Four Beautiful Words

I have some very good news to share today.  Mom and I were just waking up this morning, the nurse had been in around 6 to check her blood sugar and vitals, and Dr. Rojas came in, making his rounds.  He talked with Mom for a moment and examined her incision (more than 40 staples!) and also shared with her the pictures that they took during surgery.  I had a few more questions about the tumor itself and asked those, and then finally he said, "I have some great news from the lab.  There is no cancer."  Four beautiful words!  He then showed us the pathology report and first we stared in disbelief before shedding tears of joy!  Praise the Lord!

 

I'm not sure the full reality of the report has sunk in, but later I looked through it and saw that yes, each small part that they tested came back negative with fancy medical words like "no metastatic abnormality" and "benign tissue."  This is such wonderful news, we are so very, very thankful. 

 

Now the task ahead is to recover from this surgery and try to manage her diabetes.  Mom's IV was taken away today, and she was encouraged to get up and walk more, but she is not able to eat a lot--after a huge trauma to her system she is not very hungry as well as simply not being used to eating; her last meal was Monday night.  So it has been hard for her to take in enough calories today to keep her blood sugars up, and has had two fairly low ones in the last 20 hours, which are so very dangerous for her system.  As well, they want her up and walking more but she was already fairly weak and unsteady before the surgery, now that is compounded much more by the pain and then the low blood sugars just add to the problems.  So we had a bit of a rough day trying to manage all of this, I think she feels fairly tired out and a bit discouraged this evening, even despite the great news of the early morning.

 

Previously the doctors had been ready to release her to our hometown hospital tomorrow for a few more days of care there, but Mom doesn't feel comfortable with that until they work out a better plan for dealing with her diabetes.  We'll see what happens.

 

So today, please pray that she will have stable blood sugars, especially overnight when she tends to drop into dangerous zones, and also they are starting a new pain medication since it seems like the other one wasn't cutting it.  I think if we have a better handle on the pain and the diabetes, we will feel more comfortable with her transferring.  But for now we are eager to get some resolution on those issues.

 

However, we want to give all the glory and praise to God for His gracious and merciful answer about the fact that there is no cancer!  So many of you were praying that we would hear that answer and God graciously gave it!  We certainly know that this is not always the case; even as today is the day of Chip Stam's memorial service.  The Lord always does good, and He would have still been good even if the result had been cancer.  But we are so thankful that He chose to answer in this way.  Rejoice with us!  "All I have needed your hand has provided, Great is your Faithfulness, Lord, Unto me!"