After being so acutely aware of what day it was, even following a calendar from day -3 to day + 18; it seems strange that I feel I’ve missed a few days and had to be told yesterday by Paula, “Kim, it’s Monday not Tuesday.”

Okay Shannon, here’s the update.

Saturday and Sunday we were at the hospital both days with mom. Fever, high white cells, high blasts (cancer cells), not feeling well, etc. The doctors were not entirely familiar with mom so they reacted appropriately and sent her through all the proper tests, and sent all of us through hell.

We haven’t left her and dad alone since the fevers on Saturday. We’ve gathered together around them every day and prayed for her. We’ve pleaded with God to take this cancer away. We’ve spoken to her body and anointed her with oil, telling cancer to leave. We’ve read aloud from the bible and sent the Word of God into her telling her body to line up with the promises that it contains. We’ve kept worship music streaming through the house and praised God in the midst of this storm. We keep telling God we trust Him….we trust Him.

We are trying to keep everyone else updated…but maybe we’re not doing so well at that. Mike summed it up, “Kim I know you don’t want to speak negatively, but can you tell me if this is bad news?” (or something to that affect). Here’s what struck me in that moment: how do I tell them that this is very serious and could be very bad news…and still keep my eyes focused on God and believe whole-heatedly for this miracle? How do I separate the nurse in me and the crazy-faith-miracle-believing woman? As an oncology nurse I keep listening to the numbers and percentages and projecting a prognosis….NO. I will trust God. He is above cancer. His word tells me to believe in Him.

Monday morning she had another blood draw at her doctors office. The lab tech drew blood and told us to wait for results. She came out to us wide-eyed and said, “You’re going to have to wait here until the doctor sees those results. My machine won’t count it…it’s really wacky…I think your white count is really, really high.”

We ask how high. 40ish.

We say, ” Better than this weekend, we’ll take it”. Then we wait for instruction from the doctor. Is he going to send us to the hospital? Is he going to want to change chemo? We wait, and we pray. The RN comes out and tells us this is very serious, lots of blast cells, high white count, but if she’s feeling okay go home and come see the doc Tuesday at ten. Ok, back home. Everyone comes over and we pray again. We praise God for good news and we pray. We thank God that cancer is leaving her body.

Mom gets a call. Her 94 year old aunt that lives in St. Louis is dying. Mom and dad are the care-takers, but they can’t go home to be with her. Mom cries the rest of the afternoon….we call Mike to go support Aunt Julie and pray with her.

Tuesday…see doctor. He says, “what the heck?”. He doesn’t have any definitive answers about what is going on in her blood. He asks how mom feels. She tells him that she’s much better than this weekend. He tells her to come back tomorrow, since the blood counts seem to be coming down we’ll draw again tomorrow and hope for better results.

So again we wait. We wait and pray for better results, we trust God. They’re coming.

Oh, and Bob (cancer free Bob) is still recovering. Slowly, ever so slowly but he’s recovering. For the past two days laying on mom’s couch recovering.