quarter of a century.

next week, ill be 25. that's a quarter of a century. holy shit! also, in two days, Katy will be two. were having a birthday party tonight for her with her favorite nurse who won't be here on her birthday.
on the 29th, Landon will be one. where did the past year go!? Abbie will be 7 in June. and! Ryan and i will be married a year in July! ah! its been such a good year! until we found out Katy has cancer.
but, were getting through. I asked Katy what she wanted for her birthday and she told me "to not be sick momma!" if I could only give her that gift!
she is doing very good. she's tolerating the chemo well. her doctors don't hide anything from me. they tell me when shes not doing well. I catch them late at night in the cafeteria a lot when I'm getting coffee or ill see them in the hall on my way and we'll sit and have coffee together. her oncologist said depending on how well she's doing, if theirs any cancer left, etc. she could go home before the end of summer. but dont get my hope up.

Katy update.

I'm so far behind in updating my blog. I decided that I wanted to go back to school for nursing. Which after Governor Corbett getting Boyd into office, was probably one of the smarter things I've done in the past 8 years. With budget cuts, positions are going to be cut and my position is high on the list.

Class, a new house, 4 kids, and also finding out that were expecting our fifth child in mid august had made our lives crazy.

Those aren't the only things, though. If you follow me on Twitter, you know Katy has been sick.

In February I took her to the doctors because she was having balance problems and they told me nothing was wrong. Towards the middle of February I noticed it was getting worse, so I took her to the emergency room. Once again, nothing is wrong. Finally, at the end of February they did an MRI and found a tumor on her brain stem. They took a biopsy a few days later and we found out that it was indeed cancer. She has a brain stem glioma. Until last week she was monitored closely by her oncologist to make sure the tumor didn't grow. There were no empty beds open on the oncology wing and she didn't feel comfortable admitting her to the regular floor of the childrens hospital. Last Monday, April 4, Katy had a seizure. I called my professor and explained the situation as to why i wouldn't be in class. I called the ambulance because their was no way we were sitting in the waiting room. That night she was admitted to the pediatric oncology wing.

Today was the first her surgeon had available to operate. He doesn't normally operate on Tuesdays but felt she needed this tumor out now. The two residents came in at 5am and took her to pre op to prep her. They wheeled her back around 6:45. We talked to the doctor sometime after 1. He said they didn't get as much of the tumor as they would like, but they got the majority of it. Her heart rate and blood pressure started to drop so they felt it was safer to just stop there. They're going to monitor the growth over the next few weeks/months.

Katy is currently sleeping. She's spending the night in the PICU for observation.

I have a meeting with her oncologist at 4:30.

I think that's all. I'll try to keep the blog updated, but it'll just easier to follow me on Twitter @rnicole8604

Loooong overdue

I'm sorry about the silence on the blog. I've been so busy and just haven't had the time for the blog or Twitter. I'll hopefully be around more after the holidays.

Here's what's been going on:
 
-I got married and spent a week in France for our honeymoon. It was absolutely amazing!   
-I started school. I decided to stay with my current district for at least this year. I'm going to start looking for jobs in the spring. 
-we realized that we outgrew our house.. Even with my sisters family gone. 
-we started looking for houses, almost bought a house in Tennessee, but it was sold before we got a chance to put an offer in on it.
 -I decided I would rather not move out of state and started looking at homes closer to where we live. 
-we found a house we liked in palmyra It's only 4 bedrooms, but overall it's much bigger than our current house. If needed it has an office on the first floor that could be turned into a bedroom because it most likely won't be an office.  
-we put an offer in.. And got the house!!! :)
-we moved the third weekend in October and have been painting and unpacking since we've moved. We did get some painting done before we moved, but not much.  
-the only bad thing about the house is we moved to a new school district. But I have no doubt that Abbie will do fine. She has developed into a social butterfly and interacts well with others. 

This is what's best for our family and it's best we moved while all the kids are still young and while Abbie isn't too far into school. I would have loved to wait until the end of the school year because I don't want her to have to try and make all new friends in the middle of the school year, but that's just too far away and it was best we get the move done now.

