First Thyroid-less week...

Hi! Its Brittany here (aka this wont be funny like Mark's updates) :), and I thought I would fill you in on our lives this past week. What a week! Like Mark said, the surgery went really well. They ended up taking out 8 lymph nodes all from the right side of my neck, the whole thyroid, and one parathyroid. The incision is healing up well, and I just have to wait for the steri-strips to turn black and fall off (eww). Don't worry I will try and cover it up then to not gross people out. It has actually been a little bit more painful in the past couple of days than it was at first. They say this is a combo of the numbing meds wearing off, and doing more. I still don't have full range of motion, and it even hurts to just hold my head up straight (feels like its pulling the incision), but I am sure it will heal up nicely!

I am feeling the effects of not having any thyroid function (aka severe hypothyroidism). I cannot start taking any thyroid replacement until after radiation - so like another 5 weeks. Some of these fun effects are fatigue, weight gain, hair loss, and muscle cramps.

We met with my regular doctor this week about my stomach and to follow up with my calcium (which is now back to normal - Praise God). She gave me some meds to try with my stomach and they seem to be helping, so that is exciting. The stomach thing was really just frustrating and seemed like just a kick while we were down. Hopefully this medication keeps helping, and we don't have to worry about that as much. We also had a follow up appointment with the surgeon (Dr. Stewart), and he was great. He just has so much good info, is really good at explaining things, and doesn't make you feel rushed or annoying at all. We are meeting with the radiation/oncologist next week, and having a consultation with them, so hopefully they will be as impressive as Dr. Stewart.

This week has not all been medical appointments, we have had some fun. We went and saw a movie, we walked out and didn't really like the movie, but we both said how we didn't think about anything else during the 2 hours, so it was a perfect distraction from "real life". We had lunch with Michael and Mandy Fernihough (the couple who did our premarital counseling, and Michael married us and is the youth pastor at RBC). They have been such an encouragement and blessing to us in our marriage. They are always there for us, and are such a great example of a solid family that loves Jesus. They are moving to Colorado this week to work at a church plant and while it is so sad, it is awesome to see them be so faithful.

Our friends Ashley and her boyfriend Bill came from Lansing last night and it was SO great to see friends!! We just chatted, had dinner, played a little pictionary, it was fun. Mark went back over to Detroit today because he is going to start his part time job tomorrow! Yayy! He had to go today, because my sisters lost my keys, and he needed to have them let him into the apartment (where there is another set of apartment keys). I cant wait to hear how things go at the church tomorrow. We are so thankful to have this job, and I know Mark is ready to be working again!!

Me and Annie!

The incision - its healing!

We love scrabble!

Mark has been doing lots of work for my mom (he power washed and re stained the whole deck too!!), but this is him replacing the garbage disposal. Please notice he is wearing the hospital socks :)

Anna cheesing it up

We know that God is good, and have never doubted that God allowed this cancer to be in my body at this exact time, and that it is all apart of his perfect plan, and will bring the most glory to him. Thanks so much for praying for us, for all the people who have brought meals to our family, and just been awesome to us.

Love,
Brittany

Out of the hospital and recoverying at home!!!

Sorry for the delay in relaying the news, life has been mildly crazy!  Here are the basic details: the doctor dominated the surgery and completed it ahead of time.  He took out Brittany's entire thyroid and a couple of lymph nodes.  Originally we thought that there was only one cancerous mass on her thyroid, but after the doctor got in there, he found another.  So we are really excited that the thyroid is out.  Brittany is recovering now, so hopefully she will continue to heal and get better.  (right now she is watching gilmore girls, half asleep...)

We had to be at the hospital by 5:30am do get Brittany all prepped for surgery.  So here is a pic of us waiting for doctors.  We had a lot of time, so we passed most of it by playing our gameboys.

This is us after the surgery, just hanging out.  Brittany has been such a trooper.  We were in the hospital for a day and a half, so we had lots of down time for reading, videogames, and chit chat.  Everything went really smooth, except Jenna and Alexa always trying to steal my comfy chair :)  Our nurses were awesome too! 

Alexa read us some Harry Potter too. 

Done with the hospital!!

And here is the cancer cake that I made for Brittany.  It turned out alright.  I was trying to do some sunflowers, because those are her fav, but we settled for yellow blobs, hahaha!  At least it was tasty!!!

