It’s me.

BTW – I am so thankful for each of you who follow this page.  This month, to celebrate another year of life, a sweet friend (who happens to be a professional photographer) did a mini-shoot.  This is the result.  For those of you I’ve never met, nice to meet you! 🙂  And this is what the person you’ve been praying for looks like.  (Thank you for those prayers!). For the rest of you – you know what I look like.  Time marches on – thankfully!!

About a year …

Well, I was going to let November 25th just pass.  And I did.  But then I couldn’t.  You see, November 25^th isn’t the anniversary of a sad experience – it is an annual reminder of just how good God has been to me.

November 25^th, 2011, two very skilled surgeons attempted to remove all the cancer from my body and then repair me as successfully as possible.  One year later, I know with great confidence that God led me to the perfect professionals to care for me.  My surgeon, Dr. Robert Willett, did a wonderfully thorough job at “cleaning me out;” and my plastic surgeon, Dr. Christopher Park, did – and has done over the last year –an amazing job of “putting me back together.” Cancer is an emotional, as well as a physical, experience. Breast cancer can be a very emotional experience.  Both surgeons provided me with information but did a wonderful job of letting me take the lead in my treatment.  Dr. Park has given me so much more than physical healing. He has treated me with kindness, care, and respect (and humor) that helped heal me as a person, not just a body.

November 25^th, 2011, was a reminder of what a wonderful church family I have.  I love having my hand in many aspects of church ministry. Yet I fell off the face of the planet for a couple months.  My loving church family covered everything (probably better than I would have)! They sent food, cards, and gifts to let me know they cared. And they prayed. Wow did they pray!  Many people take “where they go to church” for granted. Not me! God has been so good to me by leading me to this wonderful group of believers.

November 25^th, 2011, my Facebook wall and this page were filled with wishes and prayers from the most amazing friends anyone could ever ask for.  (Yes, you!)  I don’t know how I got so blessed to have so many amazing friends, but I do!! And I’m not “unfriending” any of you ;-).  God gave me such a wonderful, broad support group from ALL OVER the WORLD!  I still marvel at the fact that I had friends praying for me in every time zone!

November 25^th, 2011, was just one more demonstration of what a dear sweet family I have.  I know that’s not a given.  My oldest daughter worked it out to come stay with me for my surgery (and he me AND her Dad), and she took great care of me.  But then, my “adopted Mom” (I really needed my adopted Mom through this) surprised me and paid for my youngest daughter to fly out for some of the time, too. What an amazing gift! While my son could not be here in person (the USMC had other things for him to do), he kept in touch ALL the time and let me know he loved me.  Brother, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, Dad, Father-in-Law, and more extended family all sent me love and prayers. And, there truly is not enough space to say how blessed I was to be cared for by my husband. He went above and beyond anything anyone could have imagined.  He cared for my physical wounds and my emotional wounds.  And he told me he loved me and I was beautiful in a way that no one but he could understand, communicate, and make me truly believe.

November 25^th, 2011, was, most importantly, another wonderful reminder of God’s grace and faithfulness.  I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior many years ago (with a simple understanding of John 3:16). God promised then, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5) and, “My grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness …” (II Corinthians 12:9).  And I promise, His grace and presence was, and is, enough!  I remember vividly a couple of very “alone” moments waiting for the surgery—yet I knew I was far from alone. God’s presence was such a comfort.   None of us has the promise of tomorrow.  It could be cancer, it could be anything.  I am so thankful I don’t have to face any of it alone.  I am so thankful for my Heavenly Father.  God HAS been so good to me!

Sorry

I realized I’d missed a few posts (I post here and on a Facebook page), so I’ve updated the info.  Thank you for following my blog.

October 31, 2012

A dear friend blessed me with some special October Breast Cancer Awareness presents. One of these special gifts was a balloon that was just released with my name attached to it (along with a bunch of other). What an honor to be remembered in this special way. Yes, tears are running down my face. I am so blessed.

 

October 2, 2012

This young man is amazing! It was a privilege to get to meet him – and sign my name on his go-cart!

