All Done!

This Tuesday was a huge day for me.

I finally finished ALL of my cancer treatments! So far it looks like all of the cancer is gone and hopefully it will stay that way forever. I have to say that as horrible as it's been to go through I have learned a lot from this experience. I've learned to really appreciate my family so much more than I already do, especially my mom. She has always been there for me, but I never realized just how much I needed her until this. She has taken me to countless appointments, watched my children, cleaned my house and helped me with all of the everyday things that I take for granted.

I've learned that I have some really fantastic friends. Many of my friends are scattered all over the map so they couldn't be here physically for me, but they made their presence known in other ways. One friend crocheted hats and scarves for me (you would not believe how cold your ears, head and neck get with no hair!), another made me a blanket, one sent me a book, another a gift card and so many of them emailed me, sent texts and called me.

I've also learned that it's okay to slow down. Heck, it's okay to just come to a screeching halt sometimes. Life does go on even if you do have a mountain of laundry. I'm hoping that I'll keep this in mind even now that things are starting to get somewhat back to normal. I think that my kids have kind of enjoyed the slower pace too.

And last but not least, I've learned not to worry about what others think about me so much. This is something I thought I had well in hand before, but apparently I didn't. I spent a good bit of time during my treatment worried about my appearance. I was constantly worried about people seeing my bald head, dark eye circles, brown fingernails, and my bloated body. It finally hit me that if it were an issue for them then I would probably be better off without them in my life. My hair is starting to finally come in, I'm getting new nails and hopefully soon I'll be able to get back into decent shape. While I am relieved at this, the most important thing is that I am healthy and have been granted more time with my family.

Ten

It's hard to believe, but my sweet Audrey is now in the double digits!

If you think I've lost my mind and let my baby get hi-lights you are wrong. For some dumb reason I let her play with my wigs. She decided that long, strawberry blond hair was just the thing for The Mad Hatter to have. 

She even made some signs for the front door. It's hard to see in the pictures, but they say 'we're all a little mad here', 'this way', 'that way', 'over here', and 'over there'.

Happy tenth birthday Audrey, I hope that your tenth year is your best year yet!

 

Some suggestions for friends and family dealing with cancer

I am currently about half way through my cancer treatments and I thought I would throw together a little list of things to keep in mind if you have a friend of family going through the same thing. Most of these things are pretty much common sense, but some are things that you might not think of unless you or a family/friend have been through it. 

1. Call before you decide to drop in. Always. Sure you may have the best of intentions, but if  you don't then the person you are visiting will not be able to enjoy your visit. They will sit there the entire time thinking about how bad they look or how messy their house is. 
2. Don't let the illness dominate the conversation. Sure, I don't mind talking about it,  but there is more to me than cancer. I would much rather talk about my kids or a good sale I heard about than cancer.
3. Keep in mind that things can change a lot from day to day. I may have had on a full face of makeup and had my house clean last time I saw you, but that was a good day. A really, really good day. It's not unusual for me to be sitting around in my Hello Kitty pj's all day because it wears me out too much to move. 
4. Put your money where your mouth is. Right after my diagnosis I had so many people tell me that if I needed anything, anything at all to let them know. Guess what? It's amazing how hard it is to find these very people when you need them. You know who has been my biggest helpers? My mom, dad, husband and children. My husband and I have a huge family, yet he, my parents and our three children have been the only ones to help out. My twelve year old cooks dinner pretty much every night. When my husband can't take me to a doctors appointment then my parents take me. If my parents aren't taking me then they are watching the kids for me. Sometimes this is extremely depressing to me, but then I realize that it's okay because I know these six people love me more than anything in the world and that is more than enough for me.
5. Please do not think that I am a babysitter. Yes, you read that right. I cannot begin to tell you how many people want to drop their kids off at my house because they know the girls and I will be home. Seriously, it blows my mind that people think it's okay to go off shopping and leave their kids with me for hours on end. 
6. Offer to do something with the kids. I give kudos to one of the girls friends mothers. She has hosted many sleepovers for my baby and I love her for that. It gives my child a sense of normalcy and I will always be grateful to her for that. 
7. Please stop with all the cancer articles on facebook. If I have to read through another beautiful, moving story about a husband/wife/son/daughter/etc. that went through cancer only to get to the end of the article and find out the person died, well someone might get hurt. Believe it or not it's a little depressing reading about someone going through the same thing as you and not making it. Also, just because you have a cancer diagnosis does not mean you have a death sentence. 
8. Keep in mind that cancer is a very expensive thing. I have had to turn down a few invites to things because frankly, I can't afford them. Co-pays, these of course vary depending on your insurance, but even if you have fantastic insurance they still add up. You have to spend money on gas going back and forth to appointments. My hospital is not that far from my house, but when you have to go back and forth every day, the cost of gas starts to really add up. You miss work. In my case, I have not been able to work in months. By the way, if your place of employment offers disability insurance, get it. I'm only part time so I'm not able to get it through my job, but oh it would have been nice to have a supplemental insurance! 
9. Don't make assumptions based on someone else's experience. My mother in law has a really hard time understanding why I can't do a lot of things. Why? Because her brother in law had some skin cancer spots removed from his face and is just fine. What she fails to realize is that he didn't have to go through any kind of treatment such as radiation or chemotherapy. 
10. And last, but not least.. be patient with us. Not only do I move a lot slower these days, but sometimes I forget things. I find myself telling my family "I'll try my best, but I can't make any promises." It's not that I'm not a person of my word, but sometimes I am not able to do things or as mentioned before I forget. It's not that I don't care, it's just that some things are out of my control right now.

Another mommy brag

This week at PTA Kylie was given an award for placing first in the Reflections writing contest. She also won the sixth grade science fair (although she was absent the day it was announced so I don't know what place she made). The writing contest was probably the most important to her as she loves to write. She has actually been working on a series of books for over two years now. 

I am so proud of my girl!

National Elementary Honor Society

And the newest member of the National Elementary Society is...

Audrey!

Congratulations Audrey, we love you and are so proud of all of your hard work!

Saying goodbye to an old friend. Of sorts.

A few weeks ago we finally did it. We said goodbye to the playhouse loft bed. 

The girls were getting tired of it and so was I. It had become a pain to make the bed and to keep the playhouse part clean. Also, the girls are getting bigger *sniff*sniff* and weren't really utilizing the playhouse aspect of it at all. So down it went. We ordered the girls a daybed with a trundle and so far it is working out pretty well. It takes up much less room and isn't quite so daunting when you walk in the room. It's been kind of slow going getting their room in shape due in large part to well..me. The chemo has been really wearing on me lately so there have been many days I just cannot physically do anything. That kills me. I'm super impatient and when I want to start a project I want to start and finish it right away. Not so this time. I'm hoping that in a few weeks I can share some pictures of the change. Nothing super fancy of course, but just a few tweaks here and there that make a good bit of difference. 

Ring a ding ding!

It's official. I am done with chemotherapy, rang the bell, and got the certificate. I am done!

Next up, surgery!

Twelve

 I can't believe it's been twelve years since I brought this sweet girl home from the hospital. 

Happy birthday Kylie, I hope that you have an amazing year!

Eight is great!

Guess who has a birthday today?

My baby turns 8 today! I cannot believe how quickly time has flown by. We celebrated yesterday with all of the family. Well, all of the family minus dad who had to work unfortunately. My parents made Sophie a massive dollhouse for her American Girl dolls. 

As you can tell by the big grin on her face she loves it! The only problem is that it takes up so much room in her bedroom. I am going to have to reconfigure things in there, which is fine because I was getting tired of the way her room looks anyway. So stay tuned, hopefully we'll have some fun bedroom projects coming up!

Throwback Thursday

A few days ago I was looking through my old photobucket account (remember photobucket?) and came across some old pictures of the girls that just made me laugh. I thought I would share one that ultimately because our Christmas card that year. 

Star Student of the Month

And so it begins

On Wednesday I began my first round of chemo. It honestly wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. The nurse gave me steroid and anti-nausea meds before I got the nasty stuff and that helped tremendously. She did warn that when those two things wore off I would not be feeling so hot and she was 100% correct. I'm having to go to the cancer center every day to get a shot to keep my white blood cell count up and I seem to get sick everytime I finish with that. I was told that I would most definitely lose all of my hair with the cocktail that I am on so I went yesterday and got all of my hair cut off. It looks awful and quite frankly I felt stupid paying to get a haircut when I know I will probably only have the hair another week or two. I just felt it would be easier if I lost short strands rather than long ones. 
The girls seem to be taking everything okay. Yesterday I started getting sick right around the time they came home from school and I was worried about their reaction. They were super sweet though and brought me blankets (I was freezing!) and asked me if I needed anything. I honestly think the thing that bugs me the most about all this mess is how it is going to affect them. So far they seem to be taking everything in stride, but I worry about how things will go as we progress. Kids are pretty darn resilient though and mine are awesome so I'm sure they'll be just fine.

