At the risk of sounding like Sheldon Cooper...

My brother has been impressed with how many of you continue to follow this blog and to make comments. I am most grateful. as I have told you before it bouys me up, helps me stay strong.
He said it reminded him of a quote from Lord of the Rings:
" You can trust us to stick to you through thick and thin ...But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. Anyway there it is. ... We are horribly afraid but we are coming with you or following you like hounds."

No reason for you to be horribly afraid, of course, but the rest of the sentiment seemed appropriate. And I am so grateful.

Here is an update:
I have my wedge procedure on January 3rd. I am grateful for the change of date: gift-buying and giving is over,  baking and cooking and decorating are finished, holiday celebrations are done. By that time people will be ready to concentrate on work again and that is comforting to me.
This is what I know about the procedure; They will mark the spot where the infection is and my right lung/side of the chest. The Doctor will make 3 small incisions in the skin and then make a slice/wedge on the lung, gathering up the infected spot. They will put a chest tube in and keep my overnight in the hospital. If all goes well, they will release me to come home the next day.

So, that is the goal - for all to go well so I can come home, heal up, and get ready for the big surgery to remove the left side of my lung.

Thank you again for all you do; for the comments, the e-mails, the texts, the cards and most of all the prayers and good wishes. I am thankful for everything and for each and every one of you. I hope you have the Merriest of Christmasses!! Enjoy your friends and families to the maximum.... and then get some rest for yourselves.

News from Swedish visit

So, on the day of my latest /chemo infusion, December 1st, Dr. Aye's office called and asked if I could come a day early for another needle biopsy December 5th.
I had a minor meltdown but of course said "Yes".
Dr. Aye called me that evening to re=-assure me it was not more cancer. It was a tiny spot on my right lung that the Swedish radiologists thought might be growing. He said those guys "are among
 the best in the world" and they wanted to take a look at it.
It was an "Opportunistic infection"; when the immune system is depressed by the chemo other things can pop up. But they were not able to identify precisely what it is. So to get rid of it they are going to remove a small wedge of that lung, maybe December 27th.

The other news is that the cancerous tumor has shrunk about 50%!! He is hoping to see further shrinkage with this round of chemotherapy. They will let me heal from the wedge (which is just an overnight stay at Swedish) and probably remove that left lung in mid January. Dr. aye was really pleased with the way the tumor had responded to the chemo.

Please, if you are so inclined, do not stop the prayers and good wishes. I know they are part of this equation, too! I am beyond grateful for those of you who keep in touch and who comment on the blog or reach out in other ways. Thank you for helping me along this journey.

Great news today

I had my PET scan yesterday. It was a little like a CT scan and a little like an MRI. I was shot with a syringe of radioactive isotopes, "relaxed" for an hour as they made their way around my body, and then spent another 45 minutes in the machine being slowly scanned from eyes to thighs.

Today I had my appointment with Dr. Lu, my oncologist, to find out the results. I had wound myself up so tightly I forgot to take the notebook I have been using to capture what everyone tells me or asks me to do about this disease. So I can't tell you exact numbers but... In Dr. Lu's words, "The tumor shrank significantly and the brightness of the cancer (how it was lit up by the isotopes) was significantly diminished."

So, he had called Dr. Aye yesterday to share the news and Dr. Aye says I am a candidate for the surgery to remove the portion of my lung that contains the cancer! Dr. Lu told me to be sure and call Dr. Aye to set up a consultation for next week.

Because the surgery may not be until the end of the month, evidently Dr. Aye is going on vacation, Dr. Lu suggested we think about doing another round of chemo. There is always a chance the tumor could re-grow. For us there was nothing to think about; we would rather be safe than sorry. Dr. Lu tried to fit me in this afternoon, but the chemo infusion center was booked solid so instead I will have a new chemo therapy regimine tomorrow morning.

As we were driving home Dr. Aye's office called us. We will travel to Seattle to see him at Swedish hospital next Tuesday to talk about the specifics of the surgery.

I know many of you have been praying and sending good thoughts for me. I appreciate them all and I believe they helped make a difference. I hope you will continue. Because the chemo has worked so well and I am going to have the operation, Dr. Lu says there's a very good chance I can be cured of the lung cancer. I hope you will continue to help me achieve that result!

Chemo 2 and thanks giving

Wow.... it took me a little by surprise how hard chemo 2 was. I think in the back of my mind I thought it would be easier - like when you have had some practice, the task goes better, or smoother or something. I was just knocked off my feet. Still, it was easier than many people experience and for that I am grateful. I just was not prepared to be so very tired or to take so long for the shakes and wobbliness to go away.
Thank you to everyone who texted and sent cards... little boosts everyday made a BIG difference.

Today is the start of week three and I feel good.

As this holiday approaches, I hope you find a lot in your lives to be grateful for and to give thanks for.
1. I am grateful for family and for all the joy they have brought me over the years. My husband is a saint and without his good cheer, coaching, and help I would not be able to get through this.
2. I am thankful for good work to do. Our jobs in education are so important and so meaningful. And I am grateful for the blessing of being able to work with amazing, talented, caring people. Some I just get to watch and marvel at fro afar and some I work closely with. My office mates, from Chuck to Brenda make my life so much richer. The teachers I have the priviledge to know and associate with make me smile, warm my heart, and really give purpose to what I do (hopefully again soon).
4. The many, many survivors of this nasty disease in all it's forms, deserve special thanks. It is like that saying, "walking on the shoulders of giants". I did not realize just how many people in our system have been through cancer. The stories they share, the tips they lend; all of it helps to give confidence and to make the journey bearable and better in many ways.
If you know one of them, please think about saying thank you for what they have done and continue to do.

I have my PET Scan on Tuesday. Please pray this tumor has shrunk, if you are so inclined. Then on Wednesday Dr. Lu, Mark and I will talk about the next step. We hope the tumor shrinks enough to do surgery... removing the lung hinges on that. Now that I feel better, I will try to stay a little more current with this blog. I love your comments and I am sorry I took so long writing this time.

I give thanks for you every single day, I really do. I am so grateful for the support and the keeping in touch and for all your good wishes. I hope for you all that Thursday is restful, fun, and filled with even more reasons to be thankful !

Chemo number 2

  This is the chair that Kathy sat in (for 4.5 hours)



  This is the machine that delivered the chemo to Kathy who sat in the chair.


  This is some of the chemo meds/infusium delivered by the machine that stood by the chair that Kathy sat in.


  This is the port that made it easy to put the infusion straight into the blood as delivered by the machine that stood by the chair that Kathy sat in.


  This is Muriel, who monitors the meds moving through the port, delivered by the machine that stands by the chair that Kathy sits in.. She's been with me through it all so far! Love her.

Treatment 2 went amazingly well!  We appreciate your texts, your cards (more on that in a later post).
And most of all your prayers and good wishes!

Hair Cut and wig

  This is Kurt, who cut my hair last Wednesday.  Notice the smiley faces covering the mirror - I was not Brave Heart that day. Anton, Kurt's father, is fro Austria. It was he who taught Kurt about wig-making, and Anton looks right out of the Heidi movie; he didn't wear lederhosen, but you could easily picture him in them. And he still  had a beautiful accent.

Kurt and his father run Anton's Hair Company. Primarily, they do cranial prothesis' (wigs) for chemo patients. We had quite a talk the day he cut my hair. The history of how far we have come dealing with chemo and how a patient feels about him/herself affects the road to recovery is fascinating. My sister, who took me - I'd NEVER been able to do this alone - have totally admiration these two men for their commitment to people like me and Lori Sportelli. Two women came I to make appointments while we were there and at least another called.

And yet, Kurt worked into the night so we could get on the road as  early as possible Thursday and I would not have to wait for the mail to deliver me back my hair (and piece of my identity). Angels on earth these guys are!!

The CP is my safety net, and I know some people will need to see be wear it - but Mark and I are kind of liking the buzz cut. I now understand why so many guys do it. I never wear a hat around the house, although I never go out without one...yet.  I've about decided I may adopt a Camille Cosby, Sinead O'Connor look - big fat Alicia Keyes ethnic earrings, scarves, and buzz cut even when the chemo lets the hair grow back.

