Cancer Free!!!

I just got the call from my Dr. at MD Anderson and I am officially cancer free! Praise God! Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. I am so thankful that this journey is over! I will be screened every six months for the rest of my life at MD Anderson but other than that we are DONE! All my steristrips have fallen off so the scar is finally visible...and boy is it visible. I will try to post pictures soon (sorry for those faint of heart).

Recovery

Recovery...here we are again. I begrudgingly admit that we had about two great weeks of perfect health between the heat stroke and this surgery. I worry that everyone is tired of hearing about my health issues...heck, I'm tired of hearing about my own health issues!! I just have to get this all our of my head and into my "journal." I am so very thankful for all of the help we have received over the past week. I realized just how much help we are going to need last night when I attempted to heat up our families dinner. Our amazing friend Shirley brought us a delicious meal, all I had to do was heat it up. Jacob was on a telicon meeting and Jessica and Barrett were watching the kids. I decided to heat up the meal and have it on the table when the boys got home. Many extra vicadins and 15 hours later I am still hurting from lifting the plate into the microwave. Now that is humbling! The doctors of course explained this surgery in detail to me and I fully realize that my muscles and skin have been removed from the bone and then placed back. I realize that a lot of the tissue was removed and that there is a hole in my chest now. I realize that things are going to take many weeks before they are fully "stuck" into their proper place again. I realize I need to be careful to allow the muscles and skin time to reattach...but I didn't realize that included heating up a meal for my family. I can not explain how humbling it is to not be able to do things for my family. This is my vocation, my purpose, my life, my desire, and my joy. This is also not my role right now...but I honestly don't know how to do anything else. I am fumbling around trying to do things I can do, make online photo books, fill out baby books, pray, read, all in an attempt to feel like I can do "my job." Then I realized that this is EXACTLY why Christ has placed this "burden" on me. I need to be humbled. I need to accept my limitations. I need to allow people to help. I am ready and willing to accept help. I have very much "learned my lesson" about my limitations. I am so very thankful to have Jan here today loving the heck out of my family so I can lay in bed doped up on vicadin. I am glad that my stubborn self can actually feel the ramifications of my stubborn actions. I need this. I need this. I need this. Thank you God for the way that you work through my stubbornness. Thank you for the amazing support group you have placed before me. I am humbled! I'll leave you with a precious picture of my sweet, sweet, boys loving on each other as they wait for Daddy to drag them around the house in their burrito :) . I am SO blessed!

Its me

Hey yall. Its me. I'm taking it easy mostly relaxing in my big comfy bed. I get to take a shower today, you have no idea how great that sounds right now! Four more hours and I can finally wash this greasy head! I am struggling to stay on top of the pain right now so I am still working on adjusting the dosage schedule. We have been talking with the dr's and nurses often hoping to get to a comfortable level soon. The boys have been pretty fantastic and super gentle as they climb up on the bed to snuggle with me. They even brought me breakfast in bed this morning. Of course, Nick took a few bites of it before he handed it over :) I am so very thankful for all the friends and family who are helping us out with meals, play dates, and babysitting me. I truly don't know how we would do this without you!

Out of surgery..

We just talked to the surgeon. She is out of surgery, in recovery, awake but groggy, and a little sore around the incision. He said everything went as planned, and they will be doing a biopsy on the tissue that they removed. This is standard procedure, and the risk of any additional melanoma in that biopsy is very low, as they had margins on the orginal biopsy site. We should get the results early next week.

We haven't seen her in reocvery yet. It may be an hour before we get to see her. Thank you all for your prayers!

In surgery...

Jillian went into surgery at about 11:45 this morning. She should be out by about 1:00 and then into recovery for at least a few hours. Before the surgery she was doing well, just anxious to get it over with. Judy (her mom) and I are waiting here and the boys are with my mom in Sugar Land. Thank you all for your prayers! We are blessed to have such great friends. I will update this again after her surgery. Peace in Christ...Jacob

Surgery Schedule

The surgery is on for tomorrow, check in is at 10:00. I am not sure exactly what time I will be wheeled in for the operation but the actual surgery should last about an hour. Jacob is going to update here as soon as he hears any word from the doctors. We are all ready to get this done with. I am very optimistic that my bout with cancer will be over tomorrow. The boys are going to have a sleep over at their Gran Jan's house tomorrow night (they are super excited about that!) My mom and Jacob are going with me to MD Anderson tomorrow, very glad to have them to distract me :). Check back for more updates tomorrow. See you when I am melanoma free!

