I'm Back!

Sorry for being a slacker and being MIA for a while. I am back from my week in Florida and it was so good seeing my family!

so to catch up...
Monday before I left I had my blood drawn to see what my counts were before I left for Florida. The PA told me that they all dropped dramatically and I'll not only need transfusions but possibly while I'm in Florida. So that evening and also on tuesday i had blood and platelets given to me. Wednesday morning before we went to the airport I got my blood drawn and talked to my PA who said that I would be fine in Florida and not need any transfusions. that was a huge relief because it would definitely have made things more difficult if I had to do that. So Janet takes Me, my mom and Cassidy to the airport and we all head for Tampa! Nana, Chelsea and Maile picked us up and we headed to Nana's house in Bradenton. My dad, sister, Maile, mom, Cassidy and I stayed at Nana's house with travis and Tam joining us on two of those nights. It was fun and busy!

Florida was a nice vacation for everyone to sleep in, relax and just worry about Travy's graduation party. The party was held on Sunday, the day after his graduation. Even though I could have gone, we all thought it was best for me to stay and cruise the day with cassidy, steve and Terry. So we went down to St. Armand's circle and walk around. Let's just say it was really hot in Florida...definitely hard to walk around outside during the day. My dad got me a waterproof cover for my PICC line I have in my arm so after walking around we all hung out in nana's pool :) it's so nice to swim again!

PARTY:
The party was held at my uncle's fire house station and there was a space for food, people and the band. Travis and his band played and then also my uncle David's band played. Such good music; the whole time we were there someone was playing. My dad and other uncles made kalua pork sandwiches and crawfish (cajun style) that had shrimp, potatoes and corn on the cob in it. SO GOOD! it took me a while to be comfortable enough to eat the crawfish...it freaked me out because they STARE at you!! haha. Cassidy met a lot of family that day...and i did too! a lot of people I haven't seen since i was little so I was also learning names and trying to understand how I'm related to them. My cousin Danielle (who i haven't seen since I was little) is getting married in Miami in feburary and we are all determined to be there! it will be so much fun and i'll (hopefully) be celebrating cancer free. After being in the hot room all day an hugging sweaty people we all went home and sat in the pool for 2 hours. we had like 10 people in there haha. Ale, travis and tam stayed the night :) I think that night there were 10 people sleeping under nana's roof!

The rest of the week was spent in tampa and st. petersburg. Cassidy left tuesday morning so we headed up to tampa with travis and tam; we stopped and hung out at the beach house in st. petersburg our friend's lent us for a couple of days. Dad made really good shrimp scampi and afterwards we headed to tampa to sleep. After dropping cassidy off at the airport (he went to maryland for a week to see family and friends) I hung out with Tam all day; we ate lunch with Lully then went back to St. petersburg to hang out with the parents, maile and chelsea. Nana was nice enough to drive chelsea and maile back and for between st. petersburg and bradenton (about 1 hour drive).

BUT...that's when the rains came. the weather had been beautiful until we stayed at the beach house and wanted to be outide. then it just rained all day. we were supposed to goto Busch Gardens on wednesday but it was too rainy :( :( :( so sad!!! even maile was sad. so, we went to the tampa aquarium which was fun for maile. it was just stressful to tidy up the beach house before we left, get to the aquarium and be done in time to get back to bradenton and pack up our stuff quickly before dropping maile and chelsea at grandad's for dinner then me and my mom go with bucha to aunt julian's house. it was chaotic due to mis communications and still needing to pack. we were all due to fly back home the next day; it felt like we had so much more time and then BAM i'm going back to texas. I'm still upset with florida and not letting us go on roller coasters :(

I had a blood test yesterday and my counts are almost back to normal. i'm still a little nutrapenic but i've been feeling fine this whole time.

I do have some good news and bad news:
Good news is that my insurance covers the stem cell transplant. yay! that means that we are waiting to hear from the stem cell team to figure out when they want to schedule travis' tests and start the process. hopefully monday we will find out!
the bad news is that my insurance does NOT cover my fertility treatments and egg harvesting. We are talking to my doctor to see if they can do anything for me to help out with the costs but it will cost about $10,000 to do the whole thing. Since I don't have a lot of time to figure out other ways to get that kind of money i'll probably end up just crossing my fingers and hope my ovaries don't die from all the chemo :( i guess only time will tell.

anyways...i'm sorry it took so long to write...i think i wrote a blog post but i don't see it...i guess it didn't get published. i promise to be better! i hopefully will start working out with a trainer this week...i definitely need to be more active before i sit in the hospital for 30 days.

i hope you all are doing well! keep in touch :)


-sav