Well that was fast! Glad I posted my testimony yesterday. Looks like we're definitely in the valley already!
Today was a long day at my hospital in the city. CT scan, MRI, and then monthly appointment with my oncologist. As she came in, I told her I already knew that my scans were bad. I relayed the conversation God and I had - by now my doctor expects such conversations. When this battle is over, my entire cancer team will have testimonies to share! And she nodded in agreement, my brain MRI bit. In my words of 20 years ago, my MRI sucked. I went from having 13 brain mets (tumors) to ">50" ( to those that hated their 6th grade math teacher and didn't learn the alligator trick where the alligator opens his mouth on the bigger #, that means I have more than 50 tumors in my brain). Yep. It explains the visual issues I was having last night. While preparing dinner I lost my peripheral vision in my right eye, I could only see out of the left side of my right eye, and had an excruciating pain in my left eye, made making dinner a challenge BUT I still made a mean white chicken chili!
I was NOT expecting such a drastic change, even with knowing bad news were coming, this was more then I expected. To know that my brain mets quadrupled in number was a shock to the system. I won't lie, I'm scared. It's overwhelming. Even knowing something dreaded was coming, I feel this is more than a valley. FIFTY feels like a deep pit, a quicksand hole, not a valley with a path out. I'm thankful though that God prepared me for this, I don't deserve such mercy and I don't know why ME He is sharing information regarding future steps my path with me and not with other cancer fighters but I really want to believe that He tries to talk with every cancer patient but that not everyone is hearing or is able to hear right now or maybe is refusing to hear Him and instead wants to stay in denial of His existence under the cover of 'athiest' or 'agnostic' or some Eastern Hindu/Buddhism belief.
So the plan is to try Temodar, an oral chemo drug that has shown progress with melanoma tumors in the brain. The plan is to get the brain tumors stable for 8 weeks and then slide into a clinical trial of a PD-1 medicine and hopefully the PD-1 medicine really kick the crud out of my cancer.
Tonight I'm emotional drained so thankfully for you, my post is short. I appreciate prayers as we start down into this valley.
Friday, January 4, 2013
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Valleys
I'm a notorious non-sleeper, at least at night. I love to sleep all day. I would be the best midnight radio DJ or bartender. But Joe won't let me do either job so I try to sleep like the rest of the family. Normally though I stay up late and either read, go downstairs and find a sappy movie to watch, blog, or talk to God. About three weeks ago, I was in bed having a late night chat with God and felt that heavy presence slowly blanket me like I felt before, back in August of 2011 on my late night drive from Pennsylvania. So I knew some important information was about to be relayed to me so I made sure to be attentive. Its so surreal when I get blessed with these conversations with God because they can happen anywhere - driving a 2003 Honda Odyssey in Pennsylvania or in the middle of the night in my bed, next to my peacefully sleeping husband. There doesn't seem to be rules as to where/when/attire when getting to listen to God speak to you, which is awesome, because if there was a clothing standard I would never get to listen to God's voice! Thankfully God is so accepting, He is willing to pass along important information to me in a pair of Hollister sleep pants and a t-shirt from our old Aviano Sea Dragons swim team!
This particular night I felt more like it was the Holy Spirit speaking to me, not God Himself, but the Holy Spirit. Don't ask me how I can tell the difference, but something more casual? I don't know. But it just felt like it more of the Holy Spirit of the Trinity speaking to me. And what was expressed to me were less words than a feeling I need to understand.
Without confusing my readers anymore, I basically understood that a deep valley is coming. Soon. It will hurt. It will be the closest I will come to dying. BUT I won't die. And, the worse news of the message, that Joe's faith would be tested. Some of the immediate thoughts I had were in pertaining to going through a clinical trial. My oncologist has been trying to get me into a clinical trial, there are a few promising new drugs that have been in clinical trials and the hope is that I can get into one of them because my current medicine, Zelboraf, seems to starting to plateau, it has an average work timeline of 7 months and I've been on it for 9 months. In the past few months a large subcutaneous tumor has appeared on my left top rib and won't stop growing. Also my brain tumors suddenly started growing last month and caused brain seizures in my left frontal lobe. So my tumors appear to have started awakening again. At the last appointment I had with my oncologist she brought up standard chemotherapy even if we can't get my tumors to stop growing. So I have to assume the valley is regarding to a new, more powerful treatment. Before the brain tumors started growing, I was one week away from starting a clinical trial and my doctor assured me that the pain issues of the clinical trial had been worked out and while receiving the experimental drug, I would also be receiving an iv cocktail of Demerol, Benedryl, and other medicines to alleviate any pains from the experimental drug - gulp. So there appears to be pain involved with some of these clinical trials that would definitely be considered a valley.
I spoke back (!!) to the Holy Spirit AND also to God and asserted that I will MARCH into the valley without any fear, I will take any pain and not complain, I will take on this valley BUT He needs to promise to deliver me out of the valley fully restored in my health, fully healed, and deliver me back to my family because I'm selfish and can't give up my beautiful family and cannot be without them. I promised God that Joe can have his faith tested and that Joe has such a strong relationship with God and has such strong faith that any testing of his faith will just cause his faith to grow that much deeper. I have complete confidence that Joe can be tested to his core and be able to always find a molecule of faith left to hold onto.
But I would be lying by saying the conversation didn't bother me. I would be lying if I said I'm not scared. I am totally scared! I'm also resolved to have to go through it so its like knowing the flu shot is coming, you know you need it but that it's going to hurt. So you try to relax your bicep and focus on the crack in the tile on the floor instead of looking at the needle in the nurse's hand.
So right now I'm doing all I can do. I am waiting to go into the valley and while I wait, I ready myself with prayer. I try not to drive myself crazy and wonder what is going to happen, I have a pretty good vibe of what will happen, instead I am trying to focus on getting on with my life after coming out of the valley. I am trying to focus on appreciating God's mercy by having these conversations with me instead of thinking about of the subject of the conversation. God has been communicating with Joe and I like this since (at least) the beginning of 2007 with an amazing dream He gave Joe and somehow I felt as Joe was dreaming it- I'll detail another time.
