I still exist!!! I swear!!

Hi everyone!


I know I've taken bad blogging to a WHOLE new level, but with the start of a new year comes new year's resolutions... one of which involves drastically improving my blogging regularity.

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Christmas and New Years were really hectic trying to juggle Adam's family's traditions as well as my own family's. Poor Adam had to log SOOO many miles on his car cuz of my ongoing inability to drive due to my meds. It was very tiring, yet a lot of fun because Adam's family treats me like I'm already part of the family. And for the 3rd year in a row, I got kissed at midnight on New Year's Eve... an experience I had always dreamed of but never experienced until Adam and I started dating.

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Speaking of Adam and the holidays, I would have been perfectly happy not getting a thing from him because he's enough of a gift in my life. However, he went above and beyond anything I was expecting. I won't bore y'all with listing everything he gave me, but after I was done opening all of his presents, he handed me a card. Written on the inside of the card was "Look on the tree." So I go over to the Christmas tree and start looking around on it, having NO clue what I'm supposed to be looking for... until I see an open jewelry box with the most BEAUTIMOUS pair of earrings I've ever seen before in my entire life. He bought me blue topaz stud earrings that are HUGE!!! I don't even remember what my response was, but am told it involved blurting an obscenit (I'm reeeally sorry Ad-Mom, it must've come out before I knew what I was saying) but I was EXTREMELY surprised at how thoughtful of a present it was. He knows how much I LOVE the color blue and how most of my clothing is blue, so the cool thing about the earrings is that they take on whatever color blue I'm wearing, and they're soooo sparkly!!! And then he hands me this set of paperwork from the Underwriter Gemological Laboratory that shows that they're REAL TOPAZ!!! HOLY CRAP!! It has an official gem ID card and everything!!

I was blown away. I want to wear them all the time, but I'm kinda worried about losing them or messing them up. But it turns out they're insured for the value of the earrings, so that makes me feel better. But I've never worn $1400 jewelry before!! I'm STILL shocked. He really could've gotten me absolutely nothing for Christmas and I would've been fine, but he was sooo proud of himself and had the cutest smile on his face as he was telling me about how he got the idea to get them, and how hard it was to keep it a secret since THANKSGIVING!!! I told him over and over that it was too much, but he says it's an investment in his future. Adam really is a gift from above.

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With Christmas money from Dad and Margaret, I ended up purchasing a portable DVD player. It's my newest toy. I can hook it up to my TV and use it like a regular DVD player, but one of my main objectives in getting it was so I could take it to my infusion treatments that last 3-4 hours. It works out perfectly. I can watch a movie while I'm having my treatment, so it makes the whole thing a little more bearable.

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I was so blessed this Christmas.



And as much as I do love the holidays, I must admit I'm kinda enjoying the calmness that always follows the hecticness (<--- yeah, so that's probably not a real word, but oh well).

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Abbie came up and spent some time with me the weekend after New Years, so that was awesome. She's so good to me. If you're reading this Abbie, I love you hun!!

Her parents have always been so good to me too. It's like having another family. One of the movies Abbie and I went to see was The Holiday. I HIGHLY recomment this movie. Dunno how much guys would like it, but it's definitely an awesome movie with a good uplifting message behind it.

That movie has actually prompted Abbie and me to co-author a fiction novel together, so we're starting to outline the plot and figure out where we want it to start. It should be a lot of fun, and I've enjoyed getting to work with her on everything we've done so far. So that's something exciting going on.

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The Australian Open has finally started and Andy Roddick made it past the opening round tonight. Woohoooo!!!

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Medical update...

Finally got an appointment scheduled with Duke for January 25th, which was great... until Duke called to inform me that my appointment has been pushed back to February 22. Narf. Go fig.

Still got all the other medical stuff going on, but now I'm getting migraines that, on average, tend to last 3-4 days. They're the type of migraines where one entire side of my face waters, I can't keep my left eye open (it's always on the same side of my head), I'm sensitive to light and sound, and it hurts so badly that it turns my stomach. And I've started blacking out now. There have been multiple incidents in the past 3 weeks (since the migraines started) where I've had coherent conversations with people, but have absolutely no recollection of it afterwards. Like for example, I woke up one morning and was worried because Adam hadn't called the night before like he usually does. So I called him and asked why he didn't call... it turns out I HAD talked to him, told him about seeing The Holiday with Abbie, talked about a bunch of other stuff, but have absolutely NO recollection of any of it. He says I sounded completely normal when I was talking to him. So I checked the cell phone that the call would've come in on, and sure enough it shows that I HAD talked to him the previous night for over 10 minutes yet have ZERO recollection of it. Kinda scary. Gene' says I've done the same thing with her a couple of times, and Adam's cited a few more occurences where I've done it. That, combined with the migraines and the new nosebleeds have me kinda worried. I passed all of this info along to my doc, who scheduled me to see a neurologist. His nurse called to tell me when the appointment was scheduled for, and I was devastated when I found out the soonest the neurologist could see me was THE END OF APRIL!!! I'm rapidly losing faith in the medical profession.

The only exception to this is Adam's cousin Laurie Beth... if you're reading this, my rants about doctors do not apply to you because I know how caring you are when it comes to dealing with people, and I have complete faith in your competency and knowledge of the field of medicine, so I have absolutely no doubts about how outstanding of a doctor you will be, and wish you the best of luck with your upcoming residency, even though I know you're gonna totally kick ass!

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Hmmm... what else to talk about... it's about 5am and I'm feeling the medicines start to kick in, so I guess I'll sign off for now.

I really apologize to everyone who kept checking my blog over the past couple of months only to see that it STILL hadn't been updated. I will do a better job of keeping up with it, and will be spending tomorrow getting caught up on y'all's blogs cuz I feel so out of the loop and I know that's my own fault.

I hope everyone's week gets off to a good start!