Just a Bump in the Road

About a month ago an old buddy from college, Geoff, reached out to me wanting to help us out financially. He is part of an organization called Midweek Run that helps to organize fundraiser races for individuals. I was very touched that he wanted to help out and that his organization was willing to put in the time and energy to put this together. We did the fundraiser run on July 11th up in Draper, just down the street from where I grew up. It was a humbling experience to have family and friends show up to support my family and me, not just financially, but emotionally and mentally. To know that we aren't in this fight alone helps. At times, this fight against cancer can become somewhat all consuming and it's nice to know that there are individuals we can turn to if we needed to. The race was a lot of fun! The weather was beautiful! In fact, the heat cooled off just in time for the race to start and the rain avoided us as well! The park was a great park for the run AND we even

Well... It's been a rough few weeks, which is why I've struggled to keep up on the blog lately. Going back to the last couple days of June, I've really struggled with nausea and vomiting. For about five days prior to my arm surgery I didn't eat much. On Saturday June 29th, the vomiting began. I threw up a good 7 times that day. Then, on Sunday, I threw up another 9 times. Fortunately, come Monday the vomiting slowed down big time. I think I only threw up once that day. By the time Tuesday rolled around, the vomiting had stopped. Just in time for surgery! I was hoping I was done with the vomiting, and fortunately for the duration of my hospital stay there wasn't any vomiting. However, when we returned home, the vomiting started back up on Sunday. Not only did it start back up, but it was to the point that it wasn't stopping. I was becoming very fatigued and was having a hard time standing up on my own. At about 1:00 am on Monday, July 8th I was admitted to the

Caution: Some of the photos in this post may not be appealing to some. There is exposed muscle and bone from my surgery. Just a warning! So as I've mentioned before, I struggled with arm pain since even before my diagnosis. The pain was due to a tumor that was inside of my arm bone. The tumor was doing two things: it was eating away at the surrounding bone in my arm AND it was putting pressure on the bone that was still there. That combination led to some difficult pain in my arm. In order to deal with the tumor, radiation was the best course of treatment. However, there was concern from multiple oncologists that radiating the tumor would eventually lead to a large cavity in my arm bone. This cavity, along with the weakened surrounding bone, would put me at greater risk for a pathological fracture. The orthopedic surgeon said that these pathological fractures can be very tricky to fix and can, ultimately, be very detrimental. About the middle of June we met with Dr. Groundla