Time Change...Tumzilla spared another two hours...

Amy's surgery has been pushed forward two hours to 8:30 Tuesday morning.  Good Luck, Amy!!

Do you have an "AMY STORY OR MEMORY?"

So...we decided it would be fun for Amy to hear from some of her friends and co-workers after she begins recovery from her surgery.  Anyone who has a history with Amy has been privy to her special sense of humor and infectious laugh.

The blog is open for any comments...no need to join as a follower.  Just write your memory or story in the "comment" section and your post will be there.  Once she is well enough to read them, we can show them to her.  Just knowing how much everyone cares is certainly good medicine, but there is nothing she enjoys more than a good laugh...even at herself!

24 Hours Left

Today, Amy Jo is off to Kansas City to take care of business at work before she checks in at the hospital tomorrow morning.  She baked cookies for her advisory class (NO...she will NOT be teaching today!) and gathered up some materials for her subsitute teachers to ease them into covering for her at work during her recovery.  Her students know something is wrong, but they haven't been told yet about Tumzilla.  She plans to tell them today herself rather than letting them find out through the St. Teresa's rumor mill. 

The staff and administration at school, of course, were told last week.  The support has been incredible.  The principals, fellow teachers and staff are making things as easy as possible for Amy, and it appears that everyone is gearing up to make her recovery as stress free as possible.  Any one who knows Amy understands that her job is her life...and Amy has been so sick the past 6 months (without a diagnosis) that she's been feeling guilty about losing passion for her students, her athletes and her work life in general.  The fact that her brain was getting squished to smithereens inside her skull by a large foreign object is no excuse.  Amy is not used to making excuses at work.  She is used to performing and doing a good job, so this entire year (in hindsight) has been, (her words) "torture" for Amy.  Since just getting out of bed without having a blindness episode, dizzy spell, falling down or tremendous headache each day takes such effort, it's understandable that she would lose some passion.  For us at least.  Amy, of course, is still concerned about her students.  Go figure.

When she is done taking care of business at work, she'll head to her sister Aarons house to spend her last night with Tumzilla and her family.  Her mother and sisters will transport her to KU medical center at the crack of dawn and Heather and I will be hanging around too.

Before I sign off for the day, I want to mention one of her best friends Heather MacIntosh.  For those of you who don't know Heather, Amy and she have been the best of friends after meeting at St. Teresa's.  They have traveled to Africa, Cuba, Mexico, and all over the U.S. together.  They have been roommates for several years, and soul mates for much longer.  Ironically, Heather was diagnosed with breast cancer in January and has just had a double mastectomy (at the ripe old age of 37).  Even while this tumor was killing Amy off bit by bit before her diagnosis, she was by Heathers side during her ordeal.  Well guess who was right by Amy's side during this whole thing last week?  One week out of surgery, still bent over from the pain in her chest, Heather spent the entire day at the hospital with us while Amy was getting her dignosis, meeting with the surgeon, etc.  Pretty cool to have friends like that, huh?

Tomorrow is the big day and I'll have plenty to post when it's all over.  Stay tuned...

What's Going to Happen to Tumzilla???

Tumzilla is only going to reside in Amy's head for two more days.  The Surgeon thinks he will be able to remove the majority of the tumor without causing any neurological or physical side effects.  He indicated that he may have to leave some of it depending on the brain functions that will be affected if he removes the entire tumor.  If this is the case, Tumzilla will become Tinytuma and Tinytuma will be abolished with chemo.  He will not know her exact prognosis until her skull is opened, he can actually see the tumor, and the pathology of the tumor is reported.  We did learn that the pathology report is done right in the operating room.  Rather than opening the skull for a biopsy, closing it back up and scheduling surgery for a later date (as is done with soft tissue biopsies) the biopsy and excision of the tumor takes place at one time.  This is will reduce the trauma of enduring two surgeries.

Now the good news...per the neurosurgeon, the location of the tumor (right frontal lobe), slow growth (it's been growing two to three years), and Amy's good overall general health plus young age, he called her prognosis "excellent."  His exact words "If you MUST have a brain tumor, this is a pretty nice brain tumor to have."

