Date juice

Mommy just walked into my room holding a thermos of hung jo soiy (date juice/water/soup?)which is supposed to fix my poor circulation. My heart nearly exploded with love at the sight of her in her polar bear pajamas with an oversized red hat on her fuzzy, round head. Sometimes I wonder if it's possible to faint or go into cardiac arrest from too much joy. When she smiles at me with her scrunched up, dimpled face, every molecule in my body feels so saturated with overwhelming love, joy, and goodness that I just want to scream or explode! This must be how it feels like to find true love! I am so, so in love with my mommy!

Happy Mother's Day!

From PostSecret

the waiting room is so sterile, so cold
while you nap, i flip through a magazine
hoping to distract myself
from this difficult life
from the devastating news we would be receiving
from your suppressed coughs
suddenly you look up
you place your freckled hands on mine
and say, with utmost confidence
"i'm actually not afraid,
i give it all up to God."

your faith is staggering

and now, as i sit at my kitchen table
trying to make sense of all the bad news we received
"cancer has grown"
"less than 10% chance of working"
"maybe less than 6 months"
i replay that declaration of faith in my head
and my heart aches just a little less

mommy, i want to be just like you.



-Please start praying for tarceva, our last resort. It's known to work miraculously in young, Asian, non-smoking women with adenocarcinoma lung cancer. Mommy fits 4 out of the 5 characteristics, but Dr. Jahan says that not meeting that last requirement (she has squamous cell carcinoma) lowers her chance of responding to this drug to 10 percent. Tarceva is a targeted-cell therapy, which means that it searches for cells with a specific genetic mutation called EGFR. Mommy is negative for this mutation, but there's still a slight possibility that she will respond. This is our last option. We are desperate. Please pray for a miracle. Please ask God to prepare the drug and my mom's body so that there will be a positive response, so that there will be healing. Please ask Him for a miracle. Thank you, thank you, thank you! We really are amazed and blessed by all your love, your support, your prayers! You all are wonderful, the best commmunity we could ask for! Please share your prayer requests with us too so we can pray for you!

Love,
Glenda

A bag of tissues

I woke up this morning in a cheerful mood because for the first time this week, I got a full night's rest. My mom already left the house for a full day of fun in Japantown with her support group buddies, so I allowed myself to imagine that if she were still at home, she would tell me that had gotten a full night of uninterrupted sleep and that her cough was not bothering her so much today. I spent the rest of the morning in a good mood, pretending that things would be better soon, but for some reason, in the middle of watching "Easy A," I decided to walk into her room. My mom always keeps a plastic bag at her bedside to hold the used tissues that she coughs her phlegm into. This was the first thing I set my eyes on, and seeing the bag full knocked me back to reality. I estimated that there were about 100 crumpled tissues in there, which means that she probably woke up 5 or 6 times throughout the night and spent half of her 8 hours in bed laboriously coughing up liquid buildup in her chest. Alone. No one to hold her hand, no one to comfort her. She wouldn't let me sleep beside her because she didn't want to disturb my rest. Now, my heart hurts because I remember that every additional tissue in the bag means that cancer cells have taken over and destroyed another centimeter of my mom's lungs. My heart hurts because there's nothing I can do to help her.

I hope mommy is having a good time in Japantown. I hope she will come home with a bright smile and good news that she did not cough so much today.

Please pray for our appointment with Dr. Jahan this Wednesday. We will be getting out CT scan results and discussing the next treatment option.

CT SCAN ON TUESDAY

Please pray for us! This is probably mommy's 7th or 8th CT scan. All this radiation is extremely dangerous for her body, so please pray that it will just pass through her body and not cause any more harm. Mommy is coughing so, so much right now, she was coughing up mouthfuls of blood the other day, and her left lung has been hurting. Honestly, we already expect that the CT scan results will show more cancer growth and spread. Please pray for hope and miracles. We're desperate for a miracle right now. Please, please, please.

Also, please pray that God will give mommy more time, at least until my graduation and our trip to Hong Kong. Please, please give her strength to attend my graduation and travel back to her real home.

Oh, and please ask God to give mommy a full night of sleep. She hasn't had a full night of uninterrupted rest in a long, long time.

Miracles, please.

Thank you, mommy!

Thank you for loving me every second of my 22 years of life! When I turned 21 last year, I remember asking Jeffrey Poon, "What if this is the last time I get to celebrate my birthday with her?" I am thankful for another year with my sweet mommy. My tummy is full and my heart is warm.

Here is a picture of my cutie holding the presents I got her for my birthday. Those are elephant watering cans. She told me to make the elephants "sek sek."



Also pictured is my fishy scarf from Becky. (:

I almost forgot! We have another chemo session tomorrow at 8:30am. Please pray for a miracle!

Mommy and I saw a Thoracic oncologist, Dr. Jahan, at UCSF today. We were hoping that we could switch over to UCSF, as it is one of the highest ranking Cancer centers in America and since Dr. Jahan is extremely experienced in the field. Instead of making the switch immediately, Dr. Jahan recommended that we continue with our current plan of three cycles of Camptosar followed by a CT scan. At the end of April we will see him for a follow up and he will decide our next steps. I guess I thought that seeing him would change everything, that he would have some secret, surefire plan of attack that will extend my mom's life for years, but even he himself said that there is nothing more to do than to try different treatments and hope for response. So far, Camptosar seems to be completely ineffective. Mommy is coughing more and more each day, and her supraclavicular lymph node is swollen with cancer cells. I feel so completely helpless and useless because I can do nothing to make her feel better or heal her. In my mind, I had a plan. My mom was supposed to respond well and continue to improve with the first drug for one or two years, then we would start the second drug and she would continue to improve, and by the time the third drug stopped working, there would be new therapies, and she would continue thriving for decades. She would be at my wedding, watch her grandchildren grow up, and decades later, she would die from old age. We would tell everyone about God's healing powers and how she lived for decades even though her prognosis was 6 months to 1 year. Everytime we get a CT scan back, her life is shortened and shortened, and I lose more and more hope. My mom is so good, so loving, and I want her here with me forever. I've done everything I could to fight for her. I've prayed desperately every moment of every day and I've asked for prayer from everyone hoping that God will hear my plea. Right now, my mom is coughing non-stop, and the cancer is taking away her breath and her time here on earth. Where is God? Where are his miracles?