Skip to main content

Calm hearts, easy minds

For those keeping track, I’ve learned two, rather hard, life lessons in the past eight months. First being- I should not go on vacation, secondly- I should not plan parties. But then again, God is bigger than me and I’m sure those things were placed very strategically.

Rewind to yesterday when I posted on social media and asked you all to pray for calm hearts for Austin and I. Now come back to today and please, still pray. There’s got to be some truth behind a ‘mothers instinct.’ Call it what you choose, but I’ll call it that because of the reason I could hardly eat yesterday, the way I tossed in my sheets all night long, restless, unable to put my mind to rest. The reason I felt I was going to vomit about 6 minutes prior to Dr. Plager walking in to the recovery room.

There’s never good news coming your way when a doctor closes the door behind him, pulls up a chair, and takes a deep breath. “Her right eye is really good, nothing new.  Her left eye is bad, really bad.”  And then it felt like I was sitting in his office on November 21 all over again, a lot was said and only a little retained. Rewind to, ‘She has cancer?’ And now come back to today.. She’s only going to have one eye?  I’m going to throw up, are you sure?  My baby is going to turn two without two eyes? Oh, God....

One of my favorite verses in the Bible ... “ Don’t worry about anything; instead pray about everything.  Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.  Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.  His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”  Phillipians 4:6-7

Now to what you’re all wondering about.  The possible seeding seen in Sloane’s left eye four weeks ago was just that- seeding, a whole lot of new freaking cancer.  Her left eye is covered, approaching the optic nerve, retina is completely detached. It’s as bad, if not worse, as it was when she got diagnosed originally.  This is heartbreak to Austin and I. This is what we wanted to avoid the most, as on the surface as it sounds, removing an eye is not something I have prepared to wrap my head around.  I cannot begin to fathom it, I know I hate it, I hate it for Sloane, I hate it for her future, I hate cancer so much.  But I keep coming back to this, we chose Dr. Plager for a reason, we put our trust in him from day one and we will continue to do so.  We are seeking second opinions from Sloan-Kettering and St. Jude, where there is more advanced treatment for retinoblastoma.  We ask that everyone please respect what Austin and I choose to do.  Sloane is our priority, her health is of utmost importance to us, and we do know what is best for her.  For now, Sloane has surgery scheduled tentatively in two weeks.  We may make a trip to New York, we may not.  This has been a really, really hard day.

Sloane will be having an MRI in the next few days to make sure there are no other surprises.  For now, we’re begging for your prayers, we need peace and we need strength. Please pray we make the right decision, please pray God will guide us through this and rest our uneasy minds.  Please continue to pray for all of our family, especially Sloane and Audrey.

St. Lucy, pray for us.
Blessed Father Solanus Casey, pray for us.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

November 21, 2017

I'm not much of a writer and my mind has been all over the map in the past 24 hours. Yesterday was the hardest day of our lives, to date. One cannot be prepared to sit in a doctors office and be told their child has Cancer. Our child? Our sweet spunky 15 month old has cancer? The pit in my stomach is real? Can you start over? I'm suffocating, we're suffocating. Oh please, God. But there's medicine, and chemotherapy, and really intelligent well practiced physicians. And there was a lot more said and only a little retained. Yesterday was a really really hard and long day.  Sloane was diagnosed with bilateral retinoblastomas, also known as cancerous tumors in both eyes. She will be having an MRI under anesthesia on Friday morning to rule out a tumor in her brain. She will then have surgery to get a port placed in her chest for 6-8 months of systemic chemotherapy. Surgery will follow the chemo and her eyes will be followed closely. We became a part of the Riley Family ye...

One Year

I remember a few things about the morning we went to Riley. 1) I woke up and curled my hair. 2) I did not want to be a frequent member of the Simon family member parking garage. 3) I remember the way the fellow couldn’t look us in the eye before she left the room to get Dr. Plager. I thought curling my hair would wake me up, slap me out of the nightmare that was the past 12 hours with google at my fingertips. I even tried makeup, only to be cried off in the next few hours. The parking garage led to the waiting room, and I didn’t want any part of it. There were so many kids, playing. And I just kept praying that my kid wouldn’t be one of them. For sake of privacy, we will just call her the fellow. She was kind and she was gentle. She didn’t talk much, she kept doing all these funny things to get Sloane to look certain ways, she kept repeating them and she was doing it to both eyes and that’s when we knew. We didn’t need Dr. Plager to tell us what we already knew. But she brought him i...

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 myster...