Prayers for my friend Janice

I haven't posted about my friend Janice yet, though I have wanted too many times. Some things just seem so personal. Yet, as I sit here praying for her today, I wanted all of my blogger friends and family to join me as I know there is much power in prayer. A little history...

I met Janice online on a fertility forum. We were both having troubles getting pregnant and pursuing IVF. We were both about to start our treatments and joined what was called the March IVF group. There we made many, many wonderful friends...most of whom we have never met. Many are my friends here on this blog! Janice and I always had a special bond when we talked on the forum, we were both from TX, we both worked for the government, we both were half Chinese/half white!! LOL. When I found out about the IVF clinical trial at my center, I let the board know and Janice (who lives in Lubbock, TX), Melanee (who lives in Utah) and Kari (who lives in KS) quickly enrolled with me. From there we were on the IVF roller coaster together!! We all became pregnant from the trial...3 of us with twin girls and Janice with one little boy, named Jackson. Jackson would be his mom's miracle in more than one way.

While Janice was pregnant with Jackson, she began having some health problems. I won't even pretend to try and explain what those were, but suffice it to say, they saw some spots on her liver during some testing. Since she was pregnant, they were unable to do much about it so they made an appointment for her to come back to investigate 6 weeks after Jackson was born. Six weeks later, Janice heard the devastating news. She had Stage IV colon cancer that had spread to her liver. She was a year younger than me, with a six week old newborn at home. I had just had my twins when I heard the news...to say I was heartbroken for her is an understatement. I think I cried for two days straight for her...having just lost my mother two years earlier from lung cancer, I couldn't imagine not being there for my children. However, little Jackson became his mother's hero and had she not been pregnant, she likely would not have known she even had this terrible disease and she vowed to fight like she had never fought before.

From her past experience with the IVF clinical trial, she found another clinical trial for her type of cancer based out of NYC Sloan Kettering. She and her husband would make the difficult decisions to leave their beloved son to fly back and forth from TX to NY for surgeries, chemo treatments, consultations, etc. The strength that they have as a husband and wife and as a family to this day astounds me. To go through what she has been through and to have a husband like Bruce with her every step of the way is such a blessing in and of itself.

Today, Janice is going through her third and hopefully FINAL surgery. It will be to remove her left liver lobe, which is the last remaining active part of the disease. After this surgery, the prayer is that she will be NED (No Evidence of Disease). She found out just over a year ago that she had Stage IV cancer and to go from that to NED would truly be a miracle. Please join me in saying more prayers for Janice and her family that she will in fact be NED very soon so she can finally relax and just be a "mom" to her precious Jackson and watch him grow old. You can follow Janice's progress and see pictures of her and that precious Jackson here: http://sites.google.com/site/janicedennisrecovery/page-posts

My prayers are with you my friend! I hope to see you, Bruce and Jackson at the CORM reunion in October!! ((Hugs, love and prayers from Houston!!))

Edited to add: Janice's surgery went well and all evidence of tumors have been removed!! Now the healing! Please continue to keep her and her family in your thoughts and prayers!