We will beat this.

Four words I never wanted to have to say: My husband has cancer.

The C word. Just thinking about it sucks the wind out of me and sends the blood rushing loudly through my veins. I am still wrapping my brain around it, and it is taking every fiber of my being to keep a smile on my face for my sweet beautiful, innocent babies. I don't think I've ever been this scared in my life.

We knew something was off. Back in April, Mr.P noticed his pants were a little loose. He stepped on the scale and found he had lost nearly 20 lbs, just since P5 was born 4 months earlier. Unintentional weight loss (while a fantasy of many women!) is never a good thing. He went to the doctor, they ran some tests, they didn't find anything serious. They said to wait. Come back if he lost more weight. Another month and another 10 lbs lost. More tests. A possible thyroid issue, but nothing to be alarmed about right now. A few weeks with another 7 lbs lost and we knew that we needed to be more aggressive. Some x-rays, a CT scan with contrast, an MRI and more blood tests. A referral to a specialist. Today, a consultation with a surgeon.

Diagnosis: Kidney cancer.

I need to remember to breath. I find myself holding my breath, then tensing up only to feel a moments relief with a good deep breath. Where do we go from here? There are still a lot of questions to be answered, but hopefully we will learn more very soon and be able to fight this. We have to fight this, there are no other options. There is too much at stake.

We have many things to be thankful for; so far they are diagnosing it as stage 1 kidney cancer. The surgery has excellent results. The one scary unknown right now is that they said the amount of weight he has lost is not typical of this early stage of kidney cancer, so they still need to do more tests to rule out that the kidney cancer is not a malignancy from another kind of cancer. He will be seeing another specialist this week to rule out some other things. Also, there is the chance that the weight loss is something parasitic/intestinal that is not cancer related. If that is the case, then we will be so grateful for all of this testing having found the kidney cancer so early.

*Note: if you know me in real life, please keep us in your prayers. Also keep this info on the down low for now. Seriously. It is still new, scary and raw. We don't know how we are going to approach friends with this news yet. Mr.P doesn't want pity or unnecessary worry from our friends. He tends to internalize his feelings and hold his cards close, while I NEED to talk about it. I need to let it out because bottling it up makes me feel worse. Please just pray for us. Just writing this out has made me feel better. I will likely be posting a lot more in the coming weeks.