Amy will be checking into KU Medical Center at 6:30 am on Tuesday, March 1st for her surgery and a three to five day hospital stay.  Afterward, she will go home for what is expected to be a month long recovery period.  Amy's mother and sister will be taking her to the hospital that morning, and she will have plenty of us waiting nervously in the waiting room for the surgery to be completed.  After her surgery, she will be moved to neuro-intensive care unit until the doctors consider it safe to move her to a regular hospital room. (Amy plans to ask the doctor if she can keep Tumzilla in a formaldahyde jar so she can impress her biology and anatomy students with a really cool item.  She thinks her students will prefer that over worms and dead piglets, but Amy's always been a little strange.)

Once Amy is released to go home, her mom, Lorena will be staying with her during her initial days of recovery.  My brother, Danny has been working at her house getting it ready to be a "recovery home."
He's finishing the remodeling of her bathroom which includes installing a new shower, putting up blinds, installing a XXXL dog door for her horse...I mean dog, Ollie (a gorgeous mantle great dane).

Amy is in very good spirits right now...she finally knows that she's not going crazy, imagining her symptoms (severe headaches, partial blindness, dizzyness, electrical zaps in her head, and intolerable pain and pressure in her head and back.  She has also experienced numerous episodes of blacking out, extreme fatigue, confusion and memory loss).  Since she finally has a diagnosis, her doctors ordered her some prescription pain medication to tide her over until surgery which has also helped her feel better.

Lastly on today's post, we wanted everyone to have her contact information and address:

Amy J. Carlson
1038 Lawrence Ave
Lawrence, KS  66049
Phone:  785-979-8242
E-mail:  acarlson@stteresasacademy.org

Amy also has a facebook account for any blog followers who have not befriended her yet.

Again...most of you who know Amy well understand that putting herself out there, baring her soul, discussing her illness etc. is very uncharacteristic of her.  But we (her friends) have already seen her spirits lifted by the outpouring of love and support she has received since the news of her predicament has spread.  It means a lot that you care and are concerned about her, and it warms my soul to see her smile when she gets a facebook post, a text or an e-mail from her friends and co-workers.

TUMZILLA Attacks...

In hindsight we should have been more vigilant about dogging on Amy (Jo, to her family) to see yet another doctor.  She hadn't been herself in...well...forever.  Former workaholic teacher and passionate coach, the old Amy was slipping away right before our eyes.  No one could figure out what was wrong with her, least of all Amy.  She could barely drag herself to work, much less try to figure out which doctor to see next.  No one could find anything wrong with her...from diabetes to hypertension to thyroid issues...Amy was fine.  She was beginning to think it was all in her head and that she was going crazy....  Little did she know that it really was ALL in her head. 

Since the discovery of "Tumzilla" last Wednesday morning Amy's life has turned upside down.  All our lives have. While trying to keep working, coaching and supporting her dear friend, Heather MacIntosh in her battle with breast cancer, she was slowly but surely losing herself.  A baseball sized tumor approximately 2 -3 years old was finally taking it's knockout punch in her brain. It took an ordinary eye doctor at a routine eye exam to discover why she felt so awful. He looked into her dilated eyes and saw a mass pressing on her optic nerve.  He immediately had her doctor order an MRI which revealed an 8 cm tumor in her right frontal lobe. 

More information tomorrow. 

Amy's Battle Begins...

For all the friends, family, co-workers, students and anyone else who wants to follow this journey with Amy...this blog is for you.  ANYone who knows Amy well realizes that she would never ACTUALLY produce a blog dealing with her health issues.  Too much trouble, why bother, I need to see another episode of Dr. G Medical Examiner, blah, blah, etc. etc.

Those of us who are like family to her, who love her, put up with her idiosyncrasies, laugh until we cry (when she is on a roll) and have earned the right to be called her closest friends have decided to keep folks updated through this blog.  Because we KNOW how many lives she has touched, how many people love her, and that many of you will be interested in her battle with... TUMZILLA (she named it...not us.) 

We have her blessing to post the updates and the information, but beware!!  Tumor humor is rampant right now as Amy begins her battle to save her life.

Her friends, Kathy Allen, Meghan Bardwell and Lauren Bova