Radically Radiant

Sooooooo

We went to Shreveport this past Tuesday so the Urologist could see how well the radiation had done at shrinking the tumors in Joe's bladder. Much to their surprise they were far smaller than they anticipated. Soo, this means that they are going to be able to go in through a cathetor and burn them down even smaller and clean out around the uretor so Joe's kidney can drain properly. We will be able to manage the cancer in this way from now on. No more radiation.

YAY!

PRAISE THE LORD!

Radiation Saturation

Dear Friends and Family:

Happy Joe

YAAAYYYYYY!!!!! Joe is all done with radiation! He tolerated it very well. He got very tired the last week and a half and was anxious for it to finish. He is still very tired and sleeps a lot of hours but is slowly recovering. They want to wait about a month before we do any tests and let his body calm down. In Dec (we don't have the date yet) he will go see the Urologist at the VA in Shreveport and they will take a look at the tumors through a scope to see how they are looking.

Tomorrow is our 19th anniversary. Last year I thought we had celebrated our last one together. Thank you God for giving us another year together, and hopefully a few more!

Here you see the beautiful necklace and 
earrings that Brenna made for me. 

We celebrated my birthday in October very quietly. We worked around the house all day getting things done I wanted done for a bunch of company we were having the next weekend. That evening we went to the international banquet at Hope Fellowship as part of our missions conference. It was really cool as we have a outreach to African Nationals here in Longview. We had a whole bunch of countries represented, 8 or 9 I think.

Recently I have made some new friends, Sharon, who is a musician and reviews books. We have lovely rambling conversations. And Joy who is also a musician and studying to be a teacher. Sharon has a 16 year old son who is one of Brennas best friends. Joy has a 16 year old daughter who is also a new friend of Brenna's. We are all going to a game night at Sharons next weekend.  It is funny all the musical people I am getting to know. Our life's seem to be surrounded by music any more.

This last weekend we had 1st Friday Coffee house on Friday. I ran it this time, under Molly's supervision, the December one I am in charge of by myself... well other people at Northwood will be helping, but Molly and Matt are gone for a month so I am heading it up. Saturday we went to a small concert at a private home for the Alaska String Band. They are a family of musicians and are extremely good. We got their two latest CDs and Joe has been listening to them almost non stop every since. Guess I need to get the rest of their music for him for Christmas.

Brenna also is still my darling babysitter of Eviline. What do you think? Brenna has gotten very involved with doing a Christmas program and preparing to go on a short missions trip to New Orleans over New Years. In the spring she is working on doing a short missions trip over spring break to an orphanage just across the border into mexico through Last Days Ministries, which is the one founded by Keith and Melody Green.

I am still staying very very busy at work. With Molly gone I am even more busy.

Thank you for all your love and prayers

Teri

Radiation and Celebrations

Dear Friends and Family...

Thought you all would like and update on what is going on with Joe. As you may know, he started radiation last Wed. So far he is having no ill effects from it. His blood sugars have been a bit crazy but the doctor said that isn't the radiation yet, it is probably just stress. He sees the radiation oncologists every Wed. He leaves every morning at 7:30 am and is back to work by 9:30 and works a few hours. It is looking unlikely that he will get any chemo because of his heart. The radiation will not kill the cancer by itself but it will shrink the tumors and make his life much longer and more comfortable.

We have gotten the first results of cat scans back. They show a 4.5 cm mass on outside of one kidney, which we don't know what it is yet. Hopefully it is not also cancer. The kidney and ureter are also swollen on one side. This is caused by one of the masses partly blocking one of the ureters. In the bladder there are multiple tumors, the largest are 5 cm and 5.8 cm.

The good news is that although we were told before that his heart is enlarged, it isn't. That is good news.

Two weekends ago Brenna and Teri participated in a PKD walkathon. Brenna dressed up as a fairy and did face painting on the kids. It was really nice.










The anniversary of Brenna's adoption happened in April. We wanted to do something special to celebrate but it is hard when Joe cannot do much physically. Well, this last Saturday we finally found something. We went to a wildlife drive through safari in Cherokee county, about 50 miles south of us. It was well worth the drive. We paid $15 per person and were each given a big bag of food pellets to feed the animals. They of course know that the car things have yummy food so most of them come hurrying over when they see a car. We drove around for well over 2 hours through this thing and saw most of the animals on the list. You have to be really careful because most of them will put their heads in the car if you let them and snatch anything in reach, your glasses, your hat, whatever.

There are two kinds of deer here,
I don't remember all the types

As you can see, he stuck his head in the car before we
could get the window up. This was a miniture donkey

Pretty, huh?

They came in herds and snuffled around for our pellets

Ether an emu or a rea. These dudes were really fast.
The window was going up really fast. 

The most agressive though were the zebras. Many of them
got their heads in the car. 

While I was snapping this one another one poked his head
around the corner and right into Brenna's lap

Radiant Radiology

Well, this has been an amazing day to say the least. At Joe's primary care doctor he found out this morning that although he has been struggling with sharp spikes in blood sugar and having to take tons of insulin to bring it down his A1C number which is your blood glucose over a 3 month period is 6.5, which, while not perfect is the best Joe's has ever been since they have been charting it.

