The Big C ~ Part 2

Dr. T's office wasted no time calling me and getting my surgery date set up. They wanted to schedule it sometime in January but when I asked about the recovery time they said 7 to 10 days. What!? I don't have time to be off 7 to 10 days. So, I requested to have it set up for the week before our school's Winter Break. This way I would only miss a few days that week and then I wouldn't miss any due to the fact that everybody would be off. Well... Dr. T only does surgeries on Tuesday's and Wednesday's and I would need to be there the day before surgery so they would be able to do my pre-op evaluation. So much for only missing a couple of days. I would only be at work 1 day.

Fast forward to a week before the surgery and Dr. T's office called and asked if they could bump up my surgery to that Tuesday instead of Wednesday because he would be out of town that Wednesday. Well, do I actually have a choice?? (Which is what I was thinking in a very sarcastic way) So long to being a work at all that week. I now had to be there for the pre-op appointment that Monday and surgery was Tuesday. The surgery was in Augusta, which means it was a 2 1/2 hour drive away. The surgery was an out patient surgery but for patients that live that far away Dr. T requests that they stay in a hotel overnight just in case anything goes wrong. My Mom and Frankie both wanted to be there for the surgery, which I probably would have made both of them come anyways, so they devised a plan that seemed to work out for everybody. My mom would drive me there Monday and do all the pre-op festivities with me and then drive me to the hospital for surgery the next day. Frankie would wake up early the day of the surgery and drive over to the hospital.

My mom picked me up around 8:00 Monday morning, February 10th. We stopped for breakfast and had a fun time on our road trip to Augusta. By this time I was super nervous so it helped that my mom didn't seemed worried about anything and she helped put me to ease. When we arrived in Augusta we went straight to the hospital to Dr. T's office for the pre-op appointment. That was loads of fun.  They didn't waste any time getting me back and the nurse came in and just plain as day like it happens every day (which to her I'm sure it does) says, "I'm going to spray this solution in your nose so when he comes in he can put the camera in and take a look at your vocal cords." Umm, excuse me, WHAT??? Where is he putting a camera? I have to be awake for this? This is something I should have known about so I could have prepared myself!! I was not very happy. So here she is putting this spray stuff up my nose and one nostril did fine, the other...well let's just say the spray and my nose had a disagreement and the spray went everywhere. I felt like I had spray down my shirt and on my pants. I was coughing and gagging and eventually got sick right there in the office. How disgusting, how embarrassing. The nurse was so apologetic and kept saying "I am so sorry, that has never happened before"... yeah yeah, blah blah blah  The nurse left and my mom kept saying yuck yuck yuck, you're gonna make me get sick (and I was thinking just join the club over here, I'm sorry that my actual throwing up is going to make you sick) I composed myself, Dr. T came in, put the spray in with no problem then stuck this little camera up my nose and down my throat to look at my vocal cords and I had to say "eeeeeeeee" a few times and then it was done. No problem at all. Dr. T was wonderful, he answered any and all questions that we had and said to call a number after 6 pm to see what time I had to be at the hospital the next day for surgery. We were set to go.

Once we left I texted Frankie to give him a peak into our morning.

Me: Things over here are off to a rough start:/ they just shot up some stuff up my nose and it came shooting back out, (which by the way, she claims has never happened before) I then proceeded to throw up my breakfast lol... I told mama that if this is any indication of the surgery tomorrow things aren't looking so good.

Frankie's response: Babe that's nasty

I couldn't help but laugh out loud with that one. Short and to the point. Gotta love him.

The rest of the day we spent eating and finding our hotel. There was also the looming Ice Storm headed our way that was just going to be the end of the Earth from the way the news anchors were describing it. Catastrophic, Devastating... ridiculous. Well, with the fact that we were no where near home and my sister was going to pop out baby number 3 at any time my mom was pretty stressed about what to do. We didn't even know what time my surgery was going to be and my sister was going to the doctor that day to see if they needed to go ahead and induce her. The hospital called me before 6:00 and said that I need to be at the hospital at 5:45 in the morning to get ready for surgery. Wait.....5:45.....in the morning?  Have you lost your mind?  The good news about that time was that my surgery was scheduled for 7:30 which means that I would get it out of the way.

