HALLELUJAH!

I am so HAPPY!!!!! Left the oncologist at Penn today and unexpectedly burst into tears in the parking garage! I am really DONE! Actually Dr. Flaherty said "I don't want you taking any more of that stuff, if that's ok with you?" IS IT OK WITH ME? UH, YEAH, it sure sure is! He pointed out that some people can't bear the thought of going off the med since the fear is too great, but that really all types of chemo have been found to limit out the benefit at 1 yr of preventative treatment at the most (this is for other chemos - mine is too new to have statistics). So, going on beyond a year would likely have no benefit. So YES I am HAPPY to STOP, thank you very much!

He offered me waiting 6 months to have my next scan but that DID make me uneasy and he understood that, so I will have a scan in 3 months, and then perhaps I will feel comfortable stretching it a bit longer than that. I told him I hated the MRI and wanted valium next time which he gladly wrote for. So all in all I am one happy camper today!

Off to celebrate with some pizza together! Much more to say about God's faithfulness in carrying us through this most difficult year of my life, but knowing that only because of HIM was I able to make it through, THANK YOU ALL FOR UPHOLDING US IN PRAYER THIS YEAR! Don't stop now!

Love,
Karen

LAST ROUND!

I am so excited! I am halfway through my LAST round of chemo! I have very sore feet this time, I think because I have not been getting enough sleep with the end of school and all the summery "stuff" to do. But I am enjoying helping the kids with flower beds and opening the pool and so on. So fun to see them splashing and jumping in and just having a great time in this heat wave we had this week. Last week was hard - I was kind of dreading it, as it was the one year anniversary of my diagnosis and surgery. Diagnosis was June 2, 2007 and surgery was June 6th. So on June 6th this year I had a hard time not almost feeling that HUGE incision being opened and the rib being cut out and the waking up with a ventilator in my lungs as well as about 10 other tubes in me.....that first night was the longest of my life - a SAD memory....

But, how about this? I am now CANCER FREE for a whole YEAR! :-)

This round of chemo will end on June 22nd, and I will have my MRI's and CAT scans that week, getting the results on July 1st. Planning on that being ALL GOOD NEWS and then getting on with my life for the rest of the summer. One of my "looking forward to's" is wearing flip flops again. I LOVE flip flops but they set my chemo feet ablaze last August when I started chemo and that between the toes area has never been healed right since. Can't wait for it to heal up and don those happy summer shoes again.

I will continue to have scans every 12 weeks for the next year and then, assuming all is well, they will become every 6 months after that. Meanwhile 2 weeks ago I had a breast cancer scare due to a fishy mammogram - saw the surgeon - he ordered a biopsy (NOT fun) and in a few days we heard that all was well. I really wasn't too worried - what can a bunch of tiny dots on a mammogram do to me when I was walking around for who knows how long with a 15 cm kidney tumor? :-) It was a major inconvenience for a week though with all the hoopla over the mammogram. Life here is never dull with all my kiddos and the challenges of each day anyway! There isn't time for mom to have false alarms!

The Lord has sustained us and has taught us a LOT of lessons we did NOT want to learn in the past year. But we know that He had his purposes in these trials and that we will be stronger and wiser as a result. He uses all things for good. We are so thankful for each of you and your faithfulness to hold our family up in prayer though this difficult trial. Please don't forget us, I am not out of the woods yet! None of us are, really. We all need Him each and every day.

Love
Karen

Psalm 46
1 God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
3 though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
4 There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
5 God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
6 Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
7 The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.
8 Come and see the works of the LORD,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
9 He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
he burns the shields with fire.
10 "Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth."
11 The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

ALL CLEAR AGAIN!!

Thank you to ALL of you who continue to stick with me in the battle. Life has been hectic to say the least, and many of you have been asking when I would update the BLOG! So nice to have so many people continuing to pray for me. I am plodding along. Managing ok but looking forward to being DONE the chemo and feeling "normal" again (whatever normal is!)

I just finished round SIX out of eight, had my 6 week bloodwork done last week then my CT scan (which is every 3 months). Charles and I saw the oncologist at PENN today and it is a nice big ZERO once again! Hoorah! Praising GOD for keeping that cancer away so far... I am starting to have real HOPE that it will never come back. I can't count on it, I was stage IV and kidney cancer is a nasty bugger that can return even many years later. But, so far, so good, and for that I am thankful. My oncologist reminded me that even if it does return we are checking so frequently that it would be caught early and we could "cut it out again" (yuck) or try other meds. Five years ago there was nothing that worked for kidney cancer, except surgery when it was operable. Now there are 3 -4 great meds to treat it and more on the horizon in research.

I did have VERY sore feet this time around - silly me for wearing pretty shoes to my brother's wedding! I had to take a few days off the chemo lest I not be able to even WALK. Other side effects are not that awful and I can work around them pretty much - achy muscles and joints, sore mouth, GI stuff ....(starting to love that immodium)!

