random stuff

For those of you wanting to know what's up - I'm going in for the radiation stuff next week - the 17th and 18th. Josh will post more details later. My TSH levels have shot up so high that I am exhausted and emotional and having to do this frustrating diet where I really can't eat anything, so I don't like to think about it all or it makes me cry. I have to be really good about the diet or the radiation won't work as well and then I have to do surgery and radiation again. I'm not going to do that. The struggle right now is to not let my TSH levels get any higher than they are, but get through the two weeks on the low iodine diet.

Anyway, the kids realize that mom is a little off and have been pretty clingy lately. James is so cute though. He was singing a song the other day from Sid the Science Kid. He was telling me about Sid and how Sid loved his mom and thought his mom was cool. So I asked him, do you love your mom? He smiled and said yes. Then I said, and you think your mom is cool too huh.... He said no, my mom is cute, my dad is cool and awesome. I thought it was pretty cute.

I've also lost weight with everything so Andrew was asking me the other day why I am a little mom now. He said he is going to be able to be bigger than me faster now. He was pretty excited about that. I'm finally about the same size I was before I had James, which is great, but not the way I planned on getting back into my fun clothes. Before James I was exercising all the time, I was going to a Body Pump class at the gym (I LOVE that class)...I was in good shape. Then James came and I wasn't sleeping much, cause he didn't, ended up in the hospital with pneumonia and everything has just seemed to go downhill from there. Now five surgeries later, I'm hoping that I won't have any more and I can start getting back to my same old healthy self. That's the plan. Anyway, I've been resting a lot. Just walking up the stairs right now makes my legs shaky and I have to lay down. Josh will post technical details later, cause he does that kind of thing.

Josh has been totally spoiling me though. It's been so nice to have such a nice room put together with love from my incredible friends and an amazing husband who spoils me. There's nothing like a little bump in your life to let you know that you have lots of friends that love you and an amazing family. I'm very very grateful for all of you.

I need to post pics of our halloween. We had a Halloween party with Josh's family early Oct, which was great. Josh was a vampire, I was a vampiress, Connor was a rockstar, Emmalee a witch, Andrew a football player, and James was the big bad wolf. They were all so cute. Halloween night I really didn't feel too good, so I didn't dress up. It made me sad, but I just didn't have enough energy to be in costume. I dressed in my cozy clothes and sat on the steps to hand out candy. I was glad it was a warmer night because all of this thyroid stuff makes me freezing cold all the time. I just pray that they will be able to kill all the cancer with the radiation stuff and not have to do surgery and radiation again. This isn't my favorite thing. I even missed two parties this last week. I hate missing parties. I tell people that I'm always good for a party, but not this time. There will be more parties. When I really feel yucky I just imagine myself being in St George for Thanksgiving, warm, relaxing by the pool, sitting in a nice condo cleaned by someone else. :) If the timing of all of this works out (which I'm planning on) I will totally be there!

Latest status on Pam 11/8/2008

[I started this yesterday and haven't finished it yet...in the meantime Pam posted her last blog, so some of this might be repetitive]

We haven't gotten around to updating this for a few days. On the 4th we went to the endocrinologist. He explained what we mostly already knew from the pathology report, that there was papillary cancer found, and that it had extended to the edge of the thyroid. He didn't seem nearly as concerned as the surgeon about the cancer having spread to the edge of the thyroid - he was quite optimistic. The primary nodule was about .7cm, which is relatively small, but there were others found. He said that with just one nodule only .7cm that some doctors may not even pursue the radiation, but where there were multiple nodules and it extended to the edge, radiation was going to be necessary, which we were already expecting.

