Monday Monday Monday

Hi everybody….

So as you all know Josh had his first round of chemo on Thursday the 24^th, I think it’s safe to say he made it through the worst part. What a weekend! Saturday was by far the most brutal day. He has had some nausea, but hasn’t actually thrown up. He has figured out that he MUST eat every couple of hours, if he doesn’t he goes down really fast. His hair is slowly but surely falling out, good thing he keeps his head bald so that won’t be too much of an adjustment; I actually think he is kinda excited about it, minus losing the eyebrows. Chemo has definitely rocked all of our worlds, I’m not sure what we expected, but I personally didn’t expect this, well maybe I did but I definitely wasn’t prepared. It’s really hard to see Josh feeling so bad and so emotional, the worst part is there is nothing I can do, except support him and just be there. As hard as all of this is, I have sat back and watched Josh transform, and it has been quite amazing to watch. I’m so proud of who he is and who he is becoming. I can say wholeheartedly what the enemy intends for destruction and harm, God uses for good. As always thank you for all your love, support, and prayers. XOXOXOXO

Round 1.... DING DING DING DING

Hello my fellow Americans.....


What a crazy couple of days Josh has had. It started Wednesday morning with a six hour treatment of the drug Rituxan. Rituxan is a monocional antibody, this medicine changes the way the body's immune system works. The drug targets a specific protein within the cancer cells and stops the cancer cells from growing. Wednesday was the easy day, no real problems and Josh's good friend Josh Roberts came by to keep him company which was awesome. Wednesday he didn't sleep at all, which I'm sure didn't help him get through the day on Thursday. His day started at 7:45, unfortunately I have already missed so much work I wasn't able to be there with him, let me tell how stressful that was. We both had no idea what to expect, we thought it was only going to be a about a four hour process....boy were we wrong! The nurse started by giving him an IV to administer the drugs, but after a couple of unsuccessful attempts of trying to get the IV in his veins they determined his veins were too small to inject the drugs into his arm. The potential problem of having chemo administered into a vein that is not big enough is the drug can leak out of his vein and destroy the tissue in his arm. It's crazy to think that this poison is being injected to his body, kinda a scary thought. So they decided he needed a PICC line in order to administer the chemo. A PICC line is a peripherally inserted central catheter. It is long, slender, small, flexible tube that is inserted into a peripheral vein, typically in the upper arm, and advanced until the catheter tip terminates in a large vein in the chest near the heart to obtain intravenous access, Josh's was 50 cm. As soon as the procedure was complete he began to experience chest pains, he finally got back to the cancer center and he actually though he was going to have a heart attack, when in actuality he was having a panic attack. He has never had a panic attack so he had no idea what the heck was going on. Thankfully Jerry and Jeannie Wampler were there (close family friends, who happen to be going through the same thing) and they were able to help calm him down. Vanessa Long also stopped by and hung out with him for a awhile, which was a big help as well. So then about half way through he was told they could no longer proceed without a echo cardiogram, so he had to rush over to cardiology to get that done, thankfully his heart is in good shape. As soon as he returned to the cancer center he started to feel very nauseous so he started to go over the complications with his nurse, it had only been an hour since the chemo was administered. His nurse was awesome and was able to get him the proper medications to get him through the final two chemo doses. Luckily, Melissa (Josh's sister) who is VERY pregnant came and waited for him to finish up. They were able to administer the final two drugs and was finally able to get out of there around 7:00pm, YES 7:00pm!! What a day, huh? He is on a ton a medications, among all the other ones that are administered at the hospital, he's favorite is the one turns his urine bright orange! Haha yes he is a freak show! Last night was one of his better nights of sleep, he slept like a rock from 11 to about 5, he needed that! So for the next five days he has to go to the hospital for hydration and get a shot called neupogen which keeps his white blood cells from dropping to zero. He made it through probably the roughest day of this whole thing like a champion, everybody was SOOOO proud of him! We love you all and can't thank you enough for all the support, it is truly an awesome thing to have so many people behind us. As hard as these six months are going to be, we know everything will work out and Josh will come out on top a stronger better man! Thanks again to everybody.... YOU GUYS ROCK!

Quick update

Hello everybody! Just wanted to send out a quick note. Josh's Chemotherapy has been postponed, it was scheduled to start tomorrow, but it will not. I am assuming it will start sometime this week just not completely sure what day. I will be sure to let everybody know as soon as we find out.

P.S. thank you everybody for the kind and thoughtful notes of encouragement, and of course the prayers!

"There are many things that are essential to arriving at true peace of mind, and one of the most important is faith, which cannot be acquired without prayer. "

-John Wooden

Very First Post

Hello all,

So I have been telling people that I was going to start a blog for Josh to track his journey and keep people informed, and I am finally getting around to it. My goal is keep everybody as up to date as I possibly can. So here it is, let me catch everybody up with what has been going on.

It all started Christmas day; Josh wasn’t feeling well and really hadn’t been feeling well for most of December. As we were driving to my parent’s house he found a pretty large lump on the left side of his neck, later that evening he was not feeling well at all. He went to the doctor the following Tuesday, the doctor thought it might have had something to do with his thyroid and put him and antibiotics, which didn’t work. The following Tuesday he had and ultrasound, and they found it to be a black mass, the following week he had a core biopsy, which led to the diagnosis of follicular lymphoma. Follicular lymphoma is the most common of the indolent non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, and the second most common form of non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, but it is usually found in people in their sixties and seventies, so Josh is kind of a rarity.  He then did the bone marrow biopsy and PET scan, which is needed to stage the cancer. The bone morrow biopsy came back negative, which was very good, and PET showed that the cancer is throughout his lymphatic system but is nowhere else in his body, which is also good. So with all the tests complete, Dr. Chen diagnosed Josh as having stage III follicular lymphoma. So now that that is all of that out of the way, Josh will start the chemotherapy treatments Monday. The type of chemo that will administered is called R-CHOP. I don’t really know what to expect, but Josh and I are prepared for some pretty grueling months ahead.

Thank you thank you thank you for all the prayers (I believe they are working) and support, it feels like we have an enormous army standing behind us. As scary as all of this sounds I truly have a sense of peace and I believe everything will work out just fine. Until next time…… xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo