Sunday, August 18, 2013

There's been a lot going on (not food related)

I know it's been a while since I've updated.  I believe my last update was in November.  I mentioned that there was stuff going on and some that I wasn't ready to share yet.

Well, that thing that I didn't want to share then was that I was pregnant again.  Elliott Cole was born May 15th after 36 hours of induced labor.  


He's now just over 3 months old and it's been a bit of an adjustment.  I just returned to work but my maternity leave was busy.  I wish I had been able to just enjoy being with the new baby, but unfortunately that wasn't the case.  At about 24 weeks pregnant, I had a spot removed from my skin for a biopsy.  The biopsy showed that the spot was the worst case scenario.  I had to face my biggest fear, and do it while pregnant.  The spot was melanoma and the shave biopsy did not get it all.

A month later I was scheduled for a surgery to remove more tissue and test the sentinel lymph node.  They removed all the primary melanoma completely, but one lymph node was positive.  We couldn't do anything else until Elliott was born.

So after he was born, the first step was to get a PET scan.  That was the most stressful thing I've ever been through.  It would tell us if and how far the cancer had spread.  The fact that it was in the lymph nodes meant that I was bumped up to stage 3.

All in all, my maternity leave allowed me to be paid for all my doctors appointments, scans, a second surgery and a few specialist consults.  The PET scan came back with just a few things to look at that turned out to be nothing.  My second surgery pulled more lymph nodes and they were all negative for melanoma. We're all pretty sure they removed all the cancer back in March. 

So, sorry for the serious update... But I'm ready to get back to the business of cooking and hopefully all that I will ever have to do again regarding the melanoma is just check to make sure it hasn't returned.

And I'll leave you with a current picture of the baby and hubby ... and a promise of a pretzel bun recipe tomorrow.



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