Blog 69 Taking the BAD with the GOOD

(Mahli knew something was wrong with me and stayed beside me everywhere I went in the house)

(My life made a drastic change in 2006)

I want to tell things in the order that they happened, but I will need to jump back and forth in some cases to keep this volume of blogs easier to read. I begin by telling you that what I predicted about my brother, Darrell, came true. On July 2o, 2006, I got the call that I knew I would get someday. My brother was driving an over-the-road truck for many years. Darrell was in California when he either crashed his truck which caused him to have a stroke, or he had the stroke and crashed the truck. No one else was involved and when he was found, they took him to Palms Spring.

Darrell’s wife, Les, was called and told her he was in ICU and probably was not going to survive. When I got the news, I had to make a decision to either go to Palms Spring or wait to see if he died and be able to go to his funeral. Les understood that I could not do both. Together we decided that I should wait. On July 24th, Darrell died at the age of forty-seven. He was cremated and Les sent me some of his ashes to bury there in Albemarle. I held on to them for a while, but one of my dogs died and was cremated soon after. I bought a tree and planted it on the side of the house that Robert was buying. I placed a picture of Darrell and me, wrote on the back, placed it in hard plastic, and sprinkled his and Annabelle’s ashes around the root of the tree and then buried it.

In October of 2006, Robert and I drove to Dallas for a wedding that Robert was in AND, by chance, ended up attending a funeral while we were there. The day of the wedding, I felt a small lump on my left buttocks that started hurting. We headed back to Albemarle immediately after the wedding was over. I felt like my lump was getting larger. When we would drive home we always stopped in Louisiana to play at the casinos. However, by this time, my lump was definitely enlarging and I could not sit in the casino chairs. We went back to the hotel, got a good night sleep and drove straight back to Albemarle.

The lump was getting larger everyday and began hurting badly when I went to the restroom. I knew this was not good, so I went to my doctor. She immediately set me up for a rectal inspection, which turned into a colonoscopy. The results came back as colon cancer and immediate surgery. By this time, the biopsy returned a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. A very rare finding in the pelvis. When they did the removal, the lump had grown to 10 x 4 inches in size. (that is the size of my hand). They, also, found that it was connected to the colon, but was on the outside, not inside, of the colon.

When I made my first visit to the cancer center, the doctor insisted I go to Winston-Salem for a second opinion of how to continue because it was going to mean a very hard treatment and my doctor needed to make sure he was right. Well, he was correct and I had to make a decision. The treatment would take months and the outcome was that I could only have 18 months to live. To me, it was a no-brainer. I told the Oncologist that I would do everything he asked of me, but only God could say when I would die.

I started with chemotherapy. It would be a heavy administration of the liquid medicine going into my body for 96 straight hours then three weeks to recover for SIX dosages. This was basically six months. It would be followed by six weeks of radiation treatment directed to my pelvis, front and back, for forty minutes. This was to be done every day, except the weekends. It would kill any chance of having children and could make my hips and pelvis brittle. I said, “What are we waiting for? Let’s get going!”

I was placed in the hospital for the first dose to assure that I did not have any reactions They placed a port under my skin on the right chest to make sure I kept an open line for it to drip into my vein. (I still have the port to this day). During the chemotherapy, I had to flush heparin through the port at certain periods and to change bags of the medicine during the four days. Robert and I both were trained to flush and change the bags, so I did not need a house nurse except to start the chemotherapy and to remove the needle at the end.

Ironically, I felt okay during the four days and the first week of rest. The second and third week were horrible to bear. I needed help during that time and Robert had to keep working. So, my loving family members took turns flying in from Dallas, at their expense, for each of those two weeks. I can never say thank-you enough to them. I lost my hair (as shown in the picture), began a very long battle of restless leg syndrome, was dragged around to many appointments, and can hardly remember the year 2007.

I had used up all my sick time during chemotherapy. The Cancer Center was at the hospital and for six weeks I had to do radiation therapy during my lunch break. By the time I was finished, the Oncologist changed my chance of death to three years, and as I progressed, he changed it to five years. After five years, he agreed with me that God was not finished with me yet. All signs of leftover lymphoma were gone.