Yesterday was a long day. It started with a CPR call before 6 a.m. It continued to cleaning out the bays at the North Hall for a memorial for a former Bad Rock volunteer firefighter. We went home and changed and came back in our dress uniforms in support of the family.

In the late afternoon/early evening, we went to Whitefish for dinner and managed to see a magpie. There are not any cardinals where we live. People always say when a cardinal appears, a loved one is near. We had a ton of cardinals in Omaha. Here…none. So we joked about trying to find another bird to use instead. We see a lot of turkeys…which was a hysterical because I used to call my Joe a turkey a lot when he was little. Joe was my turkey and Tim was my ham. Either way, they kept life lively. Anyhow, Michelle had mentioned to me once that when she and Joe were in Colorado, the day before he died, she saw a magpie for the first time. Joe told her about them. They can be kind of annoying birds…I know they were in Norway around ISS where the kids went to school. However, they are pretty birds. That bird seemed more appropriate than a turkey. We saw a big one right in front of us when walking down the street in Whitefish. It had been a harder day, and my spirit was kind of lagging by that point. I think it was Joe trying to say he saw us and was there. Some people may say that is a load of hooey, but those folks probably haven’t lost a kid and will take signs when they see them. I also wanted to show you a view from downtown Whitefish, the town next to us. It is double the size of our nearest small town…Whitefish’s population is about 9500. It kind of looks like it belongs in a Hallmark movie, doesn’t it? You should see it during Christmas time…it is magical. There are lighted stars strung across the road with the snow-covered mountains in the background. It is pretty cool to see. Speaking of snow, we had about 4 inches on Thursday (surprise!) and today it is nearly 60. Tomorrow should be even warmer. Spring in the mountains and the valleys in between; you never know what to expect!

We leave for Rochester, MN and the Mayo Clinic on Tuesday very early. I have consults with a surgeon on Wednesday, and a consult with an oncology radiologist on Thursday morning. We’ll fly back and get home late on Thursday. I hope to have a better understanding of what the plan is and putting it into place. I will post on this blog when I have more news. It is a lot for me to wrap my head around mentally – what I am guessing my next several months will look like physically for me. As much as I know how much you all care, please let me talk to my kids and family first and then I will post here. It is so draining to have to go over everything over and over again every time someone sends a text or email. I am trying to get a place where everyone can keep up with everything that is not social media – so please check here. I will post as soon as I know anything and have talked to my kids first.

My mom, Karen (Ancel) Neitzke, turned 80 years old on April 13th. I was able to be down in Cypress, Texas with her to help her celebrate. I had been sneakily obtaining birthday cards from friends and relatives for a couple of months. My goal was to have 80 cards for her to open on her 80th birthday. Well, everyone really came through! I had about 120 birthday cards for her! Most were from people she has known from all facets of her life. She had letters from childhood friends, high school friends, friends from her time moving around with my dad in the army…friends from just all over the place. Then my friends also joined in and even though they didn’t know her, showed up and sent her birthday wishes from all over the globe. Thank you for all the folks who helped with this. I was overwhelmed at how many cards I got to take to Texas with me! My suitcase was a lot lighter on the way home! My mom’s handbell choir also had an impromptu birthday party for her at their handbell practice the night of her birthday.

I was able to see my dad as well while I was there. He is not really verbal anymore but will sometimes say a phrase that is appropriate for the situation and it makes me smile. I got to hold his hand while my mom fed him his lunches and dinners while I was there. I even got a kiss on the cheek from him several times. He seems to be on a plateau right now and I will take it. He thought it was hilarious that my mom was 80 and she told him he was married to an old lady now. He laughed and laughed.

It was also great to see my brother and his family. I always have such a great time with them. Their 3 year old daughter is a blast to spend time with….she is quite a character! Their teenage son is big into basketball so we always have something to chat about. Craig and Mayra were champions driving me to and from the airport, which I so appreciated.

Here are some of the photos I took from my week in Houston:

This is my dad getting a double dose of love…holding my mom’s hand and mine.

If you have known me throughout this journey with Leiomyosarcoma (LMS), you know it is a very rare form of aggressive cancer. Every single LMS patient is different. It is a hard cancer to treat but there are big hopes for the future in individualized immunotherapy. New things are coming out all the time, not just for LMS but all forms of cancer. When I was first diagnosed, there was a 17% chance I would still be alive in 5 years. Thankfully, I have been blessed to have treatments that have held things stable for over 6 years. I have had 3 major abdominal surgeries, two forms of chemo for 15 months, and have been on oral meds with occasional IV treatments for the last 5 years. I have been lucky. Actually, I have been blessed. I have walked into offices to meet oncologists locally here that are amazed. They have said my chart and scans don’t seem to match the person they are meeting. Then I tell them I am volunteering with my local fire department as a firefighter and EMT and I watch their eyes bug out. I tell them I travel the world and they continue to be amazed. So I have been blessed. I am, however, back in a spot where I need to be fighting a harder battle right now. I have several tumors but one is being a stinker and growing again. It needs to be taken care of in some fashion.

