MacDaddy's and the MacDiddies Fall Break Fantabulous:I'm back! 8/17

[mickeystoontown]

I was thinking about you the other day and figured you were swamped with school work. Good for you booking another trip!

 

[Krisscot]

I was thinking about you the other day and figured you were swamped with school work. Good for you booking another trip!

Ahhh thanks for thinking of me! This is the first year I have taught Advanced Placement and the grading is kicking my butt. So.... I can't even have the disboards open on my computer or I WILL NOT grade at all. We are excited that my parents are going because they have never been. We booked pop century becuase I was hoping there would be other specials along the way that it might be worth it to bump up so we will see. If not then I am sure POP is fine.

 

[Lovemy3babes]

Glad to hear you are busy but okay. Hope to see you back soon! Congrats on booking.

 

[2ScottishPrincesses]

Sorry to hear life's been so mental hope it all calms down for you soon. Glad to hear your good news, I'm very jealous as we won't be able to make our next trip until Oct 2012 but at least I can enjoy my favourite place vicariously through you

 

[Krisscot]

Hi Everyone! I probably have absolutely no one that reads my trip report anymore but I feel I had to come back and finish it for many reasons. One..I am getting ready to start another one and I feel this is unfinished business and two... I wanted to explain why I just stopped and disappeared off the face of the earth for six months. I didn't even look at the boards...it was so sad

Last March I was diagnosed with Cancer...two different types of thyroid cancer. Apparently one was the pretty common variety, but the other was a rarer more aggressive version. Normall this type only hits people over 60 years old and so me being 39 years old was kinda ticked over the whole thing. Now I had never even been sick so yo can imagine going from fine to admitted to ICU within a month just completely rocked my world.

ANd it all started like this...

For those of you following my TR before, I started to get more flustered in my job and headaches and difficulty grading. I am a high school English teacher and I moved schools last year so I could take over the Advanced Placement English program for high school juniors. It became harder and harder with the headaches to work and even my TR suffered which was the one thing that I LOVED to do. Then my right eyelid started to droop and my right pupil started to shrink considerably. It was the oddest thing to look at and it looked like the beginning of someone having a stroke. So you can imagine the urgency that created with my doctors and the testing began...

I started with an opthamologist and then a neuropthamologist then a neurologist. I had MRI's with dye contrast and without and basicaly they had convinced me I was going to have a brain tumor. While all of this was going on I was stil teaching. Not only was I teaching...But every year at spring break I take a group of students (anywhere from 25-50) to Europe on a educational literature trip. STRESSFUL! So two days before spring break and a trip with 30 kids to Scotland and Ireland the neurologist calls me and wants to speak to me "in person"... Great.. He call me in to tell me on the fringe of the other images a 2.5 cm mass mas spotted in the thyroid area and it looks like there is a tumor on each side of my thyroid. They want me to visit a surgeon immedietly at least for a consultation before I go to Europe. Remember we are like 3 days out from the trip...So I meet with the "god's gift to humanity" surgeon immed who does a fine needle biopsy that day and send it out ASAP. Well.... It came back suspicious enough for actually the stage 4 type of thyroid cancer medullary (a really bad one that is most times fatal.) Then he says "oh but you might as well go to Europe we can't schedule surgery within a week anyway"....... Really? You can imagine my stress level on this trip.

But amazingly enough the trip was a good stress reliever. Something about hauling 30 high school kids around Europe does wonders for taking your mind off things... And I really love my kids.... Here are just a few of my favs.... (kids and teachers)

Irish doors...

Fab teachers...

OF course had to bring hubby since he is a MacKenzie...

More Irish doors

St Patrick's Cathedral

Prayer book at St Patty's

And then we came home....

Up next: Fighting off cancer....

