My brother's results are back

Loren had the FNA biopsy on his thyroid and his nodule was determined to be benign. Thank goodness. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers on his behalf. His FNA was Wednesday, not Monday, so I was only a little bit delayed.

My scar is healing fine and in a matter of months it may be undetectable. Good thing -- I may get to keep my modeling job after all. (ha ha).

I'm Sorry...

A simple note here when we got home from the surgeon followup would have been nice, right? Sorry.

The doc believes I have a 95% chance of no remaining cancer, so I have to do the radioactive iodine treatment sometime in the next 5 to 7 weeks to push this percentage up to 99%. This is the information we get from Dr. Goldenberg and he refers me back to the specialist, Dr Meacham. I think he doesn't want to have anything to do with me after my stupid joke on him. If I get enough comments requesting it, I tell what I did. But you are warned that it was quite dumb. It was Shelly's idea but she quickly realized I was crazy enough to do it and wished she hadn't mentioned it.

---Timeout---
I just remembered that by failing to post anything for several days, I also lost the opportunity to request prayer on my brother's behalf. Loren had his FNA today. Just pray that the results are negative so he doesn't have to go through this too.
It's too late to call him now, at 11 PM. I feel awful for not checking up on him today.
---End of Timeout---

Okay, so today Shelly goes to our family physician (Dr. Watt) to get confirmation on what her mom assumed was an ulcer. It was. Can anyone guess why? While with Dr. Watt, he pulls up my chart with the surgeon's notes along with the full thyroid pathology report -- you know, the one they can do when it is outside my body. I was labeled stage 3 papillary. You are reading this correctly...Shelly's Dr visit yielded more information about me than the visit with the surgeon who just gave the best case scenario and then differed me back to the specialist. This specialist visit is three weeks away. Just before the timeout above, I brushed up on the stages of cancer on the thyca.org website. (If you go there, note that I'm not over 45!!!) I just don't know what to expect if the doctors don't seem to be on the same page! If I'm labeled stage 3 and yet 5+ years shy of that dreadfully old age, has it spread? Who's right? Who knows?

The peace I had all weekend has evaporated. To those updated only by this blog, I'm sorry you didn't get to ride the roller coaster to the top (i.e., the way I felt all weekend and most of Monday) and are just stuck with me in the valley of doubt (i.e., how I am feeling at this precise moment).

On a positive note, my dad is up here for this evening (Grandma Donna is sick) and going with us to gymnastics, Olive Garden, and Children's Museum tomorrow. This will be building good memories for Riley and Sidney, and my bad memories are being diluted.

Thank you for your continued support and prayers,
Emory

We've been waiting for this day for a long time

A long time ago, just before we had 2 little money and time suckers dropped on our door, I bought Shelly the whole 9 seasons of LHOP (Little House on the Prairie) and even a special edition set with some of the movies and other info about the show. We never got around to watching them.

So at some point we decided that we would make it a goal to have the girls watch every episode. That started this morning. Guess who cried?

On to other news.

I go get the STEREO-strips removed tomorrow at a 3:50 PM appointment with Dr. Goldenberg. I say STEREO-strips because I thought that is what they were called. I know the root of the word would have something to do with the word "sterile" but I was sure they weren't called sterile-strips. Are they STERI-strips? Who cares? Well, the person who had me repeat it 3 times seemed to care...and then burst out laughing at me.

Here is the picture of them:



















I did want to photoshop in the same STERI-strips in on the right and left to make it look much bigger but my PC crashes when I try to do too much in photoshop. My PC is in desperate need of a cleanup.

Sidney gets it honest: She was describing how boys bow after a performance (along with a demonstration) and then went on demonstrate how girls do a tootsie (and then mumbled the word "roll"). I think at this point she knew what she said didn't make sense but Riley corrected her before she got a chance to correct herself. I did not make her repeat it 3 times...just once.

The girls were playing in the living room while I was in the kitchen talking to my cousin Monica. They were playing so good that, after I got off the phone, I just let them continue. [About 10 minutes go by, during which Shelly and I are doing our own thing.] I sure wish I knew the entire context of this bit that I heard coming out of Sidney's mouth: "Be careful not to fall down. You will get cancer." Obviously they still don't get it.