Sandy Kroslack:  

Life A rollercoaster ride into oblivion! Long gone is the shy, quiet, people pleaser and now stands a strong, happy, free-willed spirit! 2008 What a horrible year!!! It started off pretty nice, we celebrated my little Bears first birthday on April 2nd. The morning was beautiful, got the tents up, decorations done, kickballs ready for a mean game of family kickball,everyone started showing up...and then....the sky opened and the rain fell like crazy!!!! It hadn't rained in MONTHS!!! So, needless to say...everyone was drenched, kids covered in mud, old people huddled as close as they could get inside the tents....Comically, everyone said that they had the greatest fun (yeah, right!). From there, my year just kept on sinking into the black abyss..... My husband got very sick, he started to swell up all over and could barely move. The doctors tested and tested, first for heart failure and then for auto-immune disease. For those who don't know, NO it is not something like AIDS (where you get a virus and it attacks your body) ~ it is more like Lupus (where as, it isn't a virus ~ it is his body attacking his body). We are currently testing to find out more and the doctors are "treating" him with water pills and steroids to keep the swelling down. As if I needed any more bad news, my father was diagonosed with squamous cell carcinoma, which is skin cancer, but it has caused tumors to form on and in his throat. They could not find a primary source of the cancer last year and the tumors grew so large that they started to "weep" out of his skin. They had no choice but to start chemo this year (Jan 09). Doctors decided to try a new drug on him called, Erbitux. It is what is used on cancer patients when chemo does not work anymore. He had a feeding tube inserted into his stomach to provide nourishment for when the radiation sores starts to set in....His first dose of chemo was a double dose and from everything we read, we feared the worst - vomiting, weight loss, all the down hill stuff...BUT 2009 had another plan: The day following his first treatment, the searing pain in his jaw stopped and he started eating like a starved horse! Not once did he get sick! His mood improved and he is ready to start radiation! 2009 I have decided to put all my fears, troubles & pains on a silver platter and give them to the Lord. I have realized that I can't fix everything....and that He has told me,"Are you done...Expand for more