Upcoming Surgery

It's looking like Arley is going to be having surgery on Wednesday. I didn't expect for my curiosity discussion today to lead towards this, but when you know the inevitable is bound to happen it should be expected right?

Arley is scheduled to have a G-Tube put in. This is NOT to be confused with an NG Tube because an NG goes in through the nose and the G-Tube goes into the stomach. With the rapid weight loss I have been talking about for weeks, she has dropped 9-9.5% of her starting weight.

My fear is that she would need to have this done sometime next month while we are in Boston, however I am very apprehensive of trusting a brand new team of doctors to handle something like this when I already have a great team I trust at the ready here in Connecticut.

My dad was pretty much against it and my mom (the nurse) was for it and I've been sitting here playing monkey in the middle. It's all very six of one half dozen the other. (as both of my parents would say) A part of me feels that we should go ahead and take the preventive measure and the other part of me says lets ride this out, but I have been keeping close track of what happens with Arley every three weeks and if I can somehow control this then that's what I am going to do. Doesn't make me the least bit happy about it though.

I seriously just want to crawl under a rock and hide there. I have been over the "making big decisions" process since we started two months ago. I hate seeing my baby sick and I hate even more the decisions I have to make because of her sickness. I could really use a fairy godmother to show her face around here and 'bibbidi bobbidi boo' this Cancer shit elsewhere.

Sigh... I also really need to get my act together. July has reared her ugly little head and we leave for Boston's preliminary in just 7 short days. I bet they are going to fly faster than Pegasus and leave me scrambling to pack until the last minute. I probably should get on that now huh? Guess I'm thinking if I delay the process long enough that it won't happen for quite some time, we all know how dumb that is, but hey a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do!

Arley also has absolutely no idea about any of this. I want to try to make this fun, like an adventure, but who the hell wants their fun let alone adventure to consist of hospital visits, doctors, pain and whatever else is in store for us. I really am worried sick about the radiation aspect of all this. Her doctor said that she could have problems swallowing and it take a little toll on her so that's why we need to combat this stuff head on and go forth with the G-Tube insertion. 

The good thing about all this though is that Arley's doctor is not one to make decisions lightly. He drags his feet as much as possible and tries to find alternate courses to take until there are no more ideas left. For this very reason I have huge amounts of trust in him and his decisions. I have to, otherwise I will lose my shit completely and we can't be having any of that. He told me that if Arley was just receiving chemo and NO radiation he would try tweaking the chemo to try and help her combat the nausea and find other avenues, but the fact that radiation has to be a bitch and play along too puts us into quite a pickle.

Another good thing about all of this (or so I am told) is that if it comes to Arley not even needing it, it stays in for six weeks and then can be removed no harm no foul. It's all about making sure that while she's healthy to have the surgery now to prevent any complications should she have trouble eating/drinking, becoming dehydrated and THEN needing the surgery.

Ugh, all these decisions just seriously stress me out and make my stomach twists itself into a pretzel. Sometimes I lay awake at night thinking about what to expect in Boston and I am so overwhelmed that I feel like I'm suffocating. I know that the team out in Boston is very good and one of the best to have out there, but my anxiety and fear of the unknown just bothers the shit out of me, but I am determined to get through this with Arley not just because I have to, but because I want to prove to people that I can handle this. Together she and I can handle anything that comes our way. This is just another stepping stone to whacking the crap out of Cancer and telling it to see you never bye bye.

So in any case I will probably be spending my entire Tuesday either freaking out inside or at the very least trying to come up with something extremely fantastic to do with Arley. Hopefully the latter because I don't think my stomach can handle all the somersaults it does when I think too much on these things.

I will update you all again on Wednesday, wish my baby girl luck because my little trooper is going to need all the love, support, prayers, well wishes anything and everything you can manage to spare. Until next time friends....

PS- they also plan to check her vocal cords while she is in for surgery to check to see how it's looking. Her voice changes are unpredictable and they want to make sure nothing is happening to them. Lovely, just another thing to add to my mile long list of worries.