Year in Review

2019 was another busy year filled with fun with family, vacations, outdoors and making fun memories as well as continuing to fight the battle with cancer. 

January:

Ice Castles in Midway 

                                        February: Grandma Susie's birthday at Krispie Kremes
Papa P used to bring a dozen of glazed donuts when he would go fishing early in the morning and even was one of the first in line years ago when Krispie Kreme came to Sandy.

                                                  March: Disneyland all day and night!
                                      Celebrated Dad's birthday and enjoying living at Disneyland

                                                              April: Easter egg hunts

                                     April: Another cancer surgery for me to remove more tumors

 Memorial Weekend: Papa Matt taught Brynnley how the ride the 4-wheeler for the first time at  Hatch cabin

                                                      Catching fish at Panquitch Lake

                          June: Brynnley turns 4 years old and Mom celebrates turning 33 years old

                                                Camping for our birthdays at Hyrum Lake

                                                                Summer time favorites:

                      4th of July camping at Payson Lakes with a visit from Grandma and Papa P

Grandma P's Surprise Birthday Party at Silver Lake

                                                              Soccer fun for Brynnley

                                                                Baseball fun for Aubrie

                                                          Having fun at the Bees Game

              August: First day of 1st grade for Aubrie and first day of Pre-School for Brynnley

                                 Labor Day: Camping at the cabin and celebrating Aubrie's 7th birthday

                                    September: Backstreet Boys concert in Utah with the girls

                                                  October: Cornbelly's fun and Halloween

                     Last camping trip of the year at Granite Flatts and 4-wheeling with Grandparents

                                        November: Swimming lessons and turkey time songs

         Thanksgiving weekend: Finally got some snow to build a snowman and go sledding

                                                      Visiting Santa in December at Cabelas

                                  Elfie and Mr. McDuff visited the girls at Grandma Susie's house

                                              Zoo lights with cousins Addie and Harper

 December: Second surgery for mom's cancer this year. Starting chemo again on the 30th of December.

Christmas Time

After my cancer surgery on December 12th, I went home to stay with my parents to get some help while I recovered. It was so nice to be home with the girls and make some fun crafts. Mr. McDuff and grandma's elf named Snowflake even visited the girls at grandma's house and had a little campfire.

We even got to decorate Christmas sugar cookies! I didn't think this tradition would happen this year since I have been too sick to make cookies, but a neighbor brought them which was a blessing.

Another blessing we received was some gifts for the girls and I from Rebecca Colley's grandson's charity he started called Give2Give. I was in shock when they had given me gas money cards, Ivie gift cards as well as renewed my gym membership pass!

Christmas Eve: We colored a page of our Christmas book like we do every year. Unfortunately, due to the pain I was in from the cancer I was not able to do our normal visits to the in-laws, but instead had a night with just our little family. We colored, had hot chocolate, and watched Christmas movies together.

One of my favorite things about this Christmas was Brynnley's recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies. The ingredients she listed included: Like 10 Choc chips, some green juice, apples, 1 c. flour, and 2 cups of sugar. I love that she included the "green juice"! She won't drink it but knows that that is what mom has been living on for the past month since having severe stomach pain. She is a sweetheart!

                                                                 Christmas morning:

The girls were so excited to wake up on Christmas and were up at 6 AM. The joy and excitement in their little faces is so fun to watch. Christmas is truly magical in their eyes.

                Christmas morning breakfast was cinnamon buns from Great Harvest and Hot Coco.

                                                   Christmas at Grandma Susie's house.
We are so blessed to have tons of gifts and every Christmas morning growing up we would wake up to a room so full of presents that we could not even walk! It still is a little disappointing to wake up as an adult and not have mountains of presents I grew up with. (Of course the presents were for the entire extended family too)

Brynnley was obsessed with Mr. McDuff this year and has always been a little afraid of him.  We explained to Brynn that he was Grandma Susie's and my elf at Grandma P's when we were little. Brynnley held him so carefully and wanted to go everywhere with him.

Christmas was a wonderful day visiting with all the family! Around 1 pm I started to get really sick, (probably because I had to have a few bites of Mom's quiche that we only get at Christmas). I ended up sleeping in my parents bedroom and missed out on Grandma Joans dinner but got to spend some one on one time with my Mom.

Some of my favorite memories of Christmas time when growing up include: waking up in the middle of the night to open our stockings since Dad usually had to go to the fire station. Mom would spend hours on end cooking for days making her yummy quiches, cinnamon roll and sticky bun Christmas trees, Kneaders French Toast with carmel. As a kid we woke up and had to wait for my Mom to play her "Christmas song" while we ran out to see the tree. I always remember waking up to a huge pile and room so full of presents that we couldn't even walk! We used to have all the grandparents and family come over and spend most of the day opening presents and playing with our new toys. We would also go to Grandma Joan's house for Christmas dinner with the other side of the family. Usually we were so exhausted by dinner we just wanted to go home and sleep with our new toys. Christmas is still one of my favorite holidays with all the joy, magical feelings in the air and it is even better now to watch my sweet girls excitement with all the small things of the holiday time.

