Back Surgery is Scheduled for Today

My daughter’s and their friends spent their day off from school today selling lemonade to raise money for Colon Cancer. I’ve never been more proud of them. Not once did they ask if they could keep any of the money. Instead they went inside and got their money they have in a donation jar of their own, and poured it into the bucket. We’ve raised $245.21 so far and still have some donations coming in. Being a parent is hard, but seeing these kids do things like this reminds me it’s all worth it and I am doing a good job. And so are my friends who’s kids joined my girls today to help out. It was a great day and my heart feels good.

This week Steve completed his 5th round of chemo and he’s still doing really well. The tingling in his fingers started almost immediately when he touched anything cold.  Even when he washes his hands, if the water is a little cold, they start to tingle.  Or when he got up at the infusion center to use the men’s room, he has to push the IV to the bathroom.  The handle on it is metal and it’s so cold inside the infusion center, that the handle gets cold.  So even that bothered him.  It’s extremely irritating and he gets very frustrated with it.  Even though he knows in the whole scheme of things, it’s not the worst thing, it’s still pretty irritating. I remember before I…

A week ago Wednesday, Steve’s doctor ordered an MRI to get a better look at his spine and the tumors to see if Radiation would be good or not.  When the radiologist read the MRI he contacted Steve’s doctor and suggested that Steve go to the hospital immediately to have the spine doctors look at the MRI.  The concern was that the tumors were too close to his spinal cord and they were afraid of paralysis. So at 10pm last Wednesday night, Steve and I headed to Rhode Island hospital where they gave him a steroid to relieve some of the swelling around the spinal cord to avoid the compression.  The spine doctors then looked at the MRI and decided that with the steroid, there…

Steve finished his 4th round of chemo today.  He feels this one went the best so far.  However, the tingling in his fingers from the cold came much faster this time.  Almost immediately when he got home on Wednesday. But other than that it went well.  He still feels fine, he even had more of an appetite than he has the last few times so that’s good! Four down, many more to go! Next time the doctor will check his CEA number again – the tumor marker number.  We are hoping it’s lower again.  He said mid September he’ll send him for a scan to actually see where the tumors are now or more importantly where they are not!  We are looking forward to that. …

Today was Steve’s 3rd Chemo Treatment.  It’s crazy how fast the last 6 weeks have gone by since we first found out he had cancer. Last time there was no issue with the port and the IV went right in with no problems.  This week we had a problem again.  Not getting the IV in, but getting the blood to flow out of the IV.  You see, when they put a port in, sometimes your body realizes this foreign object is in there and doesn’t like it.  So it sort of forms like a blood clot so nothing will flow.  I’m not sure of the exact terms they use but basically it blocks it.  When this happens you can get stuff into the IV, like…

Last week was great.  Steve went to work, no doctor’s appointments, the girls fought like normal, I felt anxious about the girls fighting and Max pooped in the house.  It was a normal week and it felt good. I think we needed that break from “cancer”.   Just to realize that we are all still here and need to move along as normal as we can.  It was nice.  It recharged us for another week of Chemo.  Dr. Sam told us that we “can’t change what is happening to Steve.  We can only live each day as best as we can so we have no regrets.”  And he is right.  And while it’s hard to think that way every second of every day, we try…