Another adventure

I let this go for a while.  We have all been busy just being normal and it has been wonderful.  Samantha just reached her 4 years cancer free mark.  She is a Senior in high school and looking to graduate in May.  She is so beautiful and laughs a lot.  She has strong opinions so the house is never boring.  Here is Sam at her 18th birthday.

Daniel moved out in August of last year. He is living in Fort Collins and loving it.  He has a girlfriend (Jennie) who is going to CSU while he works at a local vegetarian restaurant.  He absolutely loves living on his own - well sort of - he lives with 3 other college boys.  He is looking forward to moving into a smaller place with Jennie. 

Isabella is in second grade at an immersion school - learning Spanish.  She loves her school and it is super fun to watch her learn another language.  At this school, 80% of her day is in Spanish with the remaining time in English. 

Jeremy is keeping busy by challenging himself with running races and mountain bike races.  He just completed a 55K (about 33 miles) over President's Day weekend.  Our summer is filling up fast.

I just started my seeds for this year's garden and mainly juggle my time between the kids, work and Jeremy's races.  I am really looking forward to the spring!

But the real reason I am going to start posting again has to do with Samantha.  Recently she was experiencing pain in her heel and around the area of her leg reconstruction.  We found that some of the hardware was coming loose.  Her doctor checked and the bones were well healed and so he suggested removing the screws which also meant we needed to remove the rod in her tibia.  About 4 weeks ago she had that surgery - but we found out last Thursday that even though the bone was well healed the allograft (dead bone used to reconstruct her leg) had broke.  At this point Samantha has 2 options.  She can have another surgery to put a metal plate back into her leg.  They would then have to use a procedure (not sure of the name) to try and stimulate bone growth around the allograft.  This would mean she would be on crutches for another 6 months with another 6 months in a brace hoping it would heal.  The doctors gave this option a 50/50 chance of working.  If it did work she would then need another surgery the following summer to even out her legs.  Currently her left leg is about 5cm shorter than her right so she walks with a limp.

Samantha's second option would be a below the knee amputation.  With this option - she would be walking in about 6 to 8 weeks.  She would have less limitations and would not need any more surgeries.  Needless to say the last week has been a rough one.  Given that this is her senior year, she has many things she wants to do.  So she has decided to go with the below knee amputation.  This is her decision and we all support it.  She knows the next 5 weeks will be pretty rough but she is focusing on everything she will be able to do once she has her prosthetic.  The sky is the limit!

Her surgery is scheduled for Wednesday March 7th in the afternoon.  We will probably be in the hospital for a couple of days.  I will post here and let everyone know how she is doing.

Here is to another adventure!