Radioactive

Getting to Rochester was tough tough tough.  It was a long slog, during which time I struggled to stay awake and alert, and the trip took an additional two hours because of stops to sleep, walk around, get a coke, fill up with gas... just anything to not fall asleep at the wheel.  So I was terrified of what Friday would bring, when I would have the same drive time-wise, only in further hypothyroidism, with radiation, and late in the afternoon and into the evening, when I wasn't allowed to stop anywhere public to revitalize.  So, I unabashedly asked for prayers from any and all praying friends and family members.  PLEASE pray for the safe trip home of both my husband from Lansing, where he was at a conference, and myself from Mayo.

I woke up Friday morning with the typical headache and fatigue and swelling and BLAH BLAH BLAH that I'd had for the past two weeks.  Being off meds really isn't fun. It makes me look like this, and I feel just as miserable as I look:

Hypothyroidism is for the birds, let me tell you.  And this is WITH makeup on.  Yamma Hamma.  

ANYWAYS.....

 I was checked out of the hotel by 6:30 am, and was in having a whole body scan by 7:15 am.  By my 10:45 am doctor's appointment, Dr. Stan had all the results ready and waiting (well, I guess HE was 45 minutes late, but the results were there.  I was sure of it!)  He had already physically talked to the nuclear med doctor in person about the scan - not just read a report. He called him up and got his impressions mano y mano. The collaboration and communication in this place blows me away.  I am thoroughly impressed by it.

Six weeks ago, Dr. Stan gave radioiodine a 34% chance of working.  He told me not to get my hopes up, but since surgery and ethanol ablation weren't options, he was willing to try a less viable option if I was.  I was.  Obviously.  Well, yesterday, after seeing my scan and talking to the nuclear med guy, that story all changed.  He said "We couldn't have asked for a better scenario.  Usually things that show up on PET scan don't also show up on radioiodine scan, but these did.  The same spots lit up, which mean they are iodine-avid.  And only the two spots we already knew about lit up.  Which means that we're pretty sure we found all the cancer, and it's treatable with radioiodine.  This should work."  He was actually SMILING as he said it.  SMILING!!  I was like.... WHAT?!?!?!?!?!  He also was very explicit about telling me "These are not life-threatening lesions.  They are vocal-cord threatening lesions".  I already knew that, but it was GOOD TO HEAR in such plain language.  "We're a go for 2 pm today for 75 mci of radioiodine!"

Bottom line.... Dr. Stan was telling me that he thought I was going to be CURED OF CANCER with this treatment.  CURED people.  Not watching.  Not monitoring.  Not controlling or slowing down.  CURED.  After 2.5 years.  After my Marshfield doctor had very explicitly told me that being cured wasn't even a goal of his, he was there to "manage" it.  That it would never go away, because radioiodine didn't work the first time, and the remaining lesions weren't candidates for more conventional therapies.  And here Dr. Stan was, the chair of Thyroid core group of the American Thyroid Association, at one of the top medical facilities in the world, telling me that he was pretty sure he would CURE me, by not following the protocol. By looking at my individual situation and doing what his gut told him best, despite protocol.   I wanted to scream.  Maybe I did?  I'm sure I waited until I was in my car to do that, and not in front of the man himself, but I was ELATED.  OVER THE MOON.  Light me up, buddy.  I'm ready.

He wants to follow up in 4 months time.  I told him that I already had an appointment scheduled with my Marshfield doctor in November - would that suffice?  He paused, looked at me, and said carefully, "well, you know... the ultrasounds you had there were read as clear, and they obviously weren't.  They missed the cancer for two years.  I want to know that this is gone, and I trust our staff here.  Let me make sure the cancer is gone, then you can follow up there all you want."  DEAL.  DEAL. DEAL.  Plus, he wants to make sure that my tumor marker goes down from that horrendous 106 number to Zero.   FINALLY.  So I will be back in October.  Fine.  By.  Me.

It really didn't hit me until I was radioactive and on the way home.  What I haven't had in the past two years, through this entire saga.... what I was lacking...was HOPE.  Hope of a life after, where there was a real possibility of an end.  A way to put it all behind me, and not have it looming.  I was getting really good at pretending it all wasn't there until I had to.  But it was there.  Always in the back of my mind, always wondering about it, always lurking.  I had never allowed myself to hope that it could all go away completely.  I was too busy processing the thought of having to live with it for the rest of my life until either it or something else did me in.  But be rid of it altogether?  I wanted that, but had not allowed myself to believe it was an actual possibility.  So when Dr. Stan smiled and said "this should work"... MAN.  Hope!!!  Such a grand feeling.  I floated all the way home, and did not even get tired once, without the aid of tea or coffee, or Five Hour Energy, or Coke-a-cola, or naps, or stops to get out and walk around.  Nothing.  I floated home on hope and prayers people.  Hope and prayers.