Thank you for all of your prayers and love that you sent our way.  We surely could feel them and appreciate them all!  Last night after we got home Brittany's tummy was really hurting, and she could not keep anything down. So we are only doing tylonal, and no more heavy duty pain meds. Also, throwing up really hurts Brittany's throat, so pray for that, and her tummy. We are still recovering, so your continued prayers would surely be appreciated!  Love you all :)

Answered Prayer

(This is Brittany) God IS good and knows just what we need. Today I met with the director of my PA program at Wayne, and it literally could not have gone better. I was really nervous (sometimes I forget that my professors are human - they do a really good job of being professional and no-nonsense, which is very intimidating), but she was awesome. She was so reassuring that they would work with me, and that my health was top priority. She was just so kind, and talked about if for some reason I was unable to come back this year, that I would have a spot in next years class (without having to reapply). It was SO reassuring, and I just felt a huge peace and weight lifted after our meeting. I am going to try my hardest to keep up in school, and it would be such a bummer to have to wait another year, but I am going to get healthy, and beat this darn cancer! That was one thing we needed prayer for, so it was awesome to see how that prayer was answered so quickly and perfectly.

Here are some pictures from today:

Amazing flowers that some girls in my class got me! They are awesome, and beautiful, and smell wonderful. Recognize the colors? They are our exact wedding colors!

Here are some flower stickers we got from Meijer that we have stuck on our wall. I understand that putting huge stickers on your wall is kind of tacky, but I think they are really pretty, and it was a super cheap way to brighten things up. There is one more on the other wall too.  Borcherts - thats your table and chair :) thanks again!

Here is Mark baking a cake. Yayyy. He keeps coming over and "making" me taste things, and its tasting pretty fabulous! We decided that cake baking was not a good hobby after we lived in Texas and started baking cakes all the time, and then being "forced" to eat them all by our selves, and it was making us fat. So we made an executive decision to only bake cakes for special occasions. Guess cancer counts!

So, just thought I would thank everyone for your prayers. We are heading back to the West side of the state tomorrow after class, and going to have dinner with Mark's parents in Holland. Then I have to be at the hospital at 5:30am on Friday! Eeeek!

Weekend update!

So here is an update on cancer watch 2010.  We went to Plainwell this weekend to meet with our surgeon and for a CT scan of Brittany's abdomen and pelvis.  The CT scan had a little bit of excitement when she had some contrast injected in her arm through an IV.  First off, the technician couldn't find her vein, so she dug around in in both arms for a while.  After she finally stumbled on a vein, the vein burst, spilling chemicals into her arm, causing it to swell up to the size of a football and almost burst!!(according to Brittany...)  But for real it was scary. After bopping around Kzoo for a while after the CT scan (Olga's for lunch, hangout at the library, drove and walked all over the place), we went to meet our surgeon.  Dr. Stewart is our surgeon and we are very impressed with him.  He was a great teacher, and taught us what was going on and how he was going to fix every thing. 

The cancer that she has is called papillary carcinoma on her thyroid.  I'm not going to try to explain the procedure, because I don't want mislead anyone out there that is looking for step by step instructions for performing their own thyroidectomy.  Here is the jist, they are going to cut out Brittany's entire thyroid.  The incision is going to be horizontal in one of her neck creases, so that after it heals, it should be pretty invisible.  After the surgery, Brittany won't take any thyroid pills, in order to allow any pieces of thyroid left in her body to grow.  That way, in six weeks, when she is given her radiation treatment, it can kill the rest of the thyroid better. 

Brittany's Surgery is on Friday, July 23rd at 7am.  They will keep her over night too. 

Our Prayer list:  Wise Doctors with steady hands.  Money to start raining from the sky.  But seriously, for insurance and things like that to go smoothly. Because just an ultrasound of the thyroid (not the biopsy or anything), which took 10 whole minutes cost $629 (we just got the bill). Yikes. When Brittany graduates school, it will be nice to be on the other side of that :). Ok back to prayers:  a speedy recovery, and for school to work with us so that Brittany can continue being a student.

We did have the chance to have some fun this weekend too, amidst our trial.  I got the chance to powerwash a deck, and Brittany studied lots...  Hahaha!  But seriously, the highlight of the weekend was picking up our sister Alexa from the airport.  She just got back from two weeks on a mission trip to Romania.  We picked her up from Grand Rapids at midnight, and of course her luggage got lost.  Finally got her home and we left for Detroit at two am.  It was a monsoon, and was probably dumb to leave like this, but we wanted to get Brittany back to school so that she could make as many classes as possible before we have to start missing them.  We finally got home at about 5am, just in time for Brittany to leaver for school at 7am. 

