if you were wondering

So our Dr has had results for the past three days or so, and we've not been told anything, which tells me one thing... "There's too many self-indulgent weenies in this town with too much bloody money!" (Nicholas Cage, Gone in Sixty Seconds)... Ok, so it doesn't tell me that I've just had that line stuck in my head for a little while today...But it does tell me that Dr's stink! And the sky is purple... (if you're looking through rose colored glasses)

Vampires

Tomorrow we'll be getting some more input, Erin went to get her blood sucked saturday and again this morning (they couldn't find the veins yesterday or today so she's been left with some nice yellow and purple) :( We'll be able to call tommorow morning to get some results back from the Dr. in SLC.

In other news, Erin still hasn't been able to find a job, we found out since we don't have any children we can't get any help financially from the state unless I'm making less than $320 (ish) a month, and I'll be making just over $600 working part time (of course, that would also require us to both work thirty hours a week at about a dollar an hour), so we're crossing our fingers, and I'm hoping Erin will have something arranged by the end of the week. Anyway, basically right now we're in between, just trying to figure out what's going on.

Microadenoma

We went and saw a specialist today. I kind of suspected this (hadn't mentioned this to my wife...) but they're going to need to do some more testing to figure out exactly what is going on... Basically seeing a heightened level of prolactin tells them very little and they're going to be testing more for more hormones allowing them a better idea of if the tumor is a prolactoma (adenoma affecting prolactin) or if it's causing a rise in other hormones as well. If it's just a raise in prolactin than a pill twice a week for a year or two will not only cancel out the heightened levels of prolactin but can also cause the tumor to both get smaller and go away. However, if it's causing certain hormones to be released causing excessive weight gain or growth hormones (possibly explaining the bone growth on the back of her head...completely non-noticable if you don't know to look for it...) to be heightened or other hormones that would cause issues, then they might need to go in for surgery. Hopefully she can pop a pill for a couple years and be done with it, she'll be doing the blood work early next week, and possibly starting a new job. So, next week will hopefully be exciting and bring new good news for all! :) Much love

MicroAdenoma Pituitary Tumor

A little background before I begin. I completely erased everything on my blog as I created it for a class and want it to serve dual purposes for both academic and personal means. To do this I felt like I should start from scratch, with the idea that if a person knows something about the author they better understand their works.

The last two weeks have been very emotional for me. My wife was having an extremely light period (aka spotting only a little on one day) and had other signs of being pregnant, which had us highly concerned as I was quitting my full-time job to take a work-study job, and she was working part-time hoping to get hired on full-time (the company then merged with another company and let her go entirely as she was in a temp-to-hire position). With these concerns we took this possiblity very seriously and went in to my family Dr. He's been the person who I always remember going to, and besides when I've been in a hospital, out of state, or he's not been available I've never really gone to any other Dr. He did a pregnancy test, (6th one if you include the 5 over-the-counter tests we'd already failed) and it turned out negative (not a surprise at this point), but that didn't explain my wife's problem, she was lactating... Anyway, he did some testing to see if her thyroid was acting up but it looked normal as far as symptoms go. So then on to bloodwork.

The blood work came back, not pregnant, nor did she have a thyroid issue. She did have an elevated level or prolactin, which is the hormone your pituitary gland releases which ultimately tells a persons body to produce milk and lactate. Unfortunately this result leads to further testing as (apparently) past (medical) experiences have proven it best to get an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Image) in order to decide what exactly is or was going on. Test results came back several days early, and my wife slept through the Dr's call, and missed him when she called back. She was later able to get a hold of the nurse there, who informed her that she has a tumor. It's in the pituitary gland (obviously affecting it as were evident in her heightened prolactin levels), and fortunately is both about 3 milimeters in size (so it's a Micro, as 10 milimeters or larger would put it as a macroadenoma) and is benign.

It's still a tumor.

Further research on my part found that less than one percent of these tumors are malignant, so there's a very small chance it would even change to cancer as it's currently benign, and they occur less often in men though in men they're more likely to be missed for a longer time leading to blindness from their subsequent growth due to their being missed for so long. I may be misinterpreting this, but if I read it right one persons experience with this condition she was told by her Dr. that 25 in 100 people don't need any treatment for this condition (wether medication or surgery was being specified in this statement I don't know, but it's what I caught from the blog post). So there is a possibility that nothing may need to be done. I lied to myself and told me that everything would be fine, I had been ever since the part where we thought we might be pregnant, and from the time that before we found Erin has a tumor that we found online that the heightened prolactin levels (we found out it could be a tumor a couple days before we found out that it was a tumor). So, for two weeks I've been lying to myself, and believing it.

I wouldn't say I'm familiar with death, though I don't think I'm a stranger to it's presence. I've lost a grandfather, a grandmother, a cousin, a close friend (when I was still very young), there are several that I associated with in high school who've since died. My middle-older brother (Jacob) tried to block a piece of shrapnel with his head (ok, so he wasn't trying to block it with his head, but it still hit him in a couple places above the shoulders, though I can't recall where), that was while he was in Iraq. My niece was born with the left side of her heart undeveloped and has had three major surgeries on her heart (I believe open-heart, but I'm afraid to make the open statement without being fully sure of it). I have rolled a car two and a half times and walked away from it with only a knot in my shoulder (from hitting the side brace), and some minor scratches on my feet (and ironically the scratches were made through shoes and socks which were entirely unharmed). I don't feel a stranger to these sort of situations or experiences.

