To all of my faithful prayer warriors,
The last chemo treatment is behind me. My blood count numbers were wonderful according to my oncologist and we were able to finish on time. I informed him that the Lord has been gracious. You all have been such a blessing to me and to my friends. Speaking of which, I have several prayer requests for them. Wes Hargraves will be going back down to Emory tomorrow for several tests on his prostate gland. Should any of them be out of the normal, it would keep him off of the transplant list. Please pray first, that he and Carm's trip down there will be tolerable for him with his portable oxygen equipment and secondly that the tests would be OK. Carm said that he has been getting a little bit of strength back, but that it has been very slow. Also, Celestia Tarver will be going in this afternoon for her next chemo treatment. She has been on "house arrest" for quite awhile now and she was unable to have her treatment yesterday as planned since her numbers were still too low. She had another dose of the drug to bring them up, this is the one that is giving her so much bone pain. Please pray that they will be able to proceed today. They will be having her come in for infusions of iron and some other things to help boost her counts. They will also be changing her to another drug for her white count that should lessen her bone pain. Her treatments will now be two weeks on and one week off to try and allow her to recuperate. Please pray for she and Ed as they continue on their arduous journey to finding the right combination of treatments to bring her cancer into remission.
I would like to fill you in on my status now. I'M DONE with the chemo and my oncologist said yesterday that he would be giving me the Herceptin for my specific type of cancer. It is the drug that I mentioned to you before. I will be receiving it every three weeks for at least one year, with a review at that time to see about another year or not. The deciding factor now is an echo cardiogram to be done on Aug, 31. The Adriamycin I have been receiving can have an effect on the heart muscle and so can the Herceptin. If the results of the echo show damage to my heart muscle, I will not be able to get the Herceptin. I will also have to have periodic heart muscle studies done during the year of therapy. I would have you pray that all is well with my old "ticker" and that we can proceed.
Once again I would like to tell you how very much we covet and appreciate all of your prayers, support and concern. You epitomize the biblical prayer warriors and have been great intercessors on all of our behalf's. The Lord has so blessed us with such a faithful group of friends. We pray for you all often and know that you do the same.
I quoted from a book by Bill Bright before, but would like to do so again. This book has been such a wonderful blessing to me. Bill stated, "Allowing ourselves to praise Him, to join in hymns and spiritual songs, truly brings melody to the heart and very practically relieves stress, refocuses the mind on things eternal, and reminds us of His marvelous attributes (Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). For example, I love the message of Andrae Crouch's song:"
I thank God for the mountains,
And I thank Him for the valleys;
I thank Him for the storms He brought me through;
For if I'd never had a problem,
I wouldn't know that He could solve them
I'd never know what faith in God could do."
I will be in touch with you all soon.
Yours in Christ,
Sandy