Slowly, slowly....

So late on Tuesday evening still feeling a little bit better every day. Physical Therapy yesterday went well lots of stretching and he did this thing on my called dry needling. Um, not so fun words to hear about wanting a doctor to do some needling. I was like ah, are you sure? Do you really think it would help? After some persuading I decided to let him do it. They are really thin needles and they run an electric current through them and you feel your muscle spasming. There were a few that did hurt a little going in but nothing like a shot. I felt born again right after my session and then about 30 min later the muscle soreness has set in and I have been sore but not in pain like last week since yesterday evening. Tomorrow I am supposed to go back to PT in the am and hopefully get to feeling better and getting stretches to do here from home.
I got my pampered chef stuff today and am so excited to start using it. I got the food chopper and a cooking stone along with a few other things. I used the stone to cook my rolls tonight and they were great!

Another Monday..

Wow, I haven't been on in a week. I had lots of help from Mom last week, Jon is working nights so she came over every night last week to help feed us and take care of kids. My brother Mason came over for dinner one day and I had to take a picture with him. I swear we have the same hair. It is time for me to do something different as far as the color for sure!! Here we are together...

I had the burning pain in my under arm all last week and it never really got any better. I went in for my fill on Thursday and Dr. Brewster said I needed to get to the Physical Therapist ASAP. She thought my muscles were just getting tighter and tighter and the pain was from the muscle rather than the skin. I was able to fill the rest of the way on my left side so I am at 250 cc's and done on that side. I was at 200 on the right side so thought we would split the remainder and fill 25 cc's at my next 2 appointments. When Dr. Brewster started putting in the 25 cc's on the left side the burning pain under my arm was immediately 100 times worse and then the skin across my chest felt like it was going to split wide open. I said, "Um is it normal to feel like the skin across my chest is going to explode at any second?" She of course said Yeah no, and still had the syringe in my expander and just let go of the end and let the pressure take the fluid back off. We only ended up filling 10 cc's on the right so I am only at 210. But that 10 cc's felt more tight than any of the last 30 cc's at a time. Pretty disappointing to be so close to being done and realize that I might have to wait another couple weeks and fill slowly. Dr. Brewster is out of town this week so I have no choice but to skip the fill this week.
She recommended a good Physical Therapist here in Loveland that I called immediately after getting home on Thursday. He was able to get me in that afternoon. Of course when I went in for my first visit and consult he kept saying wow your muscles and tendons here are really tight. I could barley move my right arm over my head. He also looked at my spine. I have know I had a curvature in my spine since high school, my GP told me it was a minor amount of scoliosis but nothing to be too concerned about. Apparently it has become worse and is now contributing to my problems with my right side. He wants me to go get an X Ray of it. Great, just what I need another problem to worry about. He did some stretching and massage and it actually has been feeling better the last few days. I have been trying to stretch and massage that tendon from my pec muscle to my under arm a few times a day and have noticed a difference. I will go to PT 3 times a week for the next 2 weeks and hopefully get much better.
Dr. Brewster did say that I need to only wait about 2 weeks after my last fill to have my next surgery so that is good news that I don't have to wait around a long time before I am done. I am really concerned with how tight the skin is around the expander on my right side. Hopefully it will all work out OK in the end. I haven't really done much of anything the last week because I have felt so horrible, including my hair and make up. Ha! That gets depressing feeling like crap all the time and not having motivation to do anything. Good thing for all the help from my mom and Jon. Today I got up and did both and will go to PT this afternoon, and hopefully continue to feel better as the week goes on.
We are in the middle of getting the drywall done in the basement. Last week the guys did all the muding and taping and they are here today doing the sanding. All the dust is going to be really fun at the end of the day. Then they will primer and texture and be done. It is exciting to be moving further along with it. I can't imagine what it will be like to double our square footage in a few months. (hopefully it will be done in a few months) Cody is still doing great with the potty training and I couldn't be happier. We actually went out this week for the first time without a diaper bag, it was awesome. Olivia spent the night on Friday with her Grandma and Grandpa Brock and had a great time. It was funny to just be with the twins. Jon and I went out to eat with some friends on Friday and were feeling funny to just have the twins with us. It is definitely easier playing man on man defense than zone. Except the 5 trips to the bathroom over dinner. On Saturday Jon was fixing our dishwasher and the twins had to be right up in that action to see what was going on.

