melanoma wife: Circle of Life

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

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Circle of Life

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted.

After celebrating Marcus' 36th bday on sunday, I have been in a depressed FUNK! Watching old home videos, looking at pictures, re-living memories of our family, our time together-before Melanoma-has me feeling lost....it seems like those videos, pictures, memories were years ago...Sela told me the other day she gets mad because it feels like she can hardly remember times with her Daddy...this makes me so sad, but at the same time I feel the same. When I listen to his voice in the videos it seems strange..it's not like I remember him talking or sounding, but I know it is him....So I just told her we would keep watching the videos and look at pictures as much as she wants...I don't want her to ever forget...Sloane either. Their Daddy was a great man and he loved them so very much.


Sela writing message to her Daddy for his birthday

Sloane writing her message while her cousin Aiden watches

My daily devotionals for the past 2 days have been about the circle of life. How there is a time for everything and our perspective on the situation will determine our future. Through every up, down, twist, turn, God is still God and will never change. He is always there for us-ALWAYS. This brings me peace because I know, that no matter what, He is on my side and FOR me :) Some days, it seems, others feel like they know how I am feeling, or they assume my grieving process isn't sufficient...but the fact of the matter is, life is full of ups and downs, happiness and sadness....I choose to remember the love Marcus gave me-and continue living a life of love and happiness. He will always remain in my heart-I will always love and miss him-always. But I will keep joy in my heart and not let the devil steal it and replace it with anger or sadness. My glass will always be half full.

Psalms 27:13 I would have lost heart, unless I had believed That I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living. (NKJV)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: You have a beautiful story and a beautiful way of sharing! I am so sorry that you lost your husband to this horrible disease. As he was dying I was ending my 11th month of interferon injections. I was diagnosed in 2008 with stage IIb. So, it was early! But, I waited 3 months to get into a dermatologist! Thinking "it was no big deal" ! It has changed my life!!! And through the computer...facebook,blogs etc I have read so many couragous stories like yours. Again I am so sorry this disease took your precious husband. He looks like he does not fit the total description of who melanoma strikes!!! Boy, do they have a long way to go in delivering an accurate msg! Your husband is obviously not fair skinned,fair haired,and his "mole" was in a weird place !!!! It just shows you we cannot allow ourselves to believe all that we hear...even if it sounds good. Go with the "gut"...melanoma is sneaky! I too am a believer in Jesus Christ so I will say a prayer for you and your family! God Bless ....a fellow melanoma warrior; November 30, 2010 at 8:04 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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LEARN THE ABCDEF'S OF MELANOMA!!! EARLY DETECTION IS THE KEY!

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Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Circle of Life

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