Maybe

Thank you again. I never grow tired of your comments, your texts, and all your prayers and karmic wishes are soo, so appreciated. Love to you all!

finishing up the first chemo

Michele had asked if she could be with me on the first chemo treatment and I jumped at the offer. It would be impossible foe me to describe this woman with any kind of accuracy; she is strong, big-hearted, generous, honest, ... get a writers dictionary and look for great character traits and it still probably wouldn't do her justice. She is one of the true blessings that came into my life because Chuck took a chance on me and gave me this job I have loved.

Michele picked me up at 8:45 for the 9:15 chemo appointment. We packed up her car and headed out. We got to the roundabout on Clearwater when I got a phone call that the appointment was being delayed until 11:00. Any of you who know me are probably glad you were not in that car at that point. But one of Dr. Lu's patients was put in the hospital and he needed to be with them before he saw me. With Michele's calming presence, I was able to see it really wasn't that big a deal for me, and it likely was for the other person.

So sweet Michele drove us around and we ended up taking a lovely walk in Columbia Park, which was spectacularly decked out in fall leaves. The river itself was smooth and beautiful. It was peaceful and calming.



We met with Dr. Lu for awhile and them went down and got all hooked up and the chemo started. It is a really efficient and not at all unpleasant. About that time my sweet friend Deb Fancher (also an extraordinary person with limitless cheer and heart) came by.

  Because I am bossy by nature, I asked them to turn some of your photos and sayings and quotes into a framed piece I can look at every day. They worked like happy children and it was balm to my soul... made me just relax.
Here is what they came up with. I hope many of you recognize pieces of your support here.



We have enough for almost another (that is a hint not to stop sending the inspirational sayings - they matter to me, I feed off of them!)

1st Chemo and it went amazingly well!

  This is me, obviously, in my chemo chair, which felt a little like a throne. I sat here for probably 5 hours today. It reclined and was actually pretty comfortable.

  This is the chemo machine. It pumped 5 anti-nausea drugs into my blood through the port and boy did they work well. I didn't have even the teeniest bit of nausea all day and even yet tonight!
Then it spent 4 hours pumping two cancer fighting drugs through the port into my bloodstream. The port work wonderfully and we are counting on those drugs to start shrinking that tumor today.  Martha Sandusky told me to think of the chemo as a "Cancer Killing Potion" so we are!

I had incredible company with me today and I will blog about that tomorrow. It was honestly a wonderful, wonderful day but I am starting to fade and think it is time to get in bed.

  But I didn't want to end with-out a big thank you to my friend Pete and his beautiful daughter McKenna. Aren't those terrific smiles? They brought us a fresh baked pasta dish, salad (I may have just gotten my vegetable quota in today!), Texas Toast, and Pumpkin cookies for dessert.
Thanks to them I am going to bed with a full stomach and an even fuller heart.

Chemo starts Wednesday!!

 This is my totally awesome husband and Laila, who did our chemo education today. she was sweet and very, very helpful.
Let me back up a bit:
Dr. Lu had talked with the Trios Tumor Board Tuesday, but there was no clear consensus about the treatment, so he contacted Dr. Aye, at Swedish, who took my case to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance Tumor Board on Friday; that board consists of experts from Swedish, Virginia Mason, Fred Hutch, and U of W. Dr. Aye called me Friday night about 6:00 to explain what they decided, then he and Dr. Lu talked on Saturday, and Dr. Lu and Laila explained/clarified our new plan to us today.

I am going to do 2 rounds of 2 drug chemo. I will have a 4.5 hour infusion on Wednesday and then another in three weeks. At the end of the 6 week period I will have my CT&PET scans repeated. If the tumor has shrunk, I will go to Swedish to remove the left side of my lung. Radiation can make the surgery more risky, so we will do radiation on the center of my chest, where those 2 lymph nodes contained cancer, after the surgery. And probably another round of chemo, just to be sure.

