Thank you for today

Mighty praying friends:

You filled our email all day. Thank you for all of your wonderful emails, prayers and thoughts. They started at 6 am and kept up until just now. Every one is meaningful and cherished.

What a long day!

We have some praises! The brain, bone and lung scans all came out clean. There is a teensy spot in the lung that they are not even going to follow up on, thinking it is probably unrelated and not cancer. The rest are perfect. Hooray!

Another praise is a cancer expert that is going to review Ray's case and recommend new research for treatment.

Things to pray about:

The pathology report came back late this evening as adenocarcinoma in both the stomach and esophagus. We don't know that much yet about treatments for this but we ask for wisdom as we talk with doctors.

And speaking of doctors we ask for continued guidance in finding the perfect ones. So far our doctors have been so great, especially our GI. We just want to find the best place in the U.S. to cure Ray! So this is a hugely important thing.

Keep praying for Ray's strength. After his battery of tests today we ended up back in the ER. They sent us home after a little IV fluids, but he needs nutrition and rest.

Thank you again for your prayers. We will begin meeting with oncologists about treatment next week. Pray that we are able to schedule quick meetings with the wonderful experts we find.

Not alone and not afraid --

kristin and ray

Joshua 1:9

First. Thank you for your emails, calls, prayers and verses. Let me just say that several of you had emailed me Joshua 1:9. Thank you. That was my verse today because sometimes waiting outside these tests can be terrifying. How wonderful that we do not have to be and I just read that verse over and over. And Ray and I read your emails which I print out and carry with us.

Here's the news from today. As we expected, there is cancer in the stomach. There is a mass at the top. It is biopsied and we should know possibly tomorrow, at latest Monday. There are several different types. If it would be lymphoma it is easier to treat. The doctor does not expect that based on the metastasis in the liver. Once we know the type we can really start searching out the best treatment.

Here are the prayer requests. Number one. There were some polyps at the top of the esophagus as well. We are praying that these are not cancer. The doctor is unsure but those are biopsied as well.

Second. We are praying for clean scans tomorrow. Ray has a chest CT, a brain MRI and a bone scan. There are no indications from any of these places but this is an important request.

Third, we are really working on finding the best place to cure Ray! Please pray for this. We have incredible friends who are helping us with this. We want to go to the best place possible. We need wisdom.

Last, please pray for Ray's strength. He's lost a lot of weight this past week and the tumor makes him feel so full it is hard to eat. He needs his strength to fight this!! He needs rest and nutrition.

Thank you most for your prayers and encouragement. I made this group a little bigger based on the cousins and friends who have emailed me. The list name is "Prayer Warriors!" We need every prayer to beat this.

I will try to email you every day that I have news.

xo and love to all.

kristin and ray

PS A few more praises. Just getting this scan today was a miracle as was our doctor, all made possible by a nurse friend who was able to be with us today before and during the scan. Thank you Lord.

Cancer

We learned yesterday that lesions on Ray's liver were most likely cancer. Below is our day today.

We love you all. Please pray hard!!
kristin

Ray

Thank you so much for your emails. They mean the world to us. Thanks for the Bible references too. Claiming God's promises is our job.

Here's what we're learning. Every doctor seems to think that the lesions on Ray's liver are not from the liver. They think the cancer is somewhere else and has spread there which increases the seriousness.

He will have a battery of tests to determine where. We are most suspicious of esophagus and stomach and Ray has an endoscopy tomorrow which will look inside to see what we find. That's at 2:20 tomorrow.

Friday a number of other CTs and scans starting at 11:30.

We hope to get all our results in by next week so that we can start focusing on treatment and cure. Most likely this is chemo because of the metastasis.

Things to pray for: only one other site, finding the right specialists once we know what we are dealing with, hope, peace, and still of course, miracles!!

Another prayer: our girls. My mom and dad and sisters have been lavishing them with care and we are too. They know that daddy's tummy is hurting. Just wisdom for us in how to best communicate about this, and extra love from us and others for our precious girls.

We love you all and are so thankful for our army of prayer support.

Much love,

kristin and ray

Please Pray

Ray and I are writing to ask for your prayers. Ray's had some abdominal issues recently which took a turn for the worse last week. We met with a doctor yesterday who has told us that it is most likely liver cancer, possibly from somewhere else in his body. We meet with an oncologist today at 12:15 who will know more. We expect more tests through the week.

We have not yet been able to contact all the people we need to so I ask that you not share this news until we know a bit more.

However, we felt it really important to share with all of you now because we so greatly value your prayers for hope, healing, miracles, cures, guidance, wisdom, peace...

With love,

kristin and ray