Thank you to all our friends and family!

I just wanted to post an update since I haven’t in a while.   I realize some people are afraid to ask, but seriously you can always ask us how Steve is doing.  We don’t mind talking about it.  It’s our life now. The girls went to camp the last week of August, right before school started.  It was a camp that is only for children who’s parents have battled cancer/ have cancer.  It’s called Camp Kesem and it’s a free one week overnight camp. When we first heard of it, I immediately thought how great it would be for the girls to meet other children who have a life like theirs and to hear their stories.  But I figured they would NEVER go away for…

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…

On June 17, 2014  Steve had his first Colonoscopy.   Thankfully the prep for it wasn’t too bad on him.  The doctor wasn’t expecting to find the tumor because he looked at all the scans beforehand and even he saw nothing in the colon.  So he was pretty curious as to what he’d see.  And so were we.  I was actually wondering if there might not even be a tumor and this would be a rare type of colon cancer.   My husband would be the one to not have something easily found.   Because he likes to be ‘different’. Well, that wasn’t the case.  The doctor did find the tumor and it’s big.  The mass is in the sigmoid colon.  He said it’s pretty much the entire…

Tomorrow will be Steve’s 12th Chemo treatment and his last one for this 6 month set.  We thought 6 months actually went till January but nope, it’s done tomorrow.  But that just means it’s time to change it up a bit. Currently Steve is receiving the FOLFOX cocktail of chemotherapy which consists of 5-FU, Leucovorin, and Oxaliplatin.  I am slowly learning about each of these drugs.  The 5-FU is the one that was causing the mouth sores and is also the one that he gets on a slow drip for the 48 hours at home.  You may recall that in October he reduced that one by 15% to hopefully stop the mouth sores – and it worked!  We’ve checked his CEA number once since the…

I had to take Steve to the hospital today. His breathing hasn’t been very good and I just knew it needed to be addressed. I’m so glad we went because his oxygen level was VERY low. They did a CT scan to check for a new blood clot, but found nothing. There is a little fluid in his lung but the doctor thinks it’s old and doesn’t believe it is related to this. They did hear some crackling in one of his lungs so perhaps it’s a little collapsed but again, he didn’t think it would cause this much distress. There is some progression of disease in his lungs so it could be a combination of everything. They admitted him and have him on oxygen…

I had a house full of people today.  Just the way it should be.  My brother brought over a bottle of something for shots.  I have no idea what it was, I can’t remember.  But I do remember that I didn’t have any shot glasses so we used wine glasses.  My crystal wine glasses that I got when Steve and I got married.  So they were pretty appropriate to use! We all got together and did a “Shot for Steve”….. it was pretty fitting considering he enjoyed himself a drink or two over the years. A memory I will always cherish!