One of the drugs is going to try and make me sick, which we cannot allow it to do that. I can't lose any more weight. The doc is giving me 3 drugs to fight nausea and I am going to have to "cowboy up", like Dave Phillips says, and develop some mental strength. and not let me head make me feel sick.

I also need to each at least 40 grams of protein a day, drink 2-3 liters of water, and get down at least 3 servings of fruits and vegetables. For the very first time in my life a doctor has said "Eat as much as you can, as many calories as you can manage". If you have a good protein shake recipe or a good nutrition bar you would recommend, please let me know. He and Laila said not to worry about how many carbs I take in because my body will use them up fighting the cancer! I so wish chocolate was a carb... sigh

The chemo education was interesting, so I may share more...I will be home from Wednesday through the weekend and probably only work part-time next week. If you have a question, don't hesitate to ask.

Thank you again for all your support. Mark and I are thrilled to finally be getting this started. We know what we need to do and we are going to do everything we can to make a good outcome. We are so very thankful for all that you have done on our behalf to help ensure that happens, too!

Implanting the port

I apologize for not having any pictures to share with you of this procedure. I debated about taking a photo of my chest with the port in it.... but decided to spare you all that. I am still orange from the antiseptic they swab you with.

I had surgery to implant my port yesterday. I am very grateful for this piece of medical technology. I have small veins that collapse, especially when I can't eat or drink before a procedure. Often nurses have a hard time finding one to put an IV in and that small thing becomes more painful than what follows.  For example, at Lourdes when they did the needle biopsy last month we had this funny, chatty, big hearted pre-op nurse who just could not get the IV in. I had tears, she had tears ... it was, in a way, very sweet that she was so compassionate.

This port will mean that we won't have to struggle with those things anymore! It sits right under my skin a couple of inches below the collarbone. It is not unsightly at all and does not hurt. The docs and nurses will access the port to give me the chemotherapy dose, add any other IV fluids as needed and they can also draw blood from it when they need to. Easy-peasy!

Also, Deb Fancher and Sue Ingraham told me about a patch that has helped them deal better with anesthesia, so I asked the lovely gentleman who was my anesthesiologist if I could try one yesterday. Wow!! What a difference. I woke up right when I should have, had no nausea or dizziness, ate several graham crackers and drank 2 apple juices, and went home less than 2 hours after the procedure.  Thank you ladies!! With your help we have conquered one more hardship and made the journey a little smoother. 

My first tatoos - getting ready for radiation

So, when Dusty was beginning college we used to joke about getting tattoos when he graduated; maybe something like a cool Chinese symbol. When I first took this job and was struggling to find my way Brenda, the best secretary in the world, and I used to say I should get some version of
"GH-PS" on my wrist. That stands for "Good heart - Positive spirit" and it would serve as a daily reminder to be nice - not the complete and total bitch I often felt like I was being.
Well today I finally got 2 tattoos....
 This is Moses, whose job it was to help me get ready for radiation therapy. He used this bean bag type pillow to make a body cast of my upper body as I laid in the CT scanner. It will harden and allow me to lay exactly the same way in the machine every time I go for therapy. Then he did a CT scan to pinpoint the tumor and see how it moves when I breathe. After that he tattooed dots on my sides that will make sure the radiation goes exactly where it should.
I will do 5 treatments a week of radiation therapy for 6 weeks. Beginning with a simulated run on Monday.

 This is Dr. Lawenda. He will be my Radiation Oncologist.
He believes in Integrative Care; paying careful attention to all areas of care; things like nutrition, managing stress and adding therapies like acupuncture if and when they are appropriate. Between the two of us I think Mark and I took 4 pages of notes during our talk with him. Very smart, very committed doctor.

Great news and an incredible man!!

Dr. Lu just called me 10 minutes ago and said the brain MRI was clean!! No metastisis, nothing to worry about!!
Thank you, thank you for all your prayers and good karma!

I feel like I am in such good hands with him; he took time out of a weekend, to call me personally and tell me because he knew it was making me anxious. Who does that anymore? Only an awesome, compassionate, incredible man.

