A new week!

Happy Monday!

We are looking forward to a fantastic Thanksgiving week celebrating with the Sangrey side of things.  Always good to get the cousins together and eat too much. ;)  I will be making Grandma Sangrey's cranberry sauce and it always makes me nostalgic.  Last year I even made her chocolate topped caramel pudding!  I hope that she was smiling down on us that day…

However, in looking forward it is always important to reflect on things past… like Neely "losing" her first tooth last Thursday.  Unfortunately it happened via "pliers" (that's what they look like at least… I'm sure that Gwen could tell us the technical dental name for them… ;)) in the dentist's chair. That's right, the 6 year old had a tooth pulled!!  It was for certain a "Mother of the Year" nomination moment for me.  Nevermind that she has already had four fillings to the ZERO that her brothers have had or that she had been complaining that her tooth hurt for about a week before I finally made the appointment (Dr. Roszenweig so kindly said to me in an aside during the wailing, "Just call us as soon as something like this comes up, we'll be happy to fit her in right away".  Nice… thanks, I'll keep that in mind…).  She just doesn't complain too much and I thought something was stuck in her tooth, ok?!  When I finally noticed how swollen her gum was… I made the call.  Turns out that her previously deep filling must've irritated her nerve and resulted in an abscess.  Lovely.  They wanted the tooth out right then.  Thankfully (there's the tie-in to this week's theme of thankfulness… just wanted to be sure that you were getting it!), she is exceptionally tough and was taking everything like a champ.  However, when she started screaming (not trying to get up or push them away, just screaming "mommy, mommy, it really hurts!"… HEART-WRENCHING), I finally interjected that perhaps she needed a bit more numbing agent?  They kept trying to tell her that pressure was different than pain and I could see in her eyes what she was not saying as she nodded politely, "I know the difference you idiots, this HURTS!!". So, the nice new young dentist who is joining our practice kept giving her more numbing agent and then wiggling her giant molar, scream, repeat until Dr. R came in and got the job done with a little more force and quickness.

Even with my background of nasty injuries, it was almost more than I could take (kind of like going into Darin's knee surgery to observe AFTER we were engaged… not wise…).  A few hours, some tylenol and a Chik-fil-A peppermint milkshake later when Neely was examining her giant tooth with roots still attached (see pic below…) she remarked on the "long pointy things" sticking out of her tooth that aren't there on the ones that have fallen out of Dryden  & Parker's mouths. "Well honey, when a tooth is ready to come out, those roots have worn away and it comes out on it's own because another tooth is trying to come in", I said.  She got a "duh" look on her face and exclaimed "Oh… well that makes sense!".  As if now all of the tugging and pain finally made sense in her mind.  And that was that.  Moving on to bigger and better things!  Like the "tooth book" at school that she would now get to fill out because she had finally lost a tooth… She is not one to dwell on the negative aspects of things.  I have no doubt that will serve her well in the future!!

So… I am here on this Monday hoping for a week when we don't have any emergency dental procedures and can do a lot more personal reflection on the innumerable blessings that God has placed in our paths.  I am planning to spend some time with each child individually (or together… it is hard to separate the little buggers…) talking about that as well as doing my own thankfulness inventory.

Well… it's been awhile…

I just had to double-check that it has actually been since May of 2011 that I have updated this blog… I have seriously been running from God's gentle prodding for almost 2 1/2 years.  I am so not proud of this fact!!  He has used so many of you to assist in the prodding but still I found excuses… no time, nothing to say, don't really want to revisit this era of my life, yada, yada, yada… You've all probably heard them all (maybe directly from my mouth!) before.  He has used preachers, teachers, Bible studies, sermons, songs on the radio and countless other very vivid and pointed episodes to prod me and still I have run (and I say I'm not a runner!! Very funny…).  I can't really say why but He won't stop prodding so there must be someone out there somewhere who needs something that I have to offer.  So to you I say, I am so sorry that I am late!!  May it not be too late…

Apologies aside… I am back to what has kept me from coming here for these past several… years…  What to say???  Update is necessary, I guess.  I am pretty darn healthy.  Ha ha.  Done!  Just kidding.  I return to Magee Women's Hospital every three months.  At these appointments I have a long hollow needle inserted into my stomach where they inject, via a trigger (are you getting the impression that this is painful?  It is…) a medication that suppresses my yet to retreat into menopause, ovaries.  They have hinted, not so subtly, that I could just have them removed in order to avoid this painful procedure but for some reason I just can't seem to take this step.  I keep asking when I will be in menopause so that I can forget all of this, and they laugh a little bit.  I don't see the humor, myself.  Apparently they aren't even interested in testing my hormone levels for another five years or something silly.  Nice.

I see my oncologist every six months (not counting the times that I see her at the rink… no joke, her son is in the same session as Parker.  I have also seen my radiation oncologist at the rink… either I am spending too much time at the rink - which is HIGHLY likely - or everyone involved in cancer in some way plays hockey… research idea NIH??).  In addition to the detailed health history (remember that there is no routine scanning in my world, only acute hypochondria is used to identify any possible metastasis), I also get bloodwork and a round of zometa via my port (only reason that I am holding onto it… think that I have about three more years of this to go…).  Supposedly it has already been determined that this drug does NOT increase the disease-free interval for patients like myself (bummer) but it can help to prevent some of the bone-wasting effects of chemotherapy.  However… don't take it for too long or it will cause bone-wasting.  Are you keeping up here?  Not complicated or seemingly contradictory at all.  Grr.

We have had a couple of scares since I was last here.  Some weird lumps and pains as well as a bizarre aphasic episode (this is when you are thinking words to say but can't physically make your mouth say them… very strange and unsettling!).  Both times it started a fire drill of scans and appointments but for now all is clear!  It also starts you right down a dark path of "this is the end", etc. etc.  It is incredibly disturbing to me how this path can create symptoms all on its own.  At this stage, battling this disease is definitely a battle most often fought in the mind.  We are still on a learning curve with this…

I have continued hot flashes that are probably one of the most debilitating, lasting effects.  Sounds pretty innocuous but you have no idea, if you don't experience them yourself!  Apparently they are a side-effect of the one actual cancer drug that I take daily so there is really no escaping them aside from the suggested anti-depressant (seriously??  Not a chance that I am taking that for hot flashes) or possibly acupuncture, which I would try but have failed to get insurance approval for and don't really care to pay for right now.  So… I sweat…

Well… that is pretty much the health update!  Feeling pretty good and living life pretty normally these days.   Since it is finally clear to me that there must be more to say… I am hoping to be here regularly to dispense useless information from our lives and experience (just kidding… that sounds like I am mocking God's prodding in my life.  I really am not… I'm just mocking my life… ha ha!!  Or, more accurately, just can't see what it is that He sees, but what is new about that???  As Rock so often likes to say, we are in sales, NOT management… )  Here's to another Monday!