here we go again...

I finally got to san antonio to see my dad on friday morning just in time to see things fall apart before my very eyes. physical therapy had been in once that morning to get him up and walking and during the second try...they really f@#% ed him up! his brace is a very large contraption and requires a lot of effort to get it on correctly. the two girls that came in had not been in to help him before and it was quite obvious. during previous pt times two men came in and helped him get up and then get the brace on...these girls had another plan.

while one of them helped him roll to his left side, the other held his right leg. between the two of them they were successful in pulling his new hip out of socket. i stayed in the room since i hadnt been here and i wanted to know what was involved so i witnessed the whole thing. it so wasnt anything that anyone should have to see their dad go thru...i cant imagine the immense pain he was in.

while we were waiting for them to come get him for surgery, one of the drs came to talk to us. i know that carrie, my sister, had been living through this for weeks now and took everything in. i on the otherhand, live 5 hours away and i have the distance to help me..but on thursday everything began to hit home for me. once talking to the dr everything came into perspective. my dad had chondrosarcoma, cartlidge cancer in his right hip joint. upon getting into the surgery going after the initial tumor, they tested his blood marrow and saw that there was still cancerous cells there. they then had to cut away all his butt muscles to get to the back of his pelvis for the other tumor. so...the hip popping out made sense.

basically, his whole right side had been cut through and only staples and sutures were holding him together. his pelvis was removed on the right side and cadaver bone replaced it, a steel ball atop a steel rod replaced filled in the new socket. it is such a hard concept to grasp for me still. with all of this work done...he is so lucky to be at this point. given the severity of the cancer and placement he is so lucky to be able to still have his leg. the dr told us most doctors would have done the replacement surgery, they would have only taken his leg off.

so...at 5:30 last night they took him back down to the or to put his hip back in place. with any luck they would be able to pop it back it without having to open him up. well, after over an hour in the OR we were thinking that an easy fix wasnt an option. a little over 2 hours after going in, dr williams came out. they were able to pop his hip back in quite easily and decided due to the swelling to open it back up. they were able to take almost a liter of fluid away from the incision sight.

so overall, he went through a lot of pain and had to go back into surgery but hopefully that will all get everything on the right track. with removing the fluid, they are hoping that everything will go back together in less time. another drawback is that after surgery last night he will remain in his brace at all times. talk about uncomfortable...a hard plastic brace to lay on...yay! he is starting to develop bed sores on the heels of his feet. they brought a special little boot to help keep him from applying pressure to it.

on a very good note, friday night was the best night he had in a long time. somehow we got him comfortable physically and mentally. he is on the road to recovering after traveling through hell on friday and we are hoping for the best. :) the drs think he might be able to leave the hospital and go to the rehab facility by wednesday.

i cant imagine the pain he has gone through physically as well as mentally...i am so glad he is going to a rehab that can help him with both.

i have been up here with him all day and he is starting to drift off for the night. we are waiting for his next round of pain meds and then hopefully he will be out for a good while sleeping peacefully.

Total Hip Replacement

His surgery was a very long process today...8:30-5:30...9 whole hours. The drs removed his whole right hip and pelvis along with 2 cancerous tumors, one of which they didn't even know about. He lost over 2 liters of blood and has gone through one transfusion today and he is still in the recovery room until his blood pressure comes up.
mom and carrie got to go back and see him around 8:30 this evening. carrie reported that he was doing okay, very swollen and still very out-of-it. mom on the otherhand, ended up laying in the hallway trying not to pass out. she just cant take the smell of ether :(

i think through all his surgeries, the times after the surgery are always the most memorable.
after his lower back fusion last christmas, he told me that his drs name was Dr. Zantac :)
today this was the conversation between my sister and him...pretty funny :)

dad...i hear they tape your eyes shut during surgery
carrie...yes, they do
dad...are my eyes still taped?
carrie...well, can you see me?
dad...yea, and i dont even need my glasses

I will be leaving after school next Thursday to go see him once he gets home and if any of you know me at all...i will totally give a hard time about that conversation. :)

i am very much a daddy's girl and i have truely appreciated everyones concern and prayers!

Surgery Scheduled

My dad had his follow-up today and good news was heard! The cat scan showed no other cancer within his body...it is only in his hip. When I called around 6, they were still in San Antonio. He was getting "fitted" for a cast. As we speak, there is a place in New Jersey getting a hip in route to Texas for him. He will undergo a right hip replacement on February 11th. The dr said he will be in surgery for about 6-7 hours and then will stay in the hospital for about 5 days. I am sure he is super excited to come home in a body cast. :) I am just relieved that there is a solution within his reach and he will soon have no more pain.
I talked to him after they left the drs office and he said he would rather we come down once he gets home. I have been there to see him off to surgery for every major one he has had...this will be the first pre-op visit I will miss. That worries me some, but I do have to admit that I would rather be at home with him than in a hospital with Braxtyn. I bet he would like to remember us being there too. Plus Bryan will be in Memphis the week of his surgery, so it would be better on us all to have Bryan there too.
Overall...I can breathe a sigh of relief for now and hopefully before too long Dad can too! :)

The Story of the Lost Eye...yes, I said EYE!!!