When we hit our knees tonight, we will thank god for sending him here to be with us in this time and on this journey. We ask that you do like-wise. What a gift!! 

possible schedule

As you can imagine, Mark and I were a little thrown by the brain MRI. As a result, we think we wrote the schedule for next week correctly, but we will be calling Monday to make sure. Here is what we think is happening:
* Monday was supposed to be the MRI, but Dr. Lu got us in earlier, so that is a "Free Day".
* Tuesday he takes my case to Tumor Council. He and Dr. Aye are pretty sure of the course they want to take, but Dr. Lu says sometimes there is an idea, a thought from the multi-disciplinary team that can be helpful.
Also on Tuesday Mark and I will meet with the doctor that Dr. Lu recommends as our radiationist.
* Wednesday I get my port implanted. That is a simple in-and-out surgery.

Once they know the best strategy for shrinking that cancer blob as quickly as possible, I have to have a "Chemotherapy Education session", which we hope can be Thursday.

Dr. Lu hopes I will be able to have my first dose of either radiation or chemo on Monday the 17th or Tuesday the 18th.

And Friday we may go to Seattle to have my hair cut off. Lori Sportelli, bless her big, kind heart, shared a company that will cut your hair and make it into a wig. So you have your own color, your own hair and you don't have to figure that issue out.

I can't resist posting this: The MRI  got delayed yesterday after we were already checked in; there was an emergency; some poor person worse off than me by a long shot. We were getting restless watching another dissection of the Donald-Hillary debacle so a nice elderly volunteer showed me how to change the channel.

  I got to watch my Red Sox and since we were the only ones in the waiting room, we didn't even feel the need to be quiet!

one more hurdle

  So many of you know that I had an oncology appointment yesterday, where I thought we were going to learn the plan and the schedule for treatment.  We had a long talk with Dr. Lu, who is totally wonderful. He explained that he and Dr. Aye want to be very aggressive and shrink the tumor as much as they can as quickly as they can. To do that we are looking at a combination of chemo and radiation - as much as I can stand.
Before they start though, they need too be sure there is no cancer in my brain. I want to stress that both Mark and I wrote down that Dr. Lu said they have nor reason to believe there is cancer there, they just need to be sure.
This machine is an MRI. Holy smokes what an experience -- I hardly know how to describe it (although I do think it is miraculous science).  You lie down, have a cage placed over your head and neck to keep you still, and then are moved into the heart of the machine. Once the magnets start doing their thing to create the images the noises are incredible. If you have ever seen the Blue Man Group live - try to imagine them playing their weird discordant instruments on speed. It bongs, and beeps, and sounds like hammering wood, then hammering metal. It screams like a siren, and bloops like a hot pot at Yellowstone. And there is no predictability - no more rhythm to it than Emerson had playing the mixing bowl and Tupperware with the spoon last weekend.
The sweet pea tech put noise cancelling headphones on me and played country music, that I could catch snatches of now and then. I was told the MRI would last 40 minutes and what saved me and made it doable for me was math; I heard a country song lasts between 2:55 and 3:45, on average. So I counted the songs by fisting and moving my fingers out and then multiplying the number of fingers by the high and the low end of the song range. I was almost at the end of my ability to hold still, when I got to what I thought should have been 40 minutes. And I was only off by 1 song!!
I am not sure when we will know the results....

I will do one more post today with what we think is the schedule for next week. From the bottom of our hearts, Mark and I want you to know how much the e-mails and cards and other stuff means to us.  Right now you are as Lou Rawls used to sing, "The wind beneath our wings".

Depends on how you look at it

So, Dr. Aye called me today at noon with the pathology results from the 2 procedures I had done at Swedish. Poor man was on vacation and I felt bad for him.
One set of the lymph nodes did contain cancer.
The two in the center of my chest which I was hopeful would not. He says, quote "We likely got all of it during the mediastinoscopy". I am choosing to see that as a positive.

Dr. Aye's recommendation is to do 6 weeks or so of chemotherapy and then  surgery.

