End of a Chapter

Well we are sitting here in the infusion center receiving Katie’s LAST! Chemotherapy treatment. We are so happy! While we are not out of the woods yet… this is the end of what we understand to be the worst part of her ongoing treatments. We were worried that her blood counts might not be good enough to get this last treatment and by some horrible chance she would have to be pushed back another week and feel crumby for Christmas. So this was a little victory today. She is not looking forward to feeling rotten for the next two weeks, but she is very happy that this will be her last experience with chemo.

Chemotherapy is absolutely horrible! We hate it! Katie hates it! I Hate it! Our family hates it! And we never want to see it again. We are all sick and tired of Katie feeling sick and tired, especially Katie.  At the same time, just a couple weeks ago, our 11 year old was offering our family evening prayer and in the prayer he said “and thank you for the blessing of chemotherapy”. That statement puts this horrible treatment into perspective, it is a necessary evil in our situation, and we are so grateful that we live in a place that has access to this life saving procedure. We have a newfound empathy for anyone who experiences chemotherapy in some way in their life. It is a tough path to walk that is reserved for the toughest individuals. Katie has proven she is one tough cookie, and we as her family are grateful that she is willing to fight so hard so that we can keep her around for many more years to come.

A couple years ago we attending a meeting with one of our church leaders who quoted the following poem that reminds me of Katie… minus the “old” part.

The Old Oak Tree

“A mighty wind blew night and day
It stole the oak tree’s leaves away
Then snapped its boughs and pulled its bark
Until the oak was tired and stark

The next step is for Katie to get another MRI probably next week. This MRI will allow us to determine the effect that the chemo has had on her tumors, and to what extent the surgery will be in the coming month. This will also determine what has been happening in her lymph nodes to determine if there has been any spreading of the cancer or if it has in fact stopped the growth. After the imaging, we will make a decision if a mastectomy will have to happen. After our last discussion with the surgeon, it still seems like a mastectomy still has the higher probability, but we won’t know until after we get a look. There are still a lot of decisions to be made in her treatment. This MRI will give us a clue as to what to expect next.

 

Following the surgery and recovery, she will still be starting her radiation treatments that will occur daily for 6-7 weeks, and regular hormone treatments every three weeks for the next 8 months. So we will continue to frequent the infusion center, but we are very hopeful for anything beyond chemotherapy.

In other news, we are very excited for Christmas! Our kids are ages 13 through 2, so this is a very magical time in our family as the kids are getting ready for the holidays. We also have two birthdays this month so we are looking forward to Katie feeling better for all of it. You’ll notice the festive pictures through out this post. One of my students nominated our family to be entered in a drawing to get some family pictures taken. Katie loved it and would be happy to do it way more often then the rest of us, but really it was quick and almost painless and the promise of out for breakfast afterwards kept all of us smiling, except maybe Eph… so that was a fun thing that we have not had done in years past.

All in all the kids continue to go to school, life moves on, our family is happy, and life is really good. We have much to be grateful for, we have good family and friends that make the journey bearable. We are hopeful for exciting things in the future, and we hope that 2020 will be a better outcome than the gloom and doom that 2019 had for us. Thank you everyone for your continued support and outpouring of love to our family. We wish we could express it in a way that was more meaningful, right now we just don’t have the energy to, but our family is still at your service whenever we can muster.