This is so typical of Donna’s personality! Right after having her head shaved and trying a new wig.
Many of you have heard me mention my scheduling coordinator, Donna. We’ve worked together for about 4 years now, and she is just a blessing and has become a good friend. Donna told me when I hired her that she has had cancer several times, and it’s really only a matter of time before it comes back. Donna was given 4 months to live about 11 years ago, so that in itself is a miracle of God.
Last year they found a new breast cancer and again, Donna was diagnosed at stage four. This was devastating news, but her faith is amazing. She had surgery before Christmas and then went through chemo and radiation last winter and spring. She was doing well through the summer and fall, but this past week she was visiting a friend in Atlanta and was having absolutely excruciating headaches. Then she started having trouble walking. She flew home with a friend (she told me they almost didn’t let her on the plane because she couldn’t walk in a straight line down the gangway and they thought she was drunk) and immediately went to the ER. She texted me that night that they had found a fairly large tumor in her brain.
That was Tuesday night. I went to see her Wednesday and they were running lots of tests. Clearly, they were trying to figure out how far it had spread to see if surgery was worth the risk. I was leaving town for Thanksgiving, and we had a wonderful time of prayer together. Praise God, they found the cancer was no where else, so they went ahead with surgery. They had to wait for some medication to get out of her system, so her family all brought Thanksgiving dinner down to the hospital and celebrated with her, and then she went in for surgery Friday morning. She did amazingly well, and they felt confident they’d gotten all of that tumor which was just amazing news! She will undergo radiation after Christmas again.
Please keep her and her family in your prayers. While everything went well, as Donna says, it’s getting harder and once it’s in the brain, it’s not a good outlook. She is absolutely my hero, though – God has carried her through and she has such peace! She wanted me to tell people that just because we believe in Christ, it doesn’t mean things will go the way we want them or that we won’t suffer. It does mean, though, that Jesus will be with us and give us peace and hope and joy in the midst of it. Amen, sister! And she is the embodiment of that.
I’ll keep you all updated, but please pray for my Donna – she is precious to me!