Other Highlights of the weekend:

Pictionary with Jenna and Martelle(we are still undefeated, and looking for more challengers)

Playing New Super Mario Bros. on DS all weekend with Jenna

I made a couple bucks conducting surveys for Richland Bible Church

I got stung by a bee

Brittany Baby sat Anna

Funniest Story of the Weekend:

We took Anna to go swimming while Brittany was babysitting her.  After swimming, we packed up the car, and left.  We pulled out onto the road, got the car up to about 50 mph, and heard this loud banging on the roof.  I look in my mirrors in time to see Brittany's phone bouncing down the road behind us.  (in a retelling of this story, Brittany exclaimed, "And the wind just blew my phone of the car."  Like it was the wind's fault and she was the victim....hahaha)  We pull over, and I hop out of the car and search, and find the phone!  All the pieces!  The main component, the back panel and the battery.  I reassembled them and POOF!  The phone worked!  Perfectly!  The screen didn't even scratch!  Brittany's plan to get an iphone = fail.

Love,

Mark and Brittany :)

 

Our news

Hello family and friends,

For those of you who have not heard our news, we just received news that Brittany was diagnosed with thyroid cancer.  This came as quite a surprise to us and turned our world upside down again.  What we have learned so far is that thyroid cancer is actually pretty rare. Treatment success is good if caught early (90% survival past 5 years I think). We do not know yet if it has spread beyond the thyroid. First step will be to remove the thyroid (no date yet) and then I suppose depending on what they find will decided on a course of treatment. Right now Brittany is still planning on sticking with PA school at Wayne but will get treatments in Kzoo.  We have a consult appointment scheduled for 4pm on Monday the 19th.

In the midst of this whirl wind, we made a conscience decision to trust God through this trial in our lives.  It seems that the first question that always comes to mind when bad news is delivered is, "Why is this happening to us?"  Although we can't be positive about exactly why this is happening, we can be positive that God is sovereign over everything, including this cancer. We aren't sure what is going to happen, we aren't sure how deeply this will effect the rest of our lives, and we aren't sure about the timeline concerning the cancer and treatment, but we are sure about placing our lives completely in the hands of God.  When I think about it, it's a balance of Brittany and my favorite Bible verses.  Brittany's favorite verse is Psalm 55:22, "Cast your cares on the Lord, and he will sustain you.  He will never let the righteous fall."  And my favorite is 1 Corinthians 10:31, "So whether you eat or drink or what ever you do, do all to the glory of God."  We trust God and want to glorify Him through this situation. 

Here are some of our prayer requests:
          1.  That the Cancer is just in the thyroid
          2.  For doctors to be wise and skillful in all their decisions and procedures
          3.  For our insurance not to be a hassle
          4.  That we are able to glorify God through this trial



On some lighter notes, here is Brittany with some flowers her husband got her. 

Just in case you were wondering, this is what I look like when I run off to an interview.  Most recently, I interviewed with Big Beaver UMC for a part-time Youth Director position.  The church is about 7 miles from our place, which is pretty close.  And guess what???  I was just offered the position!  We are working out the details of a start date right now, so I will keep you posted on the the happenings!

Here is what Brittany looks like when she is running off to a site visit for school!  Part of her school programming has her going to area hospitals and taking complete histories and physicals of patients!  She always turns into a Nervous Nelly before each one, but comes back loving the experience and her interactions.  However, the honey moon is short, because she has to hand write a million page paper afterward.

This is me being patient.  That is no typo.  (I'm Brittany's practice patient)

I'm learning to cook more and more.  I'm getting the hang of some things, others not as much.  A couple of weeks ago I attempted to make chicken tacos.  Largely, I succeeded.  That however, was also the problem.  That I succeeded soooo largely!  I accidentally made enough for a small army!  We ended up freezing a lot of it ;)  (notice the coffee pot in the background as an indicator of the size of the batch)

Ok, this one is going to sound a little weird at first, but I promise it's awesome!  Recently, I have been obsessed with making my own yogurt!  It's pretty easy, and saves a lot of money.  Which is good, because Brittany and I consider ourselves to be quite the frugglistas!  Each batch makes about half a gallon of plain yogurt.  It's a little soupy, but once you get used to that, it's awesome!  It's perfect for making smoothies or mixing fruit in it. 

Thank you all for your prayers and concerns and for letting us share our lives with you!