Sorry

Dear readers, I am so sorry for not updating. You have been waiting and waiting and waiting. To be fair, most of the time I am tired, and some days, I don’t want to remember. Most of the time I can’t remember. But, none the less, I am happy for your patience. New updates coming soon. Thank you so much- Ellie

 The same night as the ER visit, we were driving home, and Brett Smith called us. He was talking to my mom about my lung. I didn’t really understand, so I asked her what that was all about after they ended the call. She told me that there was a lesion on my lung, and they didn’t really know what that meant. I didn’t really know how I felt. I was just shocked. I had no idea what a lesion was or what that meant for me. They wanted to do a CT scan of my lungs and take it to an oncologist to determine what it was. On Tuesday, August 14th, they took the lung CT scan. A CT scan is like laying on a really thin bed that goes back and forth through a machine shaped like a donut and doing breathing exercises. The next day was the first day of school. My mom and my dad picked me up from school, and I was wondering why because my mom had to work in Pocatello all day. We drove to Soda and ran some errands. They told me that Brett had called mom and that there was a type of cancer they thought I had because of the lesion on my lung. I kind of panicked. I sat there, and I didn’t know what to think. I felt like my innards had collapsed on me. You know, you hear cancer, and you know it’s never good. People with cancer die. I was probably even more shocked about the possibility of cancer than I was at the lesion. It’s a feeling like you’re paralyzed. You don’t have a set emotion. You don’t know what to think.

Until the next week, I tried to forget about it. It’s not really something you can forget that easily. It was constantly running through my head, and I couldn’t get it to stop. Sometimes I wake up and forget that it happened. Then I remember. The lung CT scan confirmed that I had another lesion on my lung making 2 total, and all of the lymph nodes in my neck and chest were inflamed. They thought it would be best to do a biopsy of a lymph node to find out if I had cancer, and what type it was. On, August 22, 2018, I went to Primary Children’s Medical Center for the biopsy.  I was nervous and confused the day of the biopsy. I had never had a surgery that I remembered. I was nervous because a doctor would be cutting a lymph node out of my neck. The fact that I would be asleep for the surgery did reassure me.  The doctors were nice. The surgeon, Dr. Short (he was actually really tall) smelled like Graham Crackers. The operating room kind of smelled like Graham Crackers too. I had a stuffed llama with me for the surgery, and the anesthesiologist argued with me that it was actually an alpaca. We discussed it for awhile, and then he pulled out his phone to google it. He said that llamas weigh about 500 pounds and alpacas weigh about 150 pounds. Then he asked me if I had weighed mine?  I remembered waking up and my neck hurt really bad.  All of my words just blurred together. I thought I was making sense, and then I listened to myself and realized I wasn’t making sense.
After I felt a little better, they let me go home. My neck was super sore for the next couple of days. My Grandma had a neck brace that helped me hold my head upright without much effort because all of my neck muscles were so sore.  I also used 2 travel neck pillows to help stabilized my neck while I slept.  Trying to keep my head upright felt like trying to lift something after getting a tetanus shot in my arm. For the next week, all we could do was wait for the results.

Let’s start at the beginning.  On Friday, August 3, 2018, I woke up feeling not very good. I was throwing up and had agonizing abdominal pain. I kept telling my mom I was fine, but I was not fine. I couldn’t stop dry heaving, and the pain was excruciating. My mom took me to the ER because we thought I might have appendicitis. When I got to the ER, they did an abdominal CT scan to check my appendix. My appendix looked okay, but I had an impacted colon, and it was causing intense pain and making me sick. I had been throwing up so much that little capillaries in my throat had burst, so I was throwing up blood. That freaked me out. The nurse had to do an IV to give me fluids, and that is the first IV I have ever had. I was freaked out because I didn’t know what the crap an IV was. They put the IV in my arm. It felt almost like getting a shot, but it wasn’t too bad.  They had to draw my blood in 2 different spots because of some test they had to run. They took blood from my arm and then from the top of my hand. It hurt A LOT! The area in my hand bruised later. To fix the colon issue, I had to drink an entire bottle of Miralax dissolved in two 16 ounce containers of Gatorade. (That is 2 weeks worth of Miralax). It was disgusting. Plugging my nose didn’t help. I tried every different way of drinking it, and none of them helped in any way shape or form. It was just nasty! The Miralax doesn’t have a taste, but it dilutes the flavor of the Gatorade and makes it syrupy. I hate Miralax. It is terrible, and there aren’t enough words to describe how awful it is. I met my new favorite person named Valerie. She is a super great nurse. After I felt better, I was finally allowed to go home. I thought that was the end of the trip, but it was only the beginning of my journey.

 

Hello reader’s! As most of you know I have recently been diagnosed with stage four Hodgkins Lymphoma. This blog is meant to help me record my emotional journey. As more people read, this can help them understand what I am going through as the patient. So as I start recording, I want you all to know that I appreciate what you are doing. Thank you, -Ellie