Debbie Refling

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. The overwhelming outpouring of your love, prayers and support have reminded us just how special God's children are - our family and friends. 

Deb has been diagnosed with lung cancer.  The crucial liver biopsy was done on Thursday March 23rd and we got the results on Monday March 27th. Our prayer is to be able to have immune therapy but the cancer is small cell, which is harder to treat   We had an appointment with Moffitt in Tampa on Tuesday March 28th thanks to Bruce Hertz. Immune therapy is the therapy Bruce is on and when she gets scared we think of the miracle he is.  He has been our one beacon in this dark time.  Fortunately Dr. Antonia at Moffitt has a clinical trial that combines conventional chemo and radiation therapy with immune therapy, and we started the chemo on Wednesday the 29th. Please join us in praying that this treatment plan is exactly what she needs.

We trust you all understand that this is an overwhelming time for us with much to adsorb, educate and cry together over.  It is impossible to keep you all up to date or answer texts or E-mails but please keep them coming.  This is our attempt to begin the Caring Bridge site where we can do a much better job of keeping everyone in the loop.  She has said she's not particularly afraid of death, but she knows and loves a lot more people down here than in heaven so she's going to fight as hard as she can.  I'm pretty sure she's including me in that group, and I can only say I am going to do everything I can to keep her here for a long time!  Our love and thanks to all of you, Dave