We woke up, got to the hospital and they wasted no time getting me ready and into the operating room. Frankie was on his way and would be there when I woke up. And, he was. :) I was happy to see him and mama when I got back to my room. I was a little out of it but it didn't take me long to come to and get ready to go home, well to the hotel. Frankie and my mom had worked out a plan since Meggie was in fact going to be induced that day. My mom took me to get some lunch which consisted of a baked potato from Wendy's and Frankie went to get my medicine filled. Once I was all settled in back at the hotel my mom went ahead and left headed for Covington. It was raining and while it wasn't freezing just yet we didn't know when it would start so it was best for her to get on the road as soon as possible. Frankie stayed with me and we napped pretty much all day. We finally ventured out to Olive Garden (well, I stayed in the truck and Frankie picked up our order) I had soup and pasta and Frankie was able to have something really good too. I was actually surprised at how well I could eat the soft foods like pasta and soup. I just couldn't eat a lot of it. We had plenty of left overs which is a good thing because needless to say with the ice storm on the horizon we were definitely stuck there for an extra day. :( It actually wasn't that bad, I was able to get plenty of rest and we did venture out of the hotel room a couple of times just so we wouldn't go crazy. While we were waiting out the storm I got good news from the school - I was actually only missing 2 days because school was canceled due to the weather the other 3 days. We also got great news from Meggie and Terrell. Layton Thomas Selph was born Wednesday, February 13th.

Frankie was definitely going stir crazy by Wednesday night and was dead set on going home Thursday. Which is what we did. He, being the awesome hubby that he is, took me straight to Covington to meet Layton! :)

Here are some of the pictures from our stay (warning: my nodule that was removed is in fact a picture...)

 

Dr. T came in to check on me after surgery and showed me this picture, I said which part of that is the nodule, he said all of it. Wow, that is pretty big!

 

My bandage, they used a small band aid and glue to put me back together :) The purple there is from their markers where they drew on me before surgery.

 

My soup, it was really really good. I have never been a soup person at Olive Garden before but this is definitely one I will be getting again.

 

The mushy mess outside of our hotel.

 

I love this picture, even though the ice creates huge problems you can't deny how pretty it is.

 

Once we were on the interstate the roads were actually not bad, it was the exits and surface streets that were the worse.

 

 

The highlight of my trip. Getting to see Layton. We were the only ones who got to meet him in the hospital since all the ice and mess. :)

 

 

Part 3 coming soon.....

 

The Big C Word

Back in October I decided that I better make an appointment with my doctor before I got married. That is pretty normal, most girls do make a point to go see their OB-GYN before they get married. I had not been in probably four years. I absolutely hate going (I mean who doesn't) and I wasn't taking any birth control and therefore felt I had no real reason to go. Well, one month away from being married and we were not ready to come home from our honeymoon preggers so I needed to get back on birth control. I wanted to go for a few reasons. One, was to have my exam, one was for birth control and the last reason was to see if there was any way of knowing if I would have a hard time getting pregnant. Although we don't want to get pregnant right away we definitely don't want to wait too long to have children. Frankie will be 40 this year and I will be 29 so we don't want to wait too long. My parents had a hard time getting pregnant with my sister so I just wanted to double check everything.

I went and we talked about all kinds of things. I even talked with her about my weight problems. I had gained weight and then when I met Frankie I gained more weight. oops :) I just kinda chalked it up to being my happy weight. However, when we got engaged in June I, like most future brides, started to focus on losing weight. I wanted to look wonderful and skinny and tone in my dress. I went to the gym every day, I started watching what I was eating and started eating a lot of salads. Nothing happened. I didn't lose a single pound. We talked about all of this and she asked if I was sensitive to temperatures hot or cold and yes, in fact I was never just normal. I was either bone chilling cold or heat flashing, sweating bullets hot. While we were talking she was checking my neck, lymph nodes, throat - you know - what your doctors normally do when you see them. This time though she asked me to swallow. I did, no problem. She asked if I ever had any problems swallowing or feeling like something was in my throat. No, I didn't have any problems with that. Did I have any pain in my throat or neck? Nope, not that either. Well, she decided that she wanted to do some blood work to check out my hormones and thyroid levels. She also wanted me to go and get an ultrasound done on my thyroid. Of course I was a little thrown by all of that but she didn't seem too concerned so I figured I wasn't going to be either.

