One foot in front of the other

I was slowly getting better. We went for our post op appointment and we had to see a different doctor. He went over the whole pathology report and talked again about the problem of there being abnormal cells in the blood vessels. He wanted to do CT scans every six weeks once I was all healed and really monitor me closely. The team of surgeons were going to take my case to the tumor pannel in the springs. This is a pannel of doctors who all work with gastrointestinal tumors. He told me that he wished that he could tell me that this was all over, all behind me but he couldn't. I felt really unsettled. I didn't feel like there was a closed door there was still a question in my mind about what was happening. It was all really hard to understand. In hindsight I can see that this team of surgeons had never seen this kind of mass with the behavior that my mass had. Its such a rare type of mass that there was not much research and NO research with the types of traits that mine had.
I started working with a nutritionist to help with all of the digestion problems that came with having this surgery. She put me on a low glycemic gluten free diet which made a huge improvement in my energy levels, and with digesting food again. It was a huge change and it was and is a really difficult process. It doubled our food bill month after month but I am finally figuring out the tricks to it (thanks Lynn and Auntie Gay).

Food is such a social entity. I have felt really isolated and misunderstood by a lot of people because of the change in my diet. People who dont understand tease me about my weight, how picky I have to be, and ask if I have eating disorder problems. People are so judgemental when they don't understand that if I was to eat like most people I would be sick, and with out energy most of the time, and feeding the cancer cells in my body. I have a great quality of life when I make these better choices. I feel so amazing compared to how I felt before I started it. I have tried synthetic enzymes to help break food down but it just makes me feel awful. So by making these different, somewhat strange eating choices I can live healthy and strong and not let cancer win.
In August I got to see my brother graduate from BASIC. It was a hard trip for me but it was so good to be with the family and see all that he had accomplished.

I went back to work with a huge amount of help from my sisters, mom, jeremy, and friends. I could never have gotten my classroom set up with out all of their help. My friends Chaela and Sara were there the first weeks of school and beyond to take my class, give me extra breaks, help me teach lessons, and start the school year. It was really difficult to go back to work. The emotion of reliving all that had happened with everyone from work was a lot to handle. I found myself just wanting to feel normal but I wasn't.
Jeremy and I started having some pretty serious marital problems at this point. It was brought on by a lot of the problems we were facing and other things were being uncovered. We got some counseling and that gave us a lot of tools to work through things.

September came with more sadness. Jeremy's sweet grandma Elnora started to decline. She never recovered. Later in September she passed away. It was extreemly sad to loose such a dear person to us all. The day of her funeral I had an apointment with my surgeon to go over my latest CT scan.

It was clear but she had some hard news. She said that they had discussed my case at the tumor pannel. Rather than calling it an ok mass they started to refer to it as a low grade malignant tumor. The problem was that the cancer is in my blood. She said that we needed to see and oncologist to discuss options for chemo and radiation. She said that the cancer could come back in my lungs, liver, lymphnodes, bones, or again on my pancreas and if it did they would cut it out again. She expected this CT scan to be clear becuase this is a really slow growing mass so it may not show up anywhere for years.
We went to the funeral, put on the dinner for the family, and left to celebrate our 2 anniversary in Breckenridge.
When we got back we saw an oncologist in the springs. She was shocked at how long it had taken us to get into see her. She reviewed my case, did some research, and decided to send us to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas. She thought that by getting into one of the bigger cancer centers I would be able to get in front of a pancreatic specialist. She left it up to them to decide whether I would get chemo and radiation. She was not comfortable with doing radiation at that point because there were many places that the cancer could show back up. And by radiating the pancreas would not guarantee that it wouldn't come back.
It took me three grueling weeks to try to get an answer from MD Anderson. They were so SO AWFUL to work with. Every time I called I had to wait on the phone for 45 mins to a hour just to talk to someone. Once you got someone on the phone they were rude and transfered you all over the place and then eventually you would get hung up on. IT WAS TERRIBLE. And I was trying to do all of it while I was working because they were closed by the time I got home. Parents from my class started complaining to my principal. They made me jump through so many hoops trying to get in to see a specialist and in the end they wouldn't take my case.
So I went and saw a pannel of doctors at University Hospital in Denver. On Monday we went in thinking that we were going to see the pannel and we got scheduled with just one Radiation Oncologist. Like most people she kind of flipped out when she learned of the details of my case wanting to do a lot more tests and scans. They took more blood. She reiterated that we should have been in to see them weeks after the surgery rather than months. They gave us a lot of information regarding treatments. It was pretty frightening. The next day she scheduled us with the pannel. We went in and sat in a room with 3 oncologists, 2 med students, and a nurse. They all discussed my case and explained that there are 2 routes that they consider. The first is a survaillance route where they monitor me really closely for several years and then intermitten for the rest of my life. The other was using radiation and chemo and such to treat the cancer. In my case they decided that the survaillance was the best option. They were hopefull that I wouldn't have to deal with this cancer again. But also highly suggested staying on the diet that I am on and getting CT's every six months for 2 years. They also said that I shouldn't get pregnant for several years. They said this is going to be a part of my life but hopefully I can move on from it and get back to my life. They told me to eliminate as much stress as possible. But most of all they gave us some sense that we had done all that we could to be proactive about fighting the cancer and the rest was up to God.
So here we are. October. Our train is derailed. A lot of the dreams that Jeremy and I had as a couple are not possible right now. Slowly and with a lot of support and prayer we are getting back on our feet. Wrestling with God. Finding that he gives new desires, and dreams for our lives when the others get taken away. We don't quite know where we are going to end up in the long run but we are really open right now. We are paitently working through our struggles as a team and eventually I think God is going to show us what he has for us. We'll let you know when he does.