Blessings

Through this entire experience, I have had SO many blessings. I said to my mom the other day that I feel like I am swimming in the deep in of a pool with a heavy robe on that is soaked to the bone and I am barely keeping my head above water. Just keep swimming. I know if I keep swimming I am going to make it to that ladder and pull myself up out of that pool.

I have had weak moments. Oh Heaven's have I. I've treated my husband like a "punching bag" at times, and he loves me anyway. I've had crying fits. It's okay. I am becoming stronger.

Everyday I try to see the blessings that God provided me with that day.

1. A student wrote a beautiful essay about me and submitted my name to be teacher of the month. The essay is way better than winning teacher of the month!

2. I have such a great relationship with my Dad's doctors. Some have even given me their cell phone numbers and home numbers. Most of them call when they make rounds and they have new information to report.

3. My dad got back in touch with his brothers. It was so great to hear their voices again. (long story)

4. My husband is so successful in the expansion of his business!

5. Even though my husband is super busy with the expansion of the business, he still finds time and ways to help me out.

6. I have friends who hugged me while I cried my eyes out about having to put my dad's dog to sleep. While I'm crying, they make comments on my cute outfit to take my mind off of it. (Megan and Stephanie)

7. I have friends who send me texts, emails, voicemails, phone calls, and facebook messages constantly checking on me.

8. My church...is amazing. The caring team is so on top of things. They send people often to check on my dad.

9. Dreta was not my dad's nurse today....blessing.

10. I took my dad's ill dog to the vet. On normal circumstances, that is something I can't handle. I did it. I prayed through every stop light on the way there...and God got me there.

11. Lucy is in a better place, and she's no longer suffering.

12. I finally felt comfortable in a room with both of my parents tonight. :)]

13. I have never felt closer to God that I do now. I feel like my mind is in constant prayer with him. I pray all day. Little praises and asks for strength. He pulls me through. Even when it feels like everything sucks...He dries my tears and tells me to get up and start moving. I'm not walking through this alone. God has placed certain people beside me to give me strength. On top of that, I'm not even walking this journey....God is carrying me.

Cancer is scary. Cancer brings out the best and worst in people. But, one thing it has brought out in my family is honesty. Just saying what is important.

"Even if your hands are shaking, and your faith is broken, even as the eyes are closin', do it with a heart wide open....say what you need to say...." -JM

Love to you all!
Katie

How are things going?

If you had asked me that question a week ago, I would have told you NOT good. It is so true when they say that a cancer patient will have their good days and their bad days.

Here is the current status of my dad: He is still in the hospital, he has completed his first round of chemo, and we are awaiting the second round to start in a few days and radiation to begin March 2nd. Not exactly sure when he's going home, but it won't be any time soon. Let me explain...

There is a nurse at Baptist East, on the cancer floor, who for the sakes of this blog will be named Dreta. Dreta because I dread all the days that she's my dad's nurse. She is manipulative, rude, and inconsiderate. Here are Dreta's latest highlights:

1. She once answered a phone call from me while I was at work like this: "What DO you NEED?" (Emphasis on the caps) Rude.

2. She refused to tell me any info about my dad over the phone without a password (that we never set up) because NO ONE TOLD ME TO AND A BAZILLION DOCTORS CALL ME EVERYDAY AND DON'T ASK FOR A PASSWORD.

3. She told my dad that I asked to doctor to with hold pain medicine from him. OMG. That is a story within itself.

4. Once said password was set up, she still refused to tell me some information.

5. She once told me on the phone, "Look, I'm having a bad day." Boo freaking hoo.

6. She walked down the hallway and loudly said, "We runnin' an ICU on this flo' huney!" I find that extremely unprofessional.

7. She once had my dad so drugged up that he didn't eat his dinner AND gave him insulin anyway, causing his blood sugar to bottom out. Talk about an almost diabetic coma!

Oh Dreta...you have been turned in to your supervisor twice by me. And a nasty letter is going to the head person at that hospital. Just as soon as I have time to write it!

