Helluva a Week and Good News

This blog is not, generally, a journal of the details my life. It is a collection of thoughts about knitting and spinning and working with fiber. I generally keep the family comments off the blog so you, dear reader, can get what you expect.

But, sometimes, life just throws you the unexpected, and it's worth writing about. If this is the first time you've been here, let me bring you up to speed. One month ago today my middle child, Adrienne, was diagnosed with melanoma. She had an innocuous mole at the tip of her nose removed, and per standard procedure, the dermatologist sent the excised tissue to the lab. Much to the surprise of the dermatologist, the mole was cancerous.

In the past weeks, we have spent many anxious moments waiting. Waiting. Waiting.
Finally, on Monday Adrienne had the tip of her nose removed, skin taken from behind her ear to graft onto the nose (for a short term fix, can't fully reconstruct it until it's confirmed no more needs to be removed), and had two slices into her neck to pull tissue from the nearest lymph nodes to see if they had seeds of cancer in them. If yes, the disease had spread, if no, all that would be left is to reconstruct the deconstructed nose.

Wednesday was Adrienne's 25th birthday. Friday Adrienne's bandages were removed. We had expected to wait until the following week to get the full results of the biopsied tissues. The surgeon came in, removed the bandages, then had his assistant tell Adrienne how to clean the wound. He then turned to the computer in the room and looked to see if the results were in. He read them to us: negative, negative, negative, all negative. Music, music, music to our ears.

Thank you for all the well wishes we've received. The cancer was local, has been removed and Adrienne is now officially cancer-free. She will still need your positive thoughts and energy as she goes through the many months process of getting her face back. She is not ready to show her current face to the world, so I give you a recent shot of the day before her surgery. The photo was taken on 19 April and her smile then seemed to indicate that she knew good news was on the way. Indeed, it was.