Hannah and Grandma Judy

I mentioned in an earlier post that my extended family is going through hard things right now. I posted on my facey page (my goofy uncle's nickname for Facebook) a status earlier this week about my cousin Hannah. Around the beginning of the year her mom, my Aunt Theresa, was blowing her nose and found a lump in her cheek. They were able to remove it surgically and test it. The results came back last week when I was visiting Norfolk. The mass was an Alveolar soft part sarcoma--cancer. (I guess I'm still not quite over the initial shock, tears still hit me when I start thinking about it--let alone trying to write about it) It is an incredibly rare form of cancer about which I cannot find a whole lot of information. Her parents let me go with them to the oncology consult on Monday with them. Her parents are Theresa and Scott (my mom's little brother), and her older sister is Brianna. Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers, as well as Hannah. Hannah will not really be able to understand most of what's going on outside of the fear, pain, and tumultuousness of it all. Her family, though, will face the facts at each step knowing the weight of them. We were able to get Hannah in to a CT scan on Monday afternoon. This was to check the rest of her body for any other signs of its progression thus far. I have been pleading with God to just let there be no other masses at all in any part of her body. We are still waiting on the results of the CT scan. The oncologist was going to consult with his colleagues after the scans have been analyzed to decide on treatment options (or lack there of potentially). We are going to the next consult Monday morning to hopefully start the plan of action the oncologists have made. There is a good chance that no matter what the CT results are Hannah will have to undergo chemotherapy, but we just don't know yet. For everything I've been through, this is new and hard in many ways and I have to just take each day as it comes. So in that light, please keep me in prayer as well.

The other heavy issue that is also on my mom's side of the family is that my mom's mother, Judy, is now digressing rapidly. She has been dealing with bipolar disorder for over 10 years, but she was diagnosed with dementia a few months ago. This has brought with it a finality of sorts in that we know we can't simply "get the medications right" any longer. She will continue to lose mental function, eventually losing her ability to speak and towards the end become bed ridden. The hardest part is that this finality is also delayed. We have and will continue to watch her personality fade away. This is very heavy on my grandfather, Dale, and their three children Tami, Scott, and Suzi. I hope that I can support my own mom as she continues to support her parents in this hard time. I cannot even begin to imagine this situation if it were my own mom; I do not know how my mom is holding it together as her mom goes through this terrible experience. So please pray for my family in this as well. My uncle Scott has it the worst it seems to me. His mom and his baby girl are both going through hell right now. So, if you would pray  for him; pray that his heart has enough strength and wisdom to not be crushed under this weight.

This would be a time I go back to words of wise people like Rabindranath Tagore:

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,

but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain,

but for the heart to conquer it.