Two-plus Years Later....

So....

I've been reading over my blog.  My very old and dead blog. I haven't been here in 2.5 years.  How does time fly so quickly?

Shortly after my last blog post, we were house-hunting and put in a lease contract on a house.  At the last second, I mean the LAST second, the seller backed out.  Fortunately, we were able to stay in our rental home.  In April 2013 we found another property and successfully leased and moved in at the end of the month.  It was a crazy fast transaction/move and kind of drove me nuts!

June 2013 my daughter, Beanz, came down with a bad pneumonia.  Actually, I think it was the last few days of May.  Anyway, she was a sick little girl for just over a month.

Fast forward to fall...Beanz was 13 and in 8th grade...November 12 and 13 she is sent home from school early.  November 13 we go to the doctor, I request a chest x-ray to make sure pneumonia is not returning.  He is on the same page and orders it.  We leave his office and go to the x-ray place, get the chest x-rays.  The xray place is 15-20 minutes from my home.  Before I even get home he has left me a message, asking me to call him right away.  When I call him, he is stuttering, sounds flabbergasted.  He says, "I don't know what this is.  I don't know what this is. There's a mass in her chest."  He sends us to Penn State Hershey Medical Center ER.  They take us in and do their own xrays.

After midnight (it is now November 14, my son, Bubba's 10th birthday), 2 doctors come in and take me to a quiet room.  They tell me that Beanz has a cracked rib and while my mind is racing about who could have hurt my child they are telling me that they think it is cancer. 

I just look at the doctors and say over and over, "I can't cry.  She will know if I've been crying when she looks at me.  I can't cry.  I can't cry."

I cry a little anyway.  But not much.  I go back to her room.  There are not words that can express how it feels to go in to your child smiling and assuring them that they are still just looking around to see what is going on and they will do more tests.  I wasn't going to tell her until we knew.  I also didn't want to tell her before I told her dad.

As soon as I could, I got back to the quiet room.  I was emailing my friend, Nurse Nancy, in disbelief.  I called my fiance and I called Beanz dad, so they would know.

Later in the day, November 14, with her dad and I by her side, Beanz was put under anesthesia to undergo a needle aspiration of the grapefruit-sized tumor that was in her chest. Her stepmother and My Love (now officially her step dad) joined us in the afternoon.

I think it was around 8 that night that they confirmed it.  I cried like crazy.  It was hell. I was consoled by my ex-husband's wife.  Odd, I suppose.  But My Love had gone home to care for his children and my other 3 children, and to take them all out to dinner in an attempt to soften mommy missing Bubba's 10th birthday.

After pulling myself together, we went in to tell Beanz.  Her dad told her and she said, "Am I going to die?"

I cannot tell you the heart hurt that comes from that question when your child says it.  It is unreal.


Beanz went through 12 weeks of chemo, then surgery to remove 3 ribs and reconstruct her chest wall with plastic mesh, then 6 weeks of radiation 5 days a week, running concurrently with 22 additional weeks of chemo.  Some of her chemos were 2 days.  Some were 1 day.  And some were 5 day inpatient infusions.

She is, right now, 8 months cancer free.  Her hair is growing back like crazy and she's enjoying life.


I've been itching to write.

I don't know if I will write about Beanz.  I haven't figured it out yet.

I always wanted to write about my time in the hospice with my mother, but I found that writing it meant I had to re-live it.  I'm not sure if it would feel the same to write about Beanz. 

I've already written here, right now, waaaayyy more than I've been able to write up to this point about her.

And I'm not even crying.

Good sign.

If anyone is still out there, I think I'm going to get the blog up again.  Not sure about the format it will take on yet, but I need to write.