This morning the office called over the speaker for a child in my class to come to the office to call her mother asap. Ok, so let's call her J, goes down to the office. She comes back a few minutes later and approaches me at my table.

J...do you know why i had to call my mom?

me...no, why?

J...my mom was crying because her eye fell out

me...WHAT??? her eye fell out?

J...very calm...yea

me...what do you mean? is she okay?

J..yea, she is fine she just cant find it

me...WHAT?!?!? she can't find it? how did she lose it?

j...i dont know

me...i dont understand. has this happened before? why can't she find her eye? is it a real eye?

j...yea, it has come out before and she thought i had it...and yes it is real?

i am getting more confused as this conversation goes on and yet i continue...

me...are you sure her eye is real?

j...well, she was shot along time ago and it is kinda real and kinda not

me...okay, so her eye comes out and that is normal and she thinks you have it? why would you have it?

j....i dont know, but i dont have it

me...well i hope she finds it and is okay

This by far is the strangest conversation I have ever had!!! Now, J is identified as special ed and is fairly slow with most things. So here I am thinking that she is just confused herself. To make things more confusing...i have met her mother on several occasions and it is hard not to notice the "crazy eye" which i thought was a real eye. It looks off to who knows where and anyone would think that she had a lazy eye or as I labeled it "crazy". Now, someone explain to me why her fake eye is not focused forward? Why would you have a fake eye that looked off to who knows where? Isn't the point to make it unnoticable?

J is a pretty funny gal and she laughed throughout of conversation and I tried hard to keep it all in. Afterall, I was the adult in the room and there were 17 other pairs of eyes watching me.

When I was sharing this conversation with my teaching buddies another funny story was brought up.

Yesterday, we all received an email to check in a students backpack for something his mother was looking for. Now....what in the world would we say to an email that read like this?

Can you please look in J's backpack from her mother's eyeball?

HAHAHAHAHAHA

The Here and Now

We found out this week that my dad has cancer...chondrosarcoma to be exact. Cancer always just sounds bad, doesn't it? Whenever I hear someone has cancer you naturally feel bad for them, but somehow I feel just the opposite and it's my dad. How you ask? Well...over the past five years my dad has endured some very scary surgeries and this just, in my mind, doesn't compare. I remember finishing up my first year teaching and leaving the last day to get down to San Antonio for his first big surgery. He became the owner of new steel rod along with 6 screws in his neck. This was the first big surgery that anyone close to me had gone through and it was my dad...we are very close. I remember getting to Kerrville the night before and getting up super early to drive to San Antonio. The surgery seemed to take forever and waiting in a hospital isn't exactly the most comfortable place. Just the fact that they were working so close to his spine and spinal cord, I think was the most scary part. He came through great and healed faster than expected. :) Over the next few years he had various surgeries...his knee, his shoulder, his nose. All relatively minor and he came through just fine.

A few weeks before Thanksgiving in 2008 things started going down a different route. He was stricken with severe sudden pain and was unable to walk. He hadn't been 'right' for months due to an injury at work and was getting the run-around by workers comp. He took a ride in the ambulance and after many, many doctor visits they made the decision to undergo surgery to fuse his lower back. Again working wth his spine, you can't help but keep the thought of being paralyzed in the back of your mind. So for Christmas last year, we loaded up and headed to Dallas for his surgery. I think was sticks with me the most about this particular surgery is the way I saw my dad. I think that is the most important thing for me to see that he was in need of something more than surgery. He and mom do not have a great relationship...hell, it would be a stretch to say they do not have a good relationship. For many years I have wondered how they stay together. My dad has always been a hard physical worker and with all the limitating factors he was encountering over the years, he became unable to do all those things he used to. It is only normal to become depressed when your whole life has changed against your will and you don't have your wife to express your emotions to. Anyway, while in Dallas my dad talked freely about things, mostly because of the meds, but I did learn lots of things. Mostly that he needed help...

So over the past year we have all been dealing with our 'family drama' in our own ways. I live 6 hours away and that alone provides me with distance from it all. My oldest sister, Carrie, wears her heart on her sleeve and it is beginning to take a toll on her. My other sister, Amy, basically rolls with punches. I have always wondered how she internalizes stressful situations. My mom...big sigh...I have always wondered with her as well about how she internalizes anything. The two of us couldn't be more opposite. I rarely understand why she does the things she does. Let's just say that my mom really isn't the talking type. If she is mad, she yells her opinion or opts for silence...there is no negotiation. I can't remember the last time we visited my parents and she and I did not get into a fight. It is just stressful thinking about visiting. In my opinion, I think my parents should have divorced atleast 1o years ago, but instead they opted to move to Kerrville for a fresh start. Well guy...this plan sucks! Nothing good has happened since the move and things have yet to change.