My dad had some rough days. They couldn't get his pain medication right. He was either so doped up that he thought it was 1972 or so lightly medicated that he was climbing the walls with pain. Since then, they have a pain psychologist on his case which has attributed some of his pain to be psychological. They have it much more regulated now.

He has these severe mouth sores right now. They are a side effect of the chemo. They also make it extremely hard for him to eat. He has been refusing physical therapy, until today! Praise God! His blood sugar is running low because he just isn't interested in eating. He became septic due to an infection, and now he is also running the risk of getting pneumonia especially if he doesn't get out of bed more.

All that aside, he had a good day today. He got up and moved, sat in a chair for about 30 minutes and then went back to bed. I went up after work and shaved his beard off. He looks better after that. My sweet momma even came up with me. :)

This weekend was hard. I dealt with something else in addition to my dad's health issues. My dad has had a beloved beagle dog for 14 years. Lucy. Well, Lucy hadn't been eating much since my dad went in the hospital. The lady who was checking in on her was concerned. As of last week she wasn't eating ANYTHING. I called the vet (who happens to be Bella's vet) and he said that if Lucy still hasn't eaten by Friday (Feb. 17) to bring her in. So, I had a half day on Friday, and after school I went and picked up Lucy to take her to the vet because she still hadn't eaten. She was very sad looking. She would get up and walk around, but she just was so sad and sullen. I carried her to the car and took her on to the vet. He called later that day and said that upon physical examination, everything seemed ok. He ran blood work just to be safe. Well, this past Saturday he called with the results. Lucy was in kidney failure. She had at best a week to live. So, Chris went and talked to my dad about it, because I couldn't do it. He gave us the go ahead. Sweet Lucy is in Heaven now. God Bless her. I hope that she knows now that my dad didn't leave her, and that she understands that he would have taken her to the vet if he knew there was this problem. So sad.

That was HARD to deal with this weekend.

But all of that aside, I will do another post after this...and it's probably one of the most important things I'll ever write. :)

Katie

Another update...

I just want to thank everyone out there for the prayers. I have been touched in so many ways by the sweet e-mails, texts, phone calls, and Facebook messages. Prayer is so powerful. I have a sign hanging in my kitchen that says, "God knows your prayers, even when you can't find the words to say them." That has totally been my prayer..."God help me, I don't know what I need help with, but I know I need help."

So this past Saturday, Feb. 4th they hung the first bag of chemotherapy for my dad. It was a 30 minute bag of Cisplatin and then for the past 4 days he has had 24 hour bags of chemo 5 FU. Who knew there were so many types of chemo.

Chemo. I've had dreams about chemo. Chemo and fractions. Haha. My students are learning fractions right now. The other night, I had this dream that I had to pour out pitchers of chemo. They had to be equal, and I couldn't spill any!

Weird.

So tonight my dad is finishing up the last bag of four 24 hour bags. He hasn't had any ill side effects as of yet. His blood counts are still good. The man across the hall from my dad has a completely wiped out blood count. Nurses and guests have to wear masks and gloves when they enter the room. Scary.

Our next battle, besides the cancer, is medicare. My dad will eventually come home, and he's going to need some at home care. The difficulty is getting medicare to pay for it. The money is there, it just the hoops you have to jump through to make it happen. I have been put in contact with several really knowledgeable people, and they are giving me great advice.

Other issues my dad is dealing with is problems with emptying his bladder (probably due to the tumor pressing on it) and keeping his blood sugar under control (diabetes).

That really is all the updates I have about everything for now...I'm looking forward to my life resembling some sort of normalcy soon. :)

Much love,
Katie

Continued...

For some reason, I felt like I needed to break up the lengthy posts.

I left of with Dr. Weeks. He makes rounds late. Like 9 - 10pm late. But amazingly enough, the same day we asked for the recommendation, he showed up at my dad's door around 9:30pm. I was not there, but this sweet man called me after his visit with my dad. He was able to give me a little more information about what Dr. Matthews found in surgery.

