It can ware on a person to watch anyone go through such a
difficult trial, let alone someone close to you. As her husband and eternal
companion it can be especially difficult to watch Britney suffer so much. At times you feel completely helpless because
you cannot take the pain away, but it is comforting to know that we always have
our Heavenly Father listening and answering our prayers. We are never alone.
I am grateful that I am blessed to hold the power of the
priesthood and have the opportunity to bless my dear wife. Through the power
and authority of God I have been able to help Britney receive the blessings of
our Heavenly Father and the comfort of the Savior. Each and every time Britney has asked for a
blessing from me I have seen miracles great and small. Ether she received
immediate relief from pain or nausea or a bestowal of comfort and
understanding. God has never failed to bless us.
It is still difficult for Britney to write in the blog do to
the sensitivity to light and her energy levels. I know a lot of people are
wondering how she is doing and how the treatment plan is working. Britney
passes a lot of the time sleeping. If you're not hearing from her, know that
it's nothing personal in the slightest way. She is exhausted and needs her rest
and she sends her love to you all.
This week I thought I would update everyone from my
perspective. I’m just going to go right into
what has been going on this last week. In the last post Kenzie updated about
various tests and news that we were undergoing and waiting on results of. These
were to check and treat the cancer in her marrow, abdomen, and brain. This is
par for the course for cancer patients… lots of testing and waiting for
results.
As of Monday the 16th Britney was still on the
new study drug. She had received a full
cycle of the treatment so our team at LDS wanted to check her progress through
a bone marrow biopsy. The doctors have been concerned because of Britney’s
terrible headaches and they needed to know if they had gotten the leukemia in
her body under control so that they could then focus on the malignancy in her
brain. Britney has been able to keep the relentless pain at bay with continued
medications. Her eyesight has gotten
better through chemotherapy being injected into her central nervous system
through spinal taps, but the doctors needed to do brain radiation in order to
get it under control. Unfortunately on
the study protocol you can’t do both, chemo and brain radiation, it would be
too toxic.
So on Monday Britney went through another bone marrow biopsy
to see what is going on in her marrow. It wasn’t an easy one and the physician
assistant was unable to obtain any marrow. We had seen this before, it ether
meant that all the marrow was killed off by the chemo, or her bones were still
packed with disease.
Again we were on the waiting game to see exactly where she
was at. We were scheduled to receive a
consultation on the results on Thursday September 19th. Early Wednesday morning our team called and
asked us to come in that day instead to meet with our doctors. Our doctors told
us the results of Monday’s tests. The
diseased cells in Britney’s marrow were still at 96%. The study drug was unsuccessful in regard to
getting Britney into remission. Of
course this is not the news we were wanting and hoping to hear. We knew that
she most likely wouldn’t be in a full remission, but had hoped for some sort of
marked response to the drug and a drop in her numbers.
We later found out the chemo had also compromised Britney’s
heart. It is now working very hard to
maintain a 35% effectiveness (50% is normal).
This can be healed with the help of medications, and like any other
muscle it can be strengthened again. And
as far as the leukemia around her brain, it still was localized and had not
spread. The growth was of course still causing her headaches but it hadn’t
gotten worse.
Our doctor let us know that they were removing us from the
study medication because it was not working and we needed to move forward with
something else that hopefully does work.
They laid out a new plan of attack, treatment plan A and B were
unsuccessful, so on to plan C…
We needed to first get the bad symptoms that she was experiencing
from the brain tumors under control. She started the next day, Thursday Sept.
19th, on full brain radiation twice a day. She will continue with the radiation for a
full week. Following the radiation Britney
will be admitted to receive high dose chemotherapy treatments. This involves pill form chemo twice a day for
7 days called Sorafenib. The Sorafenib will then be administered concurrently
with Clofarabine and Cytarabine (Ara-C) once a day for the next 5 days. This plan is meant to knock the leukemia to
it knees and then hit it with full body radiation.
This third treatment plan is an option that we have chosen
in order to kill as much cancer cells as possible and then move strait into transplant,
whether she is in remission or not. She needs her sister’s marrow to take over
and rebuild her immune system. The doctors explained that once they start this
plan and set it in motion you can’t stop.
You have to see it through until the donor marrow cells take hold. This will
involve about 8 weeks in the hospital. It's a very methodic treatment plan and
important to knock this out hard, once and for all with no breaks.
Britney started her brain radiation on Thursday (9/19). Typically this stage is a 2 week process once
a day. Not for our Brit, she's getting it double time, twice a day for one week
so that we can complete that portion of the treatment faster and get going
through chemo and on to transplant. She
went home Thursday night and was having pretty awful nausea and fatigue. It got
worse as the hours went on because she was unable to hold anything down. On
Friday (9/20) they decided to admit her to have a better watch over her. By receiving
nausea medication intravenously, Brit has been able to eat and get some rest. J
I recently read a talk from Elder Bednar entitled: That We
Might “Not … Shrink” (D&C 19:18). You
can read the whole talk at the link below, which I highly recommend.
He describes Elder Maxwells fight with leukemia as well as
another young couple’s fight with cancer.
The similarities to our story are unbelievable. Bednar explains that “strong faith in the
Savior is submissively accepting of His will and timing in our lives—even if
the outcome is not what we hoped for or wanted.” Certainly, Britney and I
desire, yearn, and plead for healing with all of our might, mind, and
strength. But more importantly, we are “willing to submit to all things which
the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [us], even as a child doth submit to his
father” (Mosiah
3:19). Indeed, we are willing to “offer [our] whole souls as an offering
unto him” (Omni
1:26) and humbly pray, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from
me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42).
“We may not know what the future holds but we know who holds
the future.” This treatment plan is obviously not the best case scenario and we
would much rather go into the transplant in remission. But we are going forward
with a hope and a prayer in our heart and Britney knows that she can do hard
things. Heavenly father has his own plan, and I know that “all things have been
done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.” (2 Nephi 2:24) Britney and I
know that we have a rough road ahead of us, but we will come out of it
successful.
Just like the couple that you will read about in Elder
Bednar’s talk, things will fall into place, miracles have and will happen, and we
continually are humbled to see God’s plan for us unfold. “Many of the lessons
we are to learn in mortality can only be received through the things we
experience and sometimes suffer. And God expects and trusts us to face
temporary mortal adversity with His help so we can learn what we need to learn
and ultimately become what we are to become in eternity.”
Love you all,
Joe
____________________________________________________________________________________
New Post from Britney’s wonderful friends and family-
Just a little update for the upcoming 5k/bake sale/auction
If you haven't already heard the race starts at 8 am sharp.
The race will go from 8-10. The bake sale/boutique/auction will go until 11 am,
and will be open during the race. If you don't pre register or prepay, early
registration starts at 7:30. We are
excited to see everyone.
Also, there is a new way to contribute. We have set up a
Zion’s Bank Account for Brit. You can donate at any Zion’s branch. If you have
an account with Zion’s it's easy to transfer funds online, or you can even send
a check to any branch with Britney's account number on it.
Account name: Britney Graham Donations
Account number: 569364359
Thank
you everyone. Anything is appreciated.
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