February Update

Hello family and friends. Where has the last month gone? For me, the New Year came fast and furious with work for our clients along with radiation and doctor appointments. It is our busiest quarter for business with our MIC Conference on March 18th and our CSAHU Symposium in April along with three other client events and admin a month so we are very busy trying to keep up with all the A’s in our life. Keith and I made the decision to resign from one of our clients in September, the International Food Service Executives Association (IFSEA), due to the stress it put on our life with my cancer diagnosis. We are in the transition now to their new management company. They were in town last week training as we shipped off 34 boxes to them to take over. We met wonderful new friends, Synergy Communications, but a very exhausting week. After this busy quarter, our hope is to be able to reduce the stress in our life. We feel very blessed though to have work during this crazy time with the current status of our economy when so many friends are losing their jobs. We heard a rumor that we were closing the doors on our business…to set the story straight this rumor is very untrue. We are just downsizing back to the five association clients we have had for years. Due to the downsizing, we do have to have our full-time employee, Kari Quinn, go to part-time though until we figure out where life will take us. She has been an amazing support for us in the last year and I truly believe she was put in my life to help me through this cancer. For anyone reading this blog and needs some part time help, she is incredible and we don’t want to loose her but hope that we can help her find another part time job in the industry so we don’t loose her completely.

As far as my health, I have almost made it through four weeks of radiation with three weeks to go. As I expected, it is not as taxing on me as chemo but with how busy we are, having daily radiation for seven weeks has been a challenge with our work schedule. The doctors and radiation technicians are wonderful and kind though and are helping me make it as easy as possible. I am making it through it but radiation builds up and fatigue is setting in as I was warned. I am very tired and Keith is trying to get me to cut back my work schedule but at this time, that is difficult with client expectations during this busy quarter. I was only sleeping 3 to 5 hours a night for months due to all the chemo and the symptoms it brought on. In the last couple weeks, the doctors have me sleeping 5 to 7 hours a night, which is helping some with the fatigue. I was also diagnosed a few weeks ago with mild lymphedema due to the nine lymph nodes removed during my cancer surgery last August. Lymphedema happens when there is some sort of compromise within the lymphatic system. The lymph nodes controls our fluid circulation within our bodies, and when there is an injury, or other sort of compromise within that system it can cause swelling (edema). I am having to have weekly physical therapy once a week this month to keep the swelling down and manageable and I have to wear a compression sleeve on my right arm during exercise, housework or flying on a plane for the rest of my life and I have to be very careful not to cut myself or get infections in that area so that it won’t get worse. What is my next step after radiation? My Oncologist suggests I go on Tamoxifen for at least a year and then another type of medication that helps block the estrogen in my body. High estrogen in my body is suspected to increase my chances of cancer.

All in all, my prognosis of cancer not coming back is very good and I am almost through this seven-month journey that rocked our world last August! Again, thank you to all my friends and family who have been so supportive of Keith and me during this time and we thank you for the bottom of our hearts!