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On November 8th, 2003, I met my husband Greg. The following September 11th, 2004 we were married in Las Vegas. We have had our challenges here and there but this whole cancer scare has been our biggest challenge.
I can”t thank my husband enough for everything he has done for me these past eight months. He has been at my side every moment and has used every ounce of energy taking care of me. While trying to get through each day in his life trying to manage the ups and downs of muscular dystrophy, he didn’t realize just how strong he really was. I feel so guilty for all the times I was angered, having a bad day and taking it out on him. He would always say to me, “You have the right to be pissed off and yell at someone.” Being ill doesn’t give me the right to take my frustrations out on anyone. I was at least glad that I was aware of my choice of words and I was able to apologize.
I want to take this moment to tell my husband…..Thank you Greg, for taking such wonderful care of me through my illness. Thank you for pushing me when I couldn’t go, thank you for the tears you shared with me, the hugs, the kisses, walking by my side at the Komen walk for the cure on my birthday. Thank you for all the beautiful flowers! Thank you for taking me to my treatments. Thank you for making me take my medications. Thank you for cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping and taking care of the kids. Thank you for taking me out for special nights together and celebrating our anniversary… it was very special to me. Thank you for taking me to see Peter Frampton in concert. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for being so strong and thank you most of all for loving me! I love you so very much. Always & Forever.
LeAnn
Today I finished my radiation treatments!! When I walked out of the treatment room the staff informed me that I need to ring the bell. It’s a special bell that cancer patients ring when they have completed their radiation treatment. next to the bell there’s a plaque on the wall that reads…’MY TREATMENTS HERE ARE FINISHED, I WILL NOW BE ON MY WAY. I LEAVE WITH HOPE WHILE CELEBRATING THIS AND EVERY DAY’. The feeling was just as incredible as completing chemotherapy. I’ve been walking into this building every morning at 7:30 a.m. except for the weekends and I’ve done this for 8 weeks.
I am scheduled to have my port removed on Monday the 23rd of November. Then I will discuss with my Oncologist how often I will need checkups and what tests need done. I will continue on the medication Tamoxifen for five years.
It’s been a long eight months but I did it and I couldn’t have done it without the support from my husband, children, family, friends and co-workers. I was surrounded by so many people who are so amazing! I want to end my journey knowing that I stayed strong and positive. I want to be able to handle life’s challenges a little different that I use to. I want to know that I have the strength to accomplish anything that comes my way. I want to feel the true importance in this life that God has given me. I want to live each day with happiness and gratitude.
I had the biopsy done of the lesions on my liver and I am so happy and relieved that the cancer has NOT matastasized to the liver! This is the one thing that was on my mind for the past couple of months. I was fearful that I would have to go through chemotherapy all over again. Not just that but once cancer reaches your liver, it’s not curable.
Because of the Versed they give you just before the biopsy, I managed through the procedure but the pain was a little too unbearable afterwards. I was given some pain medication and later I was able to go home. I ate some soup shortly after arriving home and I was still in pain. I became sick to my stomach and vomited a few times. About an hour after I was able to take more pain medication, then I was fine.
Thank God for pain medication!!!!
Today I met with the Oncologist t discuss the results of my MRI of the liver that I had done last week. The MRI from two months ago showed two lesions that were of concern for hepatic metastasis and the results were the same this time. Since we are unsure if it’s metastasized, I will have a biopsy done. This will put my mind at ease.
I’m still having pain in my feet to my hips which I’ve been taking morphine 30mg twice a day. Some days I have brekthrough pain so I take Lortab to help with that. It takes so long for the pain to subside. The doctor added gabapentin, three times a day, to my list of daily meds. The doctor will have me see a pain specialist soon, to see what they can do for me.
I am into my fifth week of radiation and I have three more weeks to go. My skin is so red and hot, just like a bad sunburn. It’s trying to blister in a few spots. The area of radiation is to the left breast, armpit and neck area. The radiation oncologist informed me today, that I may develope a sore throat since the radiation is hitting that area. I told her it already started. I thought I was getting a sore throat because of all the sickness going around but that’s not the case. She gave me some medication to help numb the throat.
My blood sugar tests aren’t looking the greatest either. The doctor says instead of the blood sugar going down, it’s actually going up. I am on diabetic medication twice a day. He says if i don’t bring my levels down soon, I may have to give myself insulin injections. I feel like I am just a complete mess at this point, but you know…tomorrow is another day and I WILL get through this.