The Low Iodine Diet

And so the fun begins. The thyroid is a unique organism in the body in that it is the only thing that processes iodine. This means that instead of needing chemotherapy or other more drastic cancer treatments, you can ingest radioactive iodine. They thyroid, or any remaining thyroid cells rather, will suck up the iodine and be killed. To make this treatment effective, your body needs to be depleted of iodine to insure that the thyroid cells are deficient and readily "suck up" any iodine introduced into the body. This means a low iodine diet for two weeks before they will do radiation treatment. At first this didn't sound so bad, until we realized just how limited this diet was going to be. No dairy. No egg yolks. No iodized salt (non-iodized is easy enough to find, but regular salt is used in just about everything). No seafood. No commercial bakery products, chocolate, red #3, soy, potato skins, and a bunch of other stuff. This was turning into a real pain, but as of today (the 9th) I'm more inclined to say that now that we've got it figured out it's not so bad. One of our neighbors has been making us a special bread that uses no eggs or milk. That has been a life saver for Pam. There is a "Good Earth" store off Riverdale Rd. that has tortilla chips, and that has also been really nice. Another neighbor has brought us over plenty of meat that is straight from the butcher with no added preservatives, seasonings, etc. Actually I was a little jealous of Pam's steak she made for herself the other day...Pam's also been eating lots of fruit and vegetables, fruit juices, and unsalted almonds and cashews.

So many people have provided so much for us. We have wonderful neighbors and friends. There is no way I could list all the things people have done for us the past few weeks, and have offered to do for us in the next few weeks. I have to go but I don't want to end up not posting this for another day so I'm posting what I have...more later.

Appt with Endocrinologist

So I was able to schedule an appointment with the endocrinologist for Nov 4th, next Tuesday - which I called my surgeon and he said that is perfectly fine to wait a week. He said if it was two weeks he would push to get it closer for me, but one week will be fine. I'm sure we will come up with an action plan next week then.

My Doctor's Appointment

I went to the doctor today to get the pathology report from my surgery and he said it is cancer. I have to have radiation sometime coming up and possibly another surgery. The cancer extended to the edge of the tissue they took out so they are worried that there is other tissue in the body that may have been affected that they didn’t get out. I have to schedule all of this with my endocrinologist who is out today and I will talk to tomorrow to find out what and when the next step will be. But all is well – they can totally fix it so no worries. I will keep you all updated as to when and what I will be doing with all of this. Thanks for all the prayers, love, and support from everyone. We totally appreciate it. :)

Pam's Surgery

Pam went in for surgery at 10:00 am this morning to have the rest of her thyroid removed. The surgeon just came and spoke with me at about 11:50 am to say that everything went well. She is currently in recovery, and will be in her room in about 20 minutes. We're planning on her being here overnight, but depending on how things go, she may come home tonight. I'll post more later.

8:20 pm
Pam is recovering well, she will be coming home tomorrow (probably late morning or afternoon). Unfortunately I had to run home to transfer kids when the doctor came in to explain how everything went. But according to Pam, he didn't really say much. He said that the surgery all went well and that they removed any tissue that would have had any cancer in it. I had assumed they were going to biopsy what they removed right during the surgery (they had said this was one reason for the surgery taking a little longer than normal) but the doctor didn't really say anything about what they found. He said he wanted to wait until they got the lab results back because he wasn't entirely sure of what exactly he was dealing with yet, and I guess he just didn't want to say something and be wrong. So we are now waiting until Oct. 27th when has her next appointment where the doctor will go over the results with her. I am assuming that we will learn at that time if any radiation treatment is necessary, but I kind of got the impression that the doctor was thinking it wouldn't be necessary. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of definite answers yet. If I have any more clarifications, I'll write more.

Pam has a very small drainage tube in her neck that will come home with her. It will be removed Monday. She really is doing quite well. She has a sore throat for some reason though. Of course, they've got her on pretty heavy morphine right now, so we'll see how things go when she gets ready to come home.

