Sweet Mercedes

I left the hospital later that day and came home to so much love. My neighbor/ward friends had decorated our house on the outside, also leaving many baskets of goodies inside. All I could do was cry. Berklie came running out of the house to welcome me home and I grabbed her, hugged her, and cried. Hearing news like that, that your time on Earth could be cut real short, brings a whole new perspective to life. I kept thinking, "Who knows how many more chances I'll get to do this." It was hard to shake that thought, with everything I did. 

That is a day I'll never forget. My siblings (except for Kathryn, who's living in Missouri with her little family during med school) and parents congregated at our house to be with Jake and I. Karen was there also. We sat and talked and cried together. I have been blessed with an amazing family. Seriously. My brothers, sisters, and parents-- they are amazing and I appreciate each one of them. Families are meant to be there for each other, but they don't actually have to. Well, mine is. I am truly grateful for the family I have and for all that they do for Jake & I, and our girls. 

Anyway, over the next couple days, I still struggled to recover physically. I'll spare all the details, but I was having HORRIBLE back pain on my left side. When we called the surgical nurse she said they probably just had me positioned weird during surgery. The pain meds couldn't cover the amount of pain I was in. I couldn't keep the pain under control and was throwing up when it would reach the unbearable peaks. So after only being home for 48 hours, Jake and Mom took me back over to the ER. I was readmitted to the 6th floor and was being given morphine every 2 hours, which wasn't even cutting it. It wasn't until the next day that they did an ultrasound of my kidneys and found that I had a completely kinked ureter on my left side, causing hydronephrosis or inflammation in my kidney. The doctors figured this happened during the hysterectomy surgery from looking all around in my abdomen and moving things around. So back into the O.R. I went, and a urologist place a stent in my ureter to keep it straight. I had the stent in for 5 weeks before they removed it, and wow, that thing was terrible. For being kind of a small thing, it caused me a lot of grief. With all of this happening, I was in the hospital another 5 days. For being so healthy all my life and not having anything more than a few stitches, I couldn't believe how it seemed like everything in my body was falling apart. 

I had a really neat experience on that Monday in the hospital. My sweet aunt & uncle have a close friend who is in the Quorum of the Seventy, who was so kind to take the time to come and give me a priesthood blessing. Again, another experience I will never forget. The counsel he gave, the spirit that was felt, and the blessing that was given have been a great source of comfort on these many hard days. 

It was so nice outside that day, so when everyone left after the blessing, I asked my nurse if I could go outside with my parents and Jake. There's so much construction going on at the hospital, the only place you can go is right out in front to the hospital. We lugged my IV pole out there and I sat on one of the concrete benches. I sat there with my eyes closed, face towards the sun, soaking in the warmth. I could hear someone walking up, strumming some chords on a ukulele. A girl asks, "Are you two missionaries?" to Jake and Dad, since they were both in Sunday clothes for the blessing. My mom said, "No they're not currently, but they did serve missions. Did you want to talk to some missionaries?" The girl says, "No, I just like missionaries, so I was just wondering." I was keeping my eyes closed, because honestly, I didn't feel like being social and I just wanted to have some peace and quiet in the sun. The girl continued to strum chords on her ukulele. I peeked an eye open at her and she was staring at me. I gave in and opened my eyes. Begrudgingly. Little did I know, the sweet encounter I would have with her, would touch my heart forever.

"Are you sick?" she asks straightforward.

"Yes, I am." I say.

"What do you have?"

"I have colon cancer."

"Oh, I'm sorry, God bless."

More ukulele. 

I asked her what song she keeps playing. She said a song by Third Eye Blind. She was surprisingly good at those chords, obviously because she had played them over and over and over. So we chat a little about how she taught herself using YouTube videos and she tells me about some of her characters in a book she's writing.

Then I ask her, "What are you here for?"

"My mom is getting gastric bypass. Then in a couple weeks she's marrying this guy," she says, pointing to an older man sitting on the other side of her.

More ukulele.

"Is that your boyfriend?" she asks pointing to Jake.

"He's actually my husband."

"Oh, he's cute."

"Thanks."

"You guys are cute together."

She said it so plainly and matter-of-factly, but inside I was trying to contain my sobs, because of course, she had no idea the depth of the struggle I was dealing with.  

"Do you have kids?"

"Yes, I have 3 girls."

"Oh, are they sad their mom is sick?"

"Yeah, I think they're sad, but they're doing okay, we've been through this once already."

"Well, I'm sorry that they're sad and that you're sick, but you're going to be okay."

Her simple faith was very comforting to me.

Again, more ukulele.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Mercedes."

"That's such a pretty name. And I'm so impressed with your creativity with your characters in your story telling," I said.

"Thanks. But I got made fun of a lot in school. I'm sick too. I have schizophrenia and kids always thought I was the obnoxious kid in school."

"Well, that's they're problem, not yours. I think you seem great and anyone would be lucky to be your friend."

After a bit more chatting she had to leave, and I giggled as she walked away, again, strumming the ukulele. What a funny little conversation that was. As I recounted our conversation to Jake and my parents, I was filled with so much emotion and love. I was meant to meet Mercedes; to feel of her sweet, innocent spirit, and to hear her plainly say, "You're going to be okay." I know that was a tender mercy from the Lord, I'm grateful to have met Mercedes that day.

