Hold on to your hats, because May was a crazy month at our house.
On May 1, Kory and I went to the ward we will be attending when we move to LaBelle just for sacrament meeting. We loved the feeling and people there. They seemed like real salt of the earth folks. We came back to our ward after to do our callings.
On May 3, we took Madi and Quinton to Longhorn Steakhouse to celebrate Madi’s birthday.
On the 4th, Morgan got braces on, so she ate lots of soft food.
On Friday, the 6th I went to a Madison track meet to see Ainsley pole vault and to borrow some shoes from her for Chloe to go to Idaho Falls’ prom. On Saturday, the 7th, Chloe spent most of the day on her date. They drove down to Salt Lake City to go to the aquarium, then they cam home, got ready, and went to the Teton House for dinner, and then the dance. She went with her friend Kael from school.
We also had a combined birthday party for Aiden, Madi, and Leah that night. Aiden turned two and we had yummy Sandwich Tree food and some cake to celebrate. We also started having the kids sort through all of their stuff from the storage room, so it was kind of fun for them to look through their stuff.
May 8 was Mother’s Day and I bought my mom a nice
dress.
On May 10, in the evening, I started throwing up and it
continued throughout the night. I thought it was food poisoning, but Kristi
said there was a bad stomach flu going around, so I thought it might be that. I
threw up the next night as well, but along with the vomiting was intense pain.
Around 1:00 or 2:00 Thursday morning, Kory took me to the ER. They put me on a
morphine drip to help with the pain, and then the doctor ordered a CT Scan. He
looked very serious when he told me I had a large mass in my abdomen. They
referred me to a gynecologist and sent me home. I saw the gynecologist that afternoon
and he said they needed to see if the mass had any markers for cancer. If it
did, they would need to remove it whole, if not, they could suck the fluid out
and do it through laparoscopy. He sent me home, and I threw up again that
night. I called and told him, and he told me to go back to the ER for more
scans. I think they were worried that the tumor was pushing on my organs and
might cause a bowel obstruction. One of the ER doctors said, “I think it’s
reached critical mass.” There wasn’t anywhere else for the tumor to go, so it
was starting to cause problems. They decided I needed to go down to Salt Lake
for surgery, so I waited in the ER until they had a bed available at the
University of Utah and then they sent me down in an ambulance. This was all
very sudden. Kory was with me the whole time. He ran home to pack some things
and Chloe stopped by for a minute to give me a hug. Kory followed the ambulance
down. They got me into a room and then I met the doctors and they explained the
surgery. They decided they did need to take the tumor out whole, so they would
do a large incision in my abdomen. I was pretty scared for surgery but didn’t
have a lot of time to worry about it.
I was in the hospital in Utah from May 13-21. I ended up
having surgery on Sunday, May 15. After
the surgery I was moved to Huntsman and received amazing care from all of the
doctors and nurses there. The doctor estimated that the tumor weighed around 40
pounds. (After I got home, I weighed and had lost about 33 pounds, so I think
it was a little smaller than that.) They said the recovery was about six weeks
and then I would come back for a
follow-up. The big thing that they needed to figure out was whether or
not the tumor was cancerous or not. They thought it would fall in a
“borderline” category, which is not normal and not cancerous. While in there,
they did an appendectomy, a hysterectomy, and an oophorectomy. The surgery went
smoothly and took about three and a half hours. I was in the hospital for six
more days, recovering. Those were long days! Kory was there most of the time,
and I had some visits from family and friends. Halle and Barry came the day
before my surgery. Jen Horner came and brought so many great treats and things
for Kory to eat while he was there with me. I also had visits from Brenda
Hiatt, Wendy Clegg, Annie Rollins, Kris Powell, and my sister Jodi. My other
family in Utah wanted to visit, but they were sick and the hospital advised
against it.
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| I had to put this picture in. My room had an amazing view of the Salt Lake Valley. But Kory was really interested in watching all of the Life Flight helicopters--since he was a great view of all the helipads, so he'd run to the window whenever he saw one coming or going. |
Kory had to go back on the 20th to supervise our move—yes, we were moving in the middle of all this! He did a quick overnight trip and came back to pick me up on the 21st in the afternoon. Right before he picked me up, I tasted the first food that tasted good to me in over a week. It was a quesadilla, and it was amazing. I had had such a queasy stomach with all the surgeries, medicines, etc it was very hard to eat. I was on an IV for quite a few days to keep me functioning.
I was so happy to be back in my home and my bed. I did not sleep well at all while in the hospital because of all of the machines and lots of nurses coming in with meds and checking blood and vitals. It was crazy. So, I slept very well that first night back. The only down side was that we were half-way moved, so we didn’t really have a lot of our stuff handy. So it was a strange week trying to heal and finish up our move. We spent our first official night in the new house in Rigby on May 28. In the meanwhile, Caleb graduated from high school on May 25. They had the ceremony at the Sky Vu Drive In. I went, but after sitting there for awhile, I knew I couldn’t make it through the ceremony, so Kory took me home. Caleb plans to attend BYUI for a year and then go on a mission.
On the 27th, we had a birthday party for Stevie at Austin and Leah’s.
We moved on the 28th. On the 31st, we had all of the kids gather at the house for a final goodbye. Each kid had a chance to share memories and then Kory sang the song “Remember When.” The kids then walked through the house, went out on the roof for a minute, and then everyone left. I made it through a couple of hours of the gathering, but then I wasn’t feeling good and had to leave.
I also heard back from the doctor at Huntsman and they said that the results of the pathology showed that I had low-grade cancer in both ovaries. They also said it looked like the cancer did not originate in the ovaries, which means that I might have cancer somewhere else in my body. So, they told me I needed a colonoscopy and then some chemotherapy. I was super disappointed at this news, and cried for the first time in all of this. I just didn’t want all of this craziness to continue any longer.
These are the words to a song that I heard while I was in the hospital, and it has pretty much been on repeat throughout these crazy weeks. It has given me a lot of comfort. It's called Healer and it's on the Trust in the Lord collection for youth that the church out.
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