 

[Krisscot]

Right when we returned home I was scheduled for surgery. They informed me that not only were they going to remove the two tumors...they would remove the entire thyroid (none of that sucker left... not even a little) I would be in the hospital for 3-4 days and out of work for 4 weeks. Now in general this might not be as stressful to miss work...But if you remember I JUST switched school districts and left 50 sick days behind me as I did. Due to doctor's appointments alone I had already burned through the sick days I have earned through this district and now teachers were volunteering their prep hours to cover my classes for any appts but now I was looking at 20 days for the surgery alone and then radiation would be even more. I was stressed. However HUGE thanks to my school I had enough people donate sick time to cover the entire absence especially because I was gone most of the last quarter. I LOVE them.

I ended up staying in the hospital longer than planned due to the fact my parathyroids quit working and they were afraid my heart would seize up...Fabulous. Hospital stays are so different than when you have a baby. The room in ICU was definitely reminiscent of "House" Large glass windows lined the front of the room with no privacy, the room only had a shared bathroom ( I am sure most ICU patients can't even get up to use the bathroom) But other than waking up with a horrible sore throat and not being able to talk (which is bad in itself) I came through it pretty well. Turns out each tumor was a different type of cancer and the Hurthle cell was the harder to treat.

Me and some students from my 5th period in the hospital. They brought me a card and a Diet Coke. My absolute favorite.

Me and my girls...

One week out of surgery with my Jack the Ripper scar

Scar a month or so ago...

So after all the surgery stuff was finished... I really came to grips with the fact that without a thyroid you have NO energy. Man what a battle. Just go from asleep to awake is such a physically draining battle. I would literally shake with the effort of it. And this is when they began to prepare me for radiation. They didn't want to wait much longer than it took me to heal from surgery so I started on the no iodine diet. BLECK. No salt, no bread, nothing packaged, under 5 oz of meat a day. Basically the unsalted vegetable diet. Yuck. But to be honest this is when I began to plan my next trip to WDW. I made a deal with my husband and myself that if I could get through radiation and any other treatment they would throw at me and go back to school for the fall semester... I could go to WDW for fall break. It was just the incentive I needed and a awesome thing for my family to look forward to and break the stress. It also gave me something to do during my long periods of radiation isolation. I couldn't quite bring myself to continue my TR but I could look longingly forward to a vacation.

Radiation came and went. Most people with thyroid cancer receive a 30mg dose of radiation and stage four cancer patients receive a 200mg dose. They gave me 150mg. I was miserable. I was sick, I couldn't see my family for 10 days, some of my hair fell out in clumps, and everything tasted like metal. Even my beloved Diet Coke. It took months before I could even stand the taste of it. It was like sucking on a penny. But I survived. And everyday I got a little bit stronger and of course I am thinking in the back of my head "whoo hoo WDW here I come!"

I went back to school at the beginning of the year. I am not going to lie it has been brutal. I still don't think my meds are right and I have to got to the Dr a million times a month (ok a small exageration but not much) and give blood. I am kind of in a holding pattern now. But then free dining happened and I told my husband it was a sign. HAHAH I book for Oct 4-14. And I am soooooo ready to go. I will be really having a "celebration" I may not be in remisission...but for now TREATMENT IS OVER. I am picking up and finishing this TR and I am starting a new PTR. I am so excited.

So now...back to the story

 

[Vidia2]

I just found your trip report. So excited for you that you have a trip planned for October! You deserve a celebration and some magic!

 

[Krisscot]

WOW! Sorry to hear you have had to go through that too! I am really looking forward to this trip. But usually I would have planned to the last detail and made shirts but haven't really had the energy yet. But I am getting there. I am glad you are enjoying the report. I am just happy to be finsihing it. I really want to start a PTR for this trip too. I think the worst part of all of it is just being tired. I usually have SO much energy so it bumms me out. hahah. But thanks for reading

 

[2ScottishPrincesses]

Oh my word you have been through the wars . Sending you a massive amount of healing vibes . Next time you're in Scotland let me know and I'll give you the "locals tour"...of course you'll need to be back to full fighting strength for that . Count me in for the PTR