Tuesday, March 30, 2021

After More Than 4 Years, It Finally Happened

 Diana sent us this picture the other day:

 "Well, it's official!!"


 AHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Oh my gosh my baby girl is getting married!!!



He proposed on the rooftop of the Marriott Pulse Hotel with a 360 degree view of Boston! So romantic!


They've been dating for over 4 years. While they were here in December Peter asked for Chuck's blessing and of course Chuck said yes! We knew it was going to happen, just didn't know when!

So now they're planning a September wedding.

This is SO exciting!!

Friday, March 26, 2021

Reservations

I don't know if you're like me but I go through seasons, short stages really, of having so much to write about and every day I can't wait to get on here and write! And then other times where I go weeks of not knowing what to write about and not even wanting to turn the computer on... I'm in the latter right now.

Well, what's been happening around here?

I got a covid test this week. I was around someone who was around someone who ended up testing positive. Then the person I was around tested positive so I decided to just get one. I didn't have any symptoms so I wasn't too surprised when it came back negative. But it feels good to know. 

I haven't had the vaccine yet. Honestly I'm a little hesitant. I'm not a big medicine taker. My mom and sisters both take (took) copious amounts of prescription meds and I saw the problems it caused. At one point in her life my mom was on, I think 19 medications. One night I flew down to stay with her because they didn't think she was going to make it through the night. She was delirious and hallucinating. Her doctor told us to just stop all of her meds. If this was the end it wouldn't matter anyway. Wouldn't you know, my mom woke up the next morning perfectly fine! I was shocked to see her sitting up in bed, perfectly okay. So I'm a little concerned about how these vaccines are going to affect people. IF they're going to affect people. What's gonna happen 6 months from now, a year from now. I kind of want to wait and see how people react to it. I'm not against it at all, I'm just... curious.

Let's see... I got my hair cut. I can't tell if it's too short for my taste or if it's just a shock because it was so long before!

 Before (This is natural. It gets kind of frizzy.)

After (Blow dried and straightened.)

 

Umm, what else? Ally and I are going to the Museum of Flight tomorrow! I bought tickets for us back in November but everything shut down a second time and they just refunded my money. So when they opened up again I bought them right away. We're ready to go! I'm so excited! 

Have you had the vaccine? 

Are you have reservations about taking it?

Where are you excited to go that you haven't been in a while?

Sunday, March 21, 2021

WDSD - Still Growing and Learning

 Today is World Down Syndrome Day

Most people have 2 copies each of their 46 chromosomes.

People who have Down Syndrome have 3 copies of the 21st chromosome. So we now celebrate them on March 21st. Or 3/21

It was officially recognized in 2012 so for most of Beth's life it didn't even exist. We did 'a thing' for it a few years ago but mostly the day goes by without much fanfare.

But this year, Beth woke up, came upstairs and announced, "Today is my day!"

I got a text the other day telling us that Top Pot Donuts was selling donuts to celebrate people with Down Syndrome!

 Sweet! Literally!

A friend at church came up to me, grabbed my arm and said she just HAD to tell me... Beth had started a conversation with her. Just out of the blue. If you know Beth you know this is completely out of character. For those of you that don't know her very well, this is completely out of character! I didn't even know that Beth knew her. A said that Beth told her it was Down Syndrome Day and proceeded to tell her about the donuts, of how her grandmother had died... I was shocked! So was she! She said it was the first time Beth had ever talked to her besides saying a rather quiet "Hi" as she walked by.

And A was the second person this week to say Beth had just randomly started talking to them. 

It does my heart good to hear stories like this. To know she's still growing and learning and doing things that are hard.

We went out to lunch with Sharaya and Ally and afterward we headed out to get our donuts, only to find out the distribution center had a power outage last night. The store only got about 3 - 4 donuts and they were completely out. 

Well bummer.

From the back seat Beth says, "We could get cake or something."

