We Own Half of Australia!

So here's a little bit of an update on life...

As some of you know, Gam took another stay in the hospital. This time for an infection in her foot. While she was there, she became extremely disoriented...like didn't even know who we were at times, disoriented. She spent 8 days there and we were able to bring her home on Friday. The doctor thinks her body has taken all the chemo it can take right now and they are planning on doing surgery as the next step. Meanwhile, Gammy is home resting, more oriented than she was in the hospital, but still pretty out of it. She keeps telling us some girl in Kinta was in a really bad wreck yesterday and someone in our family had twins. And here's the best part, we own half of Australia! Maybe more! Yeah, she's out of it. I don't know whether we agree with her or tell her she doesn't know what she's talking about. Because Mom and I are with her a majority of the time, we are to the point to where we just laugh at everything because if we didn't, we would probably be in tears all the time.

I had to take my first exam of the semester last week. Since it's almost a three-hour class, our professor (who, if I haven't said it before, is a cross between Sarah Palin and Lela Ballard minus the politics) had planned on lecturing for part of the class then giving us our exam. That's what most professors do for three-hour classes because otherwise you waste a lot of class time. So anyway, I was prepared for lecture and my exam. She walks in, tells us she thinks she's being too harsh on us, so she's not going to lecture. Then she tells us when we come to her desk and pick up an exam, we need to turn our cell phones in because she's had problems with texting and cheating. Okay, no problem. THEN she tells us when we go back to our desks, to take out or books and notes because it's an open-book, open-note test. The test was all short answer. Don't freak out when I say this, because if you studied at all, you were going to do pretty well on the test anyway. She gave us all the questions two days earlier, so I only had to look up like two of the answers and that was just to make sure I covered all the bases. Easiest test ever. It kinda sucked though, because right now I have no car and all of my friends in town have families and can't really go out much, so I never get to go anywhere unless it's with my mom to go to doctor's appointments or Walmart or something. So Wednesday nights are my "night out," even though I go to school, I look forward to being by myself on that drive to and from Tahlequah, but that night I had to come home early. Oh well, I got over it.

However, this week I got a real night out. UAFS (University of Arkansas-Fort Smith) put on a 3-night concert series. Friday night, Dierks Bentley was there. My friend Kambrye and I decided to go, then her little sister and her boyfriend decided they wanted to go with us. So Kam and I had dinner at La Huerta, while Punkey and Lake went to eat with some of their friends. Then we went to the concert, saw everyone and their dog there, but we had a blast. It was sooo nice to actually go and hang out with people my own age (even though we did kinda hang out with Kait's dad for awhile).

Anyway, I have some stuff to do, so I'm outta here.

Time Flies

Wow. These last few weeks have flown by...

Gammy and Da-dad both had a 7-day stay in the hospital. Da-dad for pneumonia, Gammy for a blood clot. Both are doing better on those aspects, not 100%, but definitely better. However, because Gammy was placed on blood thinners, Gammy was not able to get her port placed for her chemo. She was able to start her chemo last Thursday without the port and she's been pretty sick these last few days. So 1 week down, 17 more to go. She had to go back to her regular physician to have her blood tested to make sure the blood thinners are working right.

That's really all I have for right now. I feel like I have a ton to do before I head to Tulsa tomorrow before leaving for L.A. on Wednesday. Like Jeannie says, "I'm gonna leave my troubles behind and not have a care in the world." I'm looking forward to spending a week with my besties :)

July Already

Ah, so almost another week has passed. I can't believe it's July already! That's crazy! So many things have happened, yet I feel like my life is at a bit of a standstill. Gammy had more doctor's appointments, I had wisdom teeth surgery and I started looking at potential living arrangements in Nashville.

Gammy will have her port placement on Friday and chemo is still scheduled to start on the 14th, I believe. This week is once again full of appointments and deadlines. It's just kind of a waiting game on that end.

My surgery went great. I wouldn't say I have been in no pain, but I haven't been in any more pain that I felt before I had the teeth taken out. I can take my pain meds every four hours, but I'm only taking 1 or 2 a day. Other times I just take ibuprofen. So I'm feeling incredibly blessed because of that. The prayers have definitely helped, so thank you to everyone who said one for me. I felt well enough to spend the weekend in Tulsa with my aunt and uncle. We haven't done a lot, but it's better than being stuck in Keota with no car.

And then the "house" hunting. In the midst of everything that's going on, I'm usually spending my days at home with at least one child, but usually two. I usually can't get anything done, not anything that needs to be done anyway. My days are filled with baking cookies and watching Kai-Lan. While I am confident Jaxie will be able to count to ten in Japanese before he can in English, I am also confident that I may be going crazy. So I look forward to the future. I have started looking into real estate in Nashville, because I am positive that is where I will be happiest. On top of that, Riley and I have been spending quite a bit of time together. And when he's not being annoying, he's actually fun to be around.

Anyway, I was looking at houses, condos, apartments, etc. And Riley saw some of them and started asking me questions about why I was looking at houses, so I start to explain to try to explain to him what was going to happen. And he flat out asks me if he can go with me. I thought he was kidding, so I start testing him by telling him we would be 8 hours away (yes, I explained that in a way he understood) and that we wouldn't have Nana, Papa, Gammy or Da-dad around to take care of us or that we would hardly get to see him. Or that he wouldn't get to go to school with Tag, Newt and Gage anymore, but he didn't care. He has a need for adventure, so maybe he'll be my perfect wingman. But here's the kicker...he had one stipulation. He said he didn't want to go back to school, he wanted to do home school. Mom's been talking about home-schooling the kids, so he has this idea in his head. I got that idea out of his head real quick, because I'm going to Nashville to work, so of course he can't be in home school. So I guess we'll see what happens, he really wants to go.

Well, I think that's enough for now. I need to find something else to do for awhie.

Joshua 1:9

I'm going to keep this short and not-so-sweet, but I'm posting so I won't have to tell it 5 million times.

So Gam went to the oncologist today for more tests. They have concluded that she has Stage 2 Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, which is a rapid-moving cancer. Chemo will start July 14th and she will have to go once a week for 18 weeks and then once every three weeks for a year. There were two other things she would have to take every three weeks for 18 weeks also, I didn't really read a whole lot about it. The downside is, I guess because of her age, previous heart problems and the aggressiveness of the treatment, it could cause heart failure.

This scripture is something God has been constantly bringing to me lately. Sometimes I feel like He yells it to me, like He's saying "helloooo, did this verse magically disappear from your Bible this morning or what?!" and other times it's like He puts His arm around me and speaks softly as a parent would do for a frightened child.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. -Joshua 1:9

Lack of Words

So, I've been waiting to make another post. Partially so we had time to tell the family and partially because I honestly haven't been able to bring myself to say it. But since my mom posted it on Facebook and our immediate family has been notified, and I know it will never get easier to say, I guess I will just have to come out and say it.

Gammy had a breast biopsy done a couple weeks ago and we found out last week that it came back positive for cancer. I haven't asked many questions because I'm still kind of in a daze, like, what do you ask? What do you say? Is there a rule book as to how I'm supposed to feel? So many questions that I don't have answers to. She goes for more tests tomorrow and Wednesday and following those tests, we should know more.

In the mean time, say some prayers for us. If you don't pray, keep us in your thoughts. A lot of things have been changing around here and they're changing quick. And if you know me, you know I am not a big fan of change, at least the kind I can't control. I know this is affecting all of us differently and none of us are good about communicating our feelings, so we're just kind of holding our breath for right now.

P.S. I hate to be selfish, but I'm going to have my wisdom teeth extracted on Thursday and I'm terrified, so say an extra prayer for me :)