Every storm runs out of rain...

Today is officially the best day after the worst day of my life.  

D-Day was one week ago exactly.  It was the day I learned the news that changed my life forever...and made me question if that life would last long enough for my youngest daughter to even remember who her mother was.  For 7 days straight I have lived through a fog of sheer panic, shivering and strangling anxiety, forcing myself to eat with no appetite, trying to sleep through nightmares of being told that the cancer had spread to my bone (clavicles specifically), to my kidneys, to my heart even.  Each day I woke up to find I had lost another pound...is that because I can't will myself to be hungry, or because the cancer is eating me from the inside out?  That sharp pain I feel in my kidney...is that because of the gallons of water I have had to drink, along with the radioactive contrast I've had injected into my body for one diagnostic test after another, or is that the cancer trying to tell me that it's decided to spread throughout my lymphatic system?  The mind-numbing headaches...are they because I've given up my daily coffee for fear of thinning my blood for surgery, or is that a tumor growing in my brain? 

Wednesday was the day when things began to change...the thoughts were still there...the fear still there, but I began to get a handle on it.  When the panic grabbed a hold of my throat, I could swallow...take a deep breath and tell myself that I wasn't going to choke.  I could still breathe.  That was because of the FAITH.  From the day I was diagnosed, I had the hope that I would survive, and a certain amount of faith that I would survive...but the faith was small and timid.  It was just a flicker of glowing light in a night that seemed so dark and uncertain.  In sharing my diagnosis with family and close friends, their encouragement fueled the flame of faith even more.  The glow helped me to walk through those first few days...guided me to start journaling my feelings, to come to an understanding of exactly what I was feeling.  Then by Wednesday, the light of faith glowed bright enough that I felt that I could have an honest conversation with God...to talk to Him and figure out what His plan was in all of this.  I started praying the minute I learned of my diagnosis--pleading prayers of desperation...but this was different.  

On Wednesday I had my MRI.  It was a test that I really feared because I have the tendency to get quite claustrophobic.  An MRI involves being slid into a narrow dark tube for up to an hour, while a large magnet takes digital pictures of your body...all the while hearing loud banging and snapping noises while the machine does its job.  Basically, the scariest environment imaginable...or so I feared.  However, Wednesday was also the day after I shared this online journal with my entire world.  That was what really fanned the faith flame.  Early Wednesday morning, while gearing up for this terrifying test, the love, support, and prayers started coming in...I have to say that it is the most overwhelming and humbling thing I have ever experienced.  Knowing that my family and I are being wrapped in the prayers and encouragement of so many people, even some that I've never met, is a comfort that is beyond description.  So for that, I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart.  You gave me the courage to keep my faith burning...and to have this conversation with God...

As I slid into the tube, I closed my eyes.  And prayed.  I prayed that God would take me by the hand and lead me through all that I had to face.  I prayed that He would help me to understand His purpose in placing this challenge before my family and I.  I prayed that He would use this experience to draw me closer to Him and to see Him in a more real way.  As the magnet rattled and crashed all around me, I drowned out the noise by singing songs of praise and thanking my Creator for showing me His love in the form of family, friends, acquaintances and strangers reaching out to me and offering their hands to hold.  Then, in a sound louder than the deafening MRI, I began to hear it.  I began to hear the message that I was meant to hear...

And then PEACE came.  The MRI was over and I could move onto the next.  Only, now my flame of faith burned brighter than the flame of fear.  Thursday came, and with it came the PET Scan.  An angel of a man wrapped me in a warm blanket while he injected me with a radioactive substance that would cause any cancers within my body to glow and show up in images for my doctors to interpret.  While I waited for the radiotracer to be absorbed, I read a People magazine from September and tried to quiet the voices in my head that told me that "this was the BIG test...you remember, the one that showed Dad that his cancer was in his lungs, his liver, and his brain."  "Shhhhhh...don't think about that.  Look--Bethenny Frankel is struggling to start over.  Will her talk show make it?  will she love again?  THAT, Lindsay, is the important question."

After the PET scan came a meeting with a genetic counselor to be tested for the breast cancer gene 1 and 2 mutations.  Results in two weeks.  And then today...Friday.  Friday was my last diagnostic test...the bone scan.

Friday was also the day that I expected to get my bloodwork and MRI results.  At 9:00am on the dot I called Dr. Wilde's office and left a message for her nurse, Pam, to call me back with any results she had.  I was told she would call me with the results as soon as she became available.  GULP. Then, off to the hospital with Josh and my mom to receive my next "incredible hulk" injection.  This time, we had to wait two hours for it to be absorbed.  So, we went to the mall, to the Apple store, to lunch.  Should I try calling for results again?  No...she will call me when she has them.  

The bone scan was about 15 minutes underway.  Again, I was lying flat on my back while a large square camera twisted and turned all around me, taking slow pictures of my bones and drawing a picture of my skeleton on a monitor.  Josh was in the room with me.  He was holding my phone when I heard it rang.  I heard him step out of the room...it was the call I was waiting for.  When he came back he told me that Pam had the results of my PET scan.  Wait, my PET scan?  I thought I wouldn't get those until Monday.  Oh my Lord.  She didn't tell my husband the results?  Surely if the results were good, she would have told him, would have offered some hint of assurance.  The next 15 minutes of the scan ticked slowly by...each minute the beating in my heart got faster and faster.  So fast that I worried that my chest was literally thumping and the camera wouldn't get accurate pictures...

Finally, it was over.  Josh and I walked to the waiting room where we met my mom.  Josh had already texted her that the results were in.  The choking hands were on my neck.  I couldn't make the call...I was too scared.  My mom shook me..."DON'T BE SCARED, LINDSAY."  Call. 

And here is where the good news comes in...

"Lindsay, your blood work is all normal.  And the PET scan revealed no suspicious findings."

THANK YOU, JESUS.

This is what I know for today...sometimes hysterical crying comes from nothing but pure relief and joy...not just from devastation and sadness.  I don't know exactly what my test results mean yet; only meeting with my doctors will tell me exactly, but I do know that they mean that they couldn't find cancer anywhere else in my body.  Not in my bones, not in my kidneys, not in my brain.  I also know that it means that no matter what else lies before me--surgery, reconstruction, chemo, radiation, hair loss--the flame of my faith will not be extinguished.  I now have FAITH that I will live to remember this diagnosis as a difficult trial in the long journey of my life.  My daughters will know who I am.  They won't have to "remember" me, because I will be with them.  My husband and I will watch them grow up together.  He won't have to do it alone.  

Last Friday a storm hit my life.  It has rained for 7 days.  There have been moments of sunshine and beautiful rainbows...but still it rained.  But today, Friday, November 8th 2013, my storm ran out of rain.