I hope you all are having a wonderful spring so far.  Here in Kansas we seem to be having a lot of rain.  That is okay as we have had a pretty dry year so far.  Sorry for not updating after surgery.  We thought that we would have results back pretty fast, but as usual, we had to exercise our patients and just wait.  We finally found out at Tammy’s follow-up appointment which was a good week if not a week and a half from surgery.  The results were not what we were hoping for, but kind of what we expected.  It was cancer.  I decided to wait until we knew what the next plan was before I put anything out there.  The surgery was a success.  The Dr. thought he removed everything that he could see.  Getting any of it out is a success to us.  She started radiation today on her eye area.  She will have 15 treatments and then will be done.  This is the first time she will be on chemo and radiation at the same time.  This does not usually happen because it can make the side effects a little harder, but the doctors feel that she has been off her chemo so much for surgery that they do not want to risk it while she does radiation.  So we are hoping for the best.

Ok, the bad news is over.  Tammy had her appointment with her oncologist yesterday to go over her CT scan from last week.  She hasn’t had a CT of her chest since the last one in St. Louis.  At that time there had been some growth and nothing was slowing it down.  Well, that is no longer the case.  Tammy’s CEA level, which is the cancer level in her blood dropped from 546 to 146, and from what we could tell from the CT, things look pretty stable in there.  BIG SIGH.  As I’ve mentioned before STABLE is a very good word.

It has been a very long winter to get here, but here we are.  Tammy is feeling good for the most part.  She has been having some problems with her sciatic nerve that has been pretty painful lately, but the Dr. thinks he can hopefully help with that.  She is still gaining strength daily.  She is still fighting low cortisol levels and is still on steroids everyday.  There is no comparison to two months ago.  Each day I see her spirits rise higher as her strength gets better.  When we do finally pull through the valley and we find ourselves basking in the warmth of the plateau I always try to look back and see what I have learned.  I am a questioner, meaning I question everything.  I’m sure I drove my parents nuts.  At this point in our journey my first instinct is to ask, “Why are things working now?”  Is it this chemo, is it the vitamin C, is it all of the prayers that have been said for her, or is it her sheer will to get better?  I don’t know, but I have learned that some times it just “is” and for once I am okay with that.

Thank you for all of your shoulders this winter.  There were days that without all of your help life could have been miserable, but with your help we endured.  We are truly thankful!