A Plan With a Future

Yesterday Amanda was faced with a decision regarding how the battle with cancer might continue from this point. As is her nature, she chose a plan with a future. Following are some of the details of that plan.

We will be here in Houston until the later part of this next week. We should be home by Friday, Sept. 12. Amanda will be in the hospital over the weekend (is already there now) taking an additional and stronger round of chemo (she will lose her hair again) in an effort to do as much damage as possible to the cancer before surgery.

In one month, on Tuesday, October 7, Amanda will have the surgery. We will be coming back down to Houston the previous week for pre-surgery scans and other necessary appointments.

The actual surgery will involve many surgical specialists in the operating room at one time, as it is a very major surgery in the left pelvic area, involving the hip and sciatic nerve as well as some area at the base of the spine.

To be sure all the cancer is removed from that area, Amanda will lose all of her left leg.

She will be in the hospital for about 4 weeks, possibly less.

At some time Amanda will get a prosthetic leg that is attached with some kind of a belt system around the waist .... I think we have a meeting with those people tomorrow, and so will learn more about all that.

VERY IMPORTANT: Amanda wants her classmates and friends to know that she is OK with this, and that with the prosthesis she will be able to do whatever she wants. She wants her classmates and friends to know that she doesn't see this as limiting her, but giving her an opportunity for a full and active future. She told us there are things she wants to do, and that she can do them without a leg, but she can't do them with cancer. In fact, Amanda has already been invited to go on a ski trip in January of 2010 and skydiving, by her doctors here at M.D. Anderson. (They are planning for her future too. :-) Plus, as most of you know, Amanda wants to take some trips to the mission field as well ... although, as her father, I think she is already ministering to hundreds of people here.

Additionally, if all continues to go according to the present plan, Amanda will also have two lung surgeries in this next summer.

And then .... hopefully ... an uneventful Senior year at CFS high school.

In closing, if anyone can beat all this and win this battle, it is Amanda. She is the eternal optimist. She loves life. She is full of joy. (That's why she is known and frequently referred to as "Amanda Joy.") And she cherishes her schoolmates, friends and family. She is always on their side. In my life I've learned that there are many who will turn against you and abandon you ... but I've also learned that Amanda never will. She just won't do it. She believes in the grace and mercy of God, and that God really does love her, and loves all of you as well. It is an amazing thing for me to watch. It seems to me that she views every day as a good one. In fact, I have a wonderful and funny story from when she and Caleb were toddlers, and every morning, regardless of the weather outside, Amanda would run to me with a big smile saying, "Daddy, it's a pretty day."

The dad.