"make her surprised"

Well that was weird.

Yesterday, in his prayer for his Granna, Chase asked God to "make her surprised." Today Dr. Tauer gave us the weirdest good news we've ever received, and, needless to say, we were all very surprised!

Friends, we got wonderful news today! The biopsy did not show pancreatic cancer!

We also got some bad news, though. The biopsy did show breast cancer.

As odd as it sounds, we're considering this GOOD news. (We realize that viewing metastatic breast cancer as "good news" means our interpretation of good and bad news is pretty messed up, but whatever.) We were very prepared for this biopsy to show pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer has a survival rate of just 6%. The treatment options are very limited and not very effective. Thus, a recurrence of pancreatic cancer would not be good news at all. While a recurrence of breast cancer is certainly not something we were hoping for, we are very encouraged by the fact that there are many treatment options available! And more research is being done all the time. As my dad said, this is great bad news.

I know it can be hard to keep up with Trish and all her cancer shenanigans. If you need a little recap, this post has a pretty good description of Mom's breast cancer history (plus it seems appropriate for today anyway).

Obviously, this situation is rare. Dr. Tauer said today that this was all very typical of Trish, haha. He also said that if he were to present her case at a conference, no one would believe him. He seemed very optimistic about the biopsy results. Like us, he was expecting much worse news. I think we were all pleasantly surprised to hear "breast cancer." We still have to wait on the rest of the pathology report to come back before we can determine what the next step is. We're hoping/expecting the report will show that this cancer is HER2-positive.

Here's your breast cancer lesson for the day . . . HER2 is a protein that is overexpressed in some breast cancer cells. While HER2-positive breast cancers are typically more aggressive and have poorer prognoses than other types, they have become much more treatable in the last 20 years thanks to the discovery of a targeted therapy called Herceptin. Unlike chemo, which kills any rapidly diving cells, Herceptin binds only to cancer cells that express the HER2 protein and is often able to stop/slow their growth. In my mom's case, Herceptin has kept her breast cancer from growing for the last seven and a half years! Dr. Tauer said this recurrence doesn't necessarily mean the Herceptin has stopped working; it just might not be working as well as it was before. There is now another Herceptin-like drug that has been shown to be effective for some HER2-positive breast cancers. If this cancer in the lymph nodes is still HER2-positive (it's possible it might not be, as cancer cells often change), we'll probably just add that new drug to Mom's current regimen . . . translation: no chemo! How wonderful would that be??

Today's prayer requests:

• encouraging pathology reports! Dr. T will call and let us know about these results, and that will probably be in about 3-4 more days.
• that Mom's pancreatic cancer will remain in remission . . . one cancer at a time, please!
• wisdom for Dr. T and Trish as they decide on the best course of action for treating this cancer . . . pray that God will lead them to right drugs and/or procedures.
• complete and total healing for my mom, from both pancreatic cancer and breast cancer!
• peace for my family
• major thanksgiving and praise for another checkup that showed no pancreatic cancer!
• that God will continue to reveal His glory as we walk this road

I told you it was weird good news.

"If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it..." -Daniel 3:17