Had a Great Day Today, PLUS Trevor's Happy Day

I had a fantastic day today as I am all done with chemo and was able to catch up on some much needed sleep with 2 naps, 1 before lunch and 1 before dinner. I enjoyed a much needed shower too! Then the family came by for a lunchtime visit and stayed 2 hours. We had a really nice time in the larger "family room" down the hall which has puzzles that Trevor enjoyed working on while Mike read to us from The Sign of the Beaver, a read aloud we're doing in school. Wonderful story! We had some good snuggle time and lots of talking. Everyone seemed more rested today.

Later Trevor's friend Luca, from soccer, brought Trevor to the pumpkin patch with his family, who bought him a pumpkin. Thanks so much Ziggy and Daniel! Trevor wanted to get one to make a pumpkin pie this weekend. He's been talking about pumpkin pie for his birthday too which is Oct. 30. And now I'm hungry.

Trevor is pretty determined to paint his bedroom this weekend too - He wants to make it a Swiss bedroom. I thought that would mean something I can do, like a white room with a red stripe across and one down, but nope. He wants to make a Switzerland scene...alps, buildings, a Swiss train! Well, Ziggy (Luca's mom)! We went to Switzerland last December, and his bedroom needs painted, and since you're from Switzerland and are a good painter of bedroom murals (I heard), would you be interested in helping little Trevor achieve his dreams for a Swiss bedroom? :) I can't even imagine where to begin, but apparently he's already moving stuff off his walls to prepare. LOL!

On the health front, it's amazing that my hemoglobin is still very stable at 10.2 as of this a.m.! I must still be producing my own healthy red blood cells. And even my platelets kept stable overnight and at last check were 55k. I received an HLA-donated platelet unit today just because it was earmarked for me if I needed it and was set to expire. It certainly doesn't hurt to get more because "normal" is at least 150k. I learned that in 1 week I will get another bone marrow biopsy to check to make sure we got all the leukemic cells. And another week to let the my bone marrow rebuild its numbers on its own - getting injections for white blood cell boosts to help. So I'm doing well and thank you for letting me rest today! I needed it. I'm definitely open for visitors on Wednesday as I'm all showered and rested :) I just ask you adhere to the visitor guidelines to protect me from infection and be sure to call first 722-5556.

Psalm 28:7 The LORD is my strength and my shield;
my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.
My heart leaps for joy
and I will give thanks to him in song.

Learning About the Impending Bone Marrow Transplant

Today, my doctor printed out a very informative paper from UpToDate which I linked to over on the links tab if you're interested in learning about this. You can do a search there for Bone Marrow Transplantation (stem cell transplantation) by Author Robert S. Negrin, M.D. It's really eye opening and will show you what I'm facing in the coming months. No fear though! Don't forget God's promises to me and how healthy I am going into this. I'm a great candidate and the success rate is so high for a cure with this procedure. If you're new to the blog, catch up and see all that the Lord has been doing and showing me from the beginning and you will lose that apprehension quick! :)

I had my last treatment today of chemo. Tiredness is more since, I presume, it's damaging my mitochondria (those little cell energy powerhouses) and I can't wait to rebuild after I'm home with Shaklee's Vivix which actually repairs DNA damage and builds mitochondria in the cell. Go to www.shaklee.net/mikeandkristaenglish to learn more about how it works - it's awesome!

I am neutropenic (which means 0 white blood cells) so please don't visit if you're sick or if you have been around someone sick in your family until you're sure you don't have it. I appreciate the precautions you're taking for me when you visit by wearing the mask they provide outside the door and sanitizing your hands. We're hoping to breeze through here without any infections!

I'll be in here for 2-3 more weeks while my bone marrow rebuilds, and in 2 weeks I'll get another bone marrow biopsy to check to make sure we got all the leukemia cells that were there - I'm pretty hopeful as one might can tell.

Psalm 27:13-14 "I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord."

I Knew I Caught It Early!

So, the wonderful Doctor Wolliver gave me a visit this morning as he usually does, thanking me for making it easier for them by being so healthy. :) My numbers are good, all stabilized, nothing diving, and even some rebuilding on my own. It's amazing to me, but doctors don't say "It's amazing!" but rather, "I'm pleased."

He said I did in fact catch it early because there were no circulating blasts in my blood stream. Circulating blasts? Well, that's just a fancy way of saying the leukemic cells were being blocked in the bone marrow and hadn't been released yet. It means that yes, I caught it nice and early AND that there is less of a burden on my body, i.e. I'm not as sick as I could be had I not noticed early. (Praise God!) It's a completely different experience from the first time I had this 3 years ago.

