Prayer Things

If you are moved to pray, please remember these people:

Beatrice is undergoing her third round of chemotherapy today. Good news:  the large tumor in her liver is shrinking and necrotizing. Bad news:  it has "seeded" along the biopsy line, and while I'm not precisely sure what that means, what it seems to indicate is that this is a fast-growing, fast-spreading, aggressive, nasty thing. Still, it's apparently responding to the chemo.

Fulton has undergone many surgeries and continues to make good, but very painful, progress. He has had skin grafts to begin the repair work on his badly damaged face and head;  he is apparently far more awake and aware than he had been previously, which is good news, though it means that he's also more aware of the pain of his condition. His mother writes that it's sinking in for him that he's not going home any time soon.

My friend Beth, who has lived with Stage IV metastatic breast cancer for the last eight years, just celebrated a fiftieth birthday the doctors thought she would never see. Still, in the last year or so she has had to confront the renewed spread of the cancer, and while chemotherapy has slowed its progress and kept it somewhat contained, the signs lately are not so good. Most recently, doctors discovered a mass in her stomach which is very likely malignant. This is not only frightening, obviously, but also discouraging in a larger way, as a sign of losing the battle she has fought valiantly for a long time.

And finally, my Helier has pneumonia. He and his father spent another long night in the emergency room last night, and I'm watching him now for signs that we might have to go back. He's in a good deal of discomfort at the moment, as we wait for the various meds to kick in. Aelred and Amicus have gone to Washington for the March for Life, so I would appreciate prayers for my own judgment here at home, on the respiratory-distress front.