About a week later I got a call with the results. But, they didn't tell me the results over the phone they said I needed to come back in. Dun Dun Dun.... Talk about your stomach dropping. Why in the world did I have to go in, what was so wrong that they couldn't tell me over the phone. I of course went that day and my doctor, who is wonderful by the way, told me that my thyroid levels looked fine as far as the blood work went but that my hormones were all over the place. She informed me that I had Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, PCOS and that the PCSO was most likely the reason that I had gained weight and more importantly why I was having such a hard time losing it. More on PCOS in a later post though. Well, with that news out of the way she dove right in to the results of my ultrasound. I had a nodule on my thyroid. Talk about quit listening! In my mind I was going, a nodule, a nodule - wait - do you mean a lump! I have a lump in my body?!, She was wonderful and calm and kept saying don't freak out, it's most likely nothing, these things are common blah blah blah blah blah.... I had a lump with a fancy name for it  - a nodule on my thyroid. She was sending me to an endocrinologist.

Sooo... in November, fresh off my honeymoon I finally got to go see my endocrinologist. I was very impressed with him. For one, he took time to talk to me and my mom and another, he made sure I got my biopsy done that day. I was not prepared for that but that is probably a good thing. It was the day before Thanksgiving and they were short staffed and he still made sure that they got my biopsy out of the way.

Fast forward to about a month later and I finally got the results. They of course called me a couple of weeks after the biopsy to say that they sent it to another lab for further testing and to please be patient that they would have the results as soon as possible. So, in December I heard from my doctor. My biopsy was ruled a follicular neoplasm. Which is a fancy way of saying that they couldn't tell. Apparently the only way to tell was to remove it. So, once again I got transferred to another doctor, this time a surgeon. A highly recommended surgeon by the way, Dr. J ( that's what I'll refer to my endocrinologist as) just went on and on about Dr. T (my surgeon) and how wonderful he was and how lucky we were to have him in Georgia. But, one thing Dr. J did make sure of was that I would not freak out about this result. There was still an 80% chance that everything was fine and please please please do not think you have cancer or worry about it at all. And honestly, I can say that I really didn't worry about it. I had just gotten married. I was so happy and in love and bottom line, what could I really do about it? There was no point in freaking out until I knew I had something to freak out about.

....This post is crazy long so I will post part 2 tomorrow.... :)

Aeveryday14 - Weeks 2 & 3

I am trying to catch up on my everyday pics that I post to instagram so here are weeks 2 and 3 :)

 

My collage for the week :)

 

Day 8 - I wore my new Toms to work and by far the highlight of my day was a little girl in kindergarten who noticed them and with major enthusiasm stated "Ms. Garrison! You got new Toms!" It cracked me up that a five year old noticed my new shoes ;)

 

 Day 9 - We finally got around to hanging our new home decor on our walls and this is one of my favorite new items!

 

Day 10 - Friday means jeans and tennis shoes for me at work. I love a jeans and tennis shoe kind of day!

 

Day 11 - Frankie and I travel down to Warner Robbins to make a very important payment on our wedding rings! This was the day that we paid them off!!! Yay!! I love my rings and I love that they are paid for!!

 

Day 12 - It was finally nice and semi-warm outside so I talked Franklin into grilling us some hamburgers. My favorite food ever.

 

Day 13 - We were really wanting to try to make some vegetable soup and I finally found a recipe that I thought we would both like. We met at the store after work and shopped for everything we needed. The entire time we were at the store I sneezed and coughed and just all around felt like crud. So, after we spent all that time buying groceries for our soup my wonderful husband looked at me and said "There is no way you are going home to cook when you feel bad, I'll order us a pizza."

I'm so glad I married him :)

 

Day 14 - We finally made our soup. It was wonderful, and it will definitely be something that we make again!

 

 

Week 3 :) Unfortunately, I did miss 3 days this week...

 

Day 15 - I was still feeling terrible and honestly my day was so yucky that the only thing I could take a picture of was my new best friend which happened to be sudafed :(

 

I was feeling horrible and with sudafed being my best friend you can understand why days 16, 17, and 18 never happened. There's always next year.

 

Day 19 - Once again we had a rare and sunny day and Frankie worked on my car all day long and then being the wonderful and hard working and ocd man that he is he washed it for me. :)

 

Day 20 - Happy MLK Day to me! I can't remember the last time that I went shopping for new clothes for myself and I desperately needed something new to wear to work before they staged an intervention for wearing the same 5 shirts to work every week. This was a happy happy day!

 

Day 21 - I was craving a baking session. I do that sometimes, where all I want to do is bake something. So, I decided to bake my sweet babies at work a treat. They were super excited too. :) I was happy, they were happy. Mission accomplished.

