It's Been a While...

I'm pretty sure that, for anyone who's followed this blog for longer a few months, it comes as no surprise that I am totally inconsistent in keeping it up.  I know if you look back through the dates, it looks like I was pretty good (at least until about 1 year before Mark's tumor), but most of those were done over a weekend and I would do 3-6 months or so at a time and cheat on the dates....  This most recent stretch has been the most consistent I've been in years about it.  Go me!  Too bad I've failed miserably over the last few weeks...


So, now I'll update several weeks in one shot and hope this makes up for my slacking off.

Mark finished his last radiation treatment on Monday (the 22nd).  That Thursday we were back in the office again with Mark complaining of things not tasting good.  Turns out he managed to get thrush in his mouth.  Apparently it's caused by a fungus (yeast) that most of us have on our bodies naturally anyways.  Usually our immune system will help keep its abnormal growth in check, but since Mark's immune system is anything but normal at the moment, the fungus (yeast) got out of control and now he has thrush (and subsequently can't eat too much of anything solid without getting sick)

We have tried a couple of different things to get rid of it.  He was on an oral pill for a while, but that didn't even seem to make a dent.  After a few slightly frustrating phone calls to the doctors offices (yes, two of them), we were basically told they had no idea what to do about it since that didn't work.  On a spur of the moment trip to a women's cancer survivor support group at the radiation office, the nurse there was surprised that who ever I talked to didn't have an answer, and she had me bring Mark back in to see the doctor the next day.  Mark got a new prescription for an oral wash.  He does not love that stuff (it is so nasty! - I made the mistake of trying just a tiny drop of it - just so I knew what it was I was pushing Mark to do when he didn't want to swish the meds in his mouth - yea, I'm not doing that again...)  We thought it was making a difference, and it might be, but it's not enough.  He still can't eat.  We're coming up on 3 weeks soon.

On a positive note, he's lost a lot of the extra weight the steroids put on him!  Somehow I'm sure that not eating for the last few weeks has helped with that...

-------------

Over the last weekend in July we went on our Annual Gardner Campout.  Technically, it was the first year, but we're pretending we've been doing this for as long as we can remember...  :)  We went to Flaming Gorge and had a blast.  Mark still couldn't eat, my brother had a rather severe reaction to a bite (bite on his back - face and lips swollen...  yea, it was pretty bad), Emily got lost hiking, everyone was filthy - the youngest of us got that the worst, it rained two of the nights, and we brought way too much food with us that we had to sort through to find what we were cooking for any given meal.

Actually, that makes it sound bad, but it really was fun to get to see everyone and most of us have camping gear that rarely gets used, so it was fun to break that out.  We even got to see some old friends that we haven't seen in years.  Greg and Paula heard of our camping trip and came and spent a night with us.  It was fun to see them again and spend some time catching up and playing games.  We all got to go to the Dinosaur museum in Vernal (where we randomly ran into friends that Mark knew growing up and that we had gone to church with for a while before we moved).  We also got to go the water at Flaming Gorge and played there for a while, some swimming, some toe dipping, some skipping rocks.  We made s'mores and wump-ums, roasted starbursts and sour gummy worms (not sure I recommend that last one - it was an experiment for my Dad, but he didn't seem impressed and apparently it was hard to get them to stay on the stick...), we got an astronomy lesson with a laser pointer (on the first night before the clouds started taking over the evenings) and the kids stayed up late and went on many hikes with aunts, uncles, dads, and grandparents (no, I did not go with them, I'm a horrible mother - and I'm many months pregnant - hiking is not currently my thing...  I'm just glad that other people were willing to take that part over for me  :)  )

After all is said done, we're looking forward to next year!