Preparing for the unexpected

I feel that this weekend with the fire situation and all really made me want to get prepared. I have always known it was improtant and the smart thing to do, but i never seem to get it all together. We have 72 hour kits and remnants of some emergency kits in our cars (Tristan just had a can of chili for dinner that has been in my trunk for 2 years. YUCK!). But when i was single i did not have to worry about the big stuff like food storage and a months supply. I could just eat my parents and if i were going be single and living with them another year i probably would have thrown myslelf into the natural disaster anyway (just kidding) so not much to worry about. When we got married i made 72 hour kits but we did not have enough room for food storage and now we should if i can just make everything fit into this house. I have been trying to research exactly what we would need, and even have signed up to do some dry canning and such, but then it is always when i am working. This weekend just made me see how i can't put it off anymore. Also, i have this cool binder thing i made at my sister's homemaking night and it is so organized and such for all your emergency needs. BUt i have to fill it in with all our records and information and of course it has been two months and I have not done it. Over thanksgiving break i will be searching for several items that i currently have no clue to their where abouts.

As for updates with the fire. We are ok and Heather and her family were able to go back this morning to their condo. School was cancelled for her daughter. Her bishop completley lost there home as did some others in there ward who lived in apartments that caught on fire. The park next to Hannah's (my niece) school is completley gone. But we are glad they are ok and were able to make it to my parents. Some women in Heather's ward who also have breast cancer (remind me not to move into that ward) spoke with their physician and he agreed to meet heather for a second opinion. So as of this week she has a new doctor and is on oral chemotherapy. No more weekly trips and ivs. She is sicker with this in some ways as her IV chemo never made her throw up. But she is hanging in there. I still wish we could have the big docs at USC or UCLA or city of hope check her out, but for now i am glad that we have changed up some things in the hopes of changing our outcome.

I need to post some pics, but i dont know how to get them from the camera to the computer. How sad is that. I thought i was good with computers until I married Tristan and realized i really only know how to write a paper or email. Promise some will be coming soon.

Help, we're on fire

Well, we have had quite the adventure this weekend. We woke up a little late on Saturday (9:30)and i immediately went to eat while Tristan got ready for his english proficiency test he has to take to graduate (that is a whole other blog about the inner workings of Cal State Fullerton, they just love to find things you have to do to graduate that you have to pay for. They love to take your money). So Tristan sees that traffic is bad and decides to leave at 10:00 even though he does not have his test til 11:30. A little bit later her calls me saying there is a huge fire right where we live and he is in a traffic jam just trying to get to the freeway. Turns out they would not even let him get on the freeway and he was very upset cause he needed to get to his test. They forced him to get on the 91 east so i suggested he get off at the next exit heading east and get back on going west there. He did not really want to as it was a complete parking lot going west but i assured him it would be worth it to sit for one exit and then he would have a free flowing freeway. This did happen, he sat for 30 minutes to get to the next exit, but then he started flying and called me to tell me as we were on the phone he starts yelling about how there is another fire and it is right by my sister's house.

I did not see any of my neighbors moving or evacuating, so i turned on the news and turns out the fire was on the other side of the freeway from us and we were safe as long as it did not jump the freeway. I was in the middle of cleaning and just continued to do so. I probably should have stopped and packed up my car in case i had to evacuate, but that would be to practical. If this house was going down, it was going down spotless. I called heather and she said only the rich homes on the hills had been evacuated, but that meant lots of people in her ward had to leave their homes. Right after i hung up the phone the news announced that anyone west of gypsum exit must evacuate. I called heather back up and told her and she said that everyone in her condo complex was running around like crazy so they all must have just heard. As heather was in her car with the kids trying to drive to my parents the national park on the left of her caught on fire and she had to drive in bumper to bumper traffic with huge flames just on her left. She just kept saying if you were seeing what i am seeing. Poor thing, i wanted to go help her but i had no way out of my area it was all closed off.

By the time Tristan finished his test, the fires were out of control and the freeway had been shut down. He had no way to get home. The fire jumeped the freeway at that time, but not in our area. I was nervous that it would and so i continued to clean on my hands and knees, washing walls, vacuuming the car etc. It kept me from thinking about it. I was worried about having to evacuate all by myself and not being allowed to go west toward any of my family. I would have to go east and got to some shelter all by myself. FREAKY! I finally rented a bunch of chick flicks Tristan would not want to watch and settled down for the night with hot chocolate. Around 11:00 they opened the freeway heading east only. YEAH Tristan got to come home. I have never been so happy to see him in my life.

Moral of story: Maybe i need a natural disaster once in a while to get me to clean the walls, mop boards, and other places i don't clean routinely. Oh yes, and i need to get my food storage in order, don't really have any cause we keep eating it.

