Darkest Before Dawn

I spoke with Mom yesterday in a small moment of reprieve from her grueling battle and she asked that I post an update for her. This is a hard week friends. I don't really know what to say other then ask for your prayers as she is in the thick of it now. They assure me the doctors are everything they could ask for, she is receiving the best care available and "its all part of the process."

But how do you go on living your day to day when your momma is suffering so much its spilling out through face time? How do you soak up more tears when your own are flooding the days counting down to a miracle? While she suffers through it and Dad does all he can to keep her comfortable and hold her hand, I can only pray and hope from far away. I don't really understand all the meds and what exactly is happening and when, so here it is from another perspective . . . 

The doctors started the high dose chemo and various other strange poisons used to heal the sick. They have to breakdown the diseased cells before healing can begin. And isn't strange? Here again the dying comes first.  Like everywhere we look to in the universe, there is no life before the cross. We must lose our life to find it, a miraculous mystery we don't understand. And we are humbled as Job trembling when we hear, "Who are you, oh man, to question God?" when we are brought low like this.  It is painful and bloody and yet it is where we pass from death to life. Though it seems an unlikely place for hope, it is the only hope anyone has. The medicine that heals, first must kill. We cannot transplant new life, new marrow, into a body harboring the very disease we seek to be rid of.  

And this is where she's at. . . Holding on day by day as they kill as much of the diseased immune system as they can before her stem cells are replaced. Today, November 26, will be the day they give back all those millions of little cells of hope they so tediously collected. In medical speak its called "Day 0" where her immune system will be fragile, newly born. The healing will be slow and uncomfortable, but the hope is it will only get better. The hope is the Scleraderma will be stopped from progressing and maybe some damage reversed. 

The hope, is life renewed.

- Ann

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day." 2 Corinthians 4