as I mentioned on Facebook, I feel like I am in the back seat with you & Gail on this trip...love the map...love your determination... love your spirit of faith...
Have fun with those extra few days with your brother. we all know the line about want to hear God laugh? Tell him your plans..
----------- 10th Entry January 9, 2010 6:00 AM -----------
We now have all the info for our appointment at MD Anderson. It is next Thursday, January 14th, at 8 AM. Our initial consultation will be with Dr. Araujo, a physician there who is in the Sarcoma department that deals specifically with these types of tumors. We will leave the Denton, Texas, area (and the wonderfu hospitality of my brother Lee and his wife Brenda) Wednesday to take the 4-5 hour drive down there.
We have been told to expect that that 1st meeting will be to inform us of MD Anderson's take on all of our current information including the clinical notes, the MRI, and the pathology from the biopsy which were all done in Idaho. Then, they will outline a series of tests that MD Anderson itself will want to do in order to further and more closely clarify the nature, location and size of the tumor. This will probably include more MRI and CT work.
At the end of that process which we are told will take 5-7 days itself, depending on what they find, they will then develop a treatment plan and present the options for treatment to us.
We are grateful to be able to have the opportunity to be treated at MD Anderson. The more we read and the more others talk to us who have either themselves been treated down there, or know others who have, the more we realize how blessed we are to be able to be availed of the Doctors and facilities.
I am anxious to get started. The pain is pretty strong and the neurological complications are mounting. I do not like to take the pain medication because of the way it makes me feel and its own complications, but am grateful to have them because as time goes on I find that those concerns are less and less consequenial to not taking them.
Oh well, as I say, I am anxious to get the ball rolling.
Gail is looking for and finding places for us to stay through the first week or so, and then for the longer term once they decide the course for the treatment. I cannot tell you how grateful I am for her compansionship, love, and comfort. I look back on the 32 years of our relationship and all we have experienced and shared together and I know that the good Lord and my Father in Heavenhas blessed me in this regard beyond my capacity to receive or fully understand the blessing. Yet, I am grateful for the understanding I do have, and the ever growing knowledge (a growth that will extend into the eternities I am sure) of what that love means and how much of a reflection of our Savior's and Father's love it really is...and I am committed to more fully emulating it.
We are both grateful beyond words for all of the help, kind wirds, wishes, and thoughts of all of our family, relatives and friends. Many of whom have contacted us on facebook, on FreeRepublic, elsewhere on the web, via email, phones, notes, even their own journals of their own history with various forms of cancer. All have been helpful, all have bouyed our hearts and spirits.
Most especially we are grateful for faith and prayers and the power that is within them. A power to help us each more fully understand and know God's willl for us, to accept it and testify in faith of it to others.
So, we are several days away from that first meeting at MD Anderson. Unless something develops between now and then, I expect my next entry in this journal/blog will be after we receive that intial consultation.
Sincerely, and in Christ,
Jeff
PS: Keep the faith with our nation, our constitution, and our fundamental values and way of life. Down with the traitors and hoorah for all who cherish our Republic and its foundation:
WHY AMERICA IS FREE AND HAS PROSPERED
- and -
AMERICA AT THE CROSSROADS OF HSTORY
If I have am blessed to have any sort of legacy at all, let it be my love and dedication to God in Heaven, my Savior Jesus Christ, my wife, my children, my family, and my love for the Constitution of the United States of America and the fundamental principles upon which it was founded! And, Dear God in Heaven, my eternal Heavenly Father, let it be reflected in the lifes of my childern and grandchildren!