Fortunate Friday (or Sweet Saturday!)

My Mama had her second three month follow up appt this week to make sure we keep tabs on this ugly cancer business. The tumor marker is supposed to be 35 or less. Three months ago it was 13. Her doc (we love you, man!) said that even if the number went up a little this would not be cause for concern. Well, he said we would have results Wednesday or Thursday and when Friday rolled around and we hadn't heard anything, I bugged her to bug them. She said that they said we wouldn't hear until Monday (AAAGH!). Then, at 5:13, she called me and said they called and the results are "excellent". It didn't go up! It actually went DOWN (12)!

She is such a reminder to have BIG FAITH. She believed she would be healed. We were scared of her faith because it was so big. Some people have told me that when she was on her deathbed in March, that my faith that she would be ok scared them. Please take something from her illness. PLEASE. Ask God to give you big faith for something. Something that seems impossible. Like a 77 year old woman with inoperable stage 3C ovarian cancer with pneumonia, a staph infection, a blood infection (totally septic), a skin condition and on a ventilator in the ICU for 17 days surviving. Surviving three deadly infections, any one of which could have killed her on it's own. Surviving inoperable cancer.

We took this picture because this was the best she had looked for so long. She finally got her tubes out and we could see what makes up so much of my Mama. Her SMILE.

And look at her now. WOW. I simply LOVE this woman. I can't even tell you how much or how big. You have to know her to really get it.

She doesn't remember any of her ICU stay and not that much of her rehab, either. My Dad and I joke that we wish we didn't remember it, either. Sometimes (always with a tear strolling down my cheek) I wonder how my Dad, (who was receiving radiation treatments for his own cancer all the while she was in the hospital), and Lee and I made it through the daily hospital visits (I had 45 days in a row until I got sick) and through all the feeding tube stuff and meds once she came home. FOUR months of non-stopness. But then the lightbulb goes off. It was the Lord who brought us through and it was the prayers of all of you who carried us and gave us extra strength, extra grace, extra sleep, extra stamina, and everything else we needed to be there for HER. Thank you all.

...and still no cancer...WOW.

What a Fortunate Friday. What a blessed girl I am.