Daughters, new friends, and old friends

Well, it's been a great weekend...fairly relaxing, feeling pretty good, enjoying the good weather, and getting out for regular walks in the local hills (about 45 minutes of walking each day, so that's been great).

We're awaiting the arrival of our sweet Dani who, unfortunately, is stuck in miserable Memorial Day traffic, but we'll be diving into yummy food once she gets here and plan on having a relaxing visit with her tonight and tomorrow, since her life has been a bit on the stressful side for a while now (end of semester, overly-full schedule, that sort of thing)...so Kirk and I thought we could baby her a bit. (You know...the kind of thing moms love to do but I haven't had a lot of opportunities to do... thank goodness I have Kirk to help me with this!). And then we might get some shopping and errands done down the hill -- and give Kirk a break from all the running around he has to do for / with me.

We've also got plans to do dinner with our dear Like-a-Daughter (LAD), Jen, this week, which is great, since we missed a few of our usual Monday night visits over the past month...plus she's with her family in southern California today, so there goes our usual Monday LAD visit for this week. :(

Had a wonderful, wonderful visit this week from two of my NICU nurse buddies, Barbara Johnson and Sandy Fiorenza. All the NICU nurses were so important in my efforts to become the best nurse I could be, since I was just starting out at this nursing thing, but the nurses that precepted me have a special place in my heart. Sandy I've known since I started in the NICU -- she precepted me for one shift (for the non-medical folks, that means she was the nurse responsible for training me on that shift), and it was a great shift -- she's smart, a wonderful teacher, and I learned so much from her in that 8 hour shift...plus had a great time, as she's just a sweetheart. We stayed close throughout my time in the NICU, even though she switched to day shift soon after I joined the "p.m." shift in the NICU.

As for Barbara, she's also a day shift nurse, so I didn't get to know her as well until recently, but all my interactions with her were wonderful, and whenever we interacted (mostly at shift changes, where we'd give report to one another), I always left the interaction feeling warm and supported and educated, to say the very least. I knew Barbara lives up nearby where Kirk and I live (just down the hill from us), her proximity was made more real when she ran into Kirk and me one day a couple of weeks ago -- and since then she has made sure that we are and will be in more regular contact.

So, I'm again feeling very blessed, indeed, to have such wonderful people in my life.
I've got a couple of visits from old friends coming up this week -- and I'm serious when I say old friends: one of them (Valerie) I've known since 1973 or 1974, although we lost touch for quite a number of years and haven't actually seen each other since the '70s. So I'm hoping we can actually make our calendars work for a visit...we're still working out the details. And I'll certainly be visiting with my dear friend, Kate, and her fiance, Michael, who will be visiting from Australia...they should be here Friday and/or Saturday. It's been at least a couple of years since I've seen them, so I'm thrilled that they'll be here. Kate's been a very special person in my life...it's hard that she's half way around the world and that we can see each other so rarely.

So that's the current plan for my next week: a little vague, but filled with potential for wonderful reconnection with wonderful people. I'll keep you posted!

Love to you all,
/ab

Upbeat update

Happy to report that things have been going well in terms of health, energy, and mental clarity over the past week. So keep good thoughts for me, that I can maintain this trend and get back onto Avastin in a couple of weeks to keep after this damned tumor. (As a reminder, the two benefits of Avastin are that it (1) reduces localized swelling around the tumor and that (2) it stops growth of blood vessels in the tumor site...so you can see why I'm anxious to get back on the chemo...).

Oh, and I had pulmonary function tests and an appointment with my pulmonologist yesterday and got a pretty good report from her, so that appears to be going well, too!

We had a wonderful weekend visit from Kirk's college roommate and best friend from that era, Dan Ott. I've heard about Dan for 13 years but had never met him. Dan is everything I'd heard he was -- kind, gentle, empathetic, funny, artistic, an educator who cares more about his students than his ego -- an emotionally generous big bear of a man who immediately made me feel as if I'd known him for years. It was great to see Kirk and Dan together...these two friends have stayed in touch by phone and mail/email but hadn't seen each other in 25 years.

That's it for now. Hope to have more positive news for you in the days to come!

Love you all,
/ab

Rough week

Well, as you could see from the previous post, we've had a rough week. Friday afternoon we took our sweet cat to the vet to put him to sleep. It was awful, but it was time...and, in fact, the cat seemed to be ready his end: for the first time ever, he willingly climbed into his cat carrier when it was placed before him. Still, we weren't ready for the end and Kirk, Dani, and I had a tough time getting through that afternoon and evening. We're doing okay at this point and it, of course, gets easier every day, but we're still having moments of real sadness and loss when we look up at something in the house and expect to see our little buddy at one of his usual spots. :(

The good news has been on the health front. My abscess appears to be healing well (finally), which means that -- with the infection cleared -- I have to go 4 weeks before I can start back on my chemotherapy (Avastin), which is critical to getting my tumor to continue receding.

Meanwhile, I'm working hard to improve my overall health and physical conditioning -- Kirk and I try to walk every day, even if only for 15 minutes, although most days I'm walking 45 minutes and up to 1-1/2 miles and trying to increase those numbers as much as possible.

So that's the current update. More news as we get it.

Love you,
/ab

A Hard Day

Alison has had an emotional day today, after having minor surgery yesterday to deal with an abscess. The procedure went fine. She is on yet a different antibiotic, and needs her pain medications to keep comfortable; but she is making a good recovery. Any surgery means slowing down in terms of walking and strengthening, and healing is always trickier while on steroids. So she is getting her rest, and her docs lowered her steroid dose a bit, which is great.

But, her sweet kitty is not doing well, and she knows that the time is coming very soon to have to put him to sleep, so she is pretty well wrecked thinking about that. All of us “animal people” know how emotionally difficult it is when we have a member of our family, albeit animal, who is sick. It’s pretty hard to deal with, altogether, and knowing we will miss the sweet innocence of our animals can break our hearts as we say good-bye.

We’re sending Alison, Kirk, and Dani tons of sympathy and strength to get through the next few days.

Nurses' Week

It turns out it’s Nurses’ Week, and one of my NICU nurse friends (thank you, Lori) sent me this link. I thought forwarding it via my blog would be a wonderful way to share with people (non-NICU nurse types) a glimpse of what NICU nurses do.

(Unfortunately, I'm unable to get the video clip to run from this blog, so try searching for "What it means to be a NICU Nurse" on youtube to see the video.)

I miss nursing; I miss working with my nurse friends – a group of smart, kind dedicated, compassionate people who take their work so seriously and who – from the time I started my nursing career (only a few short years ago) – never ceased to inspire me to learn and be the best nurse I could be.

So hurray to all the nurses, this week and every week. We're lucky to be a part of such an amazing profession. I'm so proud to have been a part of it.

Love you guys,

/ab

The Medical Update

Alison had been doing very well on her Avastin treatment; she was doing so well that the MRI that she had yesterday actually shows that the tumors have regressed! She had been reporting feeling stronger, able to walk longer, feeling mentally clearer – all in all, functioning better.

BUT, she developed an abscess that the doctors believe is a result of being on the Avastin. Hoping that the abscess would heal on it's own, she was told to skip one Avastin treatement. Now it turns out she'll need some minor surgery to close the abscess, and as Avastin can impede healing, she'll be off Avastin for about one month. She / we all have disappointment around that, since the Avastin has been doing its job in terms of kicking tumor butt. She’ll have her procedure next week, so we’ll post more information as it becomes available.