When I walked into my bedroom after the drive, I was greeted by a surprise transformation.  There were flowers everywhere.  Slippers and a robe waiting for me on my bed.  Books and tea, and food in the fridge, and lovely notes, and essential oils with diffusers, and lotions, and soaps, and all kinds of wonderful, thoughtful, kind things!  My friends had broken into my room while I was gone and transformed it into my own private spa, and it was amazing.  IS amazing.  I won't want to leave, even after I'm allowed to be around people again, I assure you!!!    Take a gander at THIS:

I have the best friends in the world.  And I just can't help feeling blessed and happy.  This horrible day that I was dreading turned out to be an enormous blessing, and one I will remember with joy and gratitude FOREVER.  THANK YOU GOOD AND GRACIOUS LORD!  And THANK YOU, dear and wonderful friends, that I don't even begin to deserve.

I am blessed beyond measure.  

T-3 Days

Hypothyroidism is upon me, with three days until D-day (or R-day, as the case may be).  Headache, fatigue, hoarse voice, poor vision, irritability, bloating, weight gain, swollen face and HUGE bags under my eyes.  My eyes are getting smaller and smaller every day - by Friday, I'm sure they will be slits.   I look haggard, but at least I know that this "not taking medicine" thing is working.  I'm sure I'll make my TSH over 30 goal, based solely on symptoms.  I'm fully feeling the effects of not having a thyroid at the moment.  I have been subsisting on apples, pico di gallo, and homemade taquitos, which has not been bad at all thus far.    I'm in Rapid City, South Dakota, on my way to Rochester, after spending the week in Wyoming with my family for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary.  Thursday will be lab work and a small dose of radiation.  Friday will be whole body scan, an appointment with my doctor, and then the full dose of radioiodine (if the scan shows that radioiodine will work).  There's a possibility that the cancer won't pick up the radioiodine, in which case we'll just scrap the whole thing and I'll go home without treatment.  I hope that's not the case.

So, I'm ready.

Let's do this thing.

ADDENDUM:  Initial lab results are already back and emailed to me from this morning. How I love the efficiency of Mayo!  Good news- I’m not pregnant (ha!). They had to check, even though I told them so;). TSH, which we’ve kept suppressed under .1 for two years, is now up to 58. It needs to be over 30 for treatment, so that’s good. The disconcerting thing is that my TG tumor marker number, which was 3 last we checked and I was super pumped about that, is now the highest it’s ever been at 106. And I was concerned with 8 a few months ago!!  I know that since March when I had the PET scan I never got back to fully suppressed, and that can affect the tumor marker. Just- never been triple digits before- those numbers are usually reserved for lung Mets, and that’s bad news. Not panicking, though. I’m very hypothyroitic right now, and the cancer is feasting on all that TSH. Just a scary number. And means I’ll probably have a pretty dang big dose of radiation tomorrow.

Go ahead and gorge, stupid cancer.   I’m coming for you tomorrow.

Prayers appreciated.

THIS

I am regrettably up in the middle of the night, eluding sleep and subsequently catching up on my email.  Before automatically deleting it  from it's location in my spam folder (like I usually do), a headline caught my attention that led me to a link to an article from National Review. It was a fantastic article, one that hit the proverbial nail on the head, and made me suspect, by virtue of the author’s innate understanding of what Catholics believe, that he must HIMSELF be a believing and practicing Catholic. So I googled him and threw my insomniatic self down a rabbit hole. Apparently yes, this freelance journalist is Catholic, and writes for many secular venues, including The New York Times. He also writes for a group called 1 Peter 5, and when I clicked on the link to see what they were all about, I discovered THIS “about” page that made me mentally scream “YES!!” into the night. THIS. What they are about is what I am about, in my own minute, backwoods way. In the way I try (oftentimes unsuccessfully and imperfectly) to raise my family, teach my children, live my vocation as a wife and mother. It’s what I dream for our society and for the Church . So I am sharing it here as MY “about” page, too.  In a non-journalistic way, obviously, but in solidarity with the goals of these same men and women, brothers and sisters in Christ. THIS.

FROM 1Peter5’s “About” page. 

What does it mean to be Catholic?

It’s a big question. With over a billion self-professed Catholics in the world, we’re obviously going to be a diverse group of people. But the beauty of our faith is that it is truly universal — for all men, at all times, throughout the whole world.

The four marks of the Church are that it is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. But sadly, in our present age, much of our unity has been lost.

We need to get back to basics. Belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. An understanding of the Four Last Things, and that Heaven is not a foregone conclusion. Adherence to traditional teachings on sexual morality in a world hell-bent on dragging us away from them. A properly-grounded knowledge of the Church’s thought on religious liberty and social justice, and how these impact those of us living in the post-Christian, deconstructionist ruins of Western Civilization. The re-establishment of long-discarded tradition that once made the Church strong, and can do so again.

The statistics aren’t good. Belief in core Catholic teaching among self-identified Catholics is at an all-time low. Liturgical orthodoxy is an endangered concept. We have a vocations crisis that stems directly from the crisis in the sanctuary and the family. And the governments of the world move closer each year to declaring Catholic belief a hate crime.

