Liz Strong

I'm out of the hospital and doing great!  The hospital stay was rough, I ran a fever for a few days, didn't eat solid food Sunday-Friday and they ended up having to put this crazy pic line thing into my chest through my shoulder because my IV blew and they couldn't get a new one started.  But I really lucky to have so much support to get through it.  S and my mom took turns spending the night with me and between them and a few friends I wasn't ever alone for more than a few hours.  Now I have a clean bill of health. No more cancer!  No chemo!  No more periods!

Yep, no chemo.  The preliminary results came back and I had stage 1 ovarian and stage one uterine cancers.  My doctor feels they got everything out and I shouldn't need to do any chemo.  Yay!

Speaking of no more periods, hello hot flashes.  Surgical menopause sucks, but I'm dealing with it.  And honestly, its a worth while trade, but I can't help but complain.

So now I just have to wait to heal.  My incision is about 12 inches long and today I got the staples taken out.  It hurts but I haven't had to take anything stronger than Advil so far today.  I can't drive for another week and my mom heads back home tomorrow.  I'm going to really miss her.

I have an amazing family, not only has my mom come down for the last two weeks to help us out, S's mom came for two weeks before hand, my dad and brothers came down, S's step mom and step sister came and helped out and even got us new couches while they were here.  But the most amazing thing has been my brothers.  My two younger brothers have a brewery that is really taking off, one of my brothers comes up with the recipes and brews the beers and my youngest brother designs all of the labels.  They have beer all over the US and in Europe and are doing crazy good.  Anyway, they decided that they wanted to help our family out and so they designed a beer for me!  It comes out in October.  Here is the label:

They wanted to call it Liz Strong but were afraid of getting sued.  So it's Eliza5beth, which comes from high school were I saw a book with a similar title and was tired of being one of several Elizabeth's in school and started adding the silent 5.  And then the animals on the label are our dog Pedro and our one eyed cat Malcolm and our tabby PJ.  The cats aren't with us anymore, but they were near and dear to us.  Ok, so even cooler than having a beer named after you is that they are using the money from the profits of the beer to pay for all of my medical bills.  AND they will be using the profits to donate to Uterine and Ovarian Cancer Research and Awareness.  The bigger bottles will come with a bracelet from Uterine and Ovarian Cancer.  So very cool. I cried when the they told me.