As all of you have become aware Laura has been diagnosed with stage 3a breast cancer. We will do our best to try and update as much as we can as we get and do more tests, have appointments, or things change. So many of you have reached out asking questions, wanting to help, and praying for us. We cannot be more blessed and thankful for all of the support. Right now this is what we know. She has more than one tumor in her right breast, cancer has also spread slightly into the lymph nodes in her armpit. Her cancer is kind of crazy as she had a biopsy in all 3 areas and all 3 areas tested positive or negative for all the different characteristics of cancer. What this means in non-medical terms all 3 areas will act and react different to any and all treatments we do. This is good in some ways, bad in others, but at this point it doesn't really matter, we got what we got. Since the biopsy was done we have run the gambit on all other sorts of tests and exploratory things. Slowly we have realized not to be scared about these tests, but to face them head on and know that they are routine and necessary. The doctors need to check every aspect and area in her body as best they can to hopefully determine that the cancer has not spread any further than we already know. At times these tests scare us when we think too much about them as we know a good test result means we get no worse, and a positive test result can only make things worse. So far she has done an EKG for her heart as her first treatment will be chemo, since she is young and in good health otherwise her chemo will be very strong, very aggressive, and for lack of better terms put her through hell at a rapid pace. We both know this summer won't be much fun but Laura is one tough cookie and we are encouraged that the doctors are willing to go this route as the more aggressive and stronger they attack it the better the results will be and we know she can handle it. The EKG was important since the chemo will be so strong, aggressive, and rapid her heart is at a minor risk. This was finally our first good test, she came back with a perfect EKG and we got our baseline set so that the doctors can monitor throughout our chemo. Although a small test it still felt good to finally hear we had a good one as we have only had bad answers since January. That same day kind of out of nowhere for us she had a Brain MRI. We heard both the oncologist (chemo doctor), and surgeon say that we would have an MRI. We never put two and two together that we would have two MRI's we just thought it was the same. Well we were wrong, got a call on Monday to schedule the MRI, had problems with insurance, but got that crap worked out (been fighting with insurance a lot) and had the Brain MRI done. This one had us in a rough spot mentally, what happens if we have a bad test, how do we handle that. Slowly we are learning we cannot think about or embrance the "what if" only the for sure. On Wednesday we got those results back. CLEAN SCAN praise GOD. When Laura called me to tell me that, i could just feel the uptick in her voice, her spirit had been lifted and we had a great day. 2 days in a row, 2 good tests after 3 months of all bad. We are now on a winning streak and don't have to worry about that "what if."
Laura has her regularly scheduled 3 month MRI on Monday. The past 3 months have gone well with her chemo treatments every 3 weeks and her weekly trips to Greenville, Oh to Tree of Life. She has had little to no side effects and has not felt any symptoms or feel like there have been an issues. We are very hopeful the MRI will be equal or better than im December. Please be prayerful for an MRI that shows improvements.
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