Miscarriage? What miscarriage???

Today was a sobering day.

I met a British woman (another homeschooler) who was hoping to find new friends for her 7-year-old daughter, so we decided to meet and get the girls together.  This worked fantastically well, the girls got along like they had known each other forever and shared just about everything in common.  Yay.

As the mom and I were talking about our lives in general, she asked me how much was I fearful of my husband's racing.  The conversation kept evolving until she told me she herself had what she called "a close call"...  I was expecting some story about a car accident or similar, when she told me that 3 years ago she had a bout with breast cancer. 

That's when it came down like frozen water on my naked back:  The cancer had returned about a year ago, and had now moved to her bones...  She said it so matter-of-factly that I wasn't sure how to react, or even what she said, really.  She followed it with "the doctors told me I have a 10% chance to live 5 more years".

This woman is a 46-year-old single mom.  Her daughter's father is not involved in the child's life at all (he does pay child support) and would most likely never want her.  The only other person who could take the daughter if anything happened is the grandmother, who's 70 years old... 

The story continued:  She decided to stop all conventional medicine (chemo, etc.) and go the holistic way.  This hasn't made things better but it has kept the cancer from spreading, and from looking at her, one wouldn't know anything was wrong.  But the regimen of showering with Arrowhead water and having to cure her own foods is trying, to say the least.  Following her holistic routine falls nothing short of a full-time job.

Oh, and she does work part-time.  And she has no health insurance (she couldn't get any).

Faster than I could say "I'm so sorry", all that came out of my mouth was "if things turn for the worse, we can probably take your daughter"... 

That was met with a decisive "Oh, I'm not going to die, I know I'm not".  Her resolve, ironically, gave me some of the comfort I wished to give her.  Her resolve was, in essence, her strength, as she refuses to lie down.  She also said she "couldn't" die because of her daughter and thatit just wasn't going to happen.

She's all I've thought about today.  I want to pray for her fervently, I want to do something for her, to honor her courage, to honor her strength... to take the illness away...

In case anyone feels moved to pray for her as well, her name is Karen.

God bless..

Gabriela