Hello everyone, my name is Christine 😊
I feel like I haven’t updated this blog in so long that I almost need to reintroduce myself. But I won’t, since I am hoping you have found me because you have followed my story or if not, that you will go back and get to know me through my previous posts.
Where do I even begin to update you?
Maybe we will make this a series of updates over the next few days to help with ease of reading while you have a few minutes instead of devoting a long stretch of time. I know I can get a little discouraged when a blog post goes on and on and on. 🙄
Last time I shared with you, I was celebrating my 2nd Cancerversary, now its already more than 2.5 years since my diagnosis.There are some developments that have taken place, but most didn’t happen until this last month or so. Before that, I was enjoying a tremendous summer with a few unforgettable trips, family time, sun and relaxing.
Somehow I even manged to get 16 weekends in a row off. That never happens in nursing and honestly I don’t know how it worked out like that, but hey, I enjoyed every minute of it.
Summer started off for us with lots of family visits from Germany. Over the span of 3-4 months my moms house almost always was filled with family time, laughter and some reminiscing of the ‘good old days’. We used to say: “How do you know you are getting old? When you talk more about the past than the future” I am not even that old yet but still I am already doing it. It was a lot of fun to think back though to the shenanigans we were up to as kids sometimes.
One visit that now looking back, probably had a little bit of PTSD attached to it, was the visit of my Grandpa. The last time he was here visiting with his wife, Jeff and I had planned to go have breakfast with them at my moms the day they were leaving before saying our goodbyes, spending a little bit of time shopping and then going to see my family doctor for the results of my biopsy. Well those plans didn’t happen. If you go back to my post here, you can read the full story. Getting the phone call from the surgeons office that morning definitely not only changed the plans for that day, but also changed our lives forever.
Why do I attach a little PTSD to my Grandpa’s visit you ask? Well I never did get to say goodbye to him that last visit and he got on the plane not really knowing what was going on but knowing it wasn’t going to be good news. With that being said, I liked how my therapist put it, I just wanted ‘to have a do-over with Grandpa’. This time around, I had to work the day he left, but I did get to say a proper goodbye the night before.
We had fun with cousins, aunts, uncles and even got to celebrate the 1st birthday of a great-nephew. Crazy that we have already gotten to an age where its not all that weird to have a great-nephew. I have 20 great-nephews and nieces already and another on the way. How did we get here?
No Summer would be complete without a vacation, right? I even got to go on 2 trips! Thanks honey! I love you.
My first trip was to the Epicure conference in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Last years conference was in Victoria and I shared about it here. It was a great event, but this here I was struggling a lot. I had a very hard time getting excited for anything in the summer. Don’t get me wrong, the trip was amazing, I had a lot of fun, and I enjoyed it, but it was very difficult to get to that place, where last year I couldn’t wait to go. It wasn’t only the Epicure conference, but the fact that I was leaving at all.
After the conference, my friend Amy joined Annika and myself in Ontario and we had a little girls road trip down to Chicago.
We had a great time there as well, even though it was the same weekend which saw 60 people shot and 12 dead. Luckily we didn’t find out about that until half of the trip was already over. The last day we decided we were going to stay in the hotel, since it was raining outside, Amy had some work to finish, and overall it just felt a LOT safer (One of the victims of the shootings had been attacked just a couple blocks away).
So off we went for a quick stroll, on the hunt for some DVD’s we could rent. Maybe we should have checked the weather before starting our journey. After walking for a little while and having made multiple stops such as Target and Starbucks, we found a RedBox. However, by the time we actually reached the box, it wasn’t only raining/drizzling, no it was a full on monsoon type of pouring.
Since was already pretty drenched, I took it upon myself to read of the available movies to Annika and Amy who had found shelter near by. I ended up with a new towel in the process and a story to tell and pictures to share.
My second trip was to Indianapolis to the True Woman ’18 conference put on by Revive our Hearts. I have been talking about that ministry for over a year already, since I found them to be exact. Luckily between my two trips I was able to work through some stuff, so this adventure I was stoked for.
Amy and myself went to the conference together. The speakers were amazing. I was challenged in more ways than I can count. We were so richly blessed, got to know a few new people. It taught me much about myself, about others, about God. It is definitely an experiences I won’t forget and would love to repeat, God willing.
On the way back home, we both had ‘layover’ in Toronto. When I say ‘layover’ it was 4 days for Amy and 7 days for me.
Jeff flew out to Ontario a day before I got there. We spend a few days in Toronto itself before heading to Hamilton for a wedding, which was beautiful by the way. Thanks again Lynne and Nate for inviting us.
As you can see our summer was very busy, jam packed with fun and family and friends.
So packed, that I almost forgot about my next pet scan coming up, which happened at the end of October. More on that on my next blog.
PS: this little munchkin is growing up too fast!! But so so loved!!
