Luehrs Line --------------------: Making a Come Back

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Making a Come Back

So I know it's been a while since my hand rested on the keyboard and I stared blissfully into the LED light of my laptop. What can I say? Life happens. I have been busy. Busy doing important things. You know like mothering my babies, tending a garden, chasing two growing energy laden puppies around, home-schooling my oldest boy, continuing ministry activities and occasionally cook, clean and do laundry. Not to mention, just enjoying this season of life. Reading that makes me tired! I feel a sense of conviction to write again in this blog realm. This is part of my journey; my continued healing and recovery from cancer. I face it daily. I don't like to admit it but my own mortality stares back at me in the mirror every morning. Life is fragile. Life is short. Too short. We have no idea of when it will come to an end. We just know our days are numbered and we must make to most of each day. Live like you are dying. Sounds familiar to the words of Jesus, "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it." Matthew 10:39 I feel like I have lost it. I am literally pulling my hair out going bonkers in my mind trying to jungle it all. Yet I am finding myself in this season of life. More so than ever, I know I am doing what God wants me to do. It's my so called "job"to be a wife, a mother and a follower of His ways. Do it all for His glory because there is just simply nothing else on this planet better than that. I continue to undergo diagnostic testing to monitor my blood, have CT scans and routine conoloscopy check-ups. So far so good. God is so merciful to me. I am so very thankful. So many have asked how I am doing and what is going on with my health now that I am three and a half years from my diagnosis. I want to share. I want to scream it from the rooftops. He is good, all the time God is good.

My Boys

Puppies

So today I commit myself once again to faithfully log-in the hours to write. I have so many lessons I am learning and am continuing to ponder. The Lord is working in ways I never dreamed. His word is alive and active. I rejoice in the opportunity at hand to witness to those around me. Watch and see what the Lord will do. Strange things yes are on the horizon. So I'm making a come back to the blog world. I have an appointment with my laptop. I hope you will make an appointment to visit my blog and read what my heart speaks through the keys on the keyboard to the white light of the computer screen. May the Lord be glorified.

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My Cancer Story

Many have asked me how long have you been sick? When did this all begin? Tough questions even for me to answer...all I can say at this point is I finally found some Doctors who listened to all my symptoms and did something about it. Late in April 2011 I went to see a family practitioner who sent me to a GI specialist for a colonoscopy. This resulted in a diagnosis on May 13th, 2011 of cancer in the colon. The extent was unknown at that point in time. I had to wait until Monday May 16th, 2011 for a CT scan. Then wait till Tuesday for an appointment with the surgeon, who would later remove the colon. I was informed of the biopsy results: adenocarcinoma. The CT did not show any signs of the cancer spreading to other organs (praise the Lord). In fact the CT did not even show the tumor. It was estimated by the GI Doctor to be the size of a golf ball. So surgery was scheduled for May 31st, 2011. Surgery was successful. They removed about a foot of the sigmoid colon and 20 lympnodes. I had to wait again for lab results. On June 2nd, 2011 I was told about the lab results. The tumor had evaded through the colon wall. Two out of the twenty lymph nodes tested positive for cancer. This elevated the stage of my cancer to 3 B. This is when I knew chemotherapy would be necessary. Recovery from surgery went well. GI functions are returning on their own and pain was easily controlled. I had my first appointment with the oncology team at MSTI (Twin Falls) on Friday June 17th, 2011.

I started chemotherapy on July 13th. The plan was set to give every two weeks for infusion treatments of poison. Sounds great on paper. The reality is this: chemo drugs deplete the body of healthy cells as well as potential rouge cancer cells. Keeping this schedule of every two weeks has proven to be difficult. On my off weeks I get my blood levels checked. This is to determine if it is "safe" enough for me to get chemo again. Safe...uh...it's poison right? Anyway chemo treatments have come and gone now, twelve in all. I finished up with my last round on January 27th.

On January 29th 2012 I had a CT scan. My oncology doctor said everything looked fine. No cancer detected. Doing the party dance! I am officially on the other side of living cancer free. I am celebrating in many ways. This has been the hardest thing in my life to do. Not to mention to try to balance so called "normal" life at home on the farm.

As far as the future goes with my health I have a few more doctor appointments scheduled. I will have another colonoscpy in May. For now, it is just watch and monitor my blood work and pray cancer doesn't return. Prognosis is good and I am believing and trusting in a mighty God. He is faithful!

Fast forward seven years -- 2018! Still cancer free! After many lab tests, blood work and CT scans so far no cancer detected. Miracles still happen everyone!

Favorite Quotes

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. It's what sunflowers do. Helen Keller

"Every good work should be a revelation of the glory of God. What makes the good deed an act of love is not the raw act, but the passion and the sacrifice to make God himself known as glorious. Not to aim to show God is not to love, because God is what we need most deeply. And to have all else without him is to perish in the end. The Bible says that you can give away all that you have and deliver your body to be burned and have not love (1 Corinthians 13:3). If you don't point people to God for everlasting joy, you don't love. You waste your life." John Piper ---Don't Waste Your Life

"Surrender is the key that unlocks the vault of God's best and deepest treasures." Charles Swindoll

"You can't move people to action unless you first move them with emotion. The heart comes before the head." John Maxwell

Spiritual growth is a conundrum. The key to spiritual growth is developing healthy and holy routines called spiritual disciplines. But once routine becomes routine we need to change the routine. Why? Because sacred routines become empty rituals if we do them out of left-brain memory instead of right-brain imagination. When we learn how and forget why we start going through the motions spiritually. Mark Batterson

Serenity Prayer

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as a pathway to peace; taking as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have; trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will; so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with you forever in the next. --Reinhold Niebuhr

Luehrs Line --------------------

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Making a Come Back

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