3 Down, 1 To Go!!

Dare I post 2 optimistic blog entries back to back? Yes I dare! Today was Allison's "junior" chemo treatment. "Junior", not as in less stressful, less painful or less medicated but "junior" as in her 3rd of 4 treatments she's scheduled to endure.

With our "Father, help Allison today" prayer lifted we head out with our Chemo-Day Survival Kit: bottled water, crackers, chewy granola bars, bananas, books and iPad. As we head down the road my iPhone (boy, I sure like Apple stuff huh?) won't stop dinging from the texts, emails and Facebook messages. Prayer after prayer after prayer rings in as we drive. This never gets old. Our family and friends have stood in the gap for months, never growing wearing, never forgetting. Its still overwhelming, you would think we would sort of get used to it by now. But our eyes water daily from the well wishes, hugs and food.

And oh my goodness, the food! If Allison doesn't get better soon, I'm going to have to look for new clothes! I could never thank our faithful family and friends enough for looking out for us in this very practical way. Allison seriously hasn't had to worry about cooking a meal in weeks. Again, I remain overwhelmed.

As we get close to the office I notice a car in front of me...a very elderly lady is driving (if you want to call it that)...she's going like 13 MPH, stopping when she shouldn't and driving all over the yellow line. Finally she turns on her signal (thank goodness) and pulls into.........the EYE doctor....too funny. I almost pulled in behind her and offered to be a witness if the doctor disputed her claims that she couldn't see!

We arrive at the doctor's office and get called back. The "chemo" room is a big open room with multiple "chemo" chairs. For the first 2 treatments we were able to get the corner chair, so more for familiarity than anything else, we were hoping to get that same chair. When we enter the room Allison notices an older man already sitting there. She tells Jennifer (our nurse) "he has my chair!"...Jennifer says "you want me to ask him to move?"...Allison just laughs and says she's kidding (but really she's not, she wants that chair!). :) But being the kind, gentle people that we are, we don't drag the old man out of "our" chair, we just make do with another chair. The only problem is we're now given the "jinx'ed" chair. The last 2 times we were here, patients in this chair had major problems, one even was sent to the hospital...we cross our fingers and say another prayer! Everything went fine in the "jinx'ed" chair and after a little less than 3 hours she's finished.

She's really felt great the last 2 days, we've joked a lot, laughed a lot and cried just a little...a good couple of days. Tomorrow she gets her Neulasta shot...the shot that costs more than my car and that is supposed to keep her white blood count from dropping too low. Last time the side effects were minimal, I pray this time is the same. Later this week probably won't be as good as the last couple of days have been, but we store up enough love and energy during the good days to get us through the bad ones.

Prayer works, we're living, breathing witnesses of that fact. We can finally see a light at the end of this trial. God has been faithful through it all, He said to trust Him. We did so to the best of our ability...and still do...