The Painful Truth

Today I realized that when someone uses one of the phrases, "no pun intended"; "needless to say"; or "not to be rude..." that they are actually lying 100% of the time. Liar. Liar. Pants. On. FIRE!!!

A fun example of this is an email I received in response to several emails I sent to my entire email list requesting prayer for my dad. After several updates, I received a message that only read:

"not to be rude, but who is this and why am i getting these?"

The email was signed from someone who is a Patient Liaison for Behavioral Health where I see my psychiatrist. Apparently another tragic example of the wrong person in the wrong vocation, I guess. I prayed for her anyways, but I didn't want to.

Prayer Request

Hey, all. My dad is a leukemia and bone marrow transplant survivor. Time after time, he has beaten unbelievable odds. Well, he beat the odds again, only in not such a good way this time. He's been sick for the past few months, and repeated visits to his local clinic turned up no results. Finally, he got fed up with having no results and returned to see his doctors in the City of Hope in Phoenix, AZ, who got him through his cancer, bone marrow transplant, and subsequent complications. In 2 days, they were able to find out that his Graft vs. Host disease had come back with a vengeance. They put him on various meds and took him off of others and did tests and biopsies and all that fun stuff. They found out that he is still cancer free, but he has developed a case of Epstein Barr Syndrome in his lungs, making him one of 9 people in America with this condition.

Fortunately, his insurance has approved for him to be put on a cutting edge medication for this that will occur in 8 treatments at the cost of $40,000 per treatment! Praise the Lord that this treatment will be able to take care of the situation and will be fully covered by insurance! The treatments will make him VERY sick (he's already really sick) and will take about 6 months to complete. He is now on oxygen. The hope is that he will be able to be off the oxygen in 6 months, but it may be for the rest of his life. This is really tough for him because he has been so physically active his whole life. It's also been really tough on my mom, as well, but her employer has been really good and understanding about letting her take care of him.

So I ask you for your prayers for my dad, Jim, and my mom, Charlie. Also, please place them on any prayer lists you may have access to. Thank you for your friendship and love.