I have been blessed

A peace has settled over me today and I am ok with cancer once again.  I have come to an acceptance point I guess, and although I do not like it one bit, I am not going to let it control my attitude anymore.  For now. This morning a friend called asking for advice.  Someone she knows was recently diagnosed with cancer (a different kind than Scott's) that presented much the way his did.  His prognosis is not as good as Scott's though and his treatment will be worse in some ways, making for a difficult road ahead.  After talking with her I felt a burden lift off of me and Martina McBride's song "Blessed" has been running through my head ever since.  Hearing a story similar to ours snapped me out of my sulky bitterness I've been walking around with since we got Scott's CT results.  Scott and I definitely don't have the best circumstances all around at this time, but when I consider how much worse things could be, I have nothing to complain about right now.  God has dumped more grace in our laps than we know what to do with and I am stunned at people's generosity and kindness continuously.  So basically, I could blabber on about this longer, but it all boils down to the fact that I have chosen to be thankful today for the good things we have in our life.

We met with Dr. Abbas, a cardiothoracic surgeon (the best we've been told) at Ochsner today just to get another consult.  We have a new game plan that has developed over the last 24 or so hours and he agreed with it.  We have Scott's PET scan next Tuesday and it will be read immediately.  If the lymph node in Scott's Mediastinum is still the only thing they see we will probably be having surgery here in town by the first week in August with Dr. Abbas.  If there are more areas of concern - say in Scott's neck, or elsewhere - we will stick with our surgery date of August 25th in St. Louis with Dr. Moley and Dr. Patterson, the cardiothoracic surgeon he works with.  The surgery to remove the lymph node we know about is rather basic for a cardiothoracic surgeon and, if possible, it would just be easier to be here in town where we are close to home and know lots of people.  So, please pray that there are no other naughty spots to deal with and that we can hopefully get this all over with sooner, rather than later.