I have been followed by a sarcoma specialist (the head honcho, actually) at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for 5 years now. I really like him. He is a kind person and yet he lays it all out without sugarcoating it, which I appreciate. I had an appointment with him early April 1st. He stated we needed to move forward to stop this tumor growth. He presented my case in front of the Mayo Clinic tumor board last night. These are all the oncology surgeons, radiologists, medical oncologists, etc. They discussed my case and think I should have radiation first, surgery, and possible radiation while I am being operated on. I have a consult with a surgeon on April 22nd and a consult with a radiologist on April 23rd, both in person at the Mayo Clinic. I am leery about having radiation locally. I want to see how long they want the radiation to go on…I may just do it all in Minnesota. I don’t know any details at all, so please don’t ask. I know that this tumor, along with my other tumors in my pelvis were not removed 6.5 years ago because they were highly vascularized….the tumors had created their own blood supply and the surgeon felt I would either bleed out on the table or end up in the ICU for 2 months. Neither were good choices, so he left them. I actually have small tattoos on my hips and back for radiation I never ended up getting in Omaha. They found out I was stage IV and moved to chemo instead. The goal with radiation right now is to shrink the tumor(s) (I don’t know if they will pinpoint just the one or go for the other ones as well) and decrease the blood supply to them. I have to talk to the radiologist at the Mayo Clinic to see if she feels my local hospital can handle this or not. If not, I will do the radiation there. I also don’t know how long we will have to wait between radiation and surgery. I am fair skinned and radiation will burn my skin. If my skin breaks down at the surgical site, will they do surgery? What about my bladder? It is precariously right in the middle of things. I don’t want to end up having no bladder control for the rest of my life because of poor radiological treatment. So there are a lot of things in play right now. Not to mention….June 17th I leave for Africa. If that ends up being my last big trip, I want to take it. My goal is to have treatment so I can live my life. If I can do this afterwards, great. If I need to do radiation first and surgery after the trip, great. I just need a plan and I don’t have all the information yet.

Rich and I will fly to Minnesota on April 21st and fly back on April 23rd. Hopefully we will have all the answers at that point. Until then, I have a couple of blood tests Tuesday and Wednesday, an IV treatment on Wednesday, and a meeting with my oncology nurse practitioner, where I will fill her in on what I know so far. Then I hop on an airplane to Houston to see most of my side of my family for 6 days. I will celebrate my mom’s 80th birthday, spend time with my dad in his memory care facility, and spend time with my brother, his wife , and my niece and nephew. I will have a good time and not let cancer be hanging over my head. That will be saved for my trip to Mayo. I know there are a lot of folks in my corner who have reached out to me. Thank you. Please know that it is best for my mental health to just deal with this when I have to. If the next couple of weeks are my last normal ones for awhile, I want to enjoy them. I kinda had this problem when I was first diagnosed with cancer…everyone wanted to talk about it. It rules my life, and I sometimes may just say, “this is a cancer free zone right now” and not talk about it. Believe me, it is on my mind all the time. I think I slept 4 hours last night and even then, dreamed about it. I need to set it aside right now until I have to deal with it. I do welcome healing prayers though. Thank you.

We all know that, right? That some people are just a blessing in your life…and for me, it doesn’t tend to be the people closest to me. They tend to be ancillary people in my life who pleasantly surprise me. Honestly, I could probably write about this weekly – for sure monthly. Today, however, was something super special.

My Joe’s sister-in-law, Laura, sent me a text this afternoon as she was passing through Colorado with her family. They stopped at the roadside monument where our Joe was killed a little over four years ago in a car accident in white out conditions. She and her husband had stopped there several months ago and realized that it needed a little sprucing up. This time they came prepared and replaced American flags, etc. It is hard, because we don’t live close at all to the site, and neither do his friends. His brothers with the Olathe Fire Department set up the site within days of his death. The site has been there since, with whomever passing by, fixing it up as much as they could. Thank you, Laura and Kyle, for taking the time to stop and tidy up this spot memorializing our son. Your showing of love for your brother-in-law, humbles us. It means more than we can ever express.

Sixty years ago today, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Rich’s parents eloped. Yep. April Fool’s Day. They were both the oldest children from their respective families, and I have heard their parents were not happy about not being a part of it. There aren’t many photos of that day, but I have a copy of one of them that hangs in my office, along with the wedding photos of my parents, paternal grandparents on both sides of our family, our wedding photo, and Joe & Michelle’s wedding photos.

