My Aunt Nancy - Please Pray!

I wanted to write a blog post about someone that is important to me. That person happens to be my mom's older sister Nancy. My Aunt is a strong brave lady and that has gone through a lot these past 10 years or so. So I want to highlight her today and tell you about this special lady in my life.

Not sure if everyone knows, but cancer runs very heavy in my family. My grandma is like 1 of many not sure the exact number, I want to say 12 but out of all of her brothers and sisters there is only 1 left. Every single one of my aunts and uncles, including my grandmother all passed away from cancer. And I have had several other family members (cousins) with types of cancer.

Not sure why or how this happen to my Aunt but around 10 years or so ago she started having problems with her mouth and tongue. She knew something was not right and headed to the doctor to have it check out. The doctors came back with nothing and told her she was fine. She went to several more doctors, for more opinions. Again nothing, no answers!
Months and years go by and her pains and gut feelings never went away so her daughters best friends husband who is a doctor at the mayo clinic in Minnesota decided to take a look. My Aunt and Uncle take a drive, head to Minnesota and get another biopsy taken from her tongue. This time they get some news/results, she has tongue cancer and needs surgery to have it removed. She had cancer the whole time and all those doctors never saw it, if they would have she may not have had to go through what she is going through now. But her surgery takes place and she was cancer free for a short while before it came back and had to have surgery again and again. She has had I believe 10+ surgeries now.

Here we are now and my Aunt who loves to talk has some of her tongue gone and can still talk but is sometimes hard to understand, running her cake business and being a successful business woman that is loved by so many.

Years go by and recently she had to have a tooth removed. While they were in there they found cancer again and removed it. This time while in there they broke her jaw and never knew it. Months go by and she is having a hard time eating, talking etc and thinks I cant possibly still be having problems with this tooth and heads back to the doctors where they discover that her jaw bone was broke and it died and now needs surgery to replace the dead bone.

This is were we are today. On 12-11-12 my Aunt went in for a 14 hour surgery. While in there to replace her jaw they found more cancer and hopefully removed it all. Removed the dead and broken jaw bone and placed a plate and a new bone from her leg into the jaw and one in her tongue. They also reconnected nerves and arteries in her tongue. She is now in the hospital, highly sedated to reduce injury to the jaw and help her heel. She is on a trach and feeding tube until the send her home in about a week.

If this is not one strong lady that has been through alot, then I don't know what strong is!

Fell better soon Nana! Love you and hopefully this is the end of it all.