Cramming in the fun

It's been a good week. After the emotional roller coaster of a day last week, I started to move forward and continue on with things. I cancelled all I needed to cancel for the upcoming weeks and booked a trip to California to see my best friend and ocean. One of my close friends got married and we had a great time at the celebration. It was held at the Leonardo which used to be the old library. My grandpa was the commissioner when it was built so there is a plaque with his name on it. I always think it is cool to see. The Leo has an exhibit called "Flight" right now so there is literally an old airplane inside. It is pretty amazing. There are also all sorts of flying things too - hard to explain. It was really great to see all the developments in flying that I take for granted! 

   

I also saw my friend run up a ski jump. Yep, ski jump. It is the Red Bull 400. You gain 500ft in elevation in 400 meters. It is insane! And of course he is amazing at incline running so he placed first in his division and second overall by just milliseconds. I just watch in awe as all the heats continued on. They are crazy but good on 'em! 

I have been working a bit this week too. Trying to get some money before being laid up for a bit. It feels good to have some purpose in the day. Sometimes not. ;)

Mumford and Sons were in town this week and I have been looking forward to this show for a long time. Things didn't go as planned and I sat in my car and listened to the concert, I know that sounds super depressing and sad but it was actually nice! I've been laughing about it all week. It made it so I could listen to the first presidential debates as well as the concert AND I didn't get stuck in the traffic after the concert was over. In and out! Ahh, my life is a bit special. 

Tonight I am headed to a gala for cancer with Huntsman Cancer Institute. It is the annual "Take a night off of cancer" party so they have some inspirational speakers and dinner before the party. I am lucky enough to get to be a part of the gala because of my good friend who works for Huntsman. It is always fun to get dressed up and go out and about. I'll update this when I get some pictures from it. 

Surgery is now under two weeks away although it feels like it is coming up faster than that. Although I have kept myself busy, the worry of what life will be like after the surgery still creeps in. I have joked about things being referred to as BC (before cancer) and AC (meaning after I found out I had cancer) but now I need to figure out what to say in regards to this milestone. AS(s) haha. I think I'm really funny by the way... 

I am trying my best to be in the moment and not worry about what is to come. Easier said than done, but working on it. 

I have a lot of things jammed into the next two weeks, especially a lot of eating since that will likely be limited after surgery and with radiation. Enjoying what I can now! Oh and I have an MRI tomorrow to see how my brain tumor is doing. Really hoping that it is smaller. I haven't had as many headaches. Have been having a good amount of nerve pain though... let's hope that surgery takes care of most of that! 

Off to the gala I go...

Stage IV Realness - Surgery is Scheduled

Yesterday was a hard day. A hard day I wasn’t anticipating. I had my surgery consult to remove the tumors in my neck. I went in expecting a repeat of the surgery I had in February 2015 but this one is much more involved.

This time they will be doing another radical neck dissection and extending the current scar up behind my ear and a bit outward onto the scalp as well as extending the scar across the front of my neck. This will give them access to all the current tumors, around 6. The surgery is a long one and is much more involved than the first. I don’t really want to go into many details, but it is going to be rough. (If you truly want to know more I am happy to answer any questions you have) I will stay at the hospital for at least two days and then head home after to recoup. After I am healed to their liking we will start radiation; I assume about 4 weeks after surgery. And hopefully get my brain radiation then too. The goal is to remove the bulk of the tumors (it is impossible to remove all of them due to the intricate nerves and veins they are surrounding as well as the tumors are in tissue so the edges aren't clearly defined) and once the bulk is removed then hit it with radiation to hopefully kill the remaining cells. Radiation works better on a cellular level and not a bulk level, so it gives better chance at me killing the most cancer cells possible. 

Surgery is October 12^th. So basically I have just under 3 weeks to live it up before things get really real. I was sad to have to cancel a lot of things that I had already planned (two trips!), hopefully not letting down too many people and they understand the circumstances. They said I’d be down for about 6 weeks.

The hard part about yesterday was that reality slapped me in the face. I really, truly do have stage IV cancer and it gets scary. Decisions are hard and carry so much weight. Treatments are harder, more involved. I no longer have multiple options to choose from as far as treatments go. Things are getting more and more real, and the alternatives are just what you fear – end of life. As much as I do not want to have these tumors, this surgery will be a life changer for sure. The alternative is to just let them grow and then run its course through my body. There are some more systemic treatments available but my track record shows that these f’rs don’t respond to much and when they do they decide to stop responding at some point. Let’s not forget that my neck tumors started growing during biochemo – they are stubborn, painful, ugly shits.

