Sunday, March 2, 2014

Voices of Cholangiocarcinoma: Voice #5 Carrie


How do I tell the most important, the most horrible, the most intense story of my life??? 
The story of Cholangiocarcinoma.  How did this cancer touch my families life??  

My 38 year old husband, my 5 year old son, my 3 year old daughter, my 2 year old son
… me at 36 years old.  That is how old we were when Cholangio was introduced to 
our family.  That is when reality hit our family in a way I never dreamed.  


Travis Roberts, my husband and owner of a successful concrete company was 
out on a business trip entertaining clients. He was hit with major pain.  
Pain that he knew and recognized.  Kidney stone pain.  After a very long evening of 
entertaining he ended up in the ER.  He was about 2 hours from home and by 
himself when he was told that yes, he had kidney stones, but he also had multiple 
lesions on his liver as well as enlarged lymph nodes.  The ER doc said that he better 
get home quick and get all of this checked out.  

That was the 11th of April.  

By the 23rd of April and after many tests and google searches and sleepless 
nights we were told that Travis had cancer.  I will always remember that it was 
the 23rd of April because that was 1 day after his 38th birthday.  It was early in
 the morning on the 23rd that we heard, "Yes, Mr Roberts YOU HAVE CANCER".  
And it was early afternoon on the 23rd when we were told by a PA at a GI office 
that Travis had Cholangiocarcinoma.  A cancer that there really wasn't any 
treatment for. We were told GO HOME AND DIE!  No Joke!  That is what we heard. 

We went to doc after doc for more opinions and more opinions.  
Some doc's had a nice delivery and some doc's had horrible delivery, but over 
and over we heard... There is no cure.  You will die!!! Punch in the gut after punch 
in the gut.  

In all honesty, I can't go back to that time.  It was so horrible.  It was so painful.
 It was so Unbelievable.  My husband was having a major spiritual struggle at
 the time of his diagnosis and when he was diagnosed he felt that God was really
 trying to get his attention.  He had a change of heart and change of faith like I have 
never seen in my life.  Travis felt so guilty for coming to God when he was faced 
with such horrible news.  I can say that 10 months later he is still a changed man.  
A man that was brought to God through horrible circumstances.  That is one of 
many blessings that has come from Cholangiocarcinoma.  Yes, I said it.  
Blessings have come from Cholangiocarcinoma.  I think that most of my fellow 
Cholangio family (those suffering as we are) would tell you that when something 
like this happens you love more than you ever knew you could, and you hurt more 
than you ever knew you could.  The joy is big and the pain is bigger.  

Now, like I said, we are 10 months in.  We have gone through 2 treatments in a 
cancer where there are only 3 or 4 to try.  This is not a cancer where the doctors 
expect a cure out of any of the treatments.  Oh, no.  They make it all too clear that 
they are just trying to give us as much time, quality time, as they possibly can.  

The treatments are given for as long as they work and they don't usually work 
very long. The first and best treatment option worked on Travis for about 4.5 months.  
The second treatment was a trial that we were so excited about.  It came out of
 the number one cancer hospital in the country, MD Anderson.  That trial did not 
work at all. It was a major disappointment.  Now we are on what they call the third 
line of defense.  It makes me so sick that we are only 10 months in and we are on
our third line of defense.  That doesn't leave us with many to go.  We are so 
fortunate to have a doctor who is willing to fight for us.  He is going to do everything 
that he possibly can to give Travis the longest life possible.  He is working with 
top docs at MD Anderson and he will do all that he can do.  We believe in him 
and that is all that we can ask for.  

Travis and I have been through so many phases in the last 10 months.  
We go through different emotions daily… or actually hourly.  

We are both  strong believers in Jesus and we pray for a miracle.  
The nurses and doctors encourage us to pray for a miracle because they say that 
they have seen them.   Over and over… they have seen them.  

So we know that the only cure for Travis will be through a miracle. 
We pray daily that he will be given a miracle and at 
the same time we realize that there are so many wonderful people who are not 
given a miracle.  

We realize that this cancer may win in this world, but we have 
both been given a beautiful eternal perspective and we believe that the cancer
will not win forever.  Does that make our day to day easy? No, not easy.  But, we 
were not promised easy.  Not in this life.  So, we are doing our best.  

Some days we are happy and some days we are punching walls. 
Seriously, punching walls.  

Come on, what would you do if you were told that the treatment that you 
had been given and had been making you sick… really sick for 2 months 
did not work at all?  

You might punch a wall!!

That is the real part of this.  

That is the hard part.  

But, we are living it all.  The good days and the punching walls days.  

We are living each and every one.  I can't even say to the fullest, 
but I can say we are doing our best.  This is what I say every day and what gets 
me through,  "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart and lean not on your own 
understanding.  In all of your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your path". 

Love, 
Carrie Roberts
CC Wife, Atlanta GA 


-------------------------------------------------------


Thanks Carrie for sharing the story of your journey!

Carrie and Travis are a great examples to me of love
and faith and although I have not met them in real
life, we have spent hours messaging, texting,
facebooking, communicating, and speaking on the phone.

I love Carrie's sweet, kind, and good heart which I
can feel shining through all the way from Atlanta.

I love that I can see her husband, who fights his
cancer with the same drive he had to become a 
successful business man.  Hard and fast and furious.

Carrie is not only beautiful on the outside, she is 
beautiful right to the core of her heart and soul.

They have a blog called "concretefaith.org"

( http://concretefaith.org/ )

where you can follow their journey.

We are cheering for them, as we cheer for ALL the
CC families that we have met and have come into our 
lives on this devastating, beautiful, hard, wonderful,
awful, amazing journey we call cancer.

--------------------------

I still have more "voices" to get through.  I promise
I will get them all done eventually.  I will
also add ANYONE else that wants to share their
perspective, their voice, and their story. 

I love them all.  All these brave souls fighting
for their lives.  They are all warriors, standing
brave and proud, facing the hardest thing they
have EVER had to face...their own mortality or
the mortality of a loved one.

They are true heroes in my book.  Heroes deserving
the highest of honors, yet perhaps the most overlooked.

I honor them all.

And that's what I've got for today!















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