Then we went and saw the radiologist in Tyler. What a pistol! We were there for 4 1/2 hours. It seems that the VA has only initially sent over a tiny bit of paper work and they listed him as hospice palliative care only. (WOW, I am still MAD /APPALLED at that)  So she was going to refuse the referral, but when her nurse talked to Joe on the phone she told the Doctor that "He sounds rather perky for a hospice patient, I think we should see him."

So she went after the VA for Joe's records. She personally talked to everyone of his doctors. She was hopping off of the walls by the time we saw her. She said that when she asked them why nothing had been done for him they said, "Well, he can't have any kind of anesthetic," her response was, "And your point is?" She said he should have at least had a stint put in the ureter that is partially blocked by one of the tumors because one of the kidneys is enlarged. (news to us)

Anyway, she said that she wasn't waiting for them and their games, they sent him over with no current tests or anything so she did two scans, one with no dye and one with dye in the bladder only. They also got him all set up for the radiation with the markings on him. He has a holter test on Monday and Tuesday and she still needs to get some more heart info on him so they will do the first treatment next Thursday and get the rest scheduled and his exact treatment level nailed down at that time.

She also told us that bladder cancer does not normally metastasize so if it hasn't yet there is a good chance that it wont. Having radiation or chemo will make no difference to that. She said the radiation would be much better with chemo but even without it we will be able to shrink the tumors and possibly kill them. She said that they will respond very well as high grade aggressive cancer responds very quickly to radiation, it is the slow growing kind that is hard to kill. A lot of the doctors had said that don't worry about it because you can live with bladder cancer for years. She said that is true but you definitely don't want to because it is extreemely painful and all that.

I think we are still a bit blown away after so long being told there is nothing that can be done.

Praise the Lord.

Thank you all for your continuing prayers.

Love ya

Radiology

Sorry it's been so long since I have done any updates. First I was exhausted and then I got really busy... well, that is all the excuses I can think of.

This was taken at the first time we went to the
MoJo Coffee house to hear Molly and Co. play.
 Joe Looks like a deer caught in the headlights, Huh?!
I think I should Photoshop a smile on him.

You all know that we have not been able to find any way to treat Joe's cancer... well, a couple of weeks ago he had a very long appointment with his Urologist who is incredibly frustrated that he has not been able to help Joe. After a 45 minute conversation they decided he should go back and revisit Radiation with no Chemo, just to see if we could reasonably safely slow the tumors down. We saw the Radiologist at the VA in Shreveport Monday. She said that since we talked to her last the VA has added fee basis where we can go to certain private doctors under certain conditions. It seems that there is a Radiology clinic in Tyler. It not only is closer, at 37 miles as opposed to 50 miles, the radiation machine is much better and more precise. She said that with that machine a low dose of radiation would have a lot less likelihood of causing harm than the one in Shreveport. We go for a consultation tomorrow, the 38th of Sept. That was just 3 days! The main dangers are that it could increase his diabetes and because he has diverticulitis, which we also cannot treat because he cannot have any anesthetics, that could be aggravated also. We are opting to not do any chemo though as we feel that Joe's heart would not withstand even lower doses.

Since the trip across the US end of July and first week of August Joe has been just a bit weaker than before. It took him about a month to get his blood sugars back under control. He is not responding well to insulin any more so he tries much harder to keep it from going up. He cannot do as much as before without having days of tiredness and chest pain at nigh. Some dear friends traded us chairs. They took the small pink chair Joe had been sleeping in off and on and gave us their big puffy recliner. It was a good deal on both sides as the spot they had the recliner in was too small for it and Joe needed something more comfortable for sleeping in. It was God's perfect timing as he has been having to sleep sitting up a lo more lately.

I, Teri, have been swamped at work. That is a good thing :-), if tiring. I also am still loosing weight, down 22 lbs now and falllllling. I LOVE it!

Brenna came down with a croupy cough right before we left for deputation. We finally got her into a specialist after we got back and come to find out that her lungs are a bit misshaped and she has a longtime infection down in them. She now sees a specialist to treat her for asthma.

Joe held the insolation up while We all ran around
stapling it in place 

Other than all of that we are all doing quite well. We finally, with  lot of help from our friends, got Joe's garage insulated and installed vents in the roof. What a relief for Joe. Now he can comfortably go out and putz on his guitars. This weekend, after Brenna does some face painting at a fundraiser for PKD, she will be helping Joe fix the front forks on the Harley so I can start riding it again now that the weather has gotten over this 100+ degree garbage. Now it is just in the 90's and feels marvelous.

Spontaneously formed group, they called themselves
the Puffy Penguins

Matt Mahr concert. Most of Northwood church went.
We took up the whole 4th and 5th row from the front and
then some. It was an awesome time of worship. I swore
that all the songs were just for me, but then Molly said they
were all about her, Natalie said, "Uh, uh! Me, it was all
about Me" That is the Holy Spirt for you, speaks to
each persons heart individually. Too cool!

