Happy Birthday Mom

I just want to say Happy Birthday to my mom! She is a frequent visitor to the blog so I wanted to make sure to wish here a Happy Birthday here to!

My mom's birthday is a special one to us as she is a cancer survivor, not once but twice (officially). She was originally diagnosed in September 1997 with two forms of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and in Stage 4. One was a slow growing non-curable form and the other was a fast, highly aggresive form. She had tumors in her chest, spleen and hot spots throughout her right side from the top of her head to her toes. She began chemo and ultimately had a stem cell transplant in May 1998. She received her "new life" on May 1 just two days shy of her actual birthday. She did well, was released from the hospital that summer and went into remission shortly thereafter.

She had a few flare ups with the slow growing cancer but they were able to treat with radition and small outpatient surgeries. However in 2005 the cancer again came back. As she had done these "spot" treatments she had run out of options for treatment. The last option was a bone marrow transplant. This was a hard call for the family, but felt we had just been putting bandaids on the problems before and this was our/her best hope for a total cure.

We began the search for a donor. None of the family matched her so we had to search the registry. Luckily we found a young man who agreed to donate his bone marrow to my mom. She went in the day after Thanksgiving and came home on Christmas Eve. We were amazed...last time she was in the hospital for at least three months.

Today she is doing awesome! She and my dad are retired and are loving it. They have a ton of "projects" that they work on. They do quilting, computer classes, travel, the list goes on.

We are all so thankful she is here and doing well. All praise and glory go to Our Heavenly Father who got all of us through this last decade of ups and downs. When this whole thing started I was pregnant with AJ. We weren't sure if she was going to be able to see her. Today AJ is 10 and mom was there for soccer matches, plays, etc. My sister had just moved away to college after going to a JC for two years. She had been there less than a month when we called her on her birthday to tell her mom was sick. We weren't sure if mom was going to see her graduate or get married. However, mom was there at graduation both times for her Bachelor's and Master's degrees, her wedding and the birth of her first child (we are now waiting for the birth of the second at the end of the summer.)

God has been faithful!

Happy Birthday Mom! You are truly a walking miracle!