“One World, Many Stories” is the shirt that my mom wore all over Africa, which is where this story begins. My mom, dad and friends Jan and Greg went to Africa for 4 and a half weeks on a mission trip. Pretty much from the day she arrived she began to itch all over her body. At first she thought it was a reaction from her Malaria pills, but it continue and a few days before coming home, Jan noticed the whites of her eyes were yellow. Right away she scheduled and appointment with the doctor the Wednesday after she arrived home. She then had an ultrasound and then sent for an MRI. The results came back as a huge shock to all of us …cancer. The diagnosis was cholangiocarcinoma, a rare bile duct cancer. The next step was to do a biopsy and put a stent in the duct to get her liver working properly. Those procedures were done on Wednesday, Early Thursday morning she went back to the hospital due to pancreatitis which is a common after this type of procedure. After 5 days in the hospital she is now recovering at home. She will have to first recover from pancreatitis then go in and have a surgery done to put an external drain on her liver to get it to drain properly, before they do surgery on her tumor.
So this has brought us up to date. I plan on keeping this blog for many reasons, the first being to update friends and family on what is going on so they may give specific prayers. Second as an outlet for me to express my love and feelings for my mom, and most importantly to make my mom laugh and smile and to know how many people love her.
If any of you have any great stories that you would like for me to share please email them to me at heather.burbrink@gmail.com. I plan on starting off my blogs with updates and pictures and then ending on a happy note of funny and good stories about my mom.
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| Mom updating her many " I AM STARVING!!" Facebook status |
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| Can you guess what time this was taken? Brian would always come and keep us company for lunch! |
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| Mmmm...jello...juice and broth!! |
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| All smiles after seeing "Maw maw Rhea" |
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| Soo sleepy... |
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| One of many trips across the Causeway |
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| Grandma Kisses |
This week has been a roller coaster, but we have stayed very entertained with telling stories about each other. One of them was about how mom and I, whenever we would travel together and would sleep in the same bed, we would always get the giggles and the rest of the family would be trying to get some sleep and we would be giggling and mom would throw in a few snorts to get us laughing some more! I love her infectious laugh and snort!! I love you mom!
