transformers and big sunglasses

I am sitting here at 11:00 at night, drinking a glass of wine, watching Jay Leno (actually waiting for Conan O'Brien, my one true celebrity crush). Derrick is gone until Friday (in Whitefish again), the kids are sleeping, and Mom went home with Dad today. The house is oddly quiet. Actually the fact that I am awake to enjoy the quiet house is odd. But I am not ready to go to sleep yet.

It is 82 degrees in the house. I am hot. If I could break away from the computer perhaps I would open the windows and then cool air would rush in and cool me off. But you see, I have a myspace addiction which rarely gets the satisfaction of several hours of wasted time spent on it. I must indulge, regardless of the discomfort of the sweltering heat of this house. I will endure!!!! Viva myspace!!!

As I was reviewing this week in my mind, moments of discomfort filtered to the front part of my brain (where they like to reside), and I am prepared to share them with you. They have to do with watching television with my Mom and husband in the same room when I am the one holding the remote control. You know all of the commercials they have nowadays... the ones that are funny when you and your hubby are alone? The ones advertising "male enhancement" or the girly ones urging to call, and so forth. Now, if I am alone with either my mom OR alone with my husband, I do not care what commercial comes on. Why in the world to I get all embarrassed when I have a husband on one side and a Mom on the other? Do I turn the channel or not?!?

(Okay, the windows are open... couldn't type with sweat falling all over... Derrick usually is the one to open windows... funny the things you don't appreciate about a husband until they are gone.)

I have a goal for this week. I am going to get some big sunglasses. Nokomis has a picture of her in big ones and she looks hot! I want to also look hot in big sunglasses. And there has been encouragement to go to the dark side from Melissa (hehe-dark side-sunglasses...), and I am prepared to convert for the weekend.

I've been thinking about my poor cat Gary alot today.. I think it has finally sunk in that he has moved on to another family. He always was the traveling sort. He was the sort of cat who would love you with all he had, but he still had to move on and see more of the world. I will miss him, but I am glad he is out there living his dream.

Thinking about Gary also made me think about my fish. I only have two left in my little pond in the front yard. Last Fall I didn't know if goldfish could live if you just left them alone in the pond to be frozen. I caught six out of seven fish and brought them inside. Only Fred escaped, and therefore lived. I have somewhat of a killer thumb when it comes to fish. Poor little fellows only made it a couple months. But Fred is alive and strong. We bought him a little friend, Stripey this spring so he wouldn't feel so alone. I hope that Stripey is a little girl fish, and they are having a torrid love affair in our little pond. I hesitate to add any other fish as Fred and Stripey seem so contented. This fall I will leave them to their own defenses to the winter, as they seem to have a better idea as to their survival than I do.

And that is all I have for the evening. Sorry people, but Jay Leno has some pretty impressive things on tonight... something about a Tranformer movie pilot... oh my goodness... I LOVE TRANSFORMERS. I have to say goodnight:)

Confidence

It is officially 12:25 at NIGHT and we just got home from a wedding- my dear friends Kevin and Alta got married tonight! Yeah! They are both so awesome. I hope they stay in Missoula FOREVER so we can all just hang out and have fun... unless they really want to move... or WE really want to move... um.. well, anyways, tonight was super fun. Everyone was totally into the dancing, the food was awesome and it was just generally a great night.

They had me take pictures at their wedding. This is the second event where I've been able to take pictures this summer, and it has been GREAT. The light at both events was perfect, the people were happy and smiling, and I've just been generally happy with how the pictures have been turning out. After the Hospist Ball I sorta lost my... drive or "magic" with pictures because it was so NOT what I love about taking pictures. The love is back. Thank goodness. I missed it.

Yahoo!

Everything is okay!!!! The surgery went AWESOME yesterday. Oh my goodness, we were sweating bullets. Pretty much my whole family showed up in Spokane yesterday morning at the hospital (and the rest were there in thought). While they were getting Mom ready for her surgery, they told us only one person at a time could be in the room. By the time it was all said and done we had Dad, Renae, Shaun, Danny, Nancy, Cookie, Kenny, Doug, Casey, Stephy, Aiyana, Corey D., Dwayne, Gina and me in the room (that is fifteen if you were counting ). Mom was scared, but she said that having everyone there took away 75% of the scariness. The epideral and calming drugs took away the other 25%.

