Shocking News

Here is the email I sent out to friends and family on Friday. (My apologies if you weren't included. It was hard to think of who all should be receiving it in the midst of everything that happened that day.)

I don’t even know how to write this email, but I really just feel the need to go ahead and do it. I had an MRI this morning for the low back pain that’s been going on for a few months now & got a lot worse last week. Within a couple hours after the MRI this morning, I got a call from the orthopedist — who then sent me in to see my doctor at noon with Steve to talk through everything. The bottom line is that I have kidney cancer. There is a tumor in my right kidney the size of a fist. And she said it may have been developing there for 10 years or something. But now it seems to be on my hip as well, so that is where my pain in coming from. That is about all we really know at the moment. This has all happened within the past 5 hours.

I am seeing an oncologist and a urologist next Wednesday. We will know more by Thursday. I am going to need surgery. It will probably happen soon. I will probably be unable to lift anything for at least 6 weeks afterwards. And I will probably be having radiation on my hip. But they also need to scan the rest of my body to be sure that there isn’t more.

Needless to say, we’ve been very scared. I’ve been doing amazingly well for the last hour or so. My mom is already here. She came to help because of my back pain this week. And of course, Steve came home from work to go to the doctor with me.

I hate even sending this email.... I have always struggled with guilt, and now I’m finding myself feeling guilty for upsetting everyone. So that’s something I definitely need to work on!

And of course, we’ve been waiting for Aria’s approval and hoping Steve would travel to Vietnam next week. He obviously will not be traveling next week. We have a lot of decisions to make and things to figure out.

Your prayers would be so appreciated.