In the beginning.......

Fast bells that ring for the emergency down the hall and slow bells that chime for fresh ice water in pink plastic pitchers. Little paper bracelets that are meant to keep you alive and pills that are meant to keep you asleep.Quiet sobs that mix themselves with the shuffle of discharge papers and the sound of that one shaky wheel on the IV stand as it makes it's way one more lap around the nurse's station. It has been seven days ago now...well, let's back up a little more.

Back pain...there didn't seem to be much of an answer for all the pain. In one last effort to find some relief, I hobbled in the Dr's office and cried through about 5 paragraphs of "whoa is me" and "can you make someone or something help me?"
I guess the Dr understood me through my sobs and he prescribed big yellow pills to take down the swelling, and to please come back in 3 weeks. Typically 3 wks would translate into "someday" if I was getting relief, but there was one other test I wanted to have. My mother and her sister both have a type of insulin resistance, and if I were to have the same thing, I wanted to know.

The Dr agreed to the blood test and for good measure he through in a few other standards. Within a few days the results were back and everything was SPOT ON but one. This vague test for "phosphatase's" showed that there was something quirky about my calcium levels. It could have been one of hundreds of "nothings" but it had to be checked, so I re-took the test.

After another set of abnormal results the Dr scheduled a bone scan to look for.....well, something. Scared doesn't really touch the way I was feeling but I showed up for the scan and it became hard to define the blur of days and nights since then.

The scan led to an apt with the Oncologist within days, which led to 6 CT scans and an MRI in less than 12 hours. Full of iodine and radioactive blueberry stuff I left the building that night, numb, as the technician said "good luck with all you have ahead of you" and with that, somewhere deep, my last brain cell was consumed.
By morning communication was fast and furious with the Dr's.....20 of them from Neurosurgeons to several types of cancer medicine. With all of them in agreement, quietly, but very quickly my parents delivered me to NW Hosp for surgery.

Needles and tubes pumping in steroids for swelling and thinners for clots and fluid for hydration and blood for anemia were filling my arm. In direct opposition in front of me was tonight's dinner menu and American Idol on TV. Normal life, and death all in the same room. I ordered the vegetarian lasagna....yummy carbs!
Chad collapsed on the cot next to the hospital bed and no one could make a sentence sound normal anymore.

The morning was charts and blood tests and no food or water. Pray.....The kids were with gramma and grandpa and I would have given my kingdom for a blasted ice chip!
Tears, surgery, a tumor was taken out of a collapsing vertebrae that was a few very short moments for paralyzing me.....the bone tissue in my whole spine so compromised that the stability was gone....and why in the world did she decide to sing "Hopelessly Devoted To You" Duh! Although is does sound a bit less corny through the fog of anesthesia. Of course she would be eliminated.

Fear, biopsy, confusion, tumors from my skull to my pelvis, all sat in my room with me that night. AUD-E, the gentle giant from South Africa smiled and kindly spoke in a thick British accent that somehow made every beep of the machines fade away.
What day was it now? Friends, magazines, gorgeous flowers and tropical lotions connected the silence of the next two days. Sunday and Chad was gone to make life "normal" for the kids. I had french fries for lunch....and a Dr I have never met started me on medicine to stop the cancer from spreading among other things.
Monday and Mom. She organized and I pretended to.

Another Dr....I haven't met him either....I cover my ears as he talks. Mom explains that I just can't hear it again, "Ok so I will give you the GOOD NEWS" he says ....huh?
"Well, we have all looked at your tests and we can't really find any reason why you are not totally PARALYZED. Every bone in your spine is involved in this cancer from your skull to your pelvis yet you can still move your arms and legs...you should have terrible neurological damage." "If this biopsy result come back as breast cancer that has gone to your bones, within 8 months of radiation and Tamoxifen treatment you could be in total remission. With medicine, the bones in your spine will regenerate, the cancer will go, you will be out of pain, and the word scan gets used a little more often in the next 30 years."

These are the accounts of the last seven days.
Tomorrow, chapter 2...."God fits in a hospital bed too."