On a side note, things have been pretty crazy. For Pam's birthday she decided that she wanted to redecorate our bedroom. We have a lady in our ward that is quite the interior decorator and really wanted to help Pam with this project. She has jumped in with both feet and, holy cow, the scope has certainly gone beyond a few pictures and decor to go on the wall that Pam initially envisioned. So far we have a new bed frame to lift the bed higher off the floor, we tiled our bathroom and put beadboard up on the walls, as well as quite a bit of molding and new paint. We have all new paint in our bedroom - the fancy-shmancy kind that is all textured and, well, kinda cloudy looking - I am not a designer, I don't know what you call it, but it looks VERY nice. I'll have to post a picture when it's done. The lady doing all this wants before and after pictures to kind of get her started doing this as a business, so I'll have pictures. She has pulled all kinds of strings - a dresser from the classifieds for $50 that she completely refinished and looks VERY nice - two nightstands that she had (and says she wasn't going to use, but I'm not so sure) that she refinished and put a really cool distressed look on - they look like they are out of an antique store. We got a new ceiling fan, new light fixtures in the bathroom, a new armoire. It turned in to quite the project - and it has been on an accelerated time frame so that Pam would be able to come home and enjoy her new bedroom/bathroom while recovering from surgery. The lady (she's even had her mom over helping, along with several of her kids) has been working day and night on this project. Man, do I owe some people big time!

In the middle of this, our water heater has started leaking. Well, it's been leaking for awhile, but it's getting worse. The bottom is all rusted out. It's going to give any day now. I called a guy in our ward who sells plumbing supplies to ask him some questions about getting a new one. He indicated that I could get a good deal going through him, and he could even have it delivered. I talked to him yesterday and was going to call him today to work out the details. Well, I never got to it, then I show up at about 6:00 pm back home from the hospital and there is a new water heater in my garage. Sweet. Two people from our ward have offered to help me install it - I don't think it will be too difficult, I just need to get some time somewhere in the next few days before our basement gets flooded.

When I came home from the hospital for a few minutes this afternoon our garage was off the track, and the tension cable was completely unwound and in a big mess. So I had that lovely project to deal with too. It took me about an hour of unsuccessful attempts to rewind the cable and get it hooked back up. I finally figured out the trick and once I did it the right way it only took me a few minutes to get it back on. Of course, earlier the kids had tried to force the garage down and with the spring only attached on one side it didn't come down straight, and the rails were all bent, one wheel was off, and the holder for that wheel was all bent. All that didn't take too long to fix though. Luckily Pam was just sleeping for most of the time I was gone.

All this after a really intense week or two of football video that had to be done for a banquet, a wedding video to finish up, a big slide scanning order (which I am scanning as I write this), coaching soccer, a video for our regional special needs primary, tons of stuff going on at work, a baptism video (which was my pleasure to do, Sandy - I've got it down now and I was able to crank that out pretty quickly), lots of changes going on in the stake I'm having to deal with, and a million other things. I literally have not had 10 minutes of downtime and way too many late nights. I keep thinking of that movie "Castaway" and what it must be like to be stranded on an island with nothing but time on your hands... I am SO looking forward to our Thanksgiving vacation in St. George. We'll just relax, have Thanksgiving dinner with my sister's family at Cracker Barrel, and just hang out. I think it's going to take a day or two just for my head to stop spinning... It was actually kind of nice to just sit with Pam in the hospital room for awhile (well, not so nice for Pam I am sure!) and not do anything but feed Pam ice chips and get out of the nurses way occasionally (and order food from the cafeteria "for Pam" which I promptly scarfed down - she certainly didn't want it, just ice chips and an occasional bit of yogurt.)

Well, this is turning into War and Peace so I am going to sign off - after all, our interior decorator is slaving away and probably giving me dirty looks behind my back as I sit at the computer...I'm off to paint/unpack a water heater/mount a jewelry cabinet/clean up/try to actually get the kids some late dinner/move furniture/who knows what else.

