Single Digits!!

 Y’all!!! We are in the single digits!!!! 

It’s been a couple of weeks since we have updated and it’s mainly because we have been on auto-pilot. Our girls were out of school for a week and we worked seven sixteen hour days with one day off. Along with Nick doing his treatments we are exhausted!!! When people ask how we are.. the only thing that I know to say is, “tired.” The absolute only way that we are getting through this is the Lord. He has been our strength, comfort and guide through it all. 

I had the opportunity to take Nick to a couple of radiation treatments and it’s so encouraging to hear how they talk about him. They love him! He has remained so positive during this time… he has even helped me push through some hard days… when I feel like I should be the one helping him push through. 

Nick’s fatigue is what he is fighting through on a daily basis…Sunday and Monday after chemo are his hardest days. I don’t know how he is still working, honestly. He is living off of chicken noodle soup and any soft foods he can tolerate. Nick’s neck under his chin is starting to bruise and his throat remains incredibly sore. He can’t taste anything and he is looking forward to the day where he can taste again.. he said pizza sounds so good! 

We are getting closer to being done! He has 8 more radiation treatments and 1 more chemo treatments! We can’t wait to ring that bell!!! 

We are so thankful for our army who is praying for us! Thank you to those of you who have sent money, gifts and helped with meals. We are so so thankful!! 

Below is the radiation machine! It’s incredible to me how this thing works! It’s also incredible how Nick can be strapped to this thing 5 days a week! He is a fighter!! 

We’re half way there!

 We are 1/2 way through! Nick has 17 radiation treatments behind him and 18 more to go! He has 4 chemo treatments behind him and 3 more to go!!! Y’all we can’t wait and are just ready to be done! 

We had a series of really good days but each week we have faced something new. This week it was the joys of constipation! This is not only the side effects of the meds he is on but is also a side effect of the chemo. In the beginning of all of this he could drink apple juice and it would help him. His mouth and throat have been so affected by the radiation he can no longer stand the acid. To save you all the details we will just say I saw him in a whole new light! One thing is for sure when you go through things like this it makes you closer than what you were! LOL With the help of his doctors and nurse navigator we have a plan going forward to help with this symptom. 

 He was pretty nervous going into Chemo the night before because he hadn’t felt any release. He finally throughout the night was able to get movement and by morning he was feeling great. Nicks mom came to see us for her birthday and she was able to go with him to his treatments. I was so thankful for this! I took a day to myself and enjoyed a sushi lunch! I am sure sitting through her son’s chemo treatments was not what she wanted to do on her birthday but we are so thankful she was there!

When Nick saw his Hematologist, Dr. Milton, He was SO encouraged! Nick told him he was still working and he literally couldn’t believe it! He told him that normally at this point his patients are home bound and don’t do anything besides go to treatments. Nick told him he ran to Walgreens the other day and he was shocked! We ALL know why… the Lord has sustained him! The Lord has been getting him through. I stand amazed at Nicks strength and his “I won’t give up attitude.” He pushes through the hard days, the hard moments and takes it a second at a time. 

Nick has dropped 33 lbs…and has dropped it quickly. Goals for getting through the rest of his treatments are to up his protein and calorie intake. Many days he just doesn’t feel like eating. He can have no spice (salt is still ok) and softer foods. 

We are so thankful for our army of people praying for us! We have had a complete stranger with a testimony of her own give to us financially… and others who remain anonymous. We have had people send us things that Nick needs. Thank you a million times! 

Ways to pray:                                                                                                                                                         That Nick can continue to navigate his symptoms/side effects                                                                            We both can get good rest (with our stressful job)                                                                                           Extra strength and energy throughout our work days                                                                                       For our friends and family who are away from us and want to be closer (they too are dealing with the emotions of all of this)                                                                                                                                            For total and COMPLETE healing after all of his treatments! 

We thank you for loving us and Keeping Up with Us!!!                 

                                                                                        

It’s Cancer…Part 2

 …7 weeks…7 long weeks…

This is when things started to get really hard…stressful and we questioned how we were going to do it all. You see our job alone is trying as we work with 8 teenage girls who are in the foster care system. We work 16 hr days. Yes, they are in school…but we are oncall during the day. Just the thought of keeping up with everything was incredibly overwhelming. 

