[VaMoonRise]

I can feel your deep seeded fear and pain from here. The love you and Ed share for one another is the same as what my husband Billy and I share for one another. We have known each other since I was two years old. We grew up across the street from one another in Chesapeake, VA. He was my brother Scott's best friend, our Mother's were best friends too and I was best friends with his younger sister. My Mother was like a second Mom to them and their Mother a second Mom to us. Our families were like one. The bond we share goes deeper than anything I have ever known. My family moved away from VA to NY when I was around 12 years old. We all kept in touch though over the years, Billy even came to visit us in NY, and after Billy and Scott graduated HS they attended college together for a while in VA. After college Billy got married and had three wonderful children. Billy, his wife and children even came to visit us a couple of years after my brother Scott died in 1986 in a drowning accident in an AZ River where he was then living with his fiance and her son, he was only 23 at the time. After Scott died Billy made a point of staying in touch with my Mother, sister and I. He was like a son to my Mother. Many years passed and our contact with one another became less and less as we all got caught up in our own lives, although we still would touch base with one another once in a while. Both Billy's Mom and my Mom passed away in the 90's to breast cancer. Billy and I hadn't seen each other in 10 years but I received a phone call from him and he told me how sorry he was to hear about my Mother's passing. His Mother passed away before mine in 1990, my Mom in 1995. We talked on the phone for about 8 hours that night. He told me how him and his wife had split up a year before and that she was about to remarry and how difficult the break up had been on him and the kids. From that phone call on we started talking by phone on a daily basis. We finally reunited in person a few months later at a mutual childhood friends house in Chesapeake, VA. I was living in NC at the time, Billy was still living in VA. When we first saw each other for the first time in 10 years we embraced each other tightly and all I could feel, think or say as we were hugging was "Oh, wow, I feel like I just came home." It was the best feeling in the world, I knew immediately that I was right where I belonged. I had been praying for years for God to send me a man that would be my best friend, my confidant, my rock through thick and thin, my loyal partner through life, my soul twin (we have so much in common it is almost unbelievable) and soul mate. I had been through so many trials and heart breaks in my life and really bad relationships and I had promised myself that I would never settle again for a man that wasn't worthy of my love or what I had to offer as a person and a woman. Well, God answered my prayer when He brought Billy back into my life. He is more than worthy of my love, it is I that at times. doesn't feel worthy of his love, he spoils me rotten every day. We have been together ever since that 10 year reunion. We had our 7 year wedding anniversary this past June 17. These past 7 years have been the best 7 years of my life. Every day spent with Billy is like my prayers being answered all over again, like Christmas morning, my birthday and wedding day all rolled into one. Every day I thank God for bringing us together in marriage.

The thought of cancer separating us is like a knife stabbing through my heart. Billy and I have both been through so much already in life and have lost way too many loved ones along the way. I can't imagine God allowing cancer to take away from us what we have been searching for our whole lives only after just 7 years of being together as man and wife. I want to grow old with Billy more than anything else in this world.

I don't know if you have been following my recent posts or not with all that you and Ed have going through lately. But starting about two weeks ago we have had the biggest nightmares of our lives. It first started with the news of me having multiple brain mets and having to go through WBR, then with us being told by way of phone call on our drive home from chemo, not to go home but to go straight to the ER because they thought I had a blockage in my liver and needed a stint put in. Luckily I didn't need a stint put in but my liver function was/is in terrible shape. I have been very jaundiced and extremely weak for weeks. The worst was the Friday before last though. I went in to have my monthly Zometa and they ran blood work while I was there and the blood work came back showing that my liver was in even worse condition now and that I needed to see the nurse practitioner. The nurse prac. gave me a very cold and blunt prognosis of just a couple of days, maybe weeks to live and told us to go ahead and contact Hospice now. Well, you can imagine our shock, horror and utter terror. It made no sense, how could I be dying when I was up walking around, eating well, feeling pretty good over all except for the pain in my liver and being tired. The nurse prac. even went as far as to call me a living miracle already because she couldn't believe that I was up walking around. This being a Friday made it all the worse because my Onc. wouldn't be available until Monday morning sometime. What if I died before then and Billy later found out that something could have been done to prevent it. The weekend was pure hell for us. We had to contact family members and tell them that I had only days or weeks left to live. Telling my sisters was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life and poor Billy was frantic as all get out all weekend watching me for signs of rapid decline. Well, Monday finally rolled around and we were able to get in to see my Onc. and her prognosis was completely different from that of the nurse prac., it was like night and day. She couldn't believe that the nurse prac. had told us that and couldn't state enough how wrong the nurse prac. was. It was the biggest sigh of relief that Billy and I have ever breathed. You can imagine all of the emotions we went through and how relieved and angry my family members were at the nurse prac. for putting us all through that. You can read more about this by going back to my posts titled "Weekend from H, E, Double Hockey Sticks" or "Kicked in the Teeth..."