So this brings us to the present...January 2010...and the word...cancer
My dad's right hip has been hurting for months now and since he has been the care of a workers comp doctor, things haven't been handled very well. To make things worse, since he hasn't been working for over a year, my dad's life is fulfilled with phone calls, notes, papers, mri's, catscans, phone calls, paper....do you get it? He is completely comsumed by all the medical stuff. He spends everyday thinking about all the things he can't control and it is taking its toll. We have spent the past couple years worried about his physical health, but it is so apparent now that we should be focusing on this mental health.


So Carrie calls me and tell me that the results are in and she has special privileges of seeing them before his doctors appt on Friday. Dad was aware that this could be a possibility and we asked him if he wanted Carrie to look...he never really gave a straight answer. So I told Carrie I would call him to see how he was doing and if Carrie was going to look at the results. He quickly saw right through me and asked me what I knew. So I told him everything Carrie had told me and we began looking online for answers.

Chondrosarcoma, cancer of the cartlidge. It is the 2nd most come bone cancer, but yet is still quite rare. Only 1% if bone cancer is primary and he fell right into that 1%. Surgery would be necessary due to the fact that sarcoma does not respond to chemo or radiation. Okay, surgery...we've done this before. And since they it was a Grade 1...there was a 90% chance that once removed, it would not return. Great! Due to the fact that he had been so proactive on his healthcare the past few years we are hopeful that there are no other areas infected, we hope this will be confirmed with a full body bone scan.
He met with the doctor on Friday and they gave a more personalized treatment plan. Due to the positioning of the tumor they will most likely be performing a hip replacement. In the few weeks he will be meeting with a sarcoma specialist in San Antonio and hopefully his surgery will be underway before too much longer.
So another surgery is needed, the word cancer is being used and yet I am totally okay with it. We have a solution to the physical pain he has been in for months and it is treatable. Sounds great to me! I just hope that once his is recovering physically that we can work on him mentally too and get my dad back. I need him, Braxtyn needs him, Lauryn, Meagan, Carlie, Chase, Carrie, Amy, Mom...all need him. We all want him to get better and be in a happy place!

I LOVE YOU DAD!!!

Christmas with the Griswald's...uh...I mean, Henson's

Bryan's parents, brother and niece came to over tonight to celebrate Christmas. As most of you know, I am not fans of his parents, but I was trying my best. After weeks of drawn out crap, they finally decided to come to make it a little easier on us all tomorrow. We will be in Seagraves for Bryan's extended family Christmas then off to Kerrville to be with my family. I know to not to expect much effort on his family's part, but I was hoping things might be different...yeah right.

To start off the evening, his parents were 2 hours late and come to find out, they stopped to do some shopping. What? We had plans people!!! Dinner was on the table, the girls had already eaten, and once I found out they were shopping, I decided not to wait on them. Needless to say, I was a little frustrated by them before they even arrived.
As usual, Bryan's dad was his cheerful self and didn't say a word at the dinner table. It is just akward to sit there with people who you know would rather be somewhere else. We finished dinner and everyone went to the living room. Except Bryan and me...afterall, we cooked all day, ate the cold dinner...why shouldn't we clean it all up by ourselves?

I did however enjoy letting the girls make reindeer food, it was quite messy and I am not sure if I will ever get all the glitter out of my house, but it was worth it! After everyone left, we drove around out neighbor looking at Santa Lights and tossing reindeer food out so that Santa would surely find our house!

Onto opening gifts...
The first packages handed out were not to the girls, but rather to Bryan, Brad and Mike. And can you guess what awesome gifts these were????? helicopters...thats right I said helicopters!! His parents acted like these were the greatest gifts ever and they flew them around my living room like 12 year olds.

So onto Braky Bear....
Braxtyn picked out her first gift to open..."Ooooo, Mommy...potato head, open it!" She had to put Mr. Potato Head together before moving onto her next present. #2 a magnadoodle! Braxtyn has been "eye-ing" Kenadi's since this summer, she is now a happy camper that she can draw like Kenadi. #3 CandyLand...I know we will have hours of fun with this! #4 Cars and Ratattouile from Uncle Brad and Ariah...love it! we watch both of these movies quite often on dvr. #5&6 A Dennis the Menace Christmas and Beethoven's Big Break...can you guess who these were from...thats right...his parents. They are right on target with 2 year olds. #7 a tv/dvd combo for brax's room. This gift was given by Bryan's parents. Why you ask they can suck it up so bad and then pull through with this gift? That's because we had picked it out to get for Braxtyn and they got it. Brax was so excited when she realized that she would be able to watch cowboy woody in her room!

The girls played while the guys flew their stupid helicopters, which by the way, Bryan broke within minutes. Money well spent guys. So here I sit, complaining about these people who I will forever have in my lives. I know I should be nicer, but they make it so hard. I should be packing because we are leaving tomorrow. We are supposed to be in Seagraves by lunch and I haven't packed a damn thing. I think I just might be atleast 2 hours late tomorrow! :)

Christmas is on it's way!

We are getting ready for Christmas! We have decorated the tree, put lights out on the house, taken pictures with Santa and Braxtyn has even attempted to open presents! Our little baby is becoming a big girl and such a helper. Here are some pictures of our recent adventures.