The other new thing is listening to the IPod. Jon got some headphone that will stay on their heads and that is the new exciting thing to do. Cody looks so funny with the headphones on.

I started getting the cold junk that is going around on Friday with the sore throat and coughing. Hopefully that doesn't turn into the really bad stuff that hangs around for weeks. It is supposed to snow here tonight, I am so ready for the nice weather. Enough of the winter already, it is depressing with not feeling well and the weather being crappy!

Monday, Monday....

So it has been a long weekend. Still extreamly sore and now I have this issue with my under arm. It feel almost like my shirt has been rubbing on my underarm, not in my arm pit, but where your shirt touches your underarm. I has been hurting since Friday and at first just burned and felt like I had my shirt to tight around that part of my underarm. So I started wearing a really loose T shirt like I did when I had radiation and putting aquaphore on that part of my underarm but it hasn't gotten any better. It still just burns. There is no actual irritation to the skin which is bizarre, not red, not chapped, nothing. I started worrying more about it yesterday when there wasn't any signs on the outside of skin irritation and called the dr. this morning. She said if I wasn't experiencing a fever and chills we didn't need to worry about infection and to just try to take it easy, put ice on that area and take Tylenol. Ah Tylenol, the wonder drug....um no. I am sure this actually does work for some people but it never seems to make a big difference for me. Still wearing loose shirts and I will try the ice today. Hopefully I will get some relief because it is a major pain. I just hope that there isn't something else going on under the skin. I will probably end up with giant streatch marks there or something. It just feels like my skin is being pulled apart. (probably because it is) Hopefully this part of it won't last the rest of the time as well. This is much worse than being sore!
Jon finished hanging all the dry wall this past weekend and clearing out all the misc stuff we had in the basement. We are having a guy come in and do all the taping, mudding and texturing this week. It is exciting to keep moving forward with the basement. Although there is still a lot left after this stuff it is finally coming together. Hopefully by the summer or end of summer it will be done.
Speaking of summer, I wish it was. It has been so windy here lately, I am ready for the warm nice weather....even though it is still a few months away.
I spoke to my sister Amy and she couldn't find her original poem about Valentine's Day but did write 2. So here is her 2nd annual Valentines Day poem and hopefully she will find her other one soon!
This is the season bemoaned of the year,
When sweetheartless singles snarl and sneer.
We celebrate an intangible human feeling
It makes me shudder to my very being.
Why love this day to represent?
I know others echo my sentiment.
Do we consecrate a day for sadness,
How about anger, envy or malice?
The love day wouldn't be half so bad
If it celebrated familial love - for mom or dad.
(I'm not bidder if that's what you've heard!)
I lack a boyfriend but I have endured.
This year I choose to concentrate
On family and friends and not on a mate.
As you can see I've changed my attitude,
I won't let this day cause a bad mood.
by: Amy Lucas

Happy Heart Day!!

