Dixie Cup Christmas

Well, it is looking like we will be celebrating Christmas at UCSF this year.  Ian's neutrophils are at zero today. They haven't even teased us with a bump lately, much less the spike that we need for him to be released. He is usually already home long before this point, 29 days from the beginning of treatment, so it honestly isn't looking like they're going to come back up. They did a biopsy yesterday and it is clearly pointing toward disease progression.  We are now actively pursuing options of a clinical trial at MD Anderson in Texas or an experimental drug here at UCSF. We are requesting the treatment from Texas be given to Ian here at UCSF, which is a pretty tall order on many accounts (insurance and otherwise), but it can't hurt to ask. Please pray for us and the doctors as we explore these options and continue to pray for healing. 

I'm happy to say my cold sore has healed enough to where I felt safe bringing Fiona to visit Ian a couple nights ago. She ate chocolate ice cream and drank apple juice and danced to Ian's beat boxing and held his hand while he got his painful nightly neupogen shot.

We sure wish Ian could be home for Christmas, but if he can't then we will just have to bring Christmas to him.  I'm planning to secretly bring most of the presents to Ian's room before Christmas morning so the girls will be super surprised when we show up on Christmas Day and there is an unexpected pile of gifts waiting : ) 

Today I had my annual thyroid ultrasound just across the street from the hospital where Ian is staying. It has been almost 8 years since I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of thyroid cancer, and I'm so thankful to still be here to tell the tale. Laying still while the ultrasound technician explores my neck and takes measurements again and again and calls the expert in to check out questionable areas - it's a sort of near death experience every time. I am forced to face my own mortality and the need to place my family and my future even more snug in God's hands rather than grip them fiercely and reactively in my own. 

A dear friend recently reminded me of a long lost image I used to love to compare my life to: a Dixie cup. In different seasons, it has carried different levels of meaning. I appreciate the visual perspective that we are all just frail little cups meant to somehow hold the much greater glory of God. 

These days, the analogy of a Dixie cup feels more applicable than it ever did before. Dixie cups can't hold liquid for long. They sag and crack and dissolve in a mercilessly short amount of time. They rarely even survive the short snack time of a toddler class before falling apart. Though we tend to try to avoid at all costs facing this reality for ourselves and those we love, humans are a lot like Dixie cups. We will all face death one day. Every single one of us.

As we are facing the magnificence and very real frailty of human life, we can all the more appreciate the true wonder of Christmas. We are celebrating the fact that to show us true love our Maker became a leaky, disposable Dixie cup just like us.  He understands our weakness and grief and suffering and is walking with us through each and every day of it.  Apart from his hand holding us, we would surely fall apart.