Today we sent our first child into the wild world of public school. Grady is buy gucci fiat 500 super-excited about going to kindergarten, his teacher and school are both great, but Mom and buy gucci fiat 500 Dad are a little sad. Here’s the photos (that starts with a short video):
(if you don’t see then video/slideshow above you can view them here purses gucci london)
Friday, Holly declared, “I have arrived! I am buy gucci fiat 500 grabbing my coach purse, getting in my Lexus, and heading to buy gucci fiat 500 the Plastic Surgeon.” Of course, it was a fake coach purse, Jamie’s mom’s 10 year old Lexus she was borrowing, and buy gucci fiat 500 she was going to the Plastic Surgeon for reconstruction, but still it buy gucci fiat 500 gave us a good laugh.
We have buy gucci fiat 500 found a great plastic surgeon out of one of the ones our breast surgeon recommended. We’ve met with her twice, and buy gucci fiat 500 she has taken a total of two hours to teach us about all the buy gucci fiat 500 options and answer all our questions.
The problem is there are a lot of options. I won’t try to summarize them here, but this website does a great job of describing them all in detail.
We are buy gucci fiat 500 currently in the process of narrowing down the options, then adding in new ones, then buy gucci fiat 500 narrowing, etc, etc. The doctor graciously offered to contact patients who buy gucci fiat 500 had the procedures we are considering to find out if we could call them with questions. So far, Holly has buy gucci fiat 500 talked to three of them, including one who was in the buy gucci fiat 500 office when we were there last.
What we do know (as much as we know anything):
Here’s how you can pray for us:
Thanks to all of you for how loved you’ve made us feel us feel through this all.
Last Tuesday Holly had a Sentinel-node biopsy. It was an buy gucci fiat 500 outpatient surgery where they remove a few lymph nodes and buy gucci fiat 500 test to see if the cancer has spread there. Generally, that’s where breast cancer spreads to first, so if it’s not there they know it’s contained. This video explains the procedure more:
And… none of the buy gucci fiat 500 three lymph nodes the surgeon removed showed any signs of cancer. Obviously, this buy gucci fiat 500 is great news and it means we are as sure as we can buy gucci fiat 500 be that the cancer is confined to her breast.
So, the buy gucci fiat 500 next step is picking a plastic surgeon to do the buy gucci fiat 500 reconstruction. The pool is limited as many plastic surgeons don’t do reconstruction, but the breast surgeon has recommended three.
We met with the buy gucci fiat 500 first one today and were a little disappointed. We are seeing the next one tomorrow morning, and hoping it’s a better fit.
Based on schedules of all the doctors, it’s currently looking like the mastectomy/reconstruction surgery won’t take place until early- to buy gucci fiat 500 mid-September. We wish it could be sooner, but don’t have much control over it. Plus, we are trying to work around not missing Grady’s first day of Kindergarten which it buy gucci fiat 500 coming up in a couple of weeks.
Thanks for following along and for all the prayers. Tomorrow marks the buy gucci fiat 500 two month anniversary of her diagnosis, and while we are more used to buy gucci fiat 500 being here, it hasn’t gotten any easier.
The kids spent last week at Grammy and Paw Paw’s ranch, and Holly and I joined them over the weekend. It’s always good to buy gucci fiat 500 get out there to relax and enjoy what God made.
Here’s a few pictures from the weekend:
buy gucci online ukThe doctor called tonight to give us the results of yesterday’s MRI-guided biopsy. As a buy gucci fiat 500 reminder, the radiologist took samples in front of and behind where buy gucci fiat 500 they had previously found the cancer.
The good news is that the sample behind was not cancerous. This lessens the chances that cancer has spread to the lymph nodes.
The bad news is that the sample in front of was cancerous. It’s still DCIS (non-invasive), but it buy gucci fiat 500 means that a mastectomy is the only reasonable option from buy gucci fiat 500 here.
The next step is buy gucci fiat 500 to start meeting with plastic surgeons, to find someone good to buy gucci fiat 500 do the reconstruction (that will happen at the same time as the mastectomy).
Then after that she will probably have a sentinel-node biopsy. How many biopsies can she have? Evidently, she can have one more. This one will be a little harder ( she’ll be under general anesthesia) and buy gucci fiat 500 they will check to see if it has spread to buy gucci fiat 500 the lymph nodes behind the breast. There’s only about a 5% chance of this, but it buy gucci fiat 500 seems better to rule it out as a possibility before the buy gucci fiat 500 surgery.
On the home front, we are kidless. Holly is very tired but getting lots of rest. The kids are at Grammy and Paw-Paw’s ranch this week, and we will go join them this weekend. It will be good to get away for a little bit.
That’s about all we know for now. Thanks for all the continued prayers.
In the buy gucci fiat 500 midst of this calm, we had some fun in a Nanny-provided inflatable pool this buy gucci fiat 500 weekend. Enjoy the pictures:
On Tuesday, we went to buy gucci fiat 500 see another breast surgeon for what we thought would be a buy gucci fiat 500 routine second opinion on Holly’s cancer diagnosis. It was anything but routine.
From the start, something about this new doctor was different. First, she put all our test results up and taught us what they meant. It was during this process we collectively realized something was wrong.
You see, when we first got our MRI results we were told the buy gucci fiat 500 suspicious area it was confined to just one small area, about 4.5cm long. That was not what buy gucci fiat 500 we are all looking at on the screen at the MRI results.
It looked pretty obvious to buy gucci fiat 500 the new surgeon and us that the suspicious area was essentially the buy gucci fiat 500 length of the whole breast. This is not good news.