So, stay alert with me. I don't think there will be alarms going off or a buzzer that goes off to let me know 'You have started down into the valley Angi', instead I think I'll just start descending and then one day I'll realize that I have been in the valley. I might already in the valley. I gained 19 pounds in the past two weeks thanks to Decadron, a steroid I am on to keep the brain tumors from causing inflammation in my brain, so my face is puffed up and I have fat deposits all around my ribcage, breastbone, and neck, so a simple hug can causes insane pain. I don't think any of my jeans will even fit. Tomorrow's oncologist appointment will be in stretchy exercise pants! Thankfully I'm being weaned off of the steroid so hopefully the extra weight plus sensitive fat deposits will start to disappear. So maybe I've already tread a few steps into the valley. Does it matter though? No matter what, its coming. And the deal is that I will MARCH into it, I won't pansy tip-toe into it or sidestep into it with shaking knees - nope, I charged God that I will MARCH into the valley as long as He promises to bring me out of it fully restored. And He agreed. We pinky sweared. So do me a favor, grab a poster board, write some motivational phrase on it, stand along the valley's edge, hold up your sign for me to see, shout to me, and pray for me to have strength as I go through the valley and pray for Joe to be able to hold onto his faith throughout the depths of the valley.
"God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though the waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging....The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress" Psalm 46: 1-7
This particular night I felt more like it was the Holy Spirit speaking to me, not God Himself, but the Holy Spirit. Don't ask me how I can tell the difference, but something more casual? I don't know. But it just felt like it more of the Holy Spirit of the Trinity speaking to me. And what was expressed to me were less words than a feeling I need to understand.
Without confusing my readers anymore, I basically understood that a deep valley is coming. Soon. It will hurt. It will be the closest I will come to dying. BUT I won't die. And, the worse news of the message, that Joe's faith would be tested. Some of the immediate thoughts I had were in pertaining to going through a clinical trial. My oncologist has been trying to get me into a clinical trial, there are a few promising new drugs that have been in clinical trials and the hope is that I can get into one of them because my current medicine, Zelboraf, seems to starting to plateau, it has an average work timeline of 7 months and I've been on it for 9 months. In the past few months a large subcutaneous tumor has appeared on my left top rib and won't stop growing. Also my brain tumors suddenly started growing last month and caused brain seizures in my left frontal lobe. So my tumors appear to have started awakening again. At the last appointment I had with my oncologist she brought up standard chemotherapy even if we can't get my tumors to stop growing. So I have to assume the valley is regarding to a new, more powerful treatment. Before the brain tumors started growing, I was one week away from starting a clinical trial and my doctor assured me that the pain issues of the clinical trial had been worked out and while receiving the experimental drug, I would also be receiving an iv cocktail of Demerol, Benedryl, and other medicines to alleviate any pains from the experimental drug - gulp. So there appears to be pain involved with some of these clinical trials that would definitely be considered a valley.
I spoke back (!!) to the Holy Spirit AND also to God and asserted that I will MARCH into the valley without any fear, I will take any pain and not complain, I will take on this valley BUT He needs to promise to deliver me out of the valley fully restored in my health, fully healed, and deliver me back to my family because I'm selfish and can't give up my beautiful family and cannot be without them. I promised God that Joe can have his faith tested and that Joe has such a strong relationship with God and has such strong faith that any testing of his faith will just cause his faith to grow that much deeper. I have complete confidence that Joe can be tested to his core and be able to always find a molecule of faith left to hold onto.
But I would be lying by saying the conversation didn't bother me. I would be lying if I said I'm not scared. I am totally scared! I'm also resolved to have to go through it so its like knowing the flu shot is coming, you know you need it but that it's going to hurt. So you try to relax your bicep and focus on the crack in the tile on the floor instead of looking at the needle in the nurse's hand.
So right now I'm doing all I can do. I am waiting to go into the valley and while I wait, I ready myself with prayer. I try not to drive myself crazy and wonder what is going to happen, I have a pretty good vibe of what will happen, instead I am trying to focus on getting on with my life after coming out of the valley. I am trying to focus on appreciating God's mercy by having these conversations with me instead of thinking about of the subject of the conversation. God has been communicating with Joe and I like this since (at least) the beginning of 2007 with an amazing dream He gave Joe and somehow I felt as Joe was dreaming it- I'll detail another time.
So, stay alert with me. I don't think there will be alarms going off or a buzzer that goes off to let me know 'You have started down into the valley Angi', instead I think I'll just start descending and then one day I'll realize that I have been in the valley. I might already in the valley. I gained 19 pounds in the past two weeks thanks to Decadron, a steroid I am on to keep the brain tumors from causing inflammation in my brain, so my face is puffed up and I have fat deposits all around my ribcage, breastbone, and neck, so a simple hug can causes insane pain. I don't think any of my jeans will even fit. Tomorrow's oncologist appointment will be in stretchy exercise pants! Thankfully I'm being weaned off of the steroid so hopefully the extra weight plus sensitive fat deposits will start to disappear. So maybe I've already tread a few steps into the valley. Does it matter though? No matter what, its coming. And the deal is that I will MARCH into it, I won't pansy tip-toe into it or sidestep into it with shaking knees - nope, I charged God that I will MARCH into the valley as long as He promises to bring me out of it fully restored. And He agreed. We pinky sweared. So do me a favor, grab a poster board, write some motivational phrase on it, stand along the valley's edge, hold up your sign for me to see, shout to me, and pray for me to have strength as I go through the valley and pray for Joe to be able to hold onto his faith throughout the depths of the valley.
