August 31, 2008 (Sunday)

A quiet, relatively peaceful day today. As usual we spent the morning in church services and enjoyed meeting with good friends. Most seemed to have already found the blog and spoke favourably about how useful it was for them. I suppose that gives me more motivation to keep posting and I am glad that some have found it helpful. Those that help Gracie in her nursery at church were sad, a) that she has cancer and b) that they will likely not see much of her after next week. The doctors have encouraged us to avoid crowds and especially lots of other children when she is on chemotherapy so we will probably not take her to her nursery class again after next week. Plans may change but that seems to be the plan for now.

It continues to be difficult waiting for the week of treatments. We know that hospitals and doctors have many patients to see but sometimes we wish that they were ready when we were. Again, I re-emphasize, our doctors have been excellent and we are grateful however we would also like to get going with Gracie's treatments.

We remain confident that Gracie is strong and the prognosis is great, however we still go through a variety of emotions every day. I found a good article on that a couple of days ago at http://www.retinoblastoma.ca/psycho.htm (I love the address by the way. It actually refers to psycho-social aspects and the impact of retinoblastoma on the family and not some psycho with retinoblastoma). The article makes going through emotions sound fairly linear but we have found that the feelings of shock, grief, anger, despair, anxiety, peace, etc. seem to flux from day to day, hour to hour, and even minute to minute sometimes. I would like to think that this is normal, however if it is not normal I am positive that it is not infrequent for people in our situation.

Given all of that, we find an overarching hope and happiness in trying to follow our Saviour. We know that it is through Him that real peace and a perfect understanding can come. And so we push forward in faith and are continually buoyed by the love and prayers we receive from all of our family and friends, wherever they are.