Hello strangers… I know we haven’t been on here in a few months. An odd thing happened to us; somethings that forced us to realize that we had been ignoring other things in our life. If you’re anything like us then you know how easy that is to do in ones life and when that happened we decided to take a step back from always working on a project.
***Before I go any further I want to warn you that I will be discussing and showing pictures of cancer so if that makes you squeamish look away****
As many of you know we were chugging along with the projects in our home with no plans of stopping but life had a different plan.
Enter the lump.
If you’re a woman than it is pretty normal that you find lumps in your breast (99% of the time are cyst) but that doesn’t mean its not scary when you find one. Well, recently I found one so here I went off for a ultrasound and a biopsy lucky for me it turned out to be benign. So we went back to trucking along in our life just like always thinking about our next project.
Well I guess someone had other plans.
A few months went by and I wasn’t feeling like myself. My doctor asked me questions and did a full work up on me. She said my levels were off which she said could be fixed with some vitamins, exercise and such but she then asked me if I had ever noticed the lump on my thyroid? Well that was a new one for me as far as questions go. No I said puzzled…now I will say this doctor was the first doctor to ever feel around my thyroid in my life much less ask about it. So she sent me to an Endocrinologist for a further look.
Talk about a mind race!!
If you’ve never had a biopsy done it’s definitely not on anyone’s top ten list especially a biopsy through the throat. Well it turned out I had a nodule on my thyroid (which he said was actually more common than people realize!) lucky enough for me it wasn’t cancerous nor was it affecting my thyroid function. Yay me!! So with my lumpy throat we went home knowing that I would have to go back every 6 months for a biopsy to make sure it wasn’t becoming cancerous. Ummmm…..yay me?
You would think that was enough of a test to tell us to take a step back and enjoy our lives; well no. I started noticing a sore on the very tip of my nose it was the size of a sharpened pencil tip…..
so off we went to the Dermatologist this time.
Now as someone who was a HUGE sun baby all my life this really made me nervous. Well you guessed it another biopsy (let me tell you I was biopsied out by this time) and this one was cancerous. I had what they described to us as in between a Basal Cell Carcinoma and Squamous Cell Carcinoma. I thought the worst. Of course I did what no one should ever do I went online and looked at pictures of others stories (good and bad), scolded myself for not taking better care of myself, wondered how much there was and so on. My husband the whole time was the calm for me. He just kept saying we will get through this like we always do with everything together.
They ended up taking out what was the diameter of a dime and the depth of a finger tip. I was scared by this time that they would have to keep taking more and more all because I didn’t take care of my skin and wanted that oh so pretty tan when I was younger. When I say this wakes you up about taking care of yourself but I was so happy it was over. I was also happy that they didn’t have to take any bone out. It was smack dab on the tip of my nose (I could have driven Santa’s sleigh at Christmas) but at this point in my life I didn’t think about that. I was more focused on healing… you know I think I was so focused on that because I had just dealt with the lump in my breast, finding that nodule on my thyroid and that biopsy, and now this. So we were pretty tired by that time.
So here I sit with a lumpy breast, a lumpy functioning thyroid, a little sexy red spot on the end of my nose (which is fading more everyday) that I don’t even remember is there until I look in the mirror, and my heart telling me that it’s ok.
I know this isn’t like one of our regular blog post about some great project that we have going on or some wonderful wallpaper that we’re in love with at the moment. But you know what it’s still a part of our life and it’s the part of some peoples lives that they may not always feel should be shared. Well call us human because we want you to know that not everyday is great.
So we’re asking you to do us a favor or actually do yourself a favor…..
Take that step back. Stop looking at what you haven’t accomplished yet and look at what you have. Rest your mind, love your family, but most of all love yourself.
Oh and one more thing…
Take care of yourself and pay attention to how your body and mind is talking to you. You never know it could be nothing much or it could be something more.
We also want to say to those of you who have stuck with us through this quiet moment, Thank You. Thank you for being interested in our little corner of the world. We do love sharing with you all and we aren’t going anywhere; we’re just taking a moment.
With all our hearts….Steve and Melissa.
