Talk about crazy!!!

Wow! A lot has happened since my last blog. I was so busy with my kids end of the year activities and family things that time snuck past me...well I guess a lot of things got past my radar and in more than just May too. Last friday night I was sweeping the floor and I noticed my left arm was getting numb, and kind of purple. So I went to the emergency room and to make a long story short, I have cancer, it is lymphoma. The good news is that this cancer has a high cure rate, the bad news is that the tumor has wrapped itself around my 'superior vena cava'
(the vein that brings the blood back to my heart from my arms, head and neck) and it is closed down to 1-2 mm. So I was given final diagnosis of cancer on monday and by tuesday I had my first dose of radiation. On wednesday I went back for another dose and a few tests and yesterday, thursday, I had my first chemo treatment. Talk about crazy! Everything has happened so fast that I just haven't even had time to process it. So chemo wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, just a very long (8hours) IV infusion. The facility is nice and the people are great! I can even have visitors, my husband, parents and all my sisters visited me and helped the time to pass. Now comes the hard part, waiting to see if I get sick, only about half the patients on my flavor of chemo get nausea, and of them only 1 out of ten actually throws up. There are some other side effects that I will get like losing my hair (they said at 17 days) and fatigue. So the next few days will let me know how sick this will make me. The great thing about my regimen is that most people can go on leading a normal life in between treatments with only 3-5 days of down time. At my next treatment in 3 weeks, I will bring Mitchel so that he can see that my chemo treatments aren't scary and hopefully that will help alleviate his fears for me. I think this has been harder on my family than on me. I feel positive that all will be well and hopefully soon some of the problems I've been experiencing from the tumor will go away as it shrinks. **Wierd that all of my symptoms from the tumor have been passed off as allergies (stuffy head, scratchy voice, swollen face) and a pinched nerve (neck & back pain). I'm just glad that I have finally been diagnosed and we can get to business getting better!