When it Rains it Pours

Ilene and I walked down the street today to LA Fitness (I'll tell you that story later) and half way there, water started falling from the sky. As we walked enjoying the rain drops, Ilene told me that she had heard a hurricane was headed our way. To add to our stress, we were in an underground parking structure and had to back up and accidentally backed into a pickup and scratched the rear bumper.

Regarding the hurricane, our prayer is that the rain will come all the way to Dalhart.

Many of you have asked about Josh's chemotherapy plan. His current treatment will be a total of 10 days. He gets Cytarabine for 10 days (twice a day), Doxorubicin days 2-6 and Etoposide days 2, 4 & 6. After the 10 days of treatment, if Josh is healthy enough, they will release him from the hospital until his blood counts come back to close to normal.

Then he will be readmitted for 8 days of chemotherapy. When healthy enough they will release him until his counts are back up. There will be a total of 5 rounds of treatment, the last three are shorter than the first two, and they try to get all of them done in 6 months.

The goal is to kill all of Josh's cancer cells with the chemo, the problem is that the chemo also kills the healthy fast growing cells (white blood cells, hair etc) so the side effects are the risk of infection and hair loss which is almost guaranteed.

Because of the number of chemo meds today, he has bee hooked up to the IV getting chemo since 10 am this morning and will finish about 10:30 tonight. So far, he has not experienced any nausea or adverse side effects.

With all of that, God continues to remind us that we are His children and He will not only provide for our needs, He will bless us with things that are luxuries. Ilene was talking to one of the families that have been bringing us meals, and asked about a place to exercises. Later that day the woman called back and told Ilene that they had signed us up for a month at the local LA Fitness which is 3 blocks away.

Then that family took Sarah to the movies today with their 18 year old daughter. Sarah has been invited by a couple of the teens to go to church with her.

One of the most challenging aspects of this journey has been the isolation we feel being so far away from friends and family. But God continues to send His children to encourage us and bless us even when we are so far from home.

If the tropical storm turns into a hurricane we hope that it rains and pours (all the way to Dalhart) because we know that our God is faithful and wants all of us to turn our hearts to Him.

You are all a blessing to us and we miss you.