Surgery Details

My pre-op appointment went as well as we could have hoped for today. Let me start by saying that MD Anderson is beyond AMAZING! Each and every person that we encountered there was uplifting, friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable (even the cafeteria workers!). They valet park their new new patients and then validate. They had greeters at the door to welcome you and to see if they could assist you in getting to all of your appointments. They post signs to let you know how long you will be waiting to see your respective doctors. They have volunteers with piping hot coffee, tea, and hot chocolate and lots of uplifting stories of survival to share. We started in the Melanoma clinic and filled out all of our paperwork, saw three PA's, the insurance coordinator, the doctor, patient appointment scheduler, clinical trial scheduler, and nurse. We couldn't believe how many people were there to assist in our "case". The doctor was really reassuring that the cancer showed no signs of metastasising anywhere other than my upper layers of skin and tissue. He explained the entire surgery in detail making sure we understood exactly what each step would be. He explained that they will be removing all the tissue below the incision down to my muscle fibers as well as separating my skin away from my muscles in order to close the wound. This leaves kind of an open "pocket" in my chest. In the first few days I need to remain propped up in order to avoid fluid build up in that pocket. After that, I will need to do no heavy lifting, driving, running, jumping, sudden movements, etc for 4-6 weeks to give the skin time to "stick" back onto the muscles. I will be numb for at least a few hours after the procedure, after that I may or may not be on narcotics after the surgery, it just depends on how I feel. So after that appointment was done (it took nearly three hours to see all of the staff individually) we grabbed a quick bite to eat in the restaurant downstairs and then rushed over to have some pre-op blood work done. Then we headed upstairs for a cardio work up. Had an EKG and met with the doctor to make sure the heat stroke wouldn't affect anything related to the surgery. He gave me his stamp of approval to be under anesthesia and gave me a thumbs up on overall heart health saying that I didn't need to follow up with a cardiologist anymore relating to the heat stroke. Yahoo! One more kind of doctor to check off of my list! By the way I impressed all my doctors with my amazingly low heart rate (55 bpm). They all asked if I was an athlete...I told Jacob that was reason enough to let me run more races in the future! Hah! Then back up to the melanoma clinic to schedule my pre-op appointment with the anaesthesiologist for tomorrow. The surgery will for sure be on Wednesday but we don't know what time yet. So basically I look perfectly healthy except for the melanoma. I have so much to be thankful for! You can't help but be grateful when you walk around MD Anderson and see all of those who are in the midst of their battles with various forms of cancer. Its humbling to be a member of their family. Thank you all for your prayers. I definitely felt them today!

Mommy's OwwOww

Nothing new as far as the melanoma is concerned. We should have a big post on Monday after we have the pre-op appointment at MD Anderson. I wanted to post something so that no one thought I had already forgotten my promise to update often. So... heres a picture that Curtis drew me on Mothers day...

I LOVE that our family has no mouths or noses here but we all have glasses on like daddy. He drew me on the left holding Nicholas and included my ouchie in the picture. The melanoma is becoming part of our family these days! The boys and I are trying to prepare to be out of commission for a few weeks. I am preparing all kinds of things that I can do with the boys while I recover. I'm planning a few projects for myself as well. I was anointed last night by our amazing pastor, Father Drew. Everyone is feeling peaceful and ready to approach next week with confidence. See, I told you I would update :)

New Fashion Statements

The latest in fashion trends...my new style. Here I am after the biopsy with my little stitches and my little scar. Got those stitches out today (happy mothers day to me!!!) It already feels better. I'm gonna be doing some major shopping this week searching for shirts that can cover my chest after the surgery next week. Too bad turtlenecks aren't in style anymore :)

Heat Stroke Update #2

Still working on the heat stroke...headed to the cardiologist next to do an echocardiogram, a 24 hour cardiac monitor test, and possibly an adrenaline infused stress test. All of this has been put on hold however...last Wednesday I had a suspicious mole removed that turned out to be a melanoma. If you look really closely you can see it in the below picture, its right in the middle of my chest about four inches below my collar bone. I was scheduled for an in office surgery this Wednesday to remove extra skin above, below, and internal to the original spot to make sure all the cancerous cells were gone. On Tuesday I recieved a call from my surgeon saying that the procedure was cancelled and that she was passing my case off to a dr. at MD Anderson. She believed that given my other health concersn and the depth of my melanoma was deep enough to warrant a dye test and a lymphnode biopsy to make sure the cancer had not spread. So we worried and we prayed and we waited to hear more from the surgeons at MD Anderson. I received a call yesterday setting up my pre-op appointment for next Monday and tenatively scheduled my surgery for wednesday the 18th. The amazing Physicians Assistant at MD Anderson took a look at my biopsy and pathhology report as soon as she recieved it and called us to let us know what to expect from my surgery. She said that based on her knowledge (from the best cancer hospital in the entire world) there was no reason to believe the melanoma had spread. Praise God! The surgery itself is going to under general anestesia in an opperating room and will affect a rather large area of my chest and possibly even require a skin graft. The PA said the scar it will definetly be a "conversation peice" for the rest of my life. It will most likely be an outpatient surgery depending upon the need for a skin graft. The surgeon said it will be about a six week recovery with no lifting of kids until at least the seventh week and with more severe restrictions in the first few weeks. We are just thankful to not have radiation or chemotherapy on our minds anymore. I will try my best to keep this blog updated if anything changes. I know there are a lot of friends and family that check this and I promise to update with any new information. I don't expect to have anything new to post until after my Pre-Op next Monday. We are hopeful that after my new surgeon does his own pathology report that he will concur with his PA about the non-agressiveness of this melanoma. Thank you all so much for your prayers and I ask you to please keep them up for our entire family. With the heat stroke and now this we are feeling pretty overwhelmed. More importantly we are in awe of the preciousness of this beautiful life that we have. God has already answered so many of our prayers and we know that he has allowed these sufferings for our greater good and sanctification. Thank you again, keep the prayers coming, and I promise to update soon.