More Wedding

I'm going to pretend as if my wedding happened last week instead of 3 months ago and try to write down everything that I can think of to help me remember it years from now.

I honestly don't remember much about the Friday before my wedding. Mostly because I worked that day. Bless it. Everybody and I mean everybody was like "I can't believe you are here today" "You are crazy for coming to work" and a lot of other quotes that I can't remember but that pretty much were along the lines of this girl is getting married tomorrow and she is working, as if something was seriously wrong with me.

I chose to work that Friday for multiple reasons. One of the biggest is that I took an entire week off to go on my honeymoon. When you are a teacher and you get multiple weeks off throughout the year and 2 whole months off during the summertime you just don't ask for weeks off. However, when you are getting married at the age of 28 and you pretty much have been planning your wedding since childhood then you know what you want. I knew that I wanted to get married at Christmas. Absolutely was getting married at Christmas time with lots of beautiful twinkle lights and candles. When it came down to it I would have to miss work and miss Christmas Day with my family if I wanted to stick with that plan. So, I scratched that. My family is my best friend - if that makes any sense at all - and there was no way that I was missing a major holiday just to go on my honeymoon. Hahaha, kinda lets Frankie know where he stands huh? :) Anyways.... I had to find a new time to get married, well; Fall is by far my absolute season and I wasn't willing to give up all my dreams of my pre-planned wedding and get married during the summer. When it comes to your wedding I don't feel like you should have to bend over backwards to accommodate your work schedule simply because you are a teacher. Anyone else who had a different job, especially a job that doesn't have so many breaks throughout the year, would not have to plan what they wanted around their job so I decided I wasn't either. I took a week off for my honeymoon and when we came back we were on our Fall Break for Thanksgiving. I had an amazing week in Jamaica and then I had an amazing week to get caught up and still enjoy Thanksgiving with my family. It was perfect.

Another reason I did not take off that Friday was because working allowed me to stay calm. I'm not sure if everybody feels this way before they get married or if it was just because I was older but I was very aware that my life was about to change drastically. I was about to live with a boy for the first time, I was about to have to share everything with a boy for the first time. I don't handle change well, even if it is change that I am so super excited about. I was a big ball of nerves and working helped take my mind off of - tomorrow my life will change forever- type thinking.

The last reason I wanted to work is because I actually enjoy my job. I love to teach, I love my kids, I love my job. Don't get me wrong there are times I want to really put someone in their place or pull my hair out and there are days that I'm like I hate my job, but everyone has those days, and deep down I love, love, love my job. I was about to not see my little sweeties for 2 whole weeks. That's a long time for me. So, I wanted to work so I could hang out with them.

After work, I made sure my classroom was ready for my para and I went home to get ready for our big night. I started getting packed up for our honeymoon and just took it easy with my parents and my sister and her family until it was time to go to the church. As soon as I walked into the church I was overcome with emotion. HA! I'm a crier. I'm not ashamed of it. My wonderful friend and coworker is an amazing singer and she was already there practicing her songs, and hearing her sing songs that I had wanted in my wedding for a few years now on top of seeing my wonderful bridesmaids all proud and excited for me I just couldn't control it. I was happy and I was finally getting my happily ever after so yes, I shed some tears that night. :)

After getting myself under control and actually getting through the rehearsal itself we made our way to Barnstormer's Grill for our rehearsal dinner. We had a blast and the food was excellent. The menu was Chicken marsala, green beans, broccoli and cheese casserole, mashed potatoes, rolls and a salad. The dessert choices were banana pudding or striped delight. It was wonderful. Sitting there and watching your best friends all laughing at some story and seeing your family smiling and everyone having a good time makes you realize how blessed you are to have these people in your life.

Here are some photos of our rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.

 

Frankie's mom is standing in for me at the front of the church :)

 

 

 

One of all my bridesmaids

 

Sandra

 

Lauren

 

Mary Jane

 

Garrison

 

Austin

 

Some of the pictures did not turn out good on here and the ones of my bridesmaids and Mary Jane are not my favorite but I have those in frames and I don't want to take them out. ;) All in all though we had a great time and we both felt so very blessed by the end of night. 

A-Everyday-14

Although I do not update my own blog that well, I am an avid follower of other blogs. And, I get lots of pretty cool ideas from these other blogs. One idea was to take a picture every day in 2014 and document it through instagram. I downloaded the instagram app back when it first came out and then never did anything with it until this year; but this year I have used it every day (minus three days that I missed).

