PTL...We have great news!!

Jon went in this morning and had his catheter placed.  He did very well with the procedure.

The nurse then took him to the Apheresis area where they would collect Jon's stem cells.  He was prepped and given a little "education class" on the procedure.

A little side note and funny thing:  They had me sign the papers in addition to Jon because he was still under the influence from his procedure.  And Oh boy, was he being a VERY talkative, funny guy!!  He told the nurse he felt like he had drank 4 shots.  We were laughing!  He has NO idea what 4 shots feels like.  The nurse was still laughing about it when we left.

In simple terms, to collect stem cells, they take blood from you, divide it and put back in what they are not using (they are collecting the immature stem cells from the bone marrow).  The machine does most of it, but the nurses actually stay in the room the whole time.  It is an interesting process for sure.  The nurses are literally watching over the machine and Jon the whole day.  Everything went very smoothly.  So smoothly that Jon does not have to go back in tomorrow.  They collected enough today!  He gets the day off!  I'm so happy for him.   He will start his high dose chemotherapy on Thursday.  We are praising God for this great gift of a day off before he starts this process!

We definitely have a funny story but serious prayer request.  Not even 24 hours after we moved in to our apartment, the police knocked on our door.  He said the neighbors were complaining  we were too loud.  I wasn't there, but my mom said the boys ran to the door and waved to the police.  We were all super stressed after we found this out because we really cannot get kicked out!  My kids can get out of control, but they are darn cute:o)  Honestly, they have been fine, you know just a little jumping around every once in a while.  I wanted to make a peace offering and take them cookies and sorry notes from the kids!  Jon wants to go knock their heads off.

So unfortunately tonight I got an email from the company we are renting from.  The people below us want us to move to another apartment.  Now do ya'll know what it would take for us to move??  From Thursday until next Friday or so neither Jon nor I will be around.  We do not have enough man power AND we have totally settled in.  Jon says he is going down to talk to the people below us tomorrow.  Please pray they will be understanding of our situation.  Please pray God will change their hearts and not be annoyed by my wild and crazy kids that have NO idea how to act in an apartment setting.

Your support has been amazing.  The shirt sales are out of this world!  Jon is SO excited and I canNOT wait to start getting in pictures of you all in your GODSTRONG shirt.  I am making a HUGE collage poster of these pictures and putting it on Jon's wall!  That will go beside his autographed poster that Coach K sent him  today!

All of you are amazing!!

I'll leave you with this adorable pictures.  By the way, I'm writing these blogs super late these days, so forgive me if there are mistakes!!

Let it begin...

Good evening everyone,

     This is Jon writing tonight.  I felt it only fitting, that on the eve of the beginning of this process, that I post some thoughts as we embark on this process.  Let me first of all begin by thanking everyone that has, and continues to pray for us.  You will never know just how much it means to me and my family that you support us in this way.  As a follower of Christ, we as a family strongly believe in the power of prayer.  Jesus asks us to lay everything at His feet, and without a doubt, you as brothers and sisters in Christ have done that unfailingly.
     I was telling Donna tonight, that it truly is hard to believe that we are about to begin tomorrow.  It almost seems surreal.  It feels like we have talked and talked and talked about what has to happen in order for us to begin this process, and now it is finally upon us.  I must admit, that the human side of me is very scared about what is to follow.  I am anxious about how this treatment is going to affect my body and the symptoms that will be associated with this line of treatment.  I am fearful of what the end result might be after it is all said and done.  I am wary of how this entire process is going to effect our kids.  I worry about that might, my wife is running herself ragged to take care of me, while at the same time attempting to adequately provide for our kids.  I am acutely aware of the financial strain that this process is placing on our family.  Yet, I am reminded that God has been in the process since day one, and He will be in this process until the very end.  From the day I was born on November 8th, 1976, my Father in heaven knew that on September 3rd, 2013, I would be starting one of the greatest struggles of my life.  He also knows the eventually outcome.  It is comforting to know that Jesus while on this earth experienced, and felt first hand all of the apprehensions, and fears that I am currently going through and feeling.  He empathizes with us through our struggles.  But ultimately, I am filled with courage to know that Christ went through something more grueling than any human will every know, as He bore the sins of the world, and died on the cross for us, even while we were still yet sinners.  He overcame death so that we might have life everlasting.  Hallelujah!  It is in this comfort, that I will rest.  Knowing that as each passing day goes by, His will, not mine is being accomplished.  It is in His comfort, that I will find peace.     
     Let me also thank all of you for supporting us in our pursuit of the sale of our GODSTRONG t-shirt.  What an amazing show of love and support.  I was asking Donna how in the world have we sold almost 500 shirts?  I don't even know that many people for crying out loud!  However, I realize that it is a testament to the strength of character of those that we call our friends and family, and the body of Christ.  Most importantly, the more people we have wearing these t-shirts, the more potential mouth pieces we will have to tell our story so that God can infiltrate the lives that need to be touched by Him.  I would also be remised to not thank you all for the financial support that is associated with the purchase of our GODSTRONG t-shirts.  Words can't adequately describe our incredibly grateful the Strebe family is for your support in this manner.  Thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
     Finally, let me publicly thank my biggest fan, and support, my beautiful wife Donna.  She will never know how much I love and appreciate her support throughout this grueling process.  I have no idea how hard it must be to see her spouse endure this process.  While at the same time, trying to keep it together to take care of three small children under the age of four.  Truly amazing!  To understand the details that had to be met, in order for not only this trip, but the next three months to be pulled off effectively and efficiently is mind boggling.  And yet, she did it.  We have two beautiful apartments that are literally walking distance to the hospital.  She has weekly activities that encompass at least 5 days a week for our kids.  She has meals planned out, as well as schedules of people who are visiting us over the course of the next 2-3 months.  I also wish each of you could see our kids bedroom.  All three of our kids are sleeping in the same room, and the attention to detail that Donna put in to making our kids feel like they are at home, and in a place of safety and comfort is amazing!  She is truly the most remarkable woman I have ever met.  And to think that God has blessed me with a best friend, a wife, and the most incredible mother of my children all wrapped into one, is nothing short of a miracle.  I truly don't deserve her, but am eternally grateful for her love!

Watch this short video some friends made for Jon.

Click here to show Jon support with his T-shirts

We made it!

Here we are leaving our house in Hilton Head (Bluffton).  We loaded down the van and the Thule on top along with Jon's car.  It was super sad for Jon and I.  We were feeling very depressed.  But the kids on the other hand were super excited!  And we are making this an "adventure" for them.  They have no idea we are sad about this.  I drove the twins in Jon's car and Jon drove the van with Luke.  Luke is the easiest in the car and I wanted Jon to be the least stressed!


I got several text on the ride asking, "how is it going?"  So this is what I sent back.

I hope that gave you a good laugh and a glimpse at our lives.  Sorry mom!  I just had to add that video--too funny!

The ride was actually pretty good.  Our longest drive was Saturday and the kids actually did very well--except for the screaming episode!  We arrived in Indianapolis Sunday afternoon.  A former high school classmate met us with his son and a friend to unload.  What a blessing!  It definitely helped Jon out because he is still so tired from this last chemo round.

The kids are super excited to be in Indianapolis and living in their new "condo."  They are all sleeping in the same room and it is SO cute.  We made their beds with bedding we brought from home and they were very surprised when they walked in the room.  Luke brought his favorite picture to put by his bed.  He totally gets what is going on.  When we were back in Bluffton at home, he came out of his room with a picture of him and Minnie Mouse and said, "Can I take this to Indianapolis?  I like looking at it while I'm in bed and I want to be able to have it in my room in Indianapolis."  He gets that we are going to be here for a while.

We are having a great time figuring out "city" life.  It is SOOO different than what we are used to in our small town.  I always feel very safe where we live.  This is extremely different.  We are living in a safe area but you walk outside and see homeless people walking around.  I wouldn't mind if it were just Jon and I but having 3 small children is a whole different story.  So my mom and I went on an "adventure" today trying to find a grocery store.  We found on our IPhones that there was a Kroger very near the apartments.  We were beyond thrilled until we pulled up and this is what we saw.  For those of you who do not know what a Kroger is, it definitely is NOT this.  It is a nice, huge grocery story.  This gave us a good laugh and we kept driving!  Not the grocery store we were looking for.

 Here are the kids at Spaghetti Factory.  The benefits of city life.  We love the restaurants, shopping and activities that are available!

I wanted to leave you with this.  Jon's favorite basketball team is Duke Men's Basketball.  Coach K is his favorite coach.  He has always wanted to go to a game at Cameron Indoor Stadium.  It is a small arena and very difficult to get tickets for.  Jon actually had tickets for a game 9 years ago but it was the day he asked me to marry him and he gave them up!   So, I hand wrote Coach K a letter explaining Jon's situation with his cancer and chemo/stem cell transplant.  I told him that our friends had told us Jon needed something to look forward to at the end of this.  I mailed the letter on Tuesday.  On Thursday morning I get a phone call from Durham, NC.  It was Coach K's administrative assistant.  She explained that she had just opened up my letter and read it.  She told me to call her at the beginning of December and we could see how Jon was feeling and she would work out getting him tickets!  Coach K is a very famous coach and there is no doubt that he gets lots of letters everyday.  They all go through his administrative assistant and his website also stated that he is not signing autographs right now.  The fact that she read the letter and then took time to call me was amazing.  Jon is SOOO excited and it truly gives him something to look forward to!  God is good even in the small details of life.

