May 1 in many countries is called May Day.  It is celebrated for a variety of reasons, but it is almost always a day of celebration.

For our family, May 1 will always be a day of celebration as well.  Because one year ago today, May 1, 2008, Jackson went in for surgery.  And when he came out, we were expecting to find out if he had the REALLY BAD kind of cancer or only the BAD kind of cancer.  If his leg muscles were going to be severely disfigured or if he was going to be able to walk just fine.  If we were going to be starting chemo and radiation immediately or if it could wait a week or two.

But when the doctor came out and told us it wasn’t cancer at all and only a vascular malformation, you can only imagine our relief and our excitement.  After the doctor told us, we told her to tell our parents, who were waiting with us.  There was more celebration.

Which is why May 1 will always be the Kolb’s personal holiday.  Always be a day of celebration.  Always be a day of giving thanks to our Great God, the Great Physician, who protected our baby.

I won’t speak for Kristen, but I’m pretty convinced, after reflecting for the last year, that God changed the mass in his leg from a malignant mass to something benign.  When a Colombian radiologist (at Colombia’s best hospital), a Colombian orthopedic surgeon (one of Colombia’s best), an MD Anderson radiologist (who had been reading scans for the last 25 years and works at the #1 cancer hospital in the US, if not the world), an MDA pediatric oncologist, an MDA pediatric surgeon, and an MDA pediatric orthopedic surgeon all agree that it’s cancer, it’s hard to imagine that it’s not cancer.  But praise God, literally, that they were wrong.

If you want to re-read our post from last year, here it is.