MelissaStuff

If you read my first post earlier this morning , you may have wondered what happened to us after that . . . well, let me tell you. {feel the jerking of the cars and the clacking as the mechanics of the coaster inch the cars up further and further towards the top of the first hill} We met with the doctor first which was fascinating. He is truly the expert in his field and the "Big Daddy" as he was referred to when we first arrived. I had no doubts we had landed in the right place. Not only is this his primary field of study and teaching, but he publishes the articles that set the standard for all of the doctors who see patients with thyroid cancer. He affirmed that because of my age my cancer is Stage 1 - which determines the likelihood of survival, so you can't get a better Stage unless you just plain don't have cancer at all. He also said he thought the treatment that I had undergone already was appropriate although there were a couple of things he might h...

Joey and I drove to Houston yesterday . . . after making sure our kids and animals were all taken care of, which is always a bigger deal than I anticipate it being. It's been a long time since Joey and I have had the chance to "get away" just the two of us, so even with the reason for the trip, it was nice to drive and chat and stop at Collin Street Bakery and Cooper Farms store and eat at Cracker Barrel as if we were on a vacation. If you've ever taken an anti-anxiety medication, you know the strange feeling of knowing academically that the facts should be upsetting to you, but feeling inexplicably calm in the face of those still upsetting facts. It isn't truly inexplicable, though, as you took a medication that is formulated to do that very thing. However, recently I have found myself experiencing this very same feeling without any medication, and I am confident that it is the definition of "peace that passes understanding." I will say waking...

Trying to find answers on cancer treatment was actually much less simple than I anticipated. Clearly there are great things about each of the locations we were considering - Cancer Treatment Centers, Mayo Clinics, and MD Anderson. Many people have had good results at each of these places. The bottom line is that on Monday, April 8, we will be going down to MD Anderson's Cancer Research department to meet with the premiere thyroid cancer expert - Dr. Steve Sherman . He is going to re-examine all of the test results and scans, including the pathology of the cancer tissue originally removed. They have told us to hold our return date loosely. I'm personally feeling like there won't be any emergency treatment necessary, so we will be coming home and then possibly going back as needed for follow up. There are still a lot of unknowns - there could be drug trials . . . waiting and additional scans . . . even a stint at Cancer Treatment Center if there is sufficient cause...

Some of you have been tracking through every step, some of you are just wondering what weirdo asks for cancer treatment recommendations. So, in an effort to get us all in the same page, here’s a recap: I have been battling thyroid cancer now since December 2017. Thyroid cancer  is typically a pretty simple diagnosis and treatment leading to full remission. However, my situation has not been so simple. I have a B-RAF gene mutation that makes it more aggressive and less responsive to treatment. All original tests led doctors  to believe that I had a singular node that needed to be removed in December 2017. When they actually opened me up, they had to do a full thyroidectomy and remove the metastasis in five lymph nodes including one that had become it’s own tumor, growing outside the bounds of its original space. They stopped short of removing all cancerous tissue because some of   it was too close to my carotid artery. Following that, they did a round of I-13...

My middle son, Colt, told me not too long ago that he wanted to wrestle. We are a sports family, but wrestling has never been one of those sports. AND this child is on the spectrum . . . now, all that really means for him is that he's not going to pick up on any social hints you drop, he's incredibly literal, and he's finicky about sensations. Yes, the child who is finicky about sensations told me he wanted to wrestle - where people are constantly touching you and holding you down and forcing your body into positions you don't want it to be in. But I have always determined that I would not hold my children back by forcing artificial boundaries on them that they don't have for themselves - so if the boy wanted to wrestle, we were going to let him try it out. A couple of weekends ago, we went to his first wrestling tournament. I was so naive. We were supposed to be there at 9 am, and, in all seriousness, I made plans for 11 am. I thought we would walk in, he wou...

I have to admit I was a little surprised by the wide range of response to my last post. I think there may have been some confusion . . . And maybe some didn’t read to the end. Here’s the summary of what I was actually attempting to communicate: Even though I’m on an amazing trip, we had an ugly encounter that caused us to miss a significant event.  As I thought about how angry I was over the way it was handled, it caused a whole host of angry emotions to flood through. Many of them that had been held back for quite some time.  Not the least of which is I have a callback visit scheduled in just a couple of days after I went and had a mammogram done at the beginning of March.  I don’t plan on taking back any part of what I said in that post. It was the truth - maybe a little raw, maybe jaded, maybe even somewhat self-centered - but it was exactly how I felt in that moment. However, it is not the whole truth about the trip we took, and I feel it is only fair to ...

If you know much about me, you know I’m a student of human behavior. Admittedly, I have been too distracted to pay much attention to what anyone else has been doing through certain parts of this process, but other times I have actually used the behavior of the people around me as a distraction from my own issues.  Here are some of the things I have concluded: {Warning: You should not read this post if you are easily shocked or offended. I’m not, which makes it possible for me to not be terribly bothered by many of these things and prevents this from being one long list of complaints. I’m actually more fascinated by the reactions and curious about what drives them.} 1. Some people want to make a joke of everything.  My husband got dressed a little nicer than normal when we went to the hospital for treatment this week, and when my sister gave him a hard time about it, his response was, “I have to start looking for the next one.” {Insert shaking of heads and rolling of eyes} I’m ...

I attended a retreat recently - really just a girls getaway. While I was there, I was doing some reading and I came across this quote by Christa Wells on her blog: Today and for the past week I’ve fought hard to stay present and emotionally-armed as I am reminded at every turn of a painful detour in my life. My friend said a week ago: “The detour is the path.” It’s been bouncing around in my head ever since. And making me angry, too. I mean, some detours could be avoided, right? Some detours become necessary only because people are selfish and put up roadblocks that affect everybody on the road. Right? Yes. So what? Here we are. What are we going to do about it? Here I am taking this unexpected route, a route I didn’t see on the map, and have no knowledge of or interest in. Taking this route is going require re-arranging and will make me miss some beautiful things I’ve looked forward to. I’m tired and my pack is heavy and the view ain’t that great. This detour hurts. A lo...

Please don't mistake the following ponderings for pessimism - they are not - but you can't go through a situation like this one honestly, with your head held high and your eyes wide open and not ask yourself questions like: If my time is more limited than I once thought, if I don't have 70 years to plan for, what would I wish I had done more of? What would I wish I had done less of? What would I desperately want to be different? I certainly don't have all of the answers to those questions, but I do have some ideas.  Ask anyone close to me what the last couple of years have been like and they will tell you - hectic, crazy, non-stop, successful, impressive to some, busy, too busy. Ask me and I will tell you a slightly different story if I am willing to be transparent - they have been frantic, panicky, driven by a desperate fear of failure, life-sucking, unfulfilling, lacking in almost everything that gives life to me and makes me - well, me.  I haven't felt like I ...