I have hated Will Ferrel with a passion, movies like Anchor Man and Talladega Nights seem to me like a waste of time, and overall make the world a more dumb in their very existence.

Stranger than fiction. It is probably the absolute best movie I have seen in a year. It was nothing like what I expected. It also helped me to see something so completely different in relation to death than I have thought through to seeing. It is a completely difference experience to die unexpectedly than it is to die knowing you're dying. During the ending sequences of the movie (perhaps last chapter or three) it clearly makes this distinction and Will's character is given another chance at life with a zest previously unexperienced.

The driving point to me was more of how my experiences were more detached from myself than what I'm currently experiencing. My grandmother, grandfather, cousin, none of them I expected to die, and wasn't terribly close to them, though now I wish I had been. My brother and niece, well, they didn't die for one, and for two we knew my brother being in the Army could end in sadness, it's something we all accepted (or tried to) when he joined (bless his heart for what he's doing!), and there's always chances for a newborn to have unforseen complications. Not to mention when Valarie was born I was serving as a missionary for the LDS church and had some delay in receiving information of her birth and physical condition as I was on the other side of the country.

My wife being diagnosed with a tumor is something completely different for me. Though her tumor ranks in as being 13% of all kinds of tumors found, and even though it's benign and quite treatable (especially at it's small size), I'm being faced with something I'm not altogether familiar with.

fear.

I can't remember the last time I was truly afraid. Maybe it was going down the steep face of sand mountain (located nearish to Delta Utah) screaming "oh s***" repeatedly as my friend was driving the four wheeler I was on back of full bore on a dark night and he turned off the headlights (mom, did I ever tell you about that??).... Maybe it was after I rolled my car two and a half times (though I felt completely calm when it stopped, though paramedics and dr's were freaking out pretty good.....go figure)... There is connection strange to me that I am feeling fear though the chance of there being a complication in any part of treatment, removal, or living with this tumor. And it's not even in my own head. Something in that movie triggered a response in me... stupid dogs won't stop barking and let me think about what I'm trying to say...

I'm afraid of heights. I love climbing, rock climbing even, but when it comes to repelling I'm a big wimp, I like to talk it up, but my legs are weaker than weak when I'm leaning off the cliff. In every time when it's been a personal experience with death, or danger, there's always been an adrenaline rush, and I think that pushes fear from a person. (lights flashing above my head "yes, this is what parents tell their children while they're growing up and want to play in the highway with cars") I don't know when I've felt fear like this in my life. I remember bawling when I was a kid and gasping for air between sobs, of course those times were because I was caught being naughty and hoped to cry my way out of it...., but never in my life until now do I feel like I have cried like I did tonight. Except perhaps at my grandfathers funeral, he died on my birthday, and two weeks before my family had been on vacation in California visiting him along with a family reunion, and I felt like I'd been able to really get to know, appreciate and love him, and then he was ripped away from me, on my birthday.

Some times crying is a way to express happiness, other times sadness, and now I realize it can also be used to express great fear. It is likely it can be used to release emotions of countless enumeration, though I'm sure I'd rather not find out from personal experience. There is a powerful cleansing, washing attribute in crying, by which one is able to release the energies of an emotion, and carry on for another day with a slightly lesser-load than they previously bore.

We have an appointment with an endocrinologist tomorrow, at which point we'll be finding out hopefully where this is all going. My sister-in-law just related to us a friend of hers had this condition, went in for surgery, was released the next day and within a few short days was completely back to normal (obviously normal doesn't include room for tumors in this context)...

We know there have been many prayers in our behalf, so far as we know our names have been put on the prayer roll of four temples at this point. I can't express to the extent that I want to just how appreciative we are for this, we've felt an outpouring of love from friends and family which has helped us to lift ourselves and keep going despite what may have been a dreary outlook. After tomorrow we'll know more information, and be able to put another post up with the updated information.

After this my next big concern is what I'm going to do with my life. I'm not entirely sure I want to be a photographer. I know I love it, and it's probably more that I don't know what I'm going to do with my degree once I have it (and it's only about 1.5 years away at this point)... I've always considered doing something in writing, but honestly that's too many academic pointless papers to write for my taste. I'm sure Janele (oldest sister) must agree with me on that at least to an extent...as she was (is??) an English major (she graduated with a bachelors, but isn't going to school currently, so is she still technically an English major??)...

I'm sure by this point you've either moved on to another blog, are disinterested, or are some sort of glutton for punishment in written form as you've made it this far. On a side note, if you know me well in person and have ever seen me pause in mid-sentence, perhaps shake my head, and somewhat carry on or jump onto an obscurely related tangent then I hope I can add some light to the perplexion. All the times I jump into () are times when my thoughts are running on the sideline adding things that most times weren't in my original thoughts for what I'm saying, and a lot of times they come out of no where and I have to pause to see if they'll work with what I'm saying or if I should wave to them as they pass by in the gulf-stream of the mind.