Heartbroken

I don't know how else to describe the last couple of days as anything other than heartbreaking. My sister Heather had a repeat scan last week since she completed her chemotherapy. At the last scan just a few months ago the tumors in her lungs had shrunk by 70%, but she was having questionable spots on her liver. Appartently that was the point where her body was no longer responding to the chemo. I guess i should say the tumors were no longer responding. In just three months, despite having weekly chemo, the tumors have grown. This is the first time we have not had a good response from chemo in this whole battle for the last two years. THe tumors in her lungs are now bigger than they were when they found them in march of this year only two months after she was deemed in remission. In addition, the spot on her liver was indeed cancer, as it has grown in size also since her last scan.

So now what?????? Well, surprise we are heading for our third round of chemo in less than 2 years. Add that to a couple of months of radiation and a double masectomy and you have quite a busy two years. Heather will already undergo treatment starting next week. THey will be using two different chemo agents that are platnin based such as cysplatnin etc. (for any of you out there familiar with chemo drugs). I am spear heading the get a second opinion team and realize that i will probably have to call the insurance company my self and get it approved and then sleep outside UCLA or USC's cancer centers until they let her in. But i am ready to do it. I just want to make sure that this is the right treatment for her and that she is getting the best treatment she can get.

Unfortunatley I have been working the last two days and only got a few minutes with heather yesterday on my way home from work. She seemed to be holding it together when i got to her house so i did not want to discuss the issue and upset her. However my parents said it was a really hard blow for her as she was expecting it to be smaller and hoping it was gone. I love my sister dearly and it is so painful to see her like this, but mostly my heart is breaking for her two children that i love more than anything in this world. And it is breaking for Heather as i cannot imagine what it would be like to go through this while worrying about the future of your children. Thank you to everyone who has kept her in your prayers and has asked about her and shown your concern. I really apprecaite such wonderful friends. MUCH LOVE!

And Heather if you are reading this, I love you and won't give up until you are cured

Halloween AKA my birthday

Well readers i guess it takes a monumental depressing event to bring me to return to the blogging world. Today I am 28 years old. I just returned from the optometrist for a check up, guess that's what you do when you are old. Tristan just took some stylish pictures of me in my paper glasses. I will have to post them on my next blog along with pictures of our halloween adventures. I am working today, what a birthday adventure. But then we are heading over to our friend's erin and Jed's place for some fun. I am so excited to see our friends we made when we lived in garden grove. They are the best.

My friend Sarah posted a birthday tribute to me on her blog but it is private so nobody can see how cute it is. Just trust me it was very nice.

Fun times with friends.

Yes, I am still alive. I have lots of things that cross my mind and i often think, "I should blog about this." But i never do. In our apartment we had the computer in the living room and i could often hear the tv or talk with tristan while he was studying or laying around. But in our house i am exiled to Tristan's messy office in order to complete my blogging. This is why it does not get done. I am too lazy to go up there and too bored to be up there alone. I am also never home, so when i get home the last thing i want to do is blog. Oh and there is that small issue of we have nothing exciting to talk about.

I did have two of my very best girlfriend's over last week. It was so fun to have company at our place. My friend Mindy who i was in the singles ward with forever, and who trained me at my nursing job at UCI back in 2003 came over with her new little baby. Mindy is an amazing go getter but when i saw her walk in with a baby in the car seat and a 18 month old in tow I started laughing. I could not believe that she has been married almost two and a half years and has two children who are 16 months apart. They were so good and Pyper (the oldest) is so well behaved. Teri also joined us after she got done with her new nursing job in the OR. I am so happy she has made the move to a more exciting part of the hospital, she told me about all the cool surgeries she gets to scrub in on. I must admit i was jealous, although i have held someones head in my hands while a doctor drilled through the skull with a black and decker. Teri is also a nurse and is from the same singles ward. Unfortunatley she is still there, but if I could "graduate" anyone can. On sunday we went to Ashton, Mindy's new little girl's baby blessing. I had not been to a blessing in a long time. I always have to work when friend's have there babies blessed. There were five blessings on Sunday. When she had pyper blessed 16 months ago there were also 5 babies blessed. Just her luck. There are 70 infants (age 0-2) in that ward and 4 nurseries. Who would have thought that newport beach would be the land of the babes.

Speaking of babes, Tristan has baby fever. I never thought the day would come. I have been waiting for him to say he wants a little one of our own. After conference we went to my dad's 72 birthday party. After we got home Tristan started telling me how he just has this feeling that we need to have a baby. My prayers have finally been answered, miracles still exist. But what happens to me I freakout. I have never had to deal with this before. Usually i am begging for the baby but i know it will never happen. Now it has and i was the one who freaked out. i guess when you are the sole provider and you have to figure out how to pay the bills after the baby comes and how to do it while not working very much you start to feel a bit overwhelmed. My mom won't be able to help babysit as she is busy helping heather out and i could never afford daycare. The matter is still under discussion, I just never thought i would feel like waiting, actually i think it is more that i am paralyzed by fear. CRAZY!

