The week in review

What a week this has been! I got an email from sister about the post about Mom. I guess I made her cry. That was not my intention. I just needed to put down my thoughts. I was happy to see that she reads my blog! Hi Richele! :)

My husband has been battling basal and squamous cell carcinomas for the past few years. He is plagued by them on his shoulders, upper chest, and face. He has had six Mohs surgeries - where they cut out the part of the tumor that they can see with the naked eye, freeze it, and send it to the lab. The lab immediately (while he's in the chair, locally anesthetized) looks at the tissue and tells the doctor to either cut more or that he's gotten it all - he has clean margins, in medical lingo. The process is lengthy. Never does the first cut get it all. When he had two tumors removed from his face, it took nearly all day. These surgeries take place in Spokane, so we have the trek to and fro with which to contend. After the facial carcinomas were removed, we returned to Spokane the following day to see the plastic surgeon who closed the wounds. Tom was administered a general anesthetic for that surgery. As a result, he was nauseous and vomited all the way home. Needless to say, these surgeries are something he dreads. He keeps the carcinomas in check by applying a topical chemotherapy product to his face at various intervals throughout the year. The goal is to catch the precancerous cells, actinic keratoses, before they morph into carcinomas. The week of Thanksgiving he saw the dermatologist's physician's assistant for his semi-annual checkup. He had one spot that bothered him. It had been frozen about 8 months earlier and had never seemed to heal properly. It looked like a weird kind of scar, dark pink and about the size of a BB. She decided to biopsy it. Last Friday the doctor called and left a message. Tom needed more surgery and he needed to talk to him about it. Tom was imagining the worst - more Mohs, more plastic surgery. He wasn't prepared for what was to come. He finally talked with the doctor on Tuesday. He has a form of melanoma. It's not malignant, thankfully, but it is locally invasive, agressive, and can metastasize. It's called atypical fibroxanthoma melanoma, or AFX melanoma. Just the word melanoma is enough to scare the hell out of you. I looked it up on the Internet and found out that he won't die from it, as long as he gets it removed. The doctor said he probably won't get more of them - but then again, he may. Tom is freaking out because he now has to go to an oncologist to have it removed. His doctor won't do these, even though he's one of the top Mohs surgeons in the country. Apparently, to make sure you get it all, you have to do the surgery in a hospital setting with different lab techniques. So, his consultation with the oncologist is the 30th. The surgery is scheduled for January 7. Hopefully, the excision will be small and his face will heal quickly and invisibly. You can't even see the scars from the previous Mohs surgeries. This tumor is just to the left of his left eye, between the eye and temple. It will be an interesting new year. We welcome all prayers!!!

Today is my granddaughter Olivia's birthday! She is six! She is having her birthday party tomorrow at Pizza Hut. She is so excited about it, but even more excited that her little friend, Lindsay, is spending TWO nights with her. I stopped by after work today to give her a birthday kiss and hug and she was all a-twitter. She, her friend and her little brother Tyler were running all over the house, screaming and being silly. It's so fun to watch the kids when they're so happy.

I got 34 new computers in at work today. My work is definitely cut out for me. I have to put those into place, rotate the computers they replace down to replace older more pathetic models, reinstall the applications, make sure everything is configured properly, and figure out where we're going to store the still-working computers that we will replace but not put into use at this time. We're going to store them so that, over the next two years, as the ones we're using now that are 5 years old die, I can pull one from storage and plop it into place. I am excited about having new computers for the patrons. Hopefully, I won't be called ten times a day to come down to help a patron with a computer problem. Then again, I probably WILL because they will be able to do more things, like save to a CD, and they won't know how so they'll need help. Oh well, job security!

Well, it's pouring rain, melting all the snow, it's getting late, Tom's on his way home, so I'm going to start dinner. Have a great weekend everyone!