My Number 1 Fan

I like being liked and so do you. Oh admit it, you do too. You know you do. Thankfully there are still a few people out there that like me. It is not a particularly large group of people, but my Mom says that is just because they are all jealous. That could be true I guess. After all I am not handsome or charming or fun at parties, but I am related to people who are all of those things and that surely counts for something.

Regardless of all that though, out of the modest group of people that like me, there is a new challenger to the title of my number 1 fan. That position is currently held by the regional sales manager for Pepsi Cola. I have no idea why.

Our good friends Tony and Jennifer have a little girl named Claire. She is about the cutest little girl you have ever seen no matter how many girls you've seen. Whenever she sees me she runs up to me and jumps up to be held and burries her head in my shoulder and holds on. She only knows a few words but says "Josh" very well and communicates well enough to show her displeasure if her parents get together with me without her. But all of this is really just build up to this video. Claire and mommy are singing a song I have recently written and created hand motions. Clearly knowing my love of football, Claire has sensitively incorporated the "touchdown" signal into the motions. Just thought it was too cute not to share.

Enjoy.

http://www.new.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1036953249109

Sutent

Good afternoon everyone.

I have more news about my Dad and I am afraid it is not very good. The Gleevec that my Dad has been taking has failed. As you know, my Dad’s GIST returned to his liver and the hope was that an increased dose of Gleevec would knock it back. It did not. The tumors continue to grow at a startling pace. The next step is to switch to a different drug called Sutent. The hope is that Sutent would reduce the tumors where Gleevec could not and get them small enough that my Dad could have more surgery. We could know whether that is going to work in as little as a week.

If the tumors continue to grow or fail to shrink, there are still some options, but they are less clear. As far as we know now, at that point surgery would not be an option. There may be a radioactive drug that could be used directly on the tumor. There may also be clinical trials for different drugs that my Dad could join which would likely require traveling to a place like Boston or North Carolina. And, of course, maybe there is something else we don’t know about yet.
All of that means, that we really want these tumors to shrink…right now.

Thank you all again for your prayers. Please keep them coming.

From Dad

My Dad wanted to send his own thanks and update to our congregation here and asked that I also share this letter with those reading my blog since so many of you have been praying for him. So, below is that letter. Reading it was very comforting and inspiring for me.

Dear Family…

As you can imagine it has been an interesting week in the Stump household. I was more than a little bummed to get the news last week that I had gone from the always hoped for NED (No Evidence of Disease) on my August scan to multiple new tumors just four weeks later! And one of these is already over 2 inches long!!! These crummy things move faster than several cars I’ve owned over the years.

It is not as if I don’t know what I’m up against with this cancer. I was told from the beginning that GIST is an aggressive cancer and that my particular version of it is especially aggressive; and that while there are treatments that might stabilize its progression there is no cure.

I know all this, yet…for the past month I had been feeling really good again…minimal side-effects, no pain, good energy…and coupled with the excellent clear scan in August I convinced myself that I had a three month window of clear sailing until my next scan in November. When I started feeling badly again and those feelings were confirmed by an emergency scan, I reacted as if I was losing something that was rightfully mine.

Foolishness! God makes us no such promises. We are not guaranteed the next moment, let alone the next three months. What we are guaranteed is His presence with us…and that makes all the difference.

With the elders’ gracious blessings I took several days off last week. Kay and I enjoyed this incredible fall weather camping in Mt Rainier National Park. We’ve camped there a number of times and the Park has become special to me since my sons and I have backpacked together extensively in it.

We used this time to talk through some of our ‘what then’ questions and to speak and listen to our loving Lord. So, here is what I think…

If it should be that my cancer defeats our available treatments and I don’t have all that many days left, then I don’t want to spend my remaining time morose and lamenting my losses. Sadness and disappointment are inevitable, but I don’t have to live there…and I’m determined not to. On the other hand if treatment works—and it may—and I’m granted a longer time here, then I don’t want to look back at these days and see that I lost precious days of sunshine to the blues.

Either way my response is the same: This is the day the Lord has made…I will rejoice and be glad in it! He may not make another one for me…but His grace is sufficient for today. I intend to let His grace lead me into the joy of each day’s gifts. Some days I’ll blow it and be morose anyway…it is, after all, in my nature. But far more often I’m going to celebrate the marvelous gift of life each day it comes.

I have so much to be thankful for…not the least of which is you, my church family. I’m thankful for your prayers…your expressions of love and concern…your acted-on desires to be blessings to Kay and me. We feel truly and wonderfully cared for. Thank you. God willing and with the elders’ consent I will continue to serve you, my Family, however He enables me.

To Life! And to God’s grace that makes joy possible each day!

Zero-Sum Game

A quick rant:

Happiness should never be a zero sum game. A “zero sum game” is an exercise where adding something means taking something else away so the sum of the exercise is always zero. It is a political/economic/game theory where one participant’s gain will result in another participant’s loss so that the aggregate gain and loss amounts to zero. Sadly, this concept seems to regularly apply to our relationships and it is something I think we should guard ourselves against.

All of that may sound like nonsense, but I guarantee you have experienced this. Ever known someone who can not stomach someone else’s happiness or success because it makes them feel less happy and successful? Some people act like there is a fixed amount of happiness in the universe so they resent people who find it because it means less for them. This is, of course, not only wrong but destructive. There is nothing like greeting happiness with resentment to reduce the value of your friend’s happiness to zero. That way no on is happy. Is this better?

