For Today I Have It All

Today is much better, I feel less like screaming and more thankful. Today I had my eyes opened (again) to its not as bad as it could be...

I just finished ready an article about a little girl who will be 4 on March 26th (exactly 1 month younger than Ryan), she was recently diagnosed (I believe this past summer) with a brain tumor. This particular type of brain tumor is very aggressive and basically has a 0% survival rate, she is not expected to live until her birthday. They say in the days since the diagnosis it has already grown from golf ball size to grapefruit size and still growing fast. She is living her life to the fullest every day and just returned from a special trip to Disney world from the Make A Wish foundation. Her parents even have given her an early "Toy Story" birthday party.

Amazingly this child (Delaney is her name by the way) so young has accepted that she is going to die and accepted her fate. She recently said to her mother "Oh mommy, I am so excited I'm dying." The mother said "Who told you that?" She said "God did."

Delaney has weeks or maybe days left to live but before she goes she has one last dying wish "...for everyone to give each other a hug"

How sweet is this child?

This is when I said to myself, today you need to get out of the funk. You have a child the same age as Delaney and he is fine, he does not have anything terrible to endure, heck he does not even know what dying really is.

Throat biopsies are nothing, Brain tumors now THAT is something, THAT is something to get stressed about.

I realized that I really do have it all. To be a parent with a child like Delaney how do you deal with such a thing? How do you deal with the fact the baby you gave birth too will be lost to a horrible disease like cancer? Honestly how do you go on at all?

My biggest issue today is if I should get the 2 maple trees in my backyard that I just know will come falling on my house soon, even though they look to be alive, taken out for $1300. Or when the hell the car insurance bill is going to come since it seems to be so late or what day of the weekend to cook corned beef and cabbage because holy crap there is a lot of calories in corned beef but it is so damn good. Mmmm

Today I have it all.....

I will deal with the sword my doctor will put in my throat and all my doctors appointments.
I will pray for Delaney and hope that her passing is not painful and peaceful and God takes care of her
I will pray that her family gets past the loss of their child
I pray that this is something I never deal with, never ever

Today is good and healthy and perfect

Again?! Your kidding me, right?

Again the whirlwind of doctors start and it is stressing me out, actually that is an understatement, I am really ready to scream my head off!

You may remember that back in November when I was going for my abdominal surgery they halted the surgery because a mass was found in my throat, well actually on the back of my tongue, the part that is down in you throat. They looked at the mass back at the time and told me that it needed to be biopsied followed by the wonderful news that general anesthesia was needed to do that because as the doctor put it "It is like sticking a sword in your throat." Thanks doc! Why do I get all the doctors that are comedians?

I was going to have the biopsy done at abdominal surgery "take 2" in December but my Colon/Rectal surgeon talked me out of it stating that if I need a nasogastric (NG) tube due to complications that a swollen and injured throat would be a major issue. Good to know, so if I need a tube jammed in my nose to my stomach the sword cut throat would cause problems. This all sounds like a barrel of laughs doctor. Needless to say I listened and did not do the biopsy at the time and in the end I did not need a NG tube anyway, darn!

So after much procrastinating I need the darn biopsy, I cannot even express how badly I do not want to go and do this but I scheduled it. I originally scheduled it for April 21st, since I am off of work that whole week and this would not require any more days off of work. Well then the surgical coordinator called today, it went like this....

Her: I need to move your surgery, April 21st is Passover the doctor is off all week, I have April 14th
Me: (**thinking** of course he is nothing is easy) Ok make it the 14th
Her: Ok the 14th it is.... Now you need to see he again this month since he has not seen you since November we have to make sure the mass has not grown to much, how about March 14th.
Me: Ok, so we have April 14th and March 14th
Her: Yep and then you need a Pre-OP visit, how about April 8th?
Me: Ok, April 14th, march 14th, April 8th
Her: Then you will need Pre-Admission testing at the hospital, call them maybe you can go on the 8th also. AND you need medical clearance from your primary doctor to so make and appt there too
Me: Got it.......UGH!

So I called the Primary care physical who is on maternity leave which lead to the next story "Oh I don't know when we can see you , this is a special visit since your doctors on leave...blah....blah...blah..."

So now I got appointments on March 14th, April 5th, April 8th and April 14th. I swear my boss is going to kill me!

