Kacie Wacie

This fair skinned red head is one of a kind. I love her to pieces. She’s the cutest baby! Bode was especially in love with her and loved to help her out during our trips. Of course I had to sneak her outside for a few pictures one afternoon. I’m so glad she is my niece!

The Whole Fam in WA

Small miracles had been happening all around, and one of them being that Kelli’s cancer was downgraded. Her tumor was so baffling that the pathology was sent on to experts who agreed she really had Astrocytoma Grade 3. I had never been so happy to hear about a grade 3 brain cancer in all my life. This was much better than the original grade 4 diagnosis and reminded us that God is totally in control, and Kelli always knew that He was going to take good care of her… which He has time and time again. I won’t get into all that! She decided her treatment plan would be 7 weeks of radiation, a month break, and a year of chemo. The chemo is a pill form so it’s to be taken 5 nights on and 25.. or is it 28?.. days off… for one year. I always thought I wanted to be there for the worst part of treatment, which is the radiation in the case of brain cancer. I’m so glad that I was!

Clint’s job took their sweet time (at least it seemed like it..) to let us know that a permanent relocation was not going to be approved. We were so disappointed because it seemed that everything would work out so perfectly. They did give Clint a two month work from home kind of a deal, home being Washington. I was glad it was something, but still sad it was not going to be permanent. Other employees had done the same kind of moves before and not had a problem, but lucky us had to follow some new policy of them cutting down on that kind of a thing.  I told Kelli the news and she said something along the lines, “Well, maybe that means we only need you guys for two months! If that’s the case, then great!” Always seeing the silver lining, that one.

A few weeks went by and we were sorting through all of our options on where to stay etc. We looked into furnished housing, apartments, corporate housing, rentals nearby.. we even checked into an RV. The Thurgood family had visitors in their home since her surgery and I just wanted them to have their own space, but still get the help they would need. Clint and I were working out the details with dates to go and I had thrown out there that we might even be able to do one month at first, and save the second month for her chemo portion of treatment, or just whenever. It was a huge miscommunication and Clint told his boss that we would only be going for one month at first. I was pretty annoyed and still hoped the original two month offer still stood, had we needed to take it. I cancelled any and all photo shoots and didn’t book out anything for months, just in case.

About a week before we left, we talked to Aaron on the phone. He told us to stay at their house and they were sure everything would work out ok. It’s not ideal having visitors for months on end, but neither is brain cancer. I was so nervous about imposing, or overstaying, or that the boys would be loud and drive them nuts etc etc. We’ve always gotten along great and spent all our time together in the early days before any of our kids came along, but this was different.

Everything couldn’t have worked out more perfectly!! We ended up staying about 5 weeks and we were there for most of her radiation and even a bit afterwards. The kids were overjoyed and had the time of their lives. Of course they had little issues here and there, but I still can’t believe how seamless everything went. We would have not been able to help in the way that we did if we were staying anywhere but their house. We are so blessed to have been able to go, and so many things had to be just so in order for it to happen. It’s really so neat how it all worked out.. I won’t get it now.

Clint ended up working from an office in Belleview, WA where they were able to transfer over his phone number and get him situated into a temporary office. He carpooled with my brother in law, Aaron, who works at Amazon - which is a few exits off the freeway from Optum, Clint’s work. Traffic to Belleview is horrendous. Since Clint was with Aaron they got to ride in the carpool lane and saved tons of time. They came home from work laughing and joking around just about everyday and the kids would yell, “The dads are home!!” Those two are good friends and really did enjoy hanging out and doing fun things over the time we stayed.

Sweet family members would text or leave me messages that they hoped we were hanging in there, and how were things really going and other things similar to that. I can honestly say that it was AMAZING. In such a hard and trying time in our lives, we were blessed to have 5 incredible weeks together. Our kids will cherish that time we spent together forever and the memories that were made are priceless. It seems so crazy to blend two families to live together for an extended amount of time, but it worked. Kelli and I had each other, Clint and Aaron had each other, and the kids had each other. I am sitting here bawling just thinking back on it. I could never put to words how much that time meant to me, to all of us.

