Still Here, Alive and Kicking

Sorry for the long absence.  I will try not to make myself so scarce next time!  This post is courtesy of my dear husband, Josh.  It is an e-mail to family.  It was so good, I asked to copy it.  To preface it, my oncologist ordered the scan a month earlier than I thought she would, and she was already talking more chemo before the scans.  Thus the feelings described in the e-mail!  

You've heard of waiting on pins and needles, well this past week for us has been more along the lines of swords and spears.  You see, one week ago, Amy had her first scans since she went off chemo in December '08.  Up to that point, she had been on chemo of one sort or another for 16 months.  Yeah, its about as long, if not longer, than it sounds!  Since going off chemo in December, she has been on a hormonal therapy (a pill she takes every day) that has its own line of side effects (but thankfully, not as severe as the chemo).  

But after two months of that, we did not know if it was working.  The hope was that the hormonal therapy would keep things stable at least and not allow the cancer to continue to grow or progress.  For some reason, they make us wait one week for the results so that the doc. can tell us herself and today was that day.  The week of waiting is always hard, but this one was especially difficult for all of us, especially Amy.  When we got to the doctor's office, they were busy and we waited about 45 minutes to see the doc.  Our stomachs were about to burst when finally the doctor came in our little room and gave us the scoop.

The news was  amazing actually.  We went in preparing ourselves for the worst and what we heard was that there is no further growth of the cancer and that the lesion (tumor) in her liver had actually regressed in size!  Yes, shrank, got smaller, whatever you want to say.  Well, you could've scraped our little puddle selves off the floor at that moment.  I think we were in disbelief for the first few moments as we just absorbed what was being told us.  Neither one of us wanted to think about Amy going back on chemo, but we couldn't help but go there in our minds and had prepared ourselves for what we thought was going to happen.

So, chalk it up to prayer, powerful medicine or our monthly support of shaklee, whatever you will, but we are extremely thankful today and breathing again.  Amy doesn't have to go back for another checkup for a couple of months.  So smile, kick up your heels even, whatever it is you do to celebrate, do it in honor of Amy.