Next...

So what does one do with all that information?? I am going to be completely honest with you and say PRAY (after I googled the heck out of thyroid cancer)!! You pray and you pray and you pray...I don't care what anyone believes in, when your world is crumbling around you, it's amazing how you immediately call out to God to help you! The amazing sense of relief is unbelievable! Not immediate, but eventually it was like a suffocating weight was lifted off of me.

I am a Christian, definitely not the best one at times but I have my good moments and bad. I didn't know who else to turn to and was lead to just talk to Him. I found a book online called Praying Through Cancer and walked to the book store on one of my lunch hours to pick it up. There was only one copy left. It's an amazing book written by women who have been through all types of cancer and they GOT what I was going through. All the pains, frustrations, emotions, feelings...it was nice to read and know that I wasn't alone.

The stats of this cancer are really very promising but if I had to hear anyone say, well if you were to pick a cancer off the list, this would be the one I was going to SCREAM! Cancer SUCKS no matter what kind it is!!

I learned very quickly that there's something called TOO MUCH INFORMATION! So I vowed to myself NOT to google anymore and just make it through this journey without all the statistics and scenarios of things that may or may not happen. That is enough to drive you INSANE!!

I had to focus on my family and my pregnancy and keep as positive as possible. I had to try not to let the cancer define me and who I was. I needed to enjoy every moment with my kids, husband and this new little man inside me. Every time I looked at my children or watched them play I would cry. I couldn't imagine not being here to see them go through life.

So, what was the next step? Because I was so far along in my pregnancy, it was no longer safe to operate on me so I had no choice but to wait until he was born. Trust me, the thought of this nasty tumor growing in me for another 4 months was an absolute nightmare, but I had to push the cancer to the back burner of my brain and live my life, as normally as I could. I could not let it consume me!!! So, they scheduled a c-section for me so that my cancer team to already have me booked for my thyroidectomy.

November 24th, 2008...surgery day booked!

June 30th, 2008

That date will forever be engrained in my mind and is a new anniversary, whether I want it to be or not...

I walked into my follow up appointment nervous but still in a relatively good mood, mainly because Mike and I had found out the Friday before that this little person I was carrying was a boy!!! I very excitedly told a very fabulous nurse our news and she gave me a hug and led me and my Mother In Law (AKA cancer companion) into our room.

Then my doctor came in the room...my ever smiley doctor wasn't so very smiley and I think the word I used to describe him was ominous. He apologized and then looked at me. I knew then and there that the next words that were going to come out of his mouth were:

YOU HAVE CANCER...

...BAM!! BANG!! POW!!! Just like a cheesey re-run of the original Batman TV show. Uhh, ok...now what?? First things first...CRY CRY CRY...followed by a "NOW WHAT?". This didn't fit into my life plan!! I really really wanted to be one of those people that just looked the doctor square in the face and calmly say "All right, let's just deal with it. What do I need to do?" But it turns out, it's just not that easy!

I quickly came to realize that no matter how prepared you THINK you are for certain things, some things you just CAN'T prep for. I used to think that if someone were ever to give me awful news about myself, my children or husband I would just pass out or get violently ill. It's actually amazing how your body protects you when it needs to. My body protected me physically but it was my mind that was a runaway train!

Nothing made sense...in an instant EVERYTHING changed. Why was this happening? Why would God bless me with this precious little baby that I was carrying and then hit me with something like this? Surely this CAN'T be happening. How am I going to tell Taylor? She's only 6, she shouldn't have to deal with this! What if I'm not around for my kids to remember me? What would people tell them about me? Would they just know me from pictures? Would Mike re-marry and would the kids eventually call her Mom? Many of you are probably thinking WOAH WOAH WOAH...why are you thinking about all that? But my life along with my future literally flashed before me and it felt like I had to prepare for it all right away!!

All of these questions and many many more went through my head in a nano second and it was all very overwhelming. I don't even remember asking any more questions, I just stared off into space and listened sort of to my doctor trying to talk to us about it all. I remember hearing Papillary Thyroid Cancer...blah blah blah...treatable...blah blah blah...surgery...blah blah blah...

Then I think we sat there for a little while longer, eventually leaving in a foggy hazy state. I got intO Deb's jeep because she wouldn't let me drive (good call) and we were on our way to her house. At least I think that's how I got home...see it's all a BLUR!!

I then had to pick up my phone and make the phone call to Mike...

As soon as he answered I was a ball of goo and a blubbering mess. Then there were those words again...CANCER. I have cancer. He said right away, Ok, we'll deal with it. We'll get through it. I love you.

Deb took the kids for the night so we could try and process this horrible day and have some time to just grieve without scaring the kids. I think we just held eachother and cried...sometimes you just need to cry...

Then I decided, OK, we need to watch a funny movie or something and without thinking I picked The Bucket List off of pay per view....HELLO STUPID!! We got about 20 minutes into that movie and I was crying again and right back to square one.

That was the WORST day of my life...

It all began with a prenatal check-up...

After finding out that I was indeed pregnant for the 3rd time (surprise!!!) I started to look around for a family doctor to do my prenatal checkup because my doctor at the time was on maternity leave herself and I knew I couldn't wait for her to return to work...so the search was on...I eventually heard that there were openings at a clinic but the doctor was a male....AHHHHHHHHHH...I haven't had a male doctor since I was a child and definitely not since I needed to get my "girly" issues taken care of. But since this doctor could take on my whole family I was willing to suck up my pride and give him a chance.

I went in for a meet and greet and he was awesome and I was comfortable with him right away...that was a huge relief! Now onto the baby checkups...I scheduled another appointment to come back and do a physical along with my first prenatal checkup. Everything went great at the appointment until he checked my thyroid (which for the record I don't ever remembering any other doctor checking this) and noticed something that he called a "fullness". Hmmmmm....

I didn't think anything of it because what could it possibly be right? So, he wanted me to go for an ultrasound of my neck and of course, me being me, decided that it wasn't that big of a deal so it could wait. My doctor then called me a couple weeks later to follow up about the lack of ultrasound (BUSTED!!) and I then made the appointment like a good girl.

I actually don't really remember the actual ultrasound too much except I kept seeing them measure something and figured, uh oh, that can't be very good! So, again, me being me I went back to my office after the appointment and googled thyroid issues and became VERY acquainted with thyroid cancer. Maybe TOO aquainted. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies but I figured if it was going to be bad news I was going to try and prepare myself for it...
I then got a call from my doctor's office sending me for a biopsy of the lump they found in my thyroid gland...I was a bag of NERVES!! Luckily I had my mother in law there with me to try and keep me calm. It was relatively easy...you just lie there and they stick needles in your neck..whoo hoo eh?

Then I left...and waited...

Just Throwing It Out There!

Welcome to my rambling thoughts that NEED to spew forth. I probably should have started this blog MONTHS ago but was too afraid to talk about it with anyone, or even to myself for that matter...I am able to express myself and work through things better when I write them down so that's why I am doing this...sharing my struggles with a group of people who know me and have supported me through it all or maybe some people I don't know but can relate to what I am going through. It's either this or an organized support group and I'm not ready for that yet...

This won't just be about cancer but also about life, motherhood and everything else that happens along the way!!

So here it goes...this is me....

JUST THROWING IT OUT THERE!!

Thanks for tuning in...