Greetings Dear Friends,
I hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving filled with gratefulness for our Savior and the joy of being near dear family and eating from the bounty God has generously provided for us – we did!
Thank you all for the love birthday blessings and wishes for Mama! We mentioned she settled for an apple pie with a candle in it… well, we stuck 50 candles in it and made quite a blaze! We had to be careful not to put it too close to Mom and sing “Happy Birthday” fastest ever so the candles didn’t melt her wig. Speaking of which, we are very excited; Mama’s hair is growing back a wee tiny bit so her head looks like a peach. Oh, joy, come back hair! Sometimes hair comes back on Paclitaxel and sometimes it doesn’t. At first Mama lost her eye brows and some lashes but now it’s all growing back slowly.
We have good news today! Mama’s white counts have actually gone up since last week from 1.04 to 1.66 (Neutrophils) so she was able to have the Paclitaxel today. Thank you for all your prayers! Praising Jesus for His soft and slow and faithful (and did I mention perfect!) care of us, His children. We are officially half finished; only 6 more chemos to go.
Mama did notice an increase in her neuropathy and nerve pain in her feet this past week. She walks 2-3 miles at a time about 4 times a week. The first half mile is pretty painful but her feet actually feel better afterwards; we are not sure if the increased circulation helps or if simply walking stimulates the nerves to “wake-up” in a good way? In any case, we would appreciate continued prayers that her poor feet that feel like “clubs” would hold out for 6 more treatments or at least a few more. Pray that her white count stays high enough and that she escapes the germs going around. The fact that she has been protected from sickness so far is nothing short of miraculous, so keep praying! God is hearing us!
And can I say again, thank you everyone for your love and care, and for all who have brought meals. They are unspeakable blessing to us, a very tangible expression of the love of God generously poured out through you all. This road would be much too steep without you.
Love you much,
Aubrey

Happy Birthday to Mama!

Much love to you Mama on the anniversary of your birthday! We are so thankful and honored to be your children and not often enough conscious of our great privilege in spending quality time with you. Praise the Lord, for his wonderful grace in giving you to us! We rise up in love to honor and bless you with a share of the devotion that you lavish every day on us, your family, by the grace of your heavenly Father and ours.

Mama asked for a candle in a large steak… and then under persuasion she settled for a candle in an apple pie tomorrow after a candle in a big piece of steak tonight! :o) Daddy cooked it for her…just right.

Good Evening,

I’m sure you are all filled with excitement and anticipation as you prepare for Thanksgiving this week! We are so thankful for all God is doing for and in us, showing us treasures of the darkness, and holding us fast to His word. He is demonstrating to us His faithfulness and who He is and we hunger to be nearer to Him as the hymn writer said, “Even though it be a cross that raiseth me”.

We were talking today about the mercy of God in our nearness to heaven and how we become especially conscious and thankful for the fact that this earth is not our home in the presence of so much human suffering and frailty. I am lost in the wonder of God’s mercy in rescuing me from not only this but the much worse punishment, being blatantly aware that nothing I can do earns Heaven but only His indescribable grace towards those who believe. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”(1 Peter 2:24)  At the risk of appearing tautological to some, I cannot be silent on the subject that is overflowing from our hearts and the only source of our joy and steadfast confidence, in the hope that as some of you have said you can have confidence in our reliance on God.

I have a few prayer requests to share with you for Mama. Mom is participating in a study and according to the study’s standards her white count today was “too low to proceed” with chemo but by Mayo Clinic’s standards it was just high enough at 1.04. By the study’s standards her white count didn’t need to be tested today; by Mayo Clinic’s it did… So the doctors agreed to go ahead and give her the Paclitaxel anyway. This means that we will have to be extra careful making sure Mom doesn’t get exposed to too many germs.   Also, her white count will likely be lower next time and she may have to miss a week of treatment.  Would you pray that God protects her from infection and raises her white count by next week and helps us to be diligent in working on the things that improve white cell production? :o) Mom often says she feels like she is “floating”. I think I know what she means in that God knows how much we can handle and really only lets us take on bite-sized pieces of pain, allowing enough to accomplish His good work in us but not too much so that we shrivel under the glare. He has given us courage so our fears do not overwhelm and we are so grateful for all your prayers for us. We know “the prayers of a righteous man availeth much” and God has shown us first-hand at least a part of how powerful they are! So thank you again and again for interceding for us.