This time they are avoiding the harsh chemo called Idarubicin (sp?) to prevent unnecessary damage and avoid the typhlitis (deathly intestinal infection) I had last time. Also, they're treating me prophylacticly with oral antibiotics ahead of time to prevent any type of infection. And with my body in a healthy state with stabilized blood counts, by all appearances I'll breeze through it.

Praise God for how I was taking care of my body ahead of time between bouts with diet, Shaklee supplements and exercise. I'm excited about the future. The stem-cell transplant will bring me a cure, however I will probably go into early menopause due to the high dose chemo and radiation that really wipes you out before the transplant. You can pray for a miracle there because I don't really desire to be on hormone replacement therapy at my young age of 37 or 38. But, I'm thankful for life and health so whatever the Lord's will is I'm up for it.

Thanks for riding the wave with me and supporting our family in so many ways - meals are covered through October I believe, people are shopping for groceries for my husband as he gives them his list, offers to help clean, and make play dates for the kids when my husband needs a break to go into the office, and the soccer teams transporting the kids to practice and Monica and Bruce Stanton taking Adam to his drum lesson on Mondays to piggy back on their son's lesson. Not to mention your prayers, notes of encouragement, gifts and visits in the hospital. Life feels so normal, just as it should be and I praise God for each and every one of you and want you to know how much GOD LOVES YOU!

If you do not have a relationship with God through the grace and sacrificial gift of Jesus Christ, and desire to have the hope that I have and to be a part of this incredible family, by all means let me know and I'll go through the Scriptures with you that points you to Christ and his incredible love for you and how you can know him. Please email me and/or call and it would be a privilege to usher you into the Kingdom here on earth - why wait until it's too late, why wait until you are at the end of your life when you can have life to the full and peace and joy and freedom right NOW! My email is kristaenglish@gmail.com and my phone is 805/722-5556.

I have been where you are in the past, hopeless, desiring a better life, knowing there is something better out there, and if you seek the Truth, God will reveal it to you through the Holy Spirit. For me, I knew there was more to this life than daily living (or surviving), and from an early age I kept seeking the Truth. And eventually the Holy Spirit led me to the Truth through a series of events, including reading the Bible given to me by a friend, wanting to have that peace and joy I saw in my friend Catherine Grant, having dreams that were from the Lord literally speaking to me, seeing some miraculous answers to prayers in my weak faith, and having a supernatural experience as I tested God in my immaturity - but he knew that is what I needed to believe. And everyone's story is different because God is a personal God, meeting you right where you are at, warts and all, if you'll just turn to Him and ask him the hard questions, honestly come before him, honestly seek the Truth, and He will care for you and show you the way to Himself.

"Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me." Revelation 3:20 -- Is he knocking on the door of your heart these days? Answer it, let him in and repent. He loves you so much.

Finally I leave you with 1 Timothy 2:4 which says "...[God our savior], who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." -- The God of the Universe, who placed the stars in the sky, who named each of them and created you in His image to have a relationship with you and to use you to glorify His name, wants to have that relationship with you through His son Jesus and you can experience a freedom that you've never known.

Praying for you all this morning...God bless and enjoy True Life through His Son Jesus - don't put it off another day because you never know how many days you have left on this earth. Don't forget to contact me if the Holy Spirit is tugging at your heart today.

A True Story from 6th Central

For the privacy of one of my new favorite nurses, I won't reveal her name, but let me tell you just what she shared with me tonight.

A couple of years ago there was an elderly patient named Guadalupe who suffered from Lymphoma and later died. Every time anyone walked into her room, no matter how much she was suffering with fevers or whatever, she would look up and say, "You know Jesus loves you."

Eventually, Guadalupe was near the end of her life and she told my nurse friend, "I want you to know that Jesus is here in every room." You see, as long as Guadalupe was on 6th Central, where I am now, she had literally been in every room at some point. My nurse friend asked her, "Guadalupe, what do you mean?" To which Guadalupe replied, "I've been in every room," and looking at the 10x10 inch tiles on the ceiling, she pointed at them and said, "I have prayed a prayer for each person who will be in these rooms for each of those tiles, and I want you to know and to tell them, that their room is covered by Jesus."