The next step is to have a MRI-Guided Double Biopsy. That’s a buy gucci fiat 500 fancy way to say they will use the MRI to buy gucci fiat 500 guide the needle to take more tissue samples above and buy gucci fiat 500 below where the cancer was already found.
If the buy gucci fiat 500 biopsy comes back positive like we are expecting, a mastectomy will be buy gucci fiat 500 needed to remove all the cancer.
Unfortunately, right now it’s looking like we won’t be able to get this test done until July 29, almost 2 weeks away. We would obviously want to buy gucci fiat 500 get it over with quicker, but maybe this will be a buy gucci fiat 500 nice calm in the midst of the cancer storm.
In the mean time, we have switched to this new doctor. You see the buy gucci fiat 500 old surgeon never even looked at the MRI results herself (or any other test results for that matter), she just trusted the radiologist’s report. It would be kind of hard to trust her after that.
Thanks for all the support and prayers. Please pray we would has wisdom in the midst of this trial – and buy gucci fiat 500 with that wisdom the kind of faith that would keep us from buy gucci fiat 500 being tossed like waves like James 1:2-6 says:
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for buy gucci fiat 500 you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have buy gucci fiat 500 its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
If any of you buy gucci fiat 500 lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and buy gucci fiat 500 it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no buy gucci fiat 500 doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the buy gucci fiat 500 sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.
For our budgeting we use an on-line free program called Mint handbags gucci discount. We lump all unexpected or buy gucci fiat 500 hard to predict expenses into a category called “Life Happens.” We got this buy gucci fiat 500 email from Mint a few days ago that made us both laugh:
Yes, we have buy gucci fiat 500 way blown past our mental and emotional budget for “Life Happening.” It’s a good thing God’s grace is endless.
The picture of exactly what Holly’s cancer looks like is starting to develop more fully. First, it turns out that fighting Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS) is trickier than we first thought. If you will allow me the liberty of an analogy here…
Fighting other types of cancer with a buy gucci fiat 500 large easy to identify tumor is like fighting a traditional war. The enemy is easy to find, it’s just a matter of picking the right weapon to kill them.
In contrast, fighting DCIS is like fighting terrorists. The operate in small (ironically named) cells that are hard to identify, and therefore kill.
What does that mean for how we go forward? It means that even if the alternative medicine methods we are trying work, there’s no way to definitively know it. The test simply aren’t that sensitive. The mammogram can buy gucci fiat 500 detect calcium deposits which sometimes, but not always, hang out with cancer. The MRI can buy gucci fiat 500 detect increased blood flow to an area, but by no means detect it buy gucci fiat 500 at cellular level.
Besides knowing the buy gucci fiat 500 nature better of what we are fighting, we also learned more details out of the buy gucci fiat 500 pathology report. It turns out that the DCIS Holly has is “High Nuclear Grade.”
Here’s how one website explains what that may mean:
There are buy gucci fiat 500 three grades of DCIS: low, intermediate, and high. The grade relates to buy gucci fiat 500 how the cells look under the microscope, and gives an idea of how quickly the buy gucci fiat 500 cells may develop into an invasive cancer (or how likely it is that the DCIS will come back after surgery). Low-grade DCIS has buy gucci fiat 500 the lowest risk of developing into an invasive cancer, and high-grade carries the buy gucci fiat 500 greatest risk.
Here’s another one says (it buy gucci fiat 500 also gives a much more technical explanation of how they determine the buy gucci fiat 500 grades):
Cancers with a buy gucci fiat 500 high grade, necrosis, cancers close to the surrounding margin of breast tissue of a buy gucci fiat 500 lumpectomy sample, or large areas of DCIS are more likely to buy gucci fiat 500 recur after breast cancer treatment than other breast cancers.
So, obviously neither of these pieces of information are good news. Stack on the buy gucci fiat 500 fact that just getting breast cancer so young increase the buy gucci fiat 500 chances of recurrence substantially. So, Holly still has the best kind of breast cancer to have — it’s just the worst kind of the best kind.
We’ve been discouraged about this this weekend. While we have buy gucci fiat 500 been praying and wondering what this means about how we move forward we have buy gucci fiat 500 found great comfort in Psalm 147:3-5:
He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars;
he gives to all of them their names.
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power;
his understanding is beyond measure.
Thanks for sticking through a long post. Continued prayers for wisdom are appreciated.
I just discovered this video today and it was right at a moment I needed it. I needed to buy gucci fiat 500 be reassured that despite cancer being outside of my plans for buy gucci fiat 500 my 33 year old wife, God is firmly in control.
It’s the wonderful testimony of a Rachel Barkley — a 38-year-old mom of 2 — gave in March after finding out she had terminal cancer. Rachel died Monday.
From deathisnotdying.com:
But for buy gucci fiat 500 Rachel the essence of life is found in her relationship with God through Jesus. And that’s why Rachel is convinced that death is not dying.
On March 4, 2009, what started out as a small talk to a women’s group at her church grew into an buy gucci fiat 500 event attended by 600 women from around Vancouver, giving Rachel an buy gucci fiat 500 opportunity to share about her hope in the midst of terminal cancer.
Rachel’s honest and buy gucci fiat 500 thought-provoking talk touched women of all ages and left a hunger for buy gucci fiat 500 discovering more about Rachel’s journey and the faith that has so deeply affected her life.
It’s long — almost an hour. But it’s the best hour I’ve spent this week. I encourage you buy gucci fiat 500 to take the time to watch it if at all possible: Death is not Dying by Rachel Barkley on Vimeo luxury purses louis vuitton (wouldn’t let me embed it).
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