melanoma wife: old? i used to say 30 was really, really old :)

LEARN THE ABCDEF'S OF MELANOMA!!! EARLY DETECTION IS THE KEY!

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

old? i used to say 30 was really, really old :)

well the past few weeks have really made me feel old!! sela turned 8 and celebrated her party-the pic attached is of sloane, me and sela at extreme bounce-sloane did not wanna stop bouncing to pose :) anyways, marcus also celebrated a b-day!! he turned 34!!! i tease him about getting old :) i am not far behind him though!!

life has been going well-marcus is back to work. still taking his interferon shots on mon, wed & fri. he has been doing really well with them. tuesdays are rough though-like today-he stayed home from work-he was already feeling bad yesterday before his shot, and then afterwards, he was really bad. he had the chills and fever again-he woke up with fever this morning!! he is resting now, so hopefully he will feel better this afternoon. it just seems after he has the weekend break from the shots, once he gets it monday, his body has to adjust again. i am so proud of him though-he never complains!! when i tell him i am sorry he feels so bad, he just says, "i'll be alright". i know he just doesn't want to burden me.

the girls and i went to church again on sunday-the Lord is really pushing me these days and i am so grateful. my heart is so full of love, hope, promise-that can only come from one place-thank you Lord!! i have this deep desire to be the best wife, mom, daughter, sister, friend, etc..that i can be. i want to share all the love i have inside with others and show them that God can change you-for the best! you just have to let Him in!! stop fighting it-stop letting the devil make excuses for you (my sins are too horrible, i am a loser, i am not worthy) STOP IT!!! you have to make the decision to STOP letting the devil win your heart-let Jesus in friends-He will take you places you never even dreamed you could go!!! ok, sorry for the preaching, but i just felt like someone out there needs this :)

well, i gotta go do some dishes before i meet aunt kel for lunch!! speaking of old ;) just kiddin aunt kel!!! I LOVE YOU!!!!

2 comments:

Kerri Pierce said...: Hey Mindy - So glad things are going well and Marcus is tolerating the shots! Take care!
Kerri; October 8, 2008 at 5:05 PM
Mindy Stanley Anderson said...: thanks girl! well, he has his days-just like you said-some days he is great, and others, he can't even get out of bed :( but he says he will continue on the shots for as long as his body will let him! thanks for keeping in touch!

love, mindy; October 10, 2008 at 4:03 PM

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how it all began-the "mole" story

well, just for those that don't already know-here is how this journey began. it all started with a little mole that marcus had since birth, on his thumb. in early 2007, i noticed that it had started to change-it was bigger and part of it was black and part was brown-i really didn't know much about melanoma, but i remember the way it looked-it reminded me of the mole on my niece's foot that a dr. removed when she was small, because he said if they didn't remove it, most definitely it would turn cancerous when she went through puberty. ANYWAYS, so i began nagging sweet hubby to go get it looked at. of course, he kept saying, "it's no big deal, i have had this mole since i was born-it's fine". so life went on.

well, hubby works with his hands since he is a machinist, and he bumped the mole-it bled-it grew bigger. a few months later, he bumped it at work AGAIN-it bled-it grew bigger-and now it actually started to bother him. it was sensitive.

one day out of the blue he called me from work-and asked me to make an appt. for him to go to the dr. to get the mole removed. THANK GOD! so of course i got right on that phone and made him an appt. first call to his current primary care phys. was a joke-they couldn't see him for at least another week or so because they were only seeing flu patients on fridays (the only weekday hubby has off) and didn't feel his mole was anything to fret about! well, i sure thought it was and called my primary care phys.-she had no problem seeing him on friday like he wanted!

sure enough, once he saw her, she didn't like the looks of the mole and immediately sent him to a dermatologist. and only by God's hand guiding-did she decide to NOT wait 3-6 months for a dermatolgist in beaumont to get an opening-but she sent him to a dr. in mid-county-that she didn't even know-she had just received his business card in the mail the week before-and decided since he could work hubby in so quickly-that he was the ONE!!! THANK YOU GOD!!!!

well, the next week came-marcus went to the dermatologist-wanting to get that mole removed!! to his surprise-the dr. wanted to biopsy it-he didn't like the looks of it either. (do you see a pattern here? sweet wife was on to something !) he talked the med. asst. lady into cutting as much of the mole off as she could-and she did-we later found out that she removed all the cancer from the thumb with that biopsy! one week later, we were told that the biopsy showed malignant melanoma and they sent us straight to MD Anderson in Houston!!!! talk about scary!

the medical oncologist explained that the type of cancer he had was called superficial spreading melanoma-and it liked to spread to the lymph nodes-so he suggested a partial amputation of the thumb-to make sure he got all the cancer-and a sentinal node biopsy-to see which, if any lymph nodes had cancer- Marcus wanted to save his thumb-so that is what they did. the dr. removed the margin around what was left of the mole-and took a skin graft from the side of his stomach to rebuild the thumb. this all healed very well.

they did the sentinal node biopsy and found that there was one lymph node under his arm that had cancer-it ended up having 20 cells in it-so they suggested he remove all the lypmh nodes from under his arm. he did this and all the other nodes came back CANCER FREE!!!!!!!

now they also suggested he do 4 weeks of high dose interferon to kill any cells that may have gotten loose from that node-to prevent this monster from coming back. they also want him to do 11 months of the interferon shots-but we don't know how far he will go with those. all depends on how sick they make him-and if they are anything like the high dose-he may only go 2 weeks.**MARCUS COMPLETED 4 WEEKS OF HIGH DOSE INTERFERON AND DID THE SHOTS 3/WEEK FOR ABOUT 3 MONTHS BEFORE HE STOPPED**

we later discovered that once the cancer has spread to lymph nodes closest to the mole, it is considered stage III-no one ever really told us this-we had to learn on our own.***UPDATE-8-31-09 LUNG METS WERE DISCOVERED SO MARCUS WAS UPGRADED TO STAGE IV***
***AFTER IL-2 AND SEVERAL CHEMO COMBOS, MARCUS LOST HIS BATTLE 4-1-2010. MELANOMA SUCKS!!!***

this is a brief outline of the "mole" story-hope it was easy to follow-and hope it makes everyone think twice about their moles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE LEARN ABOUT MELANOMA-IT IS NOT "JUST" SKIN CANCER!!!!!

melanoma wife

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Tuesday, October 7, 2008

old? i used to say 30 was really, really old :)

2 comments:

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