This is NOT a step back...

It has been a while since I have last updated this blog. I have been doing pretty well. I taught art camp again this past summer and we had such a wonderful time sketching, painting and learning about Galveston County's history. I had an ArtWalk for my art students at the wonderful Fit TO Run and they had a blast. I am still smiling just thinking about all of my awesome kiddos! My grad classes have been wonderful too! I have nearly completed my masters - one semester/2 classes left. I can't believe it is already here. I have met some amazing people there too! Last Spring, a UNT friend of mine, Rhonda, and I partnered in our class to write a grant for our class project. We chose my school. AND WE WON! This means $3000 worth of supplies that are coming to our library to create a professional literacy library that will benefit teachers and students both bilingual and English in grades Pre-K - 4th. I can't wait to put it all together! I have loved learning and I have been so blessed to finally get to be the librarian at school. As my second year in the library, I am having a blast teaching and helping everyone. I love my students and my teachers. I love getting to teach and help everyone in the library. Life outside of school has been wonderful too with new babies being born, weddings, and concerts. My hubby, family, and friends have continued to amaze me with their kindness, support, laughter, and strength.

Ok, here comes the not so great part. Things seemed to have happened so fast. I do feel like the life above is mine, but that what I am about to say feels far away as if it is someone else's dream that I am in. We have been going for our regular check ups and Dr. Benjamin has told us that things have been just fine. That the tumor in my left arm was of no concern and most likely benign and that I have no signs of mets anywhere else. However, the end of September is when things really started to get hairy. Surgery missed a tumor in my right lung. It happens. Or should I say bleep happens. No sign of mets, but it is there and at some point we will need to do something about it. I don't know what yet. I don't know because that is all Dr. Benjamin said about it for now. And to make a long story short, a pulmonary blood clot went unnoticed and we got a phone call after our 9-29 appt. that it was a pretty good size and located in my lower left lobe. I was to immediately start the shot Lovenox twice a day for a week and then every day for 6 months. I learned a little bit more then about our new insurance that the district changed to then too. We had to meet the overall prescription meds/OOP $2000 deductible first and then we'd owe 20% every time after. Easy to do when the shots are more than $1200. I am not a candidate for the other, cheaper, stuff like Coumadin because Sarcoma patients have thicker blood and it is harder to break up the clot. Then, after all of the talks about my arm being fine, we found out on October 21st that the tumor was not benign. More so, it had doubled in size since the March scan. It is in my bone marrow in my humorous in my left arm. AND on Wednesday the surgeon, Valerae Lewis (SHE IS AWESOME!!!), said that I have to have surgery on Monday to remove it. As in THIS Monday. She put my left arm in a sling because the bone is brittle and if I continue to use it like I do....did I mention that I am left handed and severely left arm dominant....that it will break. SO here is what they are going to do. They can't scrape and radiate it like they first thought. Because that would not leave clean margins. My type of cancer can leave microscopic disease behind that the doctors wouldn't be able to see until it was too late and by then it would be back and have metastasized. So on Monday, Dr. Lewis is going to resect the tumor. She will make an incision from the top of my humorous down to almost my elbow. Then she will remove about 6 inches of my bone. Then she will put in a titanium rod that looks like a lollipop. The stick part will fit into my remaining bone and the ball part will attach to my shoulder joint stuffs. It will take about an hour to close, all in all 3 hours from start to finish. I will be at Md Anderson for a few days, then home, then I can go back to work! If you want and you have extra time during the week, please please please come help me in the library. I will honestly need volunteers to help me check in/out books and shelve. I can teach all of my classes, but I will have a harder time doing this part of my job. I will have lots of physical therapy, but we have been to the wonderful 23rd street location when I had to learn how to walk again after the first surgery and I promise you, I will do everything to gain as much mobility back in my left arm again. I like my arm WAAAAAAY too much to give up on it. :) Now - touch the top of your head with your index finger. Are you doing it? Ok, that is the range of mobility that I will have after physical therapy. I don't kow how long it will take to get there, but I don't care. I can handle that. SO I won't be able to fully raise up my left by my ear - that is why man invented ladders. :) And I do have my right arm....better learn to embrace that one more! I do feel like I am becoming more and more like the bionic woman. That's OK. I will have one heck of a powerful left arm after all of this! And more importantly, it will leave a clear margin, one that would remove that pesky bone tumor. This is still the same cancer, ASPS. This type of cancer does not follow the rules so much remember? No stages, slow growing, not real active, moves where ever it wants through tissue, bone, and blood. And while this has been there for a year, it was very hard for anyone to see what it was going to do until it started coming out of it's shell so to speak.

This is all we know so far. I know that more chemotherapy and another surgery will be in my future because of that little stinker of a tumor that must have been playing hide-and-seek when I had lung surgery in December, but we will cross that bridge when we get there too.

Stay Positive. Sean and I are and we know that everything will work out. We are willing to do what we need to so that we can get to be parents and so I can hang around for another 60 years. Even if it means that I become the Bionic Woman!


Positivity Is Power!

Surgery Update Part 2

Hi Friends and Family!!

