Sad Irony

Life is so ironic sometimes. For some reason, it seems to be especially ironic when it comes to our sweet little girl Hope. You might remember that early in 2008 I discovered Hope's second tumor by complete accident when going to visit her surgeon, who was actually supposed to be examining Celtic. Though not quite as timely, last night we discovered yet another tumor on our little girl's backside. On Saturday I was honoring our special puppy for being a cancer survivor on her birthday, and just 6 days later we're trying to face the fact that she has cancer yet again.

While we're obviously extremely upset with this discovery, we're trying not to panic yet. We've already made the appointment to see Dr. Layton at VSEC, and we're hopeful that she can perform a miracle like she did with Hope's first two "inoperable" tumors. Thankfully, this tumor isn't nearly as big, and its location doesn't seem quite as "delicate" as the first two. We're anxious to see the doctor and hear her prognosis.

Part of me actually isn't surprised about this, as much as I had hoped that Hope would stay cancer-free. First of all, Dr. Layton told us that Hope would probably get another tumor. Since the risk of mast cell tumors increase with their frequency, and since surgery wasn't able to get large margins around her previous tumors, Hope is very high-risk. It wasn't just because of that though. It was because everything else in our life has been going so well lately. We've been blessed with so much and everything has been falling into place so perfectly, something in our life was just bound to go awry.

I don't want to imply that I think Hope's cancer is some sort of punishment by some mysterious higher power. Quite the contrary, actually. I think when things go perfectly and wonderfully it's easy for us to live our lives as though we don't need God. Trials just teach us that we do.

So after a period of peace, we're in the midst of a trial, and you can bet that we'll be relying on God during these next few weeks as Hope's cancer battle continues.