Tour and such =)

Hey everyone! I hope you're all doing well. I haven't blogged in a while. Good on two fronts. 1)I haven't been harassing you ; ) and 2) I now have a couple ideas up my sleeve for future posts bahaha :P

I haven't showed you around my abode yet so I thought we could have some show and tell. So first up the view outside my window (which most of you have seen because of facebook but it's awesome so here it is again haha)                                                                                                                                                                                        

                                     

Yep...the horse shoe =) Pretty cool. It's weird here. you can see in the pic it's very gloomy and rainy. That's how the room feels. Then when it's sunny and bright the room feels like that.  Well coming inside the window and to the left you have my divine sitting area:

My daughter's lovely artwork to help decorate my room. She is one talented lady! So you see above the chair the cards and collage board? These mean so much to me. A lot of the cards are from the department and are signed by so many very amazing people. I have some from family and friends. A couple counting down the weeks until this is hopefully over. The collage board has several quotes from my friends on facebook, very inspirational so thank you for those. 

Going further left still is my dry erase board. Very fascinating. 

 Today you can see my nurse is Christine and my PCA Betty. Christine is telling me my white blood cell counts, platelet counts, and hemoblobin counts. Also that today I get to be infused with yummy platelets because mine are boarderline low. Awesome stuff. 

Speaking of infusing and IV's and such meet my dance partner. When I was going through Chemo I was hooked to this bad boy 24/7 all 7 days. I even showered hooked up to this guy ; ). These days we have grown apart as I can now be disconnected when I don't need blood products or antibiotics. 

And lastly but certainly not least, the one and only...cranky duck! For when my dance partner makes me mad. ok ok, I've mentioned this guy before and never really explained. I have to wear this mask everytime I leave my room. My counts are so low, I can get sick from anything. My family can't even use my bathroom when they visit me. Insanity. So when a friend came to visit she suggested it looked like a duck bill and I should draw nostrils on it. My husband seeing this and our twisted senses of humors soon turned this guy into my alter ego. Whenever I am cranky about being woken up, hospital food, stubbing my toe on my dance partner, I dawn the mask and I become cranky duck, donald duck voice and all. It's really silly, but it makes me laugh. We have since thought up a 2nd alter ego. Sassy duck. This is the mask with no hat (me bald these days). Tellin it like it is with a southern duck voice. ; ) oh geez. 

So..that's my bubble. The "and such" to my title is just an update. Since my last blog I am off Chemo. They waited a few days after I came off of that and then did a new bone marrow test. This test showed that so far there is no disease in my marrow. So now we wait to make sure new blasts don't appear and that my blood counts come back to where they should be. As far as symptoms, I have been so lucky, still no real side effects. I have lost my hair. That is going to be my next post by the way. So I will talk more about that then : ) My throat is a bit sore today which the nurse thinks is probably sores from the chemo. Other than that I am feeling good. I try to go for walks every day and just keepin positive. It really seems to be helping. 

Well that's about it from me for now. Thank you so so much for reading : ) I hope I didn't bore you haha. Next time...hair loss. haha Talk to you soon and take care!

Cranky Duck makes an appearance

Hey to all of you =) Hope your day is going well. There is a fitness model that my husband and I both follow, her name is Aubrie Richeson. A week ago yesterday she posted this status : Take a few deep breaths and allow yourself to be with yourself this morning. Be open to feelings that may come to you, accept them then let them go. I really liked that status. It rang true with me that day and it is coming back to me again today. My husband was able to stay here with me this weekend and we had SO much fun. It was really nice to laugh and joke and just have him here. While he was here we were talking a bit about what is down the road and how there may be bad days but finding the positive in all this is easy to do too when it's looked for. And then it kinda dawned on me..it's not even really bad days so much as moments. Yesterday when he left and a bit this morning I find myself homesick. I really miss seeing my husband and daughter all the time, taking care of them, doing the house work (yes I really do miss this LOL), baths, just the normalcy. And there are things going on here that are annoying to say the least. SO in that vein, I thought I would take a note from Ms. Richeson. I am going to talk a bit more on these things (hopefully with some humor) and then move on to the positive because there's so much more of that.

So aside from missing home like you wouldn't believe, I think the effects of the chemo are starting to take hold. Every day I get a bit more tired. hmm well not even tired just lethargic. I feel like I could lay down and take a nap at any given second. I HATE this. I have a bit of a headache too. Oh! I forgot to tell you guys, one of the drugs they gave me turned my pee orange ; ) like kool-aid orange LOL. Kinda cool I guess. Other than these things I still feel like my normal self, but the lethargy is taking it's toll on my mood a bit. I find myself having less patience. Which leads me too gripe number 2. The endless parade of poking and prodding. They do vitals here 8pm, 12, 4am (that one includes drawing blood), and 8 am. 8 am is my favorite because they come in.. do vitals, then ask you what time you want breakfast. Yesterday the PCA did this and I told her I wanted to sleep longer. She proceeded to tell me they stop serving at 930 and she would be back at 845 to ask me again... :)... Then nursie comes in with meds, NP comes in and pokes and asks questions such as how is my BM, Dr's come in and do the exact same routine as NP and BY THEN you're awake. Shower time. In which my 25 year old self whose used to doing virtually everything on my own has to dawn her cranky duck mask (more on this character in another post...stay tuned ; ) ), go out, and ask for the following: a gown, towels, someone to help put on my aquaguard, and socks, and let the world know I am about to take a shower. yay!! ; ) They are pumping me full of so much sodium chloride that my face looks like a pumpkin, and my hands and feet are swollen. I am peeing like I'm pregnant. The nurse says," if you promise to drink water really well they may take your levels down a bit". Well...how about this nursie??? I promise to not drink any more water period UNTIL they take down my fluids : P so there. Now then, let's talk about foodage. It sucks. That's really it. It's bad. And for exercise after said meals I am not allowed off the floor so I walk down the hallway, turn around, come back up the hallway, go around the nurses station, go back down the hallway AND repeat. I appreciate hampsters in a whole new way.          Sorry for the pause there friends, I had to go pee. Last thing, I am on SOOO many "preventative" medications. I don't even like to take tylenol for headaches. Ridiculous LOL.

Deep breath deep breath. ok now that I've had my little temper tantrum ; ) Let's move on to brighter things. The sun is shining, I'm alive and kicking, my symptoms are SO small right now and even more importantly I have SO much support. Here is what boggles my mind you guys. James and I have gotten several messages talking about how we are inspiring, but I see it exactly the opposite. For every message of support, every comment on facebook, phone call, visit, card EVERYTHING I am inspired. I really feel the love and positive energy and I am really feeding off of that. You guys inspire me. I have a windowsill full of bears and flowers and balloons and cards and I get messages everyday and it all means so so much to me. When I have moments like up above, I look at all these things and it snaps me into reality. The here and now. Here, and now, I'm still feeling well, I am happy and I am fighting this thing and winning because I'm still alive. I am bummed about missing the little things right now, but it's like my husband said there will be more of those..there will only be one of my daughter's wedding. Also, I know in the end this will only make us stronger because we will have fought through all of this. Something we talked about too is that this is really showing us who is in our corner which is amazing. And as much as I went on and on about hospital stuff, the staff here really is really great. They are so nice and understanding. And everyone talks about how this is the place to be for leukemia so I am so so grateful and lucky to be here. Also we found out our insurance should be covering the majority if not all of this so that is a HUGE blessing. I am really a very very lucky girl. I am so glad to have all of you keeping me grounded and positive. Oh, I'll leave you with one last note: I had a blood transfusion on Friday the 13th very cool. Plus my blood type is..you guessed it..B+ =) Have an awesome day, thank you so much for reading!

cranes and poison and a really really good day

Hi everyone again : ) How are things? Blog number two and hopefully I'll keep you entertained ; ). So, I promised to explain the whole "orange crane" thing. Well, like I said orange paper cranes are one of the first things I saw when I arrived here.

The flyer says "join us in our wish for a leukemia free world". It then explains that it is a Japanese tradition that if you fold 1000 paper cranes you are granted one wish. Orange is the color representing leukemia. So I just thought this was really cool. I tried to fold a paper crane last night and FAILED massively. I will try again soon and will post the pic. Something else kind of cool I stumbled on to... www.lls.org a leukemia and lymphoma website is putting on (and they do this annually) a walk called "light the night walk" to fundraise for blood cancer. Here is the link if any of you are interested in finding one in your area: http://www.lightthenight.org/ I know I plan to get better and walk it for sure. 

Positivity goes a long way. I had the best day the other day (well here anyway)! I got a bear with balloons from family friends, a blanket donated to the patients here, there was a woman who came in a sang some Bob Marley with me. You can't go wrong with Bob Marley. A friend stopped by with all kinds of craft supplies. So I fully intend to get some scrapbooking done and finish decorating my bulletin board. (pics to come :D) and then I got to talk to my hubby and daughter. It's really easy to feel lonely and crappy here, but all of that was amazing and gave me a lot of positivity to cling onto. Thank you all so much. Yesterday I got to visit with my husband and daughter. That was awesome! We splurged and had pizza delivered tee hee. So that was fun. The hardest part is when they go, but I didn't cry yesterday so I guess that's an accomplishment : /. 

