Fast Forward

Hello, hello!

Did anyone think I’d blog in 2018? It has been while! A lot of life has happened since I last blogged in March of 2017. Here’s a little crash course in all things Burkey… I quit my job, started homeschooling our kiddos, Tim quit his jobs, he started his own business, we bought a fixer upper, sold said fixer upper when things went very badly and, oh yeah, we had a baby!

The most important change in our lives is the addition of our son, Kai Ellard Burkey. He is just the most amazing little guy. He was born on June 16. So many of you began praying for him before he was born when we discovered that he has hydrocephalus and agenesis of the corpus callosum. Basically, the left and right sides of his brain do not communicate much, if at all. And to answer your next question, ‘how’s he doing?!’ He is doing great!!! In fact, his doctors are amazed at how well he’s doing. If they hadn’t seen the images of his brain during ultrasounds and his MRI they never would have diagnosed him with this at birth. What we know right now is that he could have some setbacks, as far as physical, mental or emotional growth, at any point, either now or in the future. But today he’s great. We’ve had a couple of appointments with First Steps and they’ve stopped the process because he’s doing so well on his own. All the glory goes to God!!

Tim is now a full-time real estate agent and is loving it. You can see more about what he’s up to here. I am a stay at home home-schooling mom. I’m always trying to convert my friends into homeschoolers. Wink, wink. Seriously though, we’re part of a community called Classical Conversations and to say that we love it would be an understatement. It’s amazing. Homeschooling is hard, but totally worth it. Do it. Because I said so. 😊

And, drumrolllllll, the reason many of you have landed on this page is because my cancer has returned. Blah. I’m sure you can imagine how I feel about that. My last scan before I became pregnant with Kai was in July of 2017 and everything came back clear. My next scan was done in August of 2018 and that one came back not so clear. After more scans, images and a biopsy it was confirmed on October 16 by my doctors that it’s back in a couple of places within my breast and chest wall. Right away my doctor recommended that I start an oral chemo and go to Northwestern for a second opinion and a surgery consult. Unfortunately, my health insurance won’t let me receive care outside of Indiana. I’ll just let you imagine the spectrum of emotions that we’ve been feeling throughout this process. I did start the oral chemo and was taken off it within 6 days. I was experiencing very sharp chest pains and became badly dehydrated from getting so sick. I had a consultation at IU Simon Cancer Center, and between those doctors and my local oncologist it has been decided that I should not have surgery yet, to remove the disease. I’ll have four rounds of infusion chemo, more scans and then they will determine if they can operate successfully. All that to say, this really stinks. I have a handful of more appointments this week. They’re hoping to start my new chemo this Thursday.
So that’s what’s been happening around here. Stay tuned for more updates. I’m sure I’ll have some great posts coming soon.