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This is hard. This is absolutely the last thing I want to be writing about right now, but here I am. Let's start with the good news. We are all surviving (even Jerome) quarantine and covid. As hard as it's been, I actually am loving all the time home with the kids. They make me scream and LAUGH every day. Caden, Millie & I stay up too late watching movies or binging Netflix, and Eli stays up REALLY too late yelling at his friends on video games, chatting with girls and begging me to order pizza at 11:30pm. Poor Jerome doesn't get to join the late night fun, but he is hanging in there too. I don't think anything will phase that poor guy after this year.
So now the hard part. The stupid cancer is back. I had a pet scan last week and they found something under the skin on my back a "little concerning". We were all hopeful that it was just a weird cyst that I just never noticed (I couldn't even see or feel anything). I told everyone that Dr Pimple Popper could have this thing out in two seconds. My surgical oncologist was not convinced though, so I had surgery on Monday to have it removed. Pathology report came back yesterday, and it was not a cyst. It's a tumor and it is dang Melanoma. Again. So apparently because it has spread to a different part of my body it is considered to have metastasized, which means stage 4. Words like metastasized and stage 4 are obviously freak out worthy, but we are not there yet. Stage 4 has a huge range because if they had found metastasis on my liver & lungs (which would have been much worse), that would have been classified as stage 4 as well. So we are going to call this stage 3.75 or maybe a premature 4.
So our family is starting this journey again, and I would appreciate if you could throw me back on all those prayer lists again! God took care of us every step of the way last night, and I know it can be done again. First steps are just tests, tests and more tests. CT of my abdomen today and brain MRI tomorrow to confirm there are no other mets (metastasis) lurking around. After we have all the information, then we will need to make some decisions. At minimum, this likely means another year of immunotherapy treatments, and probably a step up from what I had last time. :( But as Jerome tells me at least 100 times a day, there isn't any point in worrying about things until we get there, so I'm just trying to take one day, one test, one phone call at a time right now. Thank you for the prayers and I hope everyone is staying healthy out there! Miss you all!
XOXO,
Lacey