A full year has passed and if you’ve read my previous blog you will know that’s all we were only given. It was our year to use and abuse and I believe that as a family, we have used it as well as anybody could have. We have joined together and closed ranks. We have united in support of our parents.
The wider community have also played their parts; The Christie Hospital, Willow Wood, the McMillan Nurses; my parent’s church (St John’s Dukinfield) and my own church (the Dream Centre, Droylsden) have united in prayer, our Christian friends and contacts around the world joining in. We are very, very blessed.
For me it’s been a personal journey, I’ve had the availability to take my mum to her hospital appointments nearly every week. I’ve shared the long waits, the joy of good results, the friendships made along the way and the sadness for those whose journey has ended; how can we not have grown closer as a result?
I suspect that you’re now anticipating that final announcement? But you see ………… I can’t…………. our journey hasn’t come to an end; we’ve barely left the beginning! Something very, very special is happening.
Mum is in better health today than she was a year ago!
Her pain is controlled by slow release morphine; the chemotherapy (from which she has very few side effects) has had a positive effect on her long term arthritis. The nurses tell us that most patients can only tolerate the treatment for 6 months; we are going into month 13. Every 3 months mum has a scan to determine the state of the tumour; time and again the results come back that the tumour has decreased in size (albeit slightly), the overriding good news is that it hasn’t grown and it hasn’t spread!
2 Kings 20
New International Version - UK
In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, ‘This is what the Lord says: put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.’
2 Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, 3 ‘Remember, Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.’ And Hezekiah wept bitterly.
4 Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: 5 ‘Go back and tell Hezekiah, the ruler of my people, “This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the Lord. 6 I will add fifteen years to your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.”’
My mum is now a VIP, a star patient. The students are brought to see her because she is defying the odds. And when we mention our Christian faith no-one laughs or makes disparaging remarks; how could they? No-one can deny that something very special is happening here, I call it a miracle, what would you call it?