I wanted to send you an update. I am feeling well and very ready (or rather stir crazy) to go back to work. I will be back next week, but then I will be out again the following for the second and FINAL surgery. This will be on the 26th and I will be there all day on the day before for tests. They will do the exact same thing as they did to my left lung, only to my right lung this time. We were hoping that the doctors would allow us to do the second surgery in May and I was excited that they approved for me to come back to work at the 4 week mark. SO we had all of the proper paperwork filled out and my disability done with notations of the surgery being done in two parts. But we didn't know that the doctors would be so pleased (really this is true - ecstatic with my progress really) with how well I recovered and that they would be super excited to operate on me so soon. Yippee Kye Yea right?! They really like to do the two parts 6-8 weeks apart, but we were still hoping that I would be able to work more and then have the other surgery closer to summer or in the summer. After much mulling it over I have of course accepted this as most of you know how stubborn I can be. This is really okay with me; not dragging it out and being NED soon soon sooner! Since we have the paperwork (disability and FLMA) filled out the way we do, I will be back at work for a week and then out again. I hope that was less confusing writing it all this way. :-) I worry that this will be confusing to the kiddos, but I hope that there is a special way that you have been able to sort of explain....Just think; soon I will be what I can say, cancer free and get to just enjoy a normal life of no chemo or surgeries, or radiation. Yippee!!

I have been wanting to tell you that Team Positivity is Power is back again for Relay for Life. It is on April 29th. PLEASE please please go to www.relaygalveston.com and find my team, POSITIVITY IS POWER. I would be so happy if you showed your support by joining my team AND or making a donation under my name. Each donation adds another smile as I walk for so many who's lives have been impacted by cancer.

HUGS TO ALL!!

Smooth Sailing

“So how ‘bout that 4 day 3 night cruise?” Sean asks as we pull on to our street. I smiled as I said “You are right”, “This time around was smooth sailing.” At least compared to the first surgery I had. Where as I was nervous and quite anxious before this surgery, the feelings have been replaced with excitement and readiness for the next one. The left lung resection was completed in about 2 hours, open to close. They made nearly a 7” inch incision at an angle below my left shoulder blade. After deflating my left lung, Dr. Swisher, my surgeon, used a staple laser to cut out the tumors. The tool punches out the areas where the tumors are and makes a little ring around each tumor as it clears out the areas that the tumors were immediately touching. There turned out to be seven in all and Dr. S was not only extremely pleased, but also incredibly confident that he took everything there was. Then they inserted a two-foot long chest tube in my side and filled a ‘bag’ inside the lungs up with water. When I awoke, I was pretty sick from the anesthesia but I remember seeing my smiling husband and my doctor. Surgery had gone well. Now all I had to do was heal. My first thought? Well my Aunt Joanne, a survivor herself, had said “Walk when the doctors tell ya.” And that is exactly what I did! I did all of my breathing techniques from coughing to inhaling while Sean and I watched the flat screen full of free movies in our private room. From Toy Story 3 to Iron Man 2 we laughed and healed. Your emails, notes, calls, flowers, and visits kept us STRONG and full of positivity. Sean and I were at ease and Sean was nearly at home with his cute jokes that he knows can make me blush a near brick red color. Dr. S and his wonderful team came in to visit a couple of times and told me that I was such a STAR patient that he could just operate on me all the time. Hee Hee…no thank you! He will get to do my right lung, but that is it. My library needs me; my family and friends need me. And I need to get back and see my sweet happy students, and family and friends!! But I knew what he meant. I think he is pretty awesome too. When asked to show them how I can blow out through my airway and also cough, he said that I had very strong lungs because I could scrunch the machine measurer thingy like an accordion. Pretty cool. And yes it is true that by day 3 I donned make up as we headed for home. Not without a series of events that happened first of course. After I showed them that I could walk a few laps around the floor every few hours and I passed the breathing tests, they pulled my Foley and then a few hours later they took out the chest tube. No, it didn’t hurt. I just took a deep breath on the count of 3 and the nurse pulled it out. She explained that when they would later remove the epidural that made me numb from the waist up, I would feel more pain. Mainly where the tube was in my side. No worries. If the fantastically awesome nurses could fix my insane itchies and nausea then I had full faith they would help me through the pain. Boy, were they right. I am still pretty sore there now, but the tissue that was cut for the long tube (allowing my lungs to drain out the fluid) will take some time to fully heal. As for my back, I am only sore to the touch and I can sleep pretty well in a semi upright position on our couch at home. The bed is still too soft for me to sink into.

It has been three weeks since I underwent part 1 of my double lung resection. I am really doing pretty well and though I was kept busy visiting friends and family over the holidays, I have been sleeping a lot. I am hoping to be completely off the Norco pain medicine soon. It works and the pain is so much better (under control), but it makes me itch like crazy and so I have to take Benadryl to stop me from scratching all over and well that makes for lots of sleepy time. Which is not so bad, but I am ready to get back to work, and back into the real world. I am being good and patient and following doctor orders, and I can tell that I am feeling better every day.

We will see the doctor on the 11th. I am excited to see him. My incision looks great and though I still get a little winded I know he will be happy with my progression. I will also have an MRI that day and see Dr. Benjamin. I don’t think I mentioned that they found a spot in the tissue in my left shoulder from the bone scan. Really I didn’t know about it when I met with Dr. B last time. Dr. Swisher’s PA told us. They did an X-ray but still couldn’t get a full picture and so we will all know more after the MRI. Dr. B made it sound like it was not a big deal really and even if it is cancerous they will probably just fix it up with some radiation. Not my words. Those are Dr. B’s. And there is really no reason for any concern at this time. As I say, we will just cross that bridge when we get there.

This part of the story is much too sweet to pass up. I was worried about how big the scar was going to be. I had been looking at it in the mirror after we got home and I was feeling kind of scared because the incision looks pretty big across my back and I knew soon enough I was going to have another to match. Sean said it was like my angel wings were being taken off. Taken off I asked? Yes, he replied. Because God needs to keep me here and this way I will blend in more without my wings. Reason infinity why I love this man so much. I hear him tell his friends that I give him so much strength, that I am so strong. But he is strong for me too and his positive energy and silly jokes always find me when I need them the most.

I am so happy to report that everything is going well and I will write more after my doctor’s appointment.

Carpe Diem! I know I will!!