Raise your hand if you love Dolly and hate Cancer!

Well, I survived my 9 month check up. All the scans looked great (or so the doctors said, I still refuse to look at them). That was on Monday the 15th.
       On Tuesday the 16th my parents came be-bopping into my office around lunch time unannounced. Now, the Dunaway crew does not just randomly show up in my office...so I knew what they were there for. I had a gut feeling. A few weeks ago (July 14th to be exact) mom had an ovarian cyst burst and she had to be hospitalized. I went home to visit her... because I work in a hospital, I think I am a doctor.   Long story short, she ended up having a full hysterectomy on August 3 and one week later the path report came back positive for cancer in her uterus and ovaries. However, the good news is they caught it early and hopefully all was removed with surgery! She followed up with doctors at UAB and they will be doing exploratory surgery on September 15 at Brookwood Medical Center in Birmingham, and once she has recovered from that they will begin giving her 6 treatments of chemo over 18 weeks (these details are subject to change).
         Of course this was hard to swallow, but the fact that it is mainly precautionary is good. Yes, she will lose her hair. Yes she is scared.  Yes, We are tired of cancer, and no she does not want to talk about it....treat her normally, pray for her, and make her laugh, just like you did for me! I will blog every step of the way to keep you informed. Right now we are not sure of her surgery date, but when we know...you will be the first to know! Best news of all...she will be doing some guest blogging. She is funnier than I am...so enjoy those! If you are on twitter and want more day to day updates follow her at @judydunaway or me @calliedunaway.  We will post as go through this.

Below is a post from mom about her hospital stay in July:

A few weeks ago, I developed sudden SEVERE abdominal pain. After a lengthy stay in the emergency waiting room (which could be a separate story), to an all-night stay in the emergency room with tests and examinations, to a weekend hospital stay (which was NOT on my schedule), I was blessed to avoid emergency surgery for a ruptured ovarian cyst.


Here are a few things I learned during that 3 day illness:
1. I refuse to call an ambulance because my mother (Big Mama) would hear my address broadcast on her scanner that she listens to every night. I would rather die first. Do all seniors listen to a scanner? If so, I need to get ours ordered. We're almost there.
2. If you are in enough pain, you will go in public with just your nightgown on and not care what anybody thinks. Never knew I had that in me.
3. Pain for a ruptured ovarian cyst is worse than labor, much worse. Trust me.
4. No matter how much I cried, moaned, whined, and begged, the waiting room receptionist continued to tell me "I'm sorry, but most of the beds in the back are full. We'll get to you as soon as we can." "MOST" of the beds? Is this a joke? Am I being punked?
5. No matter how much I cried, moaned, whined, and begged, Mike's response to me was: "they're doing the best they can" Then he stepped it up a little and said: "ok, Judy, that's enough, you need to quieten down" If you need a caregiver when you are in severe pain, think twice before you call Mike.
6. When I needed to go to the waiting room restroom to throw up, a young LPN person had to accompany me and my wheelchair into the ladies' room. As I proceeded to put my finger down my throat to speed the process along, my young helper grabbed my hand and said: "no, don't do that. That's gross." I asked her politely to please not remove my hand from my throat again unless she wanted me to bite hers off. Well, maybe I wasn't polite, and maybe I didn't say please.
7. When you haven't had anything to drink in 36 hours because you "might" have to have surgery, it is a scientifically proven fact that you will have severe cotton mouth. In addition, your veins will be collapsed, and the lab techs will not be able to get blood from you even If they stick you 4 times in four different places. Trust me on this one. Note to lab techs: repeatedly saying I'm sorry doesn't make it feel better, but I appreciate the effort.
8. Hospital food is still terrible. Period. End of discussion.
9. The fancy hospital bed mattress never stops moving and adjusting, and it never shut up. Who can rest with all that movement and noise?
10. If you have I.V. tubes attached to you, and you need to go to the restroom,  and your daughter doesn't know how to lower the bed rail (even though the BIG BLACK button said PUSH), I would suggest that you get an early start.
11. I think it is a hospital law that states: "if the patient I.V. port is inserted in the LEFT arm, the I.V. pole must be placed on the RIGHT side of the bed, (or visa versa), so that all four tubes will be draped across the patients body at all times making the patient as uncomfortable as possible. " I think it is in section 48, subsection 162, page 98, paragraph 3.
12. I would like to declare that morphine is my new BFF. I love that stuff.

