Sunday, August 26, 2012

If i didn't know better...

If I didn't know better I'd think that we are "back to normal".  But, I do.  A friend said to me at church this morning that she could tell everything was going well because I had not blogged in over a week.  She was right.

Ofcourse, things never stay the same.  We head back to Houston on Tuesday.  We have to be at the hospital at 7:00am on Wednesday morning (these people really don't understand how I hate to get up!).  This is all in preparation for a PETSCAN on Wednesday.  This is a simple procedure that indicates where there is still cancer cells...if there are.  Not much going on Thursday, we meet with a couple of doctors getting prepared for another endoscopy on Friday.  After we finish Friday with the endoscopy we see the oncologist, we are assuming she will give us the results of the tests.  So, here comes the "prayer of the week".  Whatever God wants us to prepare for, we will.  Whether it is surgery because there are still cancer cells or a "watch and see" approach.  That would mean no surgery and him having tests every 3 months to check for cancer cells.  I'm trying really hard and praying that I can accept either choices.  There are definitely pros and cons to each.

We had a wonderful week-end, shared dinner with friends and celebrated a surprize birthday party for a neighbor.  Today we spent lunch time with a wonderful group of friends from church, watched Jake play soccer and went to see "Thunderstruck" a family movie.  Actually, we just wanted the movie popcorn..and we did enjoy it!

So, we are good.  We are blessed. And we look forward to planning our activities for the fall.  Look forward to being in Houston, also, to enjoy a dinner with my college friend Mitzi whose husband Tom is going to feed us really well on Thursday night (shrimp and grilled veggies...yum).

I just have to give a shout out to our grandson Justin who will be starting for Abilene Christian this Saturday night in their first football game of the season...we are so proud of him.

God is in control and holding our hand.

Linda

Saturday, August 18, 2012

As normal as it can get

We had a pretty normal week this week.  Roy is feeling better and better each day.  He is able to eat just about anything that he wants.  He said that every once in awhile something that he is eating feels like it is getting stuck.  Normally if he slows down eating it is better for him.

Other than not working at this time he is back to doing his regular things.  The heat bothers him.  Today he tried to mow and was unable to finish because of the heat.  He had gotten most of it done, so Ryan finished it when he got here.  He came just for the day to pick up something for the beginning of football at Westphalia.  It was good to see him but I would have enjoyed seeing the two grandkids also, they were out of town with the other grandparents.

We are still feeling very blessed with where we are in the journey.  I work almost everyday next week because I am working for a friend.  The next week we will be back in Houston.  We do have something to look forward to at the end of ther week. ( Not the doctor's appointment on Friday to tell us the results of the test).  We plan to spend the night with Ryan on Friday night and then drive on to Abilene on Saturday to see Justin's first football game of the season. 

With two grandchildren at ACU we feel so thankful that they have the opportunity to be in a Christian environment.  Shay is in the dorm I was in my freshman year...texted me pictures of her room....I don't remember mine being near as pretty...

Please continue to pray for Roy.  There is still quite a long road ahead of us.

God is in control and holding our hand.

Linda

Saturday, August 11, 2012

One Week Later....

Well, we have been home for a week.  I think we are both over the jet lag and feeling fine.  Or rather we feel like we haven't been on a plane for 12 hours...leaving from England is so much easier than flying home from Russia.  There is a 9 hour difference between Texas and Russia but only a 6 hour difference between here and England.

Roy is doing a lot better now that he is back and able to just relax and eat the type of foods that he enjoys.  He did pull a muscle in his back.  He believes it happen at the beginning of the trip, probably from carrying luggage.  During the triip he kept saying he thought it was a kidney stone but he had it checked out yesterday and it was determined that it was not.

So, now we just wait...and pray.  I really am not sure what  I  am praying for.  I pray that they don't find any cancer when they do the petscan and endoscopy but then at the same time I'm afraid that the cancer would just be "hidden" and will come back.  But surgery is so invasive and I don't want him to go through the recovery from surgery.  This is a case of just turning it over to the Lord and we will deal with whatever He choses for our lives.

It is good to be home.  Although the heat is killing me.  But I like my "easy chair" and getting to watch the Olympics...there are so many places that we are recognizing.  It was so neat to be in London, I've decided that we need to plan to go to Rio..for the 2016 summer games.  You should have seen the look on Roy's face when I said that!

God is in control and holding our hand.

Linda

Monday, August 6, 2012

Home Again

Saturday night around 5:30 we touched ground in Texas after 15 days of being gone.  The first thing I noticed as we left the airport was how hot it is here in Texas.  After 2 weeks of wearing a jacket it was a definite change for me. 

The rest of our trip to London went really well.  Although there wasn't much "Olympic activity" involved we certainly didn't lack for things to do.  Infact, looking back there was probably only one afternoon that we could have squeezed in an event.  As it turned out getting tickets to events was much more difficult than we realized it would be.  Everything had to be done on-line...even getting tickets to Olympic Park.  There was a lot of criticism in the British news and on their BBC stations.  So, we did tourist stuff...and that was great because everyone else was trying to get into Olympic events.
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We took a bus tour of London, shopped on Regent St., saw the Tower of London, toured Buckingham Palace (which I had never gotten to do in all the times I've been to London), did a tour of the Harry Potter studio, went to Warwick Castle, Stratford-on-the Avon and Oxford.  We shopped a Harrod's and Hamley's.  For those who don't know Hamley's is the largest toy store in the world (supposedly).  It does have 7 floors which, trust me, Callie and Caleb found something on every floor that they wanted!  We spent an afternoon at Hyde Park where they had giant screens (4 of them) set up to watch the events  with games for the kids to play...us and about 3000 Brits.  Tried to get "USA...USA...USA chant started at a English Pub as we ate dinner and watched the games..unfortunately we were the only Americans in there...didn't go over very well.  Roy got to do some pin trading and all of us got into getting the pins of different sports. 
Caleb ended up with the most...most coveted was the NBC Olympic pin that a guy gave him while we were riding the tube.

Roy felt much better this last week than he did in Russia.  He still didn't have much energy, so he would spend a half day with us and then go back to the hotel and rest.  That worked out good because there were things he really wasn't interested in seeing.  He had either already been there or wasn't interested to begin with...ie. Harry Potter Studios. Our hotel room overlooked Victoria Station which made it great to be able to get back to get him for dinner or him to go back from where ever we were.  Buckingham Palace was a half mile from us.

I realize how many prayers were said over the last 3 weeks...a week before we left praying he would feel like going and 2 weeks while we were there.  No one can truly understand how much those prayers meant to us.  I am so thankful to all our friends and to the Lord for seeing us through the journey we were on.

Our journey continues at the end of the month when we go back to M.D. Anderson for a PETSCAN and another endoscopy...this will determine what happens next.  Please continue to pray that both of these test come back negative.

God is in control and holding our hand

Linda