Pre-appointment answers

I love this quote from C.S. Lewis:

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own', or 'real' life.  The truth is of course that what one calls interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one's 'real life' is a phantom of one's own imagination.  

I had stated previously that my appointment for the pathology results was going to be Monday.  It is actually Tuesday.  (Don't ever entrust appointment times to someone using narcotics....)

I typed this up yesterday, but fell asleep before posting....

***

I got a phone call that might rank as one of the top five phone calls in my life.  It was Dr. Mrozik.  She said she was calling because she knew that I "could not wait" to get my pathology reports.

It was something like that.  I have waited maybe one thousand years this past week.  I have tried to "ready" myself for news contained in this report going either way.  She had told me previously that there had been six surgeries to that date.  One had been completely non-responsive to any chemo.  Three others had cancer cells show up in their pathology.

Two had no cancer cells.

At that time, I told her which category I wanted to fall into.  She patted my arm and said with her sweet European accent,  "we are trying, Karen, we are trying."

So she did something she was going to wait until my appointment to do - she called me and told me the results.

My pathology reports, Study Subject #6 -- showed no cancer cells.

As I stand today, with the tissue and lymph glands extracted from my body, I show no cancer cells.

People with this type of cancer don't hear those words all that often.

There are milestones yet to reach, treatments yet to do, follow-ups scheduled out for up to five years, etc, etc, but as I stand today, they found no, none, not any cancer cells.

I know there are others in this community who have begged God to hear those very words, and they have not, so I want to be sensitive to them; on the other hand, I want to give God the glory, because there were two men and their wives that believed you should do as the Bible instructs - pray over the sick for healing - and they made that long drive a couple of times to do just that, and God heard.  God moved.  God healed.

I don't know how to ever properly thank Andy and Joe and their beautiful wives, but I am grateful that they prayed over us.

As have lots and lots of others.  God heard and answered those prayers.

I will always bear the scar of this battle.  I know I will always be sensitive to this fight.  I know that a healing today in this war, does not mean a healing tomorrow.

I know all of the cautions.

But I also know that God touched me and covered me under His wings, under His healing wings, and that He has kept me there through this whole journey to this point.

He has been my hiding place.

I saw God's wings in that exam room that first day, that first appointment, at the Stephanie Spielman Center.

There's still a lot of recovery and healing and processing to do with it all.  I'm weak and recovering from surgery.  I'm still recovering from a full onslaught of chemo for six months.  My brain still does not feel as if it is working correctly, along with other body components that are not yet back to normal.

But, unless I get to my appointment today and find that Dr. Mrozik was reading from the wrong lab report -- this day, this time, this moment -- is about as good as it gets.  

When she called, I only asked her one question:  "what does this do for the study?"  I have like a million questions now, and will have to wait for my appointment to get them answered.  That's all I know - "no cancer cells in the tissue, no cancer cells in the lymph glands".

And today, that is quite enough.

Look, look what God hath wrought.