Amen Guadalupe, and thank you for sharing that story with me tonight, you know who you are...with permission I'll gladly edit your name in. Guadalupe was a patient in the time after I was in here originally, and I have to say I'm having a WHOLE different experience than the last time. Prayer is powerful, keep it up on my behalf, and I look forward to sharing more stories of victorious Christian living through suffering in days to come. "You know Jesus loves you." and so do I...

Ephesians 3:12-13 says "In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence. I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory."

Quiet here so I thought I'd update you.

Things are going so well. My doctor was just in here, and he said, after reviewing the heart tests (echo and ekg), "Wow your heart looks great, not just good, but GREAT! and we're going to keep it that way, this Ara-C isn't going to touch it." He also said, "Keep running!" as he saw me going down the hall for a walk around the floor for exercise.

Hope I haven't already told you this, because I've noticed a wee bit of chemo brain where you forget things, so bear with me. My doctor loves that I was running this summer. I started off as a non-runner and got trained by a trainer who showed me through his book "The Everything Running Book" how to go from couch potato (not that I was) to a 5k in 3 months. This was a very slow building up and working on posture and breathing. As you start out walking 10 min, you build up 2 min. every other day until you're at 30 min. Then you start 2 min. running with the rest of the 30 min. walking, every other day adding 2 min. until your running time is 30 min. Then you do a 33 min, then a 36 and then a 39 min. run, before dropping back to 30 min. run. On the weekend you to do a harder run and a light run. So, I did that and because I went slow, my body had the time necessary to build up the cartilage so would you believe I never had 1 pain in my foot, ankles, shins or joints and because I was using Shaklee's products designed to rebuild muscle for athletes in training I never had an ounce of muscle pain! It was exhilarating seeing what my new healthy body could do! I loved improving each week as my body just seemed to know what it was doing and sort of took over, meaning it didn't feel HARD like if I had just gone out and started running off the bat.

My doctor, also said that it was the running that probably kept my leukemia in remission longer because when you do that kind of cardivascular excerise your body builds T-cells which are killer cells that attack cancer cells. So guess what? I was too busy to keep running with the schedule I had at the end of July and August, that I just couldn't fit my normal routine in. Turns out, after I stopped, fatigue increased and I started getting the symptoms of possible leukemia in mid to late August with just fatigue, then in September easy bruising and becoming pale (anemic). I was so healthy coming into this though that I was able to recognize these vague symptoms and head it off at the pass. My bone marrow was 50% healthy cells with 50 immature leukemic cells - incredible. Most people don't get diagnosed until they are 90-100% mature full blown leukemia. So you can see all that running paid off and I can't wait to get back to it again!

My doctor said there is a nicer hospital somewhere he's been at where they have treadmills in every room for their patients -- oh I wish we had that here! Maybe I could get a celebrity out there to pull some weight for me :) Don't you know those Divas would be able to have a treadmill in their room? LOL

So off to eat lunch now...I'm in a battle over the menus currently! I got them to change the menu to a regular menu because the soft menu is not necessary and has no fiber (it just has no raw foods on it). The reg. menu has fiber, but items I shouldn't have like fresh salads, so I just purposely don't select those, yet each new shift is scared when they see it so my trays get switched and they order me what they want and aye yie yie! It keeps going back and forth.

Praise God, I had a nice talk with my very good Dr. Wolliver about some supplement concerns - what would be good for me, what to stay away from and I liked his rationale. So, I can take certain things like B-Complex and VitalMag, but when I get through the treatments I can take my regular multivitamin (Vitalizer) and Vivix.
I have to stay away from Optiflora until my white cells are normalized after treatments. And I have to stay away from fish oils (OmegaGuard) of course b/c of my low platelets. So that was all kind of what I gathered anyway. It's just nice to have the doctor on the same team with my approach to build my body back to health once I get out of here. He's very supportive as he saw me 3 years ago and how I came back to full health with sound nutrition and taking care of my diet and exercise. Go team!

Waiting for my HLA-typed platelets now, it's not an emergency, but should be getting some hopefully today if they come in (I think they had to be flown in from somewhere else like AZ). See? Even you friends and family who live far away and want to do something you can help! Go to your local blood bank or whereever you would donate platelets and ask them for an appt. to donate platelets - tell them you'd like them HLA-typed for the bone marrow registry. (Do that whether or not you plan to register). That's what my doc said they do it like here so if you find out how to get your platelets HLA-typed where you are and it's different, I'm sorry!

Have a wonderful weekend! I'm waiting to hear how my boys did in their soccer matches today! You can click on their team blog on the list to the right to see photos of them in action and some good sports writing for the U7 team thanks to Mara!

