Heather

I logged on to facebook today to upload a photo of a hat, and noticed at the top of my news feed, an urgent prayer request from Kevin Burrill. Heather is in surgery right now for the third time on the tumor in her brain. Heather went to the ER last night with a non-lifethreatening hemorrhage in her head, and the ct scan that they did revealed that the tumor that had been removed shortly before Christmas was back and was nearly the same size as before. I’m going to copy the update from Kevin into the post, but please pray with me for this family. It seems quite clear that Heather’s time is going to be very short on this earth. I’m so thankful that I have the confidence that I will see her again! She will be comforted in the arms of Jesus, but those of us left behind will miss her, and her sweet little boys will never have any memory of their mom. That breaks my heart, but the silver lining is that they will not have the memory of her battle with cancer either. Please pray that Heather can have the health she needs for the family to move back to New Brunswick where Kevin’s family is, and that they will have some more sweet times together. Also pray with me that God would take her gently and she would not have to suffer through much pain in the end.

Thanks friends!

Here is Kevin’s update:
UPDATE: Last night around 9:00pm Heather had a medium sized hemorrhage of a blood vessel in her tumor. It’s serious, but not life threatening. As a result we went into emerg. around 2:00am (once it became clear something was wrong). Her CT scan revealed not only the hemorrhage, but a fully regrown tumor, back to 7cm in diameter – as big as it was before her first surgery. I believe God allowed this manageable hemorrhage to bring us into the hospital earlier than we would normally have gone in so we could discover the tumor’s size again and take action sooner rather than later. So it’s now 100% clear that we are dealing with an incredibly fast growing tumor (there was uncertainty about this after her second surgery). Our goal and prayer request is that her 3rd surgery (now being scheduled) will relieve enough pressure for her to have another 3-4 week window of decent health to travel to New Brunswick where we can settle and rest with home care until the end, if it is Gods will to supply this.
Also, God arranged for us to have the believing surgeon who did her first surgery again. He is a strong christian and encouraged me to keep my thoughts captive for Christ and to remember the hope we have of Heaven. We had a good 20 min. conversation – not normal for a neurosurgeon on their schedule. He was taking care to minister to me. He said that he saw our name on his phone messages this morning and that he and his wife stopped to pray for Heather and I and the boys before he came into work. He also mentioned that our other neuro-surgeon commented on how steady we seemed through this all (credit to God’s grace), and he was able to encourage me that if I stay strong in the faith others around are noticing! Praise God for signs of goodness amid hardships! He is the perfect provider of peace! Thank you for praying, all. I will update through this 3rd surgery process as previously done, so you can all pray specific requests.

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