Hello

November 28, 2012

Hey there,

I thought it about time to check in with y'all after the long weekend and share how the patient is doing.  So here goes...

She is actually doing really well, which is wonderful! There is still pain, it is a pretty constant thing, always a dull ache at best.  They took the external stitches out yesterday (the ones from that secondary surgery to remove the dead patches of skin) and the doc said everything looked great.  She has to go back in 2 weeks to have the doc look at them again and get her first "filling".  They will put a small amount of fluid into the expanders, which is the first of 6-8 over the course of the next 5-6 months. They will enlarge the expanders to a size actually slightly bigger than that of the permanent implants to allow the proper amount of room for them. Ugh.  They are going to try to coordinate filling the expanders with chemo treatments as much as possible to save the trips to Denver which is really great.

She is off of all painkillers except for Advil every once and awhile, when it gets really bad.  She's only waking up once, maybe twice a night and sleep is getting better and better.  She still wakes up super tired and sore and stiff, probably due in great part because she hasn't gotten a good, pain-free night of sleep in 3+ weeks. So that sucks.

However, every day is a just a little bit better than the one before, so thank God for that.

Right now is the calm before the storm, or the eye of the hurricane or whatever cheesy meteorological analogy you can think of...things are relatively calm around the Justus household for the most part.  She is planning on heading back to work in some capacity on Monday of next week, I've been working a little.  It's nice to get to that point for the sake of our sanity.  Its also nice to get back to work because our budget has taken a little bit of a hit from both of us being out of work for 3-ish weeks. The reason I say that it's a calm time is because we are just waiting for her to start her period...yes, her period...because then we get to start fertility!!! Yaaaaay!!!

That might be a little tongue-in-cheek...just sayin'.

The fertility process will be an interesting one.  We are going down tomorrow for, among other things a lesson in giving herself a shot because once her period starts, she will have to give herself a shot of Follicle Stimulating Hormone every day for 8-10 days, with a trans-vaginal ultrasound every other day.  Doesn't that sound like fun, ladies!?!  Gentlemen...I'm sorry you had to read that.

Boobies.

Anyway, so that should be in the next few weeks and our prayer and hope right now is that it does start somewhere around the 30-32 day mark because that will put this whole process starting around the 8th of December.  That means that the whole process will be done BEFORE Christmas which is what we are really pulling for.  Would it just not SUCK to have to go in for egg-harvesting on the 24th of December?  I mean, really...

So...chemo will start after the fertility, sometime just before or after the first of the year.  Not too excited about that but a fact of our life nontheless.  Its a little discouraging for several reasons, some obvious and others like that we have a great friend who lives in CA and she is getting married in January just a few weeks after chemo starts.  The problem is that we have no idea how her body will react to it; she may be fine and it may totally wipe her out.  Flying may be completely out of the picture for her, we have no idea.  Prayers for her for that please, that her body would handle it like a champ and she would have little to no side effects.

I've realized something fairly significant in the last month and a half; life is full of things that are either important or not.  This whole experience has been very polarizing for me.  Its made me realize that most of the crap that I get all bent about really doesn't matter when held in light of the person I love most in the world have a life-threatening disease.  Getting that next email out, or the guy who cut me off in traffic or the woman in the grocery store who took the last box of Ho-Ho's...whatever.  It doesn't matter.  It just really doesn't.  It really brings to light the things that will actually alter the course of my life, and the things that are just busywork. It actually has relieved a lot of stress for me! Its nice...

Story: I was driving to a jobsite yesterday and as I was coming to a pause in a roundabout to take a moment to judge whether the Dodge Ram 2500 that was just entering said roundabout was going to turn out or come my way, a towtruck driver who was blocking 1 of the 2 lanes in the roundabout and one exit showered me with f-bombs like it was his job for not moving fast enough through to satisfy his liking.  My first reaction was to make a comment suggesting that perhaps his mother wasn't married when he was conceived, but I didn't and I just looked at him with a shocked look on my face and drove on.  It made me really sad for him to be honest.  I'm not sure what sucks so much in his life that he feels it appropriate to holler at another human like that, but man...it must really be tough.  The thing is though, I've been there.  I've had that very attitude at several points real recently during this whole cancer thing; I get how it feels to be so mad that any person who happens to walk through the crosshairs gets blown away just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  However, I've also learned that that doesn't change a damn thing.  Being angry and acting like an ass and being rude to people never took Ade's cancer away. I sure tried it out to see if it would have an effect, but it just never did. I think it took going through it and acting like that to come to that understanding, but I'm there now.  Like I said, it just made me sad for the guy.  I prayed for him, not that the Lord would smite him and strike him down with a lightning bolt all Zeus-like, but that he would experience some peace and some healing and something other than the hell that he apparently lives in.

My prayer for you is the same. I hope you have some peace in your life at some point, from some source.  I hope Christmas means something else to you than feeling obligated to buy a whole bunch of Christmas gifts and spend money you may or may not have.  I hope it means time with your family and if you can't be with your family this year, come to our house for Christmas; Ade and I and our families would love to you.  No joke, I'm very serious.  This difficult, hard, ugly, sad world that we live in offers little joy on its own, but there is much to be found in love and in community with other good people...so find some. Our door is open.

Be nice to people.  Seriously, just be nice.  I need to be nice. We need to be nice.  It would change so much.

Have a wonderful day, I hope your thanksgiving was filled with love, laughter and ridiculous amounts of triptophan and I hope your Christmas is even better.

We love you,

Jeydrienne