Health updates on the Mrs. Messinas

Michelle hurt her knee doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu a few weeks ago. She was in a knee brace for the services and found out the morning of Joe’s visitation that she would need surgery to repair it. That surgery was yesterday. She is home and doing well, surrounded by caring friends. Thank you, prayer warriors, for lifting her in prayer while she was in surgery. Now comes the hard part…recovery. Please continue to keep her in your prayers as she has the lovely task of being on crutches for the next 4-6 weeks (anyone who has ever been on crutches is inwardly groaning, I know). A special shout out to Joe’s best friend, Zac Oslica, who when with her to the hospital, stayed with her there and got her situated at home and stayed with her all day. I still say I can totally see Joe looking down at Zac with his hand over his heart, the other one outstretched to him, a smile on his face but tears in his eyes and a look of love for all Zac is doing for Michelle when he can’t be with her himself. Zac, you are a rockstar. Thank you.

Whilst Michelle was in surgery in Kansas City yesterday morning, I was at the cancer center at Bergan Mercy all morning. I had blood work done, another one of those 2 inch needles stuck in my hip (that is every 28 days), and a zometa infusion to seal my bones to prevent any more cancer getting into my bones. I already have a spot on my L2 on my spine, but that has remained stable and it has not spread to other bones yet. The Zometa is every 3 months. I then left there and walked around the corner in the building to the radiology department and had my 3 months scans on my chest, pelvis, and abdomen with and without contrast. Always a good time. (not). It was a long morning. I kept telling Michelle that at least she got to sleep through most of her trip to the hospital! This was a pretty hard trip for me. Usually Joe calls me or texts me when I am at the hospital for these longer treatments. He was by far my biggest “kick cancer’s butt” cheerleader. I was really missing him. The oncology nurses there are stellar. They knew I was off…no smiling…even under the mask. They were all so kind when I told them what had happened. Which made the tears flow even more freely. We are still unable to have a support person with us in the infusion room due to COVID. It is a lonely place where you are looking at all those others around you…many very sick…wondering how long it will be until you reach that point. The infusion center also looks out over two cemeteries. Yeah, that is great for cancer patient morale as well. The weather turned a bit crazy yesterday and it started snowing like crazy for about 20 minutes. My only comic relief of the morning was that I was sitting their watching this poor man on a riding lawnmower mowing the grass around the hospital grounds in the driving snow. Only in Nebraska. Didn’t stop him. He just kept mowing. We were all just watching him from the window….if he had only looked up.

For the first time ever, I had the results from my CT scans given to me by my local oncologist and within a day of the scans. So Rich and I had a zoom meeting with my doctor and he said he only had 3 words to tell me: STABLE ONCOLOGICAL STATUS. These were good words. I have been on this new treatment plan for a year as of this month and I am stable. He seemed a little surprised by that. He seems to be the kind of oncologist to throw the kitchen sink at cancer, no matter what it does to the patient. I brought up this treatment to him about 16 months ago and he dismissed it. I finally brought in research studies backing up my idea. He is still surprised that it is working better than traditional chemo. That’s okay. Let him be surprised. My quality of life is so much better. I will be meeting via zoom with my sarcoma specialist at the Mayo Clinic on April 14th. I should be hearing the same message….keep on doing what you are doing. Here’s my traditional post from treatment day: