melanoma wife: Philippians 2:13 " for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure."

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

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Philippians 2:13 " for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure."


Left-Right: Rick Thomisee, Danny Wells, Marcus Stanley & Lee Soileau Monday I received this picture via email from Kim Soileau, wife of Lee Soileau, co-worker of Marcus'. She called to check in on me and wanted to send this picture. I was so happy to have it because I didn't have any pics of Marcus on the job or with co-workers. Exxonmobil was as much of his life as me and the girls were, so this is very important to me. Seeing him in his uniform, with a huge smile on his face brought me such happiness-but at the same time such sadness. I have prayed to dream about Marcus since he passed away, and Tues night, it seems after I had looked at this picture all day Monday, I dreamed of him. But it wasn't the type of dream I had envisioned. I still don't know what to make of it exactly. To start off, he knocked on the apartment door-didn't use a key to get in, knocked like a stranger....when I looked through the peephole I saw him, in his uniform, smiling big at me through the hole :) As I opened the door in amazement, he said, "Hey girl, what you been up to?" Like he was an old friend-not like he was my husband-he didn't even kiss me-he just hugged me-why didn't he kiss me like he used to when he got home from work?!? He came in the apartment and for some reason I gave him some mail-like I had been holding it for him to return....he opened it, told me where some paperwork was that I have been looking for...and really didn't talk much....then I asked him, how was I supposed to let the girls come say hi to him, knowing he couldn't stay-like I knew he was just visiting but had to go back to Heaven....he just smiled...and then the girls came in, gave him a big hug and a kiss...then they went back to playing...they didn't even ask him questions, or stick around...it was so crazy and unreal-nothing like would have happened in real life...this dream was so crazy to me....and then, as quickly as he came-he was gone again-no goodbye, nothing...he just vanished......what does this mean? Ever since this dream I have been in a complete funk....part of it may be due to hormones and my monthly visitor ;) but I just feel empty-to top it all off, a close friend of ours that has been battling her own cancer for about 3 yrs is very sick and has turned down hospice....just thinking of her and her own struggle makes me so sad....then today, I read on another Melanoma warriors blog that I follow, Mindy Lanoux, she has been doing a trial in Boston-her tumors are growing again....I HATE CANCER!!!!! and just when I feel like life is going on and God wants me and the girls to be happy-I get slammed with news and dreams that I can't explain or understand....... I just keep praying and trusting that things will turn around and I can be completely happy again, the girls will be adjusted and happy, my family will be happy for us when we transition into our new phase of life.....and we can all get along and love one another like before Melanoma came in and ripped out a piece of our hearts.

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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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Saturday, August 7, 2010

Philippians 2:13 " for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure."

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