Tuesday, December 7, 2010

cost

Talked to Shady Grove today regarding our health insurance coverage and found out that since we have almost completely exhausted our infertility coverage it will cost us $11,000 minimum to try again. Please pray that the Lord gives us great wisdom with our finances.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

1 year follow up schedule

I scheduled my 1 year post thyroid cancer treatment follow up, here's my schedule so you can keep it in prayer.

January 10th - start low iodine diet (ugh)
January 24th- pregnancy test (standard procedure)
and 1st Thyrogen injection( so I can sty on my meds)
January 25th- 2nd Thyrogen injection
January 26th- 10am Radiation dose
Jaurary 28th- bloodwork, then 8am whole body scan ( end diet and have a big lunch :))

February- hopefully schedule IVF for this month....

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Setbacks and Depression

I write in order to ask for prayer. I apologize that I haven't been posting new items very often, but I struggle with not wanting to always post bad news. I write in attempts to share my burden with you who have been such good friends and prayer warriors for me.
First, it turns out that Obamacare is not the break we were hoping for. It states that it does away with lifetime maximums on health care starting January 2011, so we thought perfect, that's when we can start trying again anyway this will do away with the $15k maximum we had for treatment....WRONG, it doesn't work that way as fertility treatment is considered special care and is in a different category.

Second, we thought the home buyers program was 15 years then we can sell our condo for full value..... well, due to some very fine print and vague paperwork we found that although David signed up for this change ( the original was 50 years) we may now need a lawyer to straighten it out since our future intent was to buy a house after 15 years which is a little over a year away....time flies doesn't it?

Third, I am going through the year post cancer treatment process and I am still having health issues like high blood pressure , tiredness and weight gain. They recently put me on Vitamin D which has helped but not a lot. I am extremely thankful though that by January after my body scan I hope to get the chance to say that I am cancer FREE :)......

Fourth and most on my mind..... we go back to the fertility clinic December 2nd to start the process of trying for a child again and to be brutally honest this process has not gotten any easier and the pain any less as time passes, the yearn grows stronger. I am going to be 35 next month and I feel like I have let God, my husband, my family and the world down that it's been 9 YEARS on this quest, where I struggle with feeling like I am not a good wife or woman and my faith just not strong enough. Yes, I know there's always adoption and I promise that's our next step...but God has closed this door please help support us in this journey. Anyway, since we'll have to pay mostly out of pocket since we exhausted the $15K max we pray God provides the funding we had hoped to get through selling our house and/or refinancing so we need that to get resolved and most selfishly I need to lose weight to do IVF, as they won't go through with the procedure unless you have a certain BMI and as of today that means this crazy weight I gained after my cancer treatment needs to come off...and well, the scale has been helping me... as of this morning I need to lose 15 pounds by the time we do IVF..... I humbling and selfishly ask for your prayers and support during this time..as I battle wanting to be depressed about the whole situation.
Thanks for listening. I am so blessed by you.
~Wendy

Thursday, August 5, 2010

God's timing....

I know I haven't blogged in a while but this I just had to share with you. Currently I have health insurance through D's job and we had already exceeded the lifetime maximum of $15k for fertility treatments. Found out that as of January 1, 2011 that the health insurance lifetime maximums have been eliminated, meaning that we can try again for a family without having to pay 100% out of pocket. I am quite literally crying with tears of joy..... I praise God for this tremendous blessing. The timing couldn't be more perfect as it will be a year since my cancer treatment which I had to wait due to the increased risk of miscarriage after the radioactive iodine treatment. Praise God from whom ALL blessings flow!

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Where has the time gone?

It's hard to believe that it's been 9 years since I stood before God, my family and friends and became Mrs. Wendy C. I had heard that if you can get through the first 5 years, you can get through anything. Well, I'd beg to differ with that one as this last year has been the hardest of my life. Thankfully what had gotten me through this past year in addition to my faith has been my strong marriage, through it all I have been blessed with a husband who has been there for me when I desperately needed him. I struggle with the thought that I haven't been there for him as much as he has been there for me,I struggle with the ways he needs to be comforted as I selfishly think of only myself sometimes. We are so blessed to also have a Heavenly Father that promises to always be there for us, and we both needed HIM so much more through the loss of 3 pregnancies and a battle with cancer. Scripture tells us to praise Him in the storms, and we certainly have tried to do that although admittedly our sinful nature is in a constant fight with the wanting to ask 'why me' and 'this isn't fair'....
I share this all to say how much I love D and am trilled that he picked me to be his wife, I still get butterflies sometimes when we hold hands.