"God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though the waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging....The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress" Psalm 46: 1-7
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Ti voglio bene
"Ti voglio bene" are, in my opinion, the most touching words in Italian. Simply they mean "I wish you well" but there's a deeper meaning to them; I want the best for you, I wish you get everything you want, I love you so much I will lasso the moon and give it to you (George Bailey's It's a Wonderful Life style). My father-in-law always says it, he ends text messages or emails with it. It's almost his signature and when he says it, it means the deepest of the meanings of it and you love my father-in-law more because of how he uses those words. My husband is truly his father's son, there's no son who walks closer in the shadow of his father, without trying or wanting to. My father-in-law, an emigrant from Nicastro, Calabria, Southern Italy, ever the romantic, brought his new wife to America for a better life, raised four children in the new land, saw two of them graduate from college, saw one son (my husband) become an Officer in the Air Force, bought a beautiful house with cash, owned his own pizzeria, and lived the American dream. All the while while working 110%, never complaining, loving with fullness rarely seen in people, and yet with a shadow of sadness in the corner of his brown eyes betraying the pain he has experienced in his life while trying to mask it with his full, broad smile. My husband's father has seen his pain and sorrow in his life with an alcoholic abusive father who basically forced Joe's father to leave home barely older than 10 to find work in the restaurants of northern Italy. He persevered, he adapted, he learned how to cook, he joined the military, he loved, he continued to smile.
I have an old passport picture of my father-in-law, it's a picture of my husband. Same broad square jaw, same challenge in the mouth, same tenseness in his muscles, same dark eyebrows, same wariness in the eyes. Now Joe shares the betraying shadow of sadness in his eyes, Joe unfortunately has had his own experiences with deep sadness, much I'm sure at the doing of the person who loves him most but doesn't seem to always show it best.
It can be unnerving to look at my father-in-law and know that my husband is growing into my father-in-law but I will could be less blessed! Every quality my father-in-law has makes him a strong Christian father and leader of his household and these traits thankfully were passed down to his son, my husband.
My husband is who brought me back closer to God. When we were dating and when we were newly married, I thought it was good enough to claim to be Catholic, I wasn't in the mood to give more to God than that. Joe was Pentecostal, I had no idea what that was and I didn't care because in my mind, Catholics stay Catholic, even if only in name. Then we had our first child and I wanted our children raised in a Christian house so I returned to my Catholic roots, immediately baptized our daughter, attended a service or two, but that's it.
By the time our second daughter was born, I knew I wasn't Catholic anymore but I was starving spiritually. I felt a craving and we started 'church shopping'. If you have never church shopped, it's not something to take on lightly. Every door of a new church we would be greeted with strangers with either wary eyes, blasé eyes, hungry eyes, or cheerful eyes. Imagination raced! We witnessed many different styles of attempting to praise God, we slipped out of a few churches mid-sermon, we returned 'Get to Know You' cards empty or only partially filled out, scared of what some of these people would do with our address! Finally, we defeatedly tried the base chapel. We walked in and felt right at home! With a Pentecostal evangelistic preacher Chaplain Tate! I wasn't sure what we would find on base but it was not him! Through his colorful sermons (What do you call a person who attends church only on Easter and Christmas? Cheesters) and bold words ("If your neighbor's house is burning down, would you just walk away? The same with his soul! If he is living a damned life, do not just walk away but save him!") I slowly came closer to God than I had been since a child. It was nice to be close again to God and know He had been waiting all this time for me to return to His side.
As what happens with military families, we moved but the seed was planted. From Luke Air Force Base, in Arizona, to New Mexico, Italy, and now in New York, my faith was completely restored and my walk with God continued to strengthen. And we needed it. Just like everyone, we faced trials and, through our relationship with God, we faced and overcame some horrible trials. My mother passed away in 2003, our marriage was tested, Joe was laid off while we lived overseas, and then we have the cancer trial that we are currently going through. And through it all, God has been there to walk us through whatever the trial.
My dad and I were having a conversation recently regarding my cancer and God's hand in it. My father was raised in a more confusing religious experience which has led him to be more skeptical of God's existence and role in our lives. I believe he believes in God but just not has figured out how to process the information. My father was raised Lutheran and would attend church on Sundays but he also had grandparents who were a pair of country preachers who preached their own style of version of Christianity and held seances on the side! My father and my uncle remember being dragged to basements to watch seances and remember cones and tables moving - that would be enough to confuse any child on what to think of God! So my father has 'tolerated' my Christianity rebirth and grew to stop making fun of my prayers before meals (something we didn't do when I was young), and through this cancer trial I truly believe he has started to let go of some of his skeptical views and might actually be starting to accept the role God has in our (and his) life.
Back to the conversation my father and I were having....My dad said it wasn't just fair. It wasn't fair that if there is a God, why would He give me cancer. There are terrible, nasty people in the world and why aren't they given cancer, why did God give my father's daughter cancer, and give his daughter cancer so many times. I corrected my father; God didn't give me the cancer. God doesn't deal out afflictions but He is here to help us get through them. I've always loved science, I thought I was going to be a doctor when I grew up, and I remember when I was very young, maybe 6, and recognizing at that young age that our world was getting populated exponentially quickly. To complicate matters, as our health continued to get better and illnesses were being cured or eradicated, people would be living longer, adding to the growing population. I realized at that age that our planet is a stationary size and that at some time, it would not be able to accommodate the amount of people that continue to be born. So at this young age I thought about a government agency who's sole role was controlling population. It would basically be a hit squad, assassins who would be in charge of randomly pick off an assigned number of people every day. These would do their jobs with precision and dedication without emotion, they would be able to look an old man in the eye and then shoot his grandchild whom he was holding the hand of and then walk a few blocks away and shoot a middle age man who was taking a smoke break from his corporate job. And by doing this, the government would be able to control the population (like deer season) and keep the world from falling into a global famine or economic downward spiral from supporting such a huge population. Yes, I had a cold view I guess on reality at such a young age! But I feel I had an idea on why bad things happen. Because they have to. Earthquakes, heart attacks, cancer are nature's way of trying to keep population in check, ergo, we have death in our lives. But having a strong relationship with God helps us get through the disasters in our lives. Holding onto Him helps us make sense of the tragedies in this life.
