Back on Blogger

Well, I just realized that I forgot to post here that I’ve moved back to my old blog on Blogger. Here is the link: http://racheldavisdays.blogspot.com/ .

Merry Merry!

Well, the good news is we have survived this past week… so it is all good!  But wow, what a rough week it has been.  My surgery went very well.  The surgeon’s words to Greg after surgery were “I have no idea what the heck I just took out of her.”  Yeah, not all that helpful to hear.  But it went to pathology and we’ll get the results at my post-op visit on Thursday.  I’m sure it is benign as these tumors always are with me – so no worries about that.  Greg and I are only concerned at this point about what is causing them and how to stop it.  These are very large tumors that end up putting pressure on internal organs and can’t just be left in – but I can’t keep having surgery over and over and over.  Hopefully pathology will give us some answers.

The worst thing this past week was that Rachel ended up getting very sick!  She managed to get Strep on top of a respiratory virus.  So, my poor baby has been dealing with a sore throat, fever, and itchy rash on her chest and back from the Strep, chest congestion and a cough all week.  Her temp got to 103 yesterday and she was just miserable.  Thankfully, she was able to sleep through the night last night and seems to be feeling better this morning.  Poor Greg has been busy taking care of his two girls and having to work!

Unfortunately, Rachl’s Christmas program at school is tonight and she is too sick to go.  She is so disappointed!  And yes, I am disappointed, too.  Even if I wasn’t able to go, Greg was going to take her and videotape it.  I was excited to see her in her very first school Christmas program.  I told Rachel that as soon as she is feeling better, we’ll go do something fun as a family and she can wear her new dress that we got her for the Christmas program.  That helped make her feel a bit better.  Now I just need to find something special for us to go do.  I’m thinking maybe I’ll try to talk Greg into taking us for a fun weekend in downtown Seattle.  We could take Rachel to Westlake Center to ride the Holiday Carousel and I’m sure there are some other fun Holiday events going on downtown.

So this is a strange Christmas.   Our Christmas season may have started off with some challenges, but I’m still determined to make it a GREAT Christmas.  I’m going to see if I can postpone the second surgery until after Christmas.  I just need some time to start feeling better before putting myself back through another surgery.   So for now, I’m just going to relax, be relieved that I’m done with all my Christmas shopping, and just enjoy my sweet family, look at our tiny little Charlie Brown tree in our tiny apartment, and focus on all that I have to be thankful for.   Merry Merry Christmas!!!

Santa Pic and an update

Friday was a big day for Rachel.  She has a Christmas program coming up at school, so after I picked her up from school on Friday, we headed over to the mall to look for a dress.   Oh, Rachel had a ball!  We took a bunch of dresses to the dressing room and let her try on one dress after another.  She loved them all, of course!  She especially loved twirling around in each dress and doing various dance moves.  It was so fun to watch her have so much fun trying on dresses.  Then, as she was pulling the last dress off, she bumped her mouth and knocked a loose tooth, causing it to bleed.  It was obvious that tooth had to come out right then, so yes, we pulled it out right there in the dressing room.  Well, she was ecstatic!!!  Now she had a new dress and the tooth fairy would be coming to visit that night.  Can it get much better than that for a 6-year-old?  Why yes, yes it can!  Because as we walked through the mall, we saw Santa Claus!  So of course, she got to sit on his lap and tell him everything she wants for Christmas.  Here is the pic of her with Santa:

And for fun, here is the pic from her very first visit with Santa:

And now for an update on me – I’m checking in at the hospital for surgery tomorrow morning at 7:00.   This will be the first of 2 surgeries.  Tomorrow the tumor by where the previous tumors were will be removed.  In addition, they surgeon will be draining the 2 large fluid collections within my chest wall.  I will be coming home with 3 drains coming out of my side… which I dread more than I can even express.  But I’m trying to look at the bright side – this is the first step in helping me finally start feeling better!  I’ve been having a lot of pain with this and it will be nice to relieve the pressure in my back and chest.  Then in a couple of weeks, I will be having a second surgery to remove the other new tumor that has grown on the other side of my chest wall.  Eek!  I can’t believe I will have to have 2 surgeries so close together.  So, wish me luck, keep me in your prayers, etc!  I’m feeling optimistic that this will still be benign and that things will go well.  Then we will see what needs to happen to prevent the tumors from continuing to occur.  I really hope that we will be able to figure that out quickly!

Tea Time

I did another picture for Rachel’s room -

Rachel’s 6th Birthday

The pictures here are from Rachel’s 6th birthday in September.  Have I ever mentioned what a great distraction this hobby is?

Long Long Time Ago

I’ve been wanting to create some “art” for Rachel’s bedroom for a long time and now that I’m enjoying playing around with Photoshop again, I finally got something completed.   I started with an old picture of Rachel when she was about 14 months old.  Our cousins, Debbie and Terry, had come to visit and brought their dog, Bonaparte.  Rachel and Bonaparte seemed mutually intrigued with each other.  It was Rachel’s first experience with a dog and was so cute to watch.  So, I extracted Rachel and Bonaparte from the background of a picture I had taken that day.  I also found another picture of Baby Dog and “attached” him so that it looks like Rachel was holding him, and then created the rest of this little fantasy picture for Rachel’s room.   Such fun!  I think I will have it matted and framed and let it be one of Rachel’s Christmas presents this year.

Credits:  Innocent Imagination by Jofia Devoe.

Snow Memories

We’ve had snow in our forecast this weekend and while I really don’t like being stuck in snow, I will admit that I have found myself wishing to see some of that white stuff floating down from the sky.  It hasn’t happened so far, but I’m keeping my hopes up.  In the meantime, I found some pictures of Rachel playing in the snow a couple of years ago and created a new digi-scrap page today…