Hello family, friends, and followers. Once again we come to you with yet another request for Joy’s health and healing. This morning we received the results of the biopsy performed last Monday on a half inch spot on Joy’s head which has just not healed correctly since Joy’s surgeries. The result, squamous cell carcinoma, with Moh’s surgery scheduled for Monday August 19th (the earliest appointment available). Moh’s is the surgery where layers of skin are taken, one at a time, and each analyzed until the physician is sure all the cancer has been excised. We are thankful that this has been caught and is being addressed, but as you can imagine for Joy, it is “one more thing.” Her biggest concern is that she will have a spot shaved on her head again, just when she was hoping that her hair growth may reach a point where she’d feel she could go without her ever present hats.
As Alyx so beautifully shared Saturday, we had a wonderful visit with Joy’s mother, brother, and family and Joy is still buoyed by the experience. And, today we enjoyed lunch with our dearest friends Joe and Jan who, along with our friend Su, flew down the day after the accident to be with us and support us in those initial days. If anyone can see the progress Joy has made, they do, for they were there at the beginning. As I mentioned in previous posts, these events of “normalcy” are so precious to us.
Joy continues to make excellent physical progress, while we aren’t golfers, I mentioned to Joy’s physical therapist that it might be a sport we’d investigate, and voilà, next thing you know, Joy was whacking balls across the gym (see pic). We’ve also increased our walks. In the area by our townhome, there are four small lakes we have typically walked around in the past, which would give us about a 4.5 mile walk. Yesterday we added a second lake to the one we’ve been walking, so are up to just over two miles for a single walk. And, then we went out later and did another mile just because it was such a beautiful day.
Words and letters of the alphabet are coming slowly, very slowly, in reading, better in conversation for Joy. Her vertical diplopia appears to have resolved except when she is extremely fatigued and for that we are eternally grateful to God and to all of you for your faithful prayers. Please continue to pray for brain healing that would resolve her right field of vision cut and allow her to see to the right. She is a very good sport about it, but it clearly hampers her and causes her to need to constantly be craning her neck to the right to take in things on that side.
Tomorrow we start back into a full week of therapy, more visits with friends, and other adventures I am sure. Thank you again for your faithful prayers, your compassionate concern, and your perseverance with us. Whether family, friend, or follower, you all mean so much to us and encourage us more than you can know.
