I Have Cancer

Great, huh? I have Papillary Thyroid Cancer. I had the biopsy yesterday afternoon, which sort of stunk. It wasn't as uncomfortable as dental work, but my tumor is so big they had to use six needles instead of four. The numbing was nice, but it left my neck super sore. It's still sore tonight. The doctor used a cool voice-recognition ultrasound machine while he poked into my neck.

So today I get a call, right when I'm drifting off to sleep at naptime, of course, and the nurse is all personable and nice and then the doctor gets on and he's all nice-able and then he's all, well, I don't like to have to tell you that it's Papillary Thyroid Cancer. And he kept on talking, about how if you have to have cancer, it's a pretty good, slow-growing type to get and the survival rates are pretty good. I guess if you have to drop bad news on people all the time, you learn that there's not much they're going to want to say when you tell them they have cancer and you should just keep going. It is scary, though, to hear someone telling you your survival chances and realize you could DIE. Left untreated of course.

My treatment will probably include surgery to remove if not all, then most of my thyroid gland plus the big old tumor on my neck. Most likely we'll do this after the baby comes at the end of the year. There's a chance I could have to get radioactive iodine treatment, depending what the surgeon thinks of my tumor. The good news is that my lymph nodes are clean, according to the ultrasounds. So they can stay.

Bless this baby's heart, this pregnancy is about to break my camel's back. One thing after another and now I have cancer. I guess I'm the same as I was yesterday; it's just scary mostly when you say,"I have cancer" or talk about chemo or other cancer treatment things. The chances are slim that it will metastasize to other organs. But then the chances were slim that it was cancer, too, like only 10% or so and here I am. Just like me, when I tell people they pretty much don't know what to say. Huh, they're thinking. That sucks. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking, too.

In other news, Seth got a raise today. YESSS!! Now I can afford to pay for my Synthroid prescription I'll probably have to take for the rest of my life!!! But seriously, thank you, Martin and Vejvoda. We super-ultra appreciate it.

The Baby's Turning Out Pretty Good

...for all the dang trouble he's causing. It was anemia, not enough progesterone, and blood diseases at the beginning, and then now he's trying to get out half-baked. (explicit pregnant talk follows. Be forewarned) I had my cervix measured and it was pretty short. My measurements with Russell were all four something and the baseline with this new guy was two something and then I went to the Perinatologist last week and the first thing he says after, "I'm doctor so-and-so," was "See this number right here? That's not a good number." I knew that, because it was 1.7 something and that's the smallest number I've seen EVER. So he already had the nurses out trying to schedule me for surgery the next day.

So dang it. I had the cerclage the next day which is a stitch to keep things all tightened up like your Uncle Scrooge's Purse Strings, and it would be fairly simple if you didn't have to get a dang, stinkin' spinal to have it. So Seth and I were at the hospital all the next day and finally five hours after I had the spinal, I could feel enough to walk to the potty and do my pee-wee, so they let me go home. I had the same surgery to keep my fatty-baby Jules in, except that when I was all dressed and ready to go home and had done my pee-wee and everything, I was sitting in a wheel-chair waiting for my mom and...I barfed. First I asked for a cracker which helped a little bit, but then I barfed it up. Plus the force from that caused me to pee my pants. So I just got in the dang car and went home anyway, since it was a drizzly day and who cares. I just had surgery and I wanted to go to bed.

But no barfing with this guy. The catch was I had to be on bedrest for a week afterward, until the doctor could look and make sure it was all healed and working. I didn't know what we were going to do with the other three big kids. Seth's mom asked if we needed her to come up and help and of course we said YES so she came up the next day. And then all these ward-members started showing up at our house with meals and videos and also taking the children for fun times. I just started crying every time, after the first couple. With Jules I had to BEG for help and that was just a miniature trickle of help with one tiny kid. so Cherry Creek Ward Rules!!! Of course the baby's fine. It's just me trying to keep him in until he's fully-cooked and delicious like a little plumpy warm cinnamon roll.