After they wheeled her out of the room and we all waved her off, we all went down to eat in the cafeteria. Then Steph and I went to our motel room (it was right across the street), and amazingly we fell asleep immediately. I think being so nervous and is just exhausting! By the time we woke up, Renae was calling to tell us the surgery was over. The doctor said it had gone even better than he had thought it would! There was minimal blood loss- the didn't even have to use any of the bloodless surgery measures that had been taken. Also, they didn't see any other cancer, either with the PET scan she had that morning or with their own eyes! What a relief! We all felt like flipping cartwheels when we heard that . So, between the hoxsey and her special diet, I think everything is really going to be okay now. It feels like a bad dream is over.

I came home to Missoula for today to go to Derrin's little kindergarden graduation (which was super cute ), and to get some things done around here (like writing blogs). Tomorrow I am going back to Spokane to stay for a couple more days so Renae can go home for bit. If everything goes alright, hopefully Mom can be out of the hospital before too long!

I want to say thank you for all of your sweet upbuilding comments during the last 8 months. I know I have blogged a LOT about all of our ups and downs throughout all of this, and you have been so supportive. It really has helped me to beable to vent to you all. I appreciate it!

Mom

Monday morning at 8 o'clock in Spokane Washington at Sacred Heart Hospital, Mom is going to have her liver resection done. We went in last Monday hoping that they could do a procedure called radio frequency ablation where they would only make a small incision, insert a probe and blast the tumor with heat. It would've been a minimally invasive procedure, but the tumor was too big for it to be effective. The resection will involve going in and totally removing the section of the liver with cancer on it.
We've talked to the Bloodless Management department at Sacred Heart, and all measures are being taken to reduce blood loss and manage any blood loss that occurs. It has been very reassuring talking to them over there.

This Friday morning Mom is also having a smaller procedure done where they are putting a filter in a vein in her stomach to catch any clots that may form in her legs. It is just another precaution that the doctors are taking to ensure her safety.

So, this is it! If all goes well, this will improve her chances dramatically.

A Little Inner Calm and Poise for Mizz Imperfection

So, yesterday I had just entered the gym . It was 6:15- much later than I usually go, and a different staff was working. One of them was Julie (very nice girl- I even voted her as my favorite staff), and the other one was Justin. Justin is a pretty nice guy. He is a chatty sort of person, and seems to know everyone who comes in. So yesterday I enter the building, drop the kids off at the daycare, and proceed onward, passing Julie and Justin. As is their habit, Julie first comments,"Wow, this is a lot later than you usually come in!", because we don't really know eachother that well and it seems like a nice safe thing to say. I ,as usual, mostly just smiled and muttered something unintelligible under my breath. Then Justin smiles and says,"Well, that is because it is MY shift *ah he he*". I know now he was joking. But I reverted to my top-form 8th grade stance by making my best scoffing noise (kinda like pssst) and looking Julie straight in the eye and saying , "Yeah, RIGHT", as only a person of my special social skills has mastered. I then walked on my merry way, confident I had handled the situation appropriately. As I entered the girl's locker room, it hit me that I had been... well... rude. It sorta crawled up my spine a little. Then it became a full-blown panic attack. I quickly changed into my exercise clothes and went to my eliptical machine back in the far corner. As I remembered my rudeness, I began to run a little harder on the machine. My stress-level kept me running frantically, moving up the intensity until I was a 9 (normally I am a firm 6 on the machine). I nearly collasped off of the machine after 30 minutes, but it said I had burned nearly as many calories in 30 minutes as I normally do in 40.

Why did I get so upset? I need to start controlling the voices in my head again.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, you have a crazy friend. But I'm nice and I smell good... and I can cook too. I could say more, but I have to fix dinner.

The End

ps... When I was leaving the building both Julie and Justin said were all chatty and nice again. All of that internal agony for nothing. Sheesh.