We long for the return of Christendom. Of a social order predicated upon a proper understanding of God, His Church, her teaching, and natural law. But to get there, we have a lot of work to do.

OnePeterFive exists as a place to begin rebuilding the Catholic ethos. We’re not just here to zero in on the problems, but to offer concrete solutions. We want to restore Catholic culture, rebuild the Church as a patron of the arts, reinvigorate the family and the traditions that keep it strong, reform the liturgy, support vocations, dust off the old devotions and make them relevant again. We want to help infuse the world with beautiful music, inspiring art, families that pray together, parishes centered around the Eucharist, strong communities, and a new generation of Catholics who can effectively bring the Gospel message to a world hostile to that message. [Monica here.  Especially THIS!!!]

Our writers come from diverse backgrounds, but share a common goal: to work together to restore the beauty, majesty, and glory of the Catholic Church as the principal force for good in a fallen world.

We have a lot of work to do. There’s no time to waste.

Why “OnePeterFive”?

In the 1962 Roman Breviary, there is a recurring theme each night as the day’s office is completed. Asking God’s protection from the enemy, the supplicant calls to mind the words of St. Peter:

Brothers: Be sober and watch: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour. Whom resist ye, strong in faith:

V. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us.
R. Thanks be to God.

The quote is found in the first book of Peter, chapter five — a short but meaningful chapter, which offers guidance to those left to tend God’s flock in a time of peril. I can think of no more appropriate passage from scripture for Catholics to bear in mind during the dangerous times in which we live. It is from this passage, and the rest of 1 Peter 5  — that the name of this endeavor is taken.

In his Christmas address to the Roman Curia in December, 2010, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI cited a vision of St. Hildegard of Bingen as he surveyed the damage in the Church:

In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 1170, I had been lying on my sick-bed for a long time when, fully conscious in body and in mind, I had a vision of a woman of such beauty that the human mind is unable to comprehend. She stretched in height from earth to heaven. Her face shone with exceeding brightness and her gaze was fixed on heaven. She was dressed in a dazzling robe of white silk and draped in a cloak, adorned with stones of great price. On her feet she wore shoes of onyx. But her face was stained with dust, her robe was ripped down the right side, her cloak had lost its sheen of beauty and her shoes had been blackened. And she herself, in a voice loud with sorrow, was calling to the heights of heaven, saying, ‘Hear, heaven, how my face is sullied; mourn, earth, that my robe is torn; tremble, abyss, because my shoes are blackened!’

And she continued: ‘I lay hidden in the heart of the Father until the Son of Man, who was conceived and born in virginity, poured out his blood. With that same blood as his dowry, he made me his betrothed.

For my Bridegroom’s wounds remain fresh and open as long as the wounds of men’s sins continue to gape. And Christ’s wounds remain open because of the sins of priests. They tear my robe, since they are violators of the Law, the Gospel and their own priesthood; they darken my cloak by neglecting, in every way, the precepts which they are meant to uphold; my shoes too are blackened, since priests do not keep to the straight paths of justice, which are hard and rugged, or set good examples to those beneath them. Nevertheless, in some of them I find the splendour of truth.’

And I heard a voice from heaven which said: ‘This image represents the Church. For this reason, O you who see all this and who listen to the word of lament, proclaim it to the priests who are destined to offer guidance and instruction to God’s people and to whom, as to the apostles, it was said: go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation’ (Mk 16:15)” (Letter to Werner von Kirchheim and his Priestly Community: PL 197, 269ff.).

There is not one aspect of the present situation in the Church that could not be greatly alleviated by holy priests teaching, administering, and tending to the needs of their flock. But holy priests do not exist in a vacuum. They come from devout families who live their faith. They come from parishes where the Eucharist is treated with great reverence, and liturgy is noble, fitting, and pleasing to God. They come from dioceses where seminaries form men to be alter Christus.

The Second Vatican Council ushered in an era of great tumult in the Church. But it also emphasized the role of the laity in the work of Catholic apostolate. There can be no greater work the laity can do than to bring about that interior reform, beginning at home, in the workplace, and in the culture, which will increase devotion to Our Lord, Our Lady, and those practices of piety and reparation which might return God’s favor to our deeply fallen world.

Half a century has been spent analyzing the problem. It’s time to start building again.

So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ as well as a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed. Tend the flock of God that is your charge, not by constraint but willingly, not for shameful gain but eagerly, not as domineering over those in your charge but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd is manifested you will obtain the unfading crown of glory. Likewise you that are younger be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you. Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you. Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking some one to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world. 10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you. To him be the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

– 1 Peter 5

We entrust this work to the patronage of Our Lady, Virgin Most Powerful; Saints Peter and Paul, Saint Benedict, St. Michael, and all holy angels and saints.

Oremus pro invicem.

Steve Skojec
Founding Publisher
OnePeterFive