today

 In the interest of putting both facts, thoughts and a bit of processing all in one place, I’m writing this blog post. It’s Wednesday, one week after Alex’s surgery to remove a cancerous lymph node to be biopsied and one day after he met with the blood cancer specialist. Unfortunately yesterday did not reveal any new information to speak of. The biopsy results are not available yet due to some mix up/trouble the lab is having and the specialist, Dr. Mountjoy, didn’t really have much to tell Alex except that the next step in the Hodgkin’s Lymphoma flow chart is salvage chemo followed by a stem cell transplant.  Oh, and the good news that his odds of survival are 30%, not the measly 20% he was told originally.  So, you know, pretty awesome really.  I mean, who doesn’t jump up and down for joy over the prognosis of extreme suffering and a 70% chance of death?  

Forgive me if I don’t put up the balloons and streamers.

I feel that it’s necessary to clarify here that Alex is a 23 year old adult man.  He’s not a child under our care, we are not making the decisions for him.  He’s a very capable human, I would say more so than most honestly.  He is rational, grounded, clear eyed, faith filled and strong.  He’s young, but he’s actually gone through and done a lot of hard things already. He went through the last 6 months of chemotherapy like a champ and believe me that was not fun. When he got the results of the most recent PET scan almost 3 weeks ago he hit a pretty hard wall.  He took some time to lament, feel the pain and look the reality of his situation in the eye and then he went to work. 

8 months ago when Alex originally got the diagnosis of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma stage 2 unfavorable, he just did the next thing the oncologist told him, which was 6 months of chemotherapy that had an 85% success rate. He went back to studying philosophy (his passion in life) and endured the treatments and made plans for his future.  I mean, an 85% chance!  Those seem like some really decent odds.  So he didn’t dig into researching cancer cause why would he?  85%...the chances of not beating this were minimal.  Enter PET scan from 3 weeks ago and the script has flipped.  Now his Philosophy books sit in a stack off to the side of his computer and the books about cancer are accumulating.  Honestly?  The minute he told me he was going to dig in on cancer research, I breathed out.  I have a lot of confidence that he will discover a way through this.  And if that’s not the outcome, if this road does end horribly, he will have given his survival every ounce of his strength, focus and energy.

So that’s where we stand.  Daniel and I are obviously committed 100% to supporting him and helping him however we can as he navigates the days and road ahead.  To those of you who have been praying, please don’t stop!  In many ways I feel like the journey is just beginning, like the last 8 months were just the slight incline to the trailhead and now we’ve rounded a bend into completely uncharted territory.  By the grace of God alone we will one day find ourselves on the other side of this journey, but that is not today.