8 Months

Top left: 2 days after surgery

Top right: 1 week after surgery

Middle left: around Easter

Bottom left: July

Bottom right: last weekend

 

Yesterday was 8 months since surgery. Looking back at pictures it is amazing to see how much has changed. In July the surgeon was not happy at all with how my scar was healing. She decided to put a steroid shot along the incision to get rid of the raised scar. I still am debating if this was a good decision or not. One of the side effects could be varicose veins, but normally it happens after 2 or 3 steroid shots. Well I don't follow any rules. I got varicose veins after one stinkin shot. The raised area is almost completely gone. The color is slowly fading back into my normal skin color.  I think the surgeon will be very happy with the results since July.

Patience, waiting, limbo land, self-control, endurance, temperance, forbearance, longaniminty - just a few words that describe my journey with cancer. Two of my favorite words are longaniminity and temperance. Longaniminity means patience enduring of hardship, injuries, or offense. Temperance means moderation or self-restraint in action, statement, self control.

Right now we are not sure what is going to happen. In October I will have another CT scan to see what is going on with the numerous spots on my lungs, liver and my enlarge thymus tissue. My blood work has decided it would be fun to do the wave like it is attending a baseball game. It goes up, it goes down then it goes up, but nothing to be overly concerned with at this time. I am considered stable. There are so many factors that can affect the rise and fall of the specific blood tests I have done. I try to get my blood work done around the same time every quarter, eat the same foods, avoid spicy food, and go to the same lab. Changing one of those things can cause the number to increase or decrease.

I have blood work run on a quarterly basis. The week I have to wait for blood work are 5-7 of the longest days of my entire life. I have learned I will not get blood work run right before a holiday because it delays it an additional 2-3 days. This last time I had to wait 10 days. My body goes through so much stress just waiting for the results. I try not to stress over it, but that is MUCH easier said than done.  I need to work on my longaniminity majorly!
 I had hoped all my blood work would go back to normal at this point, so I could have a few decades of not worrying about cancer. Evidentially God still thinks I need to learn some more longaniminity.