LeAnn
On October 4th, I celebrated my birthday at the annual Susan G. Komen walk for the cure in downtown Omaha. It felt a bit strange that I was participating in something that involved myself. I never imagined that this was something I would be doing.
My husband, Sam, Bailey and myself attenhded the walk. The kids were excited because I promised them I would spray paint their hair pink. It was chilly in the morning when we left home and I thought we would all have to wear our coats, which would hide our shirts with our numbers on the back, taking alot of the fun out of it. But when it was time for the walk, we were able to tolerate the weather. The civic auditorium had two levels where you could walk around and recieve free items such as cereal, breakfast bars, applesauces, bananas, apples, water bottle holders, M&M’s, pens, a gift bag for survivors, donuts!! lots of things. Pink bags were handed out and you just walked around filling your bag with goodies. They also had tables where you could purchase pink ribbon items.
They held a special ceremony for cancer survivors. Sam had his arm around me as I sat in the chair. It was very touching. After the ceremony they took a survivors group photo in front of the auditorium. So many people!! After the photo, we did the 1 mile walk. Sam and Bailey held hands with me and then I wanted to hold my husbands hand. It was quite a view to see all these people walking together. At one point when we looked to our right, we could see a whole line of people walking down the street we were on a short time ago. When we got to the finish line the kids and I raised our arms in the air. We finished in 20 minutes. I was then handed a red rose. All the survivors recieved a red rose at he finish line. What an awsome birthday. What an awsome husband and family I am blessed with!.
LeAnn
This coming Sunday, October 4th, I will celebrate my 42nd birthday. This is also the day for the Susan G. Komen walk fore the cure for breast cancer. My husband, Sam and Bailey will be walking beside me on this special day, along with approximately 20, 000 other breast cancer survivors and their families. This will be one very special birthday. We plan on taking lots of pictures and will post for you to see.
LeAnn
A few weeks ago, I had my initial appointment with the Radiation Oncologist. At that time, they took a CT scan and marked the areas on my body where the radiation would be given. I had to be careful these last few weeks, not to wash off the areas on my skin where they marked me.
I had my first treatment Monday. For the next eight weeks, I will have radiation Monday through Friday from 7:30 in the morning, lasting about half an hour . Thank goodness I have the weekends off. Only two weekends a month will I be able to sleep in. The procedure is painless. First I change into a hospital gown then I walk down a hall to an area where the staff and physicians sit to monitor you and set the machine for radiation. I state my name and birthdate before staff takes me to the treatment room. When I lay on the treatment table an look at the ceiling, it’s beautiful and calming. It was painted with trees, leaves and butterflies. They raise my left arm and position it in some sort of arm holder. Then they line up the marked areas on my upper body with the machine, turn on a little music and begin the treatment. It’s painless. They said in a few weeks I may begin to see some side effects, such as skin tightness and redness to the area treated. They recommend using a good lotion for that.
So, that’s what I’ll be doing for the next eight weeks. One nice thing is, after I have my treatment in the morning, I have a driver from the hospital take me to my work. Isn’t that cool? This way, Greg can just drop me off in the morning for my treatment and just head to work without waiting for me and missing any work himself.
The next step is this….Around the end of October, I will have another MRI of the liver to see if the lesions have grown. I need to set up an appointment with a pain specialist soon because of my issues with pain from the peripheral neuropathy. The Oncologist increased the Morphine I’m taking but it’s not doing the job. Sometimes, I cry even after taking the pain medication so this may not be the right kind of pain medicine for this.
LeAnn
Well, the month of August has sucked. All of this chemo has really taken a toll on LeAnn. She had the 4 doses of the heavy stuff, then she tried taking Taxol and it had too many side effects and then she has taken about 10 or 11 doses of Abraxine. She has been in so much pain that it brings her to tears most every day. She has incredible hot flashes that come from nowhere and she describes it as having her face in the oven. She has had a lot of the numbness and tingling in her hands and feet. She has been taking some Hydrocodone for the pain but it doesnt’ last long and takes too long to take effect. I nagged at her to make it known to her Dr., she needed something stronger. Dr. finally gave her some MsContin, which is a 12 hr time release morphine 15 mg.
