The one where I tell you about the "C" word...

Hello all! I hope you had a good holiday weekend! Mine was good! Hubby and I took The Princess to see her first fireworks show on Friday and man, was it worth it!!! She kept saying, "Mommy, Daddy, LOOK!!! Whoa.. a big one!!! Look, look!!!" It was so precious!

Well, I am going to dive into a deeply personal subject that I have yet to talk about until now. I feel I can share this with you all since it is a subject that many of you have probably have dealt with in one way or another. In January of 2007, my mom was having some abdominal pains and figured it was her appendix. She dealt with the pain for a week or two, but then it just became unbearable. We took her to the ER one evening and the docs did a CAT scan and sure enough it was her appendix. It had a small hole in it, but had appeared to seal itself over so she was in the clear until the morning. They scheduled her for a routine appendectomy. The next morning arrived and they wheeled her into surgery. The Dr. assured us that it would be very routine and that she would be out of surgery in 45 min. Well, an hour came and went and I wasn't too worried. Then and hour and a half went by, and I started to get nervous. All of a sudden, the Dr. comes out and he doesn't look real happy. I start bombarding him with 20 questions, but he stops me and says, "I have some news." You know that's never good. He explained that when he opened her up, her appendix which is normally the size of your pinky, was the size of a grapefruit. She had a mass inside her appendix and this very experienced Dr. had never seen anything like that before. He immediately took a small slice off and sent it to pathology and they confirmed it as Cancer. He said it looked bad since it was so big and since her appendix had a small hole it in, some of the cancer cells had leaked into her abdomen. He said he would try and get everything out and I shooed him off to go fix my mother ASAP. After another hour or so, he came out and said he had gotten everything he could see out, but that Mom would probably have to do some chemo just to make sure.
After 6 weeks of recovery, we take her to an oncologist and it turned out to be Stage 2 Appendiceal Cancer. We get her started on chemo and luckily it is the kind where she won't lose her hair or make her very sick. So she takes it for six months, but after a while, she starts getting more and more weak. They do a PET scan and found no signs of cancer in her body, so they decide she can stop the chemo. They will keep doing PET scans every 6 months or so to just keep an eye on her. So this past January, she had another scan and sure enough, she is still cancer free. That marked her as being in 1 year remission! YES!!! So, several weeks ago, she had her bi-yearly scan, and sure enough, she is STILL cancer free! I can't describe how ecstatic I am. We are just so thrilled that she has had such a positive outcome! I know that unfortunately, some do not fare as well, which is what scared the hell out of me. I can honestly say, I don't know what I would do without my mom. She is like a best friend to me.. corny, I know but true. However, this has not always been the case. I did have my obnoxious teen years where she and I NEVER got along and I swore to never be anything like my mom. But as I got older and saw that hey, she wasn't so bad after all! Then I had a child of my own, a daughter no less and everything changed. How in the world did she put up with me?? Now Makayla is a pretty good child, but has her moments and I saw just how important being a mom and having your mom by your side really is.
Ok, I now this was kinda of a downer post, but I just thought I would get all this out there now, in case I referenced my mom/cancer in future posts.