melanoma wife: TOTALLY THANKFUL

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

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

TOTALLY THANKFUL

So, we have been home a few days now and trying to get back to normal life-whatever that is ;) Marcus is doing good-still pretty tired and coughing some-but he is just trying to enjoy every second he has home-before we go back nov. 30 for another week of IL-2. Things are going well with the girls, but it is still a struggle to get Sela to discuss her feelings-her teachers told me today that she had a rough day today-and I talked to her this afternoon-she is just so worried about her daddy. Marcus and I will talk to her again together, but I simply reassured her that God is in control and we just have to pray for strength and peace to accept whatever comes. Her main worry is about losing her daddy. Which I completely understand, because of course, that is my main worry too. But I explained to her how I pray daily (sometimes several times a day) for God to grant me the strength to get through all this and the peace to accept whatever happens-even if that means God needs daddy in heaven more than we need daddy down here. I explained to her that God doesn't always answer our prayers the way we pray them, but He always has a plan and He will always take care of us. No matter what, we will be ok. Sounds like I have it all together, huh? NOT REALLY-you should have seen me saturday when I had a mini-meltdown on the way home! BUT, it doesn't mean I don't completely trust God in His plan-because I do-I just keep prayin for the strength to accept whatever plan that is. And, like I told Sela, none of us is guaranteed one second on earth. We all need to enjoy each other and the time we have because cancer, or no cancer, we could all be gone from here tomorrow. I am so thankful for my sweet girls. God truly blessed us with some angels. So I am attaching a few shots of Sela & Sloane from this afternoon, being silly girls, like normal! Thank you God for letting me enjoy them on earth-however long that is....

4 comments:

Anonymous said...: with tears in my eyes, i will tell you i think you are a wonderful mother and you are doing a great job. keep your Faith... i am always here for anything you need, but more importantly, God is always here for you. love you always!

your sis-in-law,
Amy; November 10, 2009 at 9:46 PM
Anonymous said...: Have you heard Natalie Grant's song, "Held?" God is holding all of you right now. I can feel it. I know you can too!; November 11, 2009 at 8:14 PM
Unknown said...: Mindy,

Hang in there. Marcus is lucky to have you too.; November 12, 2009 at 4:33 PM
Fede said...: I admire your strength and faith!! My husband also has cancer but it started in the esophagus in 2007. It returned this year in his liver. I could relate to so much that you write about! I have two small children also and am so thankful for all the God has given us even this whole experience with cancer. My husbands' blog is www.vivoalive.blogspot.com and he has a lot of information about holistic medicine too. He is on chemo but strongly believes in healing the body also through foods, keeping the body alkaline etc. Keep up the fight!!! I'll be praying for your family. Marci Pecora; November 14, 2009 at 12:23 AM

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, November 10, 2009

TOTALLY THANKFUL

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