Digital Bytes

The Festival of Shelters

¹³ “You must observe the Festival of Shelters^[c] for seven days at the end of the harvest season, after the grain has been threshed and the grapes have been pressed. ¹⁴ This festival will be a happy time of celebrating with your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows from your towns. ¹⁵ For seven days you must celebrate this festival to honor the Lord your God at the place he chooses, for it is he who blesses you with bountiful harvests and gives you success in all your work. This festival will be a time of great joy for all.

Business As Usual is what we call it at work. I guess life is fairly back to normal for now. Even V’s hair has started to sprout some stubble.

We’re planning on a Korean getaway with the whole family, so hopefully we get to relax a little and enjoy the company. This time we’re venturing out of the city area into Ganghwa-Do and Nami island. Apparently, Nami is the location set for the very successful Winter Sonata drama and is now a big hit with the Japanese tourists. I haven’t seen the series but i’m sure the scenery will be enchanting.

On a sadder note, a good friend M, is having some problems in his marriage and is now a victim of violence. Do keep him in your prayers.

“For behold, from this day all generations will call me blessed;

For the mighty one has done great things to me, and holy is his name.

And his mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.”

From The Magnificat in today’s Gospel of the Solemnity of The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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For those of you who have been reading my blog, you might have known that my mum is able to receive divine messages and is doing His work via intercessory prayers. In major life events, we tend to naturally ask her to seek help from God and to show us the way.

Today after lunch, mum again said that the message is indeed “V is healed”. She has gotten this message several times this week in Church and at adoration rooms. Even Mary has appeared to say to “trust in Him”.

My mum’s nature is a worry-wot, and she doesn’t trust easily. Especially when she also knows that V’s scans have showed up the little masses all over the breast as you can see from the previous post. So she probes further to ask “And what about all those things still there?”

The answer is that “in layman terms, its just like scabs, of what’s left”.

Even without these new revelations, V has been pretty resolute in not wanting to go for surgery. Not because she’s afraid of the knife, but because He has said that it won’t be necessary.

So today, on the feast of The Assumption of Mary our heavenly mother, we validate the decision that V will not be going for further treatment. We’ll use the example of Mary’s faithfulness to God’s will to guide us through this. We give complete trust to His word to us that V is healed.

The doctors may think we’re crazy. Because the textbook answer is to cut out the unknown masses – to be safe. But this is beyond science. We have been given a test of faith. And we believe.

Friday afternoon. As we sat with the surgeon discussing the outcome of the latest mammograms and ultrasounds, my thoughts were “surely we are not worthy for a miracle, was i really to expect that everything will just go away?”

The doctor’s sketch on the left shows the areas with questionable substances. There is basically “a 31.2×11.5×26.4mm irregular mass of mixed solid density seen at the 10 o’clock position. Nine smaller hypoechoic nodules with fairly well defined oval shapes are scattered throughout the rest of the right breast. These measure less than 10mm each in size and may represent complicated cysts or solid lesions” says the report.

The surgeon says her recommendation is to do a masectomy but she was willing to try a “sub-optimal” plan of just taking out the main mass and trying to get as much else as possible along the way to conserve the breast.

The last time we were in this chair, V had the guidance to insist on not opting for surgery yet. A lifeline was thrown and one more chemo session was recommended. This time as we sat here thinking, “there is no way out”. V again had the inspiration to ask, “are you certain these are all cancer cells or tumours?” The surgeon said you will only know for sure when you cut it out and test it.

I asked what would happen if we just left it as is and it turned out to be cancerous, how fast would it flare up again? And she said she had seen a case where the patient did the surgery but didn’t do the chemo and it came back in 9 mnths.

We said we’ll think about it and left.

V is in good health now. We’re just waiting for the effects of the last chemo to wear off before we head to the docs again this Friday. Her parents are also back in town so its nice to have their whole family together again.

Je-in seems to know what he wants these days and whatever he can’t get will send him into a screaming fit. We basically have to keep distracting him with something else to get his mind off whatever it is he wants but can’t have, like the TV remote!

Have also sucked up the courage to let V drive the new car. She’s done two short trips already and its nerve-wrecking for me as much as it is for her! But the idea is to empower her so she can zip in and out of daily mass early in the morning before i leave for work. So God pls be with her when she drives…

And at work it seems to be the parting of the red sea again. O well, mergers and splits come and go. That’s life.

V did her mammogram and one more shot at chemo already.She’s also decided to start going for daily masses where possible. Today she went with my mum and apparently she sneezed quite a few times. Remember my last posts on sneezing..

Anyway, mum gave her a message with regards to the sneezing. We are rejoicing now!

Well its been a month since we’ve got the new ride so i guess its time to just do a little show and tell!

Its a Golf 1.4 TSI. Sporty hatchback from “Volkswagen” (also known as “the people’s car”).

We were initially eyeing the Subaru Impreza hatchback, but just decided to pop into the VW showroom to have one look at the Polo.

Test-drove the Polo, Jetta and finally the Golf, and decided, this is it. Didn’t really think this was within budget, but the salesguy explained the current offer which brought the price down to an acceptable range. And he was willing to take in the old ride for a slightly better price then previous offers.

So we took the plunge, and boy, God does always remind me that i shouldn’t do things on impulse. Went to check out the local VW forums and i read articles on 7-speed DSG gearbox failures. Double-checked the US forums and realised the consumers there have risen up and gotten VW to throw in a 5-year warranty on the DSGs or 100,000 miles. They are just basically one level below a worldwide recall if you ask me.

So before we even got the keys, i was already feeling queasy about the whole thing – Me being paranoid android and all. Didn’t want to lose the deposit, so we didn’t back out on the deal.

Suffice to say that for now, the car still runs great, the 1.4L saves on your insurance and roadtax in a big way, and it runs as fast, if not faster than my previous 2.5L! The technology is simply amazing. It just needs to hold up

Only peeve is that at low speeds, its got this engine brakey feel to it because it doesn’t have a torque converter (no idea what that means but i read it!) so it doesn’t just cruise when you release the accelerator.

V has yet to test drive this. Really hope the smaller frame will give her the confidence and maybe soon i can get chauffeured around on weekends.

We went to see the surgeon today and she laid out the options of :

1. Masectomy

2. Mammogram / Evaluate / Partial removal

3. Mammogram / 1 more chemo / option 1 or 2

Initially the doc’s preference was option 1 over option 2 as it would give her the fullest confidence of non-recurrence. V asked her to check with the oncologist and option 3 was presented because she hasn’t max-ed out her chemo threshold yet.

So tomorrow she goes for the mammogram, and the following day 1 more shot at chemo.

The thought of losing your arm or leg or breast for the matter is really a tough decision to make if you ever had to do it.

We keep the faith for now.

Notice the flaring on the left of the left image fading off from the image on the right.

That’s the big difference made over the last four months.

Today was in a way, a day of reckoning for us.

V was scheduled for the PET scan after completing the 6 cycles of chemo. It was a rushy morning. V forgot her wallet at first, so she ran up again to get it, the roads were peak-hour packed and we were late. So we rushed into the clinic and without much presence of mind, were separated. She went into the scanning area and i was left to wait out front.

I wandered around the mall for an hour or so before she messaged me to say she was done and we were then off to her regular clinic for one more round of Zometa (the chemo that focused on strengthening the spine). That took 15 min and we were let off to come back later in the day for the results of the earlier scan.

When we came back later and were called into the room, the doc was all smiles and said it was good news. The cancer cells on her spinal area were all gone! Its clearly shown on the scans as they placed them on side-by-side comparisons with the earlier PET scan done a few months back.

The cancer cells on the breast itself were only about 10% of the original scans, but there was also some flaring on an area near her armpit but it could just be the way the scans were taken, so she’s not a 100% sure on that bit.

She then told us that she was still recommending a masectomy or at least some form of surgery just to be safe. But ultimately that decision will be made by the breast specialist as she was only handling the oncology portion. She also recommended continuing with the Zometa for a year or two just to be safe. And the first thing that popped into my head was “and how much is that?” Its like paying for a second car’s installment every month, so my heart sank abit.

It took me awhile to register that her spine is given the all clear! That’s the most important area cos you can’t masecto-mise that. Praise God for that!

Just a funny story on God’s healing. My mum has heard that when God is doing his healing work on you, you tend to sneeze. And she told V that because throughout her whole life, V doesn’t really sneeze, but all throughout the chemo there are just days when she would sneeze a couple of times. V joked that she has also been doing more burping, farting and yawning so maybe everything is just getting expelled

Next appointment is on Monday morning and V has been praying from day 1 that she does not need to undergo any surgery. Medical evidence seems to point that she does need to cut some tissue out at least.

Fortunately, my mum revealed  a message she received from the beginning, that there will be no surgery. This has lifted our spirits somewhat.

We continue to trust and pray. Do pray for V too.

(Don’t have the scans with us right now. I’ll prob put that up on Monday so you can see for yourself the contrast)