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Got back home around 1:00 a.m. this morning and have been doing "stuff" (you know, laundry, dishes ... fun stuff like that all day).

Rock of Ages, basically ROCKED.  Such a fun show - high energy, hand-clapping, foot stomping theatre.  I'm not a huge 80s fan but I... Loved it!

Yesterday was Nicole's pre op appointment - her surgery is next Monday.  She has to be at Princess Margaret hospital at 7:00 a.m and will have the

sentinel lymph node mapping done around 8:00.  This is where they inject radioactive dye into her shoulder area around the biopsied site.  The dye shows the first lymph node(s) the  cancer cells may have percolated to (if they did go anywhere else).


At 10:00 is her

surgery to remove the sentinel nodes and then

they will do the Wide Local Excision (WLE) 

to remove a chunk of skin/tissue around where the mole was.  A skin graft or flap-over procedue will

then be done.

And then it is on to recovery.  She should be released

around supper time, unless there are some concerns about her diabetes (none expected).

We will be bringing Nicole home with us for at least a week to recover.  On Dec. 7, she has an appointment with the oncologist to find out if the cancer has spread

and what the next steps are.

A blogger friend of mine, who has gone through a

similar situation (not melanoma) with her daughter wrote me that the waiting is the worse.  I agree.

On a totally different note, a friend posted this on Facebook and I think it is sooooooo pretty.

I'm hoping tomorrow to get into my studio - haven't been near it for five days and going through clay withdrawal.

♥

WIP, Update And Cat Box

I finished my little play piece the other night and was happy how she turned out.  She was going to go on Etsy, but someone saw her before that she will be travelling Stateside shortly.

This is Pumpkin.

A number of us have cats and/or dogs, I mean, life would not be complete without our little furry family members.  Both have their own unique, special and often funny, quirks and characteristics.  

Those of you who have kitties will enjoy this...




Check out YouTube for more of Simon's Cat vids.


Thank you to everyone for their thoughts and prayers for Nicole.  Yesterday she had her appointment at Princess Margaret Hospital.  Due to miscommunication or misunderstanding, this was not for the surgery but a preliminary consultation with the oncologist /surgeon.

The following is part of an email that I sent to a friend outlining some of what we found out (yes, I'm lazy when it comes to rewriting something)


Sometime in mid November (the surgeon is going on holidays for 3 weeks towards the end of this month),
 Nicole will go in early in the morning and will have general anesthetic.  They will
take a chunk out of her arm, send the tissue off to the lab and they will also do sentinel
lymph node biopsies which will also go to the lab.  The doc drew a pic on her arm of how big it
would be -  it was approx. the size of a tennis ball in diameter and could go as deep as
the muscle layer.  She will then have a flap-over procedure
done rather than skin graft if possible.  In the meantime she has to meet with the anesthesiologist.
with her records from her diabetic doctor and also get more blood work done.
The day before her surgery she has to go in and have some dye injected to map the sentinel node locations.
Depending on what they find during the surgery, she may have to go on a protocol of Interferon.  (this stuff is nasty and I'm so hoping it isn't needed)


The name given to what she has is Superficial Spreading Melanoma and her mole is
classed (due to its size and thickness) as Stage 4.  The stages go up to stage 5, so
4 is obviously not optimal, and while it can inticate the chance of spread, it does not
indicate the stage of cancer.


So that is basically where we are now - I'm sure I forgot some stuff however that
is the jest of it.

 

As I said earlier - please keep us in your thoughts and prayers over the next month or so.

♥♥♥