Tomorrow marks a year since we lost our son a day shy of being 16 weeks along. It also would have been the due date of our 3rd pregnancy had it not been ectopic..so emotions will be running high. I want to get past the hurt and celebrate the fact that lil'Dennis has been at the Lord's feet all this time and for eternity but I still mourn the loss and think of it everyday.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

back to life..back to reality

That song has been playing in my head all week as I headed back to work Tuesday after being home in isolation until the week before. I did manage a getaway snowboarding weekend with D and some friends for Valentine's day and it felt so good to be around people again. I do think I pushed it a bit too hard though and I didn't meet my goal of going down a slope by myself but I did make it up a ski lift( even though I fell flat on my face getting off) I do count that as achieving one goal.

Now that I'm back in the office I'm pleasantly swamped with work for the next couple of weeks to keep me busy. I still struggle daily with being able to concentrate and focus but hopefully it will get better. I am finding I have few delayed side effects from the treatment that just started yesterday. My salivary glands are swollen a bit and my tear ducts are burning and itchy. Talked with my doctor today and she recommended chewing gum and using eye drops and things should go back to normal. I still am having trouble sleeping through the night so D wants me to find a doc that can help me with that and my blood pressure that has been running a bit high.

My Doctor discussed my lab/scan results with me last friday and in layman's terms I'm considered about 98-99% cancer free. The test they use to see my cancer level was at 7 which I have no idea what that is out of just that that number is tiny *smile* She rattled off a lot of other numbers but I admit that I am not the best at remembering all the medical data. She also explained that they don't like to say one is really "cancer free" until a second year after a clean body scan.... I understand the precaution, so I will wait and just celebrate the fact that I am done treatment for now and go back in about 2 1/2 months for a check up to make sure the cancer is going away.
Thank you for all the continued prayers!

Sunday, February 7, 2010

Treatment and the aftermath

Sorry that I haven't posted recently. It's been a busy week and I am still slightly radioactive so I was taking a break from electronics.
Here's my week in recap.

Monday had to go to Washington Hospital Center instead of Georgetown for some insurance reason to take a pregnancy test( they have to check before they treat you) and then get my 1st of 2 Thyrogen injections. It's a drug that they give you so that I didn't have to stop taking my thyroid medication. This was great because I have already once forgotten to take my medication and it was a horrible day esp. for D after I kept falling asleep on him. Anyway, after sending me to the wrong place twice and waiting over an hour everything was done.

Tuesday we went back to Washington Hospital Center for my second Thyrogen injection and it went much smoother this time. Then off to Georgetown for the salivary gland study and to receive my tracer dose of radioiodine. Georgetown is a teaching hospital so if it's not too much trouble and won't cost me anything I participate in studies when asked. I've participated in 3 studies so far all relating to the study of thyroid cancer. This latest one was studying how many people have trouble with their salivary glands after receiving treatment. Thankfully thanks to sour candies I haven't had any trouble.

Wednesday was back to Georgetown for my full body scan which D got to watch. You basically lie down on a long table and they have this about 18" x 24" whiteboard looking thing and bring it down to about 2 inches from my nose and then you lay there for 45 minutes completely still while it goes down your entire body. They then look at the scan and can see where the cancer is by looking at where the radioiodine was absorbed. They then decide what size dosage of the full medication I need to receive. While they were figuring that out we had some time to kill so we went and bought juice to take into the room with me so I could have something other than water. They had told me not to eat before the scan so at this point I still haven't eaten and am starving even for the horrible low iodine diet.(I did lose a total of 10.5 pounds on the diet so it wasn't all bad.) Then we decided that D would just drop me off because I was going to receive my treatment and have to stay in the hospital room. So I went to the area where my lead lined room was and they put me in a lounge area to fill out a bunch of paperwork and the after about 2 hours of that I am finally in my hospital room which is covered totally covered in plastic,even the floor. They bring my treatment dose in a lead lined tube and even I have to wear plastic gloves to touch it before I swallow the 2 pills. Then they mostly left me to myself in my room. I had to drink fluids non-stop, suck on soar candies, shower a lot, flush 3 times and wash my hands obsessively. I was told that I could finally eat at about 5pm but was at the mercy of the hospital to feed me. At about 5:30 the nurse called my room to see if I wanted anything and I asked about dinner. She said they hadn't come yet..but found out later it had but they didn't see it left outside my room so it had gotten cold. The radioactivity monitor guy found it and went to heat it up for me but dropped it in the process. He felt bad so he went in search of food that I could eat while I was praying that they could bring me another meal...thankfully they finally did and I was so happy to eat a naked Salisbury steak, some steamed squash and pineapple. The rest of the night I read magazines, did some crossword puzzles and watched TV. I still don't know how to play Soduku.

