Dear all,

I thank all of you who are still reading this. So many people have been commenting to me that they have followed and still do follow this blog. My sister-in-law was telling me about her co-workers who check up on me and talk to her about it. There are SO many people who are looking out for me because they care not only about me but my relatives who have been affected by all this as well.  My gratitude for your thoughts and wishes is boundless. My thanks for supporting those I love is….well, the lump in my throat doesn’t allow me to say how intensely I feel about it without totally cracking. Thank you.

Things are going alright. Last week I was able to spend a lot more time at work than I have previously and I am glad for that. Although being there reminds me of how much catching up there is left to do and so trying to move forward is like rolling up a steep incline  - laborious, challenging, and frustrating because I  see where I need to be and I know I could get there faster if I had the “tools”. But I’m doing the best I can.

Physically: My fluid management is getting better. My strength is improving. I miss my therapists at rehab though. My anterior pituitary decided it would listen to my hypothalamus and my ovary and uterus didn’t want to be left out and so now I get to experience some femalehood again. Although I have to admit that if it weren’t for the typically “brain symptoms” (moodiness, tiredness, etc…OK I’ll give in – crabbiness!!!), I wouldn’t have known it was coming. So, I can attest to the fact that PMS is not a figment of the female imagination!  Anyway, things are taking a bit longer but anything that was normal before is welcome back. Other things haven’t changed – my smell has not yet returned. Now my jasmine flowers are gone and that makes me sad. I hope that sense comes back soon – I really miss the scents of my kids and my husband. I believe that how I perceive my senses makes me feel alive. I guess since I can’t feel with most of my body, I just want to have that extra sense to be able to devour them as much as possible.  Fortunately, I have other senses to work with and so being able to hear them, see them, and hug them makes this tolerable.

Saturday was fun but in a bittersweet way. Jani and I took Rowan to Jumpin’ Monkey to wish Elliot a happy birthday and bid farewell to the Abbott family who is moving away this week. Of course we wish them the best and know they will be in good hands since they will be closer to family but we will miss them something fierce. Dr. Susan has looked after us as if we were kin. Good souls. 

Apparently this party was another example of how small my world is now.  My friend Cindy from Ionia Michigan who I have been in touch with a bit here and there and moreso lately (and just found out that her family is 3.5 hours away in SC!) sent me a note saying that she knew I was at that party because of friend of her husband’s was there too. Unfortunately, Eric Frank and I didn’t recognize each other (her and Karl were a few years ahead of us in high school) but hopefully I will get to see all of them in a few weeks!

Anyway, I have to run to get myself together and get to work but I just wanted you all to know that I am so glad that my heart and brain are doing what they used to. With the support and encouragement of so many fabulous people, more will heal. Please keep believing for me.

BTW - Yesterday, Khaled and Mervet celebrated their 9th wedding anniversary and their middle child Kyan turned 4 too! I love them so much.

Dear all,

This has been a really great week!! And today is a fabulous Father’s Day!!  Happy Father’s Day to all you daddies out there and to the dads of all my wonderful family and friends!!

Every morning I have been up to see the kids off – I wave to them and blow kisses to their smiling faces. I am so glad that they like going to Child Time now. Rowan always talks about how much he likes Miss Sierra, Miss Alma, and Miss Pat. Encsi is putting multiple words together all the time these days. Most people wonder if their kids don’t speak when they think they should. What do you do with 2 that don’t shut up!!?!?!? It is really great. I adore them.

Although Jani and the kids have colds, their spirits have been good. Hopefully my system will evade this bug! (this was written earlier in the week – they are all doing much better and I still have no sign of it – yay!)

It has been a week of many “firsts” but some are kind of personal so I won’t share all but here are some: I was work every day!!  Bob Lust moved the fridge and microwave from my van into my office yesterday on Tuesday.  People are happy that my stinky lunches will be kept in my domain (curry and pad thai stink?!)! The main reason for this equipment is so that I will have the intranasal desmopressin on hand and also when I need to heat something, I won’t burn myself carrying it on my lap or spill it everywhere. Krista made me a couple of trays with Dycem on the top and bottom so it won’t slide around and things on it won’t slide either.  I hadn’t seen this stuff before but I love it and I also love the edges (thanks Chris and Winnie). Now I can carry stuff on so I won’t burn myself and things won’t slide off my lap and so I am set!

