Numb.

I'm ready to explain what's going on with my dad.

My dad had been having a lot of excruciating back pain so he went in for a MRI to try and diagnose the problem. The results of the MRI shocked us all....he had a large tumor on his spine that needed surgery immediately. That was about a week and a half ago.

Last Wednesday was the surgery. Spinal surgery is extremely risky, for obvious reasons since the spine is the backbone (literally) of the body. We were so nervous going into the surgery because we didn't know if removing the tumor was going to require major spine rebuilding and a long recovery.

We sat around for hours on Wednesday in a crowded waiting room and eventually got word that the surgery went well. They were able to remove most of the tumor without any major spine damage and should help relieve a lot of the back pain he was having.

Then came the scary news.

They took a piece of the tumor for testing and found out it was cancerous.

Plasmacytoma to be exact.

What the hell is plasmacytoma? Basically it's a malignant plasma cell tumor growing within soft tissue or within the skeleton. Luckily, it's easily treatable with localized radiation therapy, which my dad is going to start receiving next week.

The problem with plasmacytoma is that in 70% of the cases patients with plasmacytoma later develop multiple myeloma within a 10 year period.

Multiple myeloma is a cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow and can affect many parts of the body. Chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant are the most effective treatment. {Can you say deja vu??? Here we go again.}

At this point my dad still has to undergo a bunch of tests this week, including a bone marrow aspiration, to determine whether he already has multiple myeloma or if it is only plasmacytoma. Obviously we are hoping for the latter.

So that's where we stand right now. It has all happened so fast and unexpectedly that it's been really hard for me to come to terms with that scary word: CANCER.

I think the best way to describe how I've been feeling is numb. I really don't think it's fully hit me yet and I'm still trying to come to terms with it.

The good news is that my dad is a fighter and he certainly won't let a little thing called cancer take control of him without a fight. Plus, he's got an army of prayers raining down on him from all of the people who love him.

So as you can see, I've been dealing with a lot of emotions lately and just haven't felt up to blogging. I guess I sorta lost my mojo, if you will. Plus, I spent Tuesday night through Sunday afternoon in Houston with my family so I've been away from home for a while.

I was feeling very overwhelmed by returning to work today and acting like everything was normal when everything felt completely abnormal to me.

Luckily my friend Connie brought Alex and I dinner for tonight which was a HUGE relief since I just couldn't muster up the energy to go grocery shopping.

So I present to you my first What's for Dinner post in about two weeks:


Delicious lasagna, salad & garlic bread a la Connie.

Food never tasted so good. Seriously.

Thanks, Connie!

And thank you all for still reading my blog and not giving up on me. I promise I'll try to get my mojo back ASAP!