Help us get the word out with the GODSTRONG t-shirts.  The support has been amazing.  Jon cannot believe how many people will be supporting him by wearing his t-shirt.  It means more than you could know!  Thank you because it is lifting his spirits.

Click below to buy a T-shirt for Jon.  Again, I don't care about the money.  I want Jon to realize how many people across all the states are supporting him!  It is amazing!

BUY A T-SHIRT

Quick update

We made it to Louisville, KY.  Everything went great.  We will drive 2 more hours in the morning to Indianapolis.  I have a friend that got some college guys to help us unload.  I will write a longer post when we get there.

God has kept us safe and we are thankful!

T-shirt goal!

When Jon found out he had testicular cancer back in 2006, I bought Lance Armstrong's book, "Its not about the Bike."  For those of you who don't know, Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer more than 15 years ago.  In the book, Armstrong goes into detail about his doctors and treatment.  For us, it was a good read because we could relate in a lot of ways.  But the first time, Jon ended up only having surgery followed by surveillance for 6 1/2 years.  Lance Armstrong's cancer had already spread throughout his body and even to his brain.  So his story was a little different at that point.  The one thing that struck a chord with both Jon and I was how he was so open about his lack of faith and belief in God.

When Jon was diagnosed this past time in December 2012, I read the book again.  I gleaned even more information because at this point Jon was getting chemotherapy.  Although different drugs than Armstrong, we could still relate even more to his story.  Again, his unbelief in God struck me.

Recently I picked up the book again.  I skimmed through the parts that relate to right where we are.  This time we connected with the book perfectly.  When Armstrong describes his journey, we are right there with him!  It gave me the chills to read because he talks about meeting with the doctors at IU Cancer Center.  He describes the day he walked in, and how he felt.  And then how stressed out he was when he left because he had to make a decision on which doctor he would choose.  Again, we could totally relate to his story.  But as I continued reading, again, the way he describes his view of God really stood out to me.  I do not want to bore you but I want to share part of his story.  I am sharing this with you because since the first day I read the book, I told Jon he needed to write him a letter.  I wanted Jon to share his story, his experience, and his belief and trust in God through it all.  Well, of course time went by and we never did it.  When Jon was diagnosed this 2nd time, again, I wanted Jon to write Lance Armstrong a letter but it's been a little crazy since.  Since Jon is now dealing with this recurrence, he IS going to write him a letter this week before we leave.  Jon is going to share his story with Armstrong and the relationship he has with a God that cares so much about every detail of our lives.  A God that can change us!   Please pray as Jon writes and sends this letter.  We have no idea what kind of people Armstrong surrounds himself with.  Maybe he has never heard the TRUTH.  Pray that it will get in the right hands and ultimately that Lance Armstrong will read it.

Here is an excerpt from "It's not about the Bike"  Lance Armstrong:

     I asked myself what I believed.  I had never prayed a lot.  I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray.  I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs.  Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable.  If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a theif, then I believed that should be enough.  At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized.  If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, "But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven."  If so, I was going to reply, "You know what? You're right.  Fine."
     I believed, too in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries--I believed in that, I believed in them.  A person like Dr. Einhorn, that's someone to believe in.  I thought, a person with the mind to develop an experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life.  I believed in the hard currency of his intelligence and his research.
     Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science.  But I knew this much:  I believed in belief, for its own shining sake.  To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe -- what other choice was there?  We do it every day, I realized.  We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics.  To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery.
     To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided.  It had to be.
     Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day.  And it will beat you.  I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of  cynicism.  Dispiritedness millennium doomsday.  I knew now why people fear cancer:  because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit.
     So, I believed.

Let me close with this.  I have a personal goal and it has NOTHING to do with money.  I could care less about the money.  I would love to see 1,000 GODSTRONG shirts sold.  Jon already is blown away at the people supporting and praying for him.  I would love to tell him that 1,000 people around the country are standing with him in prayer for healing in his body.  I need your help to get the word out!  Please post on your Facebook, send email, send it out on twitter, however you can help me.  I know I'm setting my goals high but how awesome for that many people to be standing GODSTRONG with Jon!  Thanks so much for your support already!

