The blanket I made

Remember the blanket I made for my daughter recently? (The one I tortured all my blog readers with by posting pictures of its progress along with a progress bar?)

If you get a chance could you do a little something for me that will just take a moment? The blanket is in a contest sponsored by Lion Brand Yarn.

Vote here for the craft contest

Just over the slideshow, on the right, it says "rating" and has a +/- sign. If you click on plus it'll bump me up. They're giving away gift certificates for their products and boy that would be nice! Anyhoo, thought I'd try for it! Nothing lost, right? It's open until the last week of February.

Thanks!

Golden State Warriors--see games, help research!

The NBA team, Golden State Warriors, are doing a GREAT thing for the National Brain Tumor Foundation (remember the walk I did with my friends in October?). They will donate $5 of every ticket purchased through team representatives Christine Young & John Beaven. If you call them, they'll hook you up.

Christine : 650.759.3676 - christine (dot) gswarriors (at) yahoo (dot) com
John : 510.986.2237 - jbeaven (at) gs-warriors (dot) com
(emails formatted for spam prevention, thanks for understanding)

THANK YOU WARRIORS!

I only wish this was in my state. This news was too great to not share!

Desperately needing something to get away from work and studies for a few minutes at a time, I started working on my son's Babette blanket last night. I'm loving the color scheme on this one! I will post a pic at another time.

PS Can you spare a vote for my blog? Please see the little black box link on the left when you scroll down slightly. Thanks!

Babette blanket FINISHED!

I had one extra skein of sea foam and needed another salmon to complete the border so I made the exchange at Purl's this week. Tonight I finished DD's blanket! It is so soft and the salmon-kind of color as the border is her favorite. She doesn't know yet that it is hers. It's been such a therapeutic process to crochet this blanket.



While I'm here I'm going to do some shameless plugs. Christmas Day will be my CafePress Chiari/Syringomyelia store's 3rd anniversary. It's hard to believe it's been that long! I designed all the items there and 100% of the profit goes to the Research Fund at the American Syringomyelia Alliance Project, also known as ASAP, a 501(c)(3). I have a design for everyone: CM and/or SM patients, Chiari 0 CMers, family members and friends, people of all ages including infants, clothing, stickers, magnets, pins, tote bags, etc. It's worth checking out.





I also still have my CURE CHIARI wristband project going for another outstanding 501(c)(3), Wishes and Rainbows, to assist them in helping patients with their expenses. The wristbands are dark purple, have CURE CHIARI embossed on them, are 100% silicone to stretch past the hand to fit comfortably on the wrist. Unlike the majority of wristbands out there, I have 3 different sizes. 7" fits teenagers, average-framed women, and small-framed men. 8" fits large-framed women and average-framed men. I also have a small amount of 5 3/4" for very young children. They are 2.00 each. All profits go to W&R to help patients with immediate needs. If you would like to purchase a bracelet feel free to contact me via comment or email. It's a great way to spread awareness to the public and show support!



I also wanted to let you know about GoodSearch, which is a great search engine. They donate one cent per search to ASAP. Simply select American Syringomyelia Alliance Project in the box by the yellow buttons. (One of these buttons also allows you to see how much money was raised per month!) If you just enter Syringomyelia then the foundation name will pop up. You can make a difference! Consider adding GoodSearch to your favorites or making it your homepage.

Babette weaving--complete!

Wahoo! I stayed up late and attached the very last square for the Babette blanket. It's just in time for me to head to the airport shortly. I just wanted that part done!

The next part will be done when I return. I'm using the salmon color in it for a small border around the blanket.

Caio, Arizona!

We're flying out tomorrow for my surgery trip. We don't get in until nearly midnight. I'm a little concerned about the weather on both sides but figure it'll work out. Always does, one way or another, somehow. It's been raining here for days, causing flood warnings in several areas, etc.

I'm fairly well behind in posting this week. I've been doing the usual around here to prepare for leaving the kids behind for my medical trips. We took over Costco and stocked up the house; hopefully it'll make life a touch easier for J. Emergency forms, consents to treat, schedule of daily activities, all done! J. helped a ton with laundry yesterday so there's only one load left. She went to the garage and brought in the winter clothes. For MD weather we needed a lot more than what we had out for here! Brrr!

My other great time constraint is the Babette blanket. I won't get to do the border before I leave but I am determined to finish sewing on every last one of those squares! It is turning out really neat-looking. I only have 1 1/2 panels left to stitch up. Much of today will be spent on those remaining squares.

I'm antsy about the surgery but it needs done.

My son had his MRI Thursday. He was upbeat on the way there, thinking it'd be like playing astronaut, so no sedation. He got on the table, they showed him the mask, and the tears started. None of us could get anywhere with him. So off we went to a room, signed the consent for the pentabarbitol IV sedation, and they told him about the needle. It went from tears to bawling and crying, "I just want to go home!" A volunteer gave him an adorable handmade dinosaur to hold (he named it Frank!). After a few minutes he said he wanted to back to the machine and do it--no IV. Round 2 and he was awesome. He walked in there, hopped on up, got in there, and was still the whole time. He said, "I was scared of it before, but I'm not scared now! That's easy!" He was so funny after that. Oh and thankfully the spacer didn't cause the artifact they were concerned about on the imaging. The results should be in Monday or somewhere around there.