1. The tumor was about 4 inches across and 3 inches lengthwise.

2. This type of cancer is very responsive to chemotherapy.

3. Radiation will be inevitable.

4. Surgery will come after treatment.

5. He will have a colostomy bag at some point that may or may not be permanent.

6. Dr. Weeks has a plan.

I like the plan part. When you have a plan, you make progress. The plan for now was to spend the whole day doing additional testing to see if the cancer had spread. He was scheduled for a bone scan, CT scan, MRI, doplar venus something or other, and a full blood work up. The best part was that Dr. Weeks told me that if I made sure to be at the hospital on Wednesday between 8-9pm he would meet with me there and go over the results to all of these tests. He even gave me his personal cell phone number. WOW.

So, Wednesday my dad got poked and tested a lot. I felt bad for him. He was kinda crabby. Dr. Weeks did just as he promised and arrived just before 9pm to meet with me. He even took me to a room with a computer screen and showed me all of my dad's scans. So the results of the tests were:

Bone Scan: Normal
CT Scan of Chest and Abdomen: Normal
MRI of whole body: Lymph nodes enlarged on either side of his groin

Translation: The cancer had spread to lymph nodes, but not to any organs.

It is a positive thing that the cancer has not spread to organs, however; Dr. Weeks wanted to jump to chemo quickly because the cancer was in his lymphatic system. So, he rolled out his treatment plan.

His chemotherapy is Cisplatin 5 FU. That literally means nothing to me. I just hear "chemo."

He will have chemo for 5 days straight, then off for two weeks (blood tests and scans during this time). Chemo again for 5 days straight. Next, he will enter phase 2 of treatment which is 4 - 6 weeks of radiation (everyday, Monday - Friday) with chemo woven in. After radiation, surgery to remove the remainder of the tumor and a colostomy bag (may or may not be permanent), to allow the affected are to heal. In other words: long road ahead of my dad.

My dad accepted this news well.

Thursday came with the possibility of his port-a-cath being put in. However, that did not happen for one reason or another. Friday they came and got my dad around lunchtime and took him down for a PET scan (another cancer detecting thing) and then straight to have his port put in. The nurses even called my cell while I was at work throughout this procedure. I got to the hospital after school right after they brought my dad up from the procedure. He had a nice little incision on his right side near his shoulder. He was also ZONKED out. I talked with his nurse and she said that he was in pain after the procedure so he was given some pain medication that knocked him out. I decided to slip out and I headed home and CRASHED on the couch.

I was at the point of exhaustion. I was working full days, going straight to the hospital to wait to see doctors. I don't think I made it home before 8pm all of last week. My eyes burned. I had to get my contacts out. I fell asleep HARD on the couch. I woke up to a call from Dr. Weeks at about 8pm. He said that the PET scan showed something going on with my dad's thyroid, but we could address that later. One thing at a time I guess!

I decided to give my dad a call. WOW. HE WAS LOONEY. He was pressing buttons in my ear on the phone and claiming he was trying to open the gate to let me in. He also said that the nurses kept coming in his room and yelling at him to open the gate. Finally, I called his nurse and she said he was very out of it. She suggested I come up there. So, a very tired Katie and her sweet husband were on their way to the hospital at 9pm on Friday night.

We got there and he was still looney. He had seemed to forget about the "gate." However, now he was obsessing of temperature. For instance, he said that the right side of his body was 312 degrees. Ha! He also at one point was looking at the TV and asked me if Chris was on TV arresting someone. He thought his bedside table was a "dashboard" of some sort and wanted me to read numbers off of it. He did answer questions correctly like the current year, his birth date, etc. My dad has always been good at math. So, I decided to ask him a math question. I've been teaching my kids fractions, so I threw one of those questions at him. I said, "What's 2/3 of 15?" His response: "312." He was obsessed with that number. He finally began to settle down, and we headed home and were in bed by midnight.

