Having Faith

Thank you for your continued prayers for us. Friday didn’t go as planned. David woke up with a fever, so all his appointments got cancelled. Also, as a side effect of his brain radiation, he has been vomiting a lot. Needless to say, he’s been pretty miserable. 😞 We were able to do a phone appointment with his oncologist, though. Right now the goal is for him to stop running a fever so he can do his immunotherapy next week. His oncologist is anxious to continue David’s treatment as soon as possible. Saturday was a tiny bit better than Friday, so we are hoping David improves even a little bit more on Sunday.
We also discussed with his oncologist the leptomeningeal disease. There’s a lot of factors to take into consideration with the testing for it: the times that we are living in right now, if the benefits outweigh the risks and if it will change his treatment plan. So what we are doing for now, is holding off on any kind of testing for leptomeningeal disease. We are going to continue to treat David’s melanoma very aggressively through immunotherapy and targeted oral medications. If in a few months, his condition isn’t improving, then it might be beneficial to test then. There was a lot more complex conversations surrounding this, but that’s the best I can condense it into.
Honestly, these last couple of days have been pretty rough. David is totally exhausted and feels horrible. It is so incredibly hard to see the man I love, be so down trodden and uncomfortable. He is very worn out. He’s tired of feeling tired and weak. I’ve been looking back on his journey so far, and it’s crazy to see how many ups and downs we’ve had in a little over three months. It feels like medically, there have been so many “downs” and not a whole lot of “ups”. We are constantly praying and looking towards God for our strength to make it day by day. After having a lot of bad days in a row, we know we have to lean on Him more and more because our human spirits feel as though we have nothing left. It’s a very humbling experience to walk through. Days like this, we have no other choice but to wholly trust in God and look to Him for our strength. This is HARD and I’m sure there are some people who question how we can have faith during this time… my question back would be, “How can we NOT?” If we put our hope in anything but our savior, this would all be pretty hopeless. There is nothing on this earth that can give us the peace and hope that our Creator can. We can have complete confidence in knowing that no matter how this story continues, that God is using it for good. We know that no matter what, God is not going to waste the pain and hurt that we are going through now. Medicine, doctors, treatments… all those things can fail us. Our God never will.
Even though medically, we’ve had a lot of “downs”, because of you all, we have had a lot of other types of “ups”. The outpouring of love and support from all of you has been remarkable. Every single encouraging word you send our way, we read and we treasure. Whether it’s through Facebook, a text message, or a card in the mail. All of it is so important to us. Thank you. God uses all of it to uplift us and helps us know that we are never alone in fighting this. We have all of your support and we feel so blessed by that.

Prayer requests:
-For complete healing of David’s body
-For David to continue to feel better and to regain his strength
-For immunotherapy and other medicines to work in David’s body quickly
-For uplifted spirits
-For health for our whole family
-For God to continue to support our kids as they are going through different challenges
-For us to never lose sight of our loving Savior and all that He continues to do for us