Thursday, August 29, 2013

Labels

It's been a long time since I've posted.  I've been busy...very busy and I just haven't had the time or energy to update my blog.  I actually started a post last month but then my computer crashed and I lost it.  It was titled "Pride Goeth Before the Fall".  It was about how my hair was coming back in and my eyelashes were so long and beautiful and I was so proud of them and then they all fell out.  Well, the lashes are back again, I'm happy to report.  It's weird that they fell out again so many months after finishing chemo.  Thank God my hair didn't fall out too!  It finally got long enough to need a cut.  Here's a picture of my friend Ember and me with my new hair taken this past weekend while she was visiting from Minnesota.



My new home is 14 miles away from my parents' house.  It feels much further away than just 14 miles.  For the year that I was going through treatment, my husband, children, and I were blessed to live with my parents.  I didn't take one second of that blessing for granted.  Now that we have moved into our home and I am on my own, I feel like a baby bird being pushed from it's nest, learning how to fly, building strength in it's wings, figuring out how to survive.  It's exhausting but I'm finally starting to feel like I'm getting the hang of it.  I've been so busy with just the every day stuff and on top of that unpacking, painting, surgery, infection, 3 weeks of IV antibiotics, mammogram and MRI on the remaining real boob, another 6 weeks of oral antibiotics, kids starting a new school...etc.  That infection really wiped me out.  I started antibiotics for the infection in June and it finally just cleared up last week.  My immune system is still compromised and my body just couldn't fight it off.  Four different types of antibiotic over two and a half months finally did the job.  I am finally feeling much better.

My little miracle boy turned 10 months old this past Sunday.  I can't believe it...in two months he will be a year old.  He is such an amazing, happy, brute of baby.  He weighed in at 29 lbs at his 9 month check up.  He has mastered the art of speed crawling and is moving on to standing by himself and pushing his little walker around the house.  I'm hoping he continues his trend of reaching milestones early and starts walking soon because he's one heavy little guy and my back is really starting to feel it.  Here he is with my dad this past Saturday.


I really need to start updating my blog more frequently.  There are so many things on my mind that I would like to share but when they start to stack up I don't know where to begin.  There's so much going on in my head with all this cancer survival stuff.  I really don't like the term survivor... It just isn't my thing.  It's a label and I'm not into labels.  Cancer is by far not the hardest thing in my life that I have gone through and I have no intentions of letting it define me.  Maybe that's one of the reasons I so greatly dislike the whole pink campaign.  I am just a person, a creation of God.  A person in awe of God's creation and blessings in my life.  And here is a perfect example of that.  I took this picture of my back yard and a doe and her fawn.  How blessed am I?