Anyway...last thing and then I'll leave you be :) The latest news is that I start Chemo today. This afternoon in fact. It will be 7 days straight of one drug, and 3 days of another. I will be here for about a month and hopefully it takes and I can go into remission. The way I understand it, it's like hitting a giant reset button in my body. It wipes out all bone marrow cells, as well as a lot of good so this will be supplemented with blood transfusions and such, and then they let it grow back, test it and hopefully there are no blasts. It all kind of depends on genetics too so I'll keep ya posted. 

Here we go, the fight starts today! Thank you all for reading. Thanks for the support. If you like this feel free to share : ) Take care and we'll talk soon!

Whirlwind of days

Hey everyone. I just want to start by thanking anyone who takes the time to read. I just thought this might be a nice way to get things off my chest from time to time. Going into the inners of my mind can be a scary thought so those who are brave enough to do that with me are truly good people haha!

So if you're reading this you probably also know that I was very recently diagnosed with Leukemia. I'll just start at the beginning and we'll see where it takes me... For the past 3ish weeks I have been having some weird symptoms. I have been bruising really easy. Really big nasty bruises just out of nowhere. Also headaches, nausea and vomiting pretty much every morning, headaches that lasted for days, and also really bad fatigue and dizziness when I would go to the gym. I put it off at first, hoping it was just something weird and would subside. After my family's trip to Miami I realized I couldn't put it off anymore so I went to see my doctor. This was on the 4th of April. She ran blood and on the morning of the 5th I got a phone call saying my hemoglobin and platelets were very low and I needed to be admitted to our local hospital! What?? Talk about scared. So we rush there and they did more blood tests and a CT scan. Did I mention I am TERRIFIED of needles LOL :) By that evening the Dr. came in and said he believed I had leukemia and needed to be transferred to a hospital that more specialized in this treatment. So in that short amount of time my world and my husband's world was turned upside down. I am 25! No way could this be happening. Cancer. I have cancer? My dad at it various times throughout my childhood and eventually died from it. I have had Aunts and Uncles who have dealt with cancer. I think we all know someone who has had cancer, but me? How can this be happening. That's just a microcosm of what went through my head in the seconds after hearing the news. After that it was an ambulance ride to the new hospital, admitting questions, more blood work, and then finally some sleep. A little bit of sleep. The next day I had a MUGA done. That's this really cool procedure where they draw blood, tag it with radio active markers, reinsert the blood and then take pictures of your heart. This allows them to see how well your heart is pumping your blood. Very cool. I had a chest x-ray and then... BONE MARROW. I was SO scared. They knew this and drugged me up pretty good. LOL I was very sleepy for the procedure and my husband held my hand the whole time. It wasn't too bad for anyone who may need to go through this in the future. Then just a couple hours later I had this thing put in my chest. It's like a port. It allows them to draw blood and insert blood and chemo. NO MORE NEEDLES = D.

The 7th was absolutely the worst. The previously mentioned port had issues so I needed another one put in. Knowing that I would be drowsy, my husband decided to stay home, get the house back in order and spend quality time with our daughter. I think it's something we all needed, but the day was SO quiet. I had nothing to do (because of the rush everything was at home) so I had a lot of time to sit with the news and deal. The hardest part is being away from them. I am so lucky though that everyone here is SO SO nice. My PCA took a walk with me and we borrowed some movies from the activities room and that really cheered me up. From there I became determined to find things to do and stay happy. Not that I am naive, I know there are going to be sad times, but I want to stay mostly positive. My family did come and visit yesterday and that was amazing to have them here. We got to get out of the room and go have dinner in the cafeteria so that was cool. It was so hard saying good bye to them and for the first time I became angry at this disease. Really just resentful. It is keeping me from my loved ones and keeping me from going home. If this disease were a really person, I would be kicking, and screaming, and scratching and everything I could do to overcome it and get home. But its not a real person. But you know what? I can still do all those things. I can still fight this and I can go home. And I will.

Lastly, and I know this has been a long blog because I have had so much catching up to do over the past few days, I have had such great support from family and friends. The phone calls, and messages/comments on facebook, and well wishes on other sites, just everyone has really been in my corner and I can really feel the love and positive wishes radiating through to me so please know that I can feel it, it is making a difference and I thank you so so very much. Oh and in case you were wondering about "orange cranes".. they are the first things I saw when I got to the floor I'm on. I'll do another post about that soon. Take care all and thanks for reading.
Love,
Me :)