Of Mice and Men

You know how you make plans? I like to make plans. I like to know what the next move is. Essentially, I like to be in control. There is a slight problem, I am not in control. God is. And you know what? He is way better at it anyway.

I have had a lot of plans over the last few weeks. After a quick two week check up, I planned to take my amazing wife and perfectly healthy daughter to lunch.

After the Oncologist told us it was nothing to worry about, I planned to take my wonderful wife and healthy daughter to a celebratory lunch.

After the MRI showed us that we didn’t need surgery after all, I planned to be at my mom’s house for Thanksgiving dinner.

After the surgeon was able to remove the entire mass and a “Don’t worry about anything” from the pathologist’s first look, I planned to at least make it to the Newton house for Thanksgiving dinner with Deborah’s family.

(If you are noticing all these plans are revolving around food, you’re right. I like to eat good food. Plus, food is way more of an intimate link between people than most realize. Lay off.)

I planned to go to the Oncologist last Thursday; have her tell us it was nothing to worry about; maybe one more surgery to remove the mass; and then we would move on with our lives.

I had a lot of plans. Then Wednesday came. I was sitting in class, as planned, talking about writing essays with 15 juniors when I got a text from Deborah.

“I need you to call me now.”

So I did. Dr. Vallance, our amazing oncologist, had called. It is usually not good news when a doctor calls you directly, just saying. Hope had been diagnosed with Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis (LCH). Yes, you read that right. Don’t know what that is? Neither did we. I will spare you the explanation. There is a very good Wikipedia article on it here you can check out if you are curious. (Personally I really wish it was still called Histiocytosis X. Easier to say and it sounds cool.). She had a lot of free time that afternoon and wanted us to come in immediately so she could talk to us about what exactly this diagnosis means. She also said we would be going to the hospital Thursday and staying for several days. Hope would be starting chemotherapy immediately.

Plans completely obliterated.

I couldn’t really process anything as I left school and drove home. I really can’t even tell you what I was feeling or thinking from the time I got that phone call to the time we left the doctor’s office. We were there for three hours. In those three hours, we learned a lot about LCH. We learned what the treatment plan was going to be. Personally, I learned that I could not make the plans on this on. God blessed us with a wonderful oncologist who had the ability to make a plan. In fact, he went above and beyond and gave us a doctor and a nurse educator with links to this guy, who is like the guy when it comes to this particular disease. Way to go God. Thanks for that.

So, as Robert Burns said, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, gang aft agley.” Or for those of you who don’t speak Scots, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” True story.

It has been very enlightening for me to watch amazingly well trained doctors, who know exactly what they are doing, be unwilling to commit to a plan. I am still working on that. Just this morning our doctor was talking about getting us a “road map” for Hope’s chemo treatment. What was my question? “So will that have dates on it?” Still trying to make plans. Of course it doesn’t have dates. Because as much as we plan and plan and plan, stuff happens. Is it bad to plan? I don think so; I hope not. But just like the doctor’s plans are subject to what this disease decides to do, our plans are always subject to what God decided to do. So I ate Thanksgiving dinner from my mom’s house sitting in a hospital room with just my beautiful wife and daughter. That was pretty special in its own right.

God has this amazing way of working things out. It’s like he knows what he is doing or something. I’m working on letting go of my need to have a plan. Because you know what, life is messy. And that’s okay. What looks messy from down here looks like an amazing masterpiece through his eyes. I can’t wait to see it like that.

Probably one more post coming from the hospital. That whole chemo thing is worth writing about.

But if not…

So Tuesday at the hospital brought with it a sedated MRI to get a picture of this mysterious mass. Hope had some trouble breathing coming out of sedation. We were blissfully ignorant of everything going on. Okay, maybe not blissfully, but certainly more peaceful not knowing that the doctor was considering sending her to ICU. We knew her Aunt Lauraleigh who loves her very much was with her and that was enough to let us relax a bit. After some extra time with oxygen, she was back in great shape. Hurdle one: cleared.

The MRI did not really tell us much. It did provide us with some measure of relief as our oncologist was able to tell us that the mass did not look like malignant rumors typically look. It was also able to give us all just a little assurance that we needed surgery to see exactly what this anomaly was. So that is what we planned. The hope (see what I did there) was that the surgeon would be able to remove the entire mass.

Things did not work out quite that way. While the surgeon was able to remove the entire mass from her foot, he was not able to remove the mass from her groin. When he cut into the outer layer of the mass, it was “mushy.” Couple that with the fact that the mass was essentially sitting on top of the femoral artery, and the surgeon did not feel comfortable messing with it. Again, praise the Lord for smart doctors. He took enough of the mass to get a biopsy and sewed her all up.

The initial pathology reports repeated the findings of the MRI that nothing looked like a big scary malignant tumor. At this point, we knew we were dealing with a histiocyte. Basically, a histiocyte is a mass made up of good cells behaving badly. So it was not cancer, but we still did not know what it was. It was possible that it was a completely benign little growth that would never crop up again. While that seemed somewhat unlikely given the presence of two weird bumps, our hopes were high that we might get away with this being a non issue going forward.

With no reactions to surgery or sedation, Hope was discharged and we were able to go home early on Thanksgiving day. We made it to Aunt Lauraleigh’s house right on schedule for Thanksgiving lunch. Hope even wore her custom turkey dress made with much love by her Mimi.

Then the waiting began. We had an appointment the following Thursday with our new oncologist. A week. We had to a week to know what was wrong with our baby girl. We did our best to live a normal life for that week. Personally, I decided not to talk about it and pretend it wasn’t even there. But it was always there. The lingering doubt. The uncertainty. The veiled optimism. The masked fear. All of those things were always there.

For me, what is also always there is Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I don’t remember where, but somewhere a while back I heard someone specifically point out Daniel 3:17-18. In their response to Nebuchadnezzar, these three young men say this:

“If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Daniel 3:17, 18 ESV)

But if not. What a powerful three words.

In a week where every prayer I had was focused on sparing my baby girl from some life-altering disease, or worse; I had to come to terms with these three words.

I am currently writing from a brighter perspective than I have had at many points over the last two weeks. Right now, it is easy for me to say “But if not.” That has not been true for every moment. In fact, more often than not over the past two weeks, I have been angry at God. I have been terrified. I have lacked the faith to be able to say, “But if not.” If so am being completely honest, there have not been many moments in my life that have required me to walk in “But if not.” I have lived an extremely blessed life. I have had to endure very little hardship. It has most often been easy for me to give lip service to God because I was far from the fiery furnace. So here I am, in the furnace. Faced with easily the most trying scenario in my life, I failed. I didn’t run to God, I drew into myself.

I know the years to come will present more fiery furnaces in my life, probably several through Hope. All I can do is ask God to help me. I can only ask him to grant me the faith necessary to live out “But if not.” I can only ask him to make me a better example and spiritual leader for my wife than I have been. I can only ask him to make me a more Godly father to my two children. I can only ask because I am completely inept without his help. But in his amazing grace, asking is all God requires.

God grant me a willing and humble heart. Draw me to yourself, for it is only in you that I am capable of anything. Give me the faith and passion for you that makes “But if not” possible.

Part three of the story of this ordeal will be forthcoming.

Do you believe it?

If you know me at all, you probably have some inkling as to what has been going on in our lives for the past three weeks. I want to start at the beginning so everyone knows the whole story. I also want to start at the beginning so that one day Hope will have a testament to how good God has been to her.

On November 10, 2010, Deborah and I were blessed beyond measure with our second child. We had a baby girl that was happy, healthy, and absolutely adorable. She was 21 inches long and 8 pounds, 13 ounces. From the minute she was born she had big round cheeks and little rolls on her arms and legs. The only flaw in her at all was a small bump that was on the bottom of her foot. All the doctors involved agreed to just watch it and see what it would do.

That is pretty much the way she stayed for 15 days. She ate a lot. She slept well. She hardly ever cried. However, on the morning of November 25, we had what we thought was going to be a routine, two week check up with our pediatrician, Dr. James Wheeler. During his exam, Dr. Wheeler found a mass on Hope’s groin. It was on the same side as the bump on her foot. He initially thought it was a lymph node. But Dr. wheeler is a wonderful doctor and a very thoughtful man. There were several things that did not line up with a swollen lymph node due to infection. When we left the office that day, we did not know what it was or where he was going to send us.

We got a call a couple of hours later that we had an appointment the next morning with a Pediatric Oncologist. That is not really an appointment you want to take your two week old daughter to. We, along with our family, had a hard time accepting that we were headed to the right place. Surely this was a just an infection that came in through the foot and caused a lymph node to flair up. Surely we should be headed to an infectious disease specialists to put her on some antibiotics and be on our way. This guy had to be crazy.

But he wasn’t crazy. I have no idea if Dr. Wheeler is a believer or not, but I will always believe that God specially orchestrated his steps during those couple of hours after we left his office. He was going to call around to several different doctors. I am not sure who all he eventually talked to, but when he chose to send us to the oncologist, he absolutely made the right decision.

So Tuesday morning, we were off to the Oncologist. After a brief examination, the Oncologist, who just happened to be a relative of Deborah’s and a wonderful doctor and woman in her own right, was equally baffled. She was also less than convinced it was an infection in a lymph node, but had no real clue beyond that. So guess what, we were off to the hospital.

We went straight from there to the hospital for an MRI and a biopsy. In the course of about 27 hours we had gone from having a wonderfully healthy baby girl, to waiting in a room on the oncology floor for an MRI. Without a doubt, this was the biggest whirlwind roller coaster we had ever been on. Over those couple of days, I probably cried more than I had in the past 20 years combined. I was terrified.

As we were sitting in the hospital, a song kept popping into my head. “Blessed Be the Name of The Lord” by Matt Redman. I had sung this song a thousand times. I was convinced I really believed this song. All of the sudden I was hit with the stark reality of the words “You give and take away.” Was God really going to give me a wonderful daughter and then take her away a few months or even weeks later? If that were the case, was I willing to bless God in the midst of it? Did I really believe it? That is the hardest question I have ever had to ponder in my life. I found myself honestly believing the answer was yes, but desperately pleading with God to not make me find out.

At this point, I don’t know what that says about me and my faith. If I truly believed God’s promises, would I be holding on this tight? If I truly bought in to the amazing truth of the goodness and mercy of God, would I be this scared? If I were ultimately convinced that God loves Hope more than I possibly could, would I run to Him more and draw into myself less? I think the answer is yes.

But God is a better dad than I could ever be. For in his love and mercy, he allows us to be scared. He allows us to make mistakes. His grace is sufficient because he knows we can not do it on our own. And he knows we will try over and over again. I confess that I have been trying to do it on my own over the past few weeks. I have done everything I know to do. But I have not slowed down enough to take a step back and ask God to do it for me. I have not taken the time to simply sit back and reflect on the goodness, the mercy, and the love of God.

So the question remains for me. Do you believe it? Stop saying you do and act like you do.

(I will follow up with the rest of the story tomorrow, assuming I can get the hospital wifi to work.)