The concert was Thursday, Friday a whole bunch of us from
Northwood went to MoJo's in Henderson to support
Molly and Joel as they performed there for 4 hours. I love how this church
just loves to do everything together. 

We packed the church for a surprise 60th birthday party
for pastors wife Gail. 

Brenna and others doing the Macharena (sp) at Gails
party

We have been going to a lot of music events. Brenna sang in a group at the First Friday Coffee house, first in a group and then did two beautiful solos. She was really excited that she did so well. She is writing songs now also. Brenna now does BSF (intercity Bible Study Fellowship) on Mondays. She baby sits for my bible study on Tuesdays. We go to bible study and Brenna goes to Elevation, which is a light bible study and then kids hang out place at the largest church in town, on Wed. We usually have something going Fridays and always on Saturdays and church on Sunday. WHEW. Life is good but, as I said, Busy.

Well, off to bed.

Love you all, and thank you for your continued prayers

Home Sweet Home

Yup, we made it. we were only gone for a day over three weeks but it seems a lot longer... maybe because we did so much and covered so many miles in those 3 weeks. (6459 miles, just on our car, not including traveling in other peoples vehicles.) We are so very happy to be home and in our own beds and space. Whew. It was fun and great but... whew!

Joe is doing better today, made it all the way till this evening before he had any chest pains and is keeping his sugars in better line. Thank you for all your prayers on his behalf. I am convinced that that is why he did so well on this trip. We hope that with a few days rest he will be much better.

So here is the last of our saga: We left the crazy area of Utah that I showed you yesterday and traveled through a more open area for a while.

So as we continued through Utah and Colorado on I 70 things continued very beautiful. This is a more full picture of the view from our hotel ... was it Thursday evening. Isn't that the crazyist rock formation? I love the gold frosting on top. It looks pretty small from this angle but it was very imposing. Click on the picture to get a bigger view of it.

This is a closer shot of the base of this rock... butte, whatever it was... Pretty cool huh!

Okay, all we could say was WOW also. 

As we moved into the Colorado area the scenery began to change a bit... well, quite a lot actually. We followed along the Colorado river basin for a long ways, watching river rafters coming down the very, what Joe called, ruffly river. We couldn't get any good shots of that but I got this one of the stiller waters further up the mountains.

 Down into mountain valleys and back up, down and up... all at 65-75 mph with a few slow downs for 55 mph corners... and all in rather heavy traffic with lots of semis. I loved the scenery but man it was scary driving.

Isn't this a beautiful sky?

After we went over the first really high summit at 10.600 feet where I got a headache from the altitude we stopped for lunch in a cute mountian tourist town. Not a fast food joint or chain store to be had. We had a wonderful lunch and Brenna and I found a wonderful gift shop that had the most unique things for very reasonable prices. We wanted to shop for hours but we only took a half hour. It was fun though. 

We drove over the second summit, the continental divide at 11,600 feet, where Hobbs, our car, was choking and trying to over heat, through a mountian (creepy) and wiggled down into Denver and headed South. We traveled through lots of big nasty heavy rains and lightening all the way through Denver and to the boarder of New Mexico. 

You see the encroaching black cloud to the right? that was completely black and full of lightening. See the rain falling in what looks like a waterfall from heaven on the center and left? When we got to those they whipped into partial twisters and lifted our wiper blades off of the windshield so that they only skittered across the surface and shook the car. Scary stuff. 

The next day was Friday. We took a little side trip up to Eagles Nest and almost to Angel Fire, 50 miles out of our way. This is on the way up to it. 

Joe wanted to show us this increadible Vietnam War Memorial. This was built by this man on the last spot that his son had been before leaving to Vietnam where he was killed. The father used all of the insurance money to build memorial to his son and other Vietnam Vets. It has a great little museum off to the right of the pictures.

This is the entrance. The memorial is in the background down a hill overlooking a valley in the mountains  As you go down the hill the bricks on the side have the names of the fallen. There aren't that many so I assume they are of this areas. 

 This is the right side of the memorial. The point at the right side is the front of it, the back part is an amphitheater.

 This is the front, standing below it and looking up.

 And this is looking into the amphitheater from the left side with the front on the left of the picture.

 This is standing at the back of the amphitheater and looking down with the front point in the center there. Isn't that just a cool feel of eternity and living forever and inclusive of many... I think it is a beautiful piece of art... art being something that can express the soul.

 This is Joe and Brenna with the memorial in the background.

 There is a nice helicopter from the Vietnam war off to the right of the memorial, commemorating the great impact the helicopter had on this war.

This was really special and well worth the side trip

 The drive up there was really pretty also, all along 25 mph switch back roads through beautiful little bubbling rivers and such. We saw dear and antelope. There were warning signs on the road to watch out for bear also but we never saw any. 

Thank you so much for all of your prayers. I know that is what kept us safe on this trip and kept Joe doing so well. Lots of healing happened in Brennas heart along the way as she processed stuff with us through the long days of driving. We had lots of good opportunities to present the work that we are doing for Christ to many people. Some new and some who support us but were unclear as to exactly what we do. 

We look forward to what else God has in store for us. 

Love

Teri