Well it has been an interesting 2 weeks. As you all know I started the Living Strong program last month and there have been times when I thought I was going to need an EMT! but God is good and he gave me both the strength and the drive to keep going. I have made a lot of progress and have even started taking other classes as well as using select machines out on the floor. Last Thursday my sister and I took the Seated strength and stretch class which incorporates light weights, bands, balls and weighed poles. The name is misleading though because there are some moves that can be done standing and since I lean toward being stubborn I did what I could in the standing position. My sister and I both did modified jumping jacks while sitting, we looked like drunken chorus girls!! but we had fun and finished the entire class. My left leg is still limiting me but it is what it is! Wednesday I spilled my drink all over me just as I pulled in the parking lot of the YMCA, this almost caused me to just go home but I somehow knew that it was Satan trying to keep me down and there’s just no way I’m gonna let him get the upper hand so me and Jesus just went into class wet and cold (o.k Jesus was neither) but he was with me. Sheila stayed 3 days with me and she went with me to help decorate for the Pastors party and attended the dinner on Friday with me and Marty. By Friday evening my body started to pay me back (not in a nice way) for all that I had put it through during the week so I had to leave the dinner earlier that what I had planned, come home and take pain meds. I would do it all again because I would rather have some pain and live my life than to minimize the pain and be a toad on a log just watching life pass me by. So that brings us to this week…other than my classes at the Y and doing a few heads of hair (including my own) it has been relatively slow. Now we come to my appointment today! Well let’s just say that I was not expecting everything the doctor told us today (dad was on the road for work so it was me and Mama J) she stayed with me right up til the end. But I digress, so the doc thinks that maybe the cancer is spreading through my marrow again, can we say FUN? and I am scheduled for a transfusion on Tuesday. Now I remember the first time I ever saw someone getting a transfusion, it was my grandfather and he was at Cape Fear Hospital under the care of my very own doctor. I walked into his room, saw the bag of blood hanging there and turned around to leave the room so fast I created a breeze! My grandfather thought it was soooo funny, I DID NOT. Now here I am nearly 18 years later with the same doctor about to face the same situation, that my dear friends is what I call irony. I have this vision of a vampire with no teeth being fed a bag of blood (yes I am aware there are no vampires) but I’ve been watching SYFY all week cause I love scary movies, hence the vampire image. My hemaglobin and other levels are too low and the doc tells me that a transfusion will also make me feel much better, give me more energy and if I understood him correctly, I won’t be so winded when I do things. All of that makes it worth sitting for what I am told will be somewhere around 6 hours!
Now I want to share something totally awesome. There is a woman in my class a few years younger than myself, she has been cancer free for a few years. 2 weeks ago she told the class that she went to the doctor because she could feel something wasn’t right (anyone with cancer who pays attention to their body knows what that means) she told us that tests showed the return of cancer. The following Friday she went in for all the pre-treatment prep work and another set of tests, there was no more cancer!!! Let’s everyone PRAISE GOD because she and many others including our class did a lot of praying. Now if you’re wondering if the first tests were wrong (shame on you, where is your faith?) the answer is no, as with many diseases these test are done twice if anything suspicious is found. GOD makes me cry, I cry every time he answers a prayer and performs what we see as a miracle but for Him is grace and mercy in action. We must never pass on an opportunity to share with others what we see God do, it gives hope and assurance and we can never have too much of that. I don’t know how long I have, no one ever really knows, but I do know that as I travel this particular road I am never alone. In everything that I do I feel God right beside me and I couldn’t imagine my life or my death without him.
Philippians 4: 10-14
That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do know, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
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