Hi all! I don't know if Mom will ever write an entry herself but you may see her reply to messages once we teach her how! We are setting up this site because she is so loved that she has been flooded with phone calls and messages of concern; we thought this might be an easier way to update those who care about her.
Lately Mom has been spending her winters on Anna Marie Island in Florida. Her good friend Glenna Walton is here too. Mom wasn't feeling great at all and Glenna took her to the emergency room. They decided to operate the next morning and the surgeon removed 75% of her large intestine (why do we have so many feet of intestines???). Unfortunately, he found cancer while he was operating. A few days later the report came back and we got the diagnosis which is stage III Ovarian Cancer.
That surgery happened on a Wednesday and on Thursday Sarah Jane and her girlfriends were already planning to be in Florida to spend a few days with Mom and lay on the beach. It couldn't have been better timing because we wanted one of us with her. Sarah Jane extended her stay and then I was coming to Florida for a work conference and I extended my stay for a week in Florida so that I could be with Mom and Sarah Jane could go home. Both of Mom's daughters already had trips to Florida planned. That is uncanny.
So here we are. A cancer diagnosis is surreal. I don't think of it as something that could happen to my family. I don't know why that is, it seems like every family I know has experienced a diagnosis and treatment. Both of my grandmothers and one of my grandfathers had it and I've had several girlfriends who survived breast cancer. We've all become so much more knowledgable about cancer and social media has made it so we can follow people's journeys through recovery every step of the way. It doesn't seem as scary as it once did. Until it hits close to home. Until your mom gets it.
It is hard to describe the fear that I felt. It is strange because I would have told you that I was scared and upset but that I was handling it fine. However, my body betrayed me. I kept dropping things, or losing things and I couldn't find the words in my head to complete sentences. Driving was scary.
But being with Mom has made the fear more manageable. She looks wonderful and her energy is ridiculously high. Removing all of that "bad" intestine has made her feel a lot better. We are having a lot of fun and it is easy to forget in some moments what is ahead of us.
On Tuesday she and I will go see the Oncologist here in Florida and have a scan done. The scan will tell us if the cancer has spread anywhere else or if we have a complete picture of what we are facing. We should get the results back from that on Friday. That oncologist will then put all of the information together and send it all to MD Anderson.
I live in a town called The Woodlands which is about 45 minutes from MD Anderson. That is an unbelievable blessing in this circumstance. Mom and I are going to leave Florida this Friday and fly home to Houston and go to MD Anderson to have a treatment plan put together. It will then be managed by MD Anderson and probably administered by KU Med most of the time so that she can do her treatments in Kansas City.
We will know more later but typically there will be three doses of chemo to shrink the tumors and then surgery and then another three doses of chemo. That is what we are told to expect but of course, MD Anderson is the world's premier cancer center and things may be changing even as I'm writing this entry. There may be something new on the horizon for treatment so we will just have to see.
Please feel free to leave Mom a message and I will make sure she gets here to see it.
Thanks for caring so much for my mom and being so great to her. I know she is feeling surrounded by love right now.
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