When Things Go Wrong

This blog was originally to be a fun project, a part of our research class. You may have noticed I have not posted anything for the last week.



When I left class on Sunday, which was my birthday, I was very excited for multiple reasons. I had an entire week off for vacation. A week planned to continue work on our property, and now I could also get a head start on my research project, "Dancing Horses" which is really about the dressage style of riding put to music. It has nothing to do with my ILP project, Hippotherapy. I was following Catherine's advice and researching a strictly fun project, something I always wanted to learn more about but really did not have the time to do so. this would give me the excuse I needed to learn more about the origins of dressage.



Monday June 18, 2007 I spent the better part of the day collecting my dressage information, storing it on del.icio.us, viewing You tube videos for the best "dancing horses" I could find, and really feeling good I was getting a head start on my blog project.



Tuesday my husband had a routine post-op visit with a surgeon who had removed a mole from his back the week before. His PCP did not think the mole really was anything to worry about but had referred him to the surgeon just to be safe. l accompanied my husband to the office and fumed as we waited for the physician who was 1 hour behind schedule. When my husband went in for his visit I asked if he wanted me to join him in the room, he said no he'd be right out. Thirty minutes later he came back out and said"I think you need to join us".



That is when the surgeon informed us not only did my husband have malignant melanoma,but due to the depth of the biopsy, and the fact that is did not come back with clean margins, there was a strong possibility this melanoma had entered his lymph system. Not a good way to begin the week.



My blog project quickly went to the very bottom on my list of priorities which needed to be done this week. My research was now focused on what we needed to know to deal with this cancer which my husband has now been diagnosed with and getting to the other physicians we needed to see before his surgery date.



It was a whirlwind week, but we did see his PCP, spoke with the cancer center, had pre-op lab work and EKG's done, and next week he will complete his pre-op visit with the anesthesia department.



When the dust settled, I thought how am I going to keep going with school? My first impulse was to simply drop out of this course. Not a smart financial move, but certainly an option. The other option was to take things one step at a time.



The doctors will not know for sure if it has entered the lymph system until after the find the sentinel node and remove it to test for spread of the malignancy. So things still could be OK. I then contacted Catherine and asked to change my topic and share what I have learned about melanomas of the skin. Perhaps you will all learn something which could help you in your own personal protection against this common skin cancer which affects some 56,000 new patients a year and results in the deaths of over 8,000 people per year. This will become my new blog topic.