I don't ask God 'Why?' as much anymore. It doesn't really matter. And I know at the base of it, there isn't really a 'Why', it just happened. Just like why my mom's heart and lungs just decided to stop working on June 3rd nine years ago, leaving my father a widow. Instead I try to focus on the constant counseling God is giving me as I go through this. I'm fortunate that I have been able to hear God talk to me throughout this trial and God has even provided visions and dreams to me through this trial. He has said and shown me amazing things through this trial and each experience has embolden me to be able to get through this trial. My goal is to share all of those visions and conversations with my blog audience and try to help the readers to learn how to pick out God's voice and be able to recognize His voice so everyone can finally hear Him because He is always speaking to all of us, we just tune Him out because of all the other voices and distractions we have going on around us. His voice becomes like the air conditioner or fan humming in the room, you know its there but you learned how to tune it out.
So, ti voglio bene, I truly wish you all well. Have a wonderful day today and embrace the beginning of this new year. Instead of focusing on resolutions, focus on something you are grateful for. If you can find something new every day to be grateful for, you will realize how blessed you are and will live a much happier life. We are raised to be focused on what we don't have, to focus on obtaining those material items that will make us feel complete and happy, but the world has become a place in which we continually want more and more 'things' to try to feel happy but we never seem to feel satisfied, regardless of what items we surround ourselves with. So instead, try to focus on things you already have in your life (or don't have in your life like cancer) and thank God for those things every day. In short time you will start to change your focus and realize you are truly blessed.
And Happy Birthday to my father-in-law. Thank you for instilling your principles in your son. Thank you for being the wonderful father you are so that my husband had such a great role model to emulate. Ti voglio bene Dad.
I have an old passport picture of my father-in-law, it's a picture of my husband. Same broad square jaw, same challenge in the mouth, same tenseness in his muscles, same dark eyebrows, same wariness in the eyes. Now Joe shares the betraying shadow of sadness in his eyes, Joe unfortunately has had his own experiences with deep sadness, much I'm sure at the doing of the person who loves him most but doesn't seem to always show it best.
It can be unnerving to look at my father-in-law and know that my husband is growing into my father-in-law but I will could be less blessed! Every quality my father-in-law has makes him a strong Christian father and leader of his household and these traits thankfully were passed down to his son, my husband.
My husband is who brought me back closer to God. When we were dating and when we were newly married, I thought it was good enough to claim to be Catholic, I wasn't in the mood to give more to God than that. Joe was Pentecostal, I had no idea what that was and I didn't care because in my mind, Catholics stay Catholic, even if only in name. Then we had our first child and I wanted our children raised in a Christian house so I returned to my Catholic roots, immediately baptized our daughter, attended a service or two, but that's it.
By the time our second daughter was born, I knew I wasn't Catholic anymore but I was starving spiritually. I felt a craving and we started 'church shopping'. If you have never church shopped, it's not something to take on lightly. Every door of a new church we would be greeted with strangers with either wary eyes, blasé eyes, hungry eyes, or cheerful eyes. Imagination raced! We witnessed many different styles of attempting to praise God, we slipped out of a few churches mid-sermon, we returned 'Get to Know You' cards empty or only partially filled out, scared of what some of these people would do with our address! Finally, we defeatedly tried the base chapel. We walked in and felt right at home! With a Pentecostal evangelistic preacher Chaplain Tate! I wasn't sure what we would find on base but it was not him! Through his colorful sermons (What do you call a person who attends church only on Easter and Christmas? Cheesters) and bold words ("If your neighbor's house is burning down, would you just walk away? The same with his soul! If he is living a damned life, do not just walk away but save him!") I slowly came closer to God than I had been since a child. It was nice to be close again to God and know He had been waiting all this time for me to return to His side.
As what happens with military families, we moved but the seed was planted. From Luke Air Force Base, in Arizona, to New Mexico, Italy, and now in New York, my faith was completely restored and my walk with God continued to strengthen. And we needed it. Just like everyone, we faced trials and, through our relationship with God, we faced and overcame some horrible trials. My mother passed away in 2003, our marriage was tested, Joe was laid off while we lived overseas, and then we have the cancer trial that we are currently going through. And through it all, God has been there to walk us through whatever the trial.
My dad and I were having a conversation recently regarding my cancer and God's hand in it. My father was raised in a more confusing religious experience which has led him to be more skeptical of God's existence and role in our lives. I believe he believes in God but just not has figured out how to process the information. My father was raised Lutheran and would attend church on Sundays but he also had grandparents who were a pair of country preachers who preached their own style of version of Christianity and held seances on the side! My father and my uncle remember being dragged to basements to watch seances and remember cones and tables moving - that would be enough to confuse any child on what to think of God! So my father has 'tolerated' my Christianity rebirth and grew to stop making fun of my prayers before meals (something we didn't do when I was young), and through this cancer trial I truly believe he has started to let go of some of his skeptical views and might actually be starting to accept the role God has in our (and his) life.
Back to the conversation my father and I were having....My dad said it wasn't just fair. It wasn't fair that if there is a God, why would He give me cancer. There are terrible, nasty people in the world and why aren't they given cancer, why did God give my father's daughter cancer, and give his daughter cancer so many times. I corrected my father; God didn't give me the cancer. God doesn't deal out afflictions but He is here to help us get through them. I've always loved science, I thought I was going to be a doctor when I grew up, and I remember when I was very young, maybe 6, and recognizing at that young age that our world was getting populated exponentially quickly. To complicate matters, as our health continued to get better and illnesses were being cured or eradicated, people would be living longer, adding to the growing population. I realized at that age that our planet is a stationary size and that at some time, it would not be able to accommodate the amount of people that continue to be born. So at this young age I thought about a government agency who's sole role was controlling population. It would basically be a hit squad, assassins who would be in charge of randomly pick off an assigned number of people every day. These would do their jobs with precision and dedication without emotion, they would be able to look an old man in the eye and then shoot his grandchild whom he was holding the hand of and then walk a few blocks away and shoot a middle age man who was taking a smoke break from his corporate job. And by doing this, the government would be able to control the population (like deer season) and keep the world from falling into a global famine or economic downward spiral from supporting such a huge population. Yes, I had a cold view I guess on reality at such a young age! But I feel I had an idea on why bad things happen. Because they have to. Earthquakes, heart attacks, cancer are nature's way of trying to keep population in check, ergo, we have death in our lives. But having a strong relationship with God helps us get through the disasters in our lives. Holding onto Him helps us make sense of the tragedies in this life.
