Life so Far

The last year has been a challenge.

April 19th, 2010 Allen was diagnosed with stage 4 head and neck cancer.  Translation: he had a a tumor in his tongue that had spread to more than one lymph node in his neck. That was the starting line of our marathon, because to call it anything but a test of our endurance would not be doing our experience justice.

This is not going to be a blog about cancer, but to fail to include this as part of our story would only give you a shadow representation of who we are and our life here at The Pines.

We were lucky enough to find a wonderful doctor at Duke Medical Clinic in Durham, NC and at the end of may 2010 Allen and I rented an apartment near the clinic and moved to Durham so that he could receive two months of radiation with 1 week of chemo at the beginning and another  week of chemo at week 5.  When I brought Allen home on July 29th he was close to dead.  40 pounds lighter, grey, barely conscious and on a feeding tube.

In October Allen had 11 lymph nodes removed from his neck, and the good news…. ALL THE PATHOLOGY CAME BACK NORMAL!!  Cancer free, original tumor gone!  But the surgery left him with accessory nerve damage, which left him with limited use of his left arm and in constant pain.

The road back is slow, but Allen is on the mend, good days and bad days.  The pain of the nerve damage has lessened and the doctor believes he will get full use of his arm/shoulder back over the next year.  His energy still waxes and wanes but that is to be expected.  Radiation and chemo are a brutal assault to the body.

So, we play catch-up.  That has been the first order of business here at The Pines, getting on top of any issues that we did not address because Allen was out of commission.  We are getting things done, and have learnt to enlist more help.  Meanwhile, we are also starting some new projects.