Family matters...

Family is one of the most important things in life to me, and recently my mom got some very unexpected news. For those of you that do not know, my mom was recently diagnosed with Papillary Thyroid Cancer. She has been suffering from severe headaches for the past year, and went in for an MRI for her headaches, and that is when they found the nodule on her thyroid. They told her they wanted to do a biopsy, but that 90% of the time they came back benign. Unfortunately, my mom fell in that other 10%. Last Friday, April 4th, she had thyroidectomy surgery. The surgery went very well, and they romved her entire thyroid as well as several lymphnodes surrounding it. She is at home recovering from the surgery now, and will meet with the doctor in about a month to discuss the next step in the process. More than likely she will have to have a radioactive iodine treatment sometime in May. This has obviously been a very hard time for my mom, and my entire family. We all love her so much, and we hope and pray every day that she fights this cancer and can get back to living her life again very soon! Here is the good news out of all of this...

1) Every doctor has told her that if you are going to have cancer, that this is the kind you want to have. While in my opinion, there is not a cancer out there that you "want" to have...it is still very encouraging to know that it has such a high cure rate. They are very optimistic about her treatment and full recovery!

2) My mom is one of the most loving and caring people I know. There is not a single doubt in my mind that she is an amazingly strong woman, and I know in my heart that she will get through this! She has a ton of family and friends rallying around her, and we are all here for her 100% of the way!

3) She is an amazing Grammy to Parker. Parker has now started calling her "Nanny" b/c he can't quite say Grammy. I don't think she cares what he calls her, as long as he calls her something :) He has become very attached to his Grammy lately. Whenever she leaves, he screams and cries "No, Nanny, Nanny." (keep in mind that he generally does not even do this for me and Anthony, he just waves to us and says "bye bye") The bottom line is that he loves his Nanny, and she loves him! No matter what is going on, Parker can always put a smile on her face, and that makes me happier than anything in this world!

I am attaching a recent picture of Parker with his Grammy. Please keep my mom in your thoughts and prayers, and I will post updates as we know more!!!