So 2 weeks ago on August 14th, she went to the Chemo office and was going to tell her Dr. that she couldn’t take it anymore. I think she ended up doing a treatment that day and she had CT scan the day before. The Dr. noticed that it appeared these growths in her liver appeared to be considerbly larger than the previous times. She had a CT scan done on March 27th, where a spot was detected but the Dr. didn’t think too much of it at that point. They were unsure of what it was. They also did a CT scan in the 1st week of June and noticed the spots were still there, but still weren’t overly concerned with it. Well, the lesions were much larger this time around , compared with the others.
She visted the Dr on Friday the 21st.. he talked about the lesions a bit, said he needed to study the results a bit more. I believe LeAnn talked to a nurse or something on the Monday and was told it was like 80% chance of being something other that cancer, so after being scared to death on Friday it was for sure cancer spread to her liver, we were more upbeat on Monday. So she goes in to the Dr. on Friday August 28th and they talk about the liver again, and we don’t know what the nurse was talking about, but it seems like it has spread to the liver. The Dr. said she could get a biopsy done on her liver but it would be painful and could get complications, plus one of them is right next to a blood vessel. He said the other option was to wait 2 months and he would do another scan and if they were larger, he would be confident that it has spread to her liver. He wants her to go onto the radiation in the meantime.
LeAnn decided to not get a liver biopsy, based on the Dr saying it really wasn’t going to change anything as far as the plan. So, she will be going into the Nebraska Medical Center on Sept 11th for a 1st visit with the radiation people. Sept. 11th, our 5th Wedding Anniversay, my wife will be going to a Dr to talk radiation.
LeAnn is just plain wore down at this point. She has been struggling to go to work whenever she can, but alot of nights she can’t sleep and stays up all night. She’s in pain all the time, she deals with her heart fluttering, all the hot flashes and she generally feels like crap all the time. She has been quite a trooper all this time, but I can see where it is really wearing her down. Then you get news that there seems to be problems with the liver now. It’s like there is never a good day or good news – EVER. It’s just day to day of trying to get thru to the next day.
I do my best to keep her spirits up, but alot of time she will have nothing to do with my jokes and my positive reinforcements. I know it’s what I have to do, but at the same time, it feels hollow and I know me saying it’s going to be OK and look at the bright side and all that, doesn’t really help.
The kids started school again on the 18th and I sometimes wish they were a little bit older so they could realize what their Mom is going thru. They really don’t help much at all around the house, so it seems like were doing all the work. I know their kids, but they are getting older and should tone down their demands a bit during these times and be a little more thoughtful about what everyone is going thru.
LeAnn and I went back to Cozad on August 15th to visit everyone. We had everyone back, as far as Mom’s kids. Linda and all the kids and Cory were back. We left on Sat morning about 5:00 am and ran into a rain storm in Lincoln and had to pull over for awhile. We were both very tired. Made it to Cozad about 10:00. Went to Grandma’s auction and visited her. LeAnn could not handle the heat so we tried to make her as comfortable as possible during the weekend. She slept most of the way home.
So anyway, August sucked for LeAnn, and me too. I’ll post some pics of us back in Cozad and a few others too.
Today will be my 10th Abraxane treatment and I only have two more to go. I feel like giving up on this drug because of the side effects. It causes pain all over my body, especially in my feet and legs. I have numbness/tingling in my hands and feet, and my tongue has been sore. The pain pills they gave me helps some, but it takes awhile to start working. I keep getting these hot flashes in my face, like I’ve stuck my head in an oven. Feet and ankles are swollen.
I went to the Lymphedema Clinic last week and they gave me a glove to wear for the swelling in my hand. They give you exercises to do to guide the fluid to other lymph gland areas.
Yesterday, I had a CT of my chest and liver and had a bone scan. Doctor wanted to check all that out because of the pain I am having. I hope that all turns out okay. I am ready for the chemo to be done with! I just have to hang in there a little longer. Then I move on to radiation for 8 weeks.
LeAnn
I am reaching towards the end of chemo, I think I have about 4 treatments left. The chemo med, Abraxane, is really starting to kick my butt but I will try to hang in there till the end. There are times when I think I’ve had enough and just don’t give a sh** anymore but I know I have to finish it. I’m having a hard time getting through the day at work, I get these hot flashes in my face which the doctor thinks my ovaries are shutting down. I’m having muscle pain, my fingers and feet have numbness and tingling and my tongue is getting sore. So many complaints! Worried about Gregory too. He’s trying to put up with me and at the same time he’s been in pain too. Hopefully better days will come for both of us. Will write again soon.
LeAnn
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