Strength for the Weary and Power for the Weak

Since the last post, dad got his third round of the new chemotherapy drug prescribed by Dr. Tsao at MD Anderson. He did pretty good through the weekend but by Sunday evening it really hit him hard again. He has just been sooo sick. Please pray that he starts to feel better soon. Pray for mom to have the strength to keep smiling and taking care of him as she always does. It is just so sad and hard on all of us to see him feel so bad. On Sunday we all got to spend the afternoon in his HOT NON-AIR CONDITIONED house for Father's Day! Yes, as soon as we arrived for our visit, the AC went out. Now I'm talking HOT when you pile all of us in that den sitting around trying to talk to dad and give him presents. We were all pretending it wasn't hot until we just couldn't take it anymore and screamed out.."ok, its HOT in here!" Never fear, Stephen to the rescue. He knows one of the NICEST air conditioning men I have ever met!! He lives on our street and takes lessons from Stephen. His name is Brett Mayfield. Give him a call if you ever need anything for your AC system. He was on the golf course but finished right up and headed straight to mom and dad's on Father's Day and within 30 minutes had them fixed right up. No cost to them. I am so thankful for him. They were cooled off quickly with no worries about that. He did get all the left over pound cake mom made to go with our ice cream. I am sure he was most grateful as it was yummy!





Now, back to Dad. We noticed the left side of his face wasn't quite right and have since decided he has symptoms similar to Bell's Palsy. We hope and pray that it is unrelated to the cancer and just a side effect of treatment or some really weird coincidence. Dr. Becdach and Dr. Prickett both agree that a CT scan is needed to see exactly why that is happening. Today is Wednesday and it is much better and shows improvement so that is good news.





I contacted MD Anderson on Monday to let them know that we started treatment number 3 and would have that one done before our trip on July 11 for scans and restaging. Dr. Tsao had originally prescribed two treatments at 3-4 week intervals starting two weeks after we got home in April. Well, we started right away (two weeks early because we noticed some aggravated areas on the neck) and we did them at 3 week intervals instead of 4. That left us with too much time without treatment before our scheduled visit on July 11 so we decided to go ahead and do another treatment before going out there. When she got the message, she replied to us that if we noticed that he was responding to go ahead and scan here and do treatment number 4 then visit her for restaging before treatment number 5. Well, now this Bell's Palsy thing has come up so we are going to do a CT scan on Friday for that and it will also tell us if and how well the cancer is responding to the chemo. That being said, we are going to keep the appointment as scheduled for July 11 until we see anything that may or may not change that from the CT scan. We do have the scans taken in April at MD so Dr. Becdach can compare them for these purposes after Friday.

Although we sometimes grow weary and tired from fighting this cancer. We know that our God never does and he will see us through, we pray without ceasing. Papa is "in it to win it" and so is HE!!!!!

"Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. HE will not grow tired or weary and His understanding no one can fathom. He gives STRENGTH to the weary and increases the power of the WEAK."

Isaiah 40:28-29