**Sidenote before this post even begins! I’ve been writing this entry since January 8th, so bear with me if some wording is out of date…
Hi Everyone! I know this is a little out of order because I said that I would be posting soon about the rest of my stay in the hospital, but I also promised a while ago a post about some of the FUN things I’ve been doing since Christmas. So since I’ve been living and breathing hospital the past few days, I’ve decided that I’d catch you up on some of those other things…
Quickly though, for those of you wondering, I AM home from the hospital. I came home from my first week of treatment Friday the 7th around 3:30pm, napped, ate dinner and then proceeded to watch my Fightin' Blue Hens football team get beat in their championship game. (I DO NOT want to talk about that!)
Anyway, let’s get started with filling you in on some of those other things that I’ve been doing, leading up to my hospital visit this past week…
Christmas Eve!
Christmas Eve went as described in my blog that day. While I didn’t take pictures of each dish we ate as I said I might, they were all still eaten! Yum! After dinner, we opened gifts as usual and ended the night with a viewing of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Overall, pretty solid night…
Christmas Day
The next day was obviously Christmas! I felt like a little kid on Christmas morning because I woke up at 5am. This however, was not due to being too excited about opening gifts but rather because I just couldn’t sleep from eating so much the night before and from the effects of my medication. I received some great gifts from “Santa” though, including mass amounts of gift cards, perfume and new boots! Christmas morning we go to my aunt’s house on my dad’s side of the family for a brunch cooked mainly by my grandmother, but contributed to by my mom and aunts. It was delicious!! After brunch, I tried to avoid watching the continuous playing of A Christmas Story on TBS, but I wasn’t successful. For some reason, there is NOTHING else on television on Christmas Day except for that movie, infomercials and Christmas Day mass. What. The. Heck?! After dessert and gift opening at that house, we went back to my grandmother’s house on my mom’s side of the family to see the other half of the my aunts, uncles and cousins that we do not see the night before. By the end of the night I was simply exhausted and headed straight for bed when we got home.
Christmas Cards
Speaking of Christmas, I wanted to take this time to share with you a few of the absolutely PRICELESS Christmas photo cards I received from a few of my favorite newly-married couples! Thanks guys! I look at them hanging on my corkboard everyday and they definitely make me smile!
Snow Storm/Black Swan
The next two days, as I’m sure was the case for everyone living in the Northeast, was pure chaos. Here in Bangor we were hit by one of most annoying snowstorms I can remember. While most roads appeared to be clear because they were treated by road crews beforehand or the wind was constantly blowing the snow off the roads, other roads were completely treacherous and it was unthinkable to drive down hills without a 4-wheel drive vehicle. Since we at my house do NOT have a 4-wheel drive vehicle, we were trapped in the house all day on the 26th and most of the day on the 27th. I finally convinced my mom on the 27th to brave the snowy roads and drive myself, Nate and Kayla to the movies to see Black Swan, which we had been dying to watch! (I’m personally kind of obsessed with Natalie Portman, and if she doesn’t win an Oscar for this movie, those Academy Award people have GOT to be crazy!) Here is my review on the movie I’ve given people who have asked:
DEFINITELY watch the trailer and know what it's about before you go... If you go to see this blind to what the movie is, you will be shocked and probably won't like it, to say the least. It would help if you are not easily freaked out by "thrillers" either. The movie was everything I thought it would be bc I was prepared for it! You could definitely tell the people that were in theater because they were dragged there just because they heard it was supposed to be a good movie. I’m not going to lie, there were some pretty INTENSE scenes that again, if you aren’t prepared for, you will be SHOCKED and completely blown away by. Overall, the movie was awesome with great acting and effects, but I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone by any means! Complicated explanation, right?
Mall With the Magster
Tuesday the 28th was a really fun day for me mostly because I got to see one of my dearest friends from college! Maggie is originally from Scranton and we met when I was an undergrad at Delaware and she was a grad student there. We worked with each other at the good ol’ ERC for 2 years and somewhere between 2005 and now, we’ve become very close! I don’t get to see the Magster a lot because we both have busy schedules, but on the 28th she was dropping her mom off at the Lehigh Valley Airport and it just so happened that I had a few gift cards to use from Christmas. We met at the Lehigh Valley Mall for shopping and lunch! It was great to get out of the house for a little bit and visit with my favorite School Psychologist! Maggie stopped at my house for dinner on her way back to Scranton and thus ended a successful Tuesday! Thanks again for everything that day, Mags! You’re the best!
Barium & Wednesday Brunch!
Wednesday the 29th was also quite eventful. I started the day off by drinking a FULL bottle of Barium Sulfate in preparation for my full-body IV contrast CT scan later that night. Depicted here is one of two bottles of this stuff I had to drink that day:
The barium suspension was surprisingly not terrible like I oringinally thought it would be. Basically it’s a frothy, white, milkshake-like liquid that smelled like fruit and tasted a bit like a piña colada! (Ok, maybe my head’s just somewhere else! Ha!) Barium in this form is used as a contrast dye that highlights your intestines during CT scans. Since the rest of my body hadn’t been scanned for any cancerous cells up until that point, this is why a full-body CT scan was required – mainly to rule out that abnormal cells were present in any other part of my body besides the brain. (You’ll remember that this was before we had the diagnosis of CNS Lymphoma so this was a test that helped with the eventual diagnosis.)
Anyway, I kind of skipped over this before to tell you about the awesome barium-drinking, but Wednesday morning I also got together with a few friends for brunch! The lovely Danielle was visiting from Tennessee with her husband and BABY and the brunch was “thrown” to celebrate! It was a great morning of chatting and EATING! Here are a few pictures Cheyenne snapped on her iPhone of our little get-together:
Pizza With SE & Nicki
Thursday the 30th, as you know, I visited the oncologist in the afternoon to receive my test results and diagnosis. I had already planned to get together with Nicki and Steph for dinner that night, and didn’t feel the need to cancel since I hadn’t seen either of them in a while. Plus, as mentioned previously in other posts, I wanted to tell as many friends face-to-face about my diagnosis, as possible, and this was the perfect opportunity to get started with that! Plus, I couldn’t pass up the delicious bacon, chicken, ranch pizza Nicki had raved about!!
Mo Visits & Happy 2011!!
On the last day of 2010, a long-time best friend came to visit for the day. Mo, (as she is fondly known to me as), and I have known each other since the first grade. We grew up two minutes from each other, but she moved away after high school with her parents. We’ve stayed close through college and after graduating regardless, and I was honored to be the Maid of Honor in her wedding this past July! She and her husband, (that is still so weird to say!), now live in Drums, PA which is even FARTHER away from me than last time she moved! Needless to say, we were due for a little visit! Though I’ve seen Mo since her wedding, I was unable to spend the time looking at her wedding photographer photos and honeymoon photos, so this is what we spent the majority of the day doing. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from Mr. & Mrs. Volcskai’s wedding day:
It was definitely fun to catch up with Mo – chatting, reminiscing and eating pizza is always a good time J
Later that night, it was time to celebrate the NEW YEAR with some good people! Even though I had to substitute sparkling grape juice for champagne this year, it was still an awesome time being around some of my best friends and ringing in 2011!
Happy 2011!!
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