
01/06/2025
Warning: not about the twins but some of you might be interested to know what’s going on. We will continue to post here periodically about the twins.
It’s hard to believe that we could possibly have to write an update like this, and equally hard to find the words. Over the past month, we began to notice that our wild, sweet Judah was having a lot of irregular bruises show up on his body. After tracking them for several weeks, we became concerned enough to take him to the pediatrician. On Tuesday morning (New Year’s Eve), that pediatrician visit led to an ER visit, which led to being admitted to Children’s Hospital. Within 7 hours from the initial visit, extensive bloodwork was beginning to lead everyone to believe that this could be cancer and we were meeting with the oncology team. It felt like we were in some crazy time vortex of nightmarish proportions and our whole world turned upside down before we knew it. Nothing definitive could be determined until they did a bone marrow biopsy, but because the next day was a holiday (New Year’s Day), we had to wait around in that terrible state of fear and unknown, learning more about the potential path before us. During this time, Judah‘s blood and platelet count began to drop, requiring transfusions and antibiotics to level out his numbers to a healthy point to even do the bone marrow. On Thursday morning, they were able to successfully do the biopsy and that evening they confirmed the bad news – we found out that Judah has leukemia. Specifically, B Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), one of the most common childhood leukemias and praise God, one of the most curable. The amazing oncology team sat down for two hours and laid everything out very clearly, including a two year, three month timeline of chemotherapy treatment, with a 90%+ chance of curing the cancer by the end. To say that we were absolutely and utterly overwhelmed is an understatement. The next morning (Friday), they did a surgery to get more samples from his spinal column through a lumbar puncture, gave the first dose of chemo into that area, and placed a port in his chest. Later that day, they gave the next several rounds of chemotherapy, along with another platelet transfusion. Within less than 72 hours, we went from weird bruises to beginning chemotherapy. We are hoping that if his body accepts these first treatments over the next few days and his numbers stay good, we will be discharged to go home, and will fortunately be able to do the majority of the treatments with outpatient clinic visits one day a week and treatments at home. The first eight months is the most intensive, with the last year and a half being considered maintenance chemotherapy. He will obviously have a severely fragile immune system, and will have to be readmitted for the smallest of fevers and sicknesses. However, we are so thankful that there is a road to a cure and we are thankful that we were able to get a clear diagnosis and quick path to treatment, even if it has happened so quickly that we haven’t even had time to process it.
How does one even begin to process something like this? Especially on the heels of the past few years of absolute madness with our twins. We have asked if this is a cruel joke from God. We have asked what the statistical probabilities of both of these things happening in succession are. We have asked if there has to be something wrong with our water or our house. What terrible mistake or missed lesson is causing this? There are certainly a lot of questions and not tons of answers. A lot of emotions and confusion and frustration and tons and tons of sadness.
But, we can both say in absolute confidence that whatever the divine reasoning is behind all this, we have no doubt that God is with us and that he will care for us, for Judah, and for our family during this time. We’ve already been through hell over the past several years, thrown into unfathomably difficult situations. And he’s never left us. Not for a second. We felt so far over our head so many times that we didn’t know if we would ever surface for air again, but he has always brought us through. And we have a strong confidence that he will continue to care for us and bring us through again, despite the absolute madness of this reality that we are just waking up to. We certainly won’t pretend that we that we understand any of this or are at peace with it, but we are choosing to place our anchor on Jesus and trusting him through it all.
Please pray for us and for Judah as we dive into this deep end again. Pray that he responds well to the medications and that it kills the cancer definitively and finally. Pray that all of the horrendous side effects of chemo are minimized. Pray that his sweet, unique, magnetic, lively, lovable personality that God has given him will carry him through this with a smile on his face and with tons of new friends who have fallen in love with him, and hopefully with Jesus as well. Pray that his immune system will stay strong and that our house will stay healthy. Pray for strength for me and Stephanie as we figure out how to manage this along with all of the ongoing challenges with the twins and from five kids. Pray for our marriage- for Grace and peace and deep love. Pray for our other kids’ hearts as they inevitably yet again feel as if they are put on the back burner. Pray that Jesus will become very near to Judah, our other kids, our whole family, and everyone watching this.
We are utterly amazed at the degree of support that we have already felt from our friends and family, most clearly from our brothers and sisters in Christ. You guys are AMAZING and while we certainly do not relish the idea of being so dependent on you again, we are already experiencing the true love of Christ through you. We have decided to create a page, if you would like to follow “Judah’s Journey with ALL” and pray for us. We love you all and thank you for your love to us.