As many of you saw on Facebook, that third shoe I was waiting to drop dropped good and hard — except the shoe wasn't a shoe, it was my right pinky finger, and it didn't drop, I shut it in a car door during our camping getaway. Broke the tippy top of it and had to get stitches to reattach the nail bed, which ripped off from the bottom. Ow-WEE! I won't lie. I cried some seriously self-pitying tears before I got numbed up for my stitches and until my heavy-duty painkillers kicked in. Instead of kayaking in the summery sunshine at Deception Pass, we were back in a hospital dealing with a sorry situation — such a stupidly avoidable fluke of clutziness. Thank goodness for Sean. Amazing friend, husband and daddy that he is, he kept us all focused on one step after another to get me taken care of. The kids were troupers throughout the whole thing, huddling to watch one of their silly TV shows on a Kindle. Sure, they griped about what a bummer it was that we didn't get to kayak and they didn't get to go swimming and, "Wow, this camping trip isn't as fun as we thought it would be." But a) who could blame them? and b) we still got a few good campfires and some awesome s'mores out of the experience. Of course, like a cosmic middle finger — make that two — it rained later that night. Hard. Not a welcome thing for this family of amateur campers. We learned mid-downpour that the rain fly on the kids' tent was no longer waterproof. We all piled into one tent and made it through the night without getting soaked. We packed up as quickly as we could the next morning, enjoyed a lovely, little hike to a bluff overlooking Bowman Bay, booked it home ... just in time to provide what little comfort we could to our next door neighbors, who had been burglarized the night before. Our neighbor chased one of the burglars out of the house. Otherwise, who knows? We might have come home to some missing computers, TVs, house/car keys, our peace of mind, etc. as well. Good golly, when it rains, it pours. And sometimes it feels like more than any family should be forced to put up with. But through it all, friends and family near and far have been there for us (as they have been for our neighbors), sending us chin-up vibes and reminders that we're strong and loved and hopefully done with all this bad juju, already! Now for some cancer updates ...
I've started the genetics testing process and should find out in about two weeks if I'm a BRCA carrier, putting me at a higher lifetime risk for cancer.
I get an MRI on Thursday (6/25) and will discuss the results with my surgeon the following day.
My surgeon's office got the ball rolling for the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance second opinion process today, which should allow me to get my second opinion appointment(s) scheduled soon.
We meet with my oncologist next Tuesday (6/30) to get some insights, among other things, about how best to treat my cancerous lymph node -- either by removing it along with 10 or so others or zapping it with radiation and letting chemo take care of it.
I get my root canal the following day (planning to pass the hour listening to a Nerdist podcast interview of Allison Janney, unless anyone has any better recommendations).
I've tentatively scheduled my surgery (a lumpectomy) for late July — though the date and type of surgery may change, depending on the results of the MRI and genetics testing.
Thanks to all of you who have so generously offered to help us any way you can. With help from a few dear friends who have stepped up to coordinate meals and other stuff, I'm going to start posting "tasks" on my CaringBridge Planner. We've signed up for Munchery — don't need meals yet, but when we do, that's an option for out-of-town Team Liz members who can't deliver us food in person. Stay tuned for more as we figure out how/when to take y'all up on kind offers for things like helping us with our mountains of laundry. I'm sure once I'm in treatment, we'll need help moving those mountains and seeing how much elbow grease it takes to attack five years of we-have-little-kids-we-don't-have-time-to-clean grub. Until my next update ...