Tea Time after dinner!!
Josh has had the last 3 weeks off. We have never had that much time to just hang out. We’ve had a good time, just exploring around the area, going on hikes, making some fun day trips.
We still don’t have any of our stuff, that is just a snafu in the moving company. Can’t figure out why. Our express shipment that was supposed to arrive about 2 weeks after we did, is still in Germany. Hopefully that will get here this week sometime. That has towels, sheets, dishes, bikes, some toys for the kids, and some more clothes. We are still living with what we flew over here with, plus some towels that I mailed ahead of time. We went out and bought 6 plates, 2 wine glasses and 2 beer glasses (very important) and 6 coffee/tea mugs. Oh, and some silverware. Other that than, we have loaner beds, a loaner table and loaner sofa from the airforce base. Thank goodness. We hope to get our household goods by September 21. They came to pack it up in NC on June 11! That’s the longest we’ve gone without our stuff! It will be like Christmas when it all gets here! We love this house so much and can’t wait to put our stuff in it to make it feel more like home.
A little piece of news I want to share with you about what else has been going on. After arriving here, I couldn’t shake a cough I had had since April and also some back pain. I finally decided to go to the doctor in hopes to get some good cough syrup and some muscle relaxers!! The doc sent me to get a CT scan of my chest to make sure my lungs were clear. Unfortunately, it showed that my breast cancer has returned and spread to my bones, a few lymph nodes and 2 very small spots on my liver. What a kick in the pants that news was. I don’t mean to make light of it, it’s super scary, but it’s still rather a shock to us.
Needless to say, we’ve had a tough couple of weeks. Doing tests, figuring out what we are going to do, making arrangements, talking, telling our family. All really hard stuff.
I will say that the doctor I have is AMAZING!!!!! The care here is AMAZING!!!! My doctor feels very hopeful for me, even though this is Stage 4 and not curable. My previous breast cancer was something called HER2 postive (I think that means it was fed by protein)- anyway, it opened up extra treatment options for me the first go round. This time, there has been so many advances in treatment options for that type as well. There have been some trial studies with women who have had it “worse” than me, but have still been going strong for 5+ years. That was so encouraging, because when you look this stuff up on the internet, it really sucks.
I will start treatment on August 24 and continue for 6 rounds every 3 weeks. I will take a round of chemo, as well as two trial drugs that have helped work in shrinking the cancer and help eliviate the pain. That is the worse part about all this right now, I’m in quite a bit of pain and I’m not used to that. I don’t like to be slowed down. I think this medicine will help.
We have decided to stay here while during the treatment, until we are told otherwise. The doc said that after a few treatments, I can have another PET scan and see it the treatment is working*******PLEASE PRAY FOR THAT SPECIFICALLY IF YOU PRAY*******. If it’s not working, we will have a plan B. Don’t know what that will be yet, because we are thinking positive. My mother is coming out this Thursday and staying for a month to help out and then Josh’s mother will be here for a month to help. We are starting to meet some friends and the US community is pretty amazing here. I know that we won’t go without help if we need it. The hospital is 0.5 miles from my house, so I will even be able to walk to and from treatments. Everyone is so nice and helpful and sweet and as always, offering a hot drink!
This news really threw us for a loop..not expected at all. I was just shy of being 5 years clean. BUT, for the sake of our girls and for ourselves, we are continuing to live our life. We laugh, we go places, we are just normal with a side of suckyness. I would ask for you to pray if that is what you do for my girls and for Josh as well. This is hard. The girls hardly remember the first time I went through this, so this time might be a little harder. Madeline is very concerned about my hair falling out..she isn’t sure what that will be like. The big girls just don’t want me to have to go through it again. Josh is having to adjust to watching me move slower due to pain and just have this worry about me. Just pray that this treatment shrinks the cancer, buys me some time and another method of treatment will come out and that will be a cure!!
If you are interested in the trial study, it’s called the Cleapatra study...I think you can nose around google for that.
I will continue to update my blog about exciting things we are doing here, it won’t all be about cancer, because I’m not letting that rule us. BUT, I will update you on my progress.
I appreciate you love and support and prayers. I feel them all the way across the pond!!
Cheers!
Shannon