I don't ask God 'Why?' as much anymore. It doesn't really matter. And I know at the base of it, there isn't really a 'Why', it just happened. Just like why my mom's heart and lungs just decided to stop working on June 3rd nine years ago, leaving my father a widow. Instead I try to focus on the constant counseling God is giving me as I go through this. I'm fortunate that I have been able to hear God talk to me throughout this trial and God has even provided visions and dreams to me through this trial. He has said and shown me amazing things through this trial and each experience has embolden me to be able to get through this trial. My goal is to share all of those visions and conversations with my blog audience and try to help the readers to learn how to pick out God's voice and be able to recognize His voice so everyone can finally hear Him because He is always speaking to all of us, we just tune Him out because of all the other voices and distractions we have going on around us. His voice becomes like the air conditioner or fan humming in the room, you know its there but you learned how to tune it out.
So, ti voglio bene, I truly wish you all well. Have a wonderful day today and embrace the beginning of this new year. Instead of focusing on resolutions, focus on something you are grateful for. If you can find something new every day to be grateful for, you will realize how blessed you are and will live a much happier life. We are raised to be focused on what we don't have, to focus on obtaining those material items that will make us feel complete and happy, but the world has become a place in which we continually want more and more 'things' to try to feel happy but we never seem to feel satisfied, regardless of what items we surround ourselves with. So instead, try to focus on things you already have in your life (or don't have in your life like cancer) and thank God for those things every day. In short time you will start to change your focus and realize you are truly blessed.
And Happy Birthday to my father-in-law. Thank you for instilling your principles in your son. Thank you for being the wonderful father you are so that my husband had such a great role model to emulate. Ti voglio bene Dad.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Buongiorno in nuovo giorno
January 1, 2013
If you asked me a year ago if I would be here right now, I don't know if I could give you a firm answer. A year ago I had just finished my first treatment for StageIV melanoma. Everything was so new a year ago, the word to describe that time was UPHEAVAL. This January I guess the word to describe the days of late is ENDURANCE. Last year, yesterday, was so long. The longest year of my life. My most painful year. My saddest year. My angriest year. My scared year. My strongest year.
I started this silly blog in the summer of 2011. My husband had just deployed and I decided to take those six months of his deployment and train for a 5k, which was almost a joke because Angi doesn't run! I dream of running but I don't have the discipline for running BUT I was willing to try, especially with the incentive of having a gorgeous toned body for my husband to come home to :)
Quickly this blog changed direction as the summer of 2011 turned into the summer of health issues and when my life forever was altered - or better yet, the train tracks I had guided my caboose on for 37 years were suddenly ripped out of the ground, my train flew off the tracks, and my train came to a screeching halt. Since then I've crawled, walked, jogged, hitchhiked, been carried, and even piggybacked on my husband.
Right after my husband left for his deployment it just seemed I got sick and couldn't get better. First I spent a month with strep throat twice. Then I got shingles right before my 37th birthday! Then I got a golfball-sized lump on the left side of my throat. Right away my mind went to melanoma. The year before, in July of 2010, I had my second melanoma removed from above my right temple. Because of its size, lymph nodes below my jawline were removed as well. When I felt this lump on the left side of my throat, right away I worried that it was melanoma in my lymph node.
The nurse I saw didn't help - who tells a patient "I don't know what it is but of masses I've seen THAT big haven't been good"?? Thankfully I was able to get squeezed into an ultrasound that day! A month passed that started with me being told I had a good old fashioned goiter that 50% of the population has and then a biopsy turned the doctors' opinions on a dime and told me I had Hurthle Cell Thyroid cancer. Come again?
There are certain events in your life that always remain frozen in your mind, you are not even voluntarily forget when you were at that moment, like 9-11, everyone knows where they were and will never forget. If you are ever diagnosed with cancer, that's one of those moments. I know what I was doing and where I was with every diagnosis. With this particular cancer diagnosis, I was at Pymatuning Lake in Ohio. It was August 17, right about noon. It was C's 13th birthday. We had spent the girls' birthday week in Ohio as well as attend my cousin's son's wedding, it was to be a week of celebration. C had heard of the insane population of catfish at Pymatuning Lake where the fish literally could walk on each other for food. She had wanted her grandfather to take her there. We were just wrapping up contributing to the obesity of the Pymatuning catfish and were just getting into our van when my phone rang.
Caller ID kept me from being surprised and I knew the biopsy was due back any day. The nurse asked me if I could come in that day, after explaining we were in Ohio not in New York, I was put on hold and I was greeted on the phone with the endocrinologist. Words just hung in the summer heat as I blasted the air conditioning in the van. I paced around the van, hearing the words and then saw them float in the air before me. Cancer. Hurthle Cell. Aggressive more type of thyroid cancer. Large mass. Surgery soon. Iodine radiation treatment. Isolation. Happy 13th birthday C, lets have a cheery drive home discussing those crazy catfish....