As you can imagine, I have a gazillion pictures from our time there. Almost 1700!! I’ve tried to do a summary of everything up to this point, just so I can start getting to the pictures… the best part! Here are some and I will continue to post a bunch more, along with more day to say stuff.

Washington

My baby sister was diagnosed with brain cancer February of this year. Those early days were so incredibly scary, sad, heart breaking and the unknown made me feel sick to my stomach. I always felt peace with everything even before I knew what was really going on and up to this point had managed to not freak out too badly about it. From the very beginning Kelli has been nothing but the strong, beautiful, faithful, positive person she is. Through it all she was rallying those around her that she was going to be just fine and reminded us all just how good God is. I am blown away by how she decided to handle this trial in her life. She even posted a picture to facebook shortly after she awoke from surgery and found out she had cancer. You could see her bandaged up head and she was with her husband smiling, assuring everyone the surgery went awesome and she was feeling great.

I couldn’t even wrap my head around the fact that my sister had a brain tumor, let alone it was cancerous. I kept thinking this can not be happening. Not to MY sister. She’s too young, don’t get me started on those young girls. This is so not fair for her husband. It’s not fair for anyone really, but I was especially thinking about my brother in law Aaron. I had just talked to her the day before and she told me everything was going to be JUST fine and it was not going to be cancer. She had just birthed a baby and endured a few horrible months of unexplained symptoms and now I’m figuring out that was just the beginning for her. Oh I just wanted to see her and give her a hug.

This is taken from her facebook:

“I'm awake and feeling really good!! Surgery went great!! Tumor is cancerous which totally sucks, but don't panic because I'm NOT going to die and I WILL fight this thing. We won't know what kind of cancer and all those details for a little while, but I'll keep you posted. Keep the faith, guys!! God is good!!”

It had been a few days of knowing and I barely made it to the store for our much needed groceries. I was so confused how the world could go on with such a devastating tragedy among us. I was annoyed we had to have food to eat. I decided a trip out might be better anyway. I can’t cry in public. I kept thinking why are people out and about acting like nothing happened when I felt like life should not be continuing on? I was on the verge of tears the entire time feeling like I was harboring this huge secret from everyone I saw around me. I couldn’t help but wonder what everyone was going through in their own lives. Probably a lot if I was walking around shopping with so much on my heart and mind. I started staring at people and wondering what could be wrong with them or someone in their life. Then I couldn’t stop hoping that “not early stages either..” might magically turn into grade 1 or 2 upon further pathology testing. It was time to check out and surprisingly my boys had been so well behaved while I was in la la land walking around in circles trying to get everything I needed. I wanted to tell the check out girl that my sister was only 26 years old and she was just diagnosed with brain cancer and how it was even more devastating because she had three little girls ages 5 months, 3 and 5. She smiled at me and asked how I was doing. I smiled and said, “Good, how about you?”

From the beginning Clint and I knew that we would do just about anything we could to help the Thurgoods. Sitting around worrying about how she was doing was too hard anyway. About a week after her surgery she updated everyone with this:

“Alright guys, I'm ready... I am (still) Kelli Thurgood, and I have cancer. Glioblastoma Stage 4. Google and WebMD are worthless, especially when you've got God on your side. And oh, is He ever on my side, you guys! I know that for a fact and it's the only way I'm able to handle this sometimes. I know between Him and all of you, my dear family and friends, I'm going to get through this one day at a time and live a LONG life here on this earth. I have an appointment in a few days with my Radiologist and Oncologist and we'll come up with a treatment plan and get going on it as soon as I'm recovered from my surgery. I feel incredible for just having brain surgery and rarely even need any pain medicine. Childbirth with no epidural was worse, seriously. Isn't that crazy? Miracles, you guys! They're all around me, all the time! I'm thinking about starting a blog sometime soon. We'll see. As always, I can't thank you enough for all your love, support and especially prayers you've offered on our behalf. It carries us through and we feel them, and need them, all the time. God is so good. I love you guys! Let's do this thing!”

