MASSive Detection

The first part of November 2017, Mom got a cold, along with a few of the kids. Each of us kids quickly rebounded in just a few days, but Mom was down for the count. She was tired and worn out for a solid month. She finally got over the cold, but her cough lingered, and she just hasn't been able to shake it. On March 19, Mom and Dad flew to Texas for a week to visit dad's brother. While they were there Mom prayed to just enjoy all the family and to not have any pain. And she did! She was fine all week, but as she flew home she started having a rough time again. A cough was coming in full swing. Mom was finally thinking about going to the doctor to see what was going on, and to figure out a few other things. She couldn't sleep for a little while. She felt sick to her stomach all the time. Things were just not going her way. On March 28, I was leaving for work and Mom started to complain about her shoulder. Her muscle was really hurting and bothering her. About 10 minutes after I left the pain got so severe that she was crying. It was so bad she couldn't even drive herself to the doctors. Mom was about to go on a walk with a friend, so she let her know she couldn't go but was hoping her friend would take her to urgent care. Her friend did, and so the doctor visits began.

Urgent care sent her to the ER to get a D-Dimer test done to verify if she had a blood clot in the lung causing her pain.  The test returned with a little elevation that couldn't rule out the blood clot but wasn't at such a high risk it was for sure but the ER doctors chose to do CT scan for verification. The CT scan showed that there was no blood clot, and Mom was so excited! Mom asked if they knew what caused the pain and the doctor then got super serious, and internally that kind of freaked my mom out.  The doctor then disclosed the fact that the CT showed a mass on her right lung, 10 cm in mass and suspicious for malignancy.  They also found a mass on the Liver suspicious for metastatic disease and mediastinal adenopathy suspicious for metastatic disease.  The doctor then did a CT scan of the lower quadrant to check for any other masses.  An MRI was done later for verification of possible masses there too.  All seemed to be fine. The doctors never actually said the word cancer, but they sent her home with a cancer pamphlet.

As the next day was my first day of the quarter, and the other kids had school (plus a few tests), my parents kept their news to themselves for the evening. Mom said that her and Dad never really went to sleep that night. They were in just too much shock. Then the next day, when I got home early from classes Mom, said three words I never thought I would hear come out of her mouth. "I have cancer." Dad then got home a little bit after me, so the three of us went for a walk. When the girls got home we went out for lunch to give them some sunshine before the storm. When we were finally all home they made the announcement to the rest of the kids. Many tears were shed, but we went to console ourselves with some frozen yogurt.

Since then we have been blessed with so many dinners, visits, and flowers. We have really felt the love from so many around us. Thank you all for your prayers! With the discovery, Mom has made many doctors visits and had her first biopsy (bronchoscopy) and an ebus, to find out what the doctors are going to need to do in there. Today we finally got the results back on that biopsy. Her cancer is stage four and is called nonsmall cell carcinoma. There is cancer in the lung, liver, and lymph nodes. But we plan on fighting this and kicking cancer's trash!