So here I am at Saturday. His head was semi-clear this morning. He has been agitated all day. However, they did move him to the cancer floor today and I LOVE IT. The care is so much better! As I saw him tonight, the nurse noticed that he wasn't able to empty his bladder. She did a test and discovered that his bladder was holding over a LITER of urine. So she called the doctor and he of course ordered an internal catheter. He immediately felt some relief. So, now there is another issue with his bladder, but for some reason, I left the hospital tonight with more the most comforting feeling. There is another problem, but these nurses are going to take care of it.

Tonight was also a big night. They hung the first bag of Cisplatin 5 FU. Chemo has started. The cancer is real. I pray that his body responds well. I hope it kicks the crap out of that tumor. :)

That being said, I'm going to sleep...and I feel like it's going to be the first good nights sleep I've had since January 26th.

Love to you all!
Katie

Why?

So, the whole picture a day in January didn't work out. LOL. I was really determined, but for some reason fell off the bandwagon mid January.

I'm blogging today because I wanted everyone I know and love to know what is going on with me and my family.

As I sit here and type this, I'm in a hospital room with my Dad at Baptist East. Let me start from the beginning. (I am beginning to type this blog on Wednesday, February 2, 2012)

Last Thursday, I was ya know, just teaching fractions to my third graders. I finished up my lesson and just as my associate teacher was about to teach her Science lesson, I looked down at my phone and had a missed call and voice mail from a number I didn't recognize. I stepped out for a minute to check the voice mail. It was a nurse from a Dr. Matthew's with UT Medical group informing me that my dad had come in for an appointment that day, he was being transported by ambulance to Baptist East.

**Side info, and it might be TMI, but I knew my dad had this appointment. He was going to the doctor (had been putting it off too!) to check on the problem that he has always struggled with: hemorrhoids. (Sorry, TMI)

So, of course, I call this doctors office back and get the details. The nurse tells me that my dad came in, was very weak, almost passed out, sweating profusely, and had blood saturated through his pants. They took him back to the examining room. Dr. Matthew's took one look at the "situation" and ordered him to be transported to the hospital. The nurse shared with me that Dr. Matthew's explained that he was dealing with something much worse than a hemorrhoid. She brought up the "C" word...ya know...Cancer.

One would think I would freak out at this point. Really I didn't. My dad is no stranger to grand entrances into the hospital that often result in a lengthy hospital stay. He struggles with diabetes, heart disease, and a bunch of other stuff too. I told my boss what was going on, and headed to Baptist East.

It was a long wait in the ER. I have come to the conclusion that the ER at any hospital is NOTHING like the ER on Grey's Anatomy. Not only do the NOT have a McDreamy or McSteamy, but they literally don't have it on their agenda to speed the whole process up. My dad went in with immediate orders from Dr. Matthew's to admit him. So, one would think that we would have a room in a reasonable amount of time (1-2 hours). Yea...no. Try 8 hours. Yes. 8. All that fuss aside, for the most part, my dad was a good patient. I could tell he was weak, he hadn't shaved in days, and that his small problem had been progressing, and he had hid it very well.

While we waited, I never really got upset about what we were dealing with. Until this one moment happened. (WARNING, this may be very gross to you, so if you are easily disgusted, don't read this, I'm blogging this for my memory.) At one point, my dad needed to go to the restroom (just to pee!). They wouldn't let him walk across the hall to the restroom so they give him this bedside thing to use. I step out and let the nurses do their thing. As I turned around to see if everything was done and I could go back in, I peeked through the blinds just in time to see bright red blood splattered all over the floor. Whoa. The nurse cleaned it up. She got him back in bed and came out in the hall. I asked her, "WHAT WAS THAT!?" She explained it was bleeding from his gastro-intestinal tract. Great. What she didn't warn me for was the smell that accompanied that blood. I walked back in, and immediately was hit with this very, very distinct smell that I will never forget. That was my moment of freak out. I walked straight out of the room, straight out of the ER and into the waiting room to where the doors were opening and closing with fresh air. I started crying. I was scared at that point.

I was supposed to go to Nashville on Friday for a work trip. My boss quickly said "No go!" on that. I was thankful. I knew I needed to be at the hospital to try and figure out what was going on.