To make all of the above even worse, as you know, we had been waiting to get me started on Xeloda ever since I had WBR and my insurance company kept denying us. We were down to our last appeal and all of this waiting and not being on any chemo of any kind was only allowing my liver function to grow worse and worse and by the day. Every day was like a nightmare until my Onc. was able to get me on Xeloda after my weekend hospital stay. We also went ahead and started paying for the Xeloda out of pocket until we got the final answer from the Ins. Co. Luckily after a lot of phone calls by my Onc., an advocate at the cancer center, myself and a plethora of paper work the Ins. Co. finally approved it.

I had drastically changed my diet after being given a death sentence. I went to eating fruit and veggies all day long, no red meat, no sugar at all and nothing to drink but lots and lots of water. Just by drastically changing my diet and lots and lots of prayers I was able to get my liver function numbers to stop jumping sky high repeatedly in just over 3 day periods as it had been doing since before going into the hospital. I have been on Xeloda now for 2 weeks, I am on my one week off right now which started on Monday. I just had blood work done yesterday to recheck my liver function and I am ecstatic to tell you that my liver function numbers have started to drop. My Bilirubin went from a 12.3 to 11.7, SGPT from 759 to 409 and my SGOT from 453 to 242. I am thrilled to pieces as is my Onc., she said Xeloda can take up to a month to start working in some patients and this is a very good sign that mine has already started to work which is incredible since I have only been on it a short time. She also said that because I haven't had any side effects as of yet from it that she is going to increase my dosage from 3 pills in the morning and 3 at night to 3 in the morning and 4 at night. If I start to get any side effects I am to stop taking 4 at night and call her immediately to let her know.

Before being reassured by my Onc. and having these recent blood work results I was having feelings and thoughts like this.

Having failed on my last three chemo's, my liver being in such rough shape, and just "what if" the prognosis from my nurse prac. were true?? I couldn't stop thinking about it. I was really starting to become deeply afraid. I truly felt that everything was down hill from here and that it would probably be a very rapid decline. I was having terrible thoughts and couldn't stop picturing my Mother's last days of life and how horrible they were and thinking that would be me very soon. I couldn't stop crying and worrying about Billy and my sisters and what this was doing to them. I was even plagued with guilt from having all of these negative thoughts. Where did my faith, unwavering trust and belief in Christ to heal me go??? Then like a loud voice booming inside my head I realized I was allowing satan to invade my thoughts! I had left the door wide open for him and of course he wasn't going to let an opportunity slip on by. Once I realized what I had done I began to pray. I asked Christ to forgive me for my moments of weakness and for Him and God to surround me with Their armor so that satan couldn't slide in with his negative thoughts and worries. I asked for Them to give me the strength to keep him at bay and to fill me back up with my strong faith, unwavering trust and belief that Christ would heal me. Well, that is exactly what Christ and God did, They are soooooo Good, praise the Lord!! They have filled me back up with my faith, unwavering trust and belief, an inner peace, a quieting of the mind, over flowing joy and have set me on my path to healing. Since then I make sure to have little conversations with Them throughout my day, to constantly praise and give thanks to Them no matter what kind of day I am having. As you can see the Lord and Christ are blessing me with the healing I have asked for. Not only am I feeling better spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically but my blood work results are proof that Christ is alive and working in me. He can do the exact same thing for Ed, Sweetie. Don't let satan take from you what you know to be true! Just keep praying and asking the Lord to make it all so and I will be praying every day for you and Ed asking for the same thing and I know the Lord will hear us and that He will answer.

I can't recommend the books enough that I mentioned in my last few posts. Please Sweetie go out and get them, either from the library or a book store. If you are unable to then please let me know and I will get them for you and mail them to you. They truly have done wonders for me and gotten me to where I am now health wise and in my closer relationship with God and Christ. They also have taught me the right way to pray when praying for a miracle.

Here is a simple healing prayer that Ed can pray every day or you can pray for him.

Father God, I thank You for creating me in Your image. I praise You that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I confess that You are the God that heals, You and Christ are the Greatest Physicians that ever existed or ever will exist. I ask You to heal my body from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. I pray that You would regenerate every bone, joint, tendon, ligament, tissue, organ, and cell of my body. I ask You, Father, to defeat satan again, as You did on the cross, and defeat any disease that's trying to take hold of this body, You so marvelously created. This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it. In Jesus' powerful and precious name I pray with love, gratitude and many thanks. I love You, Lord God. AMEN.

I also repeat to myself all day long that "God is All and All is God, if God is All and All is God, then God resides in me, and where God resides can only be good things, pure things, and no evil, disease or negative thoughts can reside where God resides."

I love you my Dear Sweet Marie, and you and Ed are in my thoughts, heart and prayers daily. If you need me for anything don't hesitate to e-mail me directly at VaMoonRise@aol.com. I will even give you a phone call if you would like, we can chat, vent, cry, laugh and pray together.

Love & God Bless,
Nicola

PS: Told ya, that once I get to talking it is hard for me to stop, lol. I could have kept writing a bunch more but thought that other readers might not appreciate my ramblings as much you will, lol. I hope that if we talk by phone we can both get a word in edge wise, lol.