As many of you know, Doug's Mom, Susan, has been dealing with ovarian cancer for about 4 years now. We got some pretty crappy news on Thursday, so we would appreciate your prayers. Here is Susan's latest update e-mail that she sends out to her prayer partners. I thought it pretty much says it all, so I just cut and pasted it in here.
Please keep her, Dana, Doug and our whole family in your prayers...we appreciate it!
From: Susan Bierer
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 9:04:01 PM
Subject: chemo? 3/20/2008
Isaiah 43:2 “You will pass through deep waters. But I will be with you. You will pass through the rivers. But their waters will not sweep over you. You will walk through fire. But you will not be burned. The flames will not harm you.”
You might wonder why I chose that verse. I believe the Lord gave it to me, as I read it this morning before leaving for Pittsburgh . I thought that it was meant for me to share with my sister, Barb. Just knew it was for her, but when I finished asking the Lord if that’s what He had in mind, I knew it was actually a message for me today. So He prepared me beforehand that my news might not be so good today. I didn’t get chemo today. DOXIL is no longer working for me. The Phys. Asst. asked if I had been told my CA 125 and after responding, “no, what is it”, she told me it had gone up to 131. Wrong direction. She put a call into Dr. Krivak and he came immediately. Now I know why my appt. had to be at 8 AM this morning. Having to get up at 3:30 AM was a good thing after all. He would’ve been gone, if it had been made for a later time. He was visibly upset, thinking that the surgery he had done wasn’t successful. However, after the exam, he found that the tumor hadn’t grown back. He did a biopsy of the area to see if the tissue surrounding that area was cancerous. That was fun! He decided that since I had been so sick with the flu recently, he wanted another CA125 blood test done to see if the numbers had been skewed. So after he was done with me, I went for blood work. Also, to add to my enjoyment today, I was given that special treat of getting a CT scan, too. I got to drink 2 of my favorite banana smoothies. YUMMO! I may get some results tomorrow from the tests done today. Then they’ll decide the next step. They talked about a chemo treatment that would actually be 3 drugs administered every 2 weeks. This would really knock me down…as it dumps your blood counts and doesn’t give you time to recoup. The other treatment is a trial drug. It’s actually about 10 years away from being offered to the public, but they are getting good results from it at the trial stage. I’m leaning that direction right now. This one would be every 4 weeks. He also talked about radiation again, but hoping he’ll rule that out. He said he’d want me to stay in Pittsburgh to have it and this would take 6 weeks of treatment every day, then I’d have to go back on chemo. I really don’t want radiation. So, right now I don’t have a lot of information…just have to wait for test results and for Dr. Krivak to decide the next line of treatment. On the up side… I don’t have to deal with the after affects of chemo this weekend. I can enjoy Easter Sunday at church and with my family afterwards. However, that probably means I’ll have to do dishes and I was hoping to get out of that.
I would appreciate your prayers for my sister, Barb. Many of you know already, but for those of you who don’t, after almost a year of being cancer free, it has returned and hit her lung. She had her medi-port put in this week and will be starting chemo treatment very soon. Her past experience with chemo has not been good. They had to stop it before they finished the prescribed round. So we’re praying that this will go much better. My mom will be leaving Monday to spend about a month in FL with her. Her husband is still stationed in VA and will hopefully be home for good come June. She has 2 teenage boys, 14 & 16.
I guess the verse hit me because it didn’t promise that you wouldn’t have to go through hard times, but it did promise that we wouldn’t have to go through it alone. The Lord is with us and this trial won’t overtake us.
Thank you for praying…
Love,
Susan
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