December Update

We have been wanting to update our blog to let you know how our family, and specifically Andrea, are doing.

Andrea has been doing very well these past couple months. She has fully integrated back into school life and is loving every minute of it. Her studies are going well, she is involved in some extra-curricular activities (Photography Club, Year Book Club, Art Club and Swimming) and is able to be involved in Physical Education as well. Her energy level is very good and she is in good spirits. She has been up and down with her emotions when she feels under pressure, but we are thankful that she is able to talk with us about how she is feeling. She has a daily routine of taking her thyroid hormone replacement medication and she continues to massage her neck where her incision is (not her favourite thing to do!)

Andrea will have to be closely monitored as the type of cancer she was treated for is aggressive and may reoccur. We will visit the doctor in January to have bloodwork done and an ultrasound to see if there is anything unusual in her neck and to test if her thyroid medication is the right dosage. Then in May she will have to go back in the hospital for 3-5 days when she will have to take a small dose of the radioactive iodine for diagnostic purposes. They will do a full body scan to see if the treatment this past October was successful and to see if the cancer has reoccurred (the radioactive iodine from her October treatment is supposed to continue to work in her system for up to 6 months). She will most likely have to have similar tests every 6 months to a year in her future.

We are grateful for how she has recovered from surgery and her treatment and we continue to pray for complete healing. These past couple months since Andrea’s treatment have been difficult for Al and I (Connie), as we have had to face times of fear and struggled with why this has happened to Andrea. Yet we are amazed at how God is carrying us through this journey of ours and we are so thankful to many of you who are praying for us and walking through it with us. We know that we can only face this with prayer and spending time in God’s Word.

We have had a great Christmas as we spent a week with Connie’s parents and sister’s family in the South of Spain. The weather was unusually cool, but we had a fun time together nonetheless. We flew to my sister’s in Germany where we spent a few days together and are now back in Prague. If you want to see our pictures from our Christmas, you can click on the following links:

Birthdays and Things

December in Spain - 1

December in Spain - 2

Christmas 07