Our Christmas story

It was my sister’s birthday yesterday, and that was a much happier occasion than it might otherwise have been.

To tell you a little of the story that unfolded over Christmas, as I wrote earlier, she went into hospital before Christmas with some abdominal pain, and a few other sympathetic symptoms, which were initially more of a concern given other conditions that she has. But then they started using the word “tumour” in relation to a large cyst-like thing they found and becoming all very grim, suggesting a type of cancer which by the time you have symptoms makes it all a little bit too late. She had surgeons patting her on the arm saying things like “it’s not fair in one so young is it” and so forth, giving us all cause to think something very serious was upon us.

So we started praying, and other people started praying. About a week later she had another blood test, and the tumour count had come right down from somewhere up in the thousands. She also had another ultrasound, which looked very different to the first one, and the outlook started to turn around, such that by the time she got to the appointment with the specialist oncologist, it was looking less and less like that “c” word. On the 29th she went in for surgery, which by this point was going to be laproscopic to do some further tests. Unfortunately they couldn’t finish it laproscopically, so she was opened up, then she spent about a day in ICU with very low haemoglobin which resulted in a blood transfusion. But she is now home recovering, the results are back and all is clear and what they actually removed was a cyst that was bleeding in on it itself.

So, make of that what you will, but we’re very thankful to God – and hope she has many more birthdays!

(And, incidentally, I won’t say ‘God answered our prayers’ at just this point, because I believe ‘no’ is still an answer and that phrase is not to be reserved for positive outcomes – I do believe in the power of prayer, but that God ‘answered’ our prayers no matter which way it went.)

As everything kept changing I just hung on to the original plane ticket I had for Brisbane, which I booked ages ago. So I went up there, thinking I’d wait to see what happened on the 29th. But Mum then went to Melbourne on Boxing Day, so I ended up going to Toowoomba with my other sister and family. It was really nice to spend some time with them and the sweet little people (except that those little people get up at five in the morning! – which wasn’t on my original holiday plan).