Since Nicole is now on cyclosporine, we need to watch the side effects of it. One of them is high blood pressure. Nicole has struggled with high blood pressure during this journey. Now it is high enough that they are going to put her on high blood pressure medicine. She is also high in potassium. They told me to avoid foods that are high in potassium. I looked at them and said "she doesn't eat anything orally". So they decided to add some diuretic to help her pee off the extra potassium.
Nicole has spent most of her life battling cancer. I am starting to feel like a broken record when it comes to what is going on with her recovery. The cancer world has become our world. I have wondered what life was like before Nicole was diagnosed in December 2011. What will life be like when we stop worrying about her next lab results.
Even as I am typing this I can't help but feel a heavy heart for so many warriors who are lost to the battle of cancer. The children we meet have such a special place in my heart, and each time I hear that another cancer family hears the words "there is nothing else we can do" my heart breaks for them. Each time I hear a bell ring, whether in clinic or when we were in the ICS unit, my heart shouts for joy that a child is done with treatment. The bell ringing is a joyful day, but I also say a silent prayer that they will stay in remission and not relapse.
I know that childhood cancer will always hold a place in my heart. I know that being part of this world is where I have came to know our Savior and Redeemer better. I feel a great love for the children, and for their families. James E. Faust once said: "Here then is a great truth. In the pain, the agony, and the heroic endeavors of life, we pass through a refiner’s fire, and the insignificant and the unimportant in our lives can melt away like dross and make our faith bright, intact, and strong. In this way the divine image can be mirrored from the soul. It is part of the purging toll exacted of some to become acquainted with God. In the agonies of life, we seem to listen better to the faint, godly whisperings of the Divine Shepherd." (https://www.lds.org/ensign/1979/05/the-refiners-fire?lang=eng)
Since Adam and Eve, the Lord has asked His children to make sacrifices in similitude of our Savior. (see Moses 5:4-8). The word similitude is a likeness or similar to. In the Book of Mormon we are taught how we are to sacrifice in similitude today: "And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. " (3 Nephi 9:20) Just like the Savior who offered His broken heart and contrite spirit to the will of the Lord we are asked to do the same. Brother Harold G. Hillam said in a BYU speech: "We will have opportunities to be called upon to suffer. There will be times when we will have feelings of hurt and pain—physical and mental as well as spiritual—and then we will know what adversity is, and we will know a little better what Jesus Christ might have suffered, and we will have done in similitude that which Jesus Christ did." (http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=745)
The 6th prophet, Joseph F. Smith, was given a vision about the spirit world in Section 138 of the Doctrine and Covenants. In verses 12-13 he describes the spirits that were waiting there after the Savior's resurrection. "And there were gathered together in one place an innumerable company of the spirits of the just, who had been faithful in the testimony of Jesus while they lived in mortality; And who had offered sacrifice in the similitude of the great sacrifice of the Son of God, and had suffered tribulation in their Redeemer’s name." [D&C 138: 12–13] I have met many children and their families in mortality who's lives are "just, who had been faithful in the testimony of Jesus while they lived in mortality".
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| Snuggles with sisters |
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| Loves to eat her "tubey!" |
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