8/17/2011

Piper has relapsed. Her leukemia has returned. Tomorrow at 2:00pm she will be sedated and have a lumbar aspirate to gather more information. They will also begin her on her first dose of chemo, once again.

I cannot tell you how devestated we are. How broken my heart feels and how heavy my spirit is...you probably would never understand. This was totally unexpected, Piper has been nothing but the picture of health and happiness. Our family was beginning to get a grasp on "normal" living and now this...

Basically we have 2 choices. We either fight this, given little chance that she will be cured or we stop fighting, knowing that this will take her little life. In chosing to continue the battle Piper will receive about a months worth of new chemo intended to get her body back into remission. If that works, they will follow with a second round of heavy duty chemo. And if she is still in remission at that point we will be taken to Egleston where Piper will have a Bone Marrow Transplant, hopfully with one of us as her donor. At that point if all the steps we have taken have kept her in remission and the BMT is considered a success she will have a 20% survival rate.

Obviously this decision is not a difficult one as Chad and I feel strongly that not fighting is giving up and that is not our style. Beginning tomorrow we start all over. Piper will lose the beautiful hair she has, Linley will work her way through 1st grade without her family at her side and Chad has to reevaluate all his current plans for school and work. Again, we are totally devastated.

I cannot see the future. I have no idea what is to come, not only for Piper but for all of us. If you want to know the truth I am scared witless and I am spending the day sobbing uncontrolably. I wanted, no needed, our little family to begin to mend and to be able to look at this phase of life as a season instead of our normal. Facing a relapse is even more frightening that the initial diagnosis. I now know what this does to our family, finances and plans...it is ugly.

While I have no idea what happens in the future, I still stand firm on the knowledge that God is sovereign and that He has a plan. I fear the prayers I am sending up are not filled with faith but rather with pleading but I rejoice that He knows my heart, my girls and my life. At this moment, sobbing at the computer with strangers around I feel much like a tree that has been beaten by the weather. I may look to be bent over, I may be weathered to a indescript gray but I am still rooted in the soil that give me sustanence.

Of this I am certain, God is still good.