Ah, yes, family.
These past few months I’ve been spending a lot time with family members.
For good reason too. I mean, don’t get me wrong my family is pretty awesome, but more then ever right now, we all need each other.
During the summer of last year my grandfather was diagnosed with throat cancer.
In September he started his treatments of chemo and radiation.
It went….
8 weeks of once a week for chemo.
And,
5 weeks of 5 days a week of radiation.
It was so hard on him.
I have never seen my grandfather like that.
As a photographer, I’ve seen many heart breaking pictures of people going through this. The pain, the agony, the heart ache of what the families go through breaks my heart and I start to cry.
Just from a picture.
This was so different. I just cried every day cause this was real life for me.
Not just some picture that I was looking at.
After his treatments were done and he was getting back to normal, he had to go through a few more test to see if the cancer had shrunk or disappeared. In the fall close to winter of last year, he found out that is shrunk to a 4.1 to 3.9. But it was still there. It wasn’t gone.
So they gave him the option of surgery.
If he doesn’t do the surgery, he has so many years to live and the cancer could come back.
Or, he can do the surgery and have a certain percentage of living a longer life.
(Has his oldest granddaughter, this is hard on me cause I lost one grandfather already and I don’t want to loose my only grandfather)
As of the last few months, my grandfather has decided to do the surgery.
I was informed by him that it could go one or two ways when he goes in.
1- they could cut his stomach to see if they could use the lining of it for his throat. If so, then they will proceed with repairing his throat.
2- they could cut into his stomach and if they can’t use the lining of it, they’ll close him up and send him home.
You can see why I’m choosing to spend time with family now.
April 16th will be here before I know it.
I used to celebrate it cause that’s mine and my husbands dating anniversary.
Now, it’s a date that I hope has the best out come for my grandfather.
As the date nears, and even after the surgery date, I will be having family members come and visiting him.
It will take a few months for him to recover. And thankfully he has all of us
here to help him with that.
We love you grandpa, and we want nothing but the best for ya!!!
Not the best picture of me, but I don’t care. This was before all of my grandfather treatments.