November 2010............

Ok, so looking back at my pics of November, I only have two. I'm thinking that hopefully people will share pictures they've taken, I know that Dennis has some on his phone that need to get here on the computer.

The last part of October and early November were a little scary for me. Earlier I had gone to the dr. and had a biopsy of a spot done on my ear. Well, I found out that it was melanoma. The dr. called and told me on a Friday and all he said was that it was caught early and that I would need to have surgery to get it removed and that the surgeon's office would call me on Monday. Well, all weekend long I stressed and looked up melanoma online. The doc had said that it was caught early, but I didn't know what "early" meant. Was "early" considered stage 1 or 2? Had it spread? Needless to say I felt like and emotional mess. I never really told many people, because I thought that I would probably start to cry. Well I never heard anything on Monday, so I finally called that surgeon's office on Tuesday, and I found out that it was actually diagnosed as melanoma in-situ or stage 0. It was localized in that one spot on my ear and hadn't spread. I was so thankful for the The Lord's tender mercies, mind you I had that spot on my ear for more than a year I think. When I found out that news, I just cried because I was so relieved it wasn't too bad.

I had the surgery done and part of my ear lobe was cut and they grafted some skin to it that they took off behind my ear. They( the surgeon's office did to send back to the dermatologist) did take pictures, but I chose not to look at them (before and after) so I don't have any to put on here. It's probably for the better, I don't want to traumatize anyone!! It's healing now and hopefully as time goes on will get less noticeable.

I do have to go in to the dermatologists office every 4 months for the next 2 years to get checked and hopefully it won't come back. I went to see an oncologist (surreal) as a precautionary measure and he said that it probably wouldn't come back.


So that all happened in November, and we had Thanksgiving with my parents, Anthony's fam, and Kimber's fam. We actually went to Marie Callendar's for Thanksgiving this year. I've never been to a restaurant for it before. It was kind of nice not having to do all the cooking and cleaning up!!!