Cancer

To all my sweet friends and family,

There’s no way to really start this letter other than praising My God. He is the author and finisher of my faith and I know that He will not leave me as I go down this journey. I found out yesterday I have cancer. As I share with you what is going on, let me just say. God is still good. God is still loving, and God has WRAPPED me in His arms over the past 24 hours in a way I have never experienced. He is good and I praise His name for his kindness to me today.

First, I will tell each of you everything I know at this point and then I will tell you what is ahead.

As most of you know my brother Fayez got married a few months ago. His sweet wife, Kim, asked me to be a bridesmaid. During the wedding my Uncle Anwar (my dad’s brother) saw we standing on the stage and noticed my thyroid looked enlarged. He later sat me down and told me he wanted me to go get it tested. Well, I didn’t. Then 3 weeks ago I was playing with Titus. My kids love for me to play with them “super man” I lay on the floor and I put them up on my hands. Well, Titus fell on my face and broke my nose. Thankfully, my nose didnt GROW any more but it really hurt. I ended up going to the doctor to look at it and to look at my thyroid too. As we started talking, turns out he is reformed and has 8 kids. I told Joe later he needs to get sick so he can meet our doctor. (God is good to give me this doctor, and I praise Him for it!) So he got me in with a specialist and did some blood work. The blood work came back and it was good. But there was still concern over 3 lumps (goiters nodules) on my neck. He had to stick 7 needles in my neck and swirl them around to get samples. This was horrible. Once again, God was good. I just closed my eyes and prayed through trust and obey “never fear only trust and obey”. what a sweet comfort those words were. Only 5-10% of cases come back as cancer so I tried to think on things that were true as we waited. Yesterday, I got the phone call.

I was sitting at Noah’s homeschool class. My phone rang and I just picked it up without even thinking. The doctor skipped past the “hey how are you” part of the phone call and just said 3 words I will never forget “You have cancer”.

I handed someone Silas and said I will be back in 30 minutes. I found an empty classroom, shut the door, and sat on the ground and told the doctor I would call him back when Joe was with me. Joe and I were expecting the doctor to call in the afternoon so he didn’t have his phone on him. He was running at the YMCA and had left his phone at the house. An hour went by before I could get in touch with him. It was horrible. Never in my life have I wanted someone to pick up a phone like I did yesterday morning. I just NEEDED Joe. I wanted to depend on him. God didnt want that though and He wasnt going to let me run to a person. He wanted me to run to Him first, not Joe. As hard as it was, I finally put my phone down, after at least 20 calls. And laid on my face. I cried and cried and cried. I cried to the one who put this cancer in my body. I cried to Him because I know He has done it in love.  The prayer closet God provided me with yesterday was dark and cold, but it was the sweetest prayer closet I have ever known.  Thank you God for that time with you yesterday. I feel like you forced me into it, but I’m thankful now. God gently used my first hour of knowing I have cancer to teach me one thing. I can not depend on a human to get me through this. I believe I have the most amazing wonderful best friend husband a girl could ask for, but I can not depend on Joe to get me through this. My dependance must be on Christ… and Christ alone. With the help of a few moms in my homeschool group, I loaded the kids in the car and drove home. We settled the kids down for a nap and needed to talk and call doctors and family.

So that is the “story”.

Here is where we go from here.

Tomorrow at 10:15 I go back to the endocrinologist to find out if the cancer has spread. If it hasnt spread, I will have my thyroid removed in Feburary some time and be on thyroid medicane for the rest of my life. Six weeks after that I will have radioactive iodine treatment to kill any remaining cancer in the area where they removed my thyroid. If it has spread, things get a lot more complicated. I should know that in a few days. If God layed me on your heart to fast for or pray for. I ask you would pray that God would heal me and there would be no more cancer in my body.

On a lighter note, Noah cut all of Georgia’s hair off last night. Joe and I were talking in the kitchen for a long time last night. The kids were being so “good” When it was bath time I started to put Georgia in the bath and she looked bad. As I looked closer, I realized all of her hair was gone except a long rat tail in the back. I will post pictures of that soon. Seriously, after a day like that, all I could do was laugh a lot. Joe figured out a way to put a HUGE bow in the front to make in look like….. I dont even know what. Just better maybe. I havent messed with it yet. She’s walking around with a mullet. Poor child. Pictures will be up soon.

I dont want any of you crying.  God is good and He is taking care of me. Joe has been a sweety too. What a good husband, I am blessed to have him. Pray for me tomorrow at 10:15. I will try to post something on here tomorrow evening. ~ sabrina