Hello my blogging friends and readers. Happy Valentines Day. Sitting here writing that I am reminded of a really funny poem my sister Amy wrote back in her high school years about Valentines Day and how it was a conspiracy with Hallmark and Hershey. I am going to have to get her to copy it for me and let me post it because it was funny....tomorrow perhaps. We will doom on V.D. tomorrow. Today I love Valentine's Day because it gives me a renewed appreciation for my valentine and all the people that I love around me that I would still consider my valentines. Of course there is the obvious one, Jonathan, my loving husband and love of my life. I am so thankful to have married such a wonderful man and great father. Sorry ladies, I caught the best one out there. Good thing he loves me too since I am so high maintenance lately. Feeling like poop and all. I am also so thankful to all my wonderful family members and friends that support me through thick and thin, up and down, bald and beautiful baby! You all know who you are and you rock! Nothin but love for you guys......and hopefully for many, many, many years to come!
As much as I love y'all I am not lovin today. I woke early this morning to Alex yelling my name across the house at 6am....she had a bloody nose that had gotten all over her pillow, bed sheets, comforter, her, her hair, face, it goes on and on. Since she shares a room with her brotheO Cody he woke up also and in the mix of course Olivia is ripped from her sleep and wants to be in on the action going on at 6am. Needless to say our entire house was up and awake at 6 am. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, ever. It is just too early and the heat hasn't been set to turn up until 6:45 so tired and cold. So I finally deal with that bomb that was dropped and have everyone situated on the couch to watch some tv and give me a second to get myself dressed and cleaned up cleaning up Alex. We are behind a little at work so I have been trying to work as much as I can to help get caught up and turn on my computer, mind you my brand new computer, that I have been having issues with and the browsers weren't working. I use both firefox and internet explorer and neither would work correctly. My amazing B-I-L took my computer for me last weekend and fixed what I thought was wrong on my email program, so I thought all was finally well. Then this morning with the browser is not working correctly, I couldn't even get on to work. After going through a few things over the phone with the BIL we couldn't figure it out and I would need to get my computer to him for his expertise. I had to get out my old laptop that Jon now uses to work and try to work with what time I had left in the morning to get some work done. I just want to have my laptop that I dropped all sorts of coin on to work. Is this really asking too much? Sheesh! So there went my morning trying to find out what was wrong with my computer and then trying to get another one to work on. Good thing that my brother in law is brilliant and amazing with computers and fixes all my drama for me. He is definately on my Valentines day list today too!
So on with the middle of my day....Off to the amazing Dr. Brewster's office. Which I have been told "she is the best kept secret in Fort Collins". She doesn't advertise much until recently with the STYLE magazine. This is the local magazine that I modeled in for Breast Cancer Awareness month. She is an amazing surgeon and it certainly a plus that I also do like her a bunch. Well today she actually wasn't my favorite since it was a fill day and it hurt a bunch to fill today. On the radiated side of my body it is becoming hard and tighter with each expansion. The giant needle going into the expander didn't hurt it was getting the saline in the expander. It didn't want to accept all that fluid. She was pushing on the syringe so hard to get the fluid to fill the expander that when the fluid was going in I instantly felt like she could have been standing on my chest and jumping up and down because there was that much pressure. Not from the syringe getting pushed on but the fluid filling the expander then the pressure against my ribs and muscles and all of that radiated tissue telling me to "STOP THAT RIGHT NOW". I think if my tissues could talk they would have yelled that at me today. With reassurance from Dr. Brewster my tissues are looking healthy and taking the expansion process well. So onward and upward. Planning to keep sticking it out (even though I am in a constant state of being extremely uncomfortable) and get this process over with.

Who's Ready to Relay Baby?!?

Even thought it is only February I am getting on the ball and starting my relay for life team. Relay for Life of Loveland will be June 7th and 8th at the Budweiser Event Center. Last year it was at the Thompson Valley High School Track so this will be a new venue. The Fort Collins Relay for life says the same dates and same location so I am assuming we will all be walking together or be walking on 2 separate tracks in their parking lot. That would be neat since my health care professionals are all in Fort Collins and lots of the people I went through treatment with participate in the Fort Collins Relay. So I registered a team and we will have the same team name as last year "We Cancer-vive". I am only going to do one team this year and ask that instead of having couples sign up that you sign up as an individual and then bring your family along unless you think that you will both (as a couple) be there for most of the event. We were spread pretty thin last year because some of the team members only came for a short period of time. I think if we only do one team this year and most of us that are the actual registered team members stay for most of the time it will work a little better. If you register as a team member before March 1st the registration is only $5 and then after that it will be $10. Click here to go to the main page for Loveland Relay for Life. There are pictures there for 2007 Relay if you participated last year. I saw a few pictures with Alyssa in the back ground but not any of our team area. Just in case your interested. To sign up to relay on my team you click the join a team link at the top and select my team "We Cancer-vive". Hope to have a good team this year!

Buddy Check 9

It's that time of the month again. Give yourself a good squeeze and do your self breast exams. Here is the buddy check 9 message this month....