Dr visit for Connor

Connor was excited to have his whole football team sign his cast

We visited with the dr yesterday and took new xrays and he said that Connor's arm is "good enough". It's really close to being set just right, but since he broke it and then jammed the bones into each other (see the xray below) there are some places where it just can't match up just right. His arm was actually shorter than it was supposed to be before they set it again. When they sedated him they really yanked on it to pull them back out from each other again. It was quite nauseating. They said that he has growth hormones on his side and that the bones will grow over the slight mismatch. The readjustment on Monday made it so he won't have a bump under his arm when the bones heal. He's been really frustrated not being able to complete his school work quickly (since he is right handed)and it makes him a little upset to watch his football team and not be able to play. Our home teacher will make it all up to him this weekend though - he is taking Connor to a Utah Utes game. We got him a red shirt and he picked red for his cast color so he could really show his true spirit. :)

Update on the family :)

Just wanted to fill everyone in on the exciting and not so exciting things happening in our family. Recently we've been able to line the pockets of quite a few doctors in our area. :) After Emm's baptism in August I had to get my tonsils out. It wasn't too terrible, but shortly after I got off the pain medication for that, I was walking up the stairs at the school with the kids and jammed my toe into the next stair and ended up breaking my big toe. It hurt so bad! I went to the dr and they put me in a big boot and on more pain medication.

Then we had some fun things happen - Andrew started Soccer and Connor has continued playing (and completely LOVING) football! Josh decided to be Andrew's soccer coach this year so it has been really fun for both of them to spend a little time together. Josh is actually a really good soccer coach. The boys have progressed a ton in soccer this year and are having a lot of fun. I had a couple of moms tell me that they hope that he will coach again next year. I know Andrew would totally love it. Connor is doing really well in football. It is his favorite sport by far. His coach tells Josh all the time how much he enjoys having Connor on the team and how much he contributes to the team.

But, we couldn't go for too long without paying those doctors again! Connor was at football practice and broke his arm. Josh and I both saw him after a play and he was holding his arm funny. He didn't say anything - coach saw him and asked if his arm was ok and Connor said yes. So they kept on playing. Josh and I both kept wondering if we should go on the field and see if his arm really was ok, but in football the last thing your kid wants you doing is babying them, so we didn't. He kept on playing defensive end again and again. Finally coach looked over again and said, "Rolfe, you still holding your arm?" So he called a water break and checked out Connor's arm. As soon as Josh and I saw it we started loading him up to take him to the dr. I took him to the clinic, they took one look at his forearm and told me they couldn't do anything for me that I would need to go to the ER. So we did - Connor had a compound fracture - they gave him morphine immediately when we got to the hospital and then had to sedate him to set the arm again.
He was a brave kid. I was quite impressed with him. He didn't even cry over his arm being broken until we got in the car to go to the hospital. We had to go back Monday to get his final cast and have them xray the arm again. They said it wasn't set quite right so they cut his orginial cast and bent the arm a little bit more to try and get a better match for the bones. We have to go back again today to get another xray to see how it is healing now. Hopefully everything is going to be ok today and Connor won't have to get pins in his arm. That would be the next step they said. Poor guy. His coach couldn't believe that he could still keep playing after having a compound fracture in his arm. He gave Connor a captains badge the next week (a captains badge is a decal they can put on their jersey when they've done an exceptional job at something). Connor was pretty excited to earn his captains badge.

And last of all....we have a new addition to our family.

Big Commander Coda was born August 7 and joined our family Sept 16th. He is the cutest little puppy. I never thought I would enjoy having a dog, but he has been such a good little dog and so fun for the kids to have.

James now has a playmate all day long, but poor Coda is pulled and dragged all around the house and in the backyard. James loves having Coda dig in the sandbox with him, but gets a little irritated when Coda knocks down his sandcastles. He's growing really fast and learning all the family rules. It's been a fun experience. I had nightmares before we got him and LOTS of anxiety over trying to decide how this was all going to work out, but now that he is part of our family it's been a lot better than my dreams. :) He's a pretty mild puppy and is pretty much house trained and totally crate trained. He's still little enough that he won't go down any stairs so the kids are constantly deciding where he wants to be and dragging him all over the place. It's been a fun new thing. :)