We talked to Rich’s dad this morning. He has laryngitis and sounds awful but says he is feeling okay. Rich’s mother has advanced Alzheimer’s and is not aware of this special day. I am sure that is a sadness for my father-in-law. However, I wanted to make sure everyone knew to celebrate these two today. A 60th wedding anniversary is a pretty big deal, I think!

Well, I just met with my sarcoma specialist from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester early this morning. I am so blessed to have him as the man calling the shots. He has been with me for 6 years now and not only has he been a really good doctor, but he is a really genuinely good person and treats me well. I can’t say that about all of the doctors I have seen. We went over my scans in detail, comparing scans from 18 months ago to 6 months ago to this last scan in late February. The tumor is growing – not crazy, but it is growing. He is happy that everything else has remained stable. He stated that I have “one bad actor” in the bunch. As my brother, Craig, said, “At least it is only one bad actor and not the whole theater.” Yes, I am thankful for that. My doctor is the head of sarcoma specialties at the Mayo Clinic and he is running the monthly tumor board late tomorrow afternoon. He will present my case there. I have been presented before, but this time all the folks will get together and talk about possible next steps for me.

The first step would be to see if we can remove this bad actor via surgery. That would be the preferred method. However, this is not without complications, as this tumor appears to be attached to the larger tumor on my left pelvic wall. I asked him what would happen if we “poked the bear” the bear being the big tumor that has been inoperable. My sarcoma specialist put in a consult request for the oncology surgeon to look at my case and contact me. He will communicate with me via telemedicine zoom until I have to be there for surgery. Yes, the surgery would be at the Mayo Clinic. This would be an open surgery, so major surgery…so that means we would either drive or fly there and take a train back. It is a 19 hour and change drive from here. You can’t fly within the first 2 weeks after a major surgery like that. If they are able to do the surgery, they are hoping that I would just continue on the treatment I am on now and things would be fine.

Another option mentioned, which is my least favorite option, would be radiation. I am concerned because of the location of this tumor. It is sitting on the dome of my bladder. The radiation would most likely also hit my bladder, causing permanent damage. I don’t like that idea. I am hoping that would not be the case. I am not sure I trust the radiation folks here to do that. Radiation in Rochester would mean relocating there for a month or more. This is what I hope would be my last option. I hope I didn’t just jinx myself saying that.

Rich asked about chemo. My sarcoma specialist has a list of the different chemo medications we would be going to next if surgery or radiation is not an option. The first choice would be Trabectedin (Yondelis). It would mean I would need to get a port placed again and it means hair loss, severe nausea, etc…all the fun things that comes along with chemo drugs. It is given over 24 hours every three weeks. That is my next projected chemo drug. However daunting that sounds, I am still holding out that a surgeon can work on this and maybe avoid this altogether for now.

So, in summary, I am waiting for the results of the tumor board, which I will get Friday, I hope. Then I will hopefully be meeting with a surgeon via zoom from the Mayo clinic. I will continue on until then doing what I do…I have emergency medical training tonight for 4 hours….and fire dept dinner and meeting tomorrow night. I leave for Houston in about a week and I hope to have a plan in place at that point. We shall see. I have a blood draws twice next week before I leave and an IV treatment about 24 hours before boarding the plane to Houston. For now, I have a house to vacuum and laundry to get done. I still have a few posts here to make as well. For those of you praying for me, thank you. I made my doctor aware that I was going on a trip to Africa in June….so we shall see how everything progresses.

A lot of folks have reached out to see if I have found out much about what the next step in my cancer journey will be. I would like to know too! I mentioned before that I had some growth in one of my tumors in my pelvis when I had my scans in November 2025. I asked my local oncologist (whom I really like) if I could get scanned at 3 months rather than 6 months since LMS tends to just explode and run wild when it decides to activate itself. For new friends, LMS stand for Leiomyosarcoma. It is a very rare cancer than affects about 10 people in a million with cancer. Unfortunately, treating it is like playing whack-a-mole. What works for some, don’t work for others and vice versa. Some people say surgery is the only way to treat it while others have surgery and it is like poking the bear – it comes alive and spreads like crazy after being messed with surgically. Everyone is different and that is the hard thing about this disease. What worked to stabilize my tumors, led to the death of a friend with LMS. Anyhow, I had my three-month scans done early on Feb 23rd and saw my local oncologist late on Feb 25th. The local radiologist didn’t do any comparisons (which is what you have to do with EVERY cancer patient doing serial scans) and he skipped even talking about at least two of my tumors, one being the one we were concerned about growth. I don’t know if this man was having a bad day, was interrupted multiple times whilst reading my scans or what, but he totally dropped the ball on reading my scans. This was then a waste of over 2 hours seeing my oncologist as she had no results to talk about and was behind schedule so therefore, I waited for over an hour to be seen to find out nothing. It is a 30-minute drive one way to my oncologist as well. I was not happy. My oncologist put a call into the radiologist to re-read my scans. 10 days later, he finally posted an addendum, and it was talking in circles in medical jargon and basically said to send the scans to the Mayo Clinic and let them read them. So not happy. This was the news I got on March 6, the anniversary of Joe’s death, as we were driving to Kansas City. I had decided that day was going to be about Joe…not my cancer and this stupid cancer still managed to impinge on that day. My nurse navigator called (who is wonderful, by the way) and she made sure my latest scans were sent to the Mayo Clinic that day.

