A prayer and a praise.

Just as a brief background to this prayer request:

I had cancer 4 years ago...a long and amazing story that I will post sometime on my blog. It was a tumor in my eye and was neutralized through radiation. Everything seemed pretty okay for the first 3 years after that, but for the past year my eye has begun suffering from radiation damage. My vision has deteriorated in that eye, although I have some peripheral vision which is helpful with depth perception.

I had an appointment with my retinal specialist (cancer eye doctor) on Monday as a routine follow-up. They did another ultrasound and some "pictures" of my eye after injecting a dye into my body that helps see what is going on better in the eye. It's much more detailed than how I'll explain it, but basically my eye has fluid build-up, swelling, and some hemorrhaging of the vessels.

I received an injection of a medication in my eye last December that did help with the swelling, but the bleeding is getting worse. My doctor recommended beginning some laser treatments right away to try to stop the bleeding and fluid leakage. They were hesitant to do this initially because it will likely decrease what tiny vision I still have left, but at this point, it seems prudent to do what is best for the overall health of my eye. Lord willing, I will have a lot more years on this earth and so the ultimate goal now is for me to be able to keep my eye (as opposed to having it removed and have a prosthetic eye). I'm not sure how realistic this goal is, considering the trajectory that I am on, but I know that God hears and answers our prayers. So, I am beseeching you all to pray that the laser treatments and injections would be successful in stabilizing my eye--that there would be no more deterioration--even in the many days and years to come. Also, often when there is blindness or significant vision loss in one eye, that eye begins to lose muscle tone and will become "lazy" or drift off to the side. Even with my current vision loss, both eyes are still tracking together well, and so if you would pray that they would continue to do so, I would be so grateful.

For the most part, I have already grieved the cancer and the vision loss and how those have truly changed my life (although grief does pop up at surprising times and I don't like having to remember to schedule blood tests, CT scans, and doctor's appointments every several months just to make sure I'm still cancer-free). But I would really love to just be able to move on and now it seems prudent to be more proactive than ever with these treatments and so that is hard. It's also hard to think about possibly losing my eye entirely. That's why I initially chose to have radiation instead of removal of the eye when I was diagnosed (plus it also seemed like a medically prudent decision--not just vanity :).

And yet just as I walked out of the doctor's office with a heavy heart, my phone rang. It was Joel's caseworker informing me that his application for the medicaid autism waiver had been approved (see previous post) and he could start therapy within 2 weeks. Praise God!!!

And I know his timing is not without blessing in and of itself. What a gift to me when I was feeling low. And a reminder that he loves Joel and he loves me and will not forsake either of us. What a magnificent God we serve! So as you join me in prayer for my eye and health, please also join me in praise for this amazing opportunity for Joel. Our God is most certainly worthy of unending praise and he calls us to proclaim his mighty deeds--to him be the glory for all things!