I told you mama was funnier than me. Now back to my simple, yet never boring life...I kicked off August with a trip to see Dolly Parton! If you remember the Easter bunny brought me tickets. 3 friends and I took a half day off work and went up to see her. We ate dinner at a family style Italian restaurant beforehand. Big, huge, giant mistake. Next time I am going to sit at an outdoor concert and sweat my guts out, please make sure I don't load myself up with heavy foods before hand. We got to the concert and quickly realized that we were the only people in the audience that were not gay men. The band started playing and you could hear her singing and singing and singing...and then all of the sudden this tiny white ball of hair and sequins appeared. I, along with all the gay men, squealed and jumped around. She put on quite the show. I have to wonder how did she do that with her heavy sequined dress, panty hose, high heels and a wig? I was dripping and I had on shorts and a shirt. On a side note...her waist is about the size of my wrist and yes, her boobs are indeed huge!  Mom said I should have dressed sparkly for Dolly, I had to tell mama that sparkly doesn't really do it for me in 118 degree Georgia heat! If you ever get bored, please spend that time on Ebay searching "dolly parton" you would be amazed at the hilariously tacky items that you can find for $.99 I found the least tacky tshirt possible and bought it!

First person we saw when we got out of our car. He was ready to party!

Our Italian dinner..stuffing ourselves!

Thankfully one of my friends had a sharpee and notepad in her purse. I wrote a note and took a photo with it for Dolly and mama.

So our friend Meagan got married to our friend Michael. They might be the cutest couple in the world. The wedding was in Bay Minette, AL. It was a beautiful wedding. We headed to the Bay Minette Civic center...problem is, if you plug it in wrong on an IPhone's GPS you end up at the little white shack of the Bay Minette Civic Club.

Our friends sure are cute all dressed up!

But who am I kidding, we are cuter!

Lastly I will conclude with 10 trivia facts about mama that you probably don't know:

10. Her music collection consist of everything from Sandi Patti to country music to coldplay. She is cooler that I am, I don't know a single Coldplay song.

9. She likes oranges. Maderin oranges, orange flavored water, anything orange...but she doesn't drink orange juice?

8. If you look in the glove compartment of her car you will find a mini walmart. You can find reading glasses, sunglasses, 700 packs of eclipse mint flavored gum, hairbrush, makeup bag (ziploc makeup bag at that), cd's, and who knows what else.

7. When she was little her brother threw a rock and it got stuck up her nose. The hospital had to remove it. Also when she was little they stood on the street corner and watched as MLK Jr. marched to Washington D.C. 

6.  When she gets ready in the morning she flips her head upside down and teases her hair...lots of hairspray flying around during the process. Then she reflips and it looks like a troll doll/afro. At this point she somehow gets a hair pick and makes it look pretty. Once she has it looking pretty the flood of hairspray begins again.

5.  When she was little she stood at the window while Big Mama was gone waiting on her to come home. When Big Big ask what she was doing, she responded "Thinking about getting mad."

4. She loves to sing and loudly. (We are so tone deaf in our family) She always tells us "The Bible says to make a joyful noise, not an on key noise."  She is right. She also has many other sayings that Parker and I could pop of to you in a second..."Obey exactly and immediately", "Know who you are and whose you are".

3. She takes Polaroids of her shoes and tapes them to the outside of her shoe boxes. That way she does not have to open boxes, she knows what is inside.

2. She thinks watching her kids play sports is the greatest thing in the world and she misses our activities for nothing in the world. With me for a child, there were not many athletic events to attend ;)

1. She is always right. It drives me nuts. It took me 28 yrs to admit this, but she is. I hope one day my 28 yr old will admit that I did know what I was talking about all those years!

Oh death! Where is your sting?

Oh hell! Where is your victory?

Oh Church, Come Stand in the light.

Our God is not dead, he's alive. He's alive!

1 Corinthians 15:55