So we stopped at QFC and bought some slices of cake that we split between the 5 of us. This 36 year old woman who sometimes forces herself to do hard things, who knows almost every musical by heart, who snorts when she laughs and who loves her family more than anything else on earth, was celebrated today.


 It's a journey we never would have chosen but it's one we wouldn't trade for anything in the world!
















 Happy World Down Syndrome Day Beth!

Thursday, March 18, 2021

The Really Frightening Part...

 I took Beth to the dentist on Wednesday. Well, actually it was the Endodontist. She has to have a root canal on a tooth that already had a root canal.

She's been on state health insurance and she wasn't getting the best care so we switched her to Chuck's insurance and now she's getting some real work done.



 This time they just took some x-rays with a fancy 3-D machine (that cost us a lot out of pocket, I had to sign the okay before we went back to the room) so they knew exactly what treatment she would need. Her next appointment is on the 31st and that one's not going to be as fun. But this stuff truly doesn't bother her. She's perfectly fine going to the dentist. What really scares her is when they raise or lower the chair without telling her!


 The older she gets, the more she loves Starbucks!

Saturday, March 13, 2021

Waiting For Info

This is my first full day off in 10 days. We had a big 3 day event at work this week and we've all put in a ton of hours! Needless to say, it's 1:30 on Saturday afternoon and I'm still in my pajamas. 😊

To continue on where my last post ended, we got home from Denver on Monday the 1st and on Wednesday Chuck had surgery to remove the cancer from a lymph node behind his left ear. We were there the entire day, the surgeon had an emergency come up so they had to bump Chuck's surgery from 10am to 5pm. Which I really didn't care about, those things happen. The thing that bothered me was that they didn't tell us.

When we checked in at 10am the lady in admitting was surprised we were there and told us, "But your surgery isn't until 5:00?" We told her we were told it was at 12:00 and we were to come at 10:00. After people who came after us kept getting called, Chuck went back to the desk and after a few minutes a nurse came out and explained the situation. It would have been nice to have gotten a call before we came to the hospital. Oh well, we settled in for the day. (I'm SO glad Chuck talked me into bringing a bag with some books and snacks, I brought some hot tea in my travel mug...)

After a while they took Chuck back to a private room with a TV and bathroom so he didn't have to wait in the waiting room all day. That was really nice. A few minutes before 7:00pm I got a call that surgery had started and they'd call again when it ended. All day long people in the waiting room were getting calls and visits from doctors and nurses but I never heard a thing about Chuck. Sigh. 

I kept watching the Patient Board and when it said surgery was ending I waited for a call.

Nothing.

When the board changed to Out of Surgery I thought for sure someone would call but no one did. I imagined the team was sitting for a minute (did the doctor have to go from the emergency situation right into Chuck's surgery?) I could definitely wait while they took a short break and maybe got a sip of coffee.

No one else was in the waiting room by this time and even the employees who were going home told me that this area was closing down for the night. I told them this is where I was told to wait. (I didn't know where else TO go.) Then a security guard posted himself at a desk outside the doors. I'm thinking okay, where is everyone?!

The Patient Board finally read, 'In Main Recovery' so that's when I called the number they leave on the desk if you're waiting for info about your loved one and the recovery nurse told me, "Oh yeah, I'm Chuck's nurse! He did really well. He's a trouper! Did anyone call you after surgery?"

"No." 

She literally gasped. "What? Are you serious?"

Well, to make a long story short, since his surgery was so late in the day they decided to keep him overnight. But I couldn't see him. So after sitting there for more than 12 hours I went home. 

I felt so abandoned and was crying by the time I got to my car. The doctor called me while I was still in the parking garage so I didn't have good reception and I didn't hear everything she said. Plus I was still crying.

She ended up calling again right after I got home and she did apologize for bumping the surgery to a later time and deciding to keep him overnight... She also said she found 8-9 more nodules than the original so she had to take out a lot more than planned. Everything went well but now they were going to do biopsies on those other nodules (we knew the original was cancerous) and we'd get the results at our post-op visit next week. 

That visit was on the 10th and I did get an opportunity to tell her why I was crying that night. That it was the silence after surgery that bothered me, the feeling of abandonment. She understood and apologized again. THEN... 

She said the cancer hadn't spread anymore and was contained in that one lymph node. They were able to take out everything in the cancerous nodule, and the other nodules came back negative!!

As of today, CHUCK IS CANCER FREE!!! 

Such a gracious, merciful answer to prayer! The Lord is so, so good to us!

Saturday, March 6, 2021

In Memory Of

Chuck's mom died on February 22nd. She was 90 years old and had lived in a convalescent home for about 7-8 years but she seemed fine. A social worker told us she had gone into Mary Ann's room about 10:30am and she was in good spirits. They talked about her new roommate and she was excited to meet her.

Then around noon a nurse went in to check on her and found her unresponsive. It's kind of shocking to all of us. How one minute she could be just fine and then suddenly she's gone.

We all flew out to Denver on the 25th and got to spend some time with Rose, Chuck's sister. Rose had lived with Mary Ann her entire life until she went into the convalescent home. She's always been a strong-willed, stoic kind of personality but this has hit her hard. She was so glad to have us all there and we spent hours reminiscing, looking through pictures, all those things you do when you lose someone so close.

Chuck and I cleaned out his mom's room then brought everything to Rose's place and we all sorted through things. 

When we went out there in October to help Rose after her surgery, we made arrangements to see Mary Ann. Rose is paralyzed on her right side due to a stroke and it's just too hard for her to get around so it had been a couple years since they'd actually seen each other. Due to the pandemic we had to meet outside and if I remember right they said it was the first time Mary Ann had been out of bed in over a year. I'm so glad I snapped some pictures!


This is a little bit of what Chuck wrote on Facebook ~

The Lord brought her through many trials and delivered her many times from things that happened to her in her life. She was widowed at 30 with 4 kids 10 and under plus a 10,000 chicken egg ranch. She survived cancer and Covid 19. She did the best she could and asked God to help her with the rest. Her faith is what brought me to the Lord. I was her youngest and I will miss her greatly.

I'll see you on the other side Mom. Chuck
 
                                    Mary Ann Bacon Anderson

December 27, 1930 - February 22, 2021

                            


We flew in late Monday night and Chuck had more cancer surgery on Wednesday. I'll write about that in my next post.

So how are you doing? Holding up okay?

Thursday, March 4, 2021

Aaaand Now the Ending

(I thought I posted this a couple weeks ago!)

Just a few more pics of our time in San Diego.

 We took one day and drove all over town. We saw where my grandparents are buried; I showed Chuck where my dad is interred; We saw the Unconditional Surrender statue that's right by the USS Midway (it's an aircraft carrier and that statue is 25 feet tall!) drove through my old neighborhood, by my high school... after all these years it still seems weird to have something so familiar feel so foreign.



There was a guy blowing bubbles and the kids were going crazy! It was a nice break for the parents. 😊

 

I applied for my very first job at that Wienerschnitzel! They hadn't opened yet and our training was held around piles of flooring and construction workers. Unfortunately about a week after they opened they let a bunch of us go. But a friend offered me a better job so it all worked out!
 


But the part of the trip that I relished the most was the view from the balcony in our room. I'd take my tea out there in the morning, I'd write out there, I sat out there a lot. I watched the sailboats go by, the rowing teams... it was peaceful and so beautiful. And I didn't even have to put on shoes!






Sea World was right across the bay and they still had a tree lit up, plus they had fireworks one night.


Woke up one morning to fog. Even the forecasters were surprised!


Oh you guys it was so nice! I wish everyone could take a few days now and then to just get away and do absolutely nothing.


When was the last time you had a little getaway?

Do you have one planned?