Baldness Can Be Beautiful

When I was diagnosed with cancer after my family heard, I heard from different sources of what people were saying about me. At one point I heard someone asking for people to pray for me, because I didn't know how much longer I would live. Let me clear the air by saying I was diagnosed with cancer but I did not recieve a death sentence. No doctor ever even told me when I would die, they just told me how high my success rate was.
One point I was telling a good friend what was going on in my life and he totally overreacted by instantly asking me if it was deadly. Sure any cancer can be deadly, but I wasn't going to die. I am willing to fight this, I won't go down without a fight. No one in my family ever believed I was going to die just that I was going to suffer for a while.
During my process before any surgery I had or any small battle I was trying to face with all my treatments I recieved a priesthood blessing from my brothers and Dad. To this day I am very thankful and still encourage it before I complete any scans. Those blessings gave me comfort and courage to keep going even when I was tired, I do believe with all the prayers I was given I recieved hidden miracles.
The next time I went to see my Doctor he told me that I was still to do my radiation treatments and some bad news had come in also. He had removed four tumors instead of three. The huge one in my sinus cavatiy, the one in front of my ear, and instead of one in my neck he found two. These two tumors in my neck were pretty close to eachother to make my lump on my neck pretty large. In between the two tumors was a nerve connecting to my shoulder, thankfully they were two instead of one, because if it was one he would have to cut that nerve and I would have to do physical therapy with my shoulder. Obviously that wasn't the bad news, he went on to explain that he found out that the cancer in my neck was very invasive and aggressive. He wanted me to do chemotherapy now. Before he wasn't worried about me having chemo, now I wouldn't have a choice. He tried to seem very positive about it when he told me that the certian chemo I would get I shouldn't lose my hair. So he reffered me to a place called Utah Cancer Center, Where I would get my treatments and would have a radiation doctor and an oncologist for my chemo. On April 25th I had my consultation with my radiation doctor.
Dr. Avizonis was my radiation doctor and I must say she was an excellent one at that. She was very upbeat but also knows boundaries. When I came in to see her for the very first time I had only been healing for over a week from my surgery. She wanted to check to see how well I was healing but she could instantly tell I was still tender and very uncomfortable with it at that point. She continued to talk to me about the many side effects of radiation and I was scheduled to have it for six weeks, every day from monday to friday at an appointed time for about fifteen minutes. fifteen minutes? I was very happy to hear that the whole process only would take fifteen minutes a day.

She then asked me to make my face mask that day that I would wear in the room everyday for my treatments. A mask? Indeed they made a mask for my head and neck. They put a really hot, almost a blanket across my face and started sculpting it to my face, it slowly started cooling down. She then wanted to make sure I had this sponge in my mouth with a popsicle stick so that my tongue would not hit the roof of my mouth. She was trying to do as less damage as she could, which I am very thankful for.

The day before I would start they wanted me to come for a dry run. They scheduled me for May 9th, the day after my birthday. Later on I had a consultation with my onclogist, Dr. Harker. He seemed at first a very serious guy, which of course you have to be if your a cancer doctor... When he told me his plans of chemo he warned me I would lose my hair. "WHAT?" I told him that Dr. Hunter told me I wouldn't lose my hair. Now Dr. Harker was telling me I would. The news just keeps getting worse and worse. He also told me there was a chance that the chemo would make me infertile. Great... I'm loving all this new information. I was scheduled to have chemo for three continuous days every three weeks, then told me even more side effects.

On May 10th he scheduled me to have a port surgery, incase you don't know what that is, it is so I wouldn't have to get pricked for an IV all the time. When your exceptionally sick it is very difficult to find a vein and the port is connected to a main vein in your chest. The chemo I was getting was given to me through an IV so I was in need of the port before I started Chemo on May 15th.