As for the next 20 days I am going to do all that I can to enjoy myself. I am working on getting to California to see my best friend and put my feet in the ocean and maybe head to Disneyland. I am going to see my friends, eat lots of deliciousness, get ready to move into my own place at the end of October, work a little (it keeps me kinda sane) and just truly enjoy myself. I will have plenty of down time coming up that I can binge watch to my heart’s content. 

Miles for Melanoma

Miles for Melanoma Salt Lake City was on September 10^th and it was a lot of fun! Team #melafreakinoma was the largest (I think we had 53 people before the day of, more joined there!) and raised the most money, just under $4k. Pretty impressive. Lots of sunhats and sunscreen, we even had a small sunscreen sponsor – Naawk. It is a local sunscreen company and my friends contacted them and they sent over a bunch of sunscreens and chap sticks. Pretty great! My team was awesome and one of us even won the race by running it in just under 18 minutes. He’s crazy and a machine. I also met some people from Bristol- Myer Squib. BMS is the company that gifted me my meds after insurance denied it. Amazing gift. I talked to the local rep for the company and he took a picture of us. I introduced him to little Ruby and her mom as well. Bringing awareness to all the people involved.

After the walk we headed to Urban Farm and Feed for breakfast which was super tasty and low key.

I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t overwhelmed that day. It is a lot to handle when you have a lot of people in one place all for you. I feel like I don’t get to talk and spend as much time with them as I’d like. I’m pretty spoiled to say that I am overwhelmed because I have too much support – but some days that’s how I feel. There are worse problems to have!

I want to thank everyone who helped make the day what it was. Hope that the money raised that day will help go towards some groundbreaking drug research. 

 

They came from Ogden for me!

My MSS Sisters

September 4-23rd - All the things!

I’ve had a pleasant few weeks. Still keeping busy, living life. Because of that I (again) haven’t kept up with my blogging updates!

I went to a pie social and ate all sorts of pie, got a massage, had lunch with many different people on different days, family dinners, coffee dates, went to the fair per tradition and held a 7day old goat – heaven, ate fried cookie dough (at the fair of course!) went to a makeup class for cancer patients (scored a lot of good free makeup!), lots of farmer’s market visits, brunches, birthday parties, learned how to make my favorite aunt Annie’s cinnamon rolls – so many things!

 

My dad celebrated his 71^st birthday on the 8^th. It is wild to me that he is 71, he doesn’t look or act how I imagine someone who is that age. Not sure if that is a good thing or not? We had a family dinner and a giant cake to celebrate.

Sarah (my sister) and I ventured out about 45-minutes north to Brigham City Peach Days. Expectation: peach everything; peach pies, peach cobbler, peach drinks, peach candies, actual peaches. Reality: basically a fair like event with one stand selling peaches and then a random peach flavored thing here and there – maybe 5 things. So, not what we expected but it was still a lot of fun and I would definitely go again. We had some tasty Dutch oven dinner and peach cobbler (one of the only real peach thing we saw outside of the actual peaches). I want to do a Dutch oven cookout or something, maybe just dessert. I think that sounds fun!

My sister and I also went to an Indian cooking class where we learned how to make butter chicken, aromatic rice, pickled eggs Indian style (forget the name of this dish), mint and raisin chutney and my favorite, naan. It was a lot of fun and man there are a lot of spices and ingredients to each dish! The instructor tried to kill us with a Carolina reaper pepper but we survived. I don't do well with spice but it turned out good! I could go without the eggs, but am happy to have tried it all and now know how to cook some Indian food from scratch! 

I had my liver levels checked (on the 14^th) and the levels are down a bunch! Both are under 100! Best news ever. This means the liver meds are doing what they are supposed to and I can stay off of the steroids. Yep you read that correct – I am officially off of the prednisone!! It is pretty great. I have felt pretty good since being off of them, just low energy. I am able to not use a sleep aid now and my shakiness (mostly in my hands) is much better. I do have some skin reaction to the new BRaf meds but not bad enough to take steroids again, and truly hope it stays this mild and I can tolerate it. 

 

My last 5mg dose of prednisone! 

A long way from 120mg!

My dear cousin came in town to play (and deal with some family stuff) and we had some good times. We had a delicious dinner out the first night and then followed that up with a ReAl Salt Lake soccer game. It was a sister double date – her sister and my sister joined us. It was a lot of fun even though the game kinda sucked. The next day we went to the Wheeler farmer’s market and then headed up the canyon for brunch and to see the amazing leaves changing. It was beautiful. After brunch we walked around Silver Lake, an easy local hike (walk). It was so great to have her here to play, and I am so happy that she and I have become close in the last few years. We’ve both had some major stuff happen to us and we just connect on a deeper level.

