While we were baking the chocolate chip cookies, Noelle kept trying to eat the dough. We kept telling her not to eat it because of the raw eggs. I finally sat her down and said that I had a big sickness, and that it would be important for everyone in the family not to get any little sicknesses since that could keep me from getting better. That kept her from trying to eat more dough, but I am not sure what she really understood at the time.
We decided that now that the kids knew, we would have to start telling people before they found out by accident. We started with our two closest neighbors. One neighbor is a radiology technician, so she was going to ask around at work to see what anyone knew about this and who they would recommend. Our other neighbors are both hospital pharmacists. Neither had heard of angiosarcoma. After discussing it, they said that since it was an epithelial cell cancer, there might be hope in some of the newer drugs for this class of cancer.
We were having a cookout with friends on Sunday, so I called and talked to them, rather than springing it on them in person. My friend had a brother who died, tragically, of testicular cancer, and her mother had had breast cancer. She and her husband are also technical, so the discussion of the rarity of this was lively.
The hardest thing that day was to go to the party with Colin's colleagues and act as though everything was fine. We managed and the girls had a good time. The party was blessing for us that evening.
Ruth Ann (edits/additions by Colin)