December fun

The girls were so excited to see Santa this year. We visited him at Cablelas and of course both girls asked him for LOL dolls this year. 

Did you say Chocolate??? Brynnley can't live without it and has recently discovered my Dove chocolates which she loves. 

                                                       Shopping with Grandma Susie

While I was in the hospital recovering from surgery, the girls were lucky enough to go with their cousins and Uncle Sterling and Aunt Amanda to Zoo lights.

Christmas in Color is another fun family tradition each December.

                                       Aubrie loves 1st grade and is meeting all her reading goals.

Stupid Cancer Returns but Will NOT win!

Since November 1^st I started to get a lot of abdominal pain that continued to get worse throughout the month. I was even really focusing on eating clean at the time and to prepare to be strong through the holidays. I started getting sudden spasms in my bowels that were sharp and severe. I noticed that the pain kept getting worse and noticed that every time I ate the spasms would be more severe.  Finally on Thanksgiving at my parents I decided I would just a small amount of food and by the middle of the night I was in agony. I was in severe pain and couldn’t move and was seriously considering going to the ER because of the pain. 

After that I decided that I would only do liquids and drank lots of green juice and water. The pain kind of decreased but was still there. Pepto was the only thing that took the edge off the pain. I even got so desperate for rest that I took Ativan a few nights to knock me out which did help.  I researched more to find out what could possibly going on since my last CT scan showed a slight increase in tumor size on the ascending colon. I ran into dx such as IBS which was the closest thing that my symptoms matched. I soon learned about changing what I ate to follow a Low FODMAP diet. This was very restricting but if I stuck to it for a good week, my pains were not as severe. I finally got so tired of the pain that I contacted both oncologists for help. Another repeat CT scan was done at the end of November with nothing new found. Early December, Dr. Zempolich wanted to rule out any upper GI problems and so I had an endoscopy. The only thing I was dx with was Baretts Esophogus which is basically GERD and had a lot of bleeding in my esophagus. But that didn’t explain the lower GI pain I have still been experiencing. Dr. Zempolich suggested that this is the best time to go in and do an exploratory abdominal surgery to see what was going on and to do a bowel resection where I had a visible tumor. I was not expecting her to say that I would be having surgery next week on December 12. 

  This was not expected as I feel like I am just recovered from the one I had in April. I have worked my butt off to return to the gym and regain the strength, endurance and health to continue to take care of me.  I have struggled the past 4 1/2 years  while being on oral chemo daily, having chemo injections in my hips every few weeks, working to build up my practice of hand therapy, being a supportive and loving mom and spending every ounce of extra energy to go to the gym to re-build my strength and core. 

I went in for a planned exploratory abdominal surgery to remove a small tumor on my bowel on Dec 12^th. My normal 6-10 hour surgery ended unexpectedly at little over 2 hours. Dr. Zempolich opened me up with a vertical incision from chest to pelvis (for the 6^th time) and quickly found that my abdomen was coated in thousands of cancerous tumors. There was too much cancer to even remove at the time of surgery. My doctor told me that I should go home and enjoy what will most likely be my last Christmas. I stayed in the hospital for 4 days and returned to my parent’s house for them to take care of me.

While in the hospital I spoke with Dr. Werner regarding her thoughts and the next steps to take. We discussed HIPEC chemo but results have been seen only in high grade cancer. The better option was to start chemotherapy again with a new medication Doxil, given the nick name of “The Red Devil” along with carboplatin.  I am starting this chemo on the 30^th of December and nervous to go through this again. Last time I had chemo, it took my very close to my death bed and knowing that this process will be challenging again.  I am so grateful to have met with Huntsman’s palliative care program yesterday. This gives me confidence and introduced me to a new support team to aide me in getting through the continued pain and struggle of day to day functions that this return of cancer has caused. 

 Pre Surgery: 

I returned to my own home after 3 days being at my parents. In the middle of the night I woke up with the most peaceful feeling and amazement of how quick my incision was healing. It had only been 1 week after surgery and my incision was almost entirely healed and I could even lay on my stomach. I know without a doubt that the many prayers said on my behalf have helped me to heal this quickly. Unfortunately, Thursday night (1 week since surgery), I began to start having the abdominal spasms and growling stomach. I forgot how nice it felt to just have surgical pain. Now I know that this bowel pain is from all the cancer inside my abdomen and bowels holding the tissues tightly wrapped around my insides which is causing all the pain. I am still trying to figure out if certain foods cause more pain. It is so frustrating after not being able to eat since November and then right after surgery being restricted to a soft foods diet. I have only been able to tolerate rice, malt-o-meal, eggs, and my protein shake prior to the pain returning. The only thing I ate the day the pain started up again was egg drop soup and lo mein noodles and rice. It is frustrating to be hungry, yet so afraid to eat because of the pain I know I experience, even with increasing my dosage of cramping medicine.