My apologies for the month "sabbatical" from blogging.  I want to write just a bit about my 2 1/2 year old son Paul (the picture is him about a year ago).  At the end of February he had surgery to remove a swollen lymph node on his right jaw; about 10 days ago we finally got a diagnosis from that biopsy.  The very good news is that Paul does not have any cancer.  He has a a bacterial organism called MAC.  This is a slow growing thing, thus the time from surgery to diagnosis.  The bacterium is nearly ubiquitous in our environment -- dirt, dust, etc.--and most people are able to handle it.  In a small number of cases an otherwise healthy child gets an infected lymph node from the bacterium.  Although related in some way to the TB bacterium, MAC is not contagious in any way.  

This bacterium is mostly localized and the way to get rid of it is to cut the skin. Based on our latest visit to a doctor at Children's Mercy, Paul will likely need another surgery to get rid of this. In the meantime he will be taking some anti-biotics.  You can imagine this has caused some stress for our family -- though not too much because Paul is pretty healthy otherwise.  We are very thankful that this is curable even as we must be patient for it to heal.

It is amazing how little control we have over things like health.  The doctor said that this was probably just "bad luck."  I know there are many, many other families dealing with much tougher circumstances and in many cases are the victim of bad luck, too.  Not unlike managers who must depend on getting results from others they have no control over . . . oh by the grace of God . . .