Category Archives: life in general

Making a change.

03.16.12

One of my goals for 2012 is to eat a little healthier and to do what I can to make sure no one else in our family gets cancer. While Lola’s cancer is not caused by anything I have control over, so many types of cancer are. And now knowing what it is like to go through having cancer I will do anything I can to keep it away from my family!!!
So. Since 2012 started I have not bought any packaged foods including some of our favorites… instant mashed potatoes. I know.. right?? Who likes those things? WE DO!!!! Not any more we don’t. Also no more canned goods, unless there is no other option. There are some things that I can really only find in cans. But no more canned fruits or veggies. We now go all fresh or frozen. We are doing our best to keep unnecessary chemicals out of our bodies.
I have come across some totally gross stuff that goes into our process food. Have you ever heard of meat glue?? Umm… gross.  How much do you like chlorine?  How about in you chicken? We started buying natural grass fed meat from our friends over at grassfields last year and it is SO GOOD!!!  We’re also going to be raising our own meat chickens this spring.

[caption id="attachment_1150" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="yummy honey- soon to be syrup"][/caption]

Have you ever looked at the ingredients on a bottle of syrup? There is a lot of junk in there. And… did you know it is totally easy to make your own syrup?? It still has a boat load of sugar in it, but at least nothing extra! And it is tasty!! I made some this afternoon to go with our pancakes (yeah thats right… we eat pancakes for lunch).

 

 

 

 

 

The girls and I made it a while ago to Fredrick Meijer Gardens to see the butterflies. I think my kids are cuter than butterflies, so I tend to only take their pictures, and pictures of nothing else…..

When bike riding, always wear a helmet. And wings. Both critical.

 

 

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Spring is coming!!!

03.10.12

I am SO happy that we have had a few decent warm(ish) days around here. Even if the wind is strong enough to blow my house over, i’m still happy about it :) One spring thing that we have going on around here is that we have baby chicks!!

Last year when we moved out to the country one of the first things we did was to build a chicken coop (It’s still not done… but it’s good enough;) ). We got a few chickens from the family we lived with last year, and I also got a few from craigslist. We’ve had a few randomly and a few not so randomly die over the winter and we’re down to 7 hens now. Time to get our chicken numbers back up so that we can have lots and lots of yummy eggs to share. We bought 7 more chicks yesterday, and plan to get more in the next few weeks. My girls LOVE the chicks. They have been having lots and lots of fun playing with them in their big playmobil house, and because it is so hilarious to see a tiny chick sitting on a tiny chair at a tiny kitchen table, I just let them do it. I seriously find it hilarious. HI>LAR>IOUS. I need to get out more….. The end of march we have 25 day old meat chicks (yum yum) coming. The girls may need to invest in a larger play house. Or perhaps a play school?? So this leads to the question… are we real country people yet?? I don’t think so.

 

Speaking of Country….. some of you may have read a tiny bit here and there on facebook about the adventures of big dog (aka our boxer Penelope). I’m pretty sure this story verifies that we are NOT real country people. One day I’m home with the girls as usual, and I let rat dog and big dog out to do their thing. I go to get big dog back in and she has something very suspicious in her mouth.

[caption id="attachment_1132" align="alignleft" width="224" caption="Bad dog."]bad dog.[/caption]

Turns out to be a leg… yup a leg. from heaven only knows what. I find it to be very gross so naturally I do what anyone would do when the remains of a leg shows up on their porch. I text my husband a picture of it, and then say a little prayer that no one comes to my front door and sees the leg. We’ll…. the UPS man did indeed come that day and set a nice package right next to the leg. Oh well…
So, a few days later i’m in my kitchen and big dog is out on the deck. I look out and notice that she has something once again in her mouth. Its a foot. A fully intact foot complete with fur/claws etc. GROSS!!! SO I again freak out and text my husband to tell him I would like to move to an apartment in the city. I call and make big dog an appt. to get a dog bath. No stinky death dog is going to be hanging out in my house!! The big man of the house gets home from work, takes care of the foot and life goes on.
And then…. Thank goodness this is on a saturday and my husband is home. I let death dog out, and all the sudden she’s gone. I don’t know where she is and she isn’t coming when I call. A few minutes later shes back. And GUESS what she has?!! The entire remains (minus a foot and a leg) of a half decayed raccoon!!! SUPER GROSS!!! Husband takes care of it and we both say- thank goodness. I think that is everything.

