Our Journey Through A Hard Time...through my eyes.

Meet my family, which I love with all of my heart!



Family vacation, Universal Studios



 Beach, in Cali!



San Diego Temple



Rich & I at the beach. Look at all the seals!



I love my eternal partner!



This picture catches our true personality!

Hi. I am Christel. I am a wife, a mother, and a pre~school teacher. I have many life stories, but this blog is about the last 6 months (or so) of my life, and my family's life.

My husband, my high school sweet heart, had been experiencing a lot of pain in his stomach. He was still able to go to work, but by the time he arrived home he would be very sore, and sick. He would strip off all of his police gear and head for bed. His stomach pain kept getting worse, not better. He began to lose weight. He went to the doctors, only to begin the process of elimination. Watching him suffer through the intense pain he was feeling broke me down. It was heart wrenching. I didn't know what to do for him. He would take many hot bathes, and lay in bed in complete agony. I begged him to go to the ER, but he had faith that the doctors would soon figure it out and didn't want to go spend a lot of money at the ER. Men! Finally a few months later he was in such pain he let me take him to the hospital. We were certain he would go in for emergency surgery, goodbye gall bladder! They ran all sorts of tests, and also gave him morphine. That was bliss! Not only were we hopeful to get answers, but his pain was dulled with the pain meds.  After about an hour of waiting the doctor came in. Little did we know how much our lives were about to change. The doctor sat down, and told us that they had found a baseball sized tumor in his pancreas, and lesions on his liver. We just sat there. Stunned! We didn't ask a single question. No tears. No movement. We just starred at him... The doctor asked the question for us. He said, "Could this be cancer? Yes, it could. But I am not a specialist and If you were my brother I would tell you to get to Huntsman, RIGHT NOW!" We looked at each other, still no words. Finally, my husband said, "Yes, call Huntsman."  The doctor left, and I started to tear up. Rich looked at me and said, "Stop that! It's not cancer, until it is cancer." I wiped my tears, and held it together. We called his mom, and his brother. They came up quickly. They got Rich a room, as Huntsman was full. The plan was to head to Huntsman the following day. That night was long. Didn't feel real. Full of hope & faith, but doubt and fear. Such a crazy mixture. The next five days were very hard. Huntsman was difficult to get into, and we just needed to know what was going on. Besides that, my husband was once again enduring an intense amount of pain. In addtion to that, Rich asked me not to talk to anyone about this. He didn't want to say it was cancer, until the specialist said it was cancer. I felt very alone, sad, confused, scared, and really needed a friend. I didn't want to lean on him, he was the patient. Even though I was so lost in emotion I was also positive and carried a lot of faith. Whirlwind for sure!

May 7th we headed to the UofU ER. May 8th we were admitted to Huntsman, and cancer was confirmed. Rich has stage 4, pancreatic cancer. It had spread to his liver. We spent four days there.