Post Surgery

Troy's surgery went very well on Monday. He worked from home on Tuesday and then went back into the office on Wednesday. He only took a pain pill once. We went to Audrey Egitton's graduation party yesterday. Joe, Audrey's dad, works with Troy, and Sharon, Joe's wife, has helped us out a few times here at the house when we needed someone to watch the kids while we were at doctors' appointments. It was a really nice time. Derek and Ryan had a busy week. Along with playing with the kids at the party last night, we had a full week of play dates - once with William (a friend from Derek's class) and we met up with Blake, Gabriel, & Olivia at the park nearby (also friends from Derek's class). We also took a trip to the airport for a tour. Derek had his last gymnastics class on Friday, but we signed him up for a more advanced class for the summer. Derek is begging me to get off the computer right now so he can play on Kidzui - one of his favorite computer spots! We are loving this long weekend even though it has been rainy.

Surgery tomorrow

Well, we survived Disney! It was a wonderful trip, but as it goes with 2 young children, it was a lot of work and we were happy to be home. We had a really busy week last week. Troy had a few appointments. He had one with the ENT for his monthly visit and Dr. Riley said that he has one of the best looking throats around. He went to the dentist on Wednesday and Dr. Friedrich said that everything looked great. Troy doesn't have any cavities or damage from the radiation and his saliva is pretty productive. Troy feels like his mouth is pretty dry though. He also had to go to the hospital for blood tests on Thursday because he has his surgery tomorrow to remove his chemo port. Besides Troy's appointments, Derek had his skills testing Monday morning for his entrance to Kindergarten. He had an appointment on Tuesday to see the allergist. There isn't much to report except that Derek has a propensity to hives. They don't test for allergies to sorbitol and the doctor thinks it is highly unlikely that this is what his allergy is to. He wants him to take Zyrtec every night and Troy and I aren't so sure we want to do that so we are just waiting for the next allergic reaction. He has only had a few outbreaks in 5 years so we really don't think it warrants medicating him at this point. Derek also had his end of the year party on Thursday and his graduation on Friday. One of the pictures above is of him with his teachers, Miss Cassi and Miss Betsey. The other picture is Derek with 2 of his best friends, Alex and Gabriel. We are very proud of him. He has come a long way in this past year. He is more outgoing than he has been in the past and he has learned a lot at preschool academically. He is ready for Kindergarten!! Anyway, it has been a busy couple of weeks and now that summer is kicking in, we will be spending a lot of time at the pool and doing fun things around Atlanta. We'll keep you updated on all the happenings. We will let you know how Troy's surgery goes tomorrow as well. Thank you in advance to Marian and Torie, my friends and neighbors, for helping us out with the kids.

Heading to Disney!

Derek with his hives!!

We are getting packed and ready for our trip. We will drive to Orlando early Saturday morning and be back on Saturday the 9th. We're so excited to go and Troy said that he isn't even going to look at his phone! Troy has been doing really well. He has been going into work like he used to do before his diagnosis. He started on Monday of last week and has been doing it pretty steady. He stayed home Thursday to work from home, but besides that he is up and out the door by 7am. He struggles a little with his eating and wishes he could just enjoy food the way he used to. We will be going to Cobb Hospital on the 18th to have his port removed, so he will have to recover from that, but all in all things are really a lot better. My sister, Tonya, stopped by with her family while vacationing around the South. She was only here for a couple of hours, but it was so nice to see a piece of New York/family. Olivia, Christopher, and Logan (the cousins) are shown above with Ryan and Derek. Derek has only a couple of weeks of school left. He finishes on the 15th of May. He will be going to Kennesaw Elementary's Kindergarten orientation tomorrow. Ryan is signed up for the Fall to go to St. Catherine's Preschool on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Derek went to the doctor (and the hospital) last weekend for hives. He was on all kinds of medicine for 5 days and he is going to the allergist on the 12th. I actually think he may have an allergy to sorbitol. It's a long story, but he had an allergic reaction a couple of years ago and we linked it to fluoride tablets that he had taken with that inactive ingredient in them and this past reaction I found the same ingredient in some frosted animal cookies that he had chowed down. We'll see what the doctor thinks. Anyway, he is doing fine and his reaction, luckily, was just cosmetic (not to mention he was extremely itchy) and didn't affect his breathing or anything. We have a week of doctor's appointments when we return from vacation. Troy has to go to the ENT Monday for his monthly visit, Derek sees the allergist Tuesday, Troy goes to the dentist for a post radiation visit (who knows what damage the radiation may have done), and on Thursday, Troy sees Dr. Knauer for his pre-op visit. Ahhhhhhh, vacation is only 5 days away!!! We will leave the chaos behind us for a week.

Complete Remission

Troy had his appointments with Dr. Goldsweig and Dr. Riley on Friday. His MRI showed up clean once again and everything is looking good. Troy is still having a hard time sleeping, but everything else is picking up finally. Thanks so much to Sharon Egitton (and Joe and Lauren) for coming to the house on Friday to keep Derek and Ryan company. They had a blast and we really appreciate you helping us out.

Today we will be going to see Dr. Knauer, the general surgeon who installed Troy's port. This appointment is for a consultation to remove the port. I'm assuming we will schedule the appointment for the surgery to remove it as well. Also, tomorrow, Troy will be going to see Dr. Osborn and he will have his feeding tube removed - YAAAYYYYY! He is so excited to have this removed.