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you, a few days before the 14th . While most of us associate the day with sweethearts, there are many people in our lives worthy of a valentine. We all remember how important it was in elementary school to send a sweet message to every friend in our class. Well, here is another chance for you to send a message to a good friend. Please take a moment to tell someone what they mean to you, and then encourage that special someone to do a self breast exam. Your message of kindness could save a life.
Also, if you have a sister that has been diagnosed with breast cancer, consider joining the Sister Study. This involves some time commitment on your part, but how many times do we get the chance to be part of something that could lead to a cure? The goal is to get 50,000 women in the study. Researchers are looking for more African American, Latina, Asian and Native American sisters to join, as well as those over the age of 65. To learn more about the study go to http://cl.exct.net/?ju=fe3415777565067a741676&ls=fdf0117575640c7a711c7776&m=fef711717d6307&l=fe8c1576766d017972&s=fdfb1572706c077f7c167475&jb=ffcf14&t=.
Until then, celebrate the friendships and relationships that make your life sweet!

Although I have been uncomfortable the last few days I have to say it wasn't as bad as last week. Still bad, but not horrible. My heating pad is still my best friend and I am still taking one pain med every 4 hours, but not 2 which is good. Jon has been working very hard on the drywall in the basement and is about 95% done. He has one wall and under the stairs to drywall still and then we will be done with that portion. It finally is coming together. I had my pampered chef party this morning and I just have to say they have some cool products. I am going to get their bamboo utensils (much better than wooden spoons), and the food chopper. This thing will chop up anything and saves a done of time with dicing or just chopping up. If anyone is interested in getting anything look at the link on my post from Thursday and shoot me an email.

Jon spent the morning with the kids and my brother Ethan and took the girls to Lollilocks. It is a place for kids to go get their hair cut. They have a puppet theatre and play area and then the kids get to sit on these chairs that look like carousel animals while they get their hair cut. Then the girls got to pick out a hair style from a picture book and they style their hair with hair clips and bands. They had a good time but it was kinda pricey. Good thing for a 20% off coupon. Here is some snapshots.

I tried to e file our taxes and there is some issue with the IRS and Jon's birthday. What a pain. I guess we will just be mailing it in. Jon has a few interested people in his Jeep and one coming to look this afternoon. Keep your fingers crossed for us!!

Fill 'em up!

I went to the docs today to get my expanders filled and the status is 210 cc's on the left side and 170 cc's on the right. Remember they had to take some off on the left side after surgery so I am lop sided. But you can't really tell unless I am wearing my favorite tight shirts....just kidding! So they fill 30 cc's at a time and the goal is 250. I have a 2 weeks on one side and and 3 weeks on the other. Then I can schedule surgery about 5 weeks after that....so probably April-ish. Which is good, right before the nice weather and swimming season! I am so tired of the cold weather. Mom and I were looking at garden magazines in the docs office today and I can't wait for summer! We also talked about the type of implants I will get and I have decided to get the silicone gels rather than saline. With having no breast tissue to start out with they feel more natural than the saline. They will also look much different then the expanders. Although they have they same "volume" they are shaped different with different "projection" and width. It was the same drill after getting filled. Almost instantly the right (cancer) side was killing me. This is also the side that I have back muscle pain. I have been sitting with the heating pad on my back the entire day. I told Dr. Brewster that I was really uncomfortable all week and asked her about just doing it and getting it over with or if it was my body saying I've had enough. She reassured me that my body is tolerating the expansion process well and it was okay to keep expanding but not to get to the point where I am so uncomfortable I can't function. My plan is to keep going and not skip weeks unless Dr. Brewster says I really need to. Tough it out and keep filling and get it over with. I have been on my pain meds all day at full dosage and of course and very uncomfortable. Hopefully the next few weeks goes by quickly.
On another note I am having a pampered chef party on Saturday morning at 10am. I am sending an open invite to anyone who would like to come and bring a friend, or just yourself, come on by! If your interested in just ordering something check out the catalog online at www.pamperedchef.com and then shoot me an email at elizajonbrock@msn.com and let me know what you want to order and I will personally contact you.
Tis the season that all my "shows" are on TV. Lost started last week wich I am absolutely obsessed with and Survivor started tonight. Wow Thursdays are a busy night with me now. Ha! Hopefully I will be able to sleep tonight with the help of a full dose of Ambien!

