melanoma wife: Father's Day-will never be the same

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

Monday, June 20, 2011

Father's Day-will never be the same

Today I was reminded once again that life is no longer the same as before and never will be...
Father's Day...my father passed away when I was 21 of colon cancer-he was only 39. Marcus was 35-but the girls were only 9 & 4. I am so very grateful that God sent Joe to be the wonderful stepdad he is to the girls-but it all still hurts-and to be honest makes me angry. Not at God-because I will always trust His master plan-just angry at circumstances I can't control. It just seems so unfair to me that sweet Sela and Sloane have to grow up without their dad. They love Joe and think he's a great stepdad-but he's not "their" dad. It just upsets me-and it seems to upset me more than it upsets them...they are such strong girls and I'm so very proud to be their mom. At church this morning they played a video about fathers and I broke down-I had to go to the restroom because I was crying so bad. During praise and worship I broke down-I just couldn't keep it together. This afternoon I brought the girls to the cemetery to put new flowers and let balloons go to daddy-our tradition on special days..and as we left I broke down again-it's just so much harder than I ever imagined it would be. But I have to get it together and be strong for the girls. They need positivity-not constant sadness. So I have sucked it up and I'm better. Thank you Lord for continuing to give me strength even when I don't think I can make it one more second without crying. Thank you Lord for always loving me and being such a kind, faithful Father.

Father's day also marks the anniversary of the day (June 20, 2010) Joe and I started talking and realized there was a connection neither one of us expected. God truly works in ways I never dreamed. So if anyone out there reading is going through a rough time-something they think they will never be able to survive-just get on your knees, close your eyes and call on the Big man upstairs-He can and WILL get you through-you just need to have faith...and walk by it friends.....

2 comments:

Julie said...: I don't know how you do it, my sweet friend. You have a strength I can only hope and pray that I would have, should I ever need it. Love you and so happy you have Joe to lean on during these difficult times.; July 4, 2011 at 6:30 PM
Jeannie said...: Mindy,
I am very sorry you have to go through this.

I don't mean to go off topic from your post, but you mentioned your father dying at a very young age from colon cancer. If you have not had a colonoscopy, please do so soon. Most colorectal cancers are not hereditary, but its better to be safe and have the scope done. I'm saying this as a 33 year old patient at MDACC who just had a total colectomy and as a mom to a young child that I will do anything for so I can see him grow up. I hope this comment doesn't offend you.

Sending prayers to you and your girls...; July 8, 2011 at 4:02 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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Monday, June 20, 2011

Father's Day-will never be the same

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