What We Hear.....

  The sun rising around the office building on the St Vincent's grounds.

 Same day's sunset reflected in those office windows.  Even a sunny day has hope.

  This is one of the boards the nurses keep up for patients and families.  You see at the bottom where it says , biopsy with platelets.  On Thursday Dec. 6th, Ted had a bone biopsy to see if the chemo had done it's job of killing the cancer. Ted's cancer doctor never comes in on weekends (?) so one of his associates comes to review with the patient. The doctor on Saturday told Ted his cancer was in remission....What do you hear when a dr. say, "Your cancer is in remission"...I heard hope, Ted heard hope and no more chemo. Thinking now get thru this truly sick stage and heal.
  On Monday Dr. Birhiray(cancer dr) came in and said , "Did I say, If or maybe? No, I said you will have three chemo rounds. You will be here a month, maybe go home two days , come back another month, and then repeat a third time.  " So  in this first round of chemo, Ted's cancer is gone"(remission)...as is his immune system and many other daily things our bodies do  for us.
  He has been so ill, not eating, diarrhea, sick to his tummy( a little thankfully ). So now he is getting extra attention for his bowels.  He finally did eat yesterday. I tell him eat things that may be easy to digest.  It's hard to think, "what would I like to eat...when it comes down to what would I like to throw up?"  He  needs to keep trying...food makes energy that he needs for this fight. His counts are slowly climbing.
  I am ever so grateful for all of you out there with prayers and well wishes.  I know in my heart all of them are helping us. I try to stay with Ted when he is at his worse moments. I just finally had to come home and get to the chiropractor. My back has been so bad I could barely walk yesterday. Thankful for my grandchildren and daughters for all their help .

 Here's my Teddy without his hair. He had me clip it all off.  Lynzie and her husband Mark with Ted one evening when I could not be there. You can see Ted tries to always smile.
  I will tell how the cancer doctor told us about this cancer AML, and treatment.   Your bone marrow is a garden growing flowers(cells) Cancer is weeds taking over the garden, chemo is herbicide . At first you use a big amount of herbicide to kill the weeds, which also kills the flowers. Once all is killed, the garden has to sit awhile...which is where Ted is right now, the really sick stage,  After some time, the flowers will grow again....the weeds will come back, but not as many...you need more herbicide.(not as much as the weeds are not as thick).  The garden is killed once again, the garden has to sit for time to bring it back. Then a third round of herbicide(chemo) is used, not so much this third time as the weeds are less . The garden sits to rest and comes back healthy. This is the hope of all the chemo treatments. Ted will be tested time and again after this to see how well he is doing and to make sure the cancer is not back......at the end of three years he would be considered cured.
  Please pray for Ted  and anyone else with cancer. I sit and think of this as , one floor of cancer patients in one hospital and then I am overwhelmed by the enormity of cancers out there. It touches all. It's a disease that includes the whole family in the emotional pain. May God bless all of you for your caring hearts. XO