(written by Sunny)
Things started moving pretty quickly after the appointment with Dr. Getz. He has a wonderful team in his office and they got right on getting the MRI and PET/CT pre-authorized with insurance and scheduled. Lindsie had her chest MRI the next day (Wednesday the 18th) and her PET/CT on Thursday the 19th at 10:00 in the morning.
February 19th also happens to be Josh's birthday. Ava, Dex, and Vivi were so excited to celebrate dad's birthday that night they could hardly stand it. Sometime after 3:00 our friend Julia Brown just happened to drop by Lindsie's house just as Lindsie received a call from Dr. Getz. The results of the PET scan had come back and they were not good. Lindsie had multiple metastases in multiple bones all over her body. This staged the cancer at IV. It had not spread to any soft tissue organs such as the lungs or brain, so that was very good news. But stage IV cancer? That was unbelievable.
I got a text from Lindsie a little before 4:00 asking if I could come over. When I walked in my heart dropped. I could see that Lindsie and Julia had been crying and I wanted to stop time right there and go back to before whatever was upsetting them was real. Lindsie told me it was stage four and in the bones and the next thing that happened was my brain switching into business mode. There were questions to be answered, a plan to figure out. Everybody's wired differently. My response to chaos, grief, or tragedy is to get down to brass tacks and figure out what we need to do to move forward. It's not necessarily a healthy response in every situation, but it's my default. So that was my head space.
Lindsie is also a pretty pragmatic person, so while she was definitely upset, there was no sense of panic. She steeled herself pretty quickly and was ready to do whatever she needed to do next to take care of business. Not to say she was unemotional. It was just a different sort of emotion than you might expect. Maybe sometime she'll share her thoughts on what was going through her head because I don't want to speak for her.
Josh came home shortly thereafter. Being there when Lindsie broke the news to him is something that in retrospect I wish I had not witnessed. I'm not going to talk about it because it's not mine to share and I feel like it's treading on sacred space.
News spread quickly among close friends and within minutes most of us were gathered at Josh and Lindsie's. I had a moment of complete breakdown outside with some friends. I can't even say what I was feeling except that it wasn't hopelessness or fear, it felt more like grief for what Josh and Lindsie might have to go through with treatment, unknowns, etc. And anger. I was angry that this was really their story and none of us could fix it for them.
In the midst of this Amber, Lindsie's bestie across the street, remembered that the kids would be expecting a birthday party in just a couple of hours and they, of course, had no idea what was going on with their mom. They were hanging out at my house totally clueless to what was happening at their own home. To make matters worse Lindsie had to go in at 6:00 for a brain MRI. With the new results they had to make sure nothing had spread to the brain and the previous scans had not included the brain. In a matter of minutes a plan was hatched to throw a "surprise" party for Josh at my house as soon as the MRI was finished.
Julia Smith picked up roughly 8 million pizzas, a cake, and ice cream. In an hour's time we had 40 people gathered in our house waiting for Josh and Lindsie to walk through the door. Ava was so excited she could barely handle it. When Josh came through the door we yelled, "Surprise!" and he played along. Honestly, I don't know that he could tell you a thing that happened that night, but the kids had a great time and I'm pretty sure they think it was the best night ever. And really, in some ways it was. Here we were facing down impossible news affecting one of our own, but we were together. And we were laughing. It was probably the most healing thing that could have happened that night. We had an excuse to be together, to celebrate in the midst of sadness and uncertainty, and to cement in our hearts what we already knew in our minds: We are friends like family and we aren't ever going to let anybody in this crazy group of misfits hit the ground. We will hold each other up and carry one another if we have to for as long it takes.
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