“Tommy Smith Jr is a 7th grader at Faith Academy. In the fourth grade, he wrote a paper on breast cancer even though no one in his family had been diagnosed with the disease. Remembering what he learned from that assignment, he asked his dad if he could paint his go-cart pink for the month of October in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness. Tommy has been racing go-carts since he was three years old. His first pink go-cart race with be October 6 in Pensacola. The go-cart is on display in the Providence Cancer Center lobby. Breast cancer patients are encouraged to come by and sign the go-cart. Tommy’s family as well as Providence Hospital’s Breast Friends Breast Cancer Support Group are very proud of his concern for those who are living with or who have survived breast cancer. Pictured with Tommy are Breast Friend members (L – R) Kay Watson, Robi Jones, Wendy Harrison, Marcia Carrier and Paula Moore. Tommy and his pink go-cart will make a special appearance at Camp Bluebird, Providence Hospital’s adult cancer camp, which will be held October 10-12.”

*yes, they spelled my name wrong – but that’s ok 😉

Post-Surgery

Surgery went well. I’m home. I’m QUITE sore, but that will pass. So thankful for a wonderful doctor who is so skilled and my awesome (former EMT) hubby who cares for me so well. I’m on pain meds for a couple days … 30 minutes awake, 3 hours out 🙂 Thank you for your prayers. God has been so amazingly good to me!

Someone else’s thought

Amazing words (slightly editted)  from Dr Erica D. Bernstein, “Cancer is not a battle that we win or lose. It is not our fault or a sign of weakness. We are not responsible for our cancer outcomes. The crapshoot of cancer and recurrence can NOT be controlled. Celebrate yourself for each time you, despite all the trauma of cancer, treatment, and the mindset of “survivorship”, choose to love, live, laugh….. We are not a success story based on our cancer progression or not. We succeed when we are courageous enough to keep walking forward even with missing parts, severe pain, addled brains, and broken hearts.”

Today I found great comfort and encouragment in this. 🙂

Another surgery

Well, quick update. I’ll be having one more surgery September 5th. It’s reconstruction related (I’ll spare you the details here). No, I’m not excited about another surgery; but I am grateful for my doctor’s skill in helping me feel a bit more “normal” (whatever that is) 😉 . It will be outpatient, and I should recover fairly quickly (a day or 4). Grateful for praying friends and family.

Surgery 5/30/12

I am home, medicated, and resting. My pain is tolerable. Everything went very smoothly.

God gave me several reminders of His care and presence throughout the day – including the entire same staff I had with the mastectomy, except the mean nurse (got a great one this time). That was such a comfort and security for me.

Thank you, dear friends and family, for praying for me. I was, once again, overwhelmed with God’s goodness to me. I am so thankful.

Much love, Kay

Hi! Thought I’d share some thoughts running through my little head. The experience of cancer has brought some very positive things. I now go to a breast cancer support group once a month. There are some really wonderful people there. And, I have made one particularly close friend through the support group – we’ll call her “A.” A & I are around the same age and similar stage of life. Her cancer is nastier than mine, but at the moment we are both cancer free! 🙂

At the support group, we realized that many of the people who attend are either long-time survivors or those in the thick of the worst of it. There are not a lot of those who are “living with it” there to tell us how to do it. Or even those with a recurrence who are beating it. I’m hoping A & I can be those people and encourage others at the support group that you can have a fruitful, jubilant life whether or not you’re in treatment at that moment.

Personal update: new expressions of the same side effects. I am now having the joint pain in my hands very severely. It woke me up several times throughout the last few nights with the inability to close my hands. I hope we’ll be able to address this. If not, it’s just for a season. Hips and legs remain challenging. We did some painting this past weekend. A sweet friend was very subtly kind enough to do the edging so I spent very little time on my knees on the floor. (Her gift was unspoken but very appreciated.)

My hopefully last surgery comes up on May 30th. As always, I’d be grateful for prayers. It’s outpatient. I’ll be home that night. And I hope not to miss much work; I’ll admit I tend to be a tad optimistic. When you pray, I’d be grateful if you’d pray for my friend A, too. She still has several surgeries ahead of her.

Thanks so much. I appreciate each one of you. And I am so thankful for my heavenly Father who truly has been sooooo good to me.
Kay