Recovery, Healing and the Unknown.

Thank you so much for sharing!

It’s been a few weeks now since our last update so I wanted to share a little bit of what’s been going on. First, I wanted to extend my endless gratitude to all of you who have been following my story, reading my blog, buying my classes and for the prayers, comments and shares. Ya’ll are so amazing and am so thankful for you. You have truly helped me through this journey.

I’m now almost five weeks post op and feeling pretty good. My appetite is back and I can get up and move around on my own now. My incision is feeling better too, although I still have some healing to do so I’m taking things nice and slow. I even filmed a new video yesterday! Robert is so used to doing everything he saw me in the kitchen making my own lunch the other day and wagged his finger… but he’s just gonna have to deal, I’m mobile now suckers! 😉

As of this week I had my third chemical infusion of an mTOR inhibitor drug and so far so good. Thankfully there are minimal side effects and am feeling pretty good afterward. We won’t really know the extent of how much it’s working for a few months so at this point we’re hoping, praying and taking it day to day, week to week. I can’t speak highly enough of our experience at Cedars. It’s been comfortable, the staff is super friendly and helpful and they make our experience there as good as it can be considering.

Did you miss some of my other updates? Here they are:

• Life Changed in an Instant… again.
• Life Changed in an Instant: Leading up to Surgery
• Life Changed in an Instant: Our hospital stay and return home

All of this doesn’t come without a seemingly constant cloud looming over us. Will the treatment work? Will these tumors come back? Will I need another surgery? There are still so many unknowns but that’s where we have to just trust our Doctors and God as best as we can.

Every time I hit the elevator button to the “7th floor – Cancer Center” I’m reminded that this is pretty serious. Robert and I seem to be on the younger side of the patients there and it can be pretty somber at times. There are all types of people battling their own cancers, every ethnicity, gender, religion and they all have different stories

I’ve decided to focus on all the things I am thankful for; I have a great team, a great hospital, my surgery was successful, our treatment is going well, my kids are healthy and getting through school, and so much more. I also feel like this time has given me the opportunity to grow in my faith, in my relationship with my family and my husband and given me a new perspective on what I want for my future.

I’ve also been using this time to research more. I’ve gone down lots of rabbit holes about my treatment, my diet, my personal mental health and am working on fighting this disease at every level.

So now we wait… we’ll be doing this infusion every week until it seems to be working, or it seems to not be working and then we will reevaluate. Waiting can sometimes be the hardest thing, but when you think about it that’s so much part of life. So I’m learning to be grateful in the moment while I’m waiting for the unknown. I know this is a hard time for so many out there… a brighter day will come! Love to you all.

Melanie and Robert