He made the pathology reports immediately available to Dr. Lu and I called his office to set that in motion 10 minutes after I hung up the phone from Dr. Aye. If things go well and the reports come through quickly, I can see Dr. Lu Friday at 10.

Dr. Aye said I need to keep up my fitness and my nutrition. If you ever want to take a bike ride with me, walk in the park, walk the fence line of your school during lunch, or have other ways you like to get and share exercise, please call or text me.

  I didn't have another picture today so I will finish with my Swedish caregivers: this was my prep nurse. He had a quiet and quite funny manner. Mark and I both were intrigued when he told me to take off all my clothes and put on the gown, bootees and "oh yes, I will give you the Swedish version of Victoria's Secret panty lingerie". I didn't take a picture... I will let you use your imagination.

Kiss your loved ones and count your blessings - we really are  surrounded by them, you know.
As always, I am so grateful for your prayers and the communications you send my way that buoy me up every single day!

Some of the best medicine!

  This is my 14.5 (see the math?) month old grandson, Emerson. We had an awesome day yesterday!  My son James and his lovely wife Christy brought Emerson down from Spokane to spend some time with grandma. He is beautiful and happy and so much fun to be around. Dusty came over, too, so the whole family was here. That in and of itself was beyond wonderful!! And good medicine.
This little man entertained us all, all day long (and wore us out). It took all 5 of us to keep up with him. He moved rocks, rode a little scooter we just bought (backwards seems to be more fun than forward), and had his first experience with our pop-up underground sprinklers (they caught him unawares as he was chasing a dog across the yard).
Emerson evidently didn't think much of my kitchen organization; he spent considerable time moving Tupperware, lids, bowls, paper plates and napkins, etc. from one place to another and being rather emphatic about us leaving things where he put them. If we moved anything back, he moved it to the new place again!

  Notice he has on a Johnny Cash shirt. His other grandma has bought him a small drum set with a bass, a snare, and a cymbal. When he found my metal mixing bowl he sat down on the rug and started beating on it! So we found a big wooden spoon and then added a medium snap-ware bowl to the mix. It was so entertaining! He pounded on the tops, turned them over, pounded on the rims, used the scoop of the spoon and then used the skinny part of the handle... that kind of exploring intelligence is what has always drawn me to teaching. Watching the wheels turn is so exciting! I was just mesmerized by his experimentation and purposefulness...

I woke up this morning with no nausea and very little anxiety. The love and attention of friends and family really, truly is the very best medicine! Thank you for the cards, the comments, the hugs, the prayers.

Bronchoscopy and Mediastinoscopy

Hi there! I want to thank everyone who has commented on this blog, or texted me about the blog, or stopped to chat with me about it. It makes me feel connected and comforted; this would be a much  poorer, more difficult journey without you all. I am very grateful to you for your support.

  This is Swedish Hospital - it is over a city block big. all the offices and specialty towers take up more and more blocks. It is quite a impressive place.

I had another bronchoscopy there Wednesday evening along with a mediastinoscopy.
The bronchoscopy is where they put you on a ventilator and stick a flexible tube into your lung. It is lighted and allows the doc to see in there and also pass small tools down. Dr. Gilbert was trying to snatch pieces of the two lymph nodes that lit up the PET scan.
The mediastinoscopy is more invasive. Dr. Aye cut an opening in my middle upper chest and looked at the lymph nodes in my airway. He likewise was trying to get some good pieces of the lymph nodes to see if any of them were cancerous.
Everything went well, but I had some trouble with the anesthesia. I just could not wake up completely.

  This is Gemmalyn, my recovery room nurse. She is from Oahu and signed a two-year contract with Swedish when she finished college there. She is an only child and misses home. So when she fulfills her contract she will probably go back to the islands even tho she loves Swedish. Her parents miss her like crazy and her dad recently paid too ship her car to Seattle, because its a good car and she is used to driving it and he wants her to be safe on the road. She was just as sweet as could be! I swear I heard her say the car had 2 doors on one side and only 1 on the other - but that may have been the anesthesia. :)

The docs had hoped to have results today, but evidently that did not happen. We called a couple of times, but did not hear back.

