Saint Lucy

God is GOOD is an understatement.  We spoke with Sloane's oncologist this morning.  The MRI showed no brain tumors and no optic nerve involvement.  Austin and I took a huge deep breath, that felt good. Unfortunately, her left eye is as advanced as the doctors originally thought.  We are awaiting staging for her right eye to determine further treatment.  The left eye will need to be removed, it will not be responsive to any type of chemotherapy and the retina is completely detached and basically covered in tumor.  The staging of her right eye will determine if she needs systemic chemotherapy or local chemotherapy (chemo injected into her eye).  We should know more this afternoon.  If the doctors feel that her right eye will need systemic chemo then we will proceed with a port placement hopefully this week.  I hope this all makes sense.

Looking back and reflecting on this past week almost brings me to my knees.  God works in very mysterious and very timely ways.  He gave us such a horrible diagnosis in such an amazing way.  We were within arms reach of all of our family the day we found out about our baby's cancer diagnosis. I cannot say we had a "good" Thanksgiving, but I can say we had the holiday that we needed.  We prayed a lot, hugged a lot, cried a lot, and even got some laughs in.  

On Thursday night I received a phone call from Father Richard at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, basically asking me what I needed and when and how.  A dear friend of my mom had put in a call.  We chose to get Sloane baptized in the Catholic Church on Sunday.  Sloane had an intimate baptism surrounded by family and dear friends. There was a surge of peacefulness that took over me and it cannot be described.  God is so good.

Many have asked how we're doing... that is a fully loaded question.  We know that we couldn't do this without all of you.  Austin and I are taking this day by day, we are experiencing different emotions at different times and some of those times are proving to be harder than others.  It is hard to keep life normal, but we are trying. We are so thankful for all of the prayers and all of the offers to help.  Audrey thinks its pretty cool she has all these people wanting to hang out with her.  

I'll do my best to keep you all updated as we get more specifics for Sloane's treatment.  Today I have a specific prayer request to St. Lucy - the patron saint of eye problems and blindness.

"Saint Lucy, whose beautiful name signifies 'light', by the light of faith which God bestowed upon you, increase and preserve His light in my soul so that I may avoid evil, Be zealous in the performance of good works and abhor nothing so much as the blindness and the darkness of evil and sin. Obtain for me, by your intercession with God, perfect vision for my bodily eyes and the grace to use them for God's greater honour and glory and the salvation of souls. Saint Lucy,  virgin and martyr, hear my prayers and obtain my petitions."