It's Just a Shirt

This morning while dropping my son off at school I saw something that cheered me into a blooming smile. We were almost to the drop-off door, and I had stopped to let the car ahead of us release it's kid to school. All of a sudden the mom driving the car (actually it was a blue SUV of some sort) hopped out to get something for her kid. What cheered me was that fact that she was only wearing a shirt. Sure, it was big and went to mid-thigh, but the fact is there was only a shirt. Barefoot. Maybe there were shorts under the shirt, maybe not, but I did not care. All of a sudden I felt pretty pulled together, even if I was still wearing my pajamas. My day was off to a head start in comparison to shirt-mom.

There is a lesson for me to learn here. That woman probably felt pretty embarrassed to get out of her car mostly naked (or maybe she is just an exhibitionist and completely enjoyed it, who knows), but she made a stranger feel a little better (even if it was just my desicion to wear some clothes to the school). I am divided about my lesson. It is either (1) Don't ever just wear a shirt to school and then get out of the car OR (2) If you ever forget to wear pants to school, don't be too hard on yourself. You may just cheer up the person in the car behind you.

Picking up the Shoe

Yesterday we had a family pow-wow (including grilled chicken and hamburgers) at Mom and Dad's place. We (Renae, Doug, Nancy, Danny, Derrick and I and kiddies) all came over with bags of food and hopes of a little family fun, but we had ulterior motives. We came with a new plan.

As soon as we were all there, all sitting out on the deck visiting, the new plan was approached softly. We didn't want to scare, shock or overwhelm anyone with the plan. We were all relieved and happy when the plan was received well, and arrangements began to shape up.

Renae and Doug are going to take Mom and Dad to Mexico. There is a clinic just past the US border that works with a cancer patients diet, as well as giving them a "hoxsey", a serum developed to eradicate the cancer in that specific person. They will be gone for about a week to get the treatment and diet, and then she can come home with a six month supply.

In conjunction with this, I found a new oncologist in Missoula who is willing to monitor Mom during the six months. She will also provide any additional chemo if it is needed. I called this oncologist Friday, and guess what? SHE called ME back! She talked to me for a long time and both asked questions and allowed me to ask questions back. She was a ray of hope on a dark day. We are going to call her Monday and make an appointment and form a plan together.

We also have an appointment with Mom's surgeon Tuesday to see if he has changed his view of surgery on Mom's liver like the infamous Dr. N did. We hope he will still work with us when Mom needs her surgery in the future, even though we are dumping Dr. N as our oncologist.

We know other people who have done the hoxsey treatment, and they are cancer free. I've read message board after message board from family members struggling with their loved ones through cancer with just conventional chemo. It always follows pattern of getting chemo and feeling like crap, getting a surgery to remove a tumor, being cancer free for two or three months, and then having a recurrence and having to start the whole horrible process over again. Even if this hoxsey and diet didn't completely wipe it out, but she felt good while the cancer was held at bay (for a long time), it would be better than being at the mercy of Dr. N and his poison. What kind of life is that? Also, if she does end up having to have surgery in the future, this will buy her time to get those blood clots completely dissolved first.

So, here is to new hope.

The Other Shoe Dropped

Today confirmed what we already knew. If Mom's cancer count doesn't go down, surgery is to be looked at in two or three weeks.

The problem with that is she still has bloodclots. If she gets the surgery she will have to go off of the anti-clotting medicine she has been using, both before and after. And after she would be on her back recovering... which could cause more clots.

The other problem is that Dr. N is starting to have issues with our stand on blood. All of a sudden, this surgery is extremely dangerous. Before the story was that the tumor is in the lower left lobe doesn't have any major arteries, so if you have to remove part of it, that is the safest part to remove. Today he was ranting about all of the little veins there that she could bleed out of (and "not make it" was a phrase her too many times). Before HE told us he was going to build up her blood supply to twice it's usual amount and he would make it as safe for her as possible, so she would beable to lose a lot of blood in surgery and still be okay. His previous support of our beliefs was one of the reasons we chose to use him as her oncologist. I could say so much more, but I am so tired.

I do want to say that the family is talking Mexico treatment again. We are tired of Dr. N and his promises of the moon that turn out to be mirages. We are going to talk to Mom and Dad Saturday to see if they will consider going to Mexico for treatment and coming back here to use a different oncologist who will be willing to work coinsiding with natural medicine.