UPDATE

I’m really sorry but I just haven’t felt like blogging this last week. We have been in “wait to hear something/anything” mode and I don’t handle it real well.

However a decision was finally made today. Jim will be having surgery Friday morning at Shea Hospital. The doctor said the surgery lasts about three hours and Jim will be in the hospital for four days.

I am so relieved that we finally have a definite plan to follow. They did say that if they were to find more cancer once they go in he might still have to have radiation, but at this point they really don’t expect that to happen.

And that’s all I know at this point. We went to visit Aunt Happy and found out that she had lost one kidney to cancer and also part of her lung. She said her lung surgery wasn’t all that bad and she was back playing bridge in two weeks. So that made Jim feel better.

Our park is almost empty as of today. Ginny and Mickey are still here for a few more weeks and are just across the street so if I need anything they are available to help me. It’s in the 90’s and will be for the foreseeable future. But it’s rainy and cold up in Montana so I’m happy to be here in the warmth with no bugs to speak of. Nice breeze in the evenings so sitting outside with our new patio set is just wonderful.

Thanks again to all of you.

WHILE WE WERE WAITING

We are giving thanks for all of our good news. Thanks to the Lord and thanks to all of you.

You all know that the waiting is the hard part. Remember when you were young and you didn’t think Christmas or Hanukah would ever arrive? Mom and Dad always tried to find things to keep you occupied so you’d quit bugging them about how much longer. Getting out of school for summer, the same thing. Those poor teachers.

Well, we haven’t changed all that much as we’ve gotten older. Just that the things we are waiting for now are different – such as waiting for a lung transplant like Sherry and Charley, or waiting for a husband to wake up after four weeks in ICU for Nan and John, or waiting for the end of chemo and radiation for throat cancer like Sharon and Ron.

In our case it was waiting to find out if the cancer had spread and what course of action we can take. The best way to wait is to stay busy.

Thank goodness Jim has his boat to putz with. The weather has been lousy for fishing. Not for the fish but for Jim. We’ve been breaking all kinds of records for heat. 106 both Saturday and Sunday. 100 yesterday and again today. But he still had stuff to do on the boat. Most of it I don’t have a clue what it was but we did get him a new fish finder and I know he worked on getting that mounted and set up. I had to drag him into the air conditioning a few times.

We also bought a patio set. A couple of weeks ago Jim was sitting outside and our rocking camp chair fell apart with him in it. I think he might have cracked his tail bone. If not cracked, bruised really bad. He’s still in a lot of pain. Then last week Jan and Bill came over for lunch with us and all we had to offer them were those lousy fold up chairs that are so uncomfortable.

We have never owned a patio set and we decided now might be a good time to find one. We looked at several places. They had to be rocking chairs and I wanted padding. We finally found a set on sale at Big Lots.

And the best part of the whole thing was that Jim had to put it all together. Remember that keeping him busy idea. He could only work on it for a short time before I’d make him come in and cool off. So it did take him awhile to get it all done. In fact the table wasn’t done for a couple of days.

But the final result is sure nice.

Now I’m hoping that Jan and Bill are willing to come back and see us again since we have chairs for them to sit on.

You’re going to have to wait until June 24th to see Jim and I all gussied up (as Aunt Happy would say) for the wedding.

GOOD NEWS DAY

This was a great day for us. We headed out at 9:30 this morning and first up was Jim’s back surgeon appointment. He says Jim is doing just fantastic and he doesn’t want to see him again until the end of November.

In the afternoon we met with the Oncologist. He started off by saying that Jim’s Pet-CT scan was “interesting”. Not really sure that’s what you want to hear. But the reason it was interesting was that the news was good.

Jim has an enlarged lymph node on the outside of his right lung as well as the mass in his left lung. Dr. Gordon was sure that this node was going to show up in the PET as being cancerous and it didn’t. In fact there is no cancer in his brain, his organs or his bones. Only in that left lung. What a blessing that is.

And the cancer is not as advanced as they originally thought. Just try and tell me prayers aren’t heard and answered.

Our next step is to see a Pulmonologist – another one of those ologists – to have a specialist determine if we go through with the surgery that Jim has enough lung capacity. And yes, Dr. Gordon is back to thinking surgery is the best answer. He’s going to discuss the whole situation with Dr. Patel, the surgeon after we get the lung results. Then hopefully, we are done with ologists and can get this show on the road.

