LYNDSI'S STORY
Submitted by Franklin Hartley. (This is from a friend)
Lyndsi is my Granddaughter. She was diagnosed with cancer shortly after her 3rd birthday. This is the story of her bout with cancer, the Angel, and God's intervention.
It started seven years ago this May. We (my daughter-her husband-Lyndsi-my husband & I) were at a birthday party for one of her friends. They had a little puppy and it started chasing Lyndsi--well kids being awkward at that age wasn't watching where she was going and ran into the corner of a brick house--face on. She cried for a bit-not long and then went back to playing. At that time we didn't think much of it--she complained only that her jaw was a little sore the next day and then never mentioned it again.
About two months passed and then it was time for church camp. This was a family church camp so Tori and Noe & Lyndsi all went together. About the third day there they were all playing around in the water when one of the other kids bumped Lyndsi in the jaw with his elbow. All of a sudden black blood & clots started just pouring out of her mouth--for about 15 minutes. It scared them all half to death. Of course the first thing they did was gather around her and pray. Well after a while the bleeding stopped and they were able to see in her mouth. Tori said it looked like just a dark colored bump on the inside gum on the left side of her jaw. They cut camp short and came back to town and took her the next day to her dentist. He examined it as best he could because now it was very tender. He put her on antibiotics for 10 days saying he thought it was--(hard to remember) something to do with a gland back in there.
We started her on the med. but after a week there had been no improvement and she was really starting to complain about it hurting. Also , if we bumped her chin her mouth would bleed. Needless to say they went on & took her back to the dentist who, when he looked in her mouth, turned white--and immediately called another Dr. and had them take her right over. One look in her mouth and he said he would worry about what it was later--the first thing to do was to get her to the hospital for a biopsy. By now that black bump was covering all of her back teeth. I swear it looked like (do you remember that old movie the Blob) well that is what it looked like on the inside of (MY BABY'S MOUTH.) "Sniff" Hard to type with tears in my eyes--brings back some really terrifying moments. Excuse me a minute--I need a little break here--brb--ok-I'm back now--I didn't realize how hard it would be to write this all down. Oh yeah--I forgot to mention that in the preceeding two days her jaw had and really started to swell and she was having trouble speaking clearly.
The next morning she was scheduled for a biopsy at our local hospital. They had sedated her and took her in at 8 am. That was the longest wait of our lives. Three hours later (the biopsy was only supposed to take 30 min.) a nurse--(I had worked in this OR for 4 years) a friend of mine that was in the operating room came and asked me to come on back to the nurse's lounge & told the rest of the family that the Dr. would be out in just a minute to talk to them. I went (reluctantly) back with her & when I walked in, another nurse friend that was in the operating room with Lyndsi and the anesthetist was waiting for me. They said that when the doctor cut into the lump it started bleeding profusely. It took them two hours to stop the bleeding and get the piece of tissue needed for the biopsy. Then came the real clincher---the doctor had told the nurses that she would do good to live two more months--that he had never seen anything grow so fast in his life--they said he just lost it then and they were all crying---he had a daughter the same age as Lyndsi & it just hit too close to home. Anyway, after I broke down for a bit I pulled myself together as best as I could & went back out to the waiting room.
Before I got there our Preacher came around the corner and I told him what the nurses had told me. He broke down too---then we went on into the waiting room where a nurse was telling the kids that the Dr. would be up to their room in a little bit to talk to them---in the meantime we were waiting for the result of the biopsy. About an hour and a half later he came in & told us that the lab didn't know exactly what it was---that they thought it was definately cancer--just didn't know what kind--so they were going to send it off somewhere--I can't remember---and the results would be back in a week to ten days. However in the meantime he wanted to send her immediately to the Houston Cancer Treatment Center. Being terrified and not knowing anything else to do we all said "Lets Go."
THE GOOD PART STARTS NOW!
While all of this was going on, all our friends at church had started calling all the prayer lines and people from other churches that they knew. They would call people and so on and so on. There were churches all over this country praying for Lyndsi--not just praying--they were literally "STORMIN THE GATES OF HEAVEN."