Fast forward over a week later….no word from anyone. I could see that the Mayo Clinic had received my scans and added them to my patient record. They had not touched them though. Finally I contacted my local oncologist and told her that someone needed to talk to the Mayo Clinic and let them know to read the scans and let them know I was having an issue and they needed guidance on what to do. I got a message from the Mayo Clinic two days later stating they had set up an appointment with my favorite oncologist, who is head of sarcoma specialties there. What is nice is we are doing the appointment over telehealth, so I don’t have to go there….yet. My appointment was set for April 8th, with the promise to contact me if an earlier appointment arises. I was notified and offered an earlier appointment yesterday, this one being early on April 1st. By today, I had multiple messages from the Mayo Clinic to get everything in place for this appointment. I think I have jumped through most of the hoops to be ready. I also was notified that my scans had been read by the Mayo oncology radiologist. They really know what they are looking for and are the cream of the crop when it comes to giving me ALL the information on what I am looking at. They even have a “patient view of the results” which is awesome because if you don’t understand a term, you can highlight it and see what they are talking about. It is an awesome program and I wish all hospitals offered it. Even with a medical background, it was helpful and I learned a couple of new terms.

I carry a large tumor load. This paragraph is more for my family so I don’t have to keep repeating everything. Honestly, someone once said I should put this on a caringbridge website, but I really wanted to keep my info to me…and here is a safer place for me to share everything in my life. Okay, here are the numbers. I have three tumors in my pelvis: the mass on my left side is 7.0 x 9.8 cm. It actually shrunk a bit (was 7.4 x 9.9 cm), the one on my left side is 2.1 x 3.8 cm and is stable, and the middle one (my problem tumor right now) is currently 4.8 x 5.1cm (growing from 3.9 x 3.9 cm). That is the one we are concerned about. The tumor in my L2 of my spine continues to be stable (thanks in part to Zometa IV infusions every 3 months to seal my bones to the cancer). I have a few spots on my lungs with one in my left upper lobe in the lingula (the word I learned today on that nifty patient scan program) that is 1.8 x 1.2 cm. They are keeping an eye on that one. I also had one slightly less than a cm on my right lower lobe. I have several micro nodules that in my lungs that remain unchanged from 2023.

When my sarcoma specialist and I started this journey 6 years ago (almost exactly), we decided together that we needed to decide when we felt a treatment was failing. Our agreed upon deciding factor was growth of 20%. If my tumor growth grew by 20%, it was time to move onto my new treatment. I have been so lucky. I am on my third treatment of this disease and have been on the last one for 5 years now. Do I have side effects? Yes. Have I learned to overcome most of them and lead a full life? Yes. How blessed am I to have the health to be able to travel…to be able to be a firefighter and EMT in my community? So blessed. Every extra day is a gift. The first year of fighting this disease was pretty rough…especially the first few months (I had a rare reaction to one of the chemo meds and it attacked my lungs and I just couldn’t breathe). I literally thought I would be dead in two years or less, that is how awful it was. Instead, I have been able to live and travel and do a lot of wonderful things, making memories with wonderful people. I don’t know the math, but I am guessing my doctor will just have me have more frequent scans at this point. I have a big trip planned in June to Africa and I will be going…and need the strength to make that trip. So we will see what he says. I just hadn’t had any growth in so long…I had been blessedly stable for so long, this was a shock. Is this the beginning of the end or the beginning of round two in my fight against this disease that will allow me more stability and more time? I don’t know. I know that I look at things a bit differently now. I have someone so close to me waiting for me in Heaven. I am no longer afraid of death. But I also have so much to live for. I have two great kids I love so much and a husband I thoroughly enjoy walking through life with. I will let you know what my doctor says when I see him next week. Until then, I am enjoying life here in Montana with my trusty companion, Tallinn, at my side. It is almost porch sitting weather. We both can’t wait!

Same deal with Australia and my good camera. There are several more for Australia since they had cuddly (and not so cuddly) animals to photograph along with some iconic spots in Sydney.

I finally went through and went through the photos on my good camera from our time in New Zealand. All the other photos were from my phone. My phone has a really good camera, but my professional camera can do some wonders as well. I have already told you about our trip, so here are the New Zealand photos from my good camera!