 
              Sisters photoboming sisters - priceless!



 

Mandy’s (my melanoma soul sister) family invited me to go to a paint night with them. Paint Nite is where you head to a restaurant or bar and everyone paints the same picture step by step while being able to drink or eat. The painting was “Rainbows and Dragonflies.” Dragonflies is how Mandy said she would come back as to come say hello so it was only fitting. It was a lot of fun and it is great to see how different everyone’s painting comes out – even though we are painting the same thing. I was happy with mine; the colors are much more bright outside of the bar lighting.

Mine is on the left - Shaundra's (Mandy's momma) in the middle - and family friends on the right

I am truly lucky and amazed each day to have such great and fun people around me. Life is too insane to let it conquer all aspects of your life – you have to live a bit and enjoy yourself! I have worked hard these past two months to live it up and I feel like I am definitely succeeding. I have a good friend’s wedding tomorrow that I am looking forward to and then just spending time with my army. Man my blogs get super long when I don't do them often! Goodness!

Yellowstone 2016

One of my favorite childhood memories was going to Yellowstone almost every summer and staying at Campfire Lodge. We would usually camp but sometimes we would get a cabin, we would play in the river, roast marshmallows, go into town and head into Yellowstone National Park. It was a girls trip and we always had such a good time. We got to pick out a treat each time - so we usually picked Doritos, Oreos and Oh's cereal. Simple times and amazing memories.

The past few years I have wanted to go back and stay at Campfire and see the park again. Luckily my friends are open to my random ideas so we booked it! We got a cabin at Campfire and not much has changed there besides being a lot more expensive I guess (or so my mom says) and it was just as I expected. Super rustic and cabin-y. No cell phone reception. No wifi. Just nature, and it was as beautiful as I remember.

   

     

We headed into the park for two of the days. It was the 100th anniversary of national parks system so entry to the park was free for our first day. This was great but it also meant it was a bit busy but it was manageable. The first day we did the Old Faithful loop and saw a lot of bison and elk. We walked my favorite hot pot and found a new spot that we had never been. It was near the lake and it was gorgeous. Can't believe we had never done that stop. We finished off the day with swimming in the Firehole river swimming hole. This is what I wanted to come back to so bad - I had remembered stopping here one time and thinking it was just the most fun thing ever! When we got here it wasn't exactly like I remembered but that didn't take away from the fun we had getting in the semi-cold water and letting the current take us and then walk back up just to have the current take us again. There were fish jumping just feet away from us and the sun was setting. It was pretty great. Sadly there were multiple fires burning while we were there and while we were driving out the fire was just yards from the road. They have a "let it burn" policy inside the park so they rangers and firefighters just watch the fire basically. 

Day two was spent more north. We saw some paint pots, the canyon and the upper and lower falls. Three of us did the crazy stair hike down to a lookout point of lower falls, 320+ steep stairs down the side of the canyon. Nope, not for me. So me and Brooke hung out in the parking lot and had some random laughs. I tried to feed a crow - you know just my usual. The fires were blazing on this day so there was ash falling all around as well. Pretty crazy.
We then drove more north to Roosevelt Lodge and on the way stopped to look at a black bear in a tree - who knew they really climbed trees? Like to the very top of a pine tree! What?! Once we got to the lodge we all got a drink and sat on the rocking chairs on the porch and just took in the surroundings. Not too shabby! On the drive back home we saw a momma black bear and her two cubs, pretty adorable!

We had dinner in town and then headed home for some indoor S'mores (since the fire danger is so high they didn't allow any campfires sadly) and then called it a day. In the morning we had breakfast in the cafe per tradition and then I put my toes in the Madison river which was super cold, not surprisingly. After we loaded up the cars we headed into town where I got a custom screenprinted tee, some fudge and a delicious huckleberry iced tea. Sarah got some fun traditional purchases as well. We had to leave by 11:30 so we could make our 1pm check in at Bear World in Idaho to feed the bear cubs. We made it right at 1pm! And oh my goodness the baby bears were adorable. They were 7 months old and 60+ pounds. We bottle fed each of the 6 cubs and they were so sweet. They have the longest eyelashes and the sweetest eyes. So worth it. After buying some lottery tickets and getting lunch in Twin Falls we made the final trek home.

Another successful Yellowstone trip full of it's own new memories. I am already looking forward to our next one and it will need to be longer! I want to visit Mammoth hot springs and possible head south into the Tetons and Jackson. Long road trip but probably beautiful. Here's to an amazing Yellowstone 2016 and looking forward to Yellowstone 2017!


To see more pictures from the trip click on this link:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6ZzNZ6t1WSXbkhReVRmdWI0NGs