Patty Knight

Tomorrow starts the beginning of ending my time with caner.  I will always carry the scars that will remind me of the time we spent together.  I will have a new found ability to appreciate and enjoy every moment that I am blessed to have with family and friends.

I find it so hard to understand the why’s, the how’s and the what could I have done to prevent the ugly and debilitating disease of cancer.  The truth is none of us who have had cancer or who will get cancer may never get the answer to these questions.  The one thing we can all take away from the experience is nothing short of a beautiful miracle that allows us to make the most of the time we have here on earth.  Too many people spend their days working, stressed out, overbooking their schedules or being just plain lazy.  We fail to make time to relax, to call, write or visit family and friends.  We take waking up each day for granted.  It is those actions that cause to many people to go through life too quickly with few cherished memories.  Those of us who have been blessed with cancer manage to make time for the things that are important such as appreciating every minute of every day.  We make a point to catch up with family and friends, check off all those wish list items, tell others we love them…… We make memories for us and for all those who spend time with us.  For the select few of us who can say wow I am a cancer survivor I pray will continute to cherish each day because each day is a gift weather we have cancer or not.  I can say I am happier for this life and for the sincere friendships of those who stayed true to me/us in times of need.

I have been blessed with so many wonderful people in my life and as I go through these next few months I will do my best to continue to keep in touch with everyone.  I will post blogs so others can keep up with me and many more who I have not met can hopefully find encouragement and strength from my words.

I recently got together with a friend that I had not seen in a while.  To my surprise not only did she just finish with a double mastectomy, chemo and radiation but her husband also just finished chemo, radiation and surgery for cancer.  It really is sad to see just how many people are affected by the many different types of cancer.   I plan to continue to keep in touch with my friend and her husband and many others.  I may only be able to talk on the phone, through a text or a blog but I will make a commitment to make some sort of contact with friends.  For those who are really close family and friends I will do my best to visit them or have them visit me.  I am also turning into the crazy and annoying picture person.  I either take pictures when I get the chance to get together with friends or I have them take pictures and send them to me.  I have begun putting together albums with these pictures.  I have also been having fun with my youngest son going through some of these picture albums and reminiscing with him.  You can not believe just how fun it is.  We laugh, we ponder and we cry sometimes but it is something that will keep the mind and spirit filled with joy.

On a totally different note I always like to be prepared, expecially for days that may not be so good.  I am going to put in a big plug for a local business and internet business.  I have always been one to make sure that my family has a good home cooked healthy meals each day.  I may be able to continue this throughout my treatments if I get sick.   If the day comes that I can’t do the cooking I still wanted my family to have good home cooked meals.  We have a a business where I live called “lets make dinner”.  This is a fun place where groups can go and make up good home cooked meals that they then put into freezer containers with labels that have the directions to heating/cooking the meals at a later time.  While this is fun to do with friends or even kids it is also a place where where the employees also make dinners along with the groups. The employees freeze their meals and customers who can’t come in and make up meals.  Anyone can just stop by and buy the pre-made meals. If you want to ensure they have the dinners you want you can also call or email them with this dinners and side dishes you want each month and they will make them up.  You can come in to the business and pick them up or they will even deliver them to your home.  Wow what a great idea.  So if I do get sick I plan on having a few pre-made dinners on hand so my family will still eat a good healthy home made dinners.  I also have done a lot of research on some of the online dinners you can order and then cook at home in your own kitchen.  My youngest son loves to cook which will make this a good option for us as well.  I have found through my research that the best rated online dinners are with “Blue Apron”.  Here you can buy healthy dinners with ingredients that are fresh for the season and they are grown locally.  You can choose from different menus each month with no obligations or commitments to join a club.  This is a little more expensive than “Let’s Make Dinner” but much more fun and healthy for those who like to cook or want to learn to cook.  Blue Apron allows you  pick the meal you want to but and the number of people you want to serve.  Blue Apron will then send you the step by step guide to cooking it.  The kit comes with the exact portions of each item needed to cook the dinner.  What fun.  The menus change monthly and before you know it you will have a chef in your own home making great meals.  My family is almost hoping I don’t feel well so they can experience cooking without the hassle of going grocery shopping.

The link to “lets make Dinner”:  http://www.letsmakedinner.biz

The link to “blue Apron”:   http://www.blueapron.com

Ok enough babble.  I start chemo tomorrow,  I have meals made and meals ordered, I have this blog to keep family and friends updated on my current experiences with chemo and a checklist of those I want to keep in contact with during this adventure.  When this is over I hope to be cancer free, in the habit of staying in contact with family and friends, enjoying every day and hopefully helping others who may be going through the same thing.

God Bless and may we all find happiness in our hearts.

What is time?  It can be many different things to many different people. Time can be many different things to a single person depending on the day, the time of day, the mood, so on and so on.

The one thing that is certain is that time does not stand still.  Live life like there is no tomorrow.  So what does time have to do with me?

The time has come for me to begin treatment for malignant metastatic nodule melanoma.  I originally decided to create a blog so that I could share my story with others who may be experiencing the same fate or for others just looking for daily inspirations.  As you can see I have not posted much because there was not much to post.  I was diagnosed with nodular melanoma stage IIIb,  Breslow thickness 1.92 and Clark level 0f at least 4 in February 2012.  I had a wide leg excision on my outer right thigh and sentinel node removed.  The sentinel node came back positive but the wide leg excision had clean borders which showed that all the cancer had been removed.  I then underwent a total lymph node dissection of my right groin and a muscle flap from my right thigh.  Only one lymph node was positive for nodular melanoma.  The doctors felt that I had a very low chance of reoccurrence.  Good news, so I thought.  I would then be scheduled for checkups every three months with pet scans every 6 months.  Yep, as many of you know, I was the lucky one who did not fall into the category of NED (no evidence of disease).  The pet scan showed areas of lymph node involvement in both the right and left pelvic nodes.  I went back into surgery to have them removed and the pathology report showed no cancer.  Whew I was lucky.  I returned to my regular 3 month visits and all was looking good.  Just when we were ready to change my appointments to every 6 months I had another reoccurrence that appeared in my right buttox.  Wow another surgery and once again I was cancer free.  As expected I was back to 3 month followup appointments and 6 month pet scans.  This was good for a while then…..yep you guessed it I had another reoccurrence.  This time I had one area on my butt and one on my back.  Surgery was scheduled for two weeks from the time my biopsies came back positive.  I went in two weeks later for surgery and told my surgeon that in the two weeks that I was waiting for surgery I had a third area show up.  I had surgery and all 3 areas of cancer removed. According to the pathology report all three were malignant metastatic nodular melanoma.  Well once again it looks like we got it all except for a new area that showed up on my pet scan.  It looks like I may have cancer in my spleen. All I can say is that cancer has a mind of its own.  I should not have had any reoccurrence of cancer and yet here I am with possibly a new cancer spot on my spleen.  After long discussions with my physicians we decided that we can no longer continue to just cut the cancer out of my body.  We decided that it is time to start chemo treatments.  I am actually going to be taking two drugs, Tafinlar and Mekinist.  I will begin treatments on January 25th.  I will do my best to post how I feel and how things are going in hopes of helping others who may be going through the same thing.

I am truly blessed to have such amazing physicians, family and friends.  I know that I will beat my cancer.  I am strong, I have to many things to do in this life and I plan on doing them all before I check out.  I have a strong support group who sends prayers regularly and I know that all those prayers will keep me going.

 “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at a time of challenge and cotroversy.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King