I have not written a blog in a WHOLE MONTH! A lot has changed in the last month and I have been extremely preoccupied. I went from living in the Colorado mountains to living in my boyfriends house very quickly and unexpectedly.
When I left Wisconsin back in April, I was planning to come back in August for a friends bachelorette party. It lined up with State Fair so I thought "heck yeah, I'll come back for both!" The weekend prior to the party, I was still in the mountains about an hour outside of Colorado Springs - a 17 hour drive from Milwaukee. I was going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to make the trip. I wanted to see friends and have a good time but it was suuuuch a long drive. I decided it didn't make sense for me to travel that far for a week just to turn around and drive back. I told my friend I was not going to make it to the bachelorette party around 9:30am on Friday morning.
I have had a boyfriend (Mike) for over a year and he lives in the Milwaukee area. Back in May, we took Kona on a 4-ish mile walk and he complained about hip pain afterwards. We figured it was just from the walk.
Fast forward about a month and Mike is moving from his apartment into his new house and his leg started to get super swollen. It didn't really hurt, but it was a balloon. He talked to a few friends and Googled a few things and came to the conclusion that he tore his abductor muscle during the move. Those take 4-8 weeks to get better and because he was moving (figuratively and literally) we assumed it wasn't healing because he wasn't really resting it.
All of a sudden one day he had excruciating pain in his leg. It lasted two days and he decided to make a doctor's appointment.
He got an ultrasound done and they couldn't see anything. They thought maybe the swelling was from a blood clot and recommended a MRI. He scheduled that, but the appointment took two weeks. Within that two weeks, he actually came to visit me in Colorado for a few days. That was the first time I saw his leg in person and it was definitely swollen but I attributed it to him not resting it when he should have.
When he got back to Milwaukee, he got the MRI done on that Tuesday. On Friday morning, he received a call telling him to go to the ER because there was a mass discovered in his MRI. By 1pm, he was informed that he "probably" has cancer but it would not be confirmed until the biopsy next week. That's when I decided I needed to come home.
The drive home was absolutely HORRID. I mentioned earlier that it was shown as a 17 hour drive on my GPS but the RV cannot go 75MPH on the highway. I also have to stop every few hours for Kona so the drive took a lot longer than 17 hours. We drove from 6am - 7:30pm on Saturday and 6am-5:30pm on Sunday... WOOF.
It was confirmed about a week later that he does in fact have Follicular Lymphoma at age 36. He had his first chemo treatment last week and will continue those through the end of the year when we will reevaluate and see how the treatment is going.
Cancer is terrifying. Lymphoma is a type of cancer that has a high potential to revisit later on in life, so there's a good chance this will not be the only time Mike goes through chemo. Thankfully his body took the first treatment pretty well and he did not have any major side effects, but it is supposed to get progressively worse. We are crossing our fingers that the symptoms remain tame but honestly, as long as the chemo does what it is supposed to, the side effects will be worth it.
ANYWAY. If you made it this far, that is why I am in Wisconsin. This was obviously not the plan but life throws curveballs sometimes, right? And there's nothing we can do except to deal with what it throws at you.
We are participating in the Light the Night Walk hosted by the Leukemia and Lymphoma on September 26th. IF you are able to donate to this great organization, please consider doing so. Everything helps!
If you have any fun new restaurants I should try, festivals to attend, trails to hike, etc. in Wisconsin, let me know! I will be here until at least January 1, 2025.