Methotrexate

So we have been here at Primary Childrens since Friday afternoon on our second round of methotrexate this month. We actually got a two day break last week, it was pretty nice. This one hasn't been quite as bad as it was last week. We have I think one of the best rooms up here, a bigger chair to sleep on makes mom a lot happier:) The blisters on her feet started last night and for some reason she started running a fever. We never know what chemo is going to do to her, it's always something different every time.I just don't get it, it's the same drug the same doseage going at the same rate and every time we have a different reaction. We decided yesterday to have the Ativan by mouth instead of IV and she was actually able to stay awake all day and wasn't nauseated. Today we are not even taking Ativan so she's been eating all day. Right now she is eating a big plate of vegetables with Ranch dip!!! It's good to see her feeling better. Her level has to be at .10 to leave and she was at .38 this morning. We are hoping for tomorrow.  Today she decided to venture out so we went to the gift shop and then to the patio to catch some fresh air. It was so nice to get out of this room. This is a huge step for her, last week I had to beg her to go for a walk, this week she was all for it.

We have 6 more treatments left and can hardly wait. Everytime we here the bell ring down the hall we get excited for the day we get to ring the "no more chemo bell". It will be a glorious day. All the doctors and nurses and Tech's on this floor are amazing, we have made some great friends here, they are like family now, that's really sad, I see them more than I do my own family.

We get to tend the baby tonight and Maddie keeps asking me when she will be here. She's kind of excited. It's been hard to watch her friends go back to school and not be able to join them. I know it is bugging her but she's a trooper and knows that this is more important right now. Thanks again to all her friends that have visited or called or texted her, it really does make a difference. We couldn't have make it this far without the support. love and prayers of friends, family and neighbors we love you all:)

P.S. Happy Birthday Rory!!! We love you:)

July to August

This is Maddie's Mom, I've decided it will be easier for me to blog this journey we are on than it is for her. We have had an eventful last 3 weeks. Maddie got a break for a couple of weeks from chemo and had a lot of fun things happen. First was her new niece Olivia was born on July 19th, actually the day before her last chemo, but we need to mention it. Olivia is beautiful!! We absolutely can!t get enough of her. We call Maddie the baby hog:) but that's ok if it puts a smile on her face.

The chemo she finished with was the one she always gets a fever with and because chemo was delayed a week we were afraid if she got the fever she wouldn't make to girls camp. There was a whole lot of praying going on at the Cook!s house. This whole journey has brought me to my knees more times than ever before but this time was different, I really wanted her to go to camp. She had her blood drawn on Monday and they were going to leave on Tuesday, her counts were not good enough to go, 200. I asked if they could come back on Wednesday and try again and they agreed, we prayed again. Wednesday they were at 6900 but her platelets were too low. We made a mad dash to Primary Children's for a transfusion and then it was off to Camp Woodland. She had a great time! She got to stay in a tent with her best friend Haley Murray and I'm sure there was very little sleeping going on.Thank you 2nd ward young women leaders

for taking such good care of her.


She got home on Friday just in time to get ready for her shopping spree, given to her by the Make a Wish Foundation. On Saturday afternoon this big Escalade Limo pulls up and the shopping began. She had already picked out most everything she wanted and much to our surprise, most of the stores were willing to hold her stuff until we came to pick it up. It was a blast watching her and seeing her smile. We were moved to tears at Guitar Center when the store manager decided to give her the electric guitar instead of letting us buy it. What a great bunch of
guys. One things for sure we are continually blessed to meet such loving and caring people on
this journey we are on. Maddie has a way of melting people's hearts that is amazing to watch.


When we arrived home we only had a few minutes to get ready for the Tim McGraw concert. A girl I work with had her dad get us tickets. We were once again touched by the generosity of others. We had lawn tickets and we were supposed to meet up with Casey to have him get us better seats, well to make a long story short they ended up giving us their tickets on the fourth row, a Tim McGraw hat and a signed Tim McGraw tee-shirt. I don't know how the day could have been any better!!! The pictures will tell it all. Happy Birthday Maddie!!!


Girls Camp 2011 "Be Beautiful to Him"

 

Goofy Girls





The Limo



 



Riding in Style



Gamestop in Clinton





The Loot!!



Girls night out:)



Tim!!















Sorry this is an old post that I never finished writing :)

I'm @ Primary Children's yet again for chemo. I've been here since Thursday. (It's Saturday.)
My mom said I should upload my blog and she's right. /: It's been a looonggg time. I don't even remember when I wrote last. And I don't update my twitter as much as I should.

I went to the last week of school. It was nice to see my friends again. I hadn't seen them in a really long time. On the Friday before my surgery (May 16) I still had my feeding tube in and some people looked at me funny but I just ignored it. At least I could WALK then. On the last week I had to be in my wheelchair. Anyway... I got there kind of late and a lot of people were at Lagoon for Physics. But I saw my girls and a few others and that's all that matters :)

Erika,Alix,Ky,Me,Kyra,Genna,Megan,Abbie

So then on May 16th I had my surgery. We left at 5:00 to go to PCMC because we had to be there by 6. My surgery started at 7:30. Here are some pre-surgery pics.

Me and Daddy :)

My awesome doctor Dr. Scott :)

The surgery was harder than I thought it was going to be. My leg was in pain pretty much the whole time. I had a button that I could push every 10 minutes and it would give me morphine. I literally would wait until the little light would turn green because that meant I could push the button. But my scar has healed really good. I took a picture of it a few weeks ago and it looks even better now. Here's the pic:

Pretty nasty eh?

My summer has been pretty boring. I had my first round of chemo since my surgery about 3 weeks ago. This one was called Cis Platin and Doxirubbussin. They kick my buttttt. I get home and throw up for a couple days or so and then I usually feel pretty good. But when my counts come down to zero I ALWAYS get a fever and I have to come back to the hospital because fever's are really dangerous for me? I don't know... My mom knows more about the fevers than I do. I just go with the flow... Anyway, so I came in with a fever the week after chemo on a Friday and stayed until Wednesday. I threw up EVERYTHING I ate until like Tuesday. It pretty much sucked. And I HATE being in the hospital for that long. The only upside is that I don't have to get up every 2 hours to pee. Ha.

When I got home, my counts were STILL at zero. Lindsay had her baby shower on Thursday and that was pretty fun. She got TONS of cute stuff and it made me a million times more excited for baby Olivia to come! I'm gonna be over there EVERYDAY (when I'm not in chemo) to help Linds out.



On Monday I went to a ceramic making place in Ogden with my mom and Lindsay. And I was home alone so I decided that I might as well put makeup on, wear something cute, and "do my hair" (aka put my wig on haha). And of course, I took pictures :P And I was listening to music pretty loud when I was taking them. I was on the edge of my bed facing the window and my mom walked in. Scared the crap out of me! This was the picture I was taking when she walked in:

Here's some other pictures I took:

I like this one :)

I don't usually do a horizontal picture, Thought I'd try it out.

Weird smile and my neck looks kinda creepy?!

Care Bear and Selena Gomez, lol

I don't know.

Kinda like this one, minus Selena /:

XOXO :* (that's a kissy face)

I like this one (:

looking out the window

don't like my smile in this one

Hmmm.

I don't know why but I really like this picture. :)

This one too (:

Ha now that I'm done uploading pictures of me.

We went to the ceramic place and we walked in, sat down at a table and it had paint brushes, a bowl of water and little ceramic bowls filled with paint. Whatever color the little bowl was, was the color of paint in it. They had blue red, yellow, white, brown, black, purple, green, pink. They also gave us a mug that we were going to paint. We could do whatever we wanted with the mug. I had NO idea what I was going to do. So I went over to the box of stencils and picked out cute letters and dots. So I painted mine white and then put on the dots like polka dots like a rainbow (red,yellow,blue,purple,green) and then my name. So I was really concentrated on my painting when the song Baby by Justin Bieber came on and 2 girls came in with balloons and they had their hoods up like gangsters and they started singing this song but they changed the words so it was about my shopping spree wish being granted. :) It was sooo embarrassing but it was really nice and I got a good laugh out of it.

Reading the 'official paper' ;)

The balloons.

Gangsters :P

(:

Me n Lindsay

So i'm wayyyy overdue for this post and I don't feel like finishing it. I wrote this a way long time ago and I don't really know what i've written. :) Oh well. I guess we'll find out once I post it!

Follow Me, Creeps! ;)

My Twitter :)

Prince Ali, fabulous he, Ali Ababwa! :)

I'm totally listening to that song right now! Booyah! I'm not going to even say anything about how long it has been AGAIN since I wrote, cause I said that in the last one. I am sorry though. I know people want updates and stuff, but I kind of forgot about my blog all together. I changed my banner AGAIN, but I don't like it so I'm thinking of just putting up a picture... yeah. I'll do that when I'm done with this blog. :)

So, I'm thinking I want to go to the Tim McGraw concert! I wonder if anyone loves me enough to buy tickets. ;) Haha just kidding... I honestly have no idea what to talk about. I could go on and on about what has happened since I wrote last, but I did that in the last blog and that's annoying, plus it's midnight and my brain is currently in the off mode. :)

My new short wig.

