The Last Belly Shots, Delivery Date, and Less than Good News

This is my belly. It has taken over as I have more or less become the human equivalent of a beached whale.

Today I am just a few days shy of 39 weeks pregnant. I get up at least 6 times a night to pee, pretty much everything aches, and I am swollen from head to toe. In fact, when I hit week 36, I gained 4 pounds of water weight over night. This means that my pudgy baby face has returned and my ankles have vanished. Additionally, I am unable to wear my wedding bands and it is very fortunate for my feet that it is flip-flop season. So enough of the complaining...The good news is that I only have to do this for 5 more days. My Cesarean is scheduled for the morning of Saturday April 24th. That's right, the baby and I will have the same birthday. This was not planned, rather some untimely and unfortunate circumstances led to this. Nontheless, I think this will be the best birthday gift ever!

When I was in my early 20s I saw a therapist for a year or so to help me cope with some anxiety issues that I was having at the time. One of the things my therapist told me was that 99% of what you worry about never happens. Over the years, I have found this to be mostly true. What my therapist failed to mention, however, was that it is things you do not worry about that pop up to bite you in the ass. My original surgery date was scheduled for the 21st. We had to change our plans last Monday when Drew was diagnosed with lymphacitic predominant Hodgkin's lymphoma. Drew and I were completely blind-sided by this. His biopsy was supposed to be a formality. One of those things you do to "be on the safe side". Drew had one swollen lymph node in his groin. He had this for at least a decade. When he pointed it out to his doctor, the doctor assumed that it was a benign rogue node but suggested a biopsy to "be on the safe side". So Drew elected to have the entire node removed. He had out-patient surgery on April 7th. The whole surgery only took about 20 minutes and almost seemed like a non-event. On Monday the 12th, Drew's surgeon called with the bad news. Drew was at first shocked, and then numb. I cried for 2 days straight. Right now, we have very little data other than the diagnosis. Therefore, Drew and I immediately wanted to get an appointment with the hematology oncologist. The only available dates for this were in May, or April 21st. My original Cesarean was scheduled for the 21st. After discussing the situation with my doctor we decided to reschedule the surgery for after Drew's appointment. This way we get in to see the oncologist as soon as possible, and I can go with Drew without having crazy-inducing post-partum hormones on board. There were no available times for the Cesarean on April 22nd or 23rd, but my doctor is on call that weekend. Therefore, the baby will be delivered on my birthday.

So now for the silver lining (other than getting the best birthday gift ever). First, it is much better to have Hodgkin's lymphoma than non-Hodgkin's. Second, Drew has a rare variant of Hodgkin's (nodular lymphacitic predominant) that has an even better prognosis than classic Hodgkin's. Moreover, it is not typically a metastatic cancer and rarely leaves the lymphatic system. So we are very optimistic that we are going to get past this. In fact, I am positive that in a year Drew will look back and say, "remember that time I had cancer and we had a new baby, that was rough". Finally, Drew will be treated at the UMC Cancer Center by the best hematology oncologist in Tucson. The guy has received many awards and successfully treated a faculty member that works upstairs from us.

On the onset, this may seem like the worst timing ever. I thought this at first as well, but there would never be good timing for something like this. The fact that Drew was diagnosed with cancer just a few weeks before our baby will be born actually has some positives. One, we were not going to bank the umbilical cord blood but now that it could potentially be used to treat Drew we had time to set this up. Moreover, the Cord Blood Registry has a public service that will donate 5 years of free banking if an immediate family member could use the stem cells for treatment. This means that cord blood banking is only going to cost us $150 rather than over $2000. Second, because of the baby being born, Drew and I get to change our benefits. This allows us to expand our short-term disability and insurance. Finally, my parents are going to be here for several weeks. So because of the baby we will have extra emotional support and help. Just knowing that my parents were going to be in Tucson so soon gave both Drew and I a tremendous amount of comfort.

So that is where things stand for now. We will know more about Drew's cancer in a week or so. He needs to get a CT scan to see if any other nodes are affected. All of his other nodes that you can feel from the surface appear fine, which is great. So the best case scenario is that only the removed node was affected. Worst case scenario, Drew will need a few more nodes removed. In both scenarios he will probably need some sort of chemotherapy, but we will find that out on Wednesday.