In the morning they came and tested my radioactivity level and it was below the acceptable level for release so they started the paperwork for me to go home. About an hour and a half later and not receiving and breakfast I took my last shower and put on my street clothes and then waited for them to tell me where to go. D showed up right on time but then we had to wait to track down my nurse to release me. Once that was done we left and I sat in the 3rd row of our SUV so as to be as far away from D as possible.

I had been dreaming about food ever since the diet started so I knew that the first thing I wanted after getting out of the hospital was yummy cheesy pizza(that was my lunch idea , I wanted Outback if I was released at dinner time)..and man was it good along with a big carton of milk that D knew I had been missing.

So now I've been home since Thursday afternoon sleeping in our guest room and using our guest bathroom exclusively. D has been awesome making me food as I eat on my paper plates and with plastic ware. One of our friend was also nice enough to bring us some homemade chicken cacciatore and we enjoyed that a lot.
I go back to the hospital on Wednesday for my second body scan and then should be ready to go back to work on Thursday. I look forward to things going back to normal.
I find myself pretty bored not being able to bake or anything but am getting through. I feel bad for D being stuck here with me because of the huge snow we had so I'm just trying to keep myself busy until next week.

I am so thankful for God bringing me through this treatment. It went much better than I had expected and although it was hard it was easier and less scary then I had expected. I am so thankful for D and my friends and family who have been praying for me and checking on me. It's so great to feel so loved :)

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Iodine diet and getting ready for treatment

D and I went to meet with my nuclear medicine doctor to go over what to expect next week. He was really nice and spent over an hour with us going over everything. Not only that but he wasn't just any doc, but the chief of the department. Thanks to awesome doc friends who work at Georgetown University Hospital (you know who you are) D and I are grateful that I seem to have been blessed with my own dream team of doctors. This has brought us both much comfort despite the chaos of cancer treatment. I'm still waiting for the nurses to finalize my schedule for next week but so far so good. In the meantime I started the low iodine diet on the 18th and admit to start off I felt like I was starving, but thanks to the Thyca.com website and their low iodine cookbook and D's and my cooking a ton of food from scratch (which takes a long time and is a lot of work) I am doing better.Who knew homemade ketchup takes 2 days to make? Granted I yearn for a tall glass of milk and dream about butter and all other food that I can't have but praise God that my stomach has stopped talking to the masses. My doc also mentioned that I can stop the diet after I get out of the hospital most likely on Thursday. I am really looking forward to that!
So to sum up my schedule for next week, I have tests and a shot on Monday, another shot Tuesday followed by more tests, a tracer dose of radiation and a full body scan, Wednesday I take the full dose of cancer killing radiation then have a body scan again and head to isolation in the hospital overnight. After I go home I need to stay away from people until the 12th and take a bunch of precautions to not expose others to radiation. I have another body scan on the 10th.

Thank you for your prayers and all the kindnesses you have bestowed on me, I am so thankful for them and the positive attitude God has blessed me with these past few weeks. I give Him all the glory that I am on the path to be cancer free and pray that I can use this journey as a witness to others.
Happy Early Valentines day to you all and much love~Wendy

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Happy New Year!

Yesterday I had written this wonderfully eloquent and scripture and spirit filled message but after hitting spell checker it was wiped clean…so here’s my second attempt, praying it works this time :)

I can’t tell you how happy I am that 2009 is over. I started the year almost beside myself with hope of good things to come but after losing our son the day after our 8 year wedding anniversary and the day before I would be 4 months pregnant, then having to end a 3rd successful IVF pregnancy after it was determined to be ectopic, and wrapping up the year with being diagnosed with Thyroid cancer it was a tough year. However, through it all I have not lost hope, or faith for that matter. I would venture to say that my marriage is stronger, my relationships deeper, my faith challenged to its core, and my hope more sincere. I’ve been a Christian since I was 9 years old and never have my faith and walk been more tested. I felt more pain than I thought I could bear and wept more tears then I thought possible but somehow God helps me get out of bed every morning. I thank God for surrounding me with a husband whose faith is solid and family and friends who have been prayer warriors for us. The Lord has been working in me and telling me not to waste the gift of life. The senior pastor at our church even started an appropriately named sermon series called “Wasted” this month and the Lord led D to lead a small group this coming semester with a study based on the book of Job. As I look ahead I know 2010 will bring my follow up cancer treatment in early February and hopefully the ability to try again for a family come the end of the year. I’m sure there will be other bumps and bruises along the way but as scripture says He will never leave us.

Deuteronomy 31:8 “The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged."