Life

I probably have a harder time with school right now because I would rather be doing, rather than studying. I'm supposed to be researching and writing methods on premarital counseling right now, but one little email sends my brain off in another direction...and I can forget about assignments.

My church talks about numbers more than I'm probably comfortable with...but we excuse it by claiming that "every number is a person," and we truly value each and every person. Probably easy to do at this point in our church life...

Here's part of an email I got Tuesday night:
One of our Crossroads families found out today that their nearly 3 year old daughter Ellie, has a cancerous tumor growing on her kidney.

Today: I just returned home from the 4 hour surgery. She went in at noon and was out by about 4pm. The surgery went well overall – the tumor was even larger than anticipated; closer to 8” x 6” and pretty much filled up her insides. It did NOT invade the liver, which is a big answer to prayer. They removed one kidney, which was anticipated, and that went well. The only break in the tumor was in the back wall, which was firmly attached to the muscle. They couldn’t be sure if the break was caused by the removal process or if it had “leaked” on its own. The surgeons removed several lymph nodes in the area for testing. They also placed a “port” in her upper chest to administer the upcoming chemo treatments. Technically, this is a Stage 4 cancer, which is an automatic classification due to the spot in the lung. In spite that, the oncologists are extremely optimistic, assuming the reports come back good tomorrow. Scotty, Janice and the entire family are incredibly relieved that the mass is out and that the first major step to recovery is behind them.

...I think I've known 3 different families to lose there little ones to cancer within the last three years. I'm not even a parent, but that gets me.

Even today, aside from our family trouble, I was listening to some surprising statistics in class regarding birth and health defects and I realized how much I take being "normal" and healthy for granted. That's not right.