May you be filled with the joy of Jesus this Thanksgiving, remembering all His acts of mercy throughout history.  Blessed be the name of the Lord!

Dear Friends and Family,
I am filled to overflowing with gratefulness for all of you.  Your kindness and faithful encouragement has been precious to me the last 3 ½ months.  Your generosity and love…now the tears are flowing…  They are thankful tears and overcome tears, awed with God’s goodness and your kindness.  Thank you for your prayers, notes, emails, phone calls, delicious meals, picking up groceries and bringing them to church every week, cleaning our tubs, taking the boys waterskiing, vacuuming, bringing me to the wig shop the first day and helping me pick out a wig, tears, reminders of Job and Jonah, smiles, the great smelling hand sanitizer and new pajamas, squeezes, funny wig quips, the little bedside light and devotionals, the socks and big brimmed hat waiting at chemo, the DVD’s you sent, cutting and stacking logs, giving us wood, spending time with Craig or the one of the kids and really listening, pedicures, laughing us through the first Paclitaxel treatment, weeding the garden, encouraging words, gifts, the box of scarves, love, laughing over lunch with the boys, traveling over a 100 miles every week to work at the Farmer’s Market with the girls, taking me on a challenging walk, fixing the faucet and listening about side effects.   Praying for all of you has been a beautiful gift as well.  Thank you for sharing your challenges and allowing us to give to you as well.  Some of you were scared, I know.  Your experiences with cancer have been painful, but you still called or came and held my hand.  Thank You.
We are filled daily; Jesus supplies us every day with strength and hope.  His gifts are generous and faithful.  One of the greatest gifts of this small suffering is the knowledge, that, if anyone I dearly love was called to suffer, Jesus will certainly carry them as He has faithfully carried me.  He has never left us alone; we are surrounded and overwhelmed by love, help, encouragement and faithful people.  Families; husbands and wives, moms and dads have gone before us and honored God in their suffering.  They are an ever present reminder to my heart, always available and surprising us by meeting our need, because they know.   I have to mention two ladies, young mommies, cancer survivors and faithful women, whom God in his sovereignty introduced me to within the last 18 months.  He foreknew our circumstances and provided before we had an opportunity to ask or even want for anything.  For anyone who has read Pilgrims Progress, these precious ladies are my “Hopefuls”, they honored God in their suffering and now they are cancer free, living productive beautiful lives before my eyes, with beautiful full heads of hair.  J  And they are willing to talk to me about the suffering…they will go back and give to me, telling me “it is a long tunnel” but it won’t last forever.  Repeating it many times, so I don’t forget.   There are many more priceless examples of “Hopeful”; over comers and survivors and you know who you are.  Thank you for giving and encouraging.   Another I must mention is my own mom.  Many of you know Mom and her smile and giving spirit.  Having lived thirty-five years plus in a wheel chair, she overcomes and gives and loves and laughs.  How can I not be thankful and filled with courage?
My words are feeble, but I know Jesus will reward each one with gifts I can’t imagine.  I can’t wait!
May He Richly Bless you all and yours,
Standing on THE Promises,
Karen

Home again and 1/3 of the treatments are officially finished!  Four done… eight to go! The oncology nurses told us we should have a party! :o)
Charlie wore his cowboy hat and boots to Mom’s treatment. An older gentleman offered to sell him his water hose, pipes and etc. We weren’t quite sure what he meant till he came up to Charlie later and bluntly asked him if he’d done much roping. No, Charlie really hadn’t done much roping. The man would like to sell him his mustang horse. He is no longer able to get on it and it appears to him Charlie would. :o) All this in such a jovial good humor. We so enjoyed his entertaining conversation and cheerful smile!
To update you on how Mom is doing physically… if you remember from last week Dr. L. prescribed Lyrica to hopefully prevent peripheral neuropathy and nerve pain. Mama noticed in the past week she had less pain and neuropathy with only a little bit of occasional fatigue and dizziness from the drug. So we are pressing forward with tentative high hopes of completing treatments sometime in the middle of January!
We are thankful and praising God for this good reaction… of course not just because we possibly found the results we desired. There would be some pretty deep valleys of disappointment if that were the case!  There is a deeper, firmer knowledge of the goodness and sovereignty of God, being in the center of His will that tops human preferred circumstances by a mile! I love how Em so much more fluently communicates this!… Click here to read her article. God bless you all tonight!

