“Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;
I will protect him, because he knows my name.
When he calls to me, I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”     - Ps 91:14-16

Thanks so all of you here who have been praying for this scan. We met with our oncologist today and made plans for the path forward. The CT scan itself was actually pretty inconclusive, but counts and how Lauren’s symptoms have changed definitely indicate movement in the wrong direction. As such our oncologist wants to move to another line of treatment called IBRANCE to aim at stabilizing things.

Data on this drug, like most things at this point, is not super clear for Lauren’s particular scenario. But it is atypical, outside the lines of standard treatment, which means it’s going to take some time to get insurance to approve. We’ve already started the process, but while it goes through the approval/denial/appeal process Lauren is going to continue on her current medication. Some data actually suggested that it took up to 17wks for Etoposide to elicit a response, so there could be some good out of it still.

This means we’re moving towards Lauren’s 8th line of treatment and 13th drug.

Prayers right now are that her current medication actually starts doing some amazing things by calming her liver and allows Lauren to sleep, eat, and be a mom; that we don’t even need IBRANCE, but if we do that it gets approved quickly and works really well itself, even better than what the oncologist team believes.

We’re ready for God to shock some doctors. Praying that will be soon, and unashamedly confident that the best days are ahead - because we hold onto promises like this one in Psalm 91. Our God holds Lauren in His hands. He is not surprised by today. He is not scratching His head like we are at yet another disheartening response. And it is exactly because of this that we point to these promises in His words, and ask for healing.