So, here’s a suggestion for the day or week or whatever. Do your absolute best to wish for and revel in the happiness of others. Let’s say you are a young parent like me and my kid learned to walk at 8 months old (It was more like 20 for our boys), but your kid is almost two and still barely crawling. You might be inclined to be jealous and resentful (well not you, you’re great, but you know, someone), but try to pause and take a different approach. Does my kid’s success make it harder for your kid to walk? Why not just be happy for me and my kid? Or if you and your buddy are trying to lose weight and your buddy eats doughnuts and French fries all day and loses 20 pounds while you work out and eat raw dandelions and gain 5, try to be happy for your friend. After all, if they lose weight it doesn’t make it any harder for you.

We are so competitive in this Country (me more than most), that jealousy and resentment have become first and second nature. We grind our teeth and wince at the success of others, even our friends, because it should be us and it is unfair and unjust….or so we believe. We shouldn’t. It makes us all less likeable when we do that. But it is easier to condemn than to avoid, especially for someone as competitive as me.

That said, it is avoidable. So, this week instead of allowing someone else’s good fortune to remind you of your own failings and make you resentful, simply take the opportunity to celebrate someone else’s success. See someone do something great? Tell them how great you think it is and mean it. See a friend get something you want and don’t have? Tell them how great it is that they have it. Don’t do it through clinched jaw, do it because they are your friend and you should wish them the best.

There is enough happiness to go around. It is not a zero sum game. If someone you know gets theres, just smile, pat them on the back and keep going for yours.

Dad Update

Just a quick update…

As many of you know, my Dad was able to see his Oncologist today. He confirmed that there were new tumors (or at least newly visible tumors) on the liver. There are 6-7 at least. Two of them have grown rather large rather quickly. My Dad doubled the dose of his medication with the hope that it will shrink these tumors. If that does not work, there is another drug he can take and we will again look into the procedure he had done in May that fried the last large liver tumor.

He will have another CT on Friday with a follow up appointment next Wednesday. If the tumors are shrinking he will likely just keep the Gleevac at a high dose and monitor. That is the best case scenario. If the tumors are still growing, we will likely switch the drug and consult with the surgeon about the tumor blasting.

So, there are still a variety of promising options. For now we are praising God that my Dad is actually feeling good again which we hope is a sign that the higher dose of medicine is working, but if not, it is at least good to feel good.

Thank you all for your prayers, emails, blog comments. They have meant everything to me. Please keep it up.

Please Pray With Me.

Hello out there in blog land. I am sad to have to report today that we got some bad news regarding my father this week.

If you read this blog or know my family, then you know that my Dad has been battling a rare form of aggressive cancer for several years. The first surgery removed a football sized tumor from his abdomen. In a matter of months the cancer returned, this time primarily in his liver. More surgery this past May killed the tumor in his liver. In early August of this year he had a CT which showed no new tumors or growth. The surgery was a success, he had finally recovered and then got a clean bill of health. It was a good month in that regard.

Unfortunately, he began feeling discomfort in his liver a couple weeks ago. He went in for a CT this past Friday and then discovered this week what we had feared, but had not allowed ourselves to believe. The cancer had returned and was again in the form of tumors in the liver. In a month’s time one of the two new tumors was already larger than 2 inches. It is a very stubborn and aggressive disease.

In a bit of very frustrating timing, my Dad’s oncologist is out of town this week and we will not know what all of this means until Monday (9/15) at the earliest. Obviously we are concerned that he may no longer be a candidate for surgery since the cancer returned within weeks of the liver healing from the last surgery. The return and rapid growth of the tumor means that the drug he has been taking is not working, at least not working as well as it needs to. There is one other drug he can try, but it does not have a fantastic track record and often comes with very unpleasant side effects.

So, at this point, I only know that the cancer is back. I will update this blog when we know more which should be next week.

In the past I have asked for prayers for specific revelations or decisions. I asked for prayers that the original tumor would not be attached to the colon. I asked for prayers for the original surgery. I asked for prayers that the cancer not return and when it did that it be operable and when it was for the more recent surgery and then for healing from that surgery.

Today, I am going to ask for something a little different. I do not know what a best case and worst case scenario are right now. I don’t know if we might be near the end of my Dad’s life or only at another pot-hole in what will continue to be a long journey. So I can not pray or ask you to pray for some specific avenue to the best case scenario, because I do not know what that would be.

Instead, for those of you who believe God can heal people and who are willing to speak to God on my Dad’s behalf, I simply pray that you ask God to heal my Dad. I don’t know how that might be possible, but I also do not believe God’s power is limited by my own ignorance or lack of imagination. I believe God is. I believe that He created us, that He loves us and that He is at times moved in some way by our plight in this world. All of that is too big to comprehend in detail, but it does not keep me from believing it. The reality is that God and my Dad are good friends. They love each other and have a close relationship and God will know exactly who you are talking about when you pray.

If you believe the same, pray that God heals my Dad. Don’t hold back. Be bold. Be the woman reaching out just to touch the cloak of Jesus. Be the prophets angry with God for what you don’t understand. Be David expressing your love and your needs and your true emotion. Be a child asking your father for help. He will hear you. Thank you.