WHAT ABOUT JEANNE?

January 15, 2010, at about 4:10pm, the ER doctor turned and said in a shocked voice, "She's going NOW!  He was surprised. She stepped from the land of the dying into the land of the living at 4:15pm.  She was in the presence of the One she had served and loved with all her being for so many years.
So many of you asked,  what happened?  You said that you didn't know she was so bad. You thought she was healed; that the cancer was in remisson, that she was doing better.
In July '06, Jeanne began to realize something was wrong. There was not a lump but there was a mass.  We had no insurance but she found out about an organization that would pay for a mammogram.  This organization got us hooked up with Medicaid.  These places are out there and you can find them, you just have to be persistent.
The mammogram confirmed cancer in her breast.  She then had an incisional biopsy that also confirmed it and that it was Inflammatory Breast Cancer.  Let me beat a drum here - all women and their husbands, PLEASE go on the internet and research IBC.  It is not like other breast cancers, it is not common.  There are symptoms that are unusual and even embarassing.  There was a case of a 16 year old girl who was so embarassed she did not even tell her mother.
We were told that there was no known medical cure at this time.  Jeanne did not roll over and die.  She fought it, for 3 1/2 years she fought it, amazed the oncologist and his nursing staff.  She always gave credit to her Lord and Savior.
Jeanne went completely organic and natural for about 6 months and was experiencing a lessening of the symptoms.  In April she began to have difficulty breathing and quit her work as a Field Inspector for insurance companies.  We traveled to Albuquerque in May to conduct the wedding of our son Brian to Sarah.  Oh, did she love being a part of that.  However, she was in a wheelchair and really having difficulty breathing.  Our good friend, Harold Vann, loaned her some oxygen tanks and that kept her going.
About a week after returning from Albuquerque she said one morning that she needed to go to the hospital, she couldn't get her breath.  The oncologist examined her and based on the visual examination, he told us later, that he said to himself, "She's a goner."  On questioning some medical people including my sister, Enola, who is an RN, I was told it doesn't look good, it's bad; the intern said she only has a few months.  I was told to either start chemo or take her home and call Hospice.  The oncologist didn't think chemo would help but that it might give her a few more weeks or months.
When she responded so well to the chemo the oncologist and his staff were surprised.
It was during this time, June, that her mother died and she could not go to the funeral.  It was a really hard time for her.
Her hair had started coming out and she started wearing a wig.  But after a few months her hair began to come back and she began brushing it.  She had just started going without a wig when she was told she had 4 tumors on her brain and needed radiation.  She lost her hair again, except it came out everywhere except for a 1 1/2" strip that ran from her forehead back to her neck - a MOHAWK!  She laughed about that. 
She was on Herciptin, a non-chemo antibody most of the time. Her blood work was good.  However, in the last few months her "tumor marker" was moving up - not a good sign.

I need to stop at this point and give myself a break.  I'll pick this up in a few hours or maybe tomorrow.