Meanwhle, back at the hospital, Lyndsi was waking up and she was wanting us to pull her up and down the hall in this little red wagon they had for the kids to play with. So Noe was pulling her up and down the hallway when this lady walked up to him and ask "Is this the child they just diagnosed with cancer?" Noe told her yes. (a little description here--she was probably middle aged--in a white dress--white-blond hair--and a very gentle, sweet sound in her voice.) Then she said--"YOU NEED TO TAKE THIS CHILD TO COOKS CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL IN FT. WORTH." Noe told her that the doctor was making arrangements to send her to Houston. Then she said "IF YOU TAKE HER TO COOKS SHE WILL BE FINE." Noe asked her who she was and she told him she was a representative from Cooks. She gave him a card with her name on it and stepped around the corner & went behind the desk at the nurses station.
Well being desperate and grasping at straws they called for the doctor and asked if it would be alright to take her to Cooks and besides Noe had a brother that lived close and that would help too. The doctor said it would be fine and went to make arrangements. Now this was on a Friday & they would be expecting her Monday---During all this time the doctor has not said one word to the kids about her living only 2 months or that in his opinion nothing could be done--he was gonna let some other doctor have the pleasure of delivering that little piece of news. (Little did he know!!!) So we went home and started getting ready to make the trip. I went with them and hubby stayed home with my Mom. We live in Odessa, Texas and Ft. Worth is about a 6 hour drive. Right outside of Dallas we stopped to eat. Lyndsi's jaw was getting larger by the minute , really. Anyway we started talking to some people there who had noticed her jaw and we told them what had happened & where we were headed. They ask if her name was by any chance Lyndsi--we were floored, but answered yes. They said their whole church had prayed for her that morning. Well you could have knocked us over with a feather. We thanked them and went on our way.
We took her into the hospital early the next morning and got her registered and settled into her room. A little later her Dr.--Dr. Griffin came in and told us what they would be doing to her. She would go to surgery where they would put in a permanent catheter in her chest--directly into her main heart artery. This was for her chemotherapy which they would start as soon as the biopsy result was in. He was on his way out when he turned around and asked how come us to pick this hospital---we told him about the lady rep. that had recommended the hospital. He said "Representative?" He asked Noe if she had given her name and Noe handed him the card with her name on it. He looked at it a minute with this funny look and said he would be right back. About an hour later he came back in and said that he had been doing some checking and that there were ABSOLUTELY NO REPRESENTATIVES IN ODESSA. Then he smiled and said "You know---this isn't the first time this has happened" and walked out. We just stood there with our mouths open. We knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that GOD had sent that ANGEL to lead us to this hospital.
They took her to surgery to put the tube in and when the doctor came to talk with us he said it was indeeed a cancerous tumor and told us the name of it. Turned out it was a very rare and deadly cancer--only 150 cases in the world. They x-rayed her too and said that it had grown so fast it was almost up against her wind pipe and if they had waited any longer she would have died. We never would have known till it was too late if it hadn't been for that puppy.....Turns out that when she hit the side of that house runing from that puppy--it broke her jaw--and the break in the jaw is what allowed the tumor to break through so it could be seen. Seems she was walking around for several weeks with that jaw broken and we didn't even know--she never complained.
Now to try and make the rest as short as I can---she went through 15 months of chemo--every two weeks. She had 6 weeks of radiation, lost every bit of her hair including her eyebrows. I called her my "Baldy Eagle" "L" She never threw up one time from the chemo--they had a brand new nausia drug for chemo patients that hadn't been tried yet called Zofran---They used it on her and it was truly a miracle drug. She did get sick from the radiation though--not throwing up but blisters formed all inside her mouth and throat and she had to be sedated for about 2 weeks--but she pulled through that one with flying colors too.
There is so much more I could tell you but i have covered the best parts--oh yeah except for the flying kind of Angel that Lyndsi saw on one of their trips to the hospital. Something had gone wrong with her heart catheter and they were on their way to Ft. Worth. She was lying down in the back seat and very scared of what they might have to do---now she was just barely 5. Tori was driving and Lyndsi said from the back seat--"Mom do you see it-----see what Lyndsi------The Angel------What Angel--------The Angel outside the car Mom----She is flying right outside the window and smiling at me------Tori nearly wrecked the car looking------That's OK MOM --she said not to be afraid--that Jesus is taking care of me."
They say you are cured if the cancer doesn't come back in five years and it will be eight this October. But we knew she was cured. Well thats it more or less----the radiation killed her lower left jawbone so it doesn't grow----she will have to have reconstructive surgery on it in a few years--that will probably be harder on her then all the other stuff she went through-- God doesn't tell us that we won't have to go through bad times--but He does tell us that He will be with us through it all~~We know that she will come through this fire just fine too.
~TO GOD BE THE GLORY~
