The Eye of the Storm

As you probably already know, my Mom faced her second battle with breast cancer recently. She's finished with her treatments, back at work and keeping up carefully with her follow-up scans and tests.

Last Monday she had an endoscopy because a scan showed an area of concern on her esophagus. Well, the esophagus is fine but the doctor found polyps in her stomach and sent them out to be biopsied, as is routine in this situation.

This past Monday, then, we went to meet with the oncologist to see what he had to say about the results of that biopsy.

I think my Mom, her husband Rod and I were probably all equally nervous that morning. As I drove alone to meet them at the doctor's office, I prayed aloud. Until God asked me to sit quietly, so I did - and the song Hope Now came on. It was such an encouragement to me.

Then the doctor presented Very Bad News: he said the polyps were indeed malignant and that they are offshoots of the breast tumor. This automatically classifies my Mom as a Stage IV breast cancer patient. Not good news.

We all spent Monday and Tuesday processing (aka crying). The doctor had basically said - well, we can't do chemo right now (she's had so much already that we need to save chemo in case we really seriously need it someday) - let's just wait for your next scans and see what's going on.

Not good enough, mister doctor man! We met with another doctor on Tuesday afternoon, and let's just say that I haven't cried since. This doctor is much more proactive. He feels that while certainly possible, this diagnosis is "screwy" and he wants to wait for the 2nd opinion to come in on the pathology before doing anything. HOWEVER - he doesn't find it even a little appropriate to wait for our next round of scans. Oh no, baby, we're not going to sit on this. He has a full-blown action plan already lined out just in case we really are dealing with what the first pathology results say we are. Also, we will be seeing a world-class oncologist-specializing-in-breast in a couple weeks.

So. PLEASE be praying, but also know this: we are not blown to and fro when a storm comes. Our hope is in the Lord, and no mater WHAT is swirling around us, no matter what results we are waiting on, no matter what any doctor or test shows, God is good. He promised never to leave us nor forsake us, and never is that more apparent than when we are facing a truly scary situation.