And that's what I tried to do. I tried to make the phone call looked like it didn't really bother me, I did tell my dad and the girls of the diagnosis, my girls have dealt with melanoma twice so the C word is not as scary in our house like other houses. I tried to brush off the news, compared it to the melanoma surgery I had the year before and did my best to bury the panic that was starting to set in as I drove back to my father's house to get ready for C's birthday dinner - I didn't have room or time to deal with the news at that time. I never needed my husband as much as I needed him at that moment but he was deployed, I was on my own, thankfully in God's Hand but I still felt alone without Joe. Being without him complicated the surgery the doctor said I needed very soon because of the particular cancer's aggressiveness. Not only did I need to have surgery but an entire week of isolation after iodine radiation to ensure any pieces of thyroid left beind were killed. The isolation is needed so that the radiation doesn't damage the thyroid gland to anyone who gets too close to the person being treatment. How was I to have surgery and then spend a week in isolation with my husband deployed? Questions kept rising up in my throat.
On the drive home to Long Island, along Route80 that stretches across Pennsylvania, it was past midnight and pitch black outside and my girls had fallen asleep. I had the local Christian radio station and it seemed like every song pertained to my trial and before long I was cruising on Route80, sobbing, pleading, and praying. I pleaded with God to take the cancer away. It was more scary to me than the other cancers I had because the treatment plan sounded so overwhelming and I had no idea how I would do a week of isolation. I worried about being told it was a more aggressive form of thyroid cancer. I worried as to what that meant. I just kept crying and praying, and my girls kept sleeping. Then, in the pitch black, on the quiet Route80, I suddenly felt this comforting 'heaviness' blanket me. Once I felt 'wrapped in' this blanket, I heard God spoke to me.
I can't remember what God spoke like, I can't tell you it sounded like Darth Vader's father or Morgan Freeman from Evan Almighty but I remember what His voice felt like. It was surety, safety, confidence, security, familiar. He told me that 'the thyroid cancer was nothing. But that something bigger was coming" but He promised to "walk through it with us". I was awestruck that I was having this conversation with God - and yet here I was still driving, probably 80mph, as I'm having a conversation with our Lord! It wasn't the words that affected me as much as the feeling the words gave me. I didn't panic from the news. I felt like I was just to confirm the information I was being given. I remember feeling like I was being briefed on an upcoming military mission and I had no personal emotion connection to the information. I didn't even feel joyful over hearing that the thyroid cancer would be 'nothing', it was more of a fact I was absorbing. It was more of a feeling of sadness acceptance of 'something bigger' that was coming.
The next day I skyped with my husband and shared the night before's event. He and I both prayed and asked for guidance and asked to be told of what was coming. It took less than two weeks for us to find out.
My husband's deployed commander was extremely gracious and the base had Joe on a flight home within two weeks and he was able to come home for a week for my surgery and week of isolation. Before his return, my time was filled with trips into NYC (by myself!) to my hospital for blood work and other pre-surgical appointments like a standard chest x-ray. The chest x-ray was the last test I needed done before seeing my surgeon to discuss the surgery that I was to have in two days. The week was getting busy with my husband coming home the next day and then trying to finish up last minute things around the house before surgery. I wanted to quickly see my surgeon, go over the surgery, and then book it out of the city before the rush hour traffic would turn my one hour trip to three or four hours.
My surgeon came in and I could tell something was wrong. He started out his conversation about a mass in my lung and that I needed a biopsy to determine what it was. I thought my surgeon must have had a long day because he must have me confused with another patient - I was there to discuss thyroid surgery, not something in my lung. I was about to politely remind him why I was there when he said I needed the lung biopsy as soon as I healed from the thyroid surgery. I was confused and kept wondering why he felt so urgent for me to see the pulmonary oncologist doctor on the business card he was trying to push into my hand.
The thyroid surgery went amazingly easy, less than an hour and the biopsy was misdiagnosed. Instead of Hurthle Cell cancer, the huge mass was benign Hurthle cells with two very small micro-cancers of papillary cancer - the most 'passive' type of thyroid cancer. After the surgery, my surgeon told me that the normal protocol of such small papillary thyroid cancer is not even removal, just watching. But because the biopsy had come back with the result of an aggressive cancer, surgery was considered necessary. If it wasn't for the erred biopsy, the surgery would not have been scheduled, the chest x-ray would not have been preformed, the mass in my lung wouldn't have been found. Funny how things happen like that.
I healed quickly from the thyroid cancer surgery, in fact within a few days you could hardly see the scar. Joe returned to his deployed location and life went back to 'normal' as we waited for Joe to return for good from his deployment in November. In the meantime I met with the pulmonary oncologist, scheduled a biopsy, and tried to not be anxious about what was sitting in my left lung. The lung doctor didn't believe it was thyroid or melanoma, or even lung cancer. He said the mass was 'too perfect, too round', most probably a benign growth that he felt would not even operated on. H was so confident that it was just a benign mass that he scheduled a lung biopsy for once Joe returned from his deployment, in a month and a half.
This time it was November 17th, 2011. I was in the van, Joe was halfway through the turn into my hospital's parking garage when I received the phone call telling me I had cancer. The lung cancer's nurse wanted to give us a heads up prior to the office appointment we had in about an hour. Melanoma in my lung. StageIV. She said she was sorry. I thanked her for the call. Numb. That's all I felt. She had talked to me the week before. She and I discussed that IF it was cancer, we would want it to be lung cancer and not melanoma because if it was 'just' lung cancer, it was localized in just the lung so the treatment would just be removing a portion of my lung but if it was melanoma, that meant the cancer was in my blood stream and in addition to surgery, some sort of chemotherapy was required. So we rooted for lung cancer. Instead I had melanoma. In my lung. They were able to compare the biopsied cells to the melanoma I had removed on my right temple in July of 2010 and they matched. Despite quickly having surgery to remove the suspicious mole (it appeared on my temple in January of 2010, I went to my dermatologist right away, had several consults because of where it was and had it removed by July), despite having the Sentinel Node Biopsy and having several lymph nodes removed, despite those lymph nodes removed were clear of cancer, at least ONE melanoma cell escaped. Damn it! I had melanoma in my lung!
