Even Still I Will Worship

Life has a way of being unexpected. You can plan for it as much as possible, but there always seems to be a wrench that gets thrown in the gears that diverts your attention, messes up your plans, and suddenly you need to wait and find a new plan. It’s shocking to say the least when this happens, especially when it’s something like cancer treatments. For me, I look at the end in sight and that helps keep me moving forward. “I just gotta get through this next thing, and then I will be in the clear”.

That wrench was thrown in the gears for me this past week. The stem cell transplant was and is going very smoothly. I started out with 4 shots to my stomach each day which tells my body to overproduce stem cells. An answer to prayer is that I did not need the palixifor booster the entire time! This booster is expensive and used if the body doesn’t have enough extra stem cells in the blood from the original shots. I heard it can be rough and give you some very weird dreams. Thankfully, my body was able to produce enough stem cells to start collection. To proceed, I spent 5 hour stints in the clinic hooked up to a machine each day while a machine extracted my stem cells from my blood. This part went well too, I met some great people there, got to meet other transplant patients and oddly enough it felt a little bit like we were all old friends because of the journey we were all embarking on. Extracting seems easy enough to lay in a bed for 5 hours, but your body quickly gets tired of it, and there is only so much internet scrolling one can do to pass the time. This process took 3 days and I was ready to move on to the next phase. Chemo admission would have started at 8:00AM today (Saturday) but my doctors have decided to pump the breaks for a week.

About a month ago, I noticed rashes appearing on places of my body. It wasn’t too unusual for me as I have had dry patches of skin for a while, I even had medicated prescription ointment already available. Because of this, my red flags were not initially up. I was using it daily but the rashes were not going away and were getting worse. They showed up as red bumps that started appearing in those dry patches. No matter how much ointment or lotion I put on, the bumps stayed. I decided to tell my doctor about it, and they were concerned enough to get me into dermatology right away. The dermatologist took a look and said she thinks it could be lymphoma related or treatment related. To be sure of what it was, they wanted to do some biopsies and get a deeper look. I had incisions cut in a couple places on my left leg where the rashes were the worst. The biopsy I was told would take up to two weeks to get results.

My transplant doctor reviewed everything and he decided he wanted to wait until the preliminary results came back on those biopsies before we started on the next phase. At this point, we had one day left before chemo was planned to start and I hoped and prayed that the preliminary results from the biopsies would be back in time to not mess up our intricately planned transplant process. So Friday came and I kept my phone handy while I eagerly anticipated the phone call. I sent out some prayer request to friends, and I prayed that God would intervene. 2:00 pm rolled around, and I got the call. My doctor wanted to meet with me in person later that day. So we got ready and started heading to the clinic.

Long story short, preliminary results came back to show there is a high amount of lymphocytes in those biopsy tissues. This could mean that they are reactionary to a virus or infection of some sort, which in that case would be normal activity seen, however it could also mean that the lymphoma is coming back. My particular type of lymphoma can present itself in the skin, because of this, they have decided to pause the transplant until they can test those samples fully to make sure it is not cancerous. If it is cancerous, this would not be the right time to do the transplant and I would need to undergo 1-2 more rounds of chemotherapy first. This procedure has to be delicately planned, when cancer is already down. If lymphoma was indeed coming back, it drastically reduces the success of the transplant outcome. If, however, it comes back as non-cancerous, we can proceed with the transplant process as soon as possible.

So, I am on hold for a week while we wait for those results. I am staying in the area during this time because I could get the call any day to come in and I want to be ready. I ask for your prayers. Prayers that my cancer has not reared its ugly head and come back, prayers that God gives the doctors wisdom over my case, and the pathologists accuracy in its testing. Prayers for our peace of mind as worry is knocking on our door. Prayers that I don’t have to do another couple rounds of chemotherapy. They were rough on me and I will be honest, the very thought of it makes me want to cry. But I know that God is in the details, that He has me in his arms, that He is not surprised by any of this and I will be ok. The journey is a rough one but I know I will make it through because of the strength God provides, and the support system/prayer warriors God has surrounded me with. The amount of gratitude I have for you all is everlasting. Truly, I mean this when I say this, “Thank you”. You all know how to make a girl feel loved.