…7 weeks…7 long weeks…
This is when things started to get really hard…stressful and we questioned how we were going to do it all. You see our job alone is trying as we work with 8 teenage girls who are in the foster care system. We work 16 hr days. Yes, they are in school…but we are oncall during the day. Just the thought of keeping up with everything was incredibly overwhelming.
To even prepare for the radiation and chemo Nick had a series of appointments. All his dental work had to be up to date and now he found out he would have to do home fluoride treatments every day for the rest of his life. This is due to the radiation and it effecting the enamel on your teeth. He had to be fitted for his mask for radiation *Picture attached* and he also had to see a speech therapist for throat exercises as swallowing would become difficult for him. Nick also had a port placed in his chest for the administering of the chemo. In just that one week he had 8 appointments, 1 of them being his port placement, 2 radiation appointments and chemo. Needless to say he was EXHAUSTED at the end of the week! Not to mention we continued to work.
We are now 12 radiation appointments in and 3 chemo treatments down! 23 more radiation appointments and 4 more chemo treatments! There is nothing to prepare you for this. There is nothing to prepare you for the rollercoaster of emotions, the pain, the fear of the unknown all while holding on to hope.
Nick has handled all of it like a champ and I feel that this is a true testament of his faith in God. Months before we got the news Nick started diving deeper into the word, he started to make it a priority for us to pray together every day and has been intentional to have people in his life to keep him accountable. He has been incredibly positive, incredibly strong and extremely brave. The radiation has already given him some really hard side effects: changed his taste, pain in his teeth but the worst has to be how his throat feels. Imagine a really bad sunburn but on the back of his throat/roof of his mouth. He is to the point where he can’t eat many things. There were a few days this week where he was in tears because of the pain. We are heading into the 3 week mark of radiation and doctors have said it’s going to progressively get worse (we pray against many of the hard symptoms). Chemo makes him feel super tired and the first couple of weeks he had really bad nausea. The doctors/nurses on his team have been amazing and we now have many meds that have helped him have less pain.
As for me… I have struggled so much… I am a fixer… when Nick has his moments of pain, in tears because of the pain…I can do nothing. Some things that help one day, don’t help the next day. I have questioned so many things, asked God why this had to happen and honestly I have been so incredibly mad. I am tired and yet I know God is faithful. He has never ever failed us…never let us down. Why would he do this now? We have been given a promise… God isn’t done with us yet.
Please pray for us… pray for strength throughout our days. Pray that we know how to navigate this one day at a time. We covet the prayers so much.
Thank you for keeping up with us… we hope you continue to do so.
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