Before the end of the week I would discover I had a 3cm mass in my left lung and 13 small bb-size tumors scattered in my brain. I felt none of these foreign invaders, I still don't feel those. I feel others but none of the original ones. The ones in my brain could have kept growing without me knowing - I have migraines, I would have thought any pain or visual changes were just associated to my migraines. I didn't have a cough, wheeze or phlegm from the tumor in my lung, I still don't. It was only because of the thyroid cancer chest x-ray that the melanoma was revealed. Because of that, I always thank God for the thyroid cancer and find it to be a blessing.
So this is how I wound up on this path. So that's why this fat girl is running right now. I started running the second I was told of the StageIV melanoma and I haven't stopped yet. What else am I to do? Stop and give up? A friend recently told me that she feels I am so brave and I replied that I am definitely not brave but if you were to fall into a pit of vipers, what can you do but try to get out? You would fight off the snakes and try to climb out. What else can you do? Bend into a ball and cry? Who does that?? How does that help things? If I'm going out, IF SOMETHING'S TAKING ME OUT, I'm going out fighting! So that's why I run. Because I have to. Joe and I have been running this journey over a year. Its been challenging, scary, painful, sad, frustrating, but we haven't quit. We hold hands, grit our teeth, and keep throwing a foot in front of the other. A new year and we continue to run.
If you asked me a year ago if I would be here right now, I don't know if I could give you a firm answer. A year ago I had just finished my first treatment for StageIV melanoma. Everything was so new a year ago, the word to describe that time was UPHEAVAL. This January I guess the word to describe the days of late is ENDURANCE. Last year, yesterday, was so long. The longest year of my life. My most painful year. My saddest year. My angriest year. My scared year. My strongest year.
I started this silly blog in the summer of 2011. My husband had just deployed and I decided to take those six months of his deployment and train for a 5k, which was almost a joke because Angi doesn't run! I dream of running but I don't have the discipline for running BUT I was willing to try, especially with the incentive of having a gorgeous toned body for my husband to come home to :)
Quickly this blog changed direction as the summer of 2011 turned into the summer of health issues and when my life forever was altered - or better yet, the train tracks I had guided my caboose on for 37 years were suddenly ripped out of the ground, my train flew off the tracks, and my train came to a screeching halt. Since then I've crawled, walked, jogged, hitchhiked, been carried, and even piggybacked on my husband.
Right after my husband left for his deployment it just seemed I got sick and couldn't get better. First I spent a month with strep throat twice. Then I got shingles right before my 37th birthday! Then I got a golfball-sized lump on the left side of my throat. Right away my mind went to melanoma. The year before, in July of 2010, I had my second melanoma removed from above my right temple. Because of its size, lymph nodes below my jawline were removed as well. When I felt this lump on the left side of my throat, right away I worried that it was melanoma in my lymph node.
The nurse I saw didn't help - who tells a patient "I don't know what it is but of masses I've seen THAT big haven't been good"?? Thankfully I was able to get squeezed into an ultrasound that day! A month passed that started with me being told I had a good old fashioned goiter that 50% of the population has and then a biopsy turned the doctors' opinions on a dime and told me I had Hurthle Cell Thyroid cancer. Come again?
There are certain events in your life that always remain frozen in your mind, you are not even voluntarily forget when you were at that moment, like 9-11, everyone knows where they were and will never forget. If you are ever diagnosed with cancer, that's one of those moments. I know what I was doing and where I was with every diagnosis. With this particular cancer diagnosis, I was at Pymatuning Lake in Ohio. It was August 17, right about noon. It was C's 13th birthday. We had spent the girls' birthday week in Ohio as well as attend my cousin's son's wedding, it was to be a week of celebration. C had heard of the insane population of catfish at Pymatuning Lake where the fish literally could walk on each other for food. She had wanted her grandfather to take her there. We were just wrapping up contributing to the obesity of the Pymatuning catfish and were just getting into our van when my phone rang.
Caller ID kept me from being surprised and I knew the biopsy was due back any day. The nurse asked me if I could come in that day, after explaining we were in Ohio not in New York, I was put on hold and I was greeted on the phone with the endocrinologist. Words just hung in the summer heat as I blasted the air conditioning in the van. I paced around the van, hearing the words and then saw them float in the air before me. Cancer. Hurthle Cell. Aggressive more type of thyroid cancer. Large mass. Surgery soon. Iodine radiation treatment. Isolation. Happy 13th birthday C, lets have a cheery drive home discussing those crazy catfish....
And that's what I tried to do. I tried to make the phone call looked like it didn't really bother me, I did tell my dad and the girls of the diagnosis, my girls have dealt with melanoma twice so the C word is not as scary in our house like other houses. I tried to brush off the news, compared it to the melanoma surgery I had the year before and did my best to bury the panic that was starting to set in as I drove back to my father's house to get ready for C's birthday dinner - I didn't have room or time to deal with the news at that time. I never needed my husband as much as I needed him at that moment but he was deployed, I was on my own, thankfully in God's Hand but I still felt alone without Joe. Being without him complicated the surgery the doctor said I needed very soon because of the particular cancer's aggressiveness. Not only did I need to have surgery but an entire week of isolation after iodine radiation to ensure any pieces of thyroid left beind were killed. The isolation is needed so that the radiation doesn't damage the thyroid gland to anyone who gets too close to the person being treatment. How was I to have surgery and then spend a week in isolation with my husband deployed? Questions kept rising up in my throat.
On the drive home to Long Island, along Route80 that stretches across Pennsylvania, it was past midnight and pitch black outside and my girls had fallen asleep. I had the local Christian radio station and it seemed like every song pertained to my trial and before long I was cruising on Route80, sobbing, pleading, and praying. I pleaded with God to take the cancer away. It was more scary to me than the other cancers I had because the treatment plan sounded so overwhelming and I had no idea how I would do a week of isolation. I worried about being told it was a more aggressive form of thyroid cancer. I worried as to what that meant. I just kept crying and praying, and my girls kept sleeping. Then, in the pitch black, on the quiet Route80, I suddenly felt this comforting 'heaviness' blanket me. Once I felt 'wrapped in' this blanket, I heard God spoke to me.
