Put a Tip in the Tip Jar, Get on My Top Spots!

If anyone has a clue how to add HTML towards the TOP portion of my blog without making a new post, I'd love to know. haha I've been doing this for awhile and it adds everything to the bottom. But if you'd like to get on my list of top blog spots, just give me a tip :) The link is at the bottom. You can get this widget yourself and get tips from your blog too. I have heard from others it is a handy gadget and gets your blog listed on other sites top spots. I want to increase my traffic here and it seems a good place to start. Please scroll to the bottom of this page if you want to be listed in my Top Spots!



Edit: I figured it out! Notice that my Top Spots is now directly to the left. Please, feel free to tip me and it will put your blog or site on my top spots. :)

Forgot to Mention

My appointment is on October 9th. I love my doctor. It's honestly really nice to see him and all the nurses. They watched me go from a whopping 92 pounds....I think since it was the last time I had weighed myself after I got sick, to around 127 pounds right before I delivered. The doc was thrilled about it of course. I mean, you see a patient come in. You know she just found out she was pregnant and you have the job of telling her she has cancer. I was a bag of bones. That was probably pretty scary for him and hard to do. I respect every nurse and doctor there more than they can possibly know. I am at a good weight now for me. So I have no complaints. I think the oncologist's office as a whole loves seeing how healthy I look compared to before and quite honestly Gabriella is a little celebrity there. How would you feel as a nurse administering chemo drugs into a visibly pregnant patient? I always imagined that was hard for them at least at first. I don't know though. So little is really known about chemo during pregnancy. If you do any research at all on pregnancy and cancer together, you'll absolutely find the website pregnantwithcancer.org. That site helped SO much. I found a supporter through that site who helped me so much. I have since lost touch with her and her blog vanished. I find it SO odd because she was a faithful blogger. Anyway, that site is great and I plan on becoming a supporter now myself. I just need to watch this DVD they sent me on how to do it. I need to get this done. More than anything I want to give back what everyone gave me. Hope. Just remember me on follow up day. My nerves are just awful usually around that time. Last time I had a nightmare the week before that it came back. I dreamt the doc took hubby into a seperate to tell him first. It was horrifying. I think I feel a little less afraid this time around. I am not quite sure why. I am up way too late. Time for bed!

October Already! Follow up Number Three Coming Soon

It's hard to believe so much time has passed since I was declared free of cancer. Just the words make me get tears in my eyes. The fear never goes away. I am not sure about others, but for me I always assumed if I ever had cancer, once I was declared in remission I would be no longer afraid. I assumed I would be happy all the time, glad I made it through and that would be that. It's really not how it works. I always have this fear of it coming back. It comes back strong right around the time you are due for a follow up. It comes creeping up every single time you have a strange pain, or for me whenever I feel any pressure in my neck. I always feel some pressure in there. I have four thyroid nodules, one you can honestly see. It drives me crazy. I know I have scar tissue in my chest. I particularly notice the pressure when I sing. I especially notice it because my neck veins bulge out I think a little more than a normal person's do while singing. Or maybe that's just me being obsessive? I am not sure. Regardless my doctor did tell me he didn't think it would come back. I hold on to that truly. It gives me a little extra faith. I responded so immediately and well to the treatment so he just doesn't think it will return. There is always the added risk for other cancers because of my treatments. It's an ironic world and one of the biggest reasons we need something better. We need a cure. Radiation put me at a higher risk for other cancers and so did chemo. From what I hve been told and read, I am at a higher risk for leukemia, breast cancer, lung cancer, thyroid cancer...to name a few. I am not sure really if there are others. It's just a risk though and honestly aren't we all at risk? I can't live every day fearing the unknown so I don't. It does creep in now and again but I promptly shove it out. It's not a way to live. I thank God for each day and I'll continue to live and just be thankful for each moment. I am including a new picture of my little miracle baby. It's amazing to me now thinking how she is going to be one next month! So much time has gone by. I carried this little one throughout my cancer and treatments. She is healthy and well and on her way to being one. I think it won't be more than a month or two before she is walking. She's holding on to my hands and walking all over the place. She's already hard to keep up with. She has quite the little personality. Telling her no does no good because she finds it incredibly funny and only does whatever you told her NOT to do, faster and giggling hysterically. She's definitely a little comedian. She is the happiest baby I have ever seen. She'll have her 12 month check up next month along with shots. Those times are always difficult because it chokes me up. It's crazy but it's true. Mothers often get teary eyed watching nurses poke their little one. They don't understand and look at you for protection because it hurts! haha It's a helpless feeling.
Here's the recent pic I promised of my Gabriella.

Coffee + Laptop = Disaster

Yes....I managed to spill coffee on my laptop. It's funny how these things happen. I always sit at my laptop and sip coffee, knowing in the back of my mind I am taking a risk. It's a risk worth taking, or so I tell myself. At least until the morning, when I send my cup flying into the air and back down on me and my laptop. I really am not quite sure how the cup slipped, or how it got so much air. Literally, it was above my head and I saw it coming back down. It spilled all over the laptop. I immediately turned the laptop upside down and grabbed a blanket I had been covering up with and started drying it off. The laptop shut off. I felt this dread in the pit of my stomach. I dried it as good as I could and kept it upside down, thinking perhaps I could keep the coffee from hitting the main components inside. Finally I turned it back up and let it sit....battery out..unplugged. It sat. For about 15 hours. I then checked for damage. I looked for spilled coffee under the keys...and wiped up any spots I saw. It wasn't all that bad. I didn't see any coffee in the battery compartment. I plugged it in...and nothing. It had an orange battery light. I decided to wait until morning. I got up in the morning and with a nervous hand, turned my laptop on. It started booting up. I was biting my nails as the screen saying "Windows didn't shut down properly" or something of that nature popped up. It came to a dark screen and it started to beep. It was an ear piercing loud beeeeeep beeeeeeeep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. I didn't know what it meant and I couldnt' stop it. After about 30 seconds of this hideously loud beeping...it went to my login screen. I entered my password and it worked. My keys are sticking slightly...and I don't think the down arrow works at all. I will count my blessings though because quite honestly I didn't expect it to work at all. Just having a laptop is a wonderful treat for me. I can't believe I did this! I am really disgusted with myself and now my coffee is located a safe distance away from my laptop. For now, I am forced to live with sticky keys and a broken down arrow. I rebooted once and it still does the beeping thing on startup. That's a truly bad thing when there is a sleeping baby in the house. Regardless, I am still thankful and in complete shock that it works at all!!

Sick

Well I knew we'd all catch something sooner or later with the start of school. There has been other illnesses but this one has been particularly awful. Angelina brought a nasty cold home and combined with her allergy asthma (that so far appears to be seasonal) her cough seems awful. I kept getting onto her about covering her mouth and not giving the baby her sickness. Well, I got it. Bad. I felt like I had a fever yesterday with chills and muscles aches but my temp was around 97.9 all day. I took ibuprofen which did make me feel REALLY hot and sweaty. The muscle aches would go away though. Gabriella caught it but doesn't seem quite as sick. Thank the Lord! I hate seeing my kids sick. I get little to no sleep when they do. I feel much better today other than this nasty cough and a stuffy nose.

Yesterday was also my 13th wedding anniversary. We didn't do anything as money is tight these days. I hope we can get out sometime soon but instead we just went to our daughter's open house at their school, looked around at what they do and met their teachers. It was nice. It was a full day. I have a new pic of myself trying out some curls. I have been using a shampoo to help my hair get healthier since chemo. I had it cut soooo short and it's starting to grow back in. haha Have a great day all!