Sept. procedure

Hi everybody! How are you? Well, I'm finally getting around to blogging - hope I can remember what all happened, since it's been several weeks since this was done! This trip, I was accompanied by my sister Celia! She has been traveling so much lately with her family and ours, but she's a real trouper and always makes these trips for me as pleasant as possible! We left here early in the morning on a Wed., since our flight was leaving from San Antonio! We made the flight on time, arrived in CO, got the car rental and headed to my ENT appt. I had that afternoon! Every third visit, Dr. Yakes wants me checked out to make sure my air passages are clear for the embolization he'll be doing! All went well, very short visit w/ENT, and by this time we were hungry for lunch! Headed to a place called Sam's that has a great menu that includes breakfast or burgers! Checked into our hotel after that and was happy to find that my trache humidifier equipment had been delivered to the hotel! We had to call Mark to instruct us over the phone on setting up the tubes and hoses! Luckily, Celia is pretty sharp with that kind of stuff, otherwise, we would have been in trouble! I had asked Celia to help me pile my pillows up, since I need to sleep almost in a sitting position in order to not feel like I'm being swallowed up by the avm and trache, swelling, etc. She did a fantastic job propping all my pillows just right and getting all tucked in comfortabley!

Headed to Swedish the next morning to check in for procedure. I was NOT a happy camper - getting to the point of almost having an anxiety attack, very tired of this whole process! Celia is so funny, she tried to cheer me up by saying, "come on, I'll buy you something"! Ok, that made me feel a little bit better. Started talking to one of the two receptionist that always does my registration and she cheered me up too! Oh! The night before, I had been writing on Facebook and turns out Shalon was also @ Swedish for an embo! That made me feel better as well! I had not seen her in a while and she looks fantastic! The receptionist was showing me the article in a magazine where there is a story on Shalon! It is actually in several magazines, including Women's Day I believe! I'll include the photo in the article, or you can always go to Shalon's website from mine and see it all!

Started getting all ready for the surgery - see photos of my having fun getting the IV put in - yeah right! I specifically asked for this nurse, Colleen because she does such a great job and what happened? She messed up the first time! She felt so bad and kept apologizing - It wasn't too bad though and she got the IV in on the second try! Everyone @ Swedish is always so awesome! The nurses in the surgery room always take such great care of me and make make sure I am as comfortable as possible! I'm only awake a few minutes before I'm put out anyway and next thing I know, I'm waking up after the embolization is all done!

I told Dr. Yakes to go easy on me - I would rather do that, than have him "hit me w/too much alcohol" and then the recovery period is too much for me! I do NOT like waking up needing pain meds or miserable from something Dr. Yakes has had to do. This time when I woke up, I wasn't feeling too bad! Seems like right away I was put in a room and allowed to get up to go to the bathroom! I usually have to wait several hours because of the arteriogram Dr. Yakes has to do each time - but I was feeling pretty good considering what I had just been through!

I was able to have something to eat soon after I was in my room and was communicating pretty well! Celia stayed with me until the late evening and then headed back to the hotel. Came in the next morning and we left Swedish, checked out of the hotel and headed to St. Nicks in Littleton, CO for some Christmas shopping! That is the coolest store with soooo much stuff to see! Nephew Davis is into Star Wars, so Celia got him some Christmas lights that look like Yoda and R2D2!

Hurried to catch our flight after that, and arrived in San Antonio safely! We were excited that everything had gone so well, got our baggage and headed to the car with a busboy helping us! After loading the car up, the busboy left and Celia starts the car. Nothing. Hmmmm..., let's try that again. Nothing! OMG! She calls Greg right away and we don't know what to do! I ended up staying in the car, while Celia went back into the airport for help! She found an employee/maintenance guy that came and jump started her car! Yikes! This was like 7pm on a Friday night! No problems after that - got home fine about 10 p.m. or so.

I posted a photo of Shalon from her article, doesn't she look fantastic?! Also, there is a photo of me with Dr. Yakes patient coordinator, Sadie Neth as she works on making my next appt.! She is awesome and is always on top of things to make sure I'm ready for my appts.!!

Well, I may tweek this here or there, but I think this is it for now! As always, thank you everyone for all your prayer, love and support. This darned avm is a continual thing that has a mind of it's own, so it keeps us on our toes! As you know a few days or so after my embo, I had a bad bleed from my mouth and needed to get a unit of blood the next day. Whoop de doo! It's always something with me! My PCP wants to get me off steroids asap, so as I've been lessening the mgs. of Prednisone, I think when I reached 40 mg. my body is going, "wait, wait! That's enough, I need to have that prednisone"! When I got to that level, I started to wake up with the left side of my face in pain and my eye still puffy - so I may stay a day or so extra on 45 mgs. of prednisone a day. I had not been waking up in pain, and now I have to take some Neurontin for that first thing in the morning. Yada, yada, yada ..... ciao!

Cyndi