Deja Vu

I wish this was just dejua vu. But I think the doctors call it relapse or recurrence or something like that. Life is a crazy thing. I can't even remember what life was like a year and a half ago, before this whole thing began. To think that I had "hard" days makes me laugh. What did I do with my time before 3 kids and cancer and all that comes with it?? Doctors appointments, scans, surgeries now occupy so much of my time, I don't know what I did before. 

As I read through my last post, it's the same feelings all over again, just more intensified. I never really gave cancer relapse a second thought. Last time I did 5 treatments, delivered Britta on February 18th, did 7 more chemo treatments and finished chemo on May 28th, 2015. I thought I had made it, and honestly couldn't believe I did. I wanted to quit so many times, especially there at the end. But I finished. Things had been going great, even though it took several months to get back to where I felt "normal." I got called to be the Relief Society President of my ward in October and although I was completely overwhelmed, I was really grateful for the opportunity. I learned so much from the short time I was in that calling. As I approached finishing chemo, I would tell Heavenly Father, "I'm incredibly grateful for all the help and service we have received, but I'm definitely ready for my turn to be over and I'm ready to serve-- put me to work." The other thing I was struggling with is that I didn't feel like I knew the people in our ward and neighborhood that well, and I wanted to know them better. We had only lived in our new house a little over a year when I was diagnosed. Between getting chemo and having a newborn, for those many months we didn't get out and socialize a whole lot, so I was feeling a little like an outsider due to the circumstances. So... when my Bishop extended the call, I knew this was Heavenly Father's way of answering those 2 prayers for me. He's very aware of each of us and what we need, and I'm so grateful for that.

So things were moving along and were very busy. Us Sumsion girls took a trip to Disneyland at the beginning of March and had tons of fun. On our flight home, I felt pretty sick and uncomfortable, pretty close to what I felt like when we found the cancer the first time. I felt panicked, not sure if I should really be worried or if I was just paranoid. It went away the next day so I didn't worry too much about it. Then it happened again right before Easter. I dramatically increased my water intake and it seemed to help, so again, didn't worry too much. I had my regular 6 month CT scan coming up in a month, so I figured if there was anything to worry about, we'd see it on the scan. About the first week in April my ovaries started to hurt, then I started to bleed, so then I was feeling quite panicky because this was not normal. I called and bumped up my CT scan, I really felt like something might be wrong. I got the scan, they called me that afternoon to let me know that I had a 7 inch mass attached to my right ovary, and that I had an appointment the next morning with a gynecological oncologist who comes down from Huntsman on day a week the next morning at 9am. We met with Dr. S the next morning and were so relieved to hear he was quite confident that it was just a large ovarian cyst. He said that many times, that he felt like there was nothing to worry about and it was just a cyst. We planned surgery for Monday to remove the cyst and while the Doc was in there he would tie my tubes as well. We joke about how "easy" Jake has had it, and now he didn't have to even get a vasectomy either! :) I felt really good after we talked with Dr S, but part of me was still skeptical that there would be something more than just a cyst in there. The doctor let me know that if they opened me up and by some weird chance they found cancer, they'd have to do a total hysterectomy. But once again, he didn't think that would be necessary.

I was actually kind of excited for surgery for two reasons: 1-I wanted that rapidly growing cyst out of my abdomen and out of my way, and 2- the strawberry milkshakes the hospital makes. Let me just tell you the milkshake wasn't the same as I remembered it. That was disappointing. As I was waking from anesthesia, I was barely coherent enough to hear someone say total hysterectomy. I couldn't believe it, I knew what that meant. But right then I couldn't worry about that, I was in so much pain, my spinal block hadn't worked and the pain was bad. A bit later, as they were wheeling me up to 6th floor, I was finally with Jake and my mom in the elevator, and was barely with it enough to ask them, "What is it?!?" through my sobs, and they told me there was cancer. I wanted to sob and sob, but my huge incision in my tummy and the terrible pain wouldn't let me. So I slept. After several hours, I woke up to my mom, Jake, and Jill at the bedside and the first thing I said was, "What the hell is going on?!?!" Haha! I was mad. They proceeded to tell me that I did, in fact, have a total hysterectomy. When Dr S. got me opened up there was cancer on both ovaries, both Fallopian tubes, another ligament or two in there, and the lining of my bladder. I couldn't believe it. It hasn't even been a year since I finished chemo, how can that happen? They classified it as Stage 2 ovarian cancer. I kept thinking, "Who gets 2 different cancers within a year of each other? This is unheard of!" 

My 3rd morning in the hospital, the day I was to be discharged, the doctor that assisted Dr. S with the surgery, came in and told me again that it was Stage 2 Ovarian. He assured me I'd be fine. Not five minutes later my oncologist, Dr. W came in. He asked where Jake was. Jake had slept at home with the girls the night before to get a better sleep, so Jill had stayed the night with me, but left early to get home so Kraig could go to work. So I was there alone. He said, "I didn't want to tell you this right now, but I feel like ethically I need to. The pathology report came back and it's not ovarian cancer. It's colon cancer, which makes you Stage 4 now." Then all I heard was, "Blah, blah, blah, the average Stage 4 colon patient has 26 months to live. Blah, blah, blah, I'll leave now so you can process this." I sat there, not believing what I had just heard. I couldn't cry or talk or anything. I just sat in complete shock-- the meltdown came later. How was this real life??