Day 10/28

Veteran's Day meant the littles got to come with us for day radiation and oral chemo number 10 on the 10th day of the month at 10 a.m.! 




We loved this rock we found in the healing garden. There are so many things to be afraid of on this journey, but we are trying to not let that fear guide our decisions in treatment or in life. We've chosen to go against the standard "watch and wait" protocol and what the majority of people in Bear's shoes decide to do as treatment, in an effort to make choices based in science instead of out of fear for "what-if" scenarios, so this rock was especially appreciated today. 😍 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Heavens Are Opened

Our dear friends, Kjersta and Byron, have the most amazing children. Their second oldest, Kat, gave a talk in church today, just after our own Natalie's amazing talk on faith. In the talk, Kat shared times when she felt the heavens were closed to her, including trying to sort through her husband's bonkers immigration issues and his father's terminal illness. While she spoke, I kept thinking about times I have felt the heavens were closed to me, like my whole "Where are our blessings?!" thing.  And then, as though struck by a rod of lightning, it hit me: Throughout Bear's diagnosis and treatment, I have consistently felt the heavens wide open and pouring blessings out upon us. I almost burst into tears right there in our pew as I realized what an incredibly miraculous journey this has all been, full of love and light and soooo much faith.  In 2015, Elder James Hamula gave a devotional at BYU-Idaho called "The Heavens are Opened," in which he shared do...
Read more

MRI results are in!

Just heard back from Bear’s medical oncologist after this week’s MRI… An MRI alone does not give enough information for anyone to change his diagnosis or staging. BUT! The good news is that the lymph nodes are decreasing in size and the largest and primary tumor is showing a response to treatment.  Soooo… That’s cause for celebration! 🎉🤩🥰 
Read more

The hits keep coming...

Image
...and they don't stop coming. It feels like every time we accept news and adjust our mindset, the goalpost gets moved farther and farther away.  September 29 - You have colon cancer. October 4 - It's spread to your lymph nodes. October 9 - JK, it's rectal cancer, but just Stage I or Stage II. October 13 - It's actually worse than initial reports indicated, probably Stage III.  October 14 - No, really, it's even worse. Stage III-C, T3N2b.  October 15 - Oh, and it's MSS, not MSI, so it's immunotherapy-resistant, when this cancer responds well to immunotherapy.  For the love of all that is holy, can we just slow it down a bit, people?! We went from 90-95% five-year survival rate the first day to now something ridiculous like 10-15% of 30-50% of 60-70%. There are so many little factors that even the cancer survivor calculators (yes, that's a thing and yes, I use them often) can't figure the math (are we at 1.8-5.2%?! I can't tell!).  My poor, poor b...
Read more