Hello! I hope everyone has had a wonderful week full of celebrating family and eating lots of yummy food! :) I would first like to update everyone about where I am standing with my medicine and surgery date. We got the blood work back and my medicine is not where they want it to be. They decided they are going to monitor it and maybe start to give me higher doses to try to even out the levels. As a result of this I am more tired than normal but since it has been over a year since my thyroid was removed, I have learned how to conserve my energy. Also, my surgery date has been set for December 7! Yayy! I am very relieved to have a date set in stone and I am super excited for the surgery because this means the pains in my neck will go away. Thank you everyone for your prayers and even though the blood work may not be where we wanted it to be, we just need to be patient because the LORD's timing is so PERFECT. This time last year I was in treatment and it has been so humbling to be able to look back on last year and see how much the LORD has worked in my life through this trial. The treatment that I receive is called radioactive-iodine radiation and when I am in treatment I have to be in isolation, so last year around Thanksgiving things were a little different. I was released from the hospital last Thanksgiving after staying in isolation for a couple of days but because I was very sick and tired I only went to one of the Thanksgiving dinners my family celebrates. Thanksgiving Day is always very busy because we go over to my grandmother's house for Thanksgiving lunch and then go to the farm with all of my cousins for 's Thanksgiving dinner. So, last year I was not able to go to the dinner, but thankfully my beautiful grandmother convinced my mom into letting me come to Thanksgiving lunch. The radioactive iodine waves target and kill the thyroid tissue, but for people who do not have thyroid cancer this is very dangerous. Your thyroid controls your metabolism, hormones, and it is the energy source of your body, so I was not allowed to be around people because I did not want my treatment to interfere with other people's thyroids. I had to keep my distance to say the least but it was so nice to be able to do something that my family always does and feel normal for a second. In my family we always joke about me being radioactive because for a period of time after I was released from the hospital I had to do a lot of "special things". I could not eat off of glass plates because everything I touched had to be cleaned or disposed in a specific way. My clothes had to sit in a plastic bag for 3 months before we could even wash them! How crazy! If you can stand back and find joy in the little things and even laugh at yourself it makes hard things so much easier. It was frustrating to have special treatment but at the same time it was hilarious because never in a million years did I think that I would be considered a "hazard" to the human race! :) My mother thought that it was necessary to caution tape the door to my bedroom which was pretty funny and brought a good laugh to everyone and small things like that helped ease the stress of treatment. I am very thankful for another year of sitting at the Thanksgiving table with my wonderful family. The LORD has blessed me so much this past year and I have SO many things to be thankful for. I am thankful for St. Jude and its wonderful mission to treat kids with cancer without making the families pay for anything, not even a penny. I am thankful for Danny Thomas for founding the hospital and all of the people who helped make his dream possible. I am thankful for all of the doctors who go above and beyond to make sure their patients get the best treatment possible. I am thankful for all of the lovely people I have met and have the privilege of calling my St. Jude family. I am thankful for the time I got to spend with my friends who have passed away, who through their actions and the way they handled their situation touched me in ways that no words can describe. I am thankful for all of the people who have taken time out of their day to pray for me or to call in and check in on me. I am thankful for the people who helped me find joy in situations when I thought that was not even possible. I am thankful for my wonderful friends and family who have been with me every step of the way. I am thankful for my teachers who have done everything possible to make school the less of my worries so that I could be able to focus on the most important thing, getting better. I am thankful for my blessing of cancer because without this trial in my life I would not be the person I am today. Hard times bring us closer to the LORD and through this trial I have learned to depend solely on the LORD for strength, emotionally and physically. Thank you everyone who has kept up with me and thank you everyone for your prayers! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and was able to enjoy the beautiful blessing of family. Thanksgiving is a day dedicated to reflecting all the blessings in your life, but in reality shouldn't every day be like Thanksgiving? We should give thanks everyday because the LORD continues to shower blessings upon us, blessings that we do not deserve "O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever." Psalm 30:12. If you have a hard time spotting the blessings in your life just remember that the LORD woke you up today and blessed you with another day to live, shouldn't that be enough?
This is me in treatment last year. Because everything I touched became radioactive, the whole entire room was covered in suran wrap including my chair, computer, and floor. It feels pretty funny to look around your isolation room and see every single thing covered in suran wrap!
