Focht Family Blog

This must be the month. First, Andrea received good news. The lymph node contained tissue that is supposed to be gone in adults. I heard sinus tissue, mom heard thymus tissue… not sure which it was. Anyways, no malignancy was found. They are meeting with the oncologist this week to decide if they need to do anything with it. The thoracic surgeon wants her to have another CT scan in three months and if it has grown he will want to remove it at that point.

Today we had to take Misty to an emergency vet and she ended up with a biopsy. On Monday or so she had a small dime sized raw spot on her front paw behind the pad (like at her wrist area). Thursday morning we woke up to blood everywhere. She had chewed on it until it was a 3-4″ square of raw skin. I have been rinsing it with peroxide and bandaging it but she has been crying a lot and she has been wanting to lay outside. Nathan thinks that might be because nobody is bumping into her outside. However, she hasn’t eaten anything for 2 days and ate very light the 2 days before that. She is barely drinking water and today she was breathing strangely with shivers.

The vet looked at it. She was concerned it might have been a mast cell tumor. They gave her pain meds, sedated her slightly and cleaned out the wound. She prepared a slide from what was in the wound and said she thought she saw mast cells so then we had to wait longer so she could take a biopsy to send to the lab and also do a chest x-ray to see if there was anything in her lungs. Her lungs are clear. We will know by Tuesday if Misty’s biopsy shows cancer.

Andrea had her biopsy today. They were able to get enough without going through her back, although Tim said they had to spread her ribs. She will stay tonight at the hospital. The good news is that they said at first look it looked benign. They won’t know for sure until Friday so keep the prayers coming.

We have been without phone or internet for the last few days. We were staying at a campground on the Upper Iowa river and it is down in a valley. This was a weekend of firsts. We survived our first year of homeschooling!! Samantha is officially done with 3rd grade. 4th grade has already been shipped and is waiting for us in NY so she has off from school until July 15th. Timmy is anxious to start Kindergarten as well. This weekend we had a book burning. As we finished subjects we put the books into a pile that was used as firestarter for the campfires. :)

We also had the first canoe trip with the kids. We rented two canoes and the owners of the campground dropped us at a point at the river that is about 2 1/2 hours from the campground. We had one canoe with girls in it and one for the boys. Nobody fell in! At one point Nathan had to drag Joshua in because he fell asleep hanging over the edge. Both of the boys were pretty wet at the end just from putting their arms over the sides but it was a fun experience and we saw lots of bald eagles flying over the river. I didn’t take the camera with me because I was afraid it would end up in the water but I will try to catch up with what pictures I have tonight or tomorrow. :)

Andrea is my sister-in-law in Atlanta. This week has been very busy and most of it has been spent worrying about Andrea. On Friday, she went to the hospital with chest pains. They scanned her chest and found that she had lymph nodes that were enlarged. What they saw looked like cancer so they sent her to an oncologist. The oncologist told her he thought it was most likely Hodgkins Lymphoma and she went today to see a thoracic surgeon about getting a biopsy. They are going to try to do it through her trachea or through a small incision in her neck. If they do, she will be back home that same day and be fine. If not, they will have to go through her chest or back which will have a 10 day recovery. After the biopsy comes back, they will do a PET scan if it is malignant. Depending on the results of the scan they will then test her bone marrow. She is supposed to have the biopsy on Tuesday and if they end up having to go through the chest or back then mom will be traveling to Atlanta to help out while she recovers. They have two daughters who are 4 and 2.

We did a few things in Missouri and Minnesota. I have put the pictures on my computer but haven’t gotten farther than that. Samantha is in her last week of school and then 3rd grade is done!! Tomorrow we will be on our way to Iowa for a few days. I will update everything this weekend once school is over.

Wow! It is amazing how much high altitude can get to you. By the time we got up to Rocky Mountain all of the adults had slight headaches. The drive was beautiful. This is a picture of one of the pull offs. Unfortunately it was overcast or you would be able to see the peak in the background.

We stopped at another area where there was a good view of the surrounding mountains.

Todd told us that if we saw cars pulled over that someone saw an animal and we should pull over as well. Sure enough… there were elk everywhere. Here are two males eating. We loved their horns. They were fat and fuzzy. Timmy said they looked fake. :)

They were losing their winter coats so when they shook you could see the fur flying off of them.

We started trying to see how many different kinds of animals we could spot. Nathan spotted a group of sheep up on a hill.

I spotted some deer down another hill.

While driving out of the park we saw elk in some strange places. We saw them on the golf course which was funny because there were people playing golf. One of the other places we saw them was in the yards of houses. I couldn’t resist getting a picture of one of them.

The elk has its back turned but you can see him in front of the tree on the left.

One of the other animals we have seen a lot of in Colorado is prairie dogs. Apparently they are a problem here. Timmy hadn’t seen any of them that we had pointed out so we found a large field that was full of them and pulled over to watch them. I tried to get pictures but I scared most of them off. Here is one that was a little braver then the rest.

We had a great time in Colorado and we are already planning what we want to see the next time through. We are now driving though Kansas on our way to Branson, MO.

Friday we made plans to meet Melissa and her husband Todd (Skippy) in Boulder at the Pearl Street Mall. It reminds me of a bigger City Market (Savannah). Melissa and Todd had to come to Boulder to pick up a friend of theirs who had come for a visit. Todd and their friend were counselors together at Magic Camp. Todd is an amazing juggler and that is the biggest thing my kids remember about him. He tried to teach them how to juggle the last time we saw him but Samantha was only 5 and Timmy 2. I was pregnant with Josh the last time we saw him. We watched his juggling act from Magic Camp last night. He told us if you go to You Tube and put in Skippy Magic Camp it comes up. It is a two part video that is very cute.

Anyways… here is their family: Melissa, Todd, and Abigail.

We walked around with them for awhile and the kids found many places to play. Here the kids are playing on rocks.

Todd managed to get all of the kids together for a picture so I took a picture of them all as well.

One of the prettiest parts of this outdoor shopping was the tulips they had planted everywhere. Here are two of the prettiest sections.

While walking the kids found a pig outside of a store and took a ride. This is Abigail with Timmy behind her.

At this point we decided to get some lunch. Unfortunately there was a bit of a wait for a table for 10 so the kids entertained themselves while we waited. This is Josh trying to play patty cake with Abigail. Samantha was watching to make sure they were doing it right.

Next they found a large rock that had water running down it on all sides. Needless to say when we were called to our table Josh was pretty soaked.

During lunch Todd convinced us that we needed to drive up to Rocky Mountain National Forest. So, after lunch we said our goodbyes and started the drive to Rocky Mountain. Next post…..