I always make a cute little collage of my photos of the week and send it to my mom, sister, and best friend every Wednesday. But starting soon I am going to be putting my little collage and pics up here on the blog every Wednesday. My sister gave me this idea and this way she can understand a little bit more about the pictures. Since tomorrow is the start of a brand new week (this year New Year's Day was on a Wednesday so the week goes from Wednesday to Tuesday) I decided that I was going to try and update all of my pictures of the year so far onto the blog. Hopefully, within a few weeks I will be updated and on track.

I hashtag each of my everyday photos Aeveryday14 - and I am pretty positive that I drive some people crazy with my everyday pictures but at the end of the year I think I will be pretty excited to see my year through my pictures. :)

Week 1 :)

 

My collage for the week. January 1-7

 

 

Day 1 - My sweetie pie Emma was born on January 1st in 2007.

Here she is enjoying her birthday chew stick.

 

Day 2 - It was just beginning to be a winter of crazy temperatures and weather and I was enjoying the cold with a nice cup of hot chocolate.

 

Day 3 - My love. That's all.

 

Day 4 - We had a date night in Macon at one of our favorite restaurants.

 

Day 5 - At the time of this picture my thoughts were "Why in the world are we getting out in this crazy cold?" Who would have though that this temperature just a few weeks later would feel like a warm up??

 

Day 6 - I used some of my wedding gift cards to buy one of my favorite additions to our yard.

I love this flag and I love my new initial.

 

Day 7 - This was the day that I finally got around to cleaning out the junk room and making a guest bedroom. :) Yay for being productive. And, please do not judge me for the color on the walls.... this is the color we moved in to and it will most likely be one of the last rooms that get painted - but! It will definitely, without a doubt get painted....eventually. :)

 

7 Months Later....

I know! Its a shocker to myself that I am even writing anything. :) But! When everything is said and done I have realized that I need something to occupy my time and something to keep me from being super lazy all day long on the couch. So... I decided that I should update this little blog here and let everyone know what has been going on the last few, ok, 7 months of my life. :)

Well, for starters, I got married! I had amazing showers and all kinds of special attention that all culminated into one amazing flash-by-in-the-blink-of-an-eye day that was so wonderful I want to do it all over again. I went on an amazing honeymoon to Jamaica. I celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas and somewhere between the two I got into my first ever major interstate upside down truck wreck with my new hubby. - And if that doesn't scream "We haven't been married one month and I almost lost you and I'll never let you out of my sight again" then I don't know what does. - I was diagnosed with two different health "things" (because I don't want to call them diseases or issues because I am refusing to let them be either) Which one of the health "things" led to my first ever surgery (unless you count getting your wisdom teeth out, which I am thinking I don't anymore) all in the midst of a crazy ice storm. Yes, seven months have gone by but they have not necessarily been a quiet seven months. But, now that things are hopefully calming down I am going to do my best to catch everyone up on the crazy happenings of my life.

The first being my most absolute favorite day ever - my wedding!! I should probably start this update of my life by showing some pictures of all of my wonderful showers but... I don't have any of those pictures. Hmmmm... I should really work on that. But! What I do have are some of my favorite pictures of our special day so I will show you those.

One of my favorite things about me finally being a bride was that I did my own makeup.

I wanted to look like me. :)

 

 

I decided that I just wanted to have a hair piece and not have the traditional veil.

The veil's just didn't look right on me.

Just look at that handsome man that married me.

 





 

One of my absolute favorite pictures of that man.

 

 

My shoes.

Since meeting Frankie my love for heels has gone downhill since they make me taller than him. :)

 

My bracelet - I love love love that bracelet.

 

I love this picture of the back of my dress. It really shows the details.

 

A good picture of my beautiful bouquet.

 

I like this picture next to the church doors with the two wreaths that were made for my special day.

 

We decided to see each other before the ceremony and have a special moment with each other before getting lots of pictures out of the way. This was Frankie's smile when he saw me coming down the aisle.  Love it.

 

This picture was one our photographer captured of our time together before anyone else came into the sanctuary. I love that it shows me and him as well as how the church was decorated.

Simple and Eloquent. Just perfect. :)

 

 

That is all for the day. I will go into more detail about our day and add more pictures of the wedding party and the wedding itself tomorrow. I just love revisiting this wonderful day that I honestly thought would never come. I told Frankie today at lunch that I sure was happy he married me.

Love him to pieces.