-I just realized Landon turns six months old in two days! 
Where has the time gone. He is growing up so much. Give me some time and I'll put together an update on the kids too!
And Preston is going to be three in three months. 
My kids are growing up so fast :(   

Months of crazzyyy = new babyyy

Hey it's ash! 
If you read my last post, you know all that's been going on, if not, I'll try to do my best and tell you and you can go back and read it all. 
I moved to binghamton for a job. Had an amazing time there. I met an amazing man from Hershey, he's friends with my brother. We've been in a relationship since valentines day of this year and we are so happy together. I moved to Hershey over the summer, we started lookng for houses, found one and just recently found out that we got it. I was only supposed to have a short term sub job but it turned into a permanent position in the same district as rebecka. I told you I was expecting a child in november. We thought around the 13th. We later found out I was about a week ahead putting my due date at November 6th. 
Okay, I think that's everything from that post. 

In July I had an amniocentesis done. I did not want to have it done, but my doctor and boyfriend, both having medical knowledge (not in the same field), convinced me to have the amnio done. I had it done and my doctor called me and told me I should come in because he needed to talk to me and that my boyfriend, and to protect his privacy will be referred to as A from her on out, should come with me if he was not at work. Unfortunately he was at work in the middle of a surgery. Luckilly I was in Hershey that day so it would literally take me less than five minutes to walk from our apartment up to his office. 

When I got to his office, the receptionist said he was waiting for me and took me right back. I KNEW this couldn't be good. She took me directly into his personal office. This made things even worse. 

My doctor came in and had a horrified look on his face and he started off with "good afternoon Ashely" and continued with some medical junk which I'm pretty sure I zoned out during. He then got down to business and pulled some stuff out of a mamilla envelope and said "I have unforunate news, your sweet baby test positive for downs syndrome on your amnio." after that I'm pretty sure I just zoned out. I broke down. I put face in my hands and just cried. I cried for hours. Until this day I had no idea whether I was having a girl or a boy. I decided I wanted to know. We were having a boy. I decided on a name. I don't rememer what is was. But I changed it. 

On July 28th or 29th, really don't remember because I was so out of it, I was rushed to the ER by A because my blood pressure was so high. My doctor had been monitoring it and had been slightly high at previous appointments. I also had protein in my urine. 

I was admitted to the OB floor for monitoring. I started having very few contractions on the 31st. My blood pressure was getting extremely high. My doctor decided that if they didn't deliver the baby our lives would be in danger. They rushed me off to the OR.

At 11:37pm Conner sudhir was born at 14 weeks early. He was 1lb 11oz and 14in long. I spent an hour in recovery then was rolled into the NICU for a very brief moment to see him. I didn't remember what he looked like. I think I went to see him the next day, but i'm not sure, I was on a lot of medicine. They were still having trouble keeping my blood pressure normal. It wasn't as high but it was still high. I was on meds for that and a high dose of pain meds. 

After that first full day I spent almost all my time in the NICU with him. But when you have two other kids at home, a bf, an apartment, and a new job teaching a grade you've never taught before, it's hard! 

Conner is over 4lbs, eats from a bottle and isn't on any oxygen! He is coming home next Friday! That means we have to be moved into our new house by Friday.

They checked a few weeks after he was born and he showed no signs of downs syndrome! The test was a false positive! :) 

Today was my last day of work until the week before thanksgiving because Conner is going to need so much individual attention. The week of thanksgiving I'm going to do half days. My district is very understanding. Conner is going to be seeing a ton of specialists here at Hershey because he was premature. He already started seeing some during his stay at the hospital, but i'm sure he'll be seeing more. I know for sure he'll be seeing therapists. We already have an appointment set up with a pediatric neurologist for the Tuesday after he comes home. 

I'm so excited for him to come home! I've been waiting for this day for 2.5 months! I can't wait to hold him all the time! I've loved holding him since the first time I held him at 3 weeks old! 

I just thought I'd update you all! Have a good weekend (:
I'll try to update next weekend when he comes home and let you know how it's going, it'll probably be after a feeding in the middle of the night (;      

Wedding!+ honeymoon

We had an AMAZING wedding! I could not have asked for a better day. It was hot as hell but that's what you get at the beach :)
the honeymoon was amazing as well. More on that and the wedding later. But were home and had an amazing time! :) I need to catch up on my sleep + go through all the gifts, then I'll tell you all about the wedding and our time in France! :)

Wedding week!

It's wedding week! And things are crazy! Extremely crazy!
I got a letter from domestic relations saying that abbies father wants 50/50 custody.. Uh, no. He doesn't live in the same school district and. he hasn't had anything to do with her in I don't know how long. Why now that she's six? So pissed. I just opened the letter. I think it came friday. I'll keep you updated.