Feeling Torn

“Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous fall.” Psalm 55:22 (NIV)

God will sustain. We don’t know what that will look like in the future. But God knows the future and it is all in His control. He wants us to cast our cares and burdens on Him now, leave it all at His feet, and trust Him. He will sustain and care for His people come what may.

Last week Friday, June 13, Owen had another MRI. It was a long day at BC Children’s hospital. Owen had his 1.5 hour long MRI during which he is under general anesthesia. After he woke up and we dealt with his awfully grumpy attitude post MRI from the anesthesia drugs, we went up to the oncology unit for an appointment to talk with his oncologist and start another round of chemotherapy.

The oncologist already had preliminary MRI results which he shared with us. We are thankful that the initial large tumour when Owen was diagnosed has responded very good to the radiation treatments in the winter and is still very small and even hard to detect on the MRI. Unfortunately Owen’s second tumour (that I talked about on the last blog update) from the May MRI has grown more. It’s grown a decent amount in the 4-5 weeks since we saw it for the first time. Another spot they were watching in the front of his brain has also grown into a tumour. We don’t have sizes on these tumours yet. There is also quite a bit of swelling around these tumours.

Thankfully Owen is not symptomatic yet from the tumours or swelling, but if/when that occurs (could be headaches, eyesight problems, vomiting, even seizures, etc) we will have to consider steroid medication again or other means and medications to control things.

We had another meeting with Owen’s oncologist and the Canuck Place Children’s hospice team yesterday. We went into that meeting feeling nervous, even a bit worried, as we were not sure what the meeting was about. Thankfully they did not find anything worse on the MRI like we feared. But they did show us pictures of the radiation map from his radiation treatments a few months ago. Unfortunately these new tumours fall within the areas that received a majority of the radiation dose, meaning more radiation is not an option.

Owen’s oncologist also feels his current chemotherapy treatments are not beneficial in treating his disease. They proposed a secondary treatment plan that we could try which includes two new types of chemotherapy. It would get administered through a chemo port in his chest every other week in hospital. This new chemo treatment plan will not cure Owen humanly speaking, but hopefully prolong things. There are different risks we will have to consider as we make decisions on what is best for Owen and our family. There will be a needle involved with each treatment session to poke into the port and hook up the IV. However, Owen HATES needles and they cause him a lot of mental/emotional distress so that is another thing we have to consider when making these decisions. We also have some big questions to consider; Will we regret putting Owen through this and causing him more distress? Will we regret not trying this treatment plan? Please pray for wisdom for us as we navigate this and deal with being so torn during this decision making process.

We are not giving up. We are still doing some alternative treatments, we are still doing what we can with diet, lifestyle and even what products we use in our home. And most importantly we continue to lift up our little boy to the Lord every day, praying for a healing miracle and praying the Lord will continue to uphold him as his body battles this. Ultimately, Owen’s life and health is in God’s hands. And that is true for each one of us.

Next week Canuck Place Children’s Hospice will be visiting our home to meet us, meet Owen, and work with us to offer more support with Owen. The disease is progressing quickly and Owen has been struggling mentally and behaviourally. We are also seeing regression in many normal daily things. It’s been very hard to watch our boy change so much and struggle to accomplish even simple tasks at times. But we continue to encourage and do what we can to support him and help him live and enjoy this life given by God.

We are so thankful to the Lord that Owen got to meet his baby brother. Our family was blessed with a health baby boy at the end of May. Life has been very busy as we try to juggle everything, but the Lord has been caring for us and providing in so many amazing ways. We praise and thank Him for all His rich blessings!

“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory…” Ephesians 3: 20-21a