Sunday, April 13, 2008

What Happens Next

Life doesn't just stop when you get bad news. It keeps going no matter what and when children are included in the picture, you need to keep things as normal as possible. Between phone calls following the ill fated doctors appointment, our first stop was Target. The kids had been bribbed with a new toy if they were good for dad and we had to make good on our word. Better yet, being such country hicks mom and dad hadn't been in Target before!! A new experience for everyone. The kids came away with the newest Dark Watch Optimus Prime Transformer and a Snow White Barbie doll. Mom got a new book written by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts, my favorite author) and later dad would get a new PlayStation game at the adjacent Best Buy. Lunch was an indulgence of steak and lobster at Long Horn and I swear I've never met another 4 year old who turns her nose up at steak and goes whole hearted for lobster instead.

We tried to keep things light for the kids as we tried to absorb the shock into our systems. Since I remembered the nurse mention my numbers had been a few weeks before in the 300,000 range, I was told to prepare myself for chemo treatments. But not to worry my, as my Mom's boyfriend would put it, "If your hair falls out, we'll all make a trip to the Barber shop to have our heads shaved!!"

Tears would make their appearance through the last of my lunch, hearing this. It was a scary thought for someone who's closest encounter with cancer was by way of the t.v. and the radio. My mind had automatically jumped to extreme hair loss and infertility caused by the drugs that safe lives. It was awesome to hear such comforting words, words that would become my first step in this battle should it be needed. I wouldn't sit back and watch my hair fall out clump by clump, I'd get ahead of this disease and show it who was boss, I'd shave my head first!

Trying to find a bright side in what could possibly be a very dark time, I joked on the way home with my husband that if I did need chemo, I certainly wouldn't have to shave my legs for a while.

And it was then on the way home, that for the first time since dealing and coming to terms with his mom's death 8 months before, that I would see my husband cry. My heart that was already cracked and breaking, just shattered. Here was the man who'd given me all his love, his laughter, who put up with my crap and sometimes not very nice attitude, the man who had given me my children, sat there as he drove wiping at the tears that ran down his face, trying to hold back the sobs that I could see racking his strong shoulders. This would be the only time through out the coming weeks that I would see him cry.

Later that night, a little past 6:30, I got a call from my doctors nurse letting me know the result from my first hcG beta test. This is the test that counts the amount of hcG in the blood. It was 10,327. What blew my mind was when she said this number was supposed to be at 5! And reminded me I'd need a test every week until then. When I asked her what they had been when taken the Friday before the D and C, I was astonished. They were 253,000!!! Off the chart for an 8 week pregnancy. This number is usually found in women around their 16-20th week.

I waited until everyone was asleep that night to do my first research on the Internet about molar pregnancy. What I found was limited information scattered all over the place. Partial and Complete Moles are grouped together, without too much individual focus on either one. As I would come to understand later, the underlying basis as far as, statistics, and symptoms are pretty much all the same as is the treatment for the cancer. It's only difference laying in the core beginnings of conception.

That evening as I laid in bed, I prayed for God's Will to be done, for Him to give me the direction He wanted me to take, and for Him to give me the strength and the courage to walk the path He set before me, to give me the answers so that I could understand why this was happening.

I can't say that I've ever heard God speak to me. When He moves in my life, it's more like thoughts coming into my head spoken with my own voice. Thoughts I know He put there. God would certainly speak to me through out the night, so that when I woke up, my brain was already forming the plan of attack I would use to fight this disease.