Brain Tumors Suck

I promise in between all of these medical tragedies, we do have a great life.  I promise.  Even through I clearly have failed to write about them.  Sorry about that.

Saturday morning in between conference sessions, Raleigh and I got a wild hair and pulled out four dead bushes in our front yard.  They looked horrible and we were sick of them.

 As we were in the middle of this project, Kori came to pick up Gracie who had spent the night with us.  She didn't look good when she got out of the car.  I thought she'd been crying.  She said that she'd had a headache/migraine for three days.  I told her she needed to take a day off and relax.  She is so overworked and she never takes time for herself.  She agreed.  But I know she didn't go home and relax.

That night the boys went to the priesthood session and the girls made dessert at my house.  Kori sat in the corner of my couch with her eyes closed.  When Brayden came home, I had him run upstairs and get her some of his migraine meds.  She took them and said she felt better.

But, two days later when I text her to see how she was feeling, she said she was still in a lot of pain.  And that she was considering going to instacare.

But of course, she didn't.

She did make an appointment for the following Friday for a CT scan but that was 6 days away.

On Wednesday, she went over to the cafeteria in the hospital where she works and got a salad.  As she was walking up to pay for the salad she suddenly threw up all over her tray.  She put the tray down and walked over to the ER and asked them to admit her.

Two hours later, they found her tumor.

A frontal lobe tumor the size of a golf ball on the right side of her brain.

Mom sent the text.  "Kori has a brain tumor, she's being admitted to ICU"

I called immediately.  Where is she?  Should we come now?  But mom said to wait until we knew more.  So, I changed out of my work clothes and laid on my bed and stared at the wall.  My kids didn't know anything was wrong in our life, so they were in and out, up and down, crawling on me, whining, they were hungry and wanted food.  And everything that I did seemed so wrong.  It was wrong that I got to lay on my comfortable bed, pain free.  It was wrong that we were laughing.  It was wrong that we were cooking dinner.

I hardly slept that night.  I kept waking up wondering if Kori was crying.  Wondering if she was hurting.  Wondering if she was sick.  Or sad.  Or scared.

Luckily at 4:45am, I got a text from her asking if Quincey and I could stop by before work and school, to put her hair up and out of her face.  I was so relieved.  The text seemed normal and had winky face emojis.  I was so happy to go over.  I didn't know what to expect at ICU.  I imagined they would be super strict and only let 1 of us at a time visit.  Not so.  They were so friendly and were happy we had come and they let Quincey, Morgan, Kami and I all be in her room.  And we were super loud and I am sure all of the sick people were annoyed that we were having such a good time in Room 3.  We were laughing and cracking jokes as Kori was telling us how her mouth was droopy and her arms weren't working properly and when she walked it felt like she had flippers on her feet.  But she was so happy that she had something to blame it on.

A crappy, stupid tumor.

She was in great spirits.  Way better than any of us.  And as hard as it was, we said good-bye and went to work and I tried to concentrate, but of course I couldn't.  And the clock ticked by so slowly,  it felt like two days had passed as I was on my way back to the hospital.  The only thing that let me know it was the same day, was I was wearing the same clothes.  I met Raleigh in the parking lot and we went up to see her.

When we went into the room, Russ said "sit down, the doctor will be in- in a couple of minutes to give us the worst case scenario"  I love worst case scenarios.  I love hearing them from doctors especially.

Her doctor is Dr. Fox, who is Britton Shipp's doctor.  He is calm and doesn't have a peppy bedside manner, but he seemed to really care about her.  He told us that her tumor has a major artery running right through the middle of it.  On a scale from 1 to 100, her tumor is a 99 in difficulty to remove.  He said that he was in no way running away from a fight, but he doesn't do these types of tumors every day.  And didn't feel adequate enough to do the surgery.  But, he knew a place where they do, and he would like to send her there.  The hospital is called MD Anderson Cancer Center and it is in Houston.  His plan was to continue shrinking the swelling around the tumor with steroids until she was well enough to leave the hospital and then he would like her to get on a plane and fly to Texas as soon as she could get an appointment for surgery with the world renown neurosurgeons at this hospital that is so big it is the size of four city blocks.  (Incidentally, the inter-hospital life flight would cost them $10,000 and so that is why we are being steered clear of that option).  The doctor that she was to request specifically is Dr. Roa.  He told us that they remove tumors like this everyday.  They have an MRI machine in the operating room, so they can monitor the surgery perfectly and he added if a tumor can't be removed in this hospital, it can't be removed.  Suggesting, they will get this thing and get it far away from our family.
Every one was all calm.  Every one but me.  They were all trying to figure out travel arrangements and mom was saying "dad and I will pay for your flight and we will drive down behind you...  blah blah blah" and my ears started ringing and I was getting all tingly and I was a panicked jumbled up mess inside.  I was doing really well holding back the tears until Russ said....  "sweetheart, I will live in a cardboard box for the rest of my life, if I get to live in it with you"  and I burst into tears and had to leave, so she wouldn't see me cry.

I cried the whole night and the whole next day on and off.  We had a family fast and I made it until 2:30 and then my hypoglycemia kicked in and I had an episode and I had to give in and eat something.  Which made me feel like a failure.  I get really sick if I don't eat and I have bad reactions.  I wasn't feeling good mentally or physically at all.  Here I was able to do nothing for her, and I couldn't even fast for her.  The other plan for the day was to go to the 7:20 session at the temple.  Which we did, but I got into the locker room and started changing.  And I knew something wasn't right.  And then I realized, I'd forgotten to bring my dress.  I sat down on the bench and started crying.  I pulled myself together and I put my clothes back on and went out to the lobby expecting to wait there for an hour and a half, because everyone else was most likely sitting in the chapel by now, but for some reason my dad and mom walked by and I told them to go get Raleigh because there was no way I could make it through a session.

He and I went and got some frozen yogurt and I tried not to cry.  I should have gone over to the hospital, but I couldn't.  It wouldn't have been good.  For anyone.  Especially Kori.

Saturday, my mom called me and told me that Kori had just had a full body CT scan and

THERE WERE NO OTHER TUMORS FOUND ANYWHERE IN HER ENTIRE BODY!!!!!!!
This was such good news for me and made me rejuvenated with faith and hope.

As of today, there is a pending date of April 24th to head to Houston.  We don't know what will happen from there yet, but we do know she is going to the best place she can go.

Kami has a blog dedicated to her story...  check in there at www.prayersforkoko.blogspot.com
And I will try and keep up with mine as well.

Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes and for ALL of the support.  It has been overwhelming the outpouring of love that they have felt.  It really shows us how good people are.  And makes us want to be better.