But WAIT!!! It’s not over. A few days later the dog is out and guess what she brings to the deck this time?!! A small animal rib cage. And the next day?!! A giant vertebrae from heaven only knows what!!! So… ever since then poor death dog has been on a chain and she is not able to enjoy running free on our land in the country. But really… let me ask you this. Who has this happen?? My life is so STRANGE!!!

These are a few older pics from February. We went away for a night to celebrate making it one year from Lola diagnosis. And check out all Lola’s hair!!

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The dust has settled.

02.14.12

It’s official. We have been home a year from Tanzania. We have been dealing with Leukemia for one year. Our lives have been upside for one year. And the good news…..  We have survived.

I can still remember last valentines day like it was yesterday. I can still feel what my body felt like when the Dr. came in and told us that Lola did indeed have cancer. I was in the room. I was awake. I was listening, but it was like I was somewhere else and my body was literally numb.  There was a whole team of people in our room. A dr, nurses, a random med student who kept trying to talk to me. And I literally heard nothing once it was stated that Lola had Leukemia. I could see people’s mouth moving like they were talking, but there was no sound. It was like they were all on mute. It was awful. It was beyond awful.

Today marks one year since it began. Last valentines day I said to matt that next year on valentines we were taking the kids to disney world. Well…  we did that a couple months ago, so instead we took the girls overnight to a hotel to celebrate our family, Lola’s life, and that we have survived. We are SO THANKFUL to have made it this far!!  Each year we make it is really a little celebration. Really every day that Lola doesn’t relapse deserves celebration… but I think we would get sick of sleeping in hotels to celebrate ;)  We need to make it 4 more years and then we will be throwing a big ‘ol party and leaving cancer in the dust.  Lola still has another year and a half of treatment, and then a number of years of testing to make sure the leukemia doesn’t sneak back and once she has made it 5 yrs we are pretty much in the clear.

One incredibly scary thing that is going on right now is that there is a huge shortage of one of the drugs that Lola needs. I have been hearing about kids not able to get there chemo, or needing to take a lower dose because of the shortage. This is a medication that they inject into Lola’s spine to make sure the leukemia doesn’t get into her spine and brain. Pretty serious stuff and a very necessary part of her treatment.  Without this drug survival rates for kids with leukemia are decreased to a heartbreaking percentage. I have read a lot of different stats on the shortage, but basically everything says that if the gov’t doesn’t step in, there will be no more of this drug possibly for the rest of the year. It sounds like the drug could be totally gone in a matter of weeks. Lola is scheduled  for her next dose of this drug in March. Please pray that things change by then and more of this life saving medication is made and that Lola can continue her treatment as it is needed. If there shortage effects Lola, I don’t know what I will do. We would rather not have to go searching the international black market for a medication for our daughter….  but we certainly would consider it, no matter the cost.  Follow this LINK to send a letter to your senator about the issue that the Leukemia and Lymphoma society has provided. I never know if letters like this can really make a difference or not… but it sure is worth a try.

And on a much lighter note….  Did you hear the news??  I’m officially totally old. I turned 30 last week!!! I was 30 weeks pregnant on my 30th birthday. And I ate 30 pieces of cake to celebrate. Ok… maybe not, but that would make it sounds a lot cooler. or not. My day was great. The girls decorated the house with gobs of streamers taped to the walls, Matt brought me home indian food (my favorite!!) and I laid in bed eating my all time favorite candy- cinnamon hearts. A perfect birthday in my opinion :)

Lola was back into clinic on Friday to get her blood counts checked. She has been doing better with her tummy, but still not totally great. And her counts were low, so she had to be pulled off her chemo for a week to try to get the counts back up again. It always makes me a little nervous when she gets pulled off her chemo. This is only the 2nd time this has happened to her, and I hope it doesn’t happen again.  We have to go back later this week to check the counts again, and hopefully she can start back on her chemo.  We’re just praying that she doesn’t get sick this week with her low counts. We really should be living in a total bubble again….  but sometimes we just can’t do that. Lola has to give up SO much stuff because of cancer, that sometimes we just break the rules and go party at a hotel and pray that the 4 gallons of hand sanitizer I soak our family in is enough to keep her healthy.

Sorry I have no pictures to post today :(  I had good intentions of putting some up… but I am just to tired to do it now.  I’ll be posting some soon though to show off Lola’s beautiful head of hair that is growing in!!  She looks somewhat like a teenage boy who just doesn’t want to comb his hair. I find it to be cute. (On lola… not on teenage boys…)

EDITED TO ADD: here is a great article from Cure Search (the organization the funds Children’s Cancer research that I did the Ultimate Hike with) about how you can help with the drug shortage. Check it out, and help us fix this problem!!  CLICK HERE

And HERE is the link to our post a year ago when Lola was diagnosed for those of you who are new to the blog.

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Get out of my bed.

01.29.12

Have you heard that Lola got a dog for christmas??   It is the most wonderful/awful little dog ever. Its a tiny 4lb 2yr old yorkie that lets lola haul it all over the house, and put it in party dresses and force it to lay next to her any time she is tired, including all night long.  It is wonderful because Lola LOVES it so much. It helps to keep her happy, it gives her a ‘purpose’ when she isn’t feeling well and can’t do much else but pet the dog and tell it how cute it is. This past friday when Lola had clinic we scheduled the dog to go to the vet the same day to get fixed (We sure don’t need any puppies around here…) and to have some teeth pulled (really??  My dog has a dental bill?!! ;)  ). Lola thought it was so great that they were both going to the hospital on the same day. They both needed medicine, and they both had to get ‘pokes’ And lola made sure to tell every person we came in contact with that day that both her and the dog were going through medical procedures. The dog is awful because it seems to have bonded to me. And I am not bonded to it. I want it to be Lola’s dog, and the dog wants to follow my every move and snuggle up close breathing its hot stinky breath on me any time I take a break. If that dog catches me in bed, it is sure to jump on in, snuggle down under the covers and give me a big stinky lick on the face. gross. So. Thats the story on Lola’s new dog the famous Ms. Roxy Fur. (she was going to name it fur…. thankfully she decided to go with that for its middle name. )

Let’s see. What else is going on. Lola has been doing fairly well. Her spirits have been high, and she is just all around happy. Last month (december) she had gained enough weight that at clinic they raised her doses of chemo. That seems to have been more than her little body can handle and she is now dealing with a lot of nausea and vomiting. She eats and like 4 minutes later will throw up and then just continue on with her day.  While so far all of these ‘incidents’ have been at home, I am slightly terrified to leave the house with her for fear of puke. I just make sure to pack some plastic bags and extra clothes every time it seems we may be at risk for an explosion.  This is also effecting her eating habits, and it has become nearly impossible to get her to eat. Nothing sounds good, and it is so hard for her to eat even a little bit. When we were at clinic friday she had lost weight, but not enough to need to lower her chemo doses back down. Her PA at clinic didn’t have any real great ideas for how to deal with this, so we are basically going to give it another month. She is now on some high doses of chemo, and high doses of meds to deal with the side effects of the chemo.  Its just so frustrating knowing she needs the chemo, but that the chemo is affecting her negatively.  This whole situation makes life a bit more difficult.

We went to church in town today, so decided to run to the mall while we were there. Lola still has some leg/ankle weakness from last year when she stopped walking, and I could tell that the cute little leather boots I had bought her were just not giving her enough support so I really needed to find her a new, better pair. It was lunch time so we decided to grab a bite to eat at the food court.  Lola doesn’t want anything to eat, and after trying to figure out what to get her for about 15 minutes I get frustrated and tell her to pick something, or we’re going to go home.  She finally decides on chicken tenders and chocolate milk. We get our food, and she drinks about half her milk, says her stomach hurts and that she can’t eat anything else. I become slightly afraid that she is going to throw up in the food court (which she doesn’t).  Matt becomes slightly suspicious that she is just saying her stomach hurts so she doesn’t have to eat.  After some discussion it is decided that her stomach does indeed hurt. We decided just to suck it up and try to find a pair of boots since we are at the mall and probably won’t be back for a couple of weeks. We make it to store #1. No good boots. on to store #2.  They have a cute pair of Keen boots. They looks supportive, cute, comfy and they are on sale. perfect. Oh wait…. they don’t have Lola’s size. On to store #3 (stride rite). They have about the same options as store one, but we decide they are an improvement over what she has now, and they are on sale so we just snag a pair and start to get the heck out of the mall. Lola suddenly has to go to the bathroom and the events that occur in the bathroom prove that her stomach did indeed hurt. I’ll spare you the details of that…..

That is a pretty good description of our lives right now. Lola is happy overall, feels good most of the time, but we just never know when these stomach issues might creep up and cause trouble. Hopefully we can get things under control with this so that Lola can go on being happy  and feeling good all the time!!

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8 years later…

09.11.11

Wow.  Eight years ago if you had told me that this is where my life would be, I don’t think I would have believed you. BUT…   if someone had told me that this would be my life, and I had a choice to make a decision and NOT marry Matt, so that this would not be the path of my life, I STILL would have married him.

