I didn’t realize I hadn’t put any updates on my website until a few weeks ago.

I had my parathyroid glands removed in September and I was still able to finish the Columbus Half Marathon in October.  We had over 70 people join the team for that days races.  You can see a picture of those that made it to our celebration party in October on this website.

 I made it through my 24 months of chemo and my MRI of my brain is holding steady.  I am back to work full time.  My mother died of lung cancer just before Christmas, so I had another year of unhappiness during the holiday season.

ROC on! had 11 people participate in the Flying Pig events the first weekend of May this year.  I finished the half marathon and it was the worst run I ever had, but I cut 17 minutes off my time from last year.  It was raining hard throughout most of the race with lightning while we were on our way to the starting line.  I had a seizure at mile 6 and then my glasses broke and they were only one week old!  I lost the piece of my glasses later on since I only had small pockets.  Because of the rain and the temperature, none of us had cell phones with us and it took over two hours in the wind and the rain for Brian and I to find Kayla before we could go back to the hotel for a shower.   I also ended up with several blisters on my feet, which I’ve never had before, but I’m sure it was from having soaking wet feet.  Regardless of all of that, I will plan on running the Flying Pig half again next year!

 I have already signed up for the Rock and Roll Half Marathon in Chicago on August 1st as well as the Columbus Half Marathon on October 17th.  If you are interested in joining the team this year, e-mail me at laurie.dangler@gmail.com. 

 I hope we will have our own separate 5K this year. I will post it on the website if I ever get a date.

 Ohio State University is planning their Brain Tumor Survival Celebration event for Sunday, October 10, 2010 and will have Senator Kennedy’s wife speaking, so put that on your calendars!

 I hope you’re all doing well. I hope to post some pictures on the website, but I have to confess that my update is overdue because it is hard for me to remember how to log in to the site to post things, so it will be another struggle to figure out how to upload pictures. : )

I have not been very good at updating my blog, so I’m sure some were wondering if I ever got my pancreatitis taken care of.   I had my parathyroid glands removed at Ohio State on September 9th.  I was in the hospital for two days because my calcium went very low once the glands were removed.

I am still having pain over the incision site, but I’m still planning on running the half marathon on Sunday.  This year the team has 71 people signed up to race on Sunday.  I’m so glad the team expanded as I was hoping it would! I hope we all have a good race.  I am sure I will be plenty sore the next day.  I was not able to run for about three weeks around the surgery and I was on chemo last week.  I can never run when on chemo either.

I hope to have pictures posted soon after the race so you can see this year’s team.

Lauriee

Many of you have probably heard that I surprisingly ended up in the hospital for a week with pancreatitis.  It was caused by having a high level of calcium and parathyroid hormone in my blood. I have a growth on the parathyroid gland on the right side of my neck, so I’m assuming they will need to surgically remove at least that gland, if not more.  I have an appointment to see a head and neck surgeon on Friday, Sept. 4th and hopefully will know when the surgery will be after that appointment.

Pancreatitis is one painful disease and it’s not been an easy recovery.   I wasn’t able to eat anything more solid than watermelon for 12 days. I have been wanting to lose 15 pounds, but this was not the funnest way to do so.

I’ll keep you up to date on when things will be happening as far as my follow-up.  I hope to get it all taken care of as quickly as possible and be able to be in the half marathon without any trouble.

Laurie

I’m sorry that the blog has not been updated in a long time. It seemed most people were unaware of it and didn’t check into it, so I was updating people by e-mail and facebook.

I ran the Flying Pig Half Marathon in Cincinnati the first weekend of May. I’ve been trying hard to run a 12-13 mile run once a month to hang on to that distance so I don’t have to build back up for the Columbus Half Marathon.  I decided to run 12 miles today since I start chemo again on Friday and it was cool this morning.  I don’t know what happened, but somehow I ended up with a tendonitis in my ankle that was so bad that I was starting to limp by mile 6, so I stopped to prevent further injury.  It became even more painful and made me limp around today.  I never have the energy to even think of running while on chemo, so it will be forced into rest for at least a week and hopefully will be better.

I have already received my first donation toward brain cancer research.  I hope to have a letter to send out to many of you to help the ROC on! team raise some funds this year to help us find a cure for brain cancer.

Please let me know if you’d like to join us for the Columbus Marathon, Half Marathon, or 5K on October 18th, 2009.   I hope we have beautiful weather again as we did last year.

Laurie

So it’s been a while since anyone last posted.  I’ve repurposed the blog to exist within Laurie’s fundraising site.  Think of it kind of like how Star Trek got redone, or maybe when they remade Dragnet with Tom Hanks (anyone, anyone?).

