Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel

-

September 13, 2018


It's update time... On Friday I met with an oncologist. He went over our options and looked me over. He said there was a chance that the lymph node removed was the only spot of cancer. He didn't see anything that concerned him. This, obviously, raised our hopes. I went in for a PET scan on Tuesday and we received the results today...

The good news is that the cancer has not spread to any vital organs. My lungs, brain, kidneys, etc are all clear of cancer at the moment. The bad news is that there were four other tumors found in my body. One in my left upper chest (very small), one in my left upper arm bone, and then two in my abdomen. The two in my abdomen are slightly bigger. One is probably the size of an almond and the other slightly bigger.

The belief is that the malignant melanoma has metastasized and is spreading throughout my body. My uncle said that he would classify me as being between Stage 3 and Stage 4. Neither one is the greatest...but it is what it is!

I have yet to receive a prognosis from my doctor, but to be honest the prognosis doesn't really matter to me. If I were to go the conventional treatment route, I would be given probably a 10-25% chance of making it 5 years at this point. However, Kim and I have done a lot of research into alternative methods that have much higher success rates. We will likely be heading to Mexico in the next couple of weeks to begin treatment.

No matter what happens, I am optimistic about getting through this. This is nothing more than a slight bump in the road. I have felt confident, hopeful, and peaceful even before I was diagnosed. Those feelings persist. I believe I have a work to do here on the earth and my time is not up.

I have been humbled by all of the love and support that my family and I have received. Please keep us in your prayers. I know God hears them.

-Ryan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Back and the new Chinese Medicine Doctor

-
So on October 31st, I had an appointment with the PA for my back doctor. I had emergency spinal surgery on February 10th to remove a lesion that was compressing my spinal cord. The compression caused me to lose movement in both of my legs and the ability to urinate normally. So that was almost 9 months ago. Unfortunately, I still struggle on a daily basis with pain at the incision site as well as extreme soreness and discomfort in the muscles between my shoulder blades. The pain at the incision site is a random, all day type of pain. The discomfort between my shoulder blades tends to get worse as the day goes on. The more I do throughout the day, the worse the pain is. In fact, there are times that I struggle to stand up anymore because the pain is so much. I'm not an expert, but I had assumed that after 9 months this type of pain would have been resolved. I know the muscles in my back are being asked to do more and to adjust, but I thought that would have been resolved a while ago
Read more

Lifechanging news...

-
Image
In September of 2018, Kim and I received life changing news when I was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic melanoma. What a journey it has been since then! In September of 2020, we received more life changing news, but with a very different feeling associated. This news came with fear and anxiety. We found out we are pregnant! Well... Kim is. I'll touch on this after a brief cancer update... It's been almost two months since my brain surgery. It's been a good couple of months with respect to my recovery and cancer. I haven't had any new tumors or tumor growth in my body, which is wonderful news. I've had several infusions, all of which have gone well. The only difficult part has been that my oncologist was moved to a new clinic at Huntsman and getting my labs done at this clinic is always a challenge. For some reason, they seem to always be really far behind, which makes everything else get behind too. I manage to get through it though. I started PT for my hand and mo
Read more

Second Brain Surgery

-
Image
 It's been a while since I last posted... That's mostly due to a challenging recovery from the surgery. I'll get into more details later. My brain surgery was on August 6th at the U of U Hospital in Salt Lake City. We decided to do the surgery because I was struggling to get off of the steroid and my body was deteriorating from extended use of the steroid. A few days before my surgery, my grandpa gave me a priesthood blessing that provided me and Kim with a lot of peace. I sure love the priesthood and its power. Unfortunately, Kim was unable to spend any time with me in the hospital due to COVID-19. Personally, I think it's stupid. If I was 17, Kim would have been allowed in. Oh well, we deal with what we are faced with. Kim dropped me off early in the morning around 6:00 am which was really hard for me. Since we had to leave so early, I packed my back the night before! It was rather hard to walk away from my wife knowing what I was walking in to, but we know God provid
Read more