The Night before "The Day"

It's been a week of ups and downs. Cody....finally....Cody is catching onto this potty training business. At Christmas my sister was telling me that she didn't think I was going to get off the hook very easily with potty training code. Both my girls were breifly introduced to it and then one day they just decided I am potty trained and will be wearing underwear from here on out. Alex (the older twin) has been potty trained since last May and we are still working on on Cody (the younger twin). Finally over the last week the boy is now catching on that all the "big kids" are wearing underwear and not diapers. He has worn underwear around the house here the last 3 days and only had one accident. Going both #1 and #2. YEAH! Am I finally nearing the times of the diapers?? Man I hope so! At least seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. He looks so cute with these tiny little thomas underwear on his tiny behind. What a cutie patootie.
I have still been feeling sore pretty much constantly and especially worse at night. I wake up every morning feeling like a truck ran me over or I had been outise shoveling snow all day. These "fills" are definaetly getting progressivly worse from week to week. I am going to need to talk to the doc tomorrow about if this is normal or if I am putting too much stress on my body and see what she says. If nothing else I need to get some stonger pain meds to get me through the first day or two after the fill. So that appt is tomorrow, really counting down the hours!
Last night was interesting. Alex usually starts out in my bed to go to sleep since the twins share a room and would be talking all night if we laid them down together and then I move her when I go to bed. Well I am sitting out in the living room working and hear this what I thought was a cough and then she said Mommy I threw up.....The words that every mother just loves and can't get enough of....nnnooooo! All over my duvet cover, sheets, her, her hair. Oh and bonus, we had green beans for dinner...those always look great 5 hours down the road digested and then regurgitated. So I get her in the shower get all the stuff in the washer and start getting on another pair of pj's and again...blllahhhh all over her, the bathroom floor, towel, rugs. At this point I am thinking "ok seriously why me? why is Jon working tonight and not here? Just why? In the shower again for the 2nd time, threw more stuff in the washer and got her all dried and dressed. Yacked again, but this time we made it to the toilet. Hurray! We sat up until about 12:30 on the couch while she continued to vomit on and off before getting into bed. Then of course a whole night of tossing and turning wondering if I will be yacked on in the middle of my sleep or how many times we would be up changing sheets before the sun rises. Luckly enough the squirming kid was the worst part and with me not sleeping anyway I really probably only got 2 hours of sleep. Then at 5am the smoke alarm starts chirping (out of batteries), and not just any smoke alarm the one right above my bedroom door that is on the TOP of our vaulted ceiling. Which genius decided to mount a smoke detector 12 feet in the air is definatly off my show..... After some creative stacking on a coffee table and big piece of ply wood and a ricketty old ladder Jon was able to get up to it and change the battery. Again asking myself why? seriously why? These things never happen at noon or in the morning you know when it would be convenient to fix it. Nope always in the middle of the night when you have to freeze you butt off to get out of bed to fix it and realize you don't have a ladder tall enough to get up there. Apparently we need to invest in one of those extension ladders to avoid this exact same situation from repeating itself in the future.
Today wasn't much better as Jon and I were both zombies all through the day. I get a phone call from one of my providers (doc offices) saying that they still haven't received payment from my insurance. I am not sure if I have blogged about this monstrosity of a situation or not before but a quick fill in if not. I have blue cross of CA insurance b/c my husbands companies home office is in CA. Here in CO with the providers I see have to bill my things through the CO office so it doesn't get recognized as out of network and then send it through to the CA location to get processed correctly. So in my mind if they are co-mingling filing and reporting claims they are working together, right? Wrong. Every time I have seen the doctor or had lab work done, or say um hmmm SURGERY....They send it to CO office to bill and they have been denying it saying I don't have a policy with them and not sending it on to the CA office. In turn as you can imagine this all becomes MY problem as the consumer to go back to the provider and say you filed it wrong (which most are none to happy about you telling them they are doing anything wrong) and then call both the CO office and CA office to get the full story on what is going on. Today this happened again on something they were supposed to get taken care of last month and it never was followed up on (not my me) and now the provider wants me to pay the full balance. Treating me like some indigent piece of crap with no insurance and that I don't want to give her the money I owe her. This chick was a piece of work.....I just told her I am not paying you a dime. I have insurance you can look through the many many times I have been to this office for appointments, surgiers, follow ups, and everything and say that they have always paid on these claims before but now because there is some processing issue you treat me like this? I wasn't having it. I call the CO office, NOT THEIR PROBLEM, call the CA office, NOT THEIR PROBLEM, which transfers into my problem. Well I am not havin it anymore. The next time these series of phone calls are being made the HR lady at Jon's work is going to be getting an ear full from me and a front seat to this mayhem. Pure ridiculousness. Anyway just thought I would catch up on our week, say I am feeling terrible and sore and hating this a lot. Being negative today since I am so tired.....So I am going to go to bed and hopefully be in a better mood tomorrow. Real quick here is a quick picture of Olivia in a dress we recently got as a hand me down from Alyssa. Her new "dress up" dress she puts on almost every day after school.

