The Great Healer

Dear Friends,

I hope all of you had a good night's rest and are feeling chipper today. As you've noticed, I've not blogged in a few days. It was time for my six month check-up to see if I was still cancer free, so my husband and I flew to the Minn./St. Paul airport, then shuttled to our hotel in Rochester, MN on Sunday. On Monday morning and afternoon I had lab work, a PET scan and my final childhood immunizations. When you have a stem cell transplant, they wipe EVERYTHING from your body and you must start back rebuilding your immune system. You start at .1. That is the lowest you can go. It's VERY hard to build back up. One day your numbers will go up. The next day they'll go down. Sometimes you feel like a bouncing ball going back and forth.

On Wednesday morning we met with my awesome doctor, Dr. Luis Porrata, to get my tests results. I am 100% cancer free and I thank God for that more than you'll ever know unless you've walked in my shoes. I will return in six months for more lab work and a chest x-ray. This time I will wait one year before I have another PET scan. That has never happened before.

I know there are many good doctors at Mayo, but I'm confident that Dr. Porrata was God-sent just for me. We love him and he loves us. He absolutely has my best interest at heart. 
Over 400 transplants were done just last year, I could easily get lost in the numbers, but not with Dr. Porrata. At my check-up last September, he told Howard and me that he considers us family. We feel the same way about him. I've never had a doctor tell me that before. 

Now that I've received my clean bill of heath, I plan to keep doing what I've been doing-sharing the good news of Jesus whenever I can, enjoying my family and continue writing books and songs.

Just to let you know, I have some amazing folks that I'll be interviewing soon. Here's a taste of some of the highly accomplished folks you'll be reading about: Ann Downing, Marty Funderburk, Rodney Griffin, Kathy Crabb Hannah, Geron Davis, Shannon Knight, Greg Wiggins and a host of others. I'm pretty sure you're gonna want to check back and read about these awesome people.

Well, I hope you have a wonderful day. Keep Christ as the focus of everything you do and He will take it from there.

Until next time,

Pat