One year later, no sign of Cancer

Here I am once more, grateful for the opportunity to tell the world, I am alive and feeling so blessed. One year ago. After a lengthy heart examination by Dr. Mehta, an Elizabethtown Cardiologist, it was determined that there was something out of the ordinary, showing up in my exams and scans. With the insistence of Dr Mehta, we engaged another doctor q,Dr. Marshall Johnson, for his assistance in determining exactly what it was they were seeing . After a few more tests, Dr. Johnson felt it was something that required a specialist. He immediately hooked me up with Dr. Charles Scoggins at Norton's Hospital. We then made arrangements to have it checked out, whatever it might be, as soon as possible. Within a week. I was meeting with Dr. Scoggins when he expressed to us, it was indeed cancer. A GIST cancer. He had seem enough to know. Our next step would be to take it out, send it off to determine other factors. Fast or slow growing and in what stage.Within another week, I was headed for surgery with Dr Charles Scoggins at Norton's Hospital. At 5:30 in the morning of June 17, 2014 .I was being rolled into surgery. After roughly, an hour later, we were informed that a mass the size of an orange, was sitting directly on top of my stomach, not in the lining as was originally thought. Now the waiting. Four days later, about the time I was ready to be released from the hospital, the results were in. Dr. Scoggins came to my room to tell me and my family the results of the tests we had been waiting for. The Gastro Intestinal Stromal Tumor was a fast growing tumor in the 3rd stage. We were indeed blessed. Had it gone into the fourth stage, it would have metastasized and went to my liver and my brain. There would have been no stopping it. So, here I am, one year later, having just recently got the results of my one year scan. All Clear. Praise, God!  Although it has been a somewhat difficult year for me, adjusting to the fact I do not have the strength I once had, I do feel I am so grateful. I feel I am getting my strength back gradually. I have been on the chemo pills for the last year and was told I will need to be on them one more year, if all goes well, and they do not change the guidelines on that order. There has been talk of moving the time on the pills up to five years. I feel tthe chemo pills are holding me back from regaining my full strength, but I am trusting that with the help of God,my Oncologist, Dr. Vivek Sharma,and my surgeon, Dr. Charles Scoggins, I will be just fine. 

Step back Facebook. I'm blogging today.

Since joining the Facebook world, I rarely get around to posting on my blog anymore. I tend to write about much of the same things on my FB posts and folks seem to enjoy my daily entries, but since the things I post about on my blog will eventually end up in my little books, I need to get back to posting here as well. I will try to keep them both up to date, if possible, but this time of the year is a busy time for me anyway.  We'll just have to see how it goes.

bed covers to deter cats

1 of 2 compost bins and compost strainer

more space for small chickens

my raised garden bed

volunteer tomatoes

The cats awakened me  at 5 am  and after feeding them and letting them out, there was no way I could fall back asleep. I lay awake, thinking of a project I had been wanting to undertake for some time. It was just turning daylight, so I had to get to it.  We no longer use one of the enclosed dog/chicken pens, so I have been gradually disassembling it. We, at one time, had multiple sections of woven wire, given to us by Cousin Keith. Pop has since hauled most of it off for scrap, much to my dismay, since I used and loved that wire. It came in so handy for so many of my projects. I use it to make compost bins, strainers for composted soil, small cages for various uses, wind and frost caps for my plants, temporary fencing for the chickens to have extended space to get to more bugs and grass. So many uses. Now that I am down to only a very few sections of the wire, I had to disassemble the old pen in order to reuse that last section that was used overhead to keep the varmints out and the chickens in, but I got it done. A lot of trimming of honeysuckle and wisteria vines, but I managed to get it done much quicker than I had originally thought. My flock of smaller chickens, bantam and silkies, now have more space to scratch and eat. No where near the trouble I had anticipated. Much to my surprise, I found a lot of volunteer tomato plants growing in the abandoned pen. Most likely they are cherry tomatoes. They reseed more readily than most tomatoes and since I had chickens in that pen last, the seeds were, most likely, left from the table scraps I had fed them.  No matter. They were a welcome sight. I'll let them grow where they are. Who knows. That pen may make an excellent greenhouse after all.  That was a plan I had for it sometime back, anyway. Now I know. It will work as a greenhouse, but that is another project for another day.