One Year Ago...

The title was supposed to be "One Year Ago Today" but it's taken me a little longer than hoped for to get this out, so now it's "One Year and a Couple Days Ago..."

I was told I have cancer. That's a crazy thing to hear, and if you've heard it yourself you understand. If not, think "shock, holy crap, shock". It was a crazy ride, especially for the first few weeks as I learnt that I was going to be having surgery pretty quickly and then finding out that some of my initial information was slightly off and things taking longer than anticipated and feeling a little worse than anticipated, but still I got through it amazingly and God was TOTALLY with me the whole way. At the time there were good days and not so good days but it was life and you used had to keep going. Looking back on it, I think it was a lot harder than I realized at the time, and that's all thanks to God. He helped me through every minute of it.

In the past year I've pretty much finished everything and all of my blood tests and ultrasounds have come back looking great. There's been some tweaking of my hormone replacement meds (that makes me feel really old, hormone replacement meds, but it's thyroid hormone, different then the hormones you think of when you hear "hormone replacement") and that has been somewhat interesting but hopefully we've got it set this time. Every time I go to my endocrinologist he changes them up, either up or down, so hopefully this time things will stay the same.

I did just learn that I have to get my one year follow-up scan in April. That means that I get another small dose of radiation and in order to do that I have to go on a special diet (thankfully only 2 weeks this time!) and instead of going off my meds for a month before I get to just take some shots a few days before. I really like that because last time I was off my meds was really tough. On everyone, not just me, because I was totally tired and my hormones were all over the place. But this time it shouldn't be so bad, so I'm very thankful for that. The dose this time is 2 milicuries (think really, really small) compared to 150 milicuries (a whole lot bigger!) that I had to finish my initial treatment. So I won't have to go into complete isolation, I'll just have to not hold the kids for a couple days, although, isolation would probably be a lot easier!

But that's where we're at, one year later. My scar is healing and will hopefully be fairly unnoticeable one day. My hormones are close to being exactly where we want them. And in a few months I'll do a routine body scan to ensure that all the blood tests are accurate in that there are no remain cancer cells taking residence anywhere in my body.

God is so great and has done and is continuing to do great works in my life and I am forever grateful!

Thanks to everyone who had and continues to lift me and my family up in prayer, we all really, really appreciate it!