I managed to get my hair cut on Tuesday. It was good to see Jackie (Practicality).  I’ve been going there since I moved here and so she has seen me 23 months pregnant and she has met the little monsters too!  Anyway, she seemed pretty happy to see me – she hugged me like a sister. A few tears were shed. It is still tough to have people see me like this and obviously hard for people who knew me before to see me like this.  Knowing that people keep me in their thoughts is more valuable than I can say.  Plus she did a great job on my new short do – no surprise there! She always took good care of me in that regard!

I have had some very nice interactions with many ECU people this week too – Mike VanScott, Dick Ray, Deirdre Mageean, Ruth Schwalbe, Ching from Pharmacology, and Pui-Nn Ho, a medical student who spent her first summer in my lab came by my office to visit with me. People of all walks offer to help me any way they can. And as I say to all who tell me it is good to see me, it is great to be seen!! I don’t remember anything about most people visiting but now knowing that they did I am indebted.  Ruth Ann Hendrickson visited many times too and still keeps her eye on me. I have such an incredible battalion of people looking out for me so THANK YOU!!!!!

To boot, the Flat Out 5k I have mentioned previously, Bob Lust has offered to cruise with me in a wheelchair! I am pretty excited about that for many reasons.  

No one has told me yet who put up the get well sign on the road where the accident occurred. If you know, please send me a message!

Friday was a very productive and bonding day. In the morning, I went to work and resubmitted out first manuscript to Cardiovascular Research. Keep you fingers crossed for us! At lunch, I went to pick Rowan up from Child Time and we met daddy at Coldstone for ice cream.  Then I took Rowan for a Wendy’s cheeseburger and fries and then later to go see Kung Fu Panda. It was a very nice afternoon.

Saturday was good too. We tried to go strawberry picking at Briley’s but the season must be over already. Oh well, blueberries will be easier for me to pick if someone can park me next to a bush!! Then we went to Sam’s club, and then home and then we all had a good nap! Encsi slept for 4 hours!! In the afternoon, Gabor and his kids came to hang out a bit. After the kids were fed and bathed, Jani and Rowan and I stayed up late and watched Indiana Jones. I told him I would take him to the new movie if he liked it but when the German guy drank from what he thought was the wrong holy grail and vaporized on his skeleton, that was enough to scare Rowan off of Indie for a while!!

Now is a rainy Sunday morning. Jani and I were up early and got to have croissant and coffee together at 6:30 before children awoke. Rowan was awake first but a cartoon took care of him for a few minutes. Then Encsi didn’t wake up until 8am. Now they have been fed and are playing but every couple of minutes they want attention from one of us and so I am going to sign off.  Jani is messing with stuff – the alarm system, replacing air filters, dumping laundry on the bed for me to fold….it is father’s day though and so I will just smile and be glad that we have such a good daddy! And so now I’m going to hang with the kids and call my daddy and uncle Kal to wish them the best father’s day too!!

One more thing though – I keep hearing from people that they do keep up with this blog to see how we’re doing and I am very glad for that (although I have to admit it feels a bit weird to write to the internet that doesn’t reply!). If anyone has questions that you think I should address, please don’t hesitate to let me know.  As far as my health goes, I feel better and I am getting stronger but my sense of smell hasn’t returned and my pituitary is still misbehaving.

One more quick thing – so Jani is messing wit the alarm system and so some loud ones went off (we were warned) and when Jani turned it off, Rowan said “that scared the eyeballs out of me!”  How funny is that?!?! I had a mental image of a cartoon character with his eyeballs 3 feet out infront of  him while his body was already turned in the other direction to scram!!!

Anyway, gotta go!! I still haven’t had a chance to ask Vince about the pix but I promise I’ll get to that soon!

Well, last week was certainly better than the previous one physically.  My sense of smell is not back yet and my pituitary is still malfunctioning.  Healing is still going on though so keep hoping with me! Psychologically, the week was more challenging. Friday was my last day of therapy.  I think it many ways it is time for me to move ahead and try stuff on my own as my strength continues to improve, the rehab folks have been truly instrumental in acquiring the abilities I have now. Not only that, they are really good people and I feel fortunate to have had their kindness and intelligence working so hard for me! As much as I had separation anxiety for this event, I am more at peace knowing that I can go back to them if I need to. As Dave put it, it is another chapter closing. Sigh.

Fortunately, I have my family to keep me busy and entertained! Jani continues to be the positive presence. The kids continue to grow and get more beautiful each day. Jani put us all in the pool yesterday. Now that 100+ degrees is the norm, it is a relief! Rowan paddles and splashes around and Encsi is pretty brazen in it considering that the water comes up to her chest! With daddy around, there really is nothing to fear (except for him when he is angry!)!

