Blog #87 Emory, MRI, and Hope for Remission

On my way to Emory to have an MRI early this morning, to see if the tumor board will approve a resection of my liver on the right side. Doesn't that sound like a horrible way to start the week? It does in some ways and yet in others it could be what gives me back a Cancer free life and how can that be horrible?

I'm very nervous as to the results. I am a control freak and traveling this journey there isn't a thing I'm able to control. I just have to "GO WITH IT" sometimes that really is just the hardest thing to do. I have all my faith in Dr Chamsuddin and if he feel this is my only option than I refuse to question it. I know he will only lead me down the road of success through fighting this 

Yesterday,  I spent most of the afternoon crying when no one else was around and just cried my eyes out. Cried because I have this disease .. I cried because I still have to fight.I  Cried for the unknown which is dumb because really there is nothing to cry about when you don't even know what you are crying for. I have to do this. I have to go lay my little body in a tube for 30 minutes while a machine spins around me making images of my body so that the specialist on a board at Emory can make a decision about what can and should be done with me. This Cancer is nasty. It's slow growing but regardless it's growing inside of me as we did the Y90 I pray to God got it all... but the issue is this beast just wants to come back! It likes me. It like attacking my body and as I work so hard to fight to get rid of it apparently it's  fighting just as hard to stay just where it is! 

I'm okay. I'm recovering well from the last Y90 a few days ago. It takes a little time and my body needs rest and it's really hard to rest good when you are taking steroids ...those just seem to jack me up. I only slept a few hours last night. My mind kept wondering all over the place. I want to just tell it sometimes to just stop thinking to give me break! It doesn't work. 

It been a tough week I loss 3 people I know that had Cancer and were fighting for their lives. I hurts every time I hear about anyone passing from this horrible disease but it doesn't do anything less than make me want to fight harder.

 

I'm not a quitter I have never a day in my life been a quiter and I'm not about to start now just because the battle has gotten tougher. I have the strongest desire to live inside me. I want to see my little girl grow up. I deserve this. Everyone deserves this and like so many before me and so many that will  be after me I will fight my ass off to the bitter end. 

I have things I want to do and I am hoping that I can see those things through to the end of success. 

I'm almost there to get this done and I've put my big girl panties on and I will walk into this appointment as confident as I always do and know no matter what I feel inside I have a mission to accomplish and this is just another step in my ultimate recovery. 

The MRI was a success. I have never had one before ...so I really didn't know what to expect. I knew it couldn't really be that different from a CT Scan or a Pet Scan. I was taken back immediately, that's the plus of being the first patient of the day. I had to change into a hospital gown and a huge pair of hospital pants.  I laid on a the scan table and was given an IV for the dye that would be administered during the test (another thing I wasn't expecting) the machine is weird. It's like a tunnel you are pushed into and you are given huge headphones I wasn't sure what those were for until I was in the machine and the buzzing and machine itself was incredibly loud. It wasn't bad in and out of there in less than 20 minutes. I left the hospital thinking... well lets say not thinking and didn't get a copy of my disc. Once I got back to work Dr Chamsuddin called to remind me ( I'm not sure he thought he had to remind me but I think he thought I would have been there already. Because he knows I'm on top of it. I'm there before he even ever calls to see me) so I had to get  my driver(Chris) to come back and get me. I couldn't drive  because I have to taken a pain pill as my back hurts and I'm  still recovering from the procedure, Chris took me back down to Emory, I waited an hour, and off we went to Covington to drop it off at the hospital.

  It's there and when he gets the chance he will view it. It's been a long day and now I'm home laying in my bed resting and trying to recover before having to go and do chemo on Wednesday morning. Tomorrow should be a full day at the office, at least I hope so.   

A friend of mine texted me today and I thought I would share what she said about Dr Chamsuddin:

He is everything I would want in a doctor.  So glad you have him in your court!

Don't cry for me... Pray for me. Pray that the best decision is made for my future because I plan on living a long time and fighting for every day I have if I have to!!!

Blog #74... When Hope is all you have.... Risking it all

Do you know the feeling when you look at something (a picture for example) and you put a simple word with it.... and it changes the way that you look at that one thing?  This morning I posted two pictures on facebook they were of my two daughters and grandson and simply said "My legacy" and tears immediately rolled down my cheeks. It took me back to that initial shock of being told by so many doctors that I would not make it..... that I would not have the chance to see my little girl and grandson grow up. Nor would I see my daughter  find her happily ever after, with the man of her dreams, and walk down the isle. Ugh.... Those thoughts hurt so badly and I remember the pain and the nights I cried myself to sleep. The days and nights that I could only sit and write my kids letters to be left in my desk drawer for them to be found once I was dead and gone. 

When you are told that your life could end ...and it could end quickly, there is never enough time to prepare yourself for that... There is always that hope that things could just simply turn themselves around and the destination of your life be altered and you live a long life. 