To even prepare for the radiation and chemo Nick had a series of appointments. All his dental work had to be up to date and now he found out he would have to do home fluoride treatments every day for the rest of his life. This is due to the radiation and it effecting the enamel on your teeth. He had to be fitted for his mask for radiation *Picture attached* and he also had to see a speech therapist for throat exercises as swallowing would become difficult for him. Nick also had a port placed in his chest for the administering of the chemo. In just that one week he had 8 appointments, 1 of them being his port placement, 2 radiation appointments and chemo. Needless to say he was EXHAUSTED at the end of the week! Not to mention we continued to work. 

We are now 12 radiation appointments in and 3 chemo treatments down! 23 more radiation appointments and 4 more chemo treatments! There is nothing to prepare you for this. There is nothing to prepare you for the rollercoaster of emotions, the pain, the fear of the unknown all while holding on to hope. 

Nick has handled all of it like a champ and I feel that this is a true testament of his faith in God. Months before we got the news Nick started diving deeper into the word, he started to make it a priority for us to pray together every day and has been intentional to have people in his life to keep him accountable. He has been incredibly positive, incredibly strong and extremely brave. The radiation has already given him some really hard side effects: changed his taste, pain in his teeth but the worst has to be how his throat feels. Imagine a really bad sunburn but on the back of his throat/roof of his mouth. He is to the point where he can’t eat many things. There were a few days this week where he was in tears because of the pain. We are heading into the 3 week mark of radiation and doctors have said it’s going to progressively get worse (we pray against many of the hard symptoms). Chemo makes him feel super tired and the first couple of weeks he had really bad nausea. The doctors/nurses on his team have been amazing and we now have many meds that have helped him have less pain. 

As for me… I have struggled so much… I am a fixer… when Nick has his moments of pain, in tears because of the pain…I can do nothing. Some things that help one day, don’t help the next day. I have questioned so many things, asked God why this had to happen and honestly I have been so incredibly mad. I am tired and yet I know God is faithful. He has never ever failed us…never let us down. Why would he do this now? We have been given a promise… God isn’t done with us yet. 

Please pray for us… pray for strength throughout our days. Pray that we know how to navigate this one day at a time. We covet the prayers so much. 

Thank you for keeping up with us… we hope you continue to do so. 

The mask that he wears for radiation. 

It’s Cancer…Part 1

 Since you have made your way to our blog we are going to assume that by now you know, Nick has Cancer. So many times we have thought, how did we end up here? 

In March Nick was shaving his neck when he noticed a lump in his neck. The lump wasn’t hard but rather squishy. We had just started a new job and didn’t have insurance so we went to a clinic to have it checked out. The said that it could be a number of things but was 98% sure it wasn’t cancerous. There was no pain in his neck at all so the both of us weren’t too worried about it. 

Nick found a care provider and set up an appointment for May 1st, which was the first day we would have insurance. Once we had the appointment she recommended an ENT. The ENT referred him to have an ultrasound done. After the ultrasound he had a biopsy, CT scan and another biopsy. We received the dreaded news on a Tuesday that the biopsy showed positive for Squamous Cell Carcinoma. My heart literally fell into my stomach when we got the phone call. My family has such a history with cancer so of course my mind just raced. Even though our ENT said that it was treatable and curable I feared for the worst. Our main concern is if it had spread into his body. The ENT also said that it had to have a place that it was coming from since it was in his neck. We were immediately scheduled for a PT Scan. Nick and I have a friend who is an oncologist and we got his results really quickly so I sent them to her immediately. She said exactly what we needed to hear, “it hasn’t spread.” We were so thankful! The Lord had protected us! 

When we showed up at the ENT office there were about 10 people there to work on his case. Each of them played a role in how we were going to proceed with his treatments. It’s there that we found that Nick had a grape size lump on the back of his tongue in his lingual tonsil on the right side. The lump that we found is on the left side of his neck. The ENT told us that it was stage 2 because it was in his neck and the host was in his tongue.  The doctors all agreed that we would go the radiation/chemo route and not do surgery. We knew we had a long road ahead of us. 

We next met with the radiologist. This day was so hard for us as he had to tell us all of the worst that could happen, all the symptoms, possibly feeding tube and the possibility of a surgery even after all of this. Nick’s oncologist is Dr. Dugan and Nick jokingly calls him Dr. Doom because of all of the news we got that day. We later saw his hematologist for the chemo portion. 

It was decided…7 weeks of radiation and 7 rounds of chemo…