Adventures of a Tribe

Diagnosis Day #2

Posted on August 18, 2015

Danny is feeling so much better today.  He can actually swallow, his wonderful voice is back and he’s not sounding like he’s about to cough up a lung. I am so grateful for the steroid treatment he received in the ER that has brought this healing about.

My sister, Bernadine, came over and spent some time here before leaving for Oregon for the second wedding.  She absolutely amazes me with her knowledge of herbs and medicinal plants.  She walked around the yard picking weeds and who knows what, and kept bringing them to me saying, ‘this is blah blah blah and you use it for this….’. I of course had to taste everything she handed me, and some of it was quite disgusting while others were quite pleasant. If ever you’re stranded in the middle of no where, hope that she is with you, because you won’t starve and she’ll cure what ales you! A few years ago she told me that for every plant that does you harm in the wild, within 3 feet of it, grows the antidote. On a camping trip with our kids (we had 16 between the two of us), her and I went for a walk to test the theory.  We found a big bush of stinging nettle, and grabbed a handful of leaves and both proceeded to rub the leaves all up and down our arms.  Within seconds we had red bumps that were more itchy than any jelly fish I’ve ever been stung by!  It was great motivation to find the antidote, and we began searching frantically for anything at all within 3 ft. We rubbed so many things over our itchiness which seemed to worsen and multiply by the second, and nothing worked.  Finally we ripped up the stinging nettle plant, grabbed the roots and crushed them up, cursing the plant as we did, and rubbed the crushed roots up and down our arms, and Bob’s your Uncle! We’d found the cure.  What a relief.

She brought her two big beautiful dogs over and we decided that the one Hunter is petting in the photo should be his in Disney’s ‘101 Dalmatians’ movie, where all the owners look like their dogs.  In this case, the dog is tall like Hunter and has long hair. So cute.

On Friday when I took my brother, Jan, in for his biopsy, it was to have biopsies done on one of the tumors in his armpit. About a month ago he went into the ER due to sever headaches, dizziness and weakness on his left side, and a CT scan was done, and 7 cancerous brain tumors were found. The question was, where have they metastasized from?  A couple years ago he had a skin cancer removed from his back.

The doctor, who had the personality of a dead fish, left a huge gouge in his back that resembled something a gorilla would make with a blunt machete. His scar is thick and about 4 inches long. It appears that this is where his cancer has grown from, and today we heard back on the biopsies and he has been diagnosed with Melanoma. We have no idea how far it’s progressed or what stage it’s at at this point, but have an appointment set with an oncologist tomorrow night.  I do know that treatment for melanoma has progressed much over the last few years and am going to pray hard that his is treatable. I love Jan so much, and I cannot bare the thought of losing him too.