A week and a half to the walk!!!!!

Posted by Sammy on Oct 28th, 2009 | no comments

I can’t believe the walk is finally almost here. I’m beyond excited too. I’m excited to not only walk amongst family and friends but to more importantly have the guy we are walking for, Gary, join us. Yay! I think this walk will have so much more meaning for us because of the fact that Gary is truly a survivor. To be amongst others that are fighting the fight against cancer will just mean so much to us. It has been a roller coaster ride that I know neither of us will ever forget. There were way more down’s than up’s but we seem to be past all of the crappy stuff for now.

So here I go with my final push for donations of any kind. Remember even a $1 donation will help make a difference!

If you are interested in donating please click on this link: DONATE HERE!

A fabulous family vacation

Posted by Sammy on Oct 28th, 2009 | no comments

We originally had a Disney trip scheduled for both my birthday weekend and Mikey’s birthday weekend. Got awesome rates so why not go. Well once we learned that Gary’s last chemo treatment would coincide with my birthday weekend we had to cancel that trip. Then during that trip we learned that Gary would need to be back up at the NIH a few days before Mikey’s birthday weekend therefore messing up that trip.

We even had considered having him fly into Orlando instead of Ft. Lauderdale to meet us up at Disney but thankfully we didn’t do that because this last trip, that was just for diagnostics, was REALLY hard on Gary. Before he left he was having these fainting spells and seriously had bruises and cuts all over his body. It was BAD and what made it worse was that he was going on this trip all alone. On that trip he learned that he’s been suffering from sinusitis and they gave him antibiotics and flonase to help.

Now once he was home he wasn’t much better. He had these HORRIBLE headaches that would basically incapacitate him. He got NO relief at all even during his sleep. None of the really good narcotics he had helped. Finally we broke down and went to his local oncologist, Dr. P, to see what’s up. He told him to continue with the antibiotics and flonase (which he wasn’t using religiously). He did order an MRI of his head because he did want to check for inflammation of the lining of his brain due to the depocyt.

So after the doctor’s appointment he miraculously started to feel better. Then last Thursday came when we were supposed to leave for Disney. He was once again incapacitated by those damn headaches. They were so intense that he wasn’t able to move from the same spot on the couch all day long. Finally he was able to get to the car and we decided to go anyways. I was very sure that he would feel better once we left,

And he did. He felt a ton better. He had a few headaches but overall he did FANTASTIC on our mini-vacation. We got him a scooter so that he didn’t have to do the walking and that made all of the difference.

To top it off last Friday as soon as we got back to our room (I tell you I’ll NEVER forget this moment), I took my cell phone out of my bag and put it on the table so I could check my emails before napping. As I had my phone in my hands it rang and it was Megan, the Research Nurse at NIH. I immediately picked up. I knew why she was calling just wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear what she had to say.

I’ll preface this by saying that I didn’t want to hear any results from his restaging before we left because I didn’t want it to ruin our trip. I wanted us to have fun and forget everything that is lymphoma and chemotherapy. Everything! Well what happened next was the most amazing thing probably next to the birth of our son. Megan told me that she didn’t have all of the results back yet but his bone marrow biopsy results came back NEGATIVE for lymphoma. Yup you read that right. N-E-G-A-T-I-V-E!!!!!!!! I got all choked up when she told me and asked her if she was sure and she was.

This has been the best news yet. Yeah it was great the day we found out his spinal fluid was clear but we’ve known something wasn’t quite right with his bone marrow for over 2 years and to know that its NORMAL is beyond fantastic.

So that made our mini-vacation one neither of us will ever forget. We all had a reason to celebrate on that trip.

1 month until we Light the Night :)

Posted by Sammy on Oct 7th, 2009 | one comment

When I first created our team for the Light the Night walk it felt like it was forever away. Probably because we were in the middle of chemotherapy treatments and time just freezes when you are going through that. Well, today marks the 1 month away mark. We are officially 1 month from our 1st walk in honor of Gary’s fight against Lymphoma. This will be our very first walk like this, and it definitely won’t be the last. Even though we are crossing our fingers and hoping that he’s cancer-free we will never be able to forget all that he’s gone through. This is just something you never can forget.

Cancer in general is not something fun to have, shoot its not something you wish on your worst enemy. That’s how bad it is. It affects the entire family, not just the individual going through it. So if I can help raise money to find a cure, or to at least help those researchers that need the money to get closer to one, or help those families that are just living to get by because they are spending so much of their hard earned money to make ends meet so that a family member can win their fight, well then I’ve done my part.

If you can spare just $1 (we’d love more of course), you too can help. Click on the link below to Join our team and walk alongside us or to donate to help our team raise as much money as we can against this fight!

Join or Donate Here

Thank you for reading my blog and following our story

And its FINALLY done

Posted by Sammy on Oct 2nd, 2009 | one comment

I never thought I’d want a summer to fly by so fast until we hit the summer of 2009. The summer our lives would change forever because of cancer. Once we knew that Gary would have to undergo a pretty intense chemotherapy regimen I wanted the summer to be over before it began. I wanted to be at the point where we are right now. Done with it. Completely done with chemo!

This past Tuesday, September 29, 2009, my wonderful hubby, the trooper that he is, became a chemo graduate. It was very bittersweet seeing the final two bags starting and finishing. Knowing that once that last bag was done our lives wouldn’t immediately go back to normal, but it would be on the road to some form of our new “normal”, whatever that might be.

To our surprise as Gary was sitting there getting the post hydration from the last chemo drug some of the fabulous nurses from 3SE Day Hospital came into our room singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”. I got all choked up because it was such an awesome gesture. They could have easily treated him just like any other cancer patient, just a number. But not at the NIH, at the NIH you are treated special and the nurses are really the ones that make that happen. They not only came in singing to Gary, but they brought a very yummy cake for us and a certificate of completion too.

I’m proud to share a pic of my wonderful chemo graduate holding up his certificate for all to see. I’m so proud of him for getting this far in the fight for his life.