Fabulous News!

Alex and Maggie called with great news last week: they're going to be parents! Maggie is about 11 weeks along and is due around November 12. She has been feeling well and went to her first prenatal checkup last week where she had an ultrasound and heard the baby's heartbeat. We couldn't be happier. I'm going to be a grandma!

Life has gone on...

You'd think from the number and content of the posts on this blog that we've all been sitting around watching my hair fall out all winter. I don't know what it is about chemo but my brain goes kind of foggy and all ingenuity ceases. We have had lots of good things happening which I will attempt to chronicle over the next few days.

First of all, as everyone knows, senior year is plagued by the pesky college applications. Summer spent most of Thanksgiving and all of Christmas break writing essays, filling out college apps and applying for scholarships. Now the waiting period is over and the results are in... (I need to take a moment here to explain that although Summer would have loved to go to an Ivy League school, it was never, financially, an option--especially with our medical bills mounting. Still, she's very optimistic and wanted to give it a try.) These were her choices:

Brown (her all time favorite adorable university), University of Virginia, BYU-Provo, Cornell, Penn State and BYU-I. She was accepted at all but Brown and UVa and will be heading off to her parents' alma mater in August where she will join her two siblings for the first time since kindergarten. I almost wish I could be there, too!

Another VERY EXCITING event in our family is that our smart and beautiful daughter, Maggie, will be graduating this month with her Bachelor's in Psychology.

We're so proud of her and are still a little stunned that she chose our family to be a part of for eternity. Alex, you are SOOOO lucky! Congratulations, Maggie!

Almost Out from Under

Summer made me a cake to celebrate my last chemo session which was Thursday, March 31. Pretty soon we'll have the worst behind us and can focus on other things. I want to thank everyone whose prayers and thoughts have sustained me and whose gifts of cards, time, food and flowers have lightened my load. I have truly been blessed.

As far as the prognosis goes, the chemo seems to have worked quite well having shrunk the tumor considerably. The next step will be surgery around the end of April, recovery for about a month, radiation beginning around the beginning of June and ending about mid-July (when Sabrina gets home!), recovery for as long as it takes (with my skin it could be a couple of months) and then reconstructive surgery in the fall. I'm hoping to get it all in on this calendar year for insurance reasons :). Then I'll be looking for a job since we'll be nearly empty nesters and have lots of little ones in college.

Again, thank you all for your support. My oncologist called me "low-maintenance" Monday and I'm sure it's because of all of you!

Speed bumps

It’s kind of funny how we go along interpreting the information that comes to us within the realm of our own reality without really considering anything going on outside that realm.

Like many of you, I listened to President Uchtdorf’s talk during General Conference in October and thought about how it applied to my situation as a wife, mother, Seminary teacher, sister, etc. I tried to limit the amount of time I spent every day preparing my Seminary lessons so I could create a home more conducive to the Spirit (i.e., cleaner) and planned how I should spend the hours my family was away so I could have more time to spend with them in conversation when they came home. Having checked that nicely off my list, I moved on to President Eyring’s talk about sustaining church officers.

Then on November 24, the day before Thanksgiving, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. When they first tell you something like that with no tests or proof to back it up, it doesn’t seem real. I went through the Thanksgiving holiday really pondering all my many blessings and, without a clearer prognosis, wondering how many of them I would continue to enjoy for any length of time. What a perfect time to get news like that! It really focused me on what is most important. When I realized that what I would really miss would be holding my grandchildren in my arms and seeing my daughters married in the temple, I was grateful that those blessings can be mine thanks to Jesus Christ. I can hold my grandchildren’s little resurrected bodies with my own arms and am already sealed to my beautiful daughters for eternity. He’s thought of everything.

Well, enough of morbid thoughts. All the news since that day (and there’s been a lot of it) has been very good. The cancer appears to be isolated and unambitious. After two biopsies, several mammograms and sonograms, bone scans, CT scans and a MUGA scan, I started chemotherapy December 16th. I’ll go through chemo every three weeks for six cycles, which will take me into April at which time I’ll have a mastectomy and then undergo radiation therapy. The prognosis is good and although life is very tired these days (I’m on day five of my first chemo session and never knew I could feel so tired and still be alive) I will recover and get to hold those grandbabies this side of the veil after all. (Bernice—promise me you won’t let Mario plan my girls’ weddings. I’m not sure even a temple sealing could survive that!)

I was released from Seminary yesterday—a great sadness to me since I have the cutest class on the planet—but they’ll be getting a great teacher and they won’t have to worry about me falling over on my face some morning when I didn’t get enough rest the day before.

Life is good. I am so blessed to have the time to stay home and recuperate well, the family support to get me where I need to be and pick up all the pieces behind me and the insurance to pay for a great deal of this very expensive treatment. Summer is doing well. She’s a little more stressed than I would like but as cheerful as ever. Mario has been enormously supportive and even went to chemo with me last week. (Any of you who know how he handles medical stuff will realize what an enormous sacrifice this constitutes. He did have to spend some time in the hall when they stuck the needle in my mediport but he did quite well over all.) I’m not sure how much Adam understands—he’s just Adam: calm, imperturbable and even keel.

I won’t keep a boring list of symptoms or side effects; really, who wants to hear all that? I am grateful for the prayers I know many of you have offered and will continue to offer on my behalf. I truly believe prayer makes a difference and that’s why this has turned out so well in the long run.

Have a Happy Christmas and hold your loved ones a little tighter this year.

Cutest time of year!

Our ward held a Trunk or Treat today and I could not stop smiling. What adorable kids!

Some of the adults looked pretty cute, too!