Life Today

It's been quite some time since I've posted on my old blog.  Like most of you I've been busy with family, work, and all the billion activities that go along with life. Until now. You see things kind of came to a screeching halt around here on September the 9th for me. That was the day I heard the dreaded words "It's cancer." Yep, that's right I am now that one woman out of every eight that has breast cancer. 
Now that I have finally (somewhat) wrapped my brain around it I thought I would post about what is going on. I'm posting not only for myself, but in case what I am about to go through might be able to help someone else in a similar situation. So....let's begin at the beginning shall we?
I'm not one of those women that found a lump during a routine breast exam. Heck, I rarely ever did them. I would occasionally check when I was in the shower, but quite frankly I didn't think about it that often. I went in to my doctor for a check up and while there she did an exam. She told me everything looked good, but I was due for my mammogram so I made an appointment to go the next week. I was actually quite annoyed about having to make the appointment. My kids just started back to school and since I sub at their school and volunteer there I knew I didn't have time to stop for an appointment. I shudder to think of how close I came to cancelling it. 
I went in for the mammogram and kind of felt something might not be right because the technician kept checking my right breast. I wasn't overly concerned because at my last mammogram (two years prior) my right side showed something. However two years ago when I went back for a second screening they quickly told me everything was okay. Not this time unfortunately. I was told to come back in a few days for a biopsy. I kept calm while in the doctors office, but walking to the parking lot the tears came. All I could think about was having cancer and not getting to watch my babies grow up. Anyone that has ever meet me will tell you that those three little girls of mine are my everything. The thought of missing one minute of their life had me scared, sad and angry. The biopsy wasn't fun, but it wasn't horrible either. I was still in denial because I couldn't feel anything, the mammogram tech. couldn't feel anything and the doctor even had a hard time feeling anything. Sadly, the biopsy didn't have a hard time finding anything. It found a tumor approximately two centimeters. 
When I received the diagnosis I was oddly enough calmer than I had been during my waiting period. I now knew what was going on and could do something about it. As of now my doctors want me to have chemo starting tomorrow. When I am done with that I will have a lumpectomy, then a month later I will start six weeks of radiation. To be honest I waver from day to day with my emotions on this whole, nasty mess. I'm lucky in that my cancer was caught early, however I'm what's known as triple negative which means that I have a more aggressive cancer with a lower survival rate. Sucks doesn't it? But you know what? That's life and sometimes in life we just have to suck it up and deal with it. 

Nine

 

Happy birthday Audrey!

Stealing photos

This morning it came to my attention via email that someone is using images from my blog to promote their ebay listing. Not cool. First of all I don't even take good photos. Second what you are doing is very unfair to your buyer. People want to see the product they are buying, not how it may look once they get it. Third stealing is just wrong. If  you did not buy, make or receive something as a gift IT IS NOT YOURS! Yes, I realize that I am not being hurt by this, but it really pisses me off that someone is using images from my childs bedroom in the hopes of profiting.

Eleven

Happy birthday Kylie!

Seven

Happy Birthday Sophie!

 

Halloween

I know I'm really late posting about Halloween, but this is literally the first chance I've had to sit at my computer for longer than ten minutes. So that being said, forgive me if this post sounds a bit disjointed as I'm going to cram everything into it!

  I made the kids some treats for school. 

  I made s'mores like I did last year and some Jack-o-lantern juice (thankyouverymuch pinterest!). They were fun to make, but drawing the faces on those water bottles was a pain!

The Friday before Halloween I took the kids and one of their friends to the Exploreum for their Halloween night.

Doesn't Audrey look thrilled at having her picture taken?

  Kylie and her friend had their faces painted of course. They also made those nasty looking "scars" on their arms. Lovely eh?

The next night I took the girls to Bellingrath Gardens for trick or treating. It was actually kind of cold (rare around here!) so we kind of hurried through and didn't get many pictures.

And of course on Wednesday we went trick or treating. Personally I'm glad it's November because I'm starting to get tired of the costumes! 

Down on the farm

On Friday I went with Audrey's class on a field trip. They had an awesome playground and Audrey made a new friend.

 

Then she had her face painted for a pow wow.

  Then went into the tee pee to learn about the Sioux indians.

Then it was time to meet some animals. Oddly enough even though my child is terrified of animals, she went into the stall with this huge steer. This animal was huge!

Last but definitely not least it was time for a good old fashioned hayride.

   

Girls day out

The past few weeks have been really busy with school and activities. When I realized that Saturday the girls and I didn't have anything planned we decided to have a little girls day out. We headed downtown to play at the Exploreum first. 

Searching for the one in a million yellow bead

Playing DJ

Coloring pictures of sea life

 We purchased a family membership last year for Christmas and I have to say it has definitely been worth it! The kids love to go there and play and the fact that it's actually educational is a huge bonus!

Learning about volts and watts

Making a light with batteries

 After the exploreum we decided to walk around downtown. We went to the fort where the girls let their inner pirate come out.

 Then we decided to end things on a sweet note with a trip to the candy store!

 

We had a fantastic day and are already looking forward to doing it all again soon.