The clouds are beginning to part and the sun is definitely starting to come through in our world. We are heading to Disneyworld on May 2nd through the 9th for a family celebration. We can't wait. We hope everyone had a nice Easter/holiday.

Starting to eat solid foods

Troy has had a good week and a half of trying solid foods. He can handle softer foods with some struggle. It still hurts, but the healing is definitely starting. Troy went for his MRI on Friday and we get the results this Friday. He hasn't had any appointments otherwise since the last post. We have scheduled an appointment with Dr. Osborn to have Troy's PEG tube removed before our trip to Disneyworld on May 2nd. We're anticipating good news this Friday. Keep us in your prayers.

Derek is registered for Kindergarten (I did that on Wednesday). He has his 3rd T-ball game today. It's a make-up game since all it has been doing around here lately is raining. We took the boys to the Eggstravaganza yesterday and they had a good time hunting for eggs, seeing the animals, and getting up on the fire truck and getting in the police car.

The pollen is awful this time of the year and for those of you up North who have never experienced it, the cars get yellow with pollen dust. Everyone is washing their vehicles around here - it's like the road salt and dirt on the cars up North during the Winter. It's pretty wild. Luckily, none of us seem to have allergies, so we are faring well.

We will let you know how Friday goes.

Post Treatment Issues

Since February 27th everything has been pretty good. Troy is struggling with the length of time it is taking for his body to heal from the radiation. He's frustrated to say the least. He has only had 2 doctors' appointments since the last post - one with Dr. Riley and one with Dr. Machuta (she is one of the radiation oncologists that rotates at Dr. Allen's office). Dr. Riley just sees Troy on a monthly basis for the next year and he checks down Troy's throat to make sure everything is going as it should. Dr. Machuta walked in and said to Troy, "Let me guess, you feel like..." and she basically rolled down every symptom and feeling that Troy was experiencing at this point. This made Troy feel better knowing that this is the way he is supposed to be feeling - like crap! He has been going through a little bout of depression (which seems to have subsided over the past week). He just said that he wakes up and just relives the nightmare of the pain, feeding himself through his PEG tube, and pouring his medicines through the PEG also. He can't wait to get it removed. In fact, we were supposed to leave for Disney tomorrow, but we pushed it back to April 18th and then pushed it back again to May 2nd in the hopes that Troy would feel a lot better and he would have the tube removed by then. Keep your fingers crossed for us!! Anyway, Dr. Machuta gave Troy a steroid to take which will help the swelling in his neck. She said the biggest side effect of the medication is irritability which just makes me laugh... you mean he's going to be more irritable!!!? Great. We're doing well and the kids are doing well and we're looking forward to a vacation. Speaking for myself, you have no idea how much.

SUPER, GREAT, EXTRA HAPPY NEWS

Troy got his results today and the MRI findings were clean. The doctor classified Troy back into remission and we can breathe again! The doctor's orders were this: Troy has been mandated to take a vacation somewhere where they deliver drinks to us on the beach. We are looking into that and hope to make plans very soon. Although Disneyworld will be a nice break, it still won't be the same as some tropic island somewhere in paradise.

We are so happy I can't even express it. Troy has another MRI ordered on April 3rd and follow-up with the doctor on April 10th. He has a follow-up on March 6th with Dr. Riley, the ENT. He has another follow-up with Dr. Allen, the radiation oncologist on March 18th. I will probably update this blog on a bi-monthly basis while he is just going for follow-ups. And come April, I hope to update this on a quarterly basis if all stays well (which we intend it to!!). Other than that, I hope to change the title to this blog to: The Brooks Family and only have pictures of the kids posted and keep you updated on how Derek is doing with school and how he and Ryan are growing and how we are doing with life and not cancer!!

Thanks to all of you who have supported us so tremendously. And.... a very heartfelt and SPECIAL thanks to Dr. Goldsweig and his staff (especially Karen, Candice, and Ginger). They gave the best hugs this week when we so desperately needed them. They hugged when we were upset after the results on Tuesday and they hugged when we rejoiced over the wonderful news today. Also, Susan pushed Troy's MRI through quickly so we wouldn't have to wonder and agonize over the weekend. And Marian, our neighbor, cried with us over the great news after watching our kids for 3 1/2 hours while we were gone and she brought over an awesome pot roast so I wouldn't have to worry about cooking. It was so tasty, Marian! Dr. Riley and Dr. Allen were so wonderful in getting right back to us on Tuesday with their thoughts when we were so upset thinking something else could be wrong. And our families and other friends and colleagues just listened to us when we needed them to or read our blog and commented that they were thinking of us - and that was more than enough. Troy's parents gave up their lives to stay with us from August-January. And Brian Hill, the founder of the Oral Cancer Foundation, who doesn't even know us personally, but has taken the time to answer our questions and open his cell phone line to us, we thank you. I've thanked so many people before, but you can't know how much we truly appreciate everyone who has been beside us in one way or another during this extremely difficult time. We have even seen kindness from strangers who didn't know us at all. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts and God bless you all.

And, Troy, thank you for my birthday present. You said you didn't know if you could give me what I wanted. I knew you'd come through. I love you so very much.