Anyway, here we go…

I have been and will be keeping you and your family in my thoughts and prayers and wanted to wish you a Blessed holiday season…

Mary

I hope that you and your family have a blessed Thanksgiving!

May god continue to answer our prayers. We do miss you lots.

(This is my first attempt at blogging if that is what it is called. So hopefully I have done it right.)

Tanisha

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! I hope you have a relaxing day and are thankful for what you have this year.  I know it seems strange that I am putting in an update at 3:30 in the morning, but I’ve been having weird side effects from all the things that have happened in the last three months and the last two nights have woken up with something that seems like the restless legs syndrome.  The computer is always a quite diversion when I can’t sleep. I commented on me being an idiot on the computer because for some reason I’ve had trouble logging on to my own blog and just tonight I somehow saw a comment for the first time that was posted by a friend on August 17th, hoping I made it through the surgery ok. Thanks Brian! Sorry I didn’t see it before!  I think I’m getting a little better at the blog the more I use it, so hopefully it will not cause anyone to feel ignored if you’ve posted a comment on here for me.

This week seems busy for me because of Thanksgiving and most likely because there are things I feel I should be getting done.  My kids are anxious to decorate for Christmas and our basement needs some serious cleaning out to get the decorations upstairs.  I also have had to do a bunch of paperwork for my disability insurance and it’s confusing to know what to do with taxes and so forth on that type of stuff when I’ve never had to mess with that before.  I’m thankful for our tax accountant meeting with me this week so I can get my papers sent in in time to get my payment in December. 

I’ve had a strange week as far as physical symptoms.  Most of my problems are still with my head itching, but it’s starting to get better.  I got my two staples out yesterday and I’m finally allowed to get the top of my head wet after three months.  It feels weird to do so since I still have really newly covered burr holes in my skull.   The shower gives it a weird feeling.  I’ve also been having this shakiness that started in the mornings and got worse with each day and my neurosurgeon felt it is probably some withdrawal effect from not taking Valium five days a week to get through radiation.  My jaw is still stiff and I still have to smash my sandwiches just to get them into my mouth and I frequently feel like a stroke victim as food falls off my fork when it can’t get into my mouth, but my surgeon also wants me back on ibuprofen (which used to be my favorite med!) which I know will help get the inflammation down in the joint and I’ve started stretching it more each day, so hopefully I’ll be able to use it fully again some day. 

My next MRI will be December 10th.  It will be considered a new baseline.  I got the reports from the eight or so MRI’s I’ve already had and it’s very hard for them to say exactly what is happening in the surgical area right after surgery.  This will be the first time that inflammation and bleeding from surgery will have calmed down and gone to a new normal state.  It will also be the first to show any effect from the radiation.  I know they are planning on giving me an MRI every three months at least for the first year.  It looks like my chemo is going to be for six months (after the six weeks I’ve already done) and will start in mid to late December. I’ll be on the tablets for five days and then off for 23 days.   I’ll still have my blood work checked every week.  My report from yesterday was still normal, though my platelets are in the low normal range.  Looks like I’m handling the chemo so far!

I hope everyone has a great holiday this week!  Thanks for checking in on us!  Doug and the kids are doing fine and I think we’re all going through changes that will be good as far as time needed to treat me and so forth, but it’s still hard going through change.  I think they’ll be happy when I have hair again!

Laurie 

This morning is definitely not the best I’ve ever had.  It started with me being awake from 3:30 to 5:00 because of headache and itching skin that feels very tight and then the kids were awake at 5:20 because of the time change, making it hard to get back to sleep.  I did get back to sleep and that made it hard for me to get up in time to get the kids to school.  I got them there, but my mornings always feel awful, so I was tired, aching and tearful.  I think all these things are still side effects, which makes me hopeful that they will go away, even though it may take a few months.  It’s funny that I was worried about January and February being hard months, but now I think it will be November and December with the radiation effects.  I’m feeling better now after a shower, washing my face, brushing my teeth and getting some percocet in my system.  The skin on the top of my head feels like it has been stretched really tight across my skull and burned to a crisp, even though it still looks normal.  It makes it hard to watch shows like Desperate Housewives with someone on the show with cancer and having problems too.

This morning I told myself that I made it through the marathon even though I had an injury to my hip after the 30 K run, so I damned well will make it through this!

Doug and I found out yesterday that Sweeney Todd is coming out as a movie at Christmas with Johnny Depp as Sweeney.  We’re excited to see it, though on the trailer, it seems his voice just won’t be quite deep enough to sing as Sweeney.  It’s a Tim Burton movie, so it should be interesting!

Laurie