Written and emailed on January 2, 2014:

Hey My Dearest Friends/Family,

Happy New Year!

I’m writing this email to let you know how [This Young Widow] & I spent NYE.

My immediate family is already updated but wanted my extended family to be informed from me directly.

Background:

I was feeling stomach pains for a few weeks and thought gas but it came to a point that I couldn’t sleep at night.  On Dec.30th, I went to the walk-in clinic to get checked out.  After going online, I had the symptoms of Gall Bladder stones and time to get them out of me.  Doctor sent me for blood work and an ultra-sound, said they’d call me back in 48 hours with results…

I had my phone turned off for the day and realized I had missed 2 calls from the walk-in clinic and that it was urgent to call them back as they had my results from Ultra-Sound.

Dec.31st:

I called the walk-in clinic and they told me to come in immediately and get a requisition and head to Emergency at a hospital.  Got to Mount Sinai Emerg and got checked in thinking wow these stones need to come out quick.

First doctor said he couldn’t read my ultra-sound images that I brought and that he wanted to do a CT scan of my chest/abdomen. After several hours of waiting another doctor came in and dropped the bomb on [This Young Widow] and I that I had ‘masses on my liver and nodes’.  They said my blood was perfectly normal/healthy, blood pressure perfect/healthy, it just sometimes happens.

Our next steps is to wait for the specialists to get back from holiday vacation so they can perform the biopsy to confirm what they say is consistent with malignant (cancerous) growth.  I’m told they will reach out to me next week to set up the appointment, then wait for results, then set up the treatment.

We’re staying positive and know whatever the results of the biopsy, we will get through this.

We love you and appreciate you all so much!

Sugar, This Young Widow, Bub [our baby girl]