Celeb Sightings and more

It has been a while since my last post. My teaching job at Cal State Long Beach University started again a couple weeks ago and the prep part has kept me pretty busy. I had to set up this whole website thing and review a million pages of school policies and hospital policies. Since i am the newest one to our pediatric group of professors I was bumped to the night class. I now teach every friday night from 3pm-11:30pm. Nice thing is i have no traffic at those hours so my commute is only 35 minutes, but it is sad to know that every friday night Tristan will be all by his lonesome. His best friend just moved and now he has nobody to hang out with. I told him, "Great, you can study the entire time I am gone." To which he replied, "I don't study on fridays, its my day off." So i told him he could clean the entire house and do the laundry then. He actually did clean the whole house this week and he always does the dishes. It was so nice to come home after a 12 hour shift and find the house clean but more importantly to know that i did not have to worry about cleaning it the next day on my one day off.

Moving to my exciting day last week. CHOC (Children's Hospital Orange County) has a radio station inside it called Radio Lollipop. The kids can listen to it in their rooms and call in and make requests. It is a neat program they have and once a year KIIS FM comes down and broadcasts from our station inside the hospital to fund raise. I was listening to it as i drove to work that morning excited for the event. We were given a strict lecture on working and not stalking the crew that was coming. I had no idea celebs were going to be there, i just thought it would be Ryan Seacrest and Ellen K. As i walked through the lobby to the elevators it was mad chaos to just get inside, but there on the other side of the glass, about two feet from me was Ryan Seacrest and Ellen K. Ellen K had her back to everyone the whole time, how rude. But Seacreast was front and center he looked up and smiled. Boy he is really short, i only saw him sitting down, but he barely reached the table sitting. I went on to work, examining patients and rounding on them, then i left about an hour later to go to a conference at a different part of the hospital. Who is walking right next to me outside, Spencer from the MTV show "The Hills" and Heidi was not far behind him. I started laughing and said "Are you kidding me?" He said what, why. I told them thanks for coming out so early (8am) and helping with the kids. They are not even celebs in my book, but i still was in this weird sureal mode. All i have to say is although I thought that he is a jerk in real life, he was actually very nice. Heidi was the snob which surprised me and boy if you have ever seen the show and thought she has a lot of makeup on multiply that times 10. I don't know how anyone can stand having that much crap on there face. GROSS! I also got to hear Jesse Mcartney (don't know how to spell) perform and some other upcoming artists came. Then some young actor from the new 90210 came up to our unit to see the kids. It was a fun day, but I just wish real celebs could have been there.

On a more somber note, people have been asking me for an update on my sister. I also know that some extended family members read this blog and would probably care to know. About a 6 weeks ago heather had another full body scan as it was her half way point for her chemo treatment (this is her second time of chemo). The scan showed that 70% of the cancer in her lung was gone, but there were still a couple significant tumors. The bad news is the scan also showed some spots on her liver. The doctor is not sure if it is cancer or just artifact picked up by the machine. It is nice to think it would just be stuff picked up by the machine that is not really there, but that is what they told us last december about one small spot on her lungs. We believed it was just from the machine or maybe some radiation damage, scar tissue. Two months later (feb) heather had significant cancer in her lungs, showing it was not what the physicians had thought. So it makes me hesitant to accept this theory on the spots on her liver. They are treating it as if it was in her liver. Instead of chemo every three weeks, she now gets weekly chemo for three weeks and then one week off. They are not going to rescan her until december. So for about four and a half months heather will be making weekly trips for chemo. Over all her spirits are fair and she is not giving up. Thank you for everyone's concern.

House Pictures

Ok, So this post will probably be most appreciated by Sarah as she keeps asking for the pictures. It is not completely done and if i took the pictures i think they would have shown more what the house looks like. But since Tristan took the pictures and he is a photographer he likes to do different shots than i would have picked. This is not his real work so don't judge his photo skills off the house pics. He is actually an amazing photographer and some of his work is hanging in our house. When i talked with Sarah last weekend she asked for the pics and Tristan took them right then. Unfortunately it has taken me a week to get around to blogging.

Here they are:
1. View from our bedroom window



2. Livingroom/formal dinig room. It is all one big room when you walk in the house. You can't really tell that from the picture. We painted accent walls yellow since our furniture we already had is so dark.


3. Kitchen

4. Family room


5.Master bedroom, not a good idea of what the room looks like at all. It is pretty roomy.

6. Master bathroom

7. Walk in closet. Are there any of Tristan's clothes in there???

8. Office or as Tristan calls it, " the man room" Please note the dark shade of gray in this office. He picked it out all on his own. I gave him two light grays to choose from, but he came home with a dark gray called "silver bullet." Once i heard the name, I knew why.

9. Front of house. We just got a new garage door a couple weeks ago. What a difference it makes, we may not have to rush to paint the outside of the house anymore.

10.Backyard.

There are three bathrooms total, figured you did not need to see them all, there is also a third bedroom that has absolutely nothing in it at this time. Hopefully one day it will be Tristan's office and i can turn his big man room into a nursery.