Monday, February 2, 2009

Special Prayer Requests

I have a couple special prayer requests for our past Give a Blessing Recipients.

First I received an email from Janessa's Mom, which reads:

Well, Tuesday's the day. We head into clinic tomorrow morning (around 9) for Janessa to be prepared for her bone marrow procedure. They will put her "out" and then take a sample of what's going on in her bone marrow. The hope/goal is that the chemo she's endured over the past nine months has destroyed all the cancer cells and that she is truly in remission.If there are no cells, the next step will be to plan surgery for her port to be removed.She will be considered in remission if/when she remains cancer free for five years.So we will continue to go to clinic, but it will probably just be once a month.So, please be in prayer for her. She doesn't like to be put under and the sample is painful to the hip. Please pray for God's peace, comfort and protection for her during this procedure .....and most of all that the cancer is gone.We'll let you know when we know the results....Thanks Julie for all http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/janessaj

Second, here is an update on our sweet Carley from her Daddy Joel:


Hello Everyone, I am sorry that we haven't updated in a while but we have been on a roller coaster of emotions over the past week and have had to spend time processing all of the changes. Carley's tests did not come back as good as we would have hoped. Of course I already mentioned that her bone marrow is still dirty but the scans also revealed that she has stopped responding to the chemo treatments. Her newest set of scans showed that nothing had changed from the previous scans that were taken after her fifth round of chemo. Basically this means that her prognosis has gone from the good side of bad to the bad side of bad, humanly speaking of course. She is currently classified as having stable disease. The doctors at Riley have suggested that she be removed from her current therapy plan and that we look at other alternatives, which we are in the process of doing. The head of the stem cell department has put calls in to every neuroblastoma expert in the country. He has contacted individuals from Seattle to New York and is currently compiling a list of choices for us to make. At this point the most mentioned and most promising choice is a kind of radioactive MIBG therapy. Of course, like everything else in pediatric oncology, this therapy is only available as part of a clinical trial and there is currently only ONE spot left available on the current trial. This specific therapy was designed especially for children in Carley's situation. The only different approach that has been mentioned came from Sloan in New York and there recommendation is just to give her more chemo, we are reluctant to go down that path at this point because her cancer has obviously shown some resistance to chemotherapy. God is good and none of this has taken him by surprise. Percentages and human prognosis means nothing to him because ultimately this battle is of the spirit and not of the flesh. We understand the realities of Carley's situation but we also stand firm in our belief that when Man has little to offer, God is allowed to shine! Please pray that God would continue to work out all of the details and that we would soon be able to resume the type of therapy that he would have planned out for us. We hope to know something by Monday or Tuesday and we will let you know as soon as we can.
Joel http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/carleyhoffman


Lord,
We lift these sweet girls up to you!

Please visit their Caringbridge site's to offer encouragement.
Let them know how many of us are praying for them!

Many Blessings to all of you!
~Tina

No comments: