Today marks the start of round 3 of 6 of the chemo regimen for Sam. Now that there are a couple of rounds of chemo under the belt we have a good baseline for understanding how his body responds. When and how he feels icky, how to mitigate the ick, etc. Life has transitioned into three week sprints of first week chemo, second week (first few days of the second week) feeling not so good and then a third week feeling decent before starting all over again. As long as Sam does a good job of staying hydrated, he does pretty good overall. When he doesn’t stay hydrated then things can get pretty wobbly (like actually wobbly). He is also now completely bald and enjoying the resultant savings in their shampoo budget. A good friend of his gave him a bottle of beard oil as a funny Christmas gift. I am not sure he will ever be able to warrant the need for that, chemo or not. Having the ability to grow a beard worthy of special oil just isn’t in the Gordon men’s genome.
He has the first of two PET scans scheduled for the first week of January. This scan will help determine how the tumor is responding to the treatment plan. The second PET scan will come after treatment is all done to help level set what watching him looks like over the next months and years.
Those of you who have “experience” with the medical system know that it takes a bit of time for all the various EOB’s, co-pays, bill’s, etc to come through all the channels before landing as an envelope in your mailbox saying how much you personally get to financially participate. Well Sam and Grace have been at this long enough for some of these bills to come to roost so to speak. Helping navigate all the financial rigmarole can get a little stressful. Combine that with Sam being on Short Term Disability which will be transitioning to Long Term Disability soon. Once he is on Long Term Disability his paycheck only gets covered at 60% and with how close we are to the end of the year, their insurance copays all get reset.
When I asked him to share some prayer requests this is what I got back in a text message:
“A theme we’ve been thinking about is what does it actually look like to trust in God’s provision. We’ve seen Him provide in a variety of ways up to this point but as we approach the New Year and reset insurance benefits and the change to long term disability, it’s hard to trust that He will provide financially in these areas. We know money itself shouldn’t give us security, but being forced to lean on God for provision rather than our own strength is hard. I think it’s highlighted at least for me that I idolize money more than I thought I did.”
That is a great lesson for me and I hope that as I share it with those of you following along on this journey, it will resonate with you as well.
So with that said, here are some additional prayer requests:
- Treatment continues to go as planned and we see great results
- Trust in God’s Provision – what Sam said
The Gordon Family Site 