Love on HD

Last Friday, we went to Edison's first meeting with the oncologist, who essentially will be the team captain during the treatment phase of our journey. She assured us that Edison's cancer is treatable and curable with 70% success rate of it never coming back. His treatment plan is as follows:

* Six weeks of chemotherapy (on Mondays) and radiation (M-F)

* Four weeks of rest from treatment

* Three rounds of: M-Th chemotherapy and 3 weeks of rest

While Edison's treatment does not commence until next month, there are quite a few items that we need to check off to prepare him for treatment:

* Meeting with the radiation oncologist

* Chemotherapy class

* Radiation planning/measurement appointment

* Port placement (outpatient procedure)

* Meeting with the nutritionist

We asked tough questions about leave of absence from work, short and long-term side effects, support services, our cancer care team, etc. Overall, we were pleased by the oncologist's calm, patient, and straightforward responses. Edison felt better knowing that a game plan has been set, and I felt proud at how courageous my husband has been facing all this!

He's healed well from the outpatient surgery that he's had the prior week. Besides a couple bouts of nosebleeds in the morning, there has been no problem in caring for him after the surgery. Just as a nurse would, I asked him to rate his nose and throat pain from a scale of 0 to 10 - 0 being no pain at all and 10 being the worst pain he's ever felt in his life. It has always been manageable at 3 or below.

It's funny how scales are so relative. Today, Edison and I celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary; we've been together for 18 years altogether! Just before he was diagnosed with cancer, I never thought I could ever love him more than I already did: in a scale of 1 to 10, my love for him then was definitely a 10... with neon lights! After the cancer diagnosis, however, I felt a renewed sense of devotion to him: there is no limit to what I'll endure for this man. And if I've known 18 years ago what I know now, I would have still gladly accepted him in my life. All our challenges through the years have just made our celebrations all the more sweet and special!

All of this renewed euphoria doesn't end between us though. Even among family and friends, we've always known we were loved... but after sharing with you this journey of ours, we now feel how much more love you are actually willing to give us through your loving thoughts, fervent prayers, touching gifts, mighty hugs, enthusiastic happy hour invitations (yeah!), and incredible service offers, most of all! It's seriously been like a festival of love languages, and it's as if we're witnessing all of it in HD! What a glorious display of God's love in our life!

Thank You, God... and thank you all... we are truly humbled by all the love and support!

"Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." (1 Corinthians 13:7-8)

#TeamThrive