Amy's 'momentary trouble'

We had to be at the UW Hospitals at 7:30am this morning. It was slow going because Amy had a pretty sleepless night and when Amy has a sleepless night, It affects my sleep as well. Not that I’m complaining, in truth I am not, but I do feel badly for her because all she wants is to feel better. The itching has really subsided, but every once in awhile, she’ll need me to scratch her back ‘really good!’ It’s her back that is keeping her up at night and this new pain medication they gave her isn’t doing the trick.

I serve on the Baraboo Boys Club Basketball board (4 years now) and our eldest boy Trevor plays on one of the two 7th grade teams. We had our annual end-of-season banquet last night and both teams honored Amy with a gold shirt that had ‘Amy Team Mom’ with ‘Hope & Courage’ circling it embroidered on it and the lettering is purple. Each boy took the time to sign the back of the shirt. They also presented her with a poster that had each boys picture on it along with a short message of encouragement. Not only has Amy been a team mom to these boys, but at one time or another, she has had the pleasure of teaching most of these boys as they came through elementary school.

Anyway, Amy’s blood test revealed that her Biliruben has dropped from 8.5 last Tuesday to 6.1 today. It appears that this stent is working properly. However, the doctor wants the level to be 5.0 or lower before starting Chemo, so they will shoot for this Thursday to start the Chemo. They did, however, start the radiation therapy today. She was in there for about 30 min. they told us that it wouldn’t take that long the next time, but they needed to calibrate the machine to Amy. I asked the Radiological Oncologist if Amy should expect any nausea, he said that the machine is fairly precise with where the radiation goes and that he didn’t think she would experience nausea from the radiation, but most likely could from the Chemo. We didn’t even get out of the hospital before Amy started to feel queasy. Thank goodness I had a plastic grocery bag in the van, because we barely made it back on HWY 12 and Amy needed to use it. She is home in bed right now, sicker than a dog…and this is the first of 27 treatments…every day except weekends for 5 ½ weeks.

I asked for those of you who would, to wear something purple in support of Amy starting treatment and for Pancreatic Cancer awareness today. We received a great response and I know of at least 350 people that are wearing purple today in support! I personally want to thank each and every one of you who decided to wear purple. This is the breakdown of the 350 people and how they know Amy:

52 – Family
120 – Church
109 – Baraboo Club Basketball
49 – Community/Friends
20 – Education

So, now begins the actual journey, a journey that I expect will be: emotional, fear laden, full of uncertainties and at times will seem quite dark. But even with this, we know that we are not alone, we have at least 350 people out there that are caring for us, praying for us, reading with us. Each of you are making this journey with us, step by step, word by word. Even beyond all of this, in the last half of Hebrews 13:5 our Lord says ‘..Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’ He will always be with us and we will NEVER be without hope!

This is Amy's story as seen and told by me - V