This past 9 months since my last posting has not been easy. I have found myself discouraged more times that I would like to admit. I gradually stopped doing what I knew in my heart of hearts that I should do: Read my bible consistently, go to church, reach out to other believers, record my thoughts in my blog (I was without a computer until a few months ago but I could have found a way to write), I stopped my good diet and started back into my old ways, I stopped pretending to exercise...I just let myself go, but the Lord did not let me stay this way. He has once again rescued me, and is daily renewing my strength. You see, I never stopped praying, I never stopped my personal relationship with my Lord and Savior...I just...how do I say this...I stopped my urgency in my prayers and I think I was not honest. I felt disappointed. How do you tell the Lord that you are disappointed? Why would I think that He did not already know? I do not know why I continue to have this cancer when I know I have been promised healing. Healing in this life and body, not healing in Heaven. Just look at how David cried out to the Lord for deliverance. He wanted to know why God was taking so long, and where was He is time of need? Psalm 22:1-2. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry day by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest."
I have been honest with the Lord and He can take it. I have not lost my faith but instead feel like I am being led to another level. David knew that the Lord was in Heaven and in control of all things. The Lord answered David, and I trust He will answer me as well.
My last stint replacement a few months ago was not normal. Dr Humphreys said that "something" was pushing against the stints and causing them not to work. He put in a cathether for a month to relieve my right kidney. Tests showed that my right kidney was about 3 times the size of my left kidney, so he took out the foley cathether and put in a neuthropany tube which exits out of my right side, from my kidney, into a cathether bag. I am to wear this until June 17. Please pray that I can have this cathether taken out. It is causing me pain. Not at the site but on my right leg. It aches day and night and causes me to not sleep. I am trying not to take pain killers because I do not want to become addicted to them. It feels like a bad sunburn and is the best way for me to describe the pain. I thought that it might be the bag itself, maybe an allergic reaction to the latex, or the binding elastic straps that held it in place, so I purchased a holder that allows me to insert the bag into the pocket on the leg..but this has not helped either.
Dr Humphreys is not my oncologist, so he did not elaborate on what that "something" was that was causing the stints not to work. I knew what he meant...the tumor had grown. This was confirmed by Dr Parapati last week when she said that my tumor level was at 23.5. The highest that it had been before was 16.5. I have been getting two chemo drugs but I have been taken off one because it is has not helped and is very strong. I am now taking only one drug. I had chemo on Friday. My concern is that she told me that the list of drugs they can give me is getting short. This is the last one that is known to help colin cancer, but I could go on a clinical study. A clinical study is when they use drugs that have not proven effective for a certain cancer but they believe that it could help, more study is needed.
My prayers have intensified. I feel convinced that I must get on a strict diet. I need your prayer support. Please pray that my help comes quickly. Prayer that this cancer has a boundary and cannot go past that boundary, prayer that the tumor dies from the roots up. Prayer that cancer stops in my family with me.