I also had a problem with the CT scan dye - I got a rash the last 2 times so now I can't have the dye anymore. I will have a combination of a CT scan with no contrast, plus MRI's from now on. MRI's are more expensive so hopefully my insurance company will not balk! My next checkup with oncology is July 1st. At that time I will be DONE the med and have the results of the next round of scans. For the following year I will still have scans every 3 months since I will still be considered to be at fairly high risk of a reoccurrence. After that year it will move to every 6 months for a few years. Wow, do I love thinking about the FUTURE! :-)

On the home front Kristina's cast is off and she is totally her bubbly adorable impish little 10 year old self again. Poor Ethan still has his cast... well it's his second cast actually. A total of 3 months in a cast - poor kid. He gets it off tomorrow (April 9) which is also his FIFTEENTH birthday!!!!!!!! We are so proud of him. He is a great young man who loves the Lord and really wants to honor Him. It's been hard to miss PE class all this time, as well as games at his youth group. He has taken up Chinese character study and has penned some beautifully painted Bible verses on Chinese parchment as well as doing some wonderful art work this winter while on exercise restrictions. He will have surgery in the next few weeks to remove the pins from his arm and will have a splint for a few weeks and then we are hopeful he will be able to get "back in shape" and enjoy the springtime! The other kids are doing fine with various activities and learning a lot. Evan enjoys AWANA and SALT classes. Claudia and Anya have enjoyed their PEPPER classes this year. Both were on a homeschool volleyball team which placed second in their division at the statewide tournament! Anya enjoys worship dance classes 3 days a week now and will be in a recital in May.

I am so thankful to the Lord for all the blessings He has given me and for much that I have learned about Him and His purposes for me and my family in the last year or so. His ways are not my ways and His thoughts not my thoughts but He is helping me to mature and grow in many ways through the trials of life. The scriptures, especially the Psalms, are alive and so REAL to me now. I will close with some verses we have posted on our frig these days that have meant a lot to us. Maybe I will post verses more often as many are so meaningful. And then you all won't think I took a trip to Tahiti between posts. (I wish!)

Thank you all for standing with us as the Lord leads us each day. HE is our sufficiency and our hope!

Love to you all,
Karen

Romans 8: 28 – 39 (excerpts) And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him who have been called according to his purpose. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Round Five

Dear Friends,

It has been a rough month in many ways but the chemo has not been too bad. I am on my last weekend of round 5 and doing ok. Feet sore, mouth sore, GI stuff... but I know the drill now and am coping ok. We have had other concerns as a family but I know that GOD is in control and HE is my rock and my fortress. The storms of life do not stop for cancer treatment you know!

Ethan is doing fine in his first post bone graft cast - one more week to go and he will get it changed (4 weeks the first time, 8 weeks the second time!) And would you believe it, Kristina broke her arm last week!!!!!!! ARGHHHHH!!!!!! She was racing her brother and sister on the sidewalk in the DARK and tripped and fell. It's a "buckle fracture" which will heal up in about 4 weeks we are told. At least she was eligible for a waterproof cast which helps - Ethan's couldn't be waterproof due to his relatively recent stitches so we have to do the "tape the plastic bag all over it" routine each day for his bath (no showers for him for now).

One of our dear friends who has been battling a brain tumor for many years has come home on hospice care now. It's sad for all of us. The other friend I asked prayer for has done well with his surgery and is going to start chemo soon. Please pray for him too.

Thank you all for your faithfulness in prayer. God isn't finished teaching me lessons on this journey.

Love,
Karen

(Lab work next week, then CAT scan 6 weeks later)

HALF DONE!

Had my checkup at PENN this week and my oncologist was in a good mood. :-P I told him last time he was grouchy and it did nothing for my attitude. Teehee. He is usually very pleasant, really! Anyway he pointed out that I am half done chemo! HOORAH! I had wondered, as I learned recently that many folks take this poison for years. OH MY. But as I suspected, these are folks who have some small tumors that are not surgically removable, and the Sutent can keep them the same size or shrink them / hold them at bay for long periods of time (this is a good thing!). Thankfully I have no visible tumors so there is no reason for me to continue the Sutent after "only" four more rounds. Yippee! There is still the nagging reality that this cancer can come back and hit me anytime for years to come, but I am trying to dwell on the fact that the longer it stays gone the better chance it will stay gone or that better treatments will be discovered for me if it does come back. Guess this is how optimists think, huh? :-O

I sort of have the hang of the side effects now and ways to handle them or make them more tolerable, know when I have had enough and gotta crash in bed early (not that I listen to myself much) and generally I am handling it ok, so they cut out my next 6 week visit and I can just get the bloodwork done locally and talk to them by phone. Then I will get another CT scan in 12 weeks and go for a visit for those results. And by then I will only have TWO rounds left!???!!!! COOL!

My white count is running a bit low again, my blood pressure is all over the place (mostly low) after messing w/ my BP med a lot because the chemo shoots it up, my feet and hands and mouth still do weird stuff..... but generally I think I can make it through. Thank you all for holding me up in prayer. God is sustaining me through the rough spots. I am really hoping I can keep a good attitude and "look on the bright side" more often, cancel the pity parties and hope for the future. That worry thing is really a drag.

We have a friend just diagnosed with colon cancer and my heart is going out to he and his wife, as well as another friend whose almost 20 years ago brain tumor returned and now has spread to bone in his hip and spine. Please add them to your prayers.

Ethan is doing well post-op after about 36 hours of stupor from the anesthesia and a good bit of pain, but he is a great sport about it all and is doing much better now. He has 3 pins in his wrist and a big splint, which will then be 8 weeks of casts and another splint but we hope he is good as new by summer! Charles continues PT and is almost free of back pain now but has a lot of nerve weakness in his R leg still being worked on. The legal mess continues but our lawyer is working on some things to move it ahead a little faster than a snails pace, which I guess is some sort of improvement? Meanwhile we know God is with us and He is providing enough to manage day by day, for which we are so thankful.

Thank you so much for standing by us in the storm,
Karen