the news.

It was Friday afternoon on February 4th and we were heading south on Highway 77 in Mike's pickup when the call came in. Dr. Kuo had the results of Mike's lymph node biopsy. "It is not good news. They found squamous cell cancer..." The only word we really heard was cancer and then the world slowed down and became surreal. We looked at each other. The moment is sealed in my mind... even the way the afternoon sun was coming into the pickup. Your mind felt so jumbled it was hard to understand anything he was saying. You just kept hearing "It's not good... and CANCER..." and then things got fuzzy again.

To keep things light hearted Mike told the doctor we were leaving for a vacation to Cancun in 48 hours and "should he get his last will and testament together?" The doc replied with the steady "I think I'll have to refer you to my colleague (oncologist) for that." It seemed sobering that he could not just say "Oh, don't worry... you'll survive this... it doesn't look too bad..." You wanted to hear "there are some kind of CANCERS that are not bad to have, and that is what you have." But what he said was that there were squamous cancer cells in Mike's lymph node and that this kind of cancer would not have originated there. There was a mass somewhere in Mike's body that had already filtered cancer cells into the lymph node, and we did not know where it was.

That is all we knew. We had never heard the word squamous before. We didn't know if the primary source was on the outside or the inside. We didn't know what to look for. We didn't know if people survived. We just knew that the report "wasn't good" and there was "CANCER". We also knew that Mike had no symptoms whatsoever that were alarming. In fact the only thing he could think of was that his throat felt funny when he ate bananas. It seemed like such a tiny thing that we almost said it in jest. (But later found out that he was on to something.)

We spent the next few hours calling our mothers, and all ten children. It was a bittersweet but precious time. It was terrifying and traumatizing... and it was also comforting to remember that the God we love and serve is beautifully Sovereign over ever molecule in the Universe. If we can see Him working in our daily lives in the sweet and good things, we can see Him in the dark blessings too.

After consulting with family, friends and doctors we decided to keep our trip plans and head off to Cancun as planned. We couldn't even talk to or schedule an appointment with the oncologist because it was too late on a Friday afternoon. We packed our bags in a fog.