I know that everyone pretty much knows that I got a short wig, because I'm assuming that most of the people reading are friends with me on Facebook anyways.

I'm going into Dr. Scott's tomorrow to talk about the surgery. I'm kind of nervous about the surgery? I can't decide if I am or not... I don't know.
This is my newest addition:

Feeding tube; Yuck!

Excuse my ugliness, and the weird face I'm pulling. I was NOT happy about the feeding tube. It was kind of dramatic putting it in... The night before I just sat in my bed and cried for a long time but then my favorite tech Tommy walked in, sat on the floor, put his hand on my leg and talked to me and my mom about it for a while. That calmed me down a lot. I love all the nurses and tech's there. They are all SO nice to me. I'm so lucky! I made a ton of new friends and they're all nurses. I guess that there is a nurse named Irish and on Halloween he dresses up as Dorothy, dress and all (hairy legs,no tights or anything, P.S.) and brings his dog as Todo... I'm looking forward to that... :) "Kind of disturbing" says most of the nurses there, but I am excited lol. :)

The puppies are getting SO big! I don't have current pictures of them. I'll have to take some and upload some soon! I think that I am keeping the black girl instead of the little boy. She is SO cute! But so is he... ugh. They're all cute! I would keep them ALL if I could. :/ Buuuuut, my mom put the kabosh on that idea. Bah-humbug!

Alright well, I should probably go to bed since it is almost 12:30.

I'll post as soon as I can, and try to start writing more. I love you guys. <333

Goodnight,

A lot has happened...

Hey. I'm sorry I haven't blogged in a way long time. I guess I kind of forgot about it. Plus I never felt like it. /:
A lot has happened since I last wrote. I finished round 4 of my chemo last week. Cis Platin and Doxirubussin(?) kick my butt... I got way sick when I was in the hospital. I was drugged the entire time so I don't remember a lot. I do remember them giving me Benadryl. Um... bad idea. I get jumpy legs and my body just feels out of place. I feel like I'm not even in my body? And my hands shake and I just feel like i'm having a seizure or something. It really scares me. I don't care how sick I get I'm never having that again.
For my 3rd round of chemo I got to come home to 4 little suprises. :)
Lilly had her puppies. They are adorable. 3 girls and 1 boy. I'm pretty sure all of them are sold though. I think I'm keeping the boy. I really want to keep one. He's cute. He's laying on my chest right now actually and he's making cute little squeaky noises. :)

Little Lucy thought she was the mommy. :)

Miss Babysitter Lucy Girl :)

They always cuddle like this. :)

The cute little boy. He has the cutest face!

Hehe :) The litle boy.

Here are some pictures of the puppies that I took today.

Girl #1

Girl #2 :)

My little guy :)

Girl #3 :)

Momma Lilly :)

On Saturday I went to Murray with the Murray family (my best friend) and we went to Fashion Place Mall and shopped all day and then we stayed in a hotel that night.Me and Haley even got our own room! :) It was super fun and it was nice to get out of the house and not just sit there all day. Me and Haley got matching dresses and we both bought swimsuits and sunglasses. We went to Chili's afterwards. I love their chips and salsa! I ordered chicken crispers with fries and a side of mashed potatoes, lol. I ate maybe 2 fries and all of my mashed potatoes, but I didn't even touch the chicken crispers. My tongue and throat were hurting and I didn't think I could eat them cause they were crunchy... But I had strawberry lemonade and that was really yummy. We sat by the bar and there were super wasted guys hitting on the girls sitting at the table next to us. It was kind of funny to watch them... I don't know why you would want to be drunk. Stupid. But I had so much fun! I love the Murray's. They are my 2nd family.

drivin home.

hotel room. :P

My stunnah shades ;P

New Necklace :)

Hay an her stunnah shades ;)

Don't have anything else to say really. I dont have chemo until the day after Easter. :) And Abbie and Rory come home the 21st for GOOD!!! Finalllyyyyyy :) I've missed them so much. And they can make me some of  Rory's yummy Cambodian recipes ;)
Well I'll try and not take so long to write again.
Byeeeeee<333

I Got Gadgets and Gizmos a Plenty!

hey everyone. this blog is gonna be short but im on my new KINDLE. How awesome is that??? Pretty awesome if i do say so myself (:
I got it from my cousin Teri that lives in Colorado. She also sent me a Nintendo DSi. Which i think is awesome! It even has a camera. (:
Annnnnnd another thing. Remember that video camera i was talking about? Well my beehive leader Nikki George got me one!
Thanks everyone!!! I love you.
My mom thinks im spoiled. What do you think? (: