The Diagnosis...

December 11, 2008

Dear friends,

As some of you know this has been a tough time for our family but God has truly been so good to us and has sustained us and has kept us under his wing. We have been blessed blessed blessed! We have been overwhelmed with the outpour of blessings which have surrounded us through family and friends and from people we don't know. We keep hearing of different prayer chains going on all over the place in different countries, from the East Coast to the West Coast and in between. Different churches, prayer groups, etc... it is amazing, we feel God smothering us with His Love and Comfort all over the place. We would like to thank those of you who have been praying for us.

The support up here in the high desert has been amazing, just when we were throwing in the towel and actively looking down the hill to move, God stopped us dead in our tracks with all of this and said you are not alone in this I have put people in your path who will help you guys get through this. Sure enough so many friends and family lovingly and consistently have been reaching out to us daily for prayer, meals on wheels, enouragement, babysitting, school carpool anything we need on a daily basis. It is so hard because our hearts are at home down the hill, but now God is showing us the love there is for us up here. We feel torn, but right now we believe God is faithfully providing for our family LOVE and SUPPORT from the family we never realized existed up here. We dont know what are future holds and where we are to go, but we are taking it day by day and letting God lead the way. We are standing on His Promises knowing there is a time and season for everything and right now this is Gods time for us to sit at His feet and patiently wait on HIM .... : ) TO BE STILL AND TO KNOW HE IS GOD!

We are not sure how much those of you who do know, or if you don't know at all but I (Debbie) was recently diagnosed with "Multiple Myeloma", a cancer of the plasma cells (which has excessive numbers of abnormal plasma cells in the bone marrow, it is incurable but a treatable disease. The average age for someone with this disease us usually found in the age of 60 and above. I am considered a VERY rare case because of my age which I fall into a category of 4% of those diagnosed under the age of 45. Crazy, I know...and God Chose me to run this race! The specialist at UCLA sounds very optimistic that I should respond to the Chemotherapy with no problem, seeing that I am very young, my general health is in very good health, and the good medicines they have to treat this and not to mention that my all over bone scan, CAT scan and MRI have all come out clean and show no cancer in the bones as of yet. Mostly I have the Lord at my side who will see me through. We are hoping this will be the treatment that takes it into remission, if not they I believe the next step will be a bone marrow transplant (yikes!!).

To catch you up on the latest, the past few days have been really hard on us. Our WHOLE family caught the stomach flu. We have been down but now we are up. It has been especially hard on me juggling my cancer ailments, the kids and this flu. Today is a much better day and looking forward to moving right along with this new venture.

As for the chemo, we still havn't started. For the past week weve been battling back and forth with our insurance company, medical group, the UCLA specialist, the pharmacy who is handling one of the chemo drugs and the oncologist up here. There are so many people involved who play significant roles in each part in order to get all the necessary approvals to get it all going, which has been anything but efficient up to this point. For lack of better words we are dealing with very "incompitent people" who cannot seem to pull it together which is making this very frustrating on us. The only ones who seem to have the ball rolling and keeping us going is the oncologist up here is who has been kind enough to order every test we have been asked for without the help of the specialist at Ucla. The Dr up here and his staff have been great, quick and on top of it, but sad to say he is the one who doesn't feel confident in handling this rare case. Unfortunately trying to get anything answered from our treating physician at Ucla has been nothing but headaches for 3 weeks now. We have been through many hurdles and hoops trying to get approvals. Yesterday we were challenged by our insurance company who called us yesterday morning to say that they were denying the request for the Revlamid, then they called in the afternoon to tell us that they were not going to allow us to treat at UCLA after all and that we had to treat up here (which you can imagine had us in a panic), but with God on our side and Gregs strong persistance he was able to get what we needed and it was all taken care of and our insurance agreed to let us treat at UCLA after all.

To somewhat sum up the treatment details. I will be treating with a 3 part chemo series for the next 3 months.

-The first part is "Dexamethazone" a high dose steriod which I had started taking on Thanksgiving Day which was 40 steroids in 4 days. With a 2 week break then will resume again in less than one week from now. The first course I have already taken my body reacted very bad to it, so we are praying the second time around will be different and not so harsh on my system since the quantity will be significantly less.

-The second is "Revlamid" a Chemo pill which is a HIGHLY regulated drug has been harder than the dickens to get approved. Apparently, this drug is only carried in 5 of the U.S states and very expensive ($8,000.00 per month). Our insurance company has to go through many channels before they can approve it. Each step has to be under a 24 hour evaluation by an insurance director. Once it has been approved it will be shipped to me within several hours out of L.A. and will have to be resubmitted for approval each month and thereafter for re-approval again and again. As of today, it is under final evaluation (so they say) and we hope to have it sent to us with in the next couple of days.

-The third form is "Valcaid" the infusion drug which will be introvenoiusly administered through IV at UCLA once a week. As of today we got the approval and the drug is on its away to L.A as we speak and we are still waiting for confirmation from the UCLA office that the approval has been faxed and that the medicine has arrived in order for me to set up the first appt, so this too is supposedly in its last stage of finalizing. We are praying to start this by Friday or early next week.

Ultimately we are being tried and stretched no doubt, but we know that God will faithfully carry us through, though the physical ailments may be hindering, our faith will not. God is at work and we are encouraged daily through His Grace and Mercy. This trial couldn't come at a better time of the year, this is a living testimony of how much we have to be thankful for and we are honored to be given the opportunity to excercise our faith in the Lord through the Holidays. We do thank you all for your prayers, help and encouragement. Please keep praying for Greg for strength and the boys that God guards thier little hearts, and that all goes well for the 3 month treatment and that my body will respond well to the chemo and bring healing. God is on the throne and is being given all the glory!

Thats all for now we will keep you updated and let you know when we start!

Love you all,

Greg & Debbie