ORDER A T-SHIRT

Favor

I am not usually one to ask for favors.  But I need your help!  I would like for you all to shower Jon with cards, letters, and care packages (that include something he can DO).

His address will be (beginning September 1st until mid November)

Canal Square Apartments
359 N. West Street
Apt. #282
Indianapolis, IN 46202

Here is the story behind this idea:

I posted something on Craigslist one day selling stuff for boy/girl twins being born this summer.  I wanted all my cute stuff to go to someone special and not just to the Goodwill pile.  A girl emailed me back and said she was interested in buying them.  I was to text her or email her back.  So being the person I am who doesn't think through things before I do them,  I emailed and texted her.  About 15 minutes after I did that, I started freaking out.  I was thinking O My Gosh, what if this is not a girl named Brittany, what if it's the Craigslist killer.  This is of course after I invited her to my house.  So immediately I started stalking her on line.  I was checking all social media outlets, googling her, any route I could find.  When I googled her name, up came an article from Hilton Head that had been written a couple of years before.  It was about a guy named Ben (her husband) was battling cancer for the 3rd time.  A foundation was raising money for this couple because he had already been treated at MD Anderson, and was undergoing a stem cell transplant at Emory University in Atlanta.  I was thinking OMG, if this is the same girl this is just crazy.  Well, to make a long story longer (HAHA) it was the same craigslist girl!  She was now pregnant with twins, due in early fall and her husband was a 3 time cancer survivor.

Well, in the last few months, they have become great friends to us!  It ends up they are strong believers and actually go to our church.  Our paths would have never probably crossed at church or the community so God had it for us to meet them on craigslist!  Now, please understand that at the time we met them in April, Jon had NO idea he was faced with stem cell transplant.  We do not personally know anyone who has undergone this type of treatment.  The fact that God put them in our lives at this very time is completely amazing and a total God thing!  Because they now have twins (a boy and a girl) and Jon is going through high dose.  They are such Godly people and I love hearing what God has done in their lives through Ben's cancer.  And he is such an encouragement for Jon and someone Jon can talk with and he knows EXACTLY where Jon is!  It's truly amazing.

So, in talking to them recently this is some advice that they gave to us as Jon faces some very intense months of treatment.  One thing is they said for Jon to have something to look forward to at the end of this journey.  I'm working on that piece.  And another piece of advice is just for Jon to feel loved and encouraged during this time. Also, to keep his mind active and alert.  So this is the favor:

I am asking that if God lays it on your heart, to shower Jon with cards, letters, care packages, etc. Get creative in what to send him.  I would love to see him receive something everyday for the 2 - 3 months he is there.  Unfortunately, the reality of his situation is that it is easy to get stale mentally, to get depressed, and just in general to deterioate.  I would love for him to have something everyday to read or do.  Jon will start out as outpatient.  He will be admitted if the doctors feel it is necessary.  Otherwise, he will come home for dinner and to sleep.  This will help because when his counts are ok, he will be able to see the kids.   All in all he will not be feeling well so any encouragement will be appreciated!

Again, here is his address:

Jon Strebe
Canal Square Apartments
359 N. West Street
Apt. #282
Indianapolis, IN 46202

GODSTRONG

A couple of my friends came up with this idea for t-shirts for Jon and ran with it.  Duke is Jon's favorite team, hence the color:o)

Please NO pressure just thought it was something fun for Jon!

You can click on the link and buy a T-shirt for $15 and Jon will get $10 back to fund his Nike fetish. Haha. i'm TOTALLY kidding!  But really, if you buy one, please take a picture of yourself in it and send it to us!

SHIRTS FOR JON

Now I'm going to let Jon tell you all why he chose GODSTRONG!

Take it away, honey!

Well......obviously GODSTRONG is a play on the Cancer foundation created by Lance Armstrong, and partnered with Nike, LIVESTRONG.  Donna was reading excerpts from Armstong's book "Its Not About the Bike".  In it, Armstrong gives credit of his cure to himself, his will power, the medicine, the nurses, and the doctors.  Basically, everyone but God received credit.  I want everyone that sees this t-shirt to know that we are battling cancer, and will beat it by the grace of God.  I want people to know that God is working through the medicine, through the nurses, and through the doctors that He has provided for us.  It is only by the grace of God that I will be healed, bottom line.  Each person that wears this shirt will now have an obligation to tell others that Jesus is the Great Healer, and the Great I Am.  Thank you for joining us in this battle, and on this journey.