Just so you know, it's not all fun and games :)

I had a hard night from about 7:30-10:30 as my bowels were messed up and I was in a lot of pain and had to do some business with made me throw up. It was horrible, but God got me through it. My nurse's aide said, "oh, I'm so sorry you are suffering." And I said, "That's ok, I'm suffering for a good cause." After that, God relieved it all and I had a wonderful sleep last night, and this morning a great bowel experience (Too Much Info so I'll spare the details of that!) Needless to say, they are becoming more open to listening to me listen to my body where bowels are concerned and trying to do things the way I know they work for me, more naturally.

Pray they'll allow me to take my Shaklee Herblax as opposed to Senokot which doesn't work for me, so I have to take high doses of the stuff, then it swings me into pain and the opposite problem, and then they have to give me the opposite meds to stop that problem (leaving details out, but you can guess).

I love my doctors, but they are just afraid of natural things when they don't know how it works, and have no experience on possible interactions and have a lot of experience doing the same old protocol which is easy for them.

I'm hoping to get on Shaklee's Medline webpage and do the homework for them so they can see what if any contraindications there are. I think once they do that I can put them at ease at working with me. Pray for my doctor's heart that way to be open into learning something. I know he's busy and I understand his perspective and I certainly don't want to be foolish and get in the way of my treatment.

This morning my hemoglobin dropped to 7, maybe lower, so I got pretty woozy, lighheaded, and weak. I'm already hooked up to oxygen and the irradiated red blood cell transfusion is being given right now which makes me feel better immediately.

God bless the nurses, I love the variety of personalities I receive, even the challenging ones. And, enjoy your beautiful Friday out there!!!

What a Blessing You are!

You have no idea what a blessing each and every one of you are to me. God has used you in ways you have NO IDEA! You are indeed sad for us and wanting to help so badly in any way possible. I want YOU to know that God is using your prayers and groanings in your Spirit in a powerful way, even if you haven't signed up for anything to help out with, God hears your aches for us and has been responding tremendously.

Your outpouring of love is spiritually tangible and if my spirit could be any higher I'd be touching Heaven right now!

My boys are joyful and smiling -- praise God
My hemoglobin is still rebuilding itself (healthy cells rebuilding while I've got leukemia!?) (this was yesterday)-- praise Him and don't worry when they will drop down as the chemo takes care of that eventually, but it was just another confirmation that I did catch this early and I was very healthy coming into - go ahead, praise Him.
My white blood cells are zero -- yes, praise God b/c that means the chemo is WORKING -- yes praise Him
I'd had a platelet transfusion earlier day before yesterday at 8:30 before the
surgery and they had gone from 30k before the surgery to 24k at 2 pm. They didn't check until the next a.m. at 6 a.m. and I was surprised they were stable at 60k! -- Praise Him

The hemoglobin will eventually go down due to the chemo (like this morning I need a RBC transfusion because they did go down to 7.8), that's ok - praise Him - it is working and He is faithful. I'm in the right place and the perfect time and He will get me through all the ups and downs.

My son's soccer team was named by the teammates and when they named it in early Sept. I thought, "No Fear? How do you use that?" Now, I have no fear and God is using this whole thing as a total ministry to show the LOVE of God through his people (that's you and my sisters and brothers at Church and elsewhere), to show the strength and hope that can only be found when you trust in Jesus as your Savior--and don't you know I am sharing with every nurse and doctor and technician that I am in contact with here. Would you believe (in
the past), the staff is so amazed by me (really God in me) that they introduce me to other patients that they know I can help? I'm sure that will happen again eventually. God is so, so, so GOOD! It is a privilege to be given these hardships, much like the persecuted hold an incredible privilege as they fellowship in the sufferings of Christ for His glory!

I hope that encourages you tonight and puts JOY in your heart as you contend with me in prayer and turn to God's Word and praise Him, rejoice in the challenges dear ones! 1 Peter 4:12-13: "Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed."

James 5:10-11 Brothers, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy."

I ask you Sisters and Brothers in Christ, to persevere and continue praying for us, even after the newness wears off, even if it seems impossible for it to continue (as we're in it for a long haul) and I know you're all so busy. I don't want your lives to be turned upside down because of my hardship, but to be aware that this is true life and you can be a part of that...because you will be amazed, and I can't wait to share with you, all the goodness of the Lord, all that God is going to do through this trial and ministry--yours and mine--
for His glory!

Thanks so much for reading!
Krista English