This was a piece of urban art we saw on our morning walk. I thought it was too weird and too cool not to share... well, for some reason it wanted to open the blog, not close it and I can't get it moved. sigh. I am soo bad with technology.

Have a great weekend everyone! Thank you again for all you are doing to lift me up.

Beautiful day

We have been wandering around this first hill/Capitol hill area this morning as we wait to head to Swedish.
Remember when you or your brothers, or your children had those big yellow Tonka trucks and loved to move dirt around? We sat of the sidewalk across from the hotel and watched dump truck after dump truck move dirt out of this MASSIVE hole they have dug in the ground
Right now they are filling it with cement from the biggest boom we have ever seen.

We also stumbled across a huge Starbucks that roasts and bags coffee in a way that you can watch the whole thing 

They also sell clothes made from old coffee trees and plastic. Mark looked at a cool jacket that was made from recycled fishing nets.

Seattle is always interesting!

My docs at Swedish

   The famous Dr. Aye, who will do the mediastinoscopy
( an incision in my chest) if they need to tomorrow. If I am so lucky as to get to do a lung re-section somewhere down the line, he will also be that surgeon. Caring, compassionate, and very humane. He is the one that said, "Stage 3A is curable. Let's make sure you are one of those."
  This is Dr. Gilbert - he is the one that will do the initial biopsy; using a needle(endobronchial untrasoound) to try and get to the suspect lymph nodes.Really, really nice guy.

We think we are in very good hands.

moderately bad news and good news

It was a beautiful day in Seattle today. Mark and I got to spend lots of time just walking around around enjoying the fall weather, the beautiful architecture, and the interesting people.

We liked Swedish a lot. From the receptionists to the docs, everyone was friendly and up beat.

Here's the good news:
1. My PET Scan showed no cancer involvement with other major organs.
2. My PFT showed my lung function, despite the cancer and the infection, to be at 89%.
3. The docs are pleased with how fit I am and that I have no history of things like smoking. Nor do I have a family history of lots of cancer.

The moderately bad news is this:
1. The cancer is stage 3A. some of you will recall a story I have told about a doc well over 20 years ago when I first had pneumonia. He told me it looked like I had "aspirated a peanut" into mu lungs. I thought that was dumb - how could I do that and not know? And he just shrugged it off. The mass is about the size of a small tangerine and todays doctor said it had been growing for a long time.
2. a couple of lymph nodes in my bronchial airways got lit up during the PET scan.

The path forward:
1. We are skipping the visit to Virginia Mason. It will just delay moving forward.
2. We will have 2 more biopsies tomorrow at Swedish (I go in at 3 and they will do them at 5:00 pm).
3. There is always a chance that the lymph nodes are reacting to the cancer and the infection and not cancerous themselves. The results of the biopsies will determine what we do next.

My advice to you:
Even though I have been diagnosed with asthma, have had a bronchial infection here and there NO-ONE has ever done a chest X-ray between the one in Mount Vernon and the one this February. It would not hurt to ask, when you have  chest-involved illnesses, if perhaps that is something you should have done.

I have pictures of the sweet men who are doing my procedures tomorrow. I just can't get them downloaded right now. Plus I need to go eat, before they cut me off in a couple of hours... I don't want to be a Snickers commercial tomorrow!

I love hearing from you! The texts and the comments left here really and truly are helping us get through this every day. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

The PET Scan

I am typing this from a lovely hotel in Seattle that Liz helped us get (it is perfect, thank you!)

Today I had my PET Scan; it is an amazing piece of science that will tell us if the cancer is localized to my left lobe, which we hope and pray it is. Or if it has spread.

Basically they tag glucose molecules with nuclear isotopes. You go on a low/no carbs, sugar, fruits,no anything-at-all-worth eating diet for about 24 hours. And you drink horrendous amounts of water. At the imaging center they put an IV port into your arm and push this steel lined canister of
 nuclear material into your arm. The cancer cells are hungrier than normal cells and so they are the first places that absorb the glucose (sugar molecules). They give you a relaxant (I am wound a little tight so they gave me 2 Xanax).