Hello Dear Friends,
This is Aubrey again…  One of these days Mama will update you all here on what she is gleaning through all this… She was going to last week but didn’t quite get to it. We continue to be overwhelmed by all you faithful ones who persistently bless us with your kindness. We are like dry plants in a hot greenhouse being watered and propped up by our heavenly Father through your prayers and notes and humbling generosity.
Mama had a little more pain and numbness last week and noticed that her symptoms were a little worse. On Saturday she slipped on the stairs and fell a little way, not a serious fall - she wasn’t hurt; but her feet were so numb she couldn’t feel the stairs. Dr. L. said that usually these symptoms aren’t this severe until the 8^th, 9^th or 10^th week so Mom must be one of those patients who are especially sensitive to Paclitaxel and may not be able to make it through all 12 treatments. Of course Mom wants to take as many treatments as possible to decrease the risk of recurring cancer as she possibly can without permanently damaging her nerves. This week Dr. L. gave us a drug to try (it is called Lyrica, a smaller dose of Gabopentin) that may prevent nerve damage in the future so Mom could have more treatments in the long run… but it also causes drowsiness. Actually, Mama took this drug during the first round of chemo to prevent nausea so she has a very natural aversion to it and doesn’t want to be tired and loopy again. J
So, that is what we’re working through right now. We would so appreciate prayers especially this week. If you could, would you pray that the drug doesn’t make Mom super tired and that it would work really well in preventing nerve damage so she lasts through more treatments.
As for the chemotherapy yesterday, we have many reasons to be thankful for God’s graciousness. We still pray every time for high enough white counts, that the nurses would choose a good strong vein for the IV and that the treatment would go smoothly; everything was much better this time… giving thanks to Him who knows just how much we can handle.  We were even blessed with hand massages, chocolate kisses, a love dinner and a delicious-smelling clean house when we got home! Many thanks to all!
Yesterday morning, Sam harvested his first deer and Ben had his braces taken off as well, two usually big celebrations at our house. All through these last few months, God in His mercy has kept life full and over brimming and though it is not all necessarily what we would have chosen, it is all good, reminding us that He is sovereign.
Mama and I finished the last section of Job while we were waiting yesterday. God’s incomprehensible goodness even in our ignorant helplessness brought tears to our eyes. Mama asked me to post this little part of Job’s answer from chapter 42: “I know that You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know….” “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in His word I hope.” Psalm 130:5

Mama, Garrison and I just returned home from treatment and Mama is doing well. Somebody shout and clap and praise the Lord; we are one-sixth done! And then next week ¼ done, the week after 1/3, 5/6 doesn’t sound very good but one half certainly does! We are like little kids counting down till Christmas. Garrison with his superior experience in reality just laughs and shakes his head. Oh, bother! J  You are not to suppose, however, that Garrison is not fond of humor! We enjoyed many good laughs over his “spot on” observations on mundane things mentioned at just the right moment. J
Since Mom didn’t have a reaction last week to the Paclitaxel or Herceptin, she got half doses of steroids and Benadryl, still enough to make her tired but hopefully not enough to give her thrush again. Mama did get another case of thrush last week from the steroids. Four times a day x ten days of swish and swallow “lemon joy”. Apparently, once you get it, it is hard to prevent no matter how many salt water washes you do.
We were especially thankful for “Mr. Incredible Vein Man” as Mom officially titled the oncology nurse who did her IV today. One nurse tried twice; she “rolled” one vein and “blew” the other and then called on the incredible vein man who explained all his techniques and did a superb job! Many thanks to those who know this job and do it so well and tenderly! It makes a huge difference.
We read the middle section of Job this week… “Oh, that my words were written! Oh, that they were inscribed in a book! That they were engraved on a rock, with an iron pen and lead, forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, And He shall stand at last on the earth; And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, That in my flesh I shall see God, Whom I shall see for myself, And my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me! (19:23-27) Our present skin will be destroyed, therefore we do not fear or take account of its temporary destruction. Our hope and confidence is in our Redeemer whom we shall see with our own eyes when we are made new. This we know, and put our hope in. Not that we aren’t good stewards of our present bodies. But when He should see fit to send suffering we rejoice in a firmer more blatant assurance of our complete reliance on Him, in the ways which we can’t always see or predict by which He will bring glory to His Name, and in a closer knowledge of Him who is our Protector and Provider, King and Redeemer. Oh, how I love my Mama, who takes care to encourage us even now!