August, 2006
Thursday, August 31st. Strangely, Christie's side-effects from Taxol have gained force this week. Her heart continues to beat like a horse galloping on three legs and the numbness has become more far-reaching. Her fingers and part of her palms are numb. And just this week part of the bottoms of her feet starting to have neuropathy also. Please pray for her. The doctor told her that this very annoying side effect of Taxol could last for several more weeks, several more months, or years. We are praying that God provides for the feeling in her hands and feet to return sooner rather than later.
By contrast, Christie's blood counts were superior last Friday. Imagine that you had a container of oil from which you took a daily portion to sell at the market. One would assume that after many weeks the container would be empty. In the same way, one would assume that when you bombard a human being with the deadly juice extracted from the bark of the yew tree (Taxol) week after week, that human being would have depressed blood levels. But, like the widow's jar that never ran out (in 2 Kings 3), so Christie's blood counts refuse to diminish. In fact, last Friday her white count, which had been hovering just below normal all summer, leaped into the normal range! That's right; it went up. I really cannot explain that. Of course, I am not saying that in this situation I resemble Elisha in appearance or spiritual power. I am also not implying that Christie needs to sell oil to pay our bills. I am saying that something resembling the miraculous seems to be present. And, I am saying that God is faithful and merciful and that we thank Him for providing for Christie in this way.
As you will recall, last Friday was a big day for the Turnbull family. Our oldest daughters spent the morning in the kitchen baking cakes for their mom and the nurses at the Infusion room. While Christie went to Wenatchee with a friend, we came a bit later with cakes and flowers and our new camera so that we can take pictures again. After I figure out the details I will include some photos from that great morning.
We got to take a whirlwind trip to northwest Oregon to see family early this week. Due to my wife's logistical wizardry we actually left the house at 6:00 a.m. on Monday with homemade banana muffins waiting in the car for breakfast on the run. It was a beautiful drive over Blewett and Satus passes and through the Columbia River gorge to Portland and then down to Salem and Sheridan where our relatives live. The best part of the trip, besides enjoying good conversation with cousins and aunts and uncles and Christie's step-mom, was that our two-year-old son learned how to say "John Deere." We have been grooming him for just such a day. We stopped in The Dalles at Cousin's restaurant (this is a hearty advertisement for a great restaurant that serves breakfast all day) where there is a green and yellow tractor on the edge of the parking area. The boy looked out the window, pointed and started yelling at his mom, "Don Deere! Don Deere!" Boy, was that satisfying. He still needs to work on pronouncing the first name, but we give him full credit for quick farm equipment identification and for knowing the best tractor when he sees one.
Today, Christie drove to Wenatchee for the preparatory test run of her radiation treatments. We have learned that the radiation that my wife is to receive is very focused and precisely administered. Rather than subjecting her whole upper half to radiation, they make a detailed map of the placement of her internal organs and custom make shields to keep those organs from the rays. Meanwhile the doctors will be very carefully flinging radioactive particles through that part of her where the cancer was. Her treatments begin next Tuesday. We thank God that Christie feels well enough to start and that the clinic can begin the treatments so quickly. We are naturally quite eager to be done with cancer treatments and this, seemingly, represents the last big phase.
Tuesday, August 22nd. Psalm 136:1 reads Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His lovingkindness is everlasting. This imperative appears in many of the psalms. It could be called a theme of David's songs. And, as repetition is the mother of learning, it seems likely that this call sounds again and again for the benefit of thick-headed people like me so that I might actually learn it and do it. If I learn little else from the Psalms I should not miss this: God wants me to be constantly thanking Him. In other words, I should actually be spending a significant portion of my time and my thoughts and my day's allotted words giving thanks to God.
It is heartening to consider that God enjoys receiving thanks from us. When one contemplates the size of the universe, or just our solar system, or even just the planet Jupiter, one sees God's immense greatness and power and majesty. After all, Jupiter could hold 1300 Earths. It is home to a red, raging hurricane-like storm that is three times bigger than our planet. One is tempted to think that a God who makes things and sustains things on such a grand scale has no real time for such small creatures as you and I. But that is a lie that the flowers dismiss for us. Nevertheless, when we look out at the biggest planet in our solar system, or look down at the tulips and zinnias we are rightly stunned to realize that the Lord, Himself, listens to individual human beings and delightfully receives their thanks. What a privilege to give something to God. What an honor to be commanded to do so.
