July 2010 Staging

Next step after she was diagnosed was staging.  That is when they see where all the cancer has gone and you are staged 1-4 (4 being the worst) to see what treatment they give you.  They explained she would be having a few surgeries to determine this.  She also got to choose which line they would put in either an IVAD or broviac to recieve all her meds through.  The broviacs are external and hang outside your body all the time but you never have to get any pokes.  The IVAD is under the skin so is hidden more when not accessed but you get poked each time they access it.  Because Brynn loved swimming and only the IVAD you can go in water during treatment she chose this one.  They scheduled surgery to put that in and also to do a spinal tap and take a piece of her lung out that looked suspicious in the scans.  We were so relieved when it came back negative and her lungs were clear.  She had a chest tube put in from her lung surgery which was extremely painful.  Brynn's tube came out more on her back than her side so laying on her back was impossible.  We would try to prop her up on her side but any movement felt like a knife in her ribs from that tube.  Thankfully it only had to stay in a few days.  Next they took lymph nodes from her groin on the same side as her tumor and they said they looked like they could be infected.  When those came back positive they needed to go one step higher and check the lymph nodes in the pelvis/abdomen area.  I prayed like never before and was sure that with how small her tumor was and no symptoms it would not have spread and she would only be stage 1 or 2.  We were shocked when the little normal looking lymph nodes there were positive and therefore she was stage 4.  I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach and for some reason my prayers weren't being heard.  I was very frustrated and shocked.  Than Kevin said that maybe Brynn needed the higher doses of chemo to get rid of it for good and it was a blessing that she wasn't staged wrong and not getting enough chemo for what she had.  At least we can never feel like she didn't get enough treatment.  Jane Porter was my friends mom who lived right next door and raised 7 kids.  She is an amazing woman and 2 of her sons had cancer only about a year apart.  She told me that she kept a blessing book and wrote down every blessing that she could think of during her treatment and she couldn't believe all that they were blessed with.  I started doing that while Brynn was in surgery and it was amazing how much better I felt.  After staging and knowing she was getting the most intense chemo treatment-51 weeks long they let us go home for a bit to regroup before the first day of chemo. I wrote in my journal that Brynn cried when they told her the lymph nodes were infected than started consoling me and telling me that everything was going to be okay.  It's crazy how Brynn is helping US through her treatment.  She is the most courageous person I know and I can't imagine why she was chosen to go through this except our Heavenly Father knew she could handle it and it would help us and others grow stronger and have more faith.  Someday we will look back and see what came out of our trials.