A Quick Family Update

RAFAEL--just went to Hondorus, got back less than a week ago.  This time he went with a different medical group to do ortho surgery on adults.  He LOVED it.  The group stayed at an orphanage of 500 children from babies through teenagers run by the Catholic Church. 

ME--not much has changed.  I'm busy assisting my parents, particularly my mom with her cancer, and typing a bit each day, trying to pull an occasional weed and still enjoying prep'g meals for my family.

TONY--is not attending school this semester, even though G&G offered to cover his tuition.  He's working at Vivant in Utah County in the solar division as a designer, doing well and just got a promotion to lead designer, which includes a nice pay increase.

VICTOR--attending school at Dixie in St. George, loving it, having too much fun I think.

JARED--is serving a mission in the Barcelona Spain Mission, currently 10 days at his first site in Castellon de le Plana, a coastal city.  He likes his companion (thank you Lord) and it's just the two of them in a nice apartment, plus two sisters in the city of just over a half million.  His first day there they traveled two hours by train to district meeting in Valencia (so there are 10 missionaries total in the Valencia District).  He attended almost six weeks at the Madrid MTC and loved it, except didn't really hit it off with his companion, but every Saturday his district (and they would comp changes on Saturday) would travel three miles by subway to a park for two hours to mingle among the natives and practice speaking and sharing a message.  I love how they are immersed in the culture immediately, plus on P-day, Thursday, they would go on field trips to museums, city points of interest like the Real soccer stadium.

Well, that's enough for now.  I'll try to get back soon, fingers crossed.

I Got Lost Trying to Find My Way Back to This Site (Cancer is Back, but Not for Me)

I so am not a techie.  I couldn't find my blog for a while.  Nooo, seriously this blog was lost to me.  I could not remember my username...or anything else that would lead me back to this site.  Crazy. 

So, when Jared arrived at the Madrid MTC (almost two months now), he sent a quick I've arrived email.  I decided right then and there that I needed to get his blog up and running, which I did, but it was under a newer gmail account I have.  I felt the desire that day to go in and update my blog, but...refer back to the first paragraph.

And what brought me to that desire to update?

Well, that same day that Jared arrived in Madrid, an exhausted traveler of a 10-hour overnight flight from SLC to Paris with a 5-hour layover in Paris, then a couple-hour flight to Madrid, well my mom got back confirmation of her biopsy which confirmed what we suspected that she, too, has breast cancer.  Big sigh.

"I DON'T want to have surgery in Price."  So, I asked if I could make her an appt. up here to see a surgeon.  Since then I've made all of my mom's appointments, traveled with my parents (because I'm the chauffeur when they're up here--dad doesn't like to drive the freeways, and how could blame him) to all the appointments.

Dr. Rasmussen (my same surgeon, and I really like him), after reading my mom's pathology report and feeling her up suggested that she undergo a lumpectomy (as the lump was not that big) and the lymph nodes did not feel enlarged.

Post lumpectomy surgery, Dr. Rasmussen shows up in the waiting room, directs me and my dad to a consult room to deliver the news that two lymph nodes were removed and examined.  Both contained cancer.  He removed the remaining axillary nodes, five in total, and told us that they felt "yucky," in other words also infiltrated with cancer.

I had already previously made an appt. with Radiation Oncology for the first doctor we could get in to see.  We saw Dr. Cannon, and I like him, and so do my parents.  Turns out there's an Emery connection, as his wife is from Price, but her grandparents, aunts and uncles were/are from Ferron and my dad, of course, grew up with them. 

We returned for a followup with Dr. Rasmussen and to remove the drain from the node dissection.  All 7 lymph nodes were cancer filled.  He recommended a bone scan and Dr. Cannon upgraded it to a PET scan--looking for move from the primary site (the breast) to bone. 

The good news is that the PET scan showed no bone cancer.

The bad news is that the margins from the lumpectomy were not clear (and I read the pathology report and Dr. Rasmussen had taken a deep margin), so there were cancer cells still within the breast tissue. 

This last Monday mom underwent a completion mastectomy, went well.  Dr. Rasmussen removed probably 2 more lymph nodes (we'll see the results when pathology returns).

She has been recuperating at my house and went home yesterday, Thursday.  Mom and dad will return Monday for a Tuesday followup with surgeon to hopefully have 1 of the 2 drains removed.

Last week we saw the medical oncologist, Dr. Litton.  Again, I had asked for the first oncologist available, as there was a 3-week waiting period for new patients.  I REALLY LIKED DR. LITTON and wished he were my oncologist, not that Dr. Nibley is bad, but Dr. Litton spent over an hour with my parents and me educating us about mom's cancer in great detail, with legible handwriting (which was copied for us to take) on several pages.  Due to my mother's age, only fair health condition, pathology, etc., she would only have a 1:10 improvement with chemo.  Mom has elected to not undergo chemo, and I agree with her.  I personally do not think that she could tolerate chemo.  She will undergo radiation (kills fast-growing cells in a localized area, the breast and armpit) and then hormonal therapy that shuts down estrogen/progestin produced by the body). 

Interestingly, mom initially was the same pathology as me, a triple positive.

BUT then the pathology on mom's lumpectomy came back as show HER-2 neu negative.  What?  That's a discrepancy from the biopsy done in Price and sent to a lab in Arizona showing HER-2 neu positive.  The oncologist said that the pathology done outside IHC's system was a low-grade positive, so just barely positive.  The oncologist had the pathologist also check her lymph nodes, as that is where the cancer was most recently moving and would give the best indication and under two different protocol showed negative, so that's good news for mom.  Otherwise, she would have had to undergo a year's worth of Herceptin infusion (like I did) to fight any spread of cancer cells outside the primary breast area. 

Well, enough of cancer.  I hate that my mom has to go through this, but I'm grateful that they can stay with me here locally and that I can provide some assistance.  Yesterday, because mom's skin is so fragile and her dressings had been "glued" to her skin, it took me a good 30 minutes to slowly remove her dressings using baby oil to loosen the "glue."

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