September 12,2003 was an amazing day in my life. 8 years later I STILL have guests from our wedding come up to us and say how fun our wedding was. We were SO excited to be getting married. We were young. (I was just a baby at 21 yrs old!!) We were completely crazy (and still are) and we were in LOVE!!!! I loved matt so much, and the good news is that I still do. I would say that the first 7 years of our marriage were completely ‘normal,’ we had a baby and then another through adoption (maybe adoption isn’t normal to you… but it is to me :)  ) We bought a house, and then another when we needed a bigger home. Matt got a real job, I realized how much I hated having a job so stopped working ;)  I later decided having my own business was more suited to me, and that worked out pretty good. And so on and so forth was our first 7 years.

And then there is this last year. My life in the last year consisted of moving your family across the world, learning a new language and culture, being robbed, having a forest fire invade our yard, and having to put that fire out by hand because there was no ’911,’ (truth be told…  Matt and a couple other guys put the fire out, while I stood in the house deciding what I needed to toss in the car in case the fire engulfed our home.)   living without electricity or clean water, caring for a very sick orphan newborn who only slept 30 minutes at a time and screamed in pain the rest of the time, we were  forced to leave our new home on the other side of the world to come back to the states to find out our daughter has cancer. We realized we had no home, no car, no job, no nothing, to have to rely on others to care and provide for us, we had our very sick child stop talking and stop walking, we bought a new home 5 months later, and moved into our home and realized that EVERYTHING was broken in it. You guys can relate to that right??  No?  anybody??  no. hmmm….  But you know who can relate to all that stuff with me??  My amazing wonderful husband.  If I had not had him along on this crazy life journey with me, I don’t know what I would have done.  Now, I have a huge faith and find great comfort in the Lord, but there are days when the good Lord would use Matt’s amazing patience to just be there for me when i’m freaking out about medications and side effects, and things left in Tanzania and dishwashers that don’t work.  And yes, I am real good at freaken out. Our life is hard. I mean really hard. But together Matt and I have become better people through it all and I really wouldn’t trade it for a normal un-eventful life. I’m sure that you all have issues in your life, struggles that stink. And it is my prayer that not only do you find strength in the Lord to get through those hard days, but also that you have someone that can hold your hand through it all. Some times we just have to reach out for help, but getting through all that ‘stuff’ will be so much better with  someone who cares.

On Anniversary this year is not going to be fun. It won’t be exciting. We will do nothing special. But we will be together, and again I am thankful for that. Lola has a big appt at clinic tomorrow. I’m thankful that Matt is taking the morning off work to help me out with Lola. She has to be sedated in order to have chemo put into her spine. While I have gotten used to her being put under, it is never an easy thing to watch my baby go life-less on the table in the basement of the hospital. And it is never easy to watch her wake up confused, tired and hungry. So I am thankful that matt will be there to help me with our sweet baby girl. Lola will also be getting a number of other Chemos, and they will be upping her doses. The night after clinic is never real fun for Lola. She generally doesn’t feel real great and ends up with bad diarrhea during the night. And I am always so emotionally drained that it takes everything I have to take care of my sweet babe. Clinic days are not fun. So that will be our 8th anniversary. A prime example of what marriage should be. Caring for each other, loving our family, and helping each other when we need it most.  So Matthew, the Love of my life. Here’s to our 9th year. We survived the 8th year so we now know we can get through anything together, and i’m pretty sure it can only go up from here.

Please keep praying for our family, as we continue to survive the best we can. Pray for Lola at clinic in the morning. Pray that her blood counts look good, so she can get the treatment she needs. Pray that as they up the doses of chemo once again that the side effects are minimal. Pray for NO long term side effects for Lola. Did you know that 3 out 5 children with cancer live with long term side effects for the rest of their lives?!!  I’m not real interested in that for Lola. She still has a lot to do with her life. We don’t want side effects slowing her down.  Wanna know something cute about Lola?  Well…  if you said no, I can’t hear you so I’m still going to tell you.

A few nights ago I had tucked the girls in for bed and I was listening them discuss the star they could see out the window, and they decided to ‘wish’ on the star. Lola says the whole star light, start bright  etc…  and do you know what she wished for???   A ‘double blessing of the Holy Spirit.’ My 5 year old. She is 5 yrs old and THAT is what she wishes for!!!  And then last night… stars out again and this time she wished for ‘Grace, Peace and Mercy for people around the world.’  Did I mention that she is 5 yrs old?? This child is AMAZING. God has big plans for this little angle. She is going to take her double blessing and do amazing things.

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