The Jam Turned Out Pretty Good

So awhile back I wrote about how I was going to make jam from the dehydrated peaches and "we'll see how it turns out." So this is how it turned out. I just sort of made up the "dried" part of the recipe, so I think the all-peach ones on the right are super-saturated with peach. The ones on the left are strawberry-peach that I made with the leftover strawberries from my date with my daughter Julesie. We actually already opened and ate one of them and they were incredibly delicious. Today I got raspberries on sale and will mash them up as soon as I can get off my bum and make them into fabulous jam.

The Doldrums Tree

That's from The Phantom Tollbooth, the Doldrums. So my friend Jess had a list of all these ideas for kids to do when they're stir crazy during summer. Of course, my children aren't allowed to say they're "bored" because I taught them that bored means "not smart enough to think of something to do." So I've damaged their psyches a little bit. Anyway, I took Jessica's ideas we could do and added some of my own I thought of, plus searched the internet for more and wrote each idea down on a little tag. The orange ones are just for Jules, like "wash doll clothes" and the blue ones are just for Eric, like "transform all the transformers to vehicle mode."

There are a couple rules about the Doldrums tree, such as You have to be in the Doldrums to get to pick something, and Whatever you pick you have to do. The only trouble is that the children want to pick stuff all the time. I'm making dinner and it's supposed to be clean-up time and Jules is all,"can I just pick one thing, ONE THING, from the Doldrums tree?" and I'm like,"No way, squirt, it's clean-up time." Plus I was gone one day and Seth let the children pick something but kept making them pick again because every idea required ADULT PARTICIPATION. Make cookies, take a walk. anyway, I don't mine participating with them unless it's naptime, so it's pretty good so far. If I'd thought of it, I would have put up the list of all the different activity ideas before we taped them all up on the wall.

Sarah's Seventh

Seven years since our little Angel Baby Sarah was born. Every year I make a humongous heart cake for her birthday. I try to decorate it a little different each year.

Someting's Happening in the Garden

Corn. I never grew corn before but Seth's family does all the time so he requested it.










onion- I'm not really onion crazy but my in-laws gave me these onion sets and you do have to have some onions for flavah, so I'll grow these maybe, and then chop them up and freeze or dry them.











peas - I love peas so much. Also they smell pretty growing. Mine are wilt-resistent! So, bonus.











Butternut squash-I saw a recipe where you put butter and brown sugar in the squash and cook it and it made me want to try them. Otherwise I don't like squash, but I know you can make pumpkin-like pies with these if you don't want to eat them straight.








Pumpkins- I love novelties so much, so I got the enormous-competition-size-pumpkin seeds. Wouldn't it be SO COOL if a couple grew on the vine!!! Huge Enormous Pumpkins!!! It's like my dream come true.

So I planted all these seeds in the garden like three weeks ago and nothing has been coming up and nothing has been coming up. So like three days ago I started, duh, praying over the garden which I should have been doing all along, and voila! three days later here come all these crops popping out of the ground. I was so thrilled I called the kids out and made them examine each little sproutling. When Seth got home I made him come right out and examine each little sproutling. It's a pretty good miracle since all I did to prepare the soil was pick out most of the landscape rocks with which it was previously covered, and turned in the "compost" I had made during the whole last year of living in a townhome.

Finally, an Outside Project

We moved literally tons of gravel, plus a couple hundred pounds-worth of curvy pavers and put in this really calm, really good-smelling little bed. Also I planted a peony plant on each side of the window but they're super tiny and you can't see them. Maybe next year. Also we bought our brown paint for the trim there in front. The orange was just so....so ugly. Yes, that's the word I want. Also, offensive. Last Saturday Seth did the gravel bed on the other side of the front door to look like this, too. Maybe I shall plant some beautiful flowers or a tiny midget shrub under the window.