(Continuing this update on 2/4/12)

We finally got to a room about 11pm. I was SO tired. I had to fill out all of this paper work because I am my dads Power of Attorney and he was too weak to do it. Once they got him settled in the bed and I turned in the paper work I thought I would head home for the night. Hmm..No. They ordered my dad to be put on an O2 monitoring machine to measure how much oxygen his blood was carrying. (His blood work was so out of whack. The nurse said, every test came back abnormal except his urine.) My dad also has sleep apnea. When he would fall asleep, his breathing would become irregular, and that O2 monitor would go off. The nurse told me it would be best if I would go to my dad's house and pick up his sleep apnea machine so that he would get enough oxygen.

So here it is, 12am at this point, and I'm heading to my dad's house. I go in his house and start to look for the things I need...and there....it hits me again...that SMELL. Blood from the gastro-intestinal tract. There was blood on his bed, his chair, on towels in a pile in the laundry room. I started crying again. This problem was potentially huge. I tried my best to keep my focus through the blood and the smell and gathered the things he needed. 12:30, I'm back in the car and headed back to the hospital.

I deliver the things, make sure my dad is settled and head for home around 1:00am. I was dragging. I had been up since 5:30 THURSDAY morning. I came home and I still smelled the smell. It was like stuck on me. I took my boot off, I smelled it. I took my coat off, I smelled it. If I hadn't been so dang tired I would have taken a hot scalding shower. But, I did the next best thing, drowned myself in perfume and got in bed.

I woke up my normal time for work, showered, got ready and headed back to the hospital to try and see each and every doctor who would come by to see him. There was a WHOLE lot.

Dr. Witherington - Internal Medicine
Dr. Willins - Lungs
Dr. Beasley - Surgeon
Dr. Matthews - Surgeon
Another doctor for blood
Another doctor for diabetes
Another doctor for GI

So at the end of the day, we saw all of these great doctors. Very nice and informative. The only problem was that it was the weekend, and nothing really could be done over the weekend. So we set a plan. My dad would have a colonoscopy on Monday. We would go from there.

So, Monday rolls around and I go on to work. A colonoscopy is a routine procedure and the doctor promised me a phone call. So, my dad calls me around 8:30 and says that they are taking him down for the colonoscopy. About an hour or so later I get a call from the doctor. He tells me that the mass that my dad has is so large that he was unable to get the scope past it without hurting my dad (even under heavy sedation). So, we had to wait for a new plan to be put in place.

I headed to the hospital after school, and was able to catch Dr. Matthews. He said that the next day (Tuesday) they were taking my dad down for exploratory surgery to see what was going on. I wound up having to leave work fairly early in the morning because they bumped his exploratory surgery up from 3pm to 10am.

(Continuing this post on 2/5/12)

By the time I got to the hospital, they had already taken my dad down for the surgery. The nurse explained that I would just wait in his room and they would call me with updates. They called to say they had started, they called to say the were done, and they called to say that my dad was in recovery. When I got the call from the recovery nurse, I asked her why I hadn't heard from the surgeon yet. Just as I said that Dr. Matthews was walking through the door. He didn't just call me, he came up to the room. I think that's an admirable quality.

Dr. Matthews explained that they found a mass and it was rather large. He indicated about the size of a softball. He also explained that it was cancer. Specifically, "Squamous Cell Carcinoma." So, we were given the diagnosis of Anal Cancer. They brought my dad back about an hour later. I had time to compose myself before he came back. I'm the one who told him, no one had indicated to him what he was dealing with.

So the next step was getting referred to an oncologist. Luckily, my boss and her husband are working with an amazing oncologist and he came highly recommended. I asked for him.

Enter...Dr. Weeks, oncologist.

I will keep these updates coming on my blog. Thank you to all of my family and friends who have covered me in prayer. I truly feel it. I need you all more than anything.

"You know, it's nothing new
Bad news never had good timing
Then, circle of your friends
Will defend the silver lining"

- John Mayer