EASTER!

I found this video on the LDS Church website. I loved to so much I had to haul my computer to church on sunday so I could share it with my Laurel class.



I can't believe that Easter has come and gone the calendar confirms it, however the weather and my internal calendar just seems a bit off. I usually am anticipating spring so much I can hardly wait, but this year, I really don't want to tackle all of our outdoor projects. It just seems we have barely wrapped up the inside ones. I really can't wait to have it done, I'm just running out of steam to do it myself. In fact I am ashamed to admit I just noticed a Christmas garland outside that has not yet been removed. I keep thinking I would get to it but the ladder has been in the extra garage surrounded by mud. Shameful! To still have Christmas decor up AFTER Easter! A perfect illustration of the state of affairs at our house though. Oh well, enough whinning lets talk about Easter!


We had two visitors come to stay with us. The top picture is Easter loot they scored from Uncle Gabewhen he came about a week ago. The second pic is what Grandma Guymon brought for Easter (a dress and doll for Cate and street hockey gear for the boys). Much to our kids delight they are doomed to be spoiled. They are the only grandkids on the Guymon side so it gets rather ridiculous, although they would never complain. While Grandma was here we had projects to do of course she is a great sport about helping watch the kids, and helping in the manual labor department as well. Every holiday has been tainted with one project or another this year, but Grandma had fun with the kids while Chris and I painted his Logan office and I tiled the downstairs tub surround. The kids were in desperate need of new bikes, so Chris and I got the kids some new ones since their birthdays are still a ways off, I don't think they would have let us wait another minute. In fact Coley declared he would not ride his "little bike" to school ANYMORE! I admit it was way too small for him, but we thought bikes for Christmas would have been a little bittersweet since they couldn't ride them till spring anyways. I guess the cheapskate in me has to apply a big toy purchase to some sort of holiday! Cai got a big 20 inch bike with handlebrakes and a kickstand those were about his only requirements since every picture of any bike he loved. Cole just wanted a big bike so he got one with flames all over it, and Cate (if you haven't guessed already) wanted a princess bike with a basket. We couldn't even wait for the big day to give them their bikes. We ordered them in and I had to go pick them up so I took the kids with me, and they were so excited to see them. Cole nearly wanted to ride it right through the store. I figured since it was supposed to rain the rest of the weekend I would let them ride on them while the weather was good on Friday.

Easter morning was really fun, Cai came into my room at 6 a.m. I told him we would go out and look at baskets at 7:30. So Cai crawled in bed by me and proceeded to ask me if it was 7:30 yet every 15 minutes. They had already received their big gift so the baskets were mostly small toys a DVD and candy, but they were ecstatic nonetheless. The Easter bunny had a great idea this year by the way, each kid was assigned two colors of eggs to hunt for so that each kid got exactly the same number of eggs and the Easter Bunny could hide them according to how old they were (i.e. easy spots or harder spots). We'll have to remember that for next year. We picked up some really cute wind up toys from a store in New Zealand called Catch & Kiss, they're all metal and mechanical so the kids can see how they work. Cai's is called Pintacuda and Cole's is called Sparklz. Cai's walks like a bouncy bug and Cole's spins and makes sparks. The boys loved them and so did we. You can see them and more at Kikkerland.

Somehow we had a bit of a Swedish food fest on Sunday I didn't realize until later that we had Swedish pancakes with lingonberry preserves for breakfast, and Swedish hamballs for dinner. Maybe it was one of those subconcious things.

Colitis checkup :(

I knew I was in for a talking to at this checkup. I made the dumb move of stopping my meds for a few weeks after the colitis was in remission. And sure enough it came back with a vengeance. Then just as I was getting it back under control with my meds again, we left for NZ and I left my meds sitting on the bathroom counter of my mother-in-laws. The colitis really punished me the first few days of our trip, and it was hopeless to have the prescription called in since the pharmacist there had never even heard of Lialda or Mesalamine, it's generic name. He gave me some over the counter meds and I took a constant dose of 800 mg. Ibuprofen to keep the swelling down, but still did not have a happy tummy.
To make matters worse the doctor pulled the good news I felt I had gotten after my last colonoscopy out from under me. The nurse called after that one and said that they had not found any biopsies showing dysplaysia. The first colonoscopy I had some biopsies that were indefinite for dysplaysia (pre-cancerous abnormal cell growth), the indefinite means there was something going wrong in cell growth but they couldn't confirm or deny if it was dysplaysia. Well since the second colonoscopy showed none of the biopsies as having any type of dysplaysia, I guess I had figured the first biopsies must have been fine, since it is more difficult to diagnose during an active phase of the disease. So I took the clear biopsies last time as an indication that since I was in remission, they would be more accurate and all was well. But apparently that was not the case. My doctor said that he has always taken the maximum numer of biopsies for each colonoscopy, but you can't sample the entire colon, it just isn't possible. So just because he didn't sample an area with dysplasia (definite or indefinite) this time does not mean that it wasn't there in the first place or isn't there still. They just didn't catch it in a biopsy. He also warned that one pathologist to another could have very different opinions about a sample. To one pathologist they would be less concerned or more concerned about a sample it is VERY subjective. Then he started drawing timelines again for me on a pad of paper showing the progression of colitis all the way over to cancer. Putting me about in the middle, but cautioning me that my colitis seems to be more aggressive than he would typically expect for a patient with my duration of the disease. So no matter what I would HAVE to take my meds all the time, I can lessen my dosage a bit during remissions, but never go off it completely. Because the more my colon stays inflammed the greater my cancer risks are.
So I am just trying not to freak out too bad, I am not there yet. There is so much I can do to take better care of myself, I just can't get too complacent again. I feel like such a baby for feeling so sorry for myself all over again. I have so much to be grateful for. Some people have U.C. so bad they can barely function or have to go on hard core steroids, and my meds have been working. It just sucks to have your mortality thrown in your face every three months. You feel like you're living with a ticking time bomb inside you're body. You don't know when it's going to blow or if it even will. And just getting used to the ups and downs and mention of yourself so close to the "C" word. Watching the doctors fearful expressions and the nurses being extra nice to you as you come out of the examination room. You don't know if you're just imagining it all because you're scared, or just desperate for any clue of how scared should I be about my situation. I ask about percentages and likelyhoods, to find some gauge, but at the end of the day all I can do is the best I can to take care of myself. My next colonoscopy is the 4th of June, so hopefully that will shed a little more light on this confusing and complicated disease. So I guess I'll just take it one test at a time. We didn't come here to Earth to know what the next day will bring, just the reassurance that whatever comes along we are not alone. I have been given some great promises through answers to prayer and all I can do is have faith in that plan for me. Thanks for your prayers, sorry for being such a blubbering idiot. I don't think I have any filters when my emotions get the best of me (or anytime actually), so I just write and write and write. Some kind of therapy maybe I don't know. But I'll keep ya'll posted