Lots of pictures of life at home

In latest cancer news, in one day I go from this:

To this:

And this:

And this:

And this: :) See how much fun wigs can be. And that's not to mention all the hat options I have... I'm gonna miss my curls, but till they come back again we shall wear hats and wigs with great abandon.

We had twin calves born to a heifer a couple nights ago. She was confused about what to do with these two weird little, slimy beings, so this whole household spent the night awake, feeding and babying those tiny critters, doing our best to keep them alive. It worked - they're both thriving. The little heifer, who somehow got dubbed 'Louise' by AndyRay, was taken back by her momma without batting an eye. Poor Teddy though, got left alone, so now he's a human/dog/calf. Our dogs have starting bawling (seriously) and I'm expecting Teddy to start barking any day now because they've all become fast friends. Here are some photos of the new addition. The video looks blurry on here, but you'll get the idea:

Sanity and Happiness??

For those of you who may have been wondering why I have such an odd title to my blog... Mark Twain once said "Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination". I found that to be both amusing and enlightening. Consider that. .....One cannot be happy unless one is insane. That cracks me up. So therefore I found I simply had to post my statement to the late, great Samuel Clemens that there is, out there somewhere, a family who is both sane AND happy, as impossible as that may be to believe. :)

On to business matters. Thanks to all of you who sent emails for calendars. This has been a ball getting all these notes! They are done on my end, I just wasn't able to get to town to price them until recently where I found out they're pretty spendy to make here. But all is not lost, we're still pressing on and I ordered from an online company. They aren't perfect - - they don't have my comments or the beautiful borders and matching calendar pages I painstakingly added on my original, but they should be just fine. It'll come to $22.00 apiece to help me with shipping them out to you folks. I shall send emails to each of you, giving you our address and you can mail checks anytime. Then I shall need your addresses, of course, so if you could email that info back asap (if you haven't already, of course), that would be splendid. They shouldn't take long to make, so hopefully you all with have them by March 1st. Keep your fingers crossed!

Now for a cancer note. Do you remember those doctors in Denver saying they were sure I had a separate kind of cancer and they wanted to send samples of all my tumors, from first diagnosis till now, on to a famous research place for study? Well we did all that and this is their report: They cannot tell me whether or not I have breast cancer or ovarian cancer, but it is all the same. So what does that mean? It could all be ovarian, metastasized to the breast, which would be bad news as it's very rare and very hard to work with.
OR... [drum roll please]... it could have been breast to begin with that metastasized to the ovary and grew faster there, so it's the first thing they saw. They never even considered looking for breast cancer at the beginning, but those Denver doctors feel my cancer acts and looks much, MUCH more like breast than ovarian. Plus my risk factors place me in a far more likely group to get breast cancer, NOT ovarian. Such weirdness!!!

It doesn't really change anything at this point - we just need to be sure my chemo is good for both (which it is) and keep watching numbers and CT scans (which we will). My first chemo went well a week ago - - knocked me flat for a couple days (see the picture of me after surgery 2 posts ago for a visual), but I'm up and going now. Slowly, I must admit, but at least I'm moving.


It's been cold here again, so I've posted a few photos for you to "feel". Especially those of you in warmer climates... you can look on in envy at our beautiful winters. :)

I'm here

If you could see through my computer screen, you'd see these all-too-familiar (to me) easy chairs of chemo-land. Yes, I'm finally here. Much, MUCH later than we'd planned, but nevertheless getting started. Wanna know the truth? It's a bit scary. New drugs, new side effects, and who knows whether it'll do any good or not. *sigh* So, dear support team, keep your fingers crossed for us. Please.

I'm keeping "active" working on calendars and note cards. What I think I may do is print out a March 08-March 09 calendar. That way we don't all have to wait until 2009 - that's way too far away. So here's the scoop: if you'd like me to add you to my order, could you email me please? Keep in mind though, I'm having to charge at least $20 for them, which is a ridiculous price I admit, but they're more expensive to make than I'd planned. And if I don't charge, then I end up being an even bigger drain on income than I already am.

.....
SO, let me re-phrase this .... if you're crazy, and want to spend a lot on a calendar, go ahead and email me. :) Our 'work' email is: andyandmichelle@snellingranch.com. Keep using our personal email for notes and such, I just didn't want to post it on the web for all sorts of spammers and scammers to find.

Oh and in case you're wondering what they'll be like, I'm adding photos like the ones you've seen on the blog - some summer, some pets, some winter.... maybe I'll try to put together a little sample block so you can see what you're getting. Looking forward to hearing from you - even if it's to tell me I'm crazy for asking so much. :)