Another brain buddy visit, hyperbaric oxygen treatments

Tue 04/15/08
Tonight we visited our friends Joanne and her husband Floyd to encourage and pray with them before Joanne has a second surgery tomorrow for her brain tumor that was diagnosed in December. Following Temodar-radiation that ended in March, her tumor evidently grew back quickly. We pray for her healing and for a life-changing God encounter for them and their family. We’re thankful we can share our faith and experiences and that the Lord can use them to bring encouragement and peace to others during such a mysterious and difficult time.

Thu 04/17/08
With four hyperbaric oxygen treatments done, Susan has done well this week with the new therapy. It’s actually a pleasant experience. Susan sits in recliner of sorts on rails and puts an oxygen mask over her mouth and nose. The chair slides forward into the chamber that resembles a small space craft with porthole windows on the sides and a windshield-type glass on the front. Then a door closes behind her and gets sealed shut. She can rest or watch TV through the window for the 45-minute session. It’s too soon to know whether it’s working since the minimum is ten treatments before evaluation. Success in this case is purely based on her symptoms, which either improve or not. We’ll see!

My prayers with Susan have changed lately. While we have not faltered in knowing God will heal Susan if He wants to, her illness so far has been more of a process of gradual improvements in the face of a grave and incurable cancer. We long for her to be healed and restored completely so we ask God for it continually. Yet it seems He means for our experience to be a journey in which we learn to trust Him during and in spite of these circumstances – her complete healing may or not be part of it. But I think we are having a more profound experience of knowing Him than we would have if God had healed her last July. It’s not an easy season nor do we want it; but there’s a precious and growing value in it. I think affliction has an awful price, but can have a priceless outcome. As we try to discern God’s will during Susan’s cancer ordeal, we do ask Him daily to heal her, but we’re also asking for something possibly greater we sense He may want for us – transformation.