Ok who is this girl? My mind was blown. I am lucky that she is my sister. We decided we would move to Washington. It was the least we could do. They had no family around and couldn’t possibly go through this with people flying back and forth to help for short amounts of time here and there. Clint talked to his employers about us moving to Washington where he would keep his same job and work from “home” there. Perfect. I started packing up the house and couldn’t wait to move. Plans were being made and we were arranging our lives to be ready to move with little notice. A week went by and we hadn’t heard a final word from his bosses. It was making me so nervous that maybe it wasn’t going to work out as flawlessly as we thought.

I ended up going to Washington myself for 3 weeks. Yes, I missed my babies - but adored my nieces. I loved the time I was able to help out in those early days. Heavenly Father was with me that entire time and it’s crazy but my thoughts, days, nights, actions, everything was consumed with thinking about Kelli and those girls. It was as if He was clearing out the worry about my own boys, life etc. to make room for the girls.

My sister was incredible. When I saw her for the first time I couldn’t believe how normal she seemed to me. Her strength continued to amaze me. That Facebook positivity was not for show. She really did exude faith and gratitude. I was so proud. She was her smiling, loving, normal self… only a little tired, a little weak on one side, with an incision in her head about 10 inches long that wouldn’t heal up as fast as they had hoped. Every so often while talking with her she would close her eyes to give them a break and I would remember oh yeah, she just had a craniotomy.  We had a fun time together although a lot of it included doctor appointments, me trying to wash her hair in the sink without getting water on the incision, and wrapping up her wounded head numerous times a day. Those first few wraps looked terrible. There was definitely a method to wrapping it up to stay put for longer than an hour. I did get to be a head wrapping pro towards the end.

I keep saying things felt normal, but considering everything it really did feel like it. We shopped a little bit, watched lots of old Friends episodes, and our older sister Erica came out for a week. Life goes right along and the girls needed help to get to ready, fed, to and from school etc.  Three weeks flew by and I was so ready to see Clint and the boys, but I felt super guilty at the same time because I didn’t want to leave WA. It was the weirdest situation to be in.

I was in a state of shell shock that first day back home. It was so good to see Clint and give him a hug at the airport curb. Owen had changed so much and I wanted to hold him so I unbuckled him right there. He was mad at me and didn’t even want me to hold him. He cried and cried. Bode was wrapped up in telling elaborate lies the entire way home, the worst one about how Clint had punched him in the face, given him a black eye and thrown him through a wall. (Totally NOT true.) Or maybe it was how they had gone camping with just Clint and my girl friend. (Not true either.) The scenery wasn’t right. It was so dry and so brown. The drive home from the airport after taking Clint back to work felt foreign to me. I was only there 3 weeks, why was it weird being on I-15 again? My house didn’t seem like my house. It was so small and why wasn’t my Tupperware on the right side drawer when I tried looking for it there? I tried to get Owen to warm up to me so I held him in my lap while we watched cartoons. Bode tucked right in and watched with us. I realized how tired I was and waking up at 3am was for the birds. I wondered if Owen had been kept on his same nap schedule and if he would be going down soon. I took a picture and said a little prayer that Owen would remember how much of a momma’s boy he was before I left. I started bawling. I wondered if Kaylan got off to school ok and if Kacie woke up at 5am that morning since she’d been having a rough time. I didn’t know who wrapped up Kelli’s head, or if she even needed it to be wrapped. How did her meeting go at the egg retrieval clinic and her appointment with her surgeon. Oh crap, I remembered I forgot to give the girls their antibiotics the night before. Just as I was thinking I bet they loved having Aunt Karolyn around she started texting me. “I’m glad you’re home with your boys, but we miss you!!! Kacie cut a tooth!!”

I knew that girl was working on getting her first tooth. We called it.