Ready for Christmas

After I got lots of hugs and kisses from my boys it was time to have a little rest. Christine was here looking after me and making sure that I was all right. It wasn't long after I got home that I started thinking that my doctor was crazy. The kids were running around yelling and playing and I really was not feeling well. My head was pounding and the noise was just making it worse. I started thinking that maybe it was too soon for me to be at home. This really only lasted for about a day until I got the pain under control and the boys realized that I was really not feeling good so they were much quieter. It was almost Christmas though so they were very excited! I was determined to make this the best Christmas ever! We never know what is going to happen tomorrow so we need to really live for today.

We spent the next few days getting ready for Christmas. I remember walking in Walmart and having the most bizarre feeling. One minute you're carrying on with your daily life, the next minute you realize that you may not be here tomorrow, then you're walking in Walmart shopping as if nothing happened. People were rushing around smashing their carts into each other and I'm thinking: Relax people! Life is short! I actually met a woman in line who had just survived a heart attack. I let her ahead of us becuase she only had a few things and we started talking. When I told her that I had just had brain surgery she was shocked and we talked about how you never know what other people are going through.

I then got a phone call from the medical oncologist's nurse. He wanted to see me before Christmas so two days later I was in his office. This is when we found out that maybe the cancer hadn't spread from somewhere else. Maybe it had been from the skin lesion that I had in 2001. When I was pregnant with Gavin I had a mole removed from my temple. I really wasn't worried about it. Then I got a call from the surgeon who removed it and he wanted to see me in his office right away. It was my last day of work before going on maternity leave. This is when I found out that it was melanoma and they needed to do a wide excision after I had the baby. I have been seeing an Oncologist at Cancer Care ever since and there has never been anything else to worry about. Usually, the type of lesion that I had would be removed and that would be the end of it. After 5 years of follow up I was reassured that since it didn't come back within this time frame it wouldn't come back. I was still receiving follow up as they were looking for a new lesion. We were thrilled to find out that maybe the brain tumour was from my previous skin lesion! Maybe it wasn't what the Neurosurgeon initially thought and the cancer hadn't spread through my body. This was very good news for us. The Oncologist also let me know that he was going to be taking good care of me and that made me feel so much better. We talked with him for about an hour and I was so relieved when we left. He was scheduling a battery of tests to see where exactly the cancer was.

Over the next few weeks I would have a full body CT scan, a PET scan, a bone scan, an MRI of my chest and lots of blood work. This was the hardest part for me. Waiting for all my results.....