Greetings to my wonderful family, friends, and acquaintances. After a lovely spring, summer, and beginnings of fall, it time to update you wonderful people with the happenings of Elizabeth’s Journey. I’ve been putting off this post for a couple months in hopes there would be some quick change for the miraculous, but that so far has not been the case. I’ll start with the details, then progress you towards the thought process.
One of the regular test my lovely bride gets done quarterly is called a circulating tumor cell test. It checks the blood for cells that match the tumor that was removed from her liver. That test held at zero for almost a year. At the end of August, that test showed markers again of 0.2. We were hoping that was just an anomaly, but they wanted to check again after a month and at the end of September it show an increase to 0.3. Not gunna lie, that was very disheartening..
The fam at Fortress Tea House & Coffee Bar
So what does that mean? According to the oncologist, once the number hits 1.0 or greater, a tumor is pretty much certain. Two points of data (0.2 up to 0.3) only tell us it is increasing, but does not yet indicate a trend line. She is getting the bloodwork done again this week (then up to two weeks before results arrive) to see the third point of data to better understand the pace of increase. Going up 0.1 each month is a very different story (linear growth) than going up 50% each month (exponential growth). Pray for little, no, or negative growth.
Those are the facts of the situation, but not quite the heart of it. Anytime I explain the situation the same few follow up questions come up and I will try to address those.
Was there something that changed? Short answer is yes. She was on a few medicines before that have high probability of cause other issues (like other cancers) down the road. After a year of clear numbers and scans we wanted to test the waters of remission and hopefully minimize potential medicine induced side effects.
Can she go back on that medicine? Yes, but the medicine isn’t getting rid of the cancer, it is only delaying it. Cancer is dangerous for many reasons, but one reason is that most medicines eventually stop being effective in treating it, so in a weird way, this shows us there is more and/or different things we need to try.
Does that mean you are going back to Mexico? No. The beauty in our time in Mexico is that it was basically a bootcamp for when we come home. We have been equipped with lots of resources and medical grade devices for home that we can adjust and increase usage of.
So those are the details, but how are YOU and ELIZABETH… really? It is hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t been through something like this, but I had an amazing analogy thrust upon me a couple of weekends ago. I got the privilege of backpacking around Grand Island in the Upper Peninsula. It served as about the best story I could tell to walk you through our current thought process.
If you have never gone backpacking before, which I hadn’t, you typically would want to train your body a bit beforehand. Especially if you are going to go 25 miles in four days. I did not. So on went my 40 pound pack of food, shelter, and supplies and off we went. After our six hour drive and a quick ferry ride, our day one, 9.5 mile hike was in front of us. Two miles in and I started to wonder if I had what it took to get to the first campsite.
A path less taken
As my shoulders and back began to ache, I kept telling myself:” I can handle it. I’m tough. Thomas will laugh at me if I wimp out.” and finally, “this is nothing compared to the pain of seeing my wife go through cancer crap.” That thought made me realize how similar the thinking was. I obviously couldn’t just quit a few miles into the trail. There was nowhere to quit to. We had reached the island on the last ferry, so no one was coming back for me until 9am the next day anyway. Every bend we turned on I had hoped was the campsite, so I asked Thomas again how far we had gone… 4 miles. FIVE AND HALF TO GO STILL???
The farther you go, the more fatigue you get. You don’t get stronger with each step, your muscles get weaker. There comes a point for me though where the mental stubbornness kicks in and even though I’m hurting, I have a host of anchors to boost me. So we pray. Several prayers were said on that hike, especially each time I nearly rolled my ankle on roots and rocks. Thoughts of my loved ones and friends give us boost. The biggest boost of all is knowing the prize.
Preservation Point, Grand Island
On the hike, the campsite and views were the prize. Absolutely stunning. For our journey through ( *insert swear word here) cancer healing, the ultimate prize is nothing to do with this life. The prize is eternity with Christ. We continue to work, pray, and believe that that experience will be many decades away for us. But that is ultimate peace that we have. We still have plenty of days when we wish we didn’t have so weight in our backpack, to continue the analogy. We still grieve the life we knew before cancer, and wrestle with the weight of it. Even in the pain, there are some absolutely beautiful views along the way. The pictures don’t quite do the scenery justice.
As many of you know, we decided to close one of our coffee locations. Outside of the financial challenges that location had, the primary reason is so I can be more available at home so Elizabeth can do more home treatments. Pray for the pieces of that transition to continue to fall into proper place. More on that to come.
We will be getting more information on the state of the state after her bloodwork and CT scan that are being done in the next couple of weeks. Look for an update on what is next in the first week of November.