Life is surprising.

I woke up early on the 11th with pain in my right side I was sure was due to kidney stones. I slogged through for about two hours before I woke Kevin up to take me to the ER.

When they did a CT to look for kidney stones, there were none. Instead, there were some nodules on my liver, suspicious enough to do an MRI. The masses were suspicious enough to do a biopsy.

All the signs pointed away from cancer, and toward something like a medicinal side effect. That is, until they didn’t. I went to my follow-up appointment expecting pathology results. They weren’t ready due to some special staining- and it didn’t look like the nodules were due to medicine anymore. It turned out to be a rare cancer.

Today I met with a sarcoma specialist at Duke Cancer Center: Richard Riedel. Sarcomas make up 1% of cancers. EHE belongs to a class of usually slow-growing cancers, so chemotherapy is not effective. Honestly, I am grateful to not have to face the road of chemotherapy that so many people have to go down. No one should have to feel that sick for so long.

Since I only have one set of scans from my recent hospital stay, there is no way to identify how long this cancer has been active, or how quickly growing it is. I’ll be going back for scans in three months to begin to get some of this information.

In the meantime, I’ve been referred to a liver transplant specialist. When they were doing a biopsy, I was under the impression that I had about 5 masses on my liver. I was stunned today when the doctor showed us the MRI imaging. He said he hadn’t counted them, but if he did they would number between 20-30. They were large and numerous.

The great news in all of this is that the cancer seems to only be in my liver. Even better news- if I am a good candidate for a liver transplant, this is a potential cure (not a word spoken lightly by cancer doctors!).

Grace abounds: with my loving, sweet husband, my caring friends, my loving congregation at Glendale Heights UMC, and with my professors. This Holy Week, I am thankful to know and serve God who came in flesh to feel and condemn the cancers of body and soul and relationship that would divide us from one another and from God. On the cross, with the pain in his side, the pain in my side is condemned.

Friends, loved ones, and people I don’t know- please do not tell me you’re sorry. I know you are. This is not the way that life should be, this is not God’s will for me or anyone. None of God’s purposes require my pain to be fulfilled.

Please do lift prayers for me. Please allow me to do what I can do and feel like a normal, contributing member of the human race- but please help me rest and delegate and not push beyond my strength.

I have celiac disease as well, and can’t have gluten (wheat, rye, barley, and oats in my case). I know many people’s impulse is to help provide food, but gluten-free cooking is not for the faint of heart, I can’t risk cross-contamination, and sometimes I can be a picky eater, sorry. So- don’t try to provide me food. I will take jokes, cute animal videos, extra trips to Massage Envy ;-). I will take your stories of hope and stories of pain that take me out of my own difficulties.

The day I received my diagnosis, I read in my devotion these words from 2 Corinthians 1:

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, ⁴ who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. ⁵ For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ.

¹⁰ He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again, ¹¹ as you also join in helping us by your prayers, so that many will give thanks on our^[b] behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

On God I have set my hope.