My Snow Family

When I got home from work I snuggled onto the couch and started knitting. Then my amazing husband made me grandma chocolate, which is what I call Mexican hot chocolate because it's called Abuelita and has a picture of a grandma on it. It's pretty much the best drink ever. After awhile of relaxing, I decided that Doug and I should make a snow family. He made a snow person before I got home from work but she needed some friends. So I put on my hat, coat, and boots, and he put on his jacket and flip flops and we started building. An hour later we had a handsome mustached snowman, a snow-hound, and a snow cat. Aren't they cute?

From left to right: Snow Doug, Snow Biscuit, Snow Emily, and Snow Penny

It's amazing how accurately this family depicts our actual family dynamics. I'm usually keeping the dog away from the cat and the cat somehow always ends up between Doug and I, especially when we're sleeping. Doug is farthest from the dog because she annoys him the most often.

The Snow-Hound

Snow me? Yes, it is. Do you like my beautiful leaf outfit?

Snow Biscuit

Snow Doug, note the handsome mustache

Our Happy Snow Family

Even though it's blurry, this is how light it was at 9:30 at night without the flash

No News IS Good News!

I just got word that my wonderful best friend will only have to have 10 shots and not intense chemo as long as her body reacts well. This is such a relief.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, check it out here and here.

No News is Good News?

First, thank you to everyone who has been worried about me. I didn't want to make people worry but I had to get it off my chest. I just couldn't bring myself to talk about the specifics of  it yet. I couldn't force myself to write down what was happening. But now I will.

In September my best friend of 12 years excitedly told me she was pregnant. I was happy for her but also nervous because the father wasn't the greatest guy in my opinion. But I supported her because I love her and after seeing how much support she was getting from her family I knew she could do it. In the middle of October she went to hear her baby's heart beat but they only heard the hum of the machines. So they did an ultrasound and found that she had a molar pregnancy and that there was no baby. She had surgery the next day and had to go back to the hospital with complications after the outpatient surgery. She was in the ICU for awhile because of a thyroid storm and fluid in her lungs. Everything was fixed (except her broken heart) and she was released from the hospital a few days later.

They did follow up tests to make sure her hCG levels were returning to normal. But they weren't, which is an indication of a cancer called Choriocarcinoma. She went in for CT scans earlier this week. If it hasn't spread she will get shots of a low dose drug to kill the rest of it in her uterus. I'm assuming they'd use methotrexate since it's specifically mentioned in the Wikipedia article about Choriocarcinoma. If it has spread she will have to undergo full on intense chemotherapy with the hair loss and everything. Since she had problems with her lungs in the hospital they're more worried about it having spread.

So, it's Friday and the CT scans results are supposed to be here. But for some reason they didn't do all of the scans that they needed to because of a paperwork mix-up or some garbage, so she had to go back to get more scans done. And we're all still waiting for the results...

So Many Things

I feel like so many things are going on that I should have a ton of stuff to post about. But then when I sit down and start to write, I realize that everything I feel so busy with is mental. I'm not doing a ton of fun activities like over the summer, but I'm doing a lot of reading, writing, and thinking for school. I'm thinking about my future and often about my past. And it's hard. The first time I was in school I felt like I could take a long time because I had graduated from high school with so many college credits. Now, I feel like I can't mess up. My semesters are planned so rigidly that I cannot fall behind. I'm doing well so far so I shouldn't worry but it's so much pressure.

And then there's "The Thing". The thing that I refuse to talk about because if I don't talk about it, it will go away, right? "The Thing" that I keep hoping isn't true and keep praying can't exist but I won't know until Friday. "The Thing" that will change lives, not my life the most, but it will definitely affect me. It's the thing that makes me stare out the window of the bus but not see a thing that passes by. It's the thing that makes me shake my head in the middle of a lecture so I can focus again. It's the thing that makes my stomach hurt, that I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about. "The Thing" is at the point where, if it's there, there is only one way to fix it. A hard, painful, long way. A tearful, stressful, sick way. A way that breaks you down so far you may wish you were dead from the very thing you're trying to fix. I keep hoping with all my heart that "The Thing" in this case is just a myth. I keep reminding myself not to be upset because we don't know yet. And I just keep waiting...