See you when I get back (or can handle typing after going back to the hotel post-surgery)! Cheers--here's to hoping for a pulse in my arm after surgery! It would be cool to have one finally, haha!

Oh if you get a chance and are willing, would you mind voting for my blog using the black box toward the right of the page? The contest ended a couple months ago but has started over again. So if you voted quite awhile back, your vote is gone now. I really appreciate it! There is no actual "award" but the more nominations it receives, the more views it will get because it will be toward the top of the health blogs list, the more people will (hopefully) read some of the informative links on the right side of my page, the more knowledge and understanding will be out there on these conditions!

Since I'll miss you this week, Happy St. Niklaus Nacht on the 5th!

Son's MRI; Babette blanket

My son's MRI is scheduled for next week. I'm glad to have it done before I go to Baltimore for surgery a few days later. I admit to being unnerved and fearful last night when he came out of his room to tell us matter-of-factly about having pain in his chest. That was a first, at least he has never told us before of chest pain.

I had PT this morning and am glad it's almost done. On the other hand, that also means surgery is around the corner.

I finished crocheting all the squares for the Babette blanket---well over 100! I marked the progress chart toward the bottom of the blog to 95%. The other 5% I am reserving for the process of attaching them all together. I am putting a picture here but it's a little misleading. It only shows panels 1-8 because my dinner table isn't big enough for 9 and 10, the final two panels. I'll post another picture when they are all connected, and another after I add a small finishing border to complete it.

Don't sweat the small stuff

I've been asked about some other daily issues of late so I thought I would do a post about these things that keep me going on a daily basis and help me remember there is more to life that than waiting for a particular doctor call, test results, etc.

The Babette blanket is coming along pretty well. I am part-way through Panel 7 so I just took a photo of panels 1-6. It's exciting to see some progress now. Working on it is an excellent distraction from the pain and for the most part I look forward to each and every square.


Collin wanted terrible to help me with the blanket and eventually I had him sit with me and "help." My friend took some pictures but I just now saw this one while uploading and is sure one of my favorites, his little hand in mine.


We do not have Meg's CPAP yet due to paperwork problems at the hospital. And thus, we continue to watch this 5 year old munchkin throw herself around as she tries to find air. Here, she lifts her head up and backwards so she can breathe, at least until her head falls back down. This is all done in her chopped up version of sleep.




The kids had their first baseball game today. Well Collin played in the spring but this was Meg's first game, ever. They both hit coach-pitch, both times at time.

Babette blanket

As promised, here is what I have done so far with the Babette blanket (blanket joined together using crocheted squares of varying sizes).

I am using Gong yarn from Italy and a size G6/4mm hook. I have never used the yarn before and it already feels heavenly.

Panel 1 is the largest square of the entire pattern. It takes up the whole panel itself. I used pink, lavender, and salmon.

Panel 2 consists of 2 smaller squares put together.

The left square, inside to out, is salmon and purple. The right square, inside to out, is sea foam and pink.

I'll get pictures when it starts to come together. There are 10 panels are become progressively more work (or at least more squares at a time).

I just worry I won't have enough time to finish.

Vascular surgeon in Dallas

I decided to just call the Dallas surgeon instead of sending a fax over the weekend. I spoke with his nurse, who was very kind. She gave me her fax number and asked me to get the records from the local cardiothoracic surgeon. While I made some phone calls back and forth between the upstairs and downstairs portions of the hospital (seems there is going to be difficulty getting the records sent out, seems as how the surgeon here doesn't have his records dictated, he leaves them as handwritten notes), the Dallas nurse talked to the vascular surgeon about the situation.

She called me back and let me know he was expecting them and once read, he will call me back himself and tell me whether or not he thinks he can help. That way, she says, I know whether or not it's worth making a trip.

We'll see.

For now, I'm trying to make arrangements for all of us that are going to be in Phoenix/Tempe for the National Brain Tumor Foundation fund-raising walk on Saturday. I look forward to all of us being together. I'll try to get some pics of all of us.

I finished the first panel in the Babette blanket for my daughter. Of course, it was the biggest square in the blanket at 12 inches. The rest are of varying smaller sizes. I'm glad this one is over. There are only a couple hundred left, haha. But at least the 12 incher is done. it was getting a challenge to handle. The little ones will be so much easier--well, I think. There is a progress bar at the bottom of my blog to keep an eye on the progress. I will post pics along the way, in between progress bar changes.

On another neat note, my blog was approved to be part of the Medical Blogger Patient Code of Ethics. They have a category for medical professionals and another for patients, and do a review of the websites to see if the code of ethics are being followed by the bloggers. I am really happy to be part of this.