In the verse above, giving thanks is predicated on two facts that are not changing: He is good; His lovingkindness is everlasting. Upon these two realities--like the great foundation stones of Solomon's Temple--rests the entire weight of the injunction to give thanks. The assumption is that God's goodness and the nature of His excellent love is the warrant for constant thanksgiving. When we do give thanks, then, especially in the midst of trial, we disclose our faith in the goodness of God and in the everlasting quality of His love for us. To give thanks to God is to call Him good and to trust in His love.
This does not mean that God's goodness is a mere abstract idea, remote from our experience like some distant comet that rarely appears to our view. Rather, God's goodness is all around us, summoning our thanksgiving. As James stated, every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights (1:17). That we can experience His goodness in our lives is also a basis for our hope: I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (Psalm 27:13). While this period of our lives has been much harder than other periods, and while lots of that hardship has been very uncomfortable, we have also seen God's goodness in manifold ways during this same period. We have much for which to thank Him.
To be specific, about four weeks ago Christie's heart started beating very strangely. It often felt to her like a beat was skipped. That was naturally disturbing to us. We talked to Dr. Smith about it and she decided to have Christie wear a monitor for a day to determine what kind of arrhythmia was plaguing her. We have known all along that two of the types of treatment she has received can cause heart problems. We were thankful to God to learn that though she is indeed having frequent arrhythmias, they are not the "bad kind." Just to be certain that her heart looks good, she went in for an echocardiogram yesterday and we look forward to hearing the evaluation of that test on Friday. Please continue to pray for Christie and particularly for her heart. Though her irregular heart beats are not supposed to be dangerous, they are nevertheless disconcerting and she feels quite fatigued.
This Friday marks the long-awaited end of chemotherapy. What a long climb it has been and I could not begin to relate how proud of Christie I am for her plucky, stalwart, and valiant march through the past eight months. We thank God that her side-effects have been so much less severe than they easily could have been.
Saturday, August 12th. It has been a horrendously long time since we have restocked this page with news. I apologize. Thanks to the many of you who have continued to pray for Christie even though you wondered if we had fallen into the Mariana Trench. We hadn't. In fact, by God's mercy, Christie felt well enough for us to go on a four-and-a-half day trip to beautiful central Oregon. I would insert a picture of some of the capital views we took in on McKenzie Pass, but, alas, at a fateful moment, the camera slipped from one of our hands and dropped onto the hard ground and is not functioning. Hopefully I will be able to retrieve those images after some surgery on the unfortunate camera.
There are several signal occurrences from the past two weeks that deserve mention. First, Christie's hematocrit and white blood cell levels are rock solid. It still does not make sense but it continues to be the case nevertheless. This phenomenon is somewhat like the physics of the helicopter. According to natural law (I have been told) helicopters should not work. But they do. According to the natural progression of chemotherapy (I have been told), vital blood levels gradually grow more and more depressed as the treatment progresses. In my wife's case, important features of her blood chemistry are holding steady. God is to be praised for His mercy in that specific way. Because these levels are so relatively healthy, Chris has not been vulnerable to the kind of infections that often accompany chemotherapy. Thanks be to God!
If you have been counting like we have, you realize that there are just two more weeks of Taxol left! Hallelujah! Even if Saint George had been chained to the dragon for a whole summer and knew he was about to be released in a couple of weeks, he couldn't be more relieved than we are. Like living in a cave for three months with a fire-breathing monster, there is nothing inherently enjoyable about being poisoned. At least we know that this is the kind of poison that has the potential to heal. As might be expected, some of the other classic effects of Taxol are becoming more pronounced, especially numbness in the hands and feet. However, the stomach issues Christie had been dealing with for the several weeks in July were virtually gone for the past two weeks.. Though her digestion is not superior today, there was great relief for an extended time. That is welcome answer to prayer.
Our son turned two last Monday. As it is for all parents, the rapid advance of time makes it nearly impossible for us to believe that he is already two. He demonstrated his new maturity by replacing his custom-made word for horse with the more accepted usage in our culture: "horse." It was a sad moment. It seemed to represent a symbolic shift into a new age. Until last week he used to call horses "buhluhluh." In his former dialect, whenever we wanted to talk about a live horse or a playmobil horse we would have to use his word. (In order to pronounce the old word accurately, one simply makes an "ahh" sound while moving one's tongue back and forth over the upper lip four or five times.) We saw many horses on our trip and though the parents continued to use the old pronunciation, somehow the two-year-old realized that those animals with four long legs, a long neck and a mane were called by the name "horse." When he was young, he used to speak like a child. Now he is all grown up.
Over the past month or so I have been enjoying G.K. Chesterton's excellent defense of Christian belief in his book Orthodoxy. Here is one of the many compelling passages in that book for your enjoyment:
All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.
Thank you very much for praying for us and for persisting in prayer. You can see how God is answering those prayers.