MAY 25-Found a Tumor

It all started when Calli wanted to put the trampoline together....

We got the kids a trampoline for Christmas, and three weeks ago it dried up enough to put it up.  Calli did not want to wait for Mike to put it together, and decided to pick up the 200 lb box by herself and started to put it together.  Really she knew that if she just started, that Mike would come and rescue her and finish it :)  Well, Mike, Calli & Aidan had it together in no time, and when it came time to jump- she couldn't.  Hmmm her back hurt so much on her spine.  She came & told me, and I thought it was just cramps or "growing pains."  When she still had pain and it was worsening a week later, I took her to her pediatrician, who did an xray- which was normal.  The next day, she started having numbess and tingling down her left leg, the day after that, both legs, the day after that it hurt her to talk, cough, laugh.  We were referred to an Orthopoaedist.  At the appt, they said how rare it was for teens to have real back problems, and that they see this all the time...but still Dr. Cope ordered an MRI.

IT took another week to get her MRI approved by our insurance co.  We went to Lehigh Valley hospital, and they did a lumbar MRI.  ON the way home, I stopped at my dear friend Nea;s house to see her new kitchen.  She only lives 15 mis from the hospital.  George was there, which was weird, because it was only 3:30 and he was not done work yet.  He assured me that everything was probably fine, because they would not have let us go, or they would have called the doctor right away if they saw anything wrong.  So I said goodbye and got in the car.  Three missed calls were on my phone.   One from the hospital, one from the doctor and one from Mike.  We had not been gone from the hospital even 20 minutes and they were calling for us to come back a do a thoracic MRI.

I went right back into the house, and George and Nea Prayed for me to be calm and that everything would be alright.  ON our way back, I stopped at the burger king, got some food for us, and called the doctor.  He told me that they found a tumor on her spine and they could not see all of it, so we had to go back right away and get another one.  He proceeded to tell me that he had already called the neuro-Surgeon at CHOP and made an appointment for us.  He also said "I am so sorry."

By now, I was a bit numb, and replaying the words he said...how do I tell Calli, Mike, Aidan, my family?  Lord my family has been through so much already.  I hung up with the doctor, and looked at my precious Callahan...my baby.  I looked into her sea green/blue eyes and said "You have a tumor Calli."  "I do mom?  Could it be cancer?"  "I don't know Calli, I don't know."  She shed one tear, and then picked up the devotional she reads each day and said to me "Mom I want to read this to you, I think it was for us today."  She read the following devotional to me:

STREAMS IN THE DESERT

MAY 25

"I endure all things for the sake of God's own people; so that they also may obtain salvation...and with it eternal glory" (2 Tim. 2:10, Weymouth).

If Job could have known as he sat there in the ashes, bruising his heart on this problem of Providence--that in the trouble that had come upon him he was doing what one man may do to work out the problem for the world, he might again have taken courage. No man lives to himself. Job's life is but your life and mine written in larger text....So, then, though we may not know what trials wait on any of us, we can believe that, as the days in which Job wrestled with his dark maladies are the only days that make him worth remembrance, and but for which his name had never been written in the book of life, so the days through which we struggle, finding no way, but never losing the light, will be the most significant we are called to live. --Robert Collyer

Who does not know that our most sorrowful days have been amongst our best? When the face is wreathed in smiles and we trip lightly over meadows bespangled with spring flowers, the heart is often running to waste.

The soul which is always blithe and gay misses the deepest life. It has its reward, and it is satisfied to its measure, though that measure is a very scanty one. But the heart is dwarfed; and the nature, which is capable of the highest heights, the deepest depths, is undeveloped; and life presently burns down to its socket without having known the resonance of the deepest chords of joy.

"Blessed are they that mourn." Stars shine brightest in the long dark night of winter. The gentians show their fairest bloom amid almost inaccessible heights of snow and ice.

God's promises seem to wait for the pressure of pain to trample out their richest juice as in a wine-press. Only those who have sorrowed know how tender is the "Man of Sorrows." --Selected

Thou hast but little sunshine, but thy long glooms are wisely appointed thee; for perhaps a stretch of summer weather would have made thee as a parched land and barren wilderness. Thy Lord knows best, and He has the clouds and the sun at His disposal. --Selected

"It is a gray day." "Yes, but dinna ye see the patch of blue?" --Scotch Shoemaker

 

After she read this, I called Mike, and he was just speechless.