Prayers Needed Update

I've been working on this hat for Jill. I don't think she's lost her hair, but you never know. Unfortunately I don't think it's going to fit. I hate it when that happens. I guess I'll start over.

But, speaking of Jill, she's undergoing surgery next week to remove a lump in her lung. The doctors think they can get a better grasp of exactly what cancer she has after they biopsy the lump. Apparently, after three courses of chemo, there's not much change with her abdominal tumor and the doctors think the chemo is not having the effect they hoped. The abdominal tumor needs to shrink before they can remove it, so the chemo was the best chance for that to happen. Continued prayers are needed -- for the doctors removing the tumor and the doctors reading the samples and Jill's recovery.

My other prayer request recently was for my son Francis. If you read the post about his breathing problems, you may remember that we were thinking that he had the beginning symptoms of asthma. Well, as it turns out, it's not asthma. We're still not 100 percent certain what it is, but it seems it's likely reflux (GERD or actually LPR). It seems that he likely had some vocal cord dysfunction from the acid (swelling in the vocal cords from the stomach acid rising up into his throat). We went to his allergist who diagnosed it in about 30 seconds flat. It was actually pretty incredible to watch, because I had spoken with the pediatrician about the possibility of it being reflux and he started him on Prevacid. I actually forgot to tell the allergist's nurse that he was on Prevacid, so when the allergist came to that conclusion, I felt pretty good about it. But this week when we were at the dentist, the hygienist came out to tell me that Francis had quite a bit of decay and asked me if it was possible that he has reflux. Wow! It seems the stomach acid is eating away the enamel on his teeth. That tells me he's got it pretty bad and since there's a strong family history of reflux, we want to watch this pretty closely. Your prayers for Francis would be appreciated. We had a long talk with the nurse practitioner about why he has to steer clear of his favorite foods for quite a while, until his esophagus and throat completely heal. He won't exactly be on a baby food diet, but let's say your typical teenage favorites are completely out of the question.

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