falling

malena and i did pumpkin paintings last night. super fun. had to show off her artwork, pretty sure she is a natural pumpkin painter. i think that we all know she gets her craftiness from her mom, i hope she gets her athletic skills from her dad because we know those aren't coming from me.

i have hit a rougher (i say rougher because it has continued to be rough since treatment ended) patch and am feeling pretty tough lately and my right side continues to hurt. we are going to do a pet scan in the next week or so. for a pet scan, they inject radioactive liquid into my arm around my elbow and i have to then lay still for about an hour. then they move me into the machine and work their magic. the pet scan is different than a ct scan or x-ray because it shows in a more molecular way how organs and tissues are working. i had a pet scan right after i was diagnosed as a way for them to determine if the cancer had spread to other areas in my body. as much as i don't want to have radioactive liquid put into my body, i will choose that over potentially having something wrong and not knowing it. i should have the actual date booked for the scan and the results appointment soon. one thing that i have hated over the last year is the taste of saline that gets injected into my iv's. when i was doing the high dose treatments, they would inject saline into my iv every single time. i literally can taste it a millisecond after they start to inject it. it turns my stomach every time. over the last year, i have had to be injected with saline from some of my other tests like the ct scans. it never gets better. i should have had that on my "things i won't miss" list when i did my last shot. now the waiting and anxiety begin again. tick, tock. tick, tock.

moving on to something more positive, there is a great opportunity to support a  really good cause. my friend marcie (i call her marcie-roo, but am pretty sure her students call her ms. paradis) has two projects on donorschoose.org. on her site, she explains the needs for her classroom and breaks down the cost so you know exactly what you are donating for. if you are looking for a good cause where you know directly where your donation is going, i know that marcie would appreciate anything you can contribute. malena bought her students two dictionaries tonight, although malena's favorite words these days are "dora" and "why?", i am confident she will grow her vocabulary exponentially in school and would want her to have the right tools to do it. good luck marcie - i am anxious to see you implement one of your projects. great job. i love all of my teacher peeps, they have one of the toughest jobs there is. i still clearly remember some of my most favorite teachers and what i learned from the subjects they taught as well as how they taught.

this is a picture i took of malena when we were finding our way through a hay maze recently. i love this picture because she is setting out on her own course without looking back to see where i am (of course, not losing sight of her was more important to me than it was to her). i hope she always finds her way. i am confident she will. she is my daughter after all.