Health update and Prayers for those affected by tornado

Washington's tornado

I have been meaning to update my blog all week, but the words have not come to me. What can you say that hasn’t already been said about the terrible destruction from Sunday’s tornado that plowed a path through Washington. For those of you who don’t know I live in Eureka, Illinois. Our neighboring town, where my sister lives is Washington. Washington is one of those typical Illinois small towns – easy to love and a great place to raise a family. Now it is not so typical. Now it has a huge scar running down its center. 

Praise the Lord though that only one life was lost! Praise the Lord that my sister’s family and even her house are fine! 

Today I drove over to Washington to go to Walmart. I have been avoiding this trip all week. I even thought of just going to another town for my stuff, but I wanted my first trip through town to be without my kids. To see just a little bit of the destruction in person was heart breaking. My heart goes out to all the people who lost homes. Please continue to pray for them. They have a long, hard road ahead of them.

Health update

I am feeling much better. I am feeling a little stronger every day. I have much to be thankful for. I realized this today when I was running up the stairs to get something. I can again run up the stairs! I am not anemic anymore. My leg muscles do not burn anymore because of the effects of chemo. I even have hair on my head and have started going without a hat! Yes, it is really short. Shorter than any hairstyle I would choose, but I have decided to be OK with it. And a positive is that I’m loving how quickly it can be styled. :o) Guys really do have it much easier than women at least in this area!

My body is healing and hopefully soon all I will be left with are just the scars – reminders of this struggle and also of God’s hand of protection during this time. God has taken good care of me! He really has! Thanks so much for all the prayers!

“So what happens next?” “Are you done?”

 I get those questions a lot. Yes, I guess I am done in a lot of ways. It seems weird to me to say that. This has been a long year. I have been in fight mode for so long that it seems weird to just stop. I don’t know if that makes sense or not, but in a way fighting cancer has become a way of life for me. I now have to start getting back to normal. 

I did see my oncologist last week.  All appears to be fine right now. I am kind of in the watching and waiting phase now I guess. I will see her again in three months. At that time I will have another PET scan. Of course the goal of this PET scan is to be totally clear. My first PET scan done right after my biopsy showed a little blip right at the sight of the recurrence. The radiologist said that it could easily have been caused by the recent surgery. This repeat scan will just be verifying that. I am also leaving in my port until then. My doctor doesn’t seem too concerned about my next PET scan. It is more of a precaution. I am not too worried about it right now either. I’m sure when it gets closer I will be a little nervous, but I know I’m in good hands. And I’m trying to remind myself daily of this fact. 

None of us know what the future holds. We think we do. We plan and go about our lives, but sometimes things happen to mess up our plans. Whether it is a tornado or cancer. But no matter what God is still in control! 

Have a great Thanksgiving!!

Surgery Complete

My surgery went well Thursday. There were no surprises, and I was even able to go home the same day. It was a little more painful than I was expecting though. I think that we throw around the term laparoscopic and we kind of minimize the fact that it is still surgery. I am very grateful that we now have the option of laparoscopic surgery. I think that it is awesome that surgery is able to be done in such a way, but I think that we forget that it is still surgery and a drama to our bodies.  The good news though is that even though it was painful, the pain lessens pretty quickly – I’m sure much more quickly than traditional surgery.

I was starting to get around more yesterday. And today I am up even more. Of course now for me I have to make sure that I don’t do too much too soon. If you knew my grandma or my dad, you would know where I inherited my need to be always doing something. If there is a job that I know needs to be done, it keeps calling to me. It is so hard to not just get up and do it. :O)

I have been super tired though so that helps to keep me moving slower. I don’t know if I should blame the effects of anesthesia, healing, hormone changes, or what but I have been super tired. I am hoping that this gets better this week. I am also hoping that this post makes sense because it has been a little harder to put words together the last few days.

One thing that took me by surprise with this surgery was the deep feeling of loss and sadness that I felt. I wasn’t excited about this surgery, but I thought that I had worked through the emotions of it before. Truth be told, I was pretty upset that this surgery might even be suggested last year. From my research I knew it was used some – more in the past than now. I even had the option of doing the Lupron shots last year but I turned them down. I didn’t want to have to go through menopause so young. With cancer the decisions are always hard it seems. You must balance treatment with side effects. You must decide how far you need to go in treatment to do the best you can to kill cancer. But you must know that every step of the way that there will be bad side effects that you will have to live with -some permanently. It is not easy and it takes an emotional toll.

But I had thought through all this already. I had weighed the pros and cons.  I was even in menopause going into the surgery. I wasn’t expecting a lot of surprises. And yet I felt like I had just lost a big part of me. I guess because I had just made it permanent and there was now no chance of going back. I am now extremely glad that I didn’t have this surgery back in May. I cannot even begin to imagine how I would have felt waking up to instant menopause. I would have dealt with all my feelings of loss, the pain and also horrid hot flashes and a big hormone drop. I think that God’s hand was in the details. By doing chemo and then Lupron I was able to go a little more slowly into menopause. Because of this, my hot flashes post surgery have not been very different than they were before. I am very glad of this.

Having gone through this, I would make one recommendation to another woman in my same shoes. If you must make the decision to either suppress or remove your ovaries, give yourself time. Even if you are against the Lupron shots, get at least one before you surgically and permanently put yourself into menopause. Give yourself the extra time to adjust to the idea and the low hormone levels. I am so glad that this is the way it ended up happening for me. I was very knowledgeable about what to expect from the surgery, but it is one thing to know on paper what to expect and another to go through it.