Olsen family Christmas and New Years Update

We had a wonderful family Christmas celebration once the three of us were finally all together. Cooper had a blast with his fun new toys. His favorite of all so far is the new play guitar which he won't put down. I posted pics on Cooper's blog if you'd like to see. For New Year's eve we had a wonderful dinner out with several of our neighborhood friends at the local Buca di Beppos (yum!). After dinner we came home and put Cooper to bed and then I headed down the block to have a glass of organic wine with a few of my neighbor friends and then came home to cuddle on the couch and watch the ball drop with Bob. Last night was enjoyed attending some friends' annual New Year open house which is always so much fun. Cooper was amazed by their fabulous intricate train village under their Christmas tree. He also played with the other kids non stop for over two hours. He completely conked out in the car on the way home and when we took him up to bed he didn't even wake up while I changed his diaper and put his PJs on. ;) Thank you, Tony and Kathleen, for including us again this year - it was great fun and we love you both. 2009 was filled with a great many blessings and challenges. I've learned and grown so much in such a short time frame, thanks to God's will and guidance. I am excited about 2010. I just know it will bring more beautiful blessings into our life and allow us to continue to learn from apply our learnings in ways to help ourselves and others who face similar challenges that we were fortunate to overcome in 2009. May we all find 2010 filled with great health, peace, happiness, and prosperity! Love, Julie

Port-abled, surrounded by seeds & nuts

The port is in. UCLA was definitely the place to get it done. What a night-and-day difference there is between hospitals! I knew things would be MUCH better there since that's where I had my bilateral mastectomy last month and thankfully the port placement procedure process was similarly performed in terms of professionalism and compassion.

I'm very sore but that's normal. I guess I realize now that it would have been beneficial to have had this done further in advance of starting chemo because the idea of having the bandage peeled off of the area in the morning is making me cringe. Thankfully, whatever pain/discomfort it causes me tomorrow will only occur once since next time I go in after that the port incision will be healed. But, oh gosh, am I ever dreading the moment they peel it back to unveil the port.

I came home, popped one of the vicodin they gave me on my way out and crawled into bed with a bag of organic trail mix. After shoveling the trail mix down my throat (after all, it had been 24 hours since my last true meal), I promptly drifted off to sleep. I woke up, three hours later, surrounded by seeds and nuts (and, no, I'm not referring to Bob haha), in the bed, etc. It was pretty funny but when I laughed it hurt so I stopped laughing heehee.

Had a couple of hard boiled (organic, of course) eggs for dinner - need the protein and need to resume the eating in a gradual fashion as a precaution due to the sedation I had for the procedure, took my supplements, and crawled back into bed with the laptop and my honey. It's nice having Bob home so he can be on Cooper night time duty since I can't lift Cooper again for a few days. I even managed to get the good doc to agree that diaper changes are off limits for a few days "to avoid that risk for infection"...."and of course since that involves lifting him". haha - love my docs!! :)

Up next, first round of chemo (Taxotere + Cytoxan) - tomorrow morning, 10:00 am PT.

Oh yeah - my dear friend and neighbor, Greg, is having shoulder surgery in the morning (Tuesday) - please say a prayer for him for a successful surgery. He's been through A LOT this past year and a half - he and his beautiful family really deserve a break.

Love,

Julie

PS - Cancer - you're screwed - prepare to be vaporized - I'm opening up a can of whoopass! My new friend, Jane, even got me a shirt to announce it :) Thanks, Jane!

Walking v. cleaning...and booby stuff (lots of booby talk)

...so I didn't clean out any closets (or anything else for that matter) tonight...but I did get my butt in gear and went for my required daily walk. I have to say it's a very strange feeling to have knockers that don't move AT ALL when the rest of your body is moving. I'm sure I entertained at least a few unsuspecting onlookers as I strolled the mall and made an occasional sudden shake or hop to see if these bad boys would move at all LOL - can you just picture it!? If by tomorrow morning I'm feeling as well as (or better than) I do tonight, I think I'll hit those closets and enlist my dad's help (I can't do any heavy lifting but I can supervise LOL) to get that yard sale organized for Sunday (or the following weekend depending on what I can scrounge up). Now for booby talk...heehee...TMI ahead... These expanders (implants that have a valve through which saline can be added to expand them) are meant to stretch the skin to make space for implants later on so they have this strange feature of being very large in that it can be felt under every inch of breast surface whereas a typical implant would not take up so much real estate. My skin is still numb so it feels like I have a package or something attached to me - does not feel like a part of my body since there's such limited sensation there. Of course, when Cooper bumps into me or pounds on my chest I can feel THAT and it usually is followed by a whimper or an "ow!" since the underlying muscle is still healing/recovering from being split and separated from my chest to make space for the expanders. Oh yeah, that's the other thing about this type of reconstruction - since I have no more breast tissue, implants have to go underneath the muscle (normally they go between breast tissue and muscle in that the muscle doesn't get disturbed - not so for this process). So my skin is totally numb but my muscle is still reeling from the surgical disturbance and expander process. It's not excruciating, just uncomfortable and strange. So the procedure was quick and painless. What they do is they use this little magnet device on the skin to locate the valve of the expander (which also is magnetic), and they numb the skin (which was numb already haha) and then they insert a needle/tube and pump saline into the expander. You can actually see the skin raising as it goes in - well I couldn't because I was too chicken to look but when I looked down after doc injected the first side I saw a noticeable difference immediately. Pretty wild! You may recall that I was going in with the "less is more" attitude on this - that I really don't care all the much about the cosmetic part of all this stuff - I'm focused on surviving. So a funny thing happened today. Bob was with me and as we entered the parking garage at UCLA I reminded him that I need his support when it came time to discuss the size of my future breasts - that it's my body and if this process hurts I want to be able to say enough is enough even if that means I end up with considerably smaller breasts than I originally had. Once we were in the doc's office, I asked what size he thought I was at the time before injecting the saline and he said something like: "small C, maybe - but I don't know because my patients all say I'm a terrible judge of that." There is no way I was a small C this morning - I tried on a B-cup bra a few days ago and it was too big...I told him that and he said "See." We laughed. Now, I had planned to give a little speech about how I don't want to be as big as before...that less is more, etc. But when I was seated in front of this amazing doctor who happens to also be gorgeous, I found myself not even asking how much he was about to inject until he had already started! So unlike me!! Thankfully I realized this as soon as he had started and I spoke up to ask and basically since this has to be a gradual process based on what my skin can handle (as this is a stretching process) I was not at risk for being overinflated LOL. So....Bob and I are walking back to the car afterward and he says "I love how you give me the riot act and then you look in Dr.McHotty's eyes and just go with whatever he had planned!" haha!!! I did NOT give him the riot act but he enjoyed exaggerating to point out that my tongue goes a wagging over this doctor. He commented again that the handsome doctor may be getting to reconstruct a "hot set of hooters" for me, but it's Bob who will get to enjoy them. Haha. Bob is such a wonderful husband and father and he has such an awesome sense of humor too. I really hit the jackpot with him.