Brain Tumor walk

Saturday's Angel Adventure Walk for the National Brain Tumor Foundation. The weather was perfect, good turn-out, $106,000 raised for research, and we all had a great time.

Nicole (Chiarian), Jackie, Kristina, Jennie, Holley (tumor survivor) and her 3 boys, Holley's mom, and me.


Jennie flew here from New York to do the walk with us. You may remember she traveled from her town all the out to Long Island to spend the night at the hotel and go to my doctor appointments, testing, and to the hospital with me in July. I was so incredibly grateful for her companionship. Her mom has just had her first round of chemo for breast cancer and Jennie from day 1 has been proving herself to be an advocate extraordinaire.

We were talking hair loss, scarves, and hats last week, and the decision I made to shave the day before the 2nd brain surgery since they were going to do it anyway because of the extent of what was being done, the three areas of brain they had to go into. I wanted the control of where and when, instead of losing it to some nameless tech who likely wouldn't even know my name and only would see me as someone who had something wrong with me.

So Jennie's mom thought about that and may decide on doing this as well, should she start to lose her hair.

I found the picture below a few minutes ago. DH took it moments after the shaving. There is another picture in my collage at the top of the blog with me and a hat and scarf that is from the same time.

When something like this happens you feel like the world should stop turning. That everything needs to just STOP for a minute so you can breathe and try to understand because nothing is going to be the same.

Nothing is so important as family and friends. Nothing that is owned, that can be bought, that can be packed in a bag. They're those who are around you.

Jennie's mom raised one amazing young woman, and to have done that, she must be one great lady herself.

Stay strong, know that you can do this, and kick cancer's ass!

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.