Introduction and back story.

I figured I should probably start with an introduction and a little back story. So, here we go! I'm a mom of 4 beautiful girls. My oldest is 6, my youngest is 2. The ages fall like this: 6, 5, 3, 2. At one time, I had 4 ages 4 and under. I'm super busy, and enjoy being the mom. I have been married for 15 years, and my girls think that Daddy is better than sliced bread. They have him wrapped around their little fingers.

So, now that we have a little introduction, and some back story done, on to the fun!!! I am thinking of making this not just about them, but about the struggles we are going through right now. That way, I get my words out and can (hopefully) work out some feelings. I guess this is the best place to start.

Let me start by saying that my family is the most important part of my life. Not just my hubby and my kids, but my whole family. We are pretty close, and enjoy spending time together. I love them very much!!

A little over a year ago, my Dad was diagnosed with stage 4, non-curable colon cancer. It started with him just feeling yucky, having some stomach issues, and just feeling drained. We went to the doctor, and they did a blood test. His blood volume was less than half of what it should be, so the next day, they did a CT and a blood transfusion. The CT showed that his liver was enlarged and they thought there was a growth on the liver. They did an MRI that day too, and it showed that it wasn't the liver, but the tumor was in the colon. It had grown large enough to move up and around his liver. At this point, he was starting to look a little yellow, which makes sense. The liver is what controls Billirubin, which is what causes jaundice in babies and in big people. They found out that it had already spread to his lymph system, and his lymph nodes around his liver were swollen and blocking off his bile ducts. They decided to go in and do a stint. Here is a pic of him right after they did the stint.

You can't really tell how yellow he really was, but it was bad. Well, the installed his port, and placed a stint in his liver so it would drain, then a few weeks later, started him on chemo. The chemo started working, and he started to get somewhat better. I can't say he was totally normal, but we didn't expect that. Things were good, and going according to plan until a few months ago. The chemo they had him on stopped working, so they had to switch to another drug. This one made all his hair fall out, and he is steadily loosing weight. He isn't eating all that much, and is really weak a lot of the time now.

Last week, he started feeling worse, and he started to turn yellow again. His doctor that had placed the stint is out of the country on vacation, so one of his partners went in on Friday and cleaned out the stint. He said that an infection had started in his liver, so they put him on some really high powered antibiotics to try and stop the infection. The last few days, the yellow has gotten worse, and he says that he isn't sure how he's feeling, which is not a good sign. He has a call in to his oncologist, and we will see what they say. I am just hoping that we can get this turned around. So, now that we are all caught up on what is happening, I will keep everyone posted on how things go from here. No matter if it's good or bad.