I have been given that chance. I tell people all the time I was to either take the road of certainty... meaning death as the statistic of my disease said would happen or I could RISK IT ALL...I risked it all, and by God's Grace, a incredibly skilled doctor, my determination to live, and all the prayer's.... I survived. I am blessed and sometimes I even get mad at myself because I feel that I should be doing more with this second chance but I have to remind myself I am still fighting this monster myself. I am just one person, I am fighting this horrible disease, working full time, being a mom, and trying to stretch my story across the world of other cancer patients to help inspire and maybe help in saving the life of someone else. It's important to me. It's not that I want to be this world leader in thinking that I know how to cure cancer, I don't ... I just know that when someone is told there is "NO HOPE" there is someone else that can give you back the hope that someone else ripped away. 

I remember the scrambling to find answers.. Traveling the country, wasting money just in hopes to hear that someone had this miracle pill I could take that would make this all go away. There  was no miracle pill. I would have done the Y90 sooner and immediately ...if the hospital pathology department didn't first say that I did not have cancer. That sent my life into a tailspin especially when it wasn't just the first biopsy but the second, and then a few days later I get a call... it is cancer and it's bad.  I ran everywhere I could to make things right for me. I didn't want to die. I feared I would tho. I feared the worse so many times and then I would tell myself how I wasn't going to give this stupid monster that satisfaction. If it was to take my life I would go down fighting as hard as I could and I have done that.  I have heard all my life that your attitude makes all the difference in situations like this... I thought they were just words .. Until it completely applied to my own life and believe me if I were to have just fed into the negativity of these doctors and if I would have believed what they said (they are doctors and they know it all... Right???) not a chance in hell.... look at me. I am a prime example of how WRONG they really can be.

 It's not even about being right or wrong it's about the fact that so many of them were not open about the Y-90 and told me it was a last resort. It was my 1st I chose like I said earlier to GO FOR IT.. What did I have to lose? Maybe I could have died a month or two sooner but I had the chance to live 5,10,15,50 years longer than I would have if I had not Risked it all. Some people go with What will be... and to afraid to go with What could be... I have been a what could be kind of person my whole life. I have risked it all in every aspect of my life ... So I felt why not risk it with my health too! 

 I really had more of a chance of an upside than a downside. I remember my cancer marker went sky high and my tumors had grown a little on the scan after alternative medicine and I called Dr. Chamsuddin and told him I had an updated scan and I wanted to see if he would look at it. I drove down to the hospital and he looked me in the eyes and said...  "Your only hope is the Y-90, Christy" In that one moment everything was clear, I knew what I had to do and I knew who I wanted to do this with... Dr. Chamsuddin took interest in myself and my family from the very first day of the initial biopsy I am not sure if it was that he just wanted to treatment for the first time at the hospital or if he was eager and ready for a challenge but he gave me the confidence to GO FOR IT!!! Everything got scheduled and there were snags with my insurance and all kinds of things, so many obstacles but we faced them, over came them and here I am 2 Y-90's and 9 ablations and a chemoemobolization later... Almost free of this monster.

 That one day defined the rest of my life. The choice had to be mine. I had to be the one person on this earth willing and ready to risk it all. Thank God I made that decision. I don't know if I would have made the same decision  if it had been any other Interventional Radiologist, I know that for a doctor like Dr. Chamsuddin he has seen a lot of people with this same problem, where the loved ones are so upset and supportive but the day he met me he walked into that biopsy room and there was me, and 5 or 6 other people standing there waiting for him ... and he knew I was so loved, he never really had to say that but he was surprised to see everyone standing there. It's not easy to have the pressures that I have put on him not only with my friends and family there with me but that I write so much about this journey, he says I put pressure on him, I think he likes it, pressure makes us better, stronger, more determined to succeed. He has been a huge part of my life over this last year and when he is done with me I hope that he will know long after we see one another again he will always be my HERO!  He gave me back my life in his own skillful way and I can not explain how that feels in my heart and soul because words can't describe what heaven may look like because none of us have ever seen it, but heaven is how this second chance makes me feel I am lucky enough to live another day and as many years as this body will allow me to live. 

Living life is so hard. Every time I turn around I am seeing the sorrow of someone else losing a loved one to one situation or another. Tragedies happen in an instant and that instant never goes back to the way life use to be. I don't live every day carefree and happy as I should I allow outside factors to get to me at times I just realize the insignificance of things when it truly relates to my life and let it go... I have just start learning how to do that. I have been a "People Pleaser" my whole life now I am a "Christy Pleaser" and if you fit into my life the way that you should then I am willing to help in pleasing you too. For the haters of the world that have never seen "ME" than they have missed out on someone special to love them. My status on FB today is ... I walk the walk .... that I talk, do you?

As I am less than a week from what I HOPE and PRAY is the last procedure, I find myself getting more anxious...I am just ready to have it done and over with... I just want to get in there be put to sleep and wake up with a smile on my face .... 

Don't Cry for Me... Pray For Me..... we are almost there, thanks for traveling this journey with me.