President Hinckley's Tribute

I am sure some have already seen this, but I thought I would share anyway. It is a video tribute to Gordon B. Hinckley with his voice over some pictures and music. His funeral was broadcast today on BYU TV. I thought the tribute was very sweet. Make sure you scroll down to the bottom to pause the music to hear the video. In 2000, the President made an address to the youth of our chuch which focused on the 6 B's. They are Be grateful, Be smart, Be clean, Be true, Be humble, Be prayerful. What great and wise advice. I love how it ends on this note.



It has been a hard few days. Going into the doctor on Thursday, I still wasn't feeling over being pretty sore at night. Still waking up rather uncomfortable and tossing and turning the last few hours of sleep. I knew going in it wasn't going to be great. I was on the maximum amount of pain pills for the rest of the day on Thursday. I was lucky that Jon didn't have work on Thursday and Friday. He worked until early Thursday morning so by the time I got home from the doctor with the kids he was up and here to help me out with the kids. I was on the couch for most of the day Thursday working. This time I started to have bad muscle pain in my back by my shoulder (on top of the normal aches and pains) so have had the heating pad there the last few days. The shooting pains have started to pop up again and I have to stop to take a deep breath while they are going on. Definetly starting to be a major bummer. Needless to say I haven't gotten much sleep the last few nights and am pretty tired and sore. Thursday night my girlfriend Nichole that I haven't seen for over a year was in town and stopped by with her baby, Christian. He is such a cutie with big blue eyes. He husband is getting done with training in the Air Force and they are being stationed in Anchorage so she will be going up there in a month or so.
Olivia was supposed to go to Salt Lake this weekend with my parents to see my sister Toni. They are blessing their baby tomorrow at church and my brother in law invited Olivia to come over and go sledding and hang out. She was very excited. Unfortunatly due to the weather and interstate road closures they ended up flying instead of driving and Olivia wasn't able to go. She was bummed. We have been able to do some fun things this weekend anyway. Jon and Cody were invited to go see the monster truck and motocross show last night with our friend Desi and his son Duncan. (look at his ear plugs) Desi's wife Aislinn decided to have a girls night for the rest of us. Olivia, Alex, and I went over there last night to hang out and play games with a group of other ladies. It was fun to visit and spend time with friends. Jon and Cody also had a lot of fun, but we were all really late getting home. Olivia had a learning fair this morning at school where the kids get to pick different workshops to attend. She went to sign language, cheerleading, raptors (one on birds), and born to be wild (about animals). She had a fun morning. It is just past 1pm and both the twins have been asleep for 20 min. I suppose that is what happens when you put your kids to bed after 10. Ha! I hope they are in a better mood when they wake up. I spent a good part of the day yesterday studying for a test I have to take for work and need to spend the afternoon on it again today. I hope that I am able to pass it. I don't think I am a very good test taker. I didn't do very well on my ACT or SAT and this is also a timed test so I am a little nervous about it. I updated some more of the monster truck pictures on my picasa site.