Hello blog.... it's me again

I'm Alive!!!!


I know all 3 of you readers out there have been wondering where I'd wandered off to

It's been just under a year since I last wrote and although 'I've been super busy' is actually true that's only half the reason I haven't written until now

The last 12 months have been the most impactful years of my life. There's been good times. There's been bad times. And there's most definitely been ugly times.

I'll start my year long catch up with the most ugly.

In January of 2010 my mom went into the emergency room for chest pain. Having chronic pneumonia the last several years she thought they'd find some gunk in her lungs, give her an antibiotic and send her home.

Well they found something in her lungs, but it wasn't fluid. It was cancer. Cancer in her lungs, cancer in her liver and over the course of the last year - cancer in her spine, bones and brain. She's had 3 different type of chemotherapy, one round of radiation and she's been hospitalized twice; once for 3 weeks with pneumonia and clots in her lungs - and once for pancreatitis.

The pancreatitis admission was the latest. Last Wednesday she text me saying she was doing good, starting to eat solid foods and the plan was to send her home Friday. Thursday evening I got a call saying she had a 4cm lesion on her brain and it was bleeding. I rushed to MS with my husband.... (yes my husband, but I'll save that news for another post) got to the hospital and learned that she wasn't expected to make it through the weekend. She was heavily medicated and barely able to talk.

Today is Friday Jan 21, 2011 and mom is home at my sister's. She's awake, talking, and eating but there's no doubt that cancer has had it's way with her. The bleeding was stopped with 6 units of plasma (Go Donate!) the swelling on her brain is being controlled with steroids, and she's been kept pain free with serious meds, but her cancer is still out of control and at this point she's just being kept comfortable until her time with us is done. Hospice comes daily to check on her and make sure she's comfortable and resting.

My mom is 53 years old and is going to die leaving behind 3 children, 3 grandchildren, brothers, sisters, parents and a host of other people who love her... because she smoked.

Even now she's most likely sitting in her wheelchair out on my sister's porch.... smoking.

And I will never forgive her for it.

Small-cell lung cancer accounts for approximately 20-25% of all cases of lung cancer.


The predominant cause of small-cell lung cancer is tobacco smoking.


Smoking is by far the leading risk factor for lung cancer. Tobacco smoke causes nearly 9 out of 10 cases of lung cancer. The longer a person has been smoking and the more packs per day smoked, the greater the risk. If a person stops smoking before lung cancer starts, the lung tissue slowly returns to normal. Stopping smoking at any age lowers the risk of lung cancer.

Love your children more than yourself. Love your parents, your spouse, your siblings enough to stop being selfish. SMOKING KILLS.

There is no doubt, no question, no yet to be determined medical test to prove it.

So do yourself and everyone who loves you a favor and Q.U.I.T. or be prepared to explain to them why you loved your cigarette more than you loved them.

'It's just to stressful to quit'. 'I'll quit when I'm ready'. 'I smoke because I like it'.... none of those are acceptable reasons why my 4yr old niece will only have vague memories of her grammsy.


emedicinehealth.com
Cancer.Gov

Webmd

Three's Company Too

Not a lot to report today.... still sick. I've had a sinus/upper respiratory infection since the day after Christmas and it doesn't appear to be going anywhere. I still got in my 15 minutes of exercise though. I focused on strength training which burned my muscles like heck but didn't put any strain on the breathing - which has been rather difficult thanks to the gobs of snot clogging up my face.

OH! There is some news.. Our new roommate moved in today. My old roommate lived here for just under a year and ended up moving for work. He only ended up being able to give two weeks notice though, which meant in addition to the drastic reduction of income from being laid off, I was also going to lose the $300 a month I got from him for rent.... just before rent was due. Thank God for craigslist.com though. I've found my last 4 roommates from that site and only 1 turned out to be a bad egg.

The new roomie is a girl, which I'm not 100% thrilled about but she's young and far from home so I have a feeling I'll end up taking more of a big sister frame of mind than an 'Oh God, girls are so annoying!' one. Here's hoping anyway.

Good things are a'comin

Today is January 2nd, 3 months since I was laid off from my job and I am for all intents and purposes still unemployed. The despair of being without a job is waning though. After submitting my resume to quite literally 100 plus job postings, I finally got offered a job. I'm just not due to start work until January 11th. Direct hire this time - no more temp gigs. Woohoo!

January 11th is also the day classes begin for the 2010 Spring Semester at University of South Alabama - where I have transferred and will be attending until completion of my degree. This change is the first major action I took to accomplish one of my major new goals - which is to get a degree in something I actually enjoy doing and can make a career of and work for myself doing.

I didn't spend my first post of the new year listing out all the things I planned on doing in 2010 so I'll cover a few of them now.

In no particular order:

Goal 1 is to stop drinking pop. When I moved to Michigan I stopped drinking pop and went almost 4 years without so much as a single Coke. Then I moved back south and well... It's time to kick that habit though once and for all.

Goal 2 is to exercise at least 15 minutes a day - Every Single Day. I know 15 minutes might seem minuscule but I've learned the hard way that setting up big goals is a sure fire way to pretty much guarantee failure - so this year I'm doing things right - baby steps people...

Goal 3 is to go 365 days without eating fast food. The only exception I'm allowing is Subway - even though you get it quickly, I'm not sure a deli sandwich can be lumped in with McDonald's or Taco Bell.

Goal 4 is to smile and laugh at least once Each Day. That may seem like a no brainer but sometimes stress can be a big fat downer and 2 or 3 days will go by and you realize you've not so much as cracked a grin in almost a week. Laughing releases endorphins - endorphins make you feel happy - ergo laughing is good. And I don't know about you but I've never seen anyone laugh without smiling as well.

Goal 5 is to create a vision board. I know several people who've made them and the idea is that having a constant visual of where you want your life to go helps facilitate your desire to actually take action to make sure you get there.

Goal 6 is to see possibility in every situation. This one may be a little hard sometimes. Trying to picture something good coming out of say - having a major repair on your car when you're unemployed and unemployment doesn't come close to paying the bills can seem pretty daunting, but that exact thing just happened to me and something positive did indeed come from it. And let me tell you - believing something good would come out of that from the beginning of the situation would have definitely changed the way I reacted and handled it.

Goal 7 is to let my family know how much I love them. The relationship between my family and I has, for the last several years, been somewhat stressed. A culmination of past events, hurt feelings, old grudges, difference of opinions and life styles have stretched the thin connection I have to my family even tighter and although many of those things may never change I'm tired of feeling like I'm on eggshells around them. We may never see eye to eye but we are family and maybe I'm getting soft in my old age but that's starting to mean something.

So those are some of the main goals I have for my life in 2010. Last year I would have had to list just one more to end on an even number, but being anal retentive and OCD is something I'm trying to make a little less of a priority this year.

Oh! I've also signed back up with Nablopomo this year so for January, at least, I've a goal to blog every day. So far So Good!!