Because at this point you are, like Rhianna sings "Radioactive, radioactive" they close the door and tell you to relax for an hour. I was thinking "Yea, right", but I fell fast asleep.

Before I knew it they woke me up and put me in this machine
I was lucky - the scan was "eyes to thighs" instead of "head to toe". It moved in about 2 inch increments as it scanned and I was done in 25 minutes. Easy-peasy.

Tomorrow Dr. Aye hopefully will tell us that this scan and the PFT mean.

Thank you again my friends for all your good wishes, your help, and your support!

Dusty's battle cry

My son Dusty came over Wednesday and said as he left, "Yesterday was our day to be sad. From now on we fight." I think of statement several times every day.

I want you to think of that, too, and don't be sad any more. Look around you at the people who have fought, and beat, cancer. Some of them more than once. Our district is filled with heroic men and women who have tackled something like this and come out victorious. Deb Fancher, Donna Grubaugh, Kristi Privette, Martha Sandusky, and Denise Wimmett's daughter are just a few. In each of your inner circles and families there are many, many more.

This is a blimp, a bump in my road, If you were honest, many of you have at one time or another thought I was a mean bitch. I can be tough and I am strong-willed. I am a fighter and I know, deep in my heart, that I am going to be fine.

But, I don't want to minimize the impact that your support will have. I know I need help. Michele Earley sends me a profane text every morning that makes me laugh and puts a smile on my face and helps me start my day with an easy heart. I will forever and ever be grateful to that extraordinary woman!

There is a Beatles song with a chorus that says
"I get by with a little help from my friends,
I get high with a little help from my friends,
Going to try with a little help from my friends"

I just realized how sappy I am getting - I promise not to do it again. Thank you all for your good wishes and support. Mark and I both appreciate you so very, very much! 

My awesome oncologist

The gentleman in the pink is Dr. Lu. He will be my oncologist.
He is, pardon my french, frickin awesome! He spent an hour and a half with Mark and I on Friday. His honesty scared us a bit, but certainly left us better informed and in lots of ways reassured.

A couple of good things:
1. I do not have small cell cancer - that is the worst.
2. Biopsies and such are just samples, which is part of the reason why I have been told since March that this mass was not cancer. You have to grab just the right place sometimes to see the cancer. My last biopsy, on the 13th, took core samples and that was what made the difference. Anyway... nothing they have seen or sampled has indicated that this thing is malignant.
3. The mass does not appear to have grown since the first CT scan in March. They only took one measurement at that time, but that place was the same size in September.

The Pulmonary Function Test

So, best case scenerio for me in this journey is to find that I am a candidate to have the left upper lobe surgically removed from my lung. That is where the cancer mass is.
The first determining factor is to evaluate my lung/pulmonary capacity; I have to be able to live without that portion of the lung. Any one who knows me knows I have lots of lung capacity; I talk a lot, I do spin class, I run around my building like crazy and I am never short of breath.
My say-so, however, did not count for much.
So, I had a PFT done on Thursday. Below is the tech who did it and the booth I sat in for the tests. They measured my regular breathing, how much air I took in with a deep breath and how forcefully I could blow it out. They measured how the pressure in the booth changed when I breathed in and out. And the evaluated how much air was being absorbed by calculating the difference in how much air I took in and what I released out. All in all it was pretty interesting.

            

The tech said I did good, so keep your fingers crossed.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.
This is my great friend Dave Elkins and his wonderful son, Owen. They gave me the gift of their time this morning, came to the house, and set this blog up for me
.  I am touched by all the good wishes and beautiful notes that people have sent me since my diagnosis on Tuesday. I know that some of you sincerely want to be kept in the loop as we travel this road and I figure a blog will be a good way to do that.
I will try and update it everyday, at least for the next week as we meet with doctors and make decisions.
I am so tech-dumb that I am not sure, yet, about all the features of a blog. If you can respond, please do. And don't hesitate to use my district e-mail to keep in touch or text my phone . You lift me up, make me smile, and do me so much good that I look forward to hearing from you.