My 2011 testimony given at Church on 1/1/12

19 months ago in May 2010 I was baptised & gave my testimony. I talked about the changes in my life that had happened since having Charlotte and how I’d seen God at work through those changes, like when he prunes a vine back. I remember saying that following the loss of my job and home I felt lost, but, through understanding the situation and working through it, and also God speaking to me about working with those in need in our community that although I didn’t know what the future held, I felt on the edge of something exciting…..

But I have to be honest and say that losing my Dad suddenly 6 months later & Charlotte being ill on & off for the next 6 months is certainly not what I had in mind when I said exciting.

& yet  here I am, excited about sharing with you and saying  that 2011 was an exciting year when I think about my faith, my spiritual growth & how God has answered prayer & there’s so much I could share but don’t want to go on for too long! lol
Many were there when a GP friend & I spoke at the Church meeting in March, when we truly believed & praised God that he had healed Charlotte of Leukaemia after her illness in January. A couple of weeks later I went on my own to Green Pastures Christian retreat centre for 3 days, to rest, to be quiet & spend time praying and reading my bible, seeking some strength & peace about everything that had happened. On the 2^nd evening after the prayer meeting the duty leader spoke to me and asked if I would like her to pray for me & said that whilst we we’re in the chapel God told her she needed to pray for me.  I accepted her offer and she put her hand on my shoulder & prayed. I was just blown away that God had touched me like that through her, it reassured me at a time I needed it that I was on the right track & he was there with me & lifted me so much.
Charlotte was diagnosed with Leukaemia on 19^th May & I’m sure many like me were shocked & confused having believed she’d been healed. Medically what happened was very unusual, but I believe God was at work in the situation and knew that it was too soon after Dad’s death for me & the family to cope with the effects of a diagnosis at that time & all that that brings. However by May when she was diagnosed, following my experience at Green Pastures I was so much stronger and gained more strength from so many verses that people gave to me during those first few weeks following her diagnosis, especially in hospital. Charlotte’s illness has allowed me to speak about my faith so many times to many people and I don’t know how I would have coped without God by my side. He has answered our prayers as Charlotte has stayed on the base level of chemo treatment and bone marrow tests have always had positive results, she has continued to gain weight without a nasal feeding tube which a lot of children have to have & despite a low or non-existent immune system at times & being at school she has remained well on the whole for the last 5 months, with only 1 night in hospital. Charlotte has grown in confidence & is very mature & independent when it comes to her treatment. She is due to start her 2^nd intensive 8 week phase of treatment on Friday, it having been delayed a week as her blood counts were too low following a virus over Christmas. Then she goes onto Maintenance chemo, which is basically oral chemo at home every day, with monthly visits to the hospital for an IV chemo drug, this goes on for the remaining 73 weeks of her treatment & it won’t be until after 5 years that she would be given the all clear…but I have no doubt at all in my mind that she will be fine. It’s a situation that makes you count your blessings as I’ve met children who don’t have a good prognosis and don’t know how parents cope in that situation without a faith.
In September we met another challenge which would lead to some worry & hard work when our landlords informed us they were selling our home & we would have to move.  I really wanted to stay in West Moors, for Charlotte’s school & our family & friends. After checking the private rental market I felt pretty despondent about where and what we were going to be moving to. Most properties were out of our budget or not very suitable and so although still praying I thought we would end up relying on the council to house us on the day we had to move out of our old home.  When we’d moved 2 years earlier our prayers were answered amazingly when a bungalow suddenly became available across the road from our old house at exactly the right time. I have to admit that although I was praying I was almost thinking God pulled something off last time but I can’t dare hope he’ll do it again, it would be asking too much. Then out of the blue a lady from a local Leukaemia charity contacted me on Facebook, she had seen from comments on there about having to move. She invited us to view a 3 bed chalet bungalow and I thought this can’t be right, I even went back to the lady & checked she did realise that we wanted to rent & she confirmed she did. I was puzzled as I knew the rent would be out of our budget but thought, she knows that, so began thinking, what if it happens, it would be unbelievable, it was almost like God had provided so amazingly for us last time, he couldn’t surpass that surely! I went along & met them at the property & I looked round, although I didn’t need to, I was just waiting for what they were going to say. They told me what the rent would be, which as I thought was out of our budget, & then she went on to say that the Charity would support us guaranteed for the next 12 months and then review. I was blown away; it was almost too much to take in. I came away for a few hours to think & pray and knew it was just right and our prayers had been answered, far & above our needs or what I hoped for.
Finally as if enough hadn’t happened this year, my other sister Nicola got back in touch in November after stopping contact with the family 4 years ago. She’s come back with news that she, her husband & my 14 year old niece have all been born again, they’ve changed so much. Praise the Lord!  You know a lot of people criticise Facebook & social media, but through my diary on there during Charlotte’s illness my sister was not only able to catch up on what happened but also on my journey with my faith, which has contributed to a new relationship with her, not just as sisters, but Sisters in Christ.
So in some respects I was right when I said I felt I was on the edge of something exciting in my life, but do you know that what I’ve learnt is that as Christians we are actually all always on the edge of something exciting…as God knows the plans he has for us, even if we don’t.
I then shared the following verse: Ephesians 3:20