Encsi was so sound asleep this morning that even mommy was up and rolling before she was awake.  So I got to go to her room and see her sleeping. Such a wonderful sight! I took pictures of course!! Rowan has been getting better about parting in the morning and even on Mondays. Although he did ask yesterday, “mommy, does Friday come after Tuesday?’ don’t we wish the work week was 3 days long and the weekend was 2!!

So now, what do I do to ease the pain of no therapy? I bury myself in work! I have a TON of stuff to do and there are still parts that I am trying to catch up on so I can not only be up to speed, but also get a few steps ahead of the game (needs to be done to be successful in this line of work!).  So today I am working on resubmitting a manuscript and will concentrate on the grant resubmission from now until July5th. From here on out, I am planning to be at work everyday and hopefully most of those days.  We just bought a mini-fridge/freezer and a microwave for me to keep in my office so I can keep my intranasal desmopression (has to be refrigerated and I have to take it at 6am, 2pm, and 10pm) and food/drink in my office.  Getting back to normal life (well, mostly)! I also bought a ramp to put in the back of the van so that when I go to people’s houses that have steps (most do here since we’re on pocosin wetland) so hopefully I’ll be able to get to more Bunko nights!

I am looking forward to visitors later this summer too. Hope and Jay and their kids are planning to come by when they come down for a vacation at the outer banks in August. Cindy and Karl and their kids and hopefully Cathleen and her family will join us too for a weekend in July or August. 

The news of the flat out 5k that the Jaycees are putting on here in Greenville to benefit burn victims and to help me out too this year has spread like wildfire.  Jani, Teresa, Dave, and Claire have worked to put this together. I put the website link up on the last posting but in case you can’t find it, it is www.flatout5k.com.  The theme this year is S.A.F.E – Streets Are For Everyone.  This will be grueling physically and emotionally but it is yet another example of how many people have come together to help out and support me and apparently, since I am stubborn (I keep hearing this and I’m not sure if it is good but I am still here so I hope so!!), I intend to be there and if it takes me all day to cross the finish line, so be it!. Overwhelming doesn’t even come close to describing how it feels to have so many people reach out to me.

A story that I want to share from my stay at Shepherd:

I had a very nice visit from some old friends from Seattle (they just moved to Minneapolis) Dave and Nicole Nuckley. We went to the Atlanta art museum and then they joined the McDevitts and my family for dinner in the family recreation room. They brought many treats from Seattle (I had to hide some to keep others away from!) like smoked salmon, chocolate covered cherries, choclate covered almonds….mmmmmmmmm. It was awesome to have them visit and to catch up on Tama and Jerrod and Isabelle, and Priscilla and Jeremy. Thanks again for coming out of your way to see me and spend time with all of us!! I hope you are enjoying Minneapolis!

If you are still reading this blog, thank you. I feel good to be able to share these experiences with you and know that you care to read them. I am getting stronger all the time and even though there are ongoing battles, the love and support I have from my family and friends is phenomenal. I wish all those that suffer adversity would have the network that I have. The world would be a better place. I know that many of my friends and family have suffered and I hope that I have been there for them a fraction of the way they are here for me now.

So with that, I wish you all a Happy Monday and hope the week goes well!

I just wanted to pass this along and thank everyone involved in advance.  If anyone in interested in participating remotely, I understand that that is a possibility also. The therapists here at the PCMH Rehab outpatient clinic are putting a team together! I am planning to do this too!! The support continues to be truly overwhelming.

http://www.flatout5k.com/

Hi all! Once again too much going on to write about everything but I’m going to try! Last week was not good physically for a couple of reasons but I’m not going to go into those boring details other than that I got some virus Wednesday evening that kicked my butt through Friday and so I stayed in bed all day Friday. I felt better over the weekend, relapsed yesterday, but today was pretty good again so I hope it stays like this and continues to improve.

In other respects it was very good. I got to see Dr. Reeg on Tuesday morning. My spine looks fine so I am healing.  I felt stronger after seeing him. Hard to explain in words.

I rally want to thank our sweet neighbors Gary and Mac for all the bunches of daffodils that decorated our kitchen this spring.

Jani is hanging in for the firefighter training. It is a workout physically and intellectually but he is still working hard at it and enjoying what he is learning.  The kids are doing better now with the daycare thing. Not sick and not crying when they get dropped off so that makes life more pleasant for all of us. This morning Rowan woke up on his own all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Both kids were happy, ate, kissed mommy, and hopped in the car. I feel MUCH better about it when they are like that.

As for me, I am trying to get to work more. Still working around some logistics but hopefully everything will get worked out in time.

I’m sorry for this being so short but I’ll try to go into more detail next time!