And our good news doesn’t end there. We had a couple of hours to kill between doctor appointments. They were both out in Scottsdale and I didn’t want to have to drive all the way back to AJ in between. So we had lunch at Sweet Tomatoes and after that we found a Macys.

Jim needed a new suit, a new tie, and a red dress shirt for Todd’s wedding. I already have my dress so I’m good to go. Can you believe we found a red dress shirt in Jim’s size on sale. Just unbelievable. Then we found a beautiful black suit with the most gorgeous tie to go with it. He sure does clean up good. WOW!

And what’s even better is that everything was 25% off and if we opened up a Macys account we got another 20% off that. We got such a great deal I was doing a dance around the store.

So a really good news day.

QUICK UPDATE

Don’t really know a whole lot more than we did before we saw the oncologist but we both really liked him. And that’s a good thing. We also found out that Jim may not be a candidate for surgery.

He has had two coronary by pass surgeries and they get real hesitant about surgery when chemo and radiation will work.

Jim has a PET-CT scan tomorrow and a brain MRI on Friday. We will be getting to bed early tonight because Jim has to be up at 5:00 a.m. to take his medications and eat some protein.

We meet with the oncologist, Dr. Michael Gordon, again on Monday and that’s when we will know how we’re going to proceed.

Thanks to all of you for all of the beautiful, kind words of encouragement and the prayers. You will just never know how wonderful it is to read these words and feel the caring behind them.

STILL WAITING

We will be seeing the Oncologist this afternoon so hopefully we’ll have a few more answers.

Jim is fishing which is by far the best therapy for him while we just sit and wait.

As for me, my therapy is eating anything and everything.

LIFE CHANGES

Sometimes life throws you a curve ball and hopefully you’ve learned how to hit them out of the park.

When Jim was going through his pre-op for his back surgery, the doctors took a chest x-ray. They found a mass in his left lung and told him as soon as he healed from the back surgery he needed to have a biopsy.

He had the biopsy done and yes, it is cancer. At this point they plan on doing surgery, hopefully next week or the week after. Then we’ll have to see about whether he needs any chemo or radiation. We have been seeing a lot of doctors (surgeon, pulmonologist, cardiologist, internist) but we still haven’t met with the oncologist.  Once we have that appointment, then surgery will be scheduled.

We will be staying here in AJ while we get this taken care of and still plan on being in Montana for our son’s wedding on June 24.

We are doing great. The Lord is taking over my worry for me cause I need to not be hysterical for Jim. lol

Not sure how much I’ll be posting but I will let you know how things are going when I know something more.

Prayers are definitely appreciated.

A HAPPY POST

Aunt Happy that is. We spent Easter with Happy and she had us rolling on the floor with laughter.

She told us the story of when she was about 17 and her Dad, who printed the newspaper in a small Montana town, decided to take her Mom to Chicago for a long week-end. He left Happy in charge of the Administrative part of the newspaper office.

All was going along nicely until Ole Olsen came in to pay his bill. (This is not an Ole joke. She grew up in an area that was settled by Danes and Norwegians and that is truly what his name was.) Happy went over to look for his invoice and that’s when the problems started.

There were at least 10 Ole Olsen invoices in the drawer. So she asked Ole what his address was. Now remember this was 80 years ago. He told her he lived on the corner across the street from the Jacobson’s. So she went to check the drawer for the Jacobson invoice only to find there were 26 of them. Definitely going downhill rapidly.

Ole had no idea which Jacobson. He always called him Jacobson. Ole tried to help Happy out by telling her that the corner he lived on was about three blocks up and maybe four blocks over. Still no good.

She finally told him that he would have to wait for her Dad to get back but Ole was determined to pay his bill. Out to his truck he goes.

When he comes back in he has two live squawking chickens in his hand. Happy is not happy with live chickens and Ole insists she take them in payment of his bill. He tells her that her Dad will know which Ole paid because he told her Dad he was going to bring in the chickens. Dad just happened to forget to mention this to his daughter.

When she described her reaction to the chickens I didn’t think any of us were ever going to recover from laughing so hard. I wish you could have been there to hear the story directly from her. She is a much better story teller than I am.

Happy finally convinces Ole to take his chickens home and bring them back next week when her Dad would be there to record the payment. 

What a great Easter Sunday.