Charlotte's Blood Transfusion Investigation

Blood Situation

I've been wanting to get this down on the blog for ages but there's been so much going on like hospital stays I've just not had chance. Firstly I apologise of you're from the medical profession or highly knowledgeable about blood and this entry isn't 100% medically correct, but I'm explaining this situation from how I understand it from what I've been told by Consultants & Haematologists. Back in late February Charlotte's Consultant at Poole had to discuss with me something they had found in Charlotte's blood. Whilst I was waiting for him to explain my heart stopped, I wondered what he was going to say, I was thinking some complication of Leukaemia that I didn't know about. He then went on to explain that when Charlotte was first diagnosed her blood was typed as Rhesus Negative, but when they typed it again in January in case she needed a transfusion it was now Rhesus Negative - D with red cell antibodies. At first the only thing this meant to me was I know from my Mum that you have to be careful in childbirth. Now things have progressed, I have had a meeting with Charlotte's Oncology Consultant at Southampton and learnt a lot more.

It transpires that realistically the only way Charlotte's blood could have developed antibodies were if her negative blood was exposed to positive blood. Unknown to me, for a couple of weeks before I was told the news, Poole Hospital & the transfusion service have been in a mad panic checking their records of the transfusions Charlotte had at Poole & Southampton in May & June last year following her diagnosis & the start of her intensive chemo. They assure me she was given negative blood and advised that if their records said it was negative blood she was given the systems in place would not allow the 'wrong' bag of blood to be picked up & given to Charlotte.

However, its unheard of for these antibodies to have occurred naturally so their only thought is that somewhere something has gone wrong. The Haematologist explained that when someone is negative for example, there are degrees of negative, so if someone went to register as a donor and they were typed as a 'weak' negative they wouldn't be accepted. So the only assumption they can make at this point is that something was wrong with one of the four transfusions Charlotte had. Apparently Charlotte is the talk of transfusion services & there is a full investigation underway to find the cause, because not only is there implications for Charlotte, there could be for other people in the South West who've received that blood. I am told that the donors are being recalled and blood taken, and this is now going through rigorous testing to check the type again but also, checking that one of their blood doesn't contain a tiny amount of antibodies that were missed the first time round.

The other strange aspect is that her blood was typed in October 2011 as well and at that point didn't have the antibodies. So now they're more puzzled, and apparently in medical terms makes the case more interesting that if an error was made it took Charlotte's blood that long to develop the antibodies after the exposure took place. This delay in antibodies incurring has started them also thinking about whether they've found something as rare as 'hens teeth' (their words) and this is a natural occurrence, in which case I've been told her 'case' will be become known and used globally in haematology.

Me, I'd much rather we could have just had plain & straightforward and not another 'aspect to deal with. With regards to the implications for Charlotte, initially it means that should she need any further transfusions it will take longer to arrange as it will not be as easy to get supply of an exact match. Hopefully with the stage of treatment she's at this won't be a situation we have to deal with. I was however, concerned that for example if she had a serious accident what would happen, and I was assured her life would be saved by giving her any blood, but then she would need to be transfused correctly as soon as possible? I shocked my Consultant by asking him about the implications should she be in the position of needing a bone marrow transplant, he said he didn't expect me to ask that as he doesn't believe we'll ever get to that point. But I explained as much as I don't think about the 'what ifs' the facts are that they don't cure 100% of children, so there's a tiny chance she could, he explained that it would be a factor in the matching but not a problem, and in fact sometimes transplants take place where there isn't a match? Apart from that, the other implication for Charlotte is if she has children in later life. If the father of the child she was carrying has positive blood her child could be also, and they have to be careful as her blood crossing to the baby can be lethal, so they use injections and other precautions, but we're years off of that yet, so we'll deal with that later when Charlotte is old enough to need to know about havng a baby! lol