Official Notificiation...

This is the official email I sent out to a few family members and friends.

"I am sorry that you have to find out this way, but I need to cut straight to the point. I had surgery 14 days ago to remove my right ovary. Today we found out it had a cancerous tissue on the tumor/ovary; it was 6cm. The doctor we had was amazing and by God’s wisdom he removed the tumor in a way that would not seed the cancerous cells. I will be traveling to Tripler Medical Center in Hawaii within the next several weeks to have my left ovary removed and a biopsy will be done on my lymph nodes. Because of the way our doctor performed the initial surgery
at this point I have Stage 1 Ovarian Cancer. Further treatment is dependent upon
the lab results from my next surgery. Honestly this is all the information we
have at this time. I am certain you have a thousand questions, and believe me we
do too. In time we’ll get the answers and as we find them out will pass the
information on to you.


Please check my blog often, I’ve posted the journey to this point and will continue to share information with everyone there. We appreciate everyone’s thoughts and prayers.
We are believing for 100% healing and that is the direction we are headed on
this journey of life. "

As I sat and typed this up I was numb, stoic, matter of fact. I still feel this way. I have to maintain composure. Mark and I haven't told the kids yet. By the time you read this we will have told them. We will have personally told our parents as well. We can't call everyone thus the reason for the above email being sent out to people. It's all out in the open now tell anyone you want, dang shout it from the mountain tops. I want to, I want to scream!

Screaming helps me vent. I learned this back in 1988 when I began working at Camp Koinonia. I was going through a really rough time. Mr. Ken spent a lot of time talking with me, mentoring me and one day I was so pent up with anger, frustration, fear and internal torment that I could not cry, he told me to scream. We were out in the woods working on something, heaven only knows (I lived for working in the woods that summer.) but he told me to just let it rip. To scream at the top of my lungs till I had no more air and energy left in me. With each scream all the fear, tension, anxiety, everything came pouring out. It was then that I was able to think clearly, find a solution and move forward with my life. I think I need a good scream now. Oh Where O' Where are the woods of my youth so that I may scream and no one will call the authorities!!

I digress... so sorry. Mark and I have talked a lot over the past week when we heard that cancer is a high probability. We decided we weren't hiding it behind a rock. We were going to talk about it and tell anyone who wants to know. We want our fight to be an open book, a main-stream training session if you will. I am a fighter, one hell of a fighter. It's only stage one, so our plan is one more surgery to remove the left ovary and biopsy the lymph nodes and then we are done. Monitoring for the next 5 years but other than that, we're done. The fight is over, the next few weeks will require a lot of prayer though. Being thrown into instant menopause is not going to be a picnic for my sweet family. So they are the ones that are gonna need the prayers! (sure hope I don't grow a beard and my voice deepen any lower than it already is!)

May 12, 2011 a day I would soon like to forget.

6:40pm... we just finished dinner and telling the kids. They are strong. They have lots of questions, we shed a few tears but we are strong. We are moving forward, not turning back and fighting the fight together. The Francis 5 will Prevail! (I think I shall change our name to ...
THE FRANCIS 6 +1 TEAM (Jesus is fighting this with us too!)