This lead me to think of the story of the doctor who was a real jerk to all his patients and then he got sick himself and realized how hard this is for the patient. The appointments, the running around, the stress of it all.

I swear I am going to scream!!

Sorry I just needed to get it off my chest

Ryan's 4 year old "letter"

Every year I make Ryan a photo book, I compile them at Shutterfly and its a good 100 pages (probably 300 pictures) from over the past year. I hope sometime in his future he treasures these books and pictures detailing his life and how much I love him. I always start the first page with a "letter" to Ryan from me. Again I hope one day when I am long gone he has these letters and truly understands how I felt about him and how much I treasured him. Here is his letter for this year (and yes some parts of it are famous quotes its not all me)....

It's the moments together that change us forever

Ryan,

This is my wish for you: Comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss you lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag, beauty for your eyes to see, friendships to brighten your being, faith so that you can believe, confidence for when you doubt, courage to know yourself, patience to accept the truth, love to complete your life.

Every year I sit down to write this and the past 12 months fly through my head like a movie; I think, what a great year we had, I also tend to say to myself "that was the best year and age yet" I am starting to realize this is what I will always think, I will always remember the greatness and forget the hardest moments. I will love the stage you're at and forget that this may have been the most trying age yet. You continue to thrill and amaze me everyday, please never stop.

I can hardly believe you are 4, where do the years go? I remember so vividly wanting you to be born, sitting in the glider feeding you a bottle and sleeping with you in my arms. I remember you not talking or walking or even holding up your head for that matter. I remember having to return to work and taking you to daycare, I swear I thought I would die and now you do everything I wished for and more. I am not sure I am ready for you to get any bigger, I want you to be my baby forever, I want you to love and want me as much as you do right now. But as I write this, getting all choked up I want tomorrow and everything it will bring.

Ryan, I love you more than I can ever put on this paper, you carry my heart and soul in your eyes, and your smile and hugs melt me. I cannot explain it and you know what I will not even try. It is something you cannot understand until you are a parent, but its true, pure make you all teary eyed kind of love and I have it bad.

Mommy xoxo

Bragging

I am going to say it right up front this is a total brag post so if you feel weird about that I warned you. You know its something we generally do not get to do in life, its just not acceptable to toot your own horn all the time.


I am home today its another snow day in NJ, Ryan is here with me. As I type this he is on the internet on the laptop Peter set up for him.


I was just sort of daydreaming thinking about the fact that he was on the computer running the mouse and navigating though the Playhouse Disney page and realizing his smarts, it really blows me away


Now maybe this is totally normal knowledge for a child who will turn 4 in a month but I have been told he is way ahead of his peers.


This child knows all his colors and shapes including things like octagon, trapezoid and pentagon, he knew all of these by 18 months. I actually have a video of him at 18 months doing the shape sorter saying all the shapes and placing them in the sorter like nothing. At one point you see him say "It's on the red side" and he looks and turns it right to the red side.


He currently can count to 100, he knows all his letters capital and lowercase and can identify them. He knows the sounds each letter makes and can give you an accurate list of words that start with that letter. He has been doing this for minimally a year already if not more.


He recently, I would say in the last 4 months starting to be able to write. He can write his name and all the capital letters. He understand opposites and rhyming for years, he can spell many words and can even read, maybe 10 words


His vocabulary is insanely large, he was a very early talker and always ahead in this area. I took him for a speech evaluation about a year ago because he was stuttering (which he still does off and on) and the speech therapist was so impressed with his language and the length of his sentences, she said his speech was way ahead



Peter is very smart, like one of the smartest people I ever met, he has that weird knowledge about a lot of different things he also started to read at 3. I consider myself smart but normal people smart, I think he got Peter genes,thankfully.


I think forward to the days when he will go to school, I feel like he will going to kindergarten and be like "Huh, I know this stuff already" and wonder if that is a disservice to him? We have a local private Academy school that is for students that excel you need to test to get in and be ahead of your peers. I sometimes wonder is a school like this the right road for him?


I always felt that children should be challenged and not left to conform with peers who maybe are not at an advanced level but then I wonder about placing undue stress on him too. Or is it stress at all if he is at an advanced level? OR is he advanced at all? Maybe I am just a crazy parent who thinks their child is awesome


Actually maybe I think to much about this and I just should let him be and see what happens but as his parent I want him to excel in the right place.

Ugh I think to much....LOL!

The Battle Of The Bulge

Why are some people predisposed to be thin and some overweight? Is it that we are predisposed at all? I am not sure

If we are not predisposed to be thin or overweight how is it then that children in the same house could have such different weighs?

My brother and I grew up in the same home with the same parents who required us to sit down to family dinner nightly. Sitting down to dinner (as many of my friends would tell you) was not an option it was what we did. So we ate the same foods and had the same set of rules for eating. The rules where we only drank milk at dinner and we always had to eat our vegetables, as far as the rest of the meal we never were made to finish it. My brother never had a weigh issue, I did. Hmmm?

How did we each learn such different views on food?
Why did I think it was OK to overindulge and he did not?
Why would I eat till it hurts and he did not?

I remember one time at Thanksgiving saying "Oh I am so full it hurts" and he said to me "Why do you do that?" Why does he not do that? Because it tastes good, hello? What is it in our head that makes us eat to much when we know we will feel like crap later.

I have been on Weight Watchers now since August 14, 2010 and to date have lost 43.6 lbs and I feel great. My health is better, I feel better and I fit better in my clothes (my new 2 size smaller clothes) but can I really change forever? I pray to God daily that I can

I fight everyday for thin, I count every point and have been eating super healthy but is there something somewhere that has to click to make a permanent change?

I was just talking to a co-worker (my size 2 co-worker) about exercise and how there are people in the world who love it and crave it and people who loath it. Are people "made" to love exercise or born? I compared my feeling for exercise by using a food analogy (of course)...I always hated tomatoes (which I love now...weird!) but I always though they looked delicious. It's the same way with exercise, I don't like it but it looks delicious. I need to change my feeling of exercise like I did tomatoes. Wonder how I do that?

Are we born to be a certain way or can we change it?

Winter

You know something I hate winter. Actually that is not being said with quite enough emotion...I HATE winter more than just about anything!

Seriously why do I live in NJ? OK wait I know that answer, my family is here. Can my whole family move somewhere warm please? I will follow all of you, I promise!

I wish I could go to sleep on December 26th and wake up April 1st. Lets weigh the pros and cons about winter, shall we?

Cons:
Its friggin cold
Its friggin dark
It friggin snows
There is friggin ice
My heat bill goes up
Did I say its friggin cold

Pros:
Christmas is in Winter
I go to Florida yearly in the winter
Ryan's birthday is in the winter
And sometimes I get a paid day off because school is closed


This morning we has a snow/ice/rain storm. The roads were glare ice, I joked on my Facebook page that I had to ice skate just to get to my car today. Schools called a 2 hour delay but after the 2 hours were up driving on local streets was still hell.

Why is this necessary? Think about mornings going to work in July.... No jacket needed, bright and sunny out with the occasional rainy day, no big bulky clothes needed and daylight till 8:30pm. I mean I see no issue here, summer is where its at with a bit of spring and fall mixed in

The moral to the story is the cons of winter outweigh the pros and there is nothing bad to say about the summer.

I think I am going to start a petition to ban winter and do 4 months each of Spring, Summer and Fall.

Who's with me?

I Can't Believe Its Been Almost 4 Years!

Ryan's birthday is next month and he will be 4. How is that possible? Time does fly by and wow it depresses me sometimes.

I had many infertility issues, I went to my doctor took all the drugs and nope that failed. I went to another doctor, took all the drugs and that failed. I went to a 3rd doctor and he basically told me "You need IVF" I went to get IVF and they found a huge cyst in my ovary and next thing I knew I was again in the hospital having surgery and I lost 1 ovary and tube. I had to go to Mt Sinai because no one even wanted to touch me, so I guess I was lucky? That was January 2006.

I gave up....I needed a break....I was a depressed mess...but I was done trying for a while

Somewhere in July 2006 I sat in a Weight Watchers meeting with my mother and told her how I was feeling so sick, that my Crohn's was acting up and I could not take it, I swear I could barely eat. On my ride home that night I thought (why no sure?) "OMG am I pregnant?" and my next thought was "When was my last period?" I looked through my calender and realized it was Memorial Day 2006 and there was no recording of a period in June at all. I went right to CVS and bought two different pregnancy tests, the multi packs so I had now 5 tests,and as anyone who has ever been pregnant knows you cannot wrap your head around being pregnant until you have at least a few positive tests of different brands. LOL!! So, I took the test and literally instantly there was a + sign. I thought I would die or hyperventilate at the very least. I called Peter on the phone and asked when he would be home and he said soon. He walked in the door and I lost it, I was crying so hysterically I could barely tell him. I was PETRIFIED! What the hell did we do? Almost 4 years...meds....surgery and all the doctors telling me no... I was pregnant! All I could think was HOLY SHIT!

I did everything right, I ate right and gained little weight (only 8lbs total to be exact). 16 weeks I had an amnio (due to my "Advanced Maternal Age") and he was perfect and a BOY!! Although I originally only wanted a girl I was thrilled. OMG a baby boy, I called everyone and anyone on my way home and for the next 2 hours.

19 weeks down... I went for the Level 2 ultrasound and everything again was wonderful but the director said "We really should have you back every 2 weeks because you had previous cervical surgery (for dysplasia) , just in case" Little did I know this was the best medical advice ever, I owe Ryan to her.

I came back every 2 weeks and even more since I now had gestational diabetes and all was good in the world, my OB (who has been my gynecologist for 15 years) even commented that I was making this look easy. I remember saying to him "Don't say that you know I do nothing easy" WOW...how true that was!

Then came my appointment the day before Thanksgiving I was 25 weeks and 2 days. I had 2 appointments that day, one with my OB, one with the specialist. I got caught in my OB's office because he had an emergency and almost cancelled my ultrasound but didn't and left my OB's office to reschedule that for later. Another very smart move but who knew at the time.

I went to the ultrasound and met my mother (she wanted to come and see the baby) and the first thing they did was measure my cervix. Now from having these done I knew it needed to be over 2.5 cm, under was 2.5 cm was"critical" and 2 weeks before I was at like 4. She measured at minimum 10 times and the screen kept reading 2.0 or 1.9 or 1.8. I was panicking to put it lightly. She asked me if I was having contractions and literally ran out of the room for the director. I thought...contractions? Of course not. In came the Director and told me I needed to go to the labor and delivery at the hospital, OK now I am freaking.

So thank god my mother was there and took me, they wisked me in an hooked me up to the baby monitor and I was having contractions that I could not feel but were changing my cervix. I learned that night that if I did not have the ultrasound that day the contractions would have continued probably until he was born at 25 weeks gestation. ACK....to say I was freaking at this point was an understatement. The miracle baby I was never to concieve could not be born at 25 weeks, please God this cannot happen.

From that moment until Ryan was born at 39 weeks exactly by C-section after a failed induction my pregnancy was a whirl win. I was on bed rest now for the next 14 weeks. I had to have my legs up at all times, I could only go down/up the stairs once a day, I could only shower every other day for 5 minutes. Lets just say I spend way more time on the internet than any 1 person really should.

I counted the days of pregnancy just to get him more developed, we celebrated the weeks. I remember my mom would call all excited each week "We are at week 27..." As the weeks went on and he was still inside, I relaxed slightly and then came my elevated blood pressure (pre-eclampsia). I would go to the specialist and my blood pressure would be 200/107 and she would send me back to L&D, this happened week after week. I learned to leave a packed hospital bag in the car.

The nurses at Valley all got to know me and when they saw me weekly they knew right what to do, it's sad really. I once knew all the nurses from the surgical ward and now I was making myself through the L&D ward too. Honestly they were wonderful and just love Valley hospital.

My doctor induced me at 39 weeks he wanted control of my delivery and of course 13 hours later at 7cm after a manual dilation I again failed. C-section here we come! At least that went fairly easy, my perfect baby was OK and full term.

Someone said to me when I was pregnant, bad pregnancy...good child and man they were so right. Ryan was a super good baby he almost never cried and when he did it was he was hungry 99% of the time. He has been this easy to this day too, I am so lucky. Now please do not get me wrong there are days I want to run down the street screaming at the top of my lungs or maybe throw something at the wall but he is really a model child.

I cannot believe it has been almost 4 years. I remember my baby boy coming home like it was yesterday, he was so small (6lbs 11 oz) his coming home outfit was out and we had nothing small enough to fit him. We walked in the house and I took him from his car seat and looked at Peter and said "Now what?"

You know what though, we figured it out and honestly I rock at this parenting thing if I do say so myself.

I prayed for him and someone knew I needed him, I am forever grateful for every bit of these past 4 years.

He is my one and only miracle and he is perfect