I can't remember what God spoke like, I can't tell you it sounded like Darth Vader's father or Morgan Freeman from Evan Almighty but I remember what His voice felt like. It was surety, safety, confidence, security, familiar. He told me that 'the thyroid cancer was nothing. But that something bigger was coming" but He promised to "walk through it with us". I was awestruck that I was having this conversation with God - and yet here I was still driving, probably 80mph, as I'm having a conversation with our Lord! It wasn't the words that affected me as much as the feeling the words gave me. I didn't panic from the news. I felt like I was just to confirm the information I was being given. I remember feeling like I was being briefed on an upcoming military mission and I had no personal emotion connection to the information. I didn't even feel joyful over hearing that the thyroid cancer would be 'nothing', it was more of a fact I was absorbing. It was more of a feeling of sadness acceptance of 'something bigger' that was coming.
The next day I skyped with my husband and shared the night before's event. He and I both prayed and asked for guidance and asked to be told of what was coming. It took less than two weeks for us to find out.
My husband's deployed commander was extremely gracious and the base had Joe on a flight home within two weeks and he was able to come home for a week for my surgery and week of isolation. Before his return, my time was filled with trips into NYC (by myself!) to my hospital for blood work and other pre-surgical appointments like a standard chest x-ray. The chest x-ray was the last test I needed done before seeing my surgeon to discuss the surgery that I was to have in two days. The week was getting busy with my husband coming home the next day and then trying to finish up last minute things around the house before surgery. I wanted to quickly see my surgeon, go over the surgery, and then book it out of the city before the rush hour traffic would turn my one hour trip to three or four hours.
My surgeon came in and I could tell something was wrong. He started out his conversation about a mass in my lung and that I needed a biopsy to determine what it was. I thought my surgeon must have had a long day because he must have me confused with another patient - I was there to discuss thyroid surgery, not something in my lung. I was about to politely remind him why I was there when he said I needed the lung biopsy as soon as I healed from the thyroid surgery. I was confused and kept wondering why he felt so urgent for me to see the pulmonary oncologist doctor on the business card he was trying to push into my hand.
The thyroid surgery went amazingly easy, less than an hour and the biopsy was misdiagnosed. Instead of Hurthle Cell cancer, the huge mass was benign Hurthle cells with two very small micro-cancers of papillary cancer - the most 'passive' type of thyroid cancer. After the surgery, my surgeon told me that the normal protocol of such small papillary thyroid cancer is not even removal, just watching. But because the biopsy had come back with the result of an aggressive cancer, surgery was considered necessary. If it wasn't for the erred biopsy, the surgery would not have been scheduled, the chest x-ray would not have been preformed, the mass in my lung wouldn't have been found. Funny how things happen like that.
I healed quickly from the thyroid cancer surgery, in fact within a few days you could hardly see the scar. Joe returned to his deployed location and life went back to 'normal' as we waited for Joe to return for good from his deployment in November. In the meantime I met with the pulmonary oncologist, scheduled a biopsy, and tried to not be anxious about what was sitting in my left lung. The lung doctor didn't believe it was thyroid or melanoma, or even lung cancer. He said the mass was 'too perfect, too round', most probably a benign growth that he felt would not even operated on. H was so confident that it was just a benign mass that he scheduled a lung biopsy for once Joe returned from his deployment, in a month and a half.
This time it was November 17th, 2011. I was in the van, Joe was halfway through the turn into my hospital's parking garage when I received the phone call telling me I had cancer. The lung cancer's nurse wanted to give us a heads up prior to the office appointment we had in about an hour. Melanoma in my lung. StageIV. She said she was sorry. I thanked her for the call. Numb. That's all I felt. She had talked to me the week before. She and I discussed that IF it was cancer, we would want it to be lung cancer and not melanoma because if it was 'just' lung cancer, it was localized in just the lung so the treatment would just be removing a portion of my lung but if it was melanoma, that meant the cancer was in my blood stream and in addition to surgery, some sort of chemotherapy was required. So we rooted for lung cancer. Instead I had melanoma. In my lung. They were able to compare the biopsied cells to the melanoma I had removed on my right temple in July of 2010 and they matched. Despite quickly having surgery to remove the suspicious mole (it appeared on my temple in January of 2010, I went to my dermatologist right away, had several consults because of where it was and had it removed by July), despite having the Sentinel Node Biopsy and having several lymph nodes removed, despite those lymph nodes removed were clear of cancer, at least ONE melanoma cell escaped. Damn it! I had melanoma in my lung!
Before the end of the week I would discover I had a 3cm mass in my left lung and 13 small bb-size tumors scattered in my brain. I felt none of these foreign invaders, I still don't feel those. I feel others but none of the original ones. The ones in my brain could have kept growing without me knowing - I have migraines, I would have thought any pain or visual changes were just associated to my migraines. I didn't have a cough, wheeze or phlegm from the tumor in my lung, I still don't. It was only because of the thyroid cancer chest x-ray that the melanoma was revealed. Because of that, I always thank God for the thyroid cancer and find it to be a blessing.
So this is how I wound up on this path. So that's why this fat girl is running right now. I started running the second I was told of the StageIV melanoma and I haven't stopped yet. What else am I to do? Stop and give up? A friend recently told me that she feels I am so brave and I replied that I am definitely not brave but if you were to fall into a pit of vipers, what can you do but try to get out? You would fight off the snakes and try to climb out. What else can you do? Bend into a ball and cry? Who does that?? How does that help things? If I'm going out, IF SOMETHING'S TAKING ME OUT, I'm going out fighting! So that's why I run. Because I have to. Joe and I have been running this journey over a year. Its been challenging, scary, painful, sad, frustrating, but we haven't quit. We hold hands, grit our teeth, and keep throwing a foot in front of the other. A new year and we continue to run.
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