As promised, here is mayra2's full size drawing of Teyla!  She didn't have time to make all the corrections she wanted, but gave me permission to go ahead and post it anyway.  So here you go!!!!  I love it!  :) 

DO NOT REPOST OR USE IN ANY FORM WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR. 

Thanks again Mayra for such a beautiful gift!!!  And thank you for letting me share it!!!!  
 


By the way, I don't know how to post full size as LJ automatically resizes when I upload an image.  Camy will be posting the full size on Beya as well.  Thanks Camy and thanks Mayra!  :) 

Now there's a subject line I never thought I'd type, LOL! 

My sister's wedding is only a month away already!   Time goes so fast!  We hosted her personal shower today, and it went well! I won't bore you with tons of pics of my sister opening gift after gift of lingerie, LOL, but I did have to share a few things.

The cookies!  Some are upside down, but if you look close enough, I think you'll get the idea.     I did mention this was a personal shower, right?   I won't even post the pasta my friend brought that was shaped like a certain part of the male anatomy.  She didn't tell any of us and waited to see if anyone would notice!  I'm oblivious as always, but the other girls definitely noticed it pretty quickly.      By the way, these cookies took us forever to make, so if you ever find yourself frosting on little undies on cookies, give yourself plenty of time.  Hehe. 




The food table. (Hawaiian theme in case you couldn't tell)



The cheesy corsage that my poor sister had to wear. We made it out of two of the biggest flowers we could find a pair of thong underwear.



And in case you're wondering what the heck that thing in the middle of the table is, well, that was our attempt for a humorous centerpiece. It sounded more funny when we were envisioning it in our heads, but oh well. They still made us laugh.

Chad is known for his bald head and Kristi used to be known for her crazy hair until she had it cut recently. So I was staring at the pineapples one day and had this crazy idea. My sister came up with what to use for the faces and we had our Veggie people, LOL, or our fruit and veggie versions of the bride and groom. And then we had to put them on the beach in keeping with our Hawaiian theme, so hence the box of sand and the "palm tree" and sea shells! LOL!

Veggie bride and groom and the real bride and groom for comparison.





Okay, so we're not artists by any stretch of the imagination.  LOL!  But we had fun. 

mayra2 has a secret talent that I'm one of the privileged few to know about.  :)  She is an artist!  Last year, she made me a drawing of Teyla and a few days ago she colored it and made it into some icons for me!!!!!  Thank you Mayra soooo much!!!!  I LOVE them!!!!!  In fact, I love them so much, I just have to share them!  LOL! 

Posted with permission.  Aren't they gorgeous?!  She is so talented!  Once she finishes coloring the drawing to her satisfaction, she will let me post the whole thing for everyone to see as well.  :)  Yay!  Her talent should be shared!  :) 











Thanks Mayra!!!!! 

I was just going through my pictures and realized I have an huge amount of Belle yawning.  Apparently, it's her specialty.  :)  Thought they were pretty funny, so am sharing.  :) 



















And to show it's not just Belle, I'll close with one massive Petey-sized yawn.  LOL!



And on that note, it's after 2am, so good-night.  :) 

EEK! I can't believe it's Easter and my yard looks like this today!



At least the dogs don't seem to mind too much!  I think they've forgotten what warmth is and think this is normal now.   LOL! 





Belle's not supposed to be running or playing for at least another month, but she's doing so well, I let her play today anyway.    Sorry for the bad quality, these were snapped quick on my camera phone.

It doesn't feel like it over here, but  Happy Easter!!!!!   

Just got back from my follow up and unfortunately, still don't really know anything! Argh! But it went good overall. She removed the packing, so good riddance to that stuff in my head! A huge relief is that the biopsy came back normal, which is good in that I don't have that one disease they were checking for, but bad in that it tells us nothing. So we still have no idea what's wrong or how to fix it. So now we're back to waiting and seeing. My nose is pretty clear now and not as inflamed from all the medicine I'm on right now, so I have to finish out this current round of medication and then start using a new nasal steroid spray. They think it wasn't working before because it was so clogged, it couldn't get through. I have to wean off the oral steroids and get at least two weeks of the nasal steroid into my system to see if that helps. If it gets bad again, then we'll do the sinus surgery as originally planned, but put me back on the oral steroids beforehand so it's not blocked this time. I go back to the surgeon in three weeks again to see how the steroid nasal spray is helping. And then after that appointment, I have to stop using the steroid nasal spray for one week as it needs to be out of my system before they run some specific allergy tests at another appointment in four weeks.
So new medicine for three weeks, back to surgeon for check-up, wait one week off the medicine, then go back again for more allergy tests. Then we'll see what happens next. She still suspects if we can get my nasal inflammation under control by pinpointing the trigger, then I shouldn't need the sinus surgery anymore, so she wants to keep testing that before jumping back into another surgery since from what she saw, the problem is more in my nose, not the sinuses after all. So we'll see.

I also got a scan, and my neck got dislocated from being moved around in the surgery. She said the muscles aches and spasms are common in younger people put under general anesthesia since we have better muscle tone. I thought that was funny since I'm a big flab, but she said I actually have pretty good muscle tone and the muscle relaxant they give you before the intubation and then the process of being put under general anesthesia and then being intubated can all cause a shock to the muscles and cause the kind of reaction I'm having. It will wear off usually within a week. She thinks the weakness and dizziness and weird throbbing veins in my wrists is all from the prednisone. I have to take that for five more days and then switch over to the nasal steroid, so that should get better soon too hopefully. And then she said they dislocated my neck during intubation, so I'm being referred to the chiropractor tomorrow at 10am to get fixed for that. So that should help with the pain in my neck, shoulders, and wrists. UGH. So I guess it's an ongoing process for now.

The good news is that my biopsy is normal and that for today at least, I can breathe. I'm thankful for that much at least! Thank you all again SO much!!!!

I took these last week.   



HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY! 





 

Hi guys, I'm home from the hospital. I'm so bummed. I went in at 5am yesterday, got admitted, and waited three hours for the surgeon. They walked me into surgery, put me under, and I woke up feeling really nauseous, but overall pretty good! Waited another two hours for the surgeon to come speak with me, only to find out the very disappointing news that she had to back out of the surgery once she got in there. Turns out that my nasal passages were too severely swollen. She tried Afrin and a Cocaine nasal spray ( ) to try to shrink them, but couldn't get up past them to do her work. So she was only able to do a partial surgery.  She did remove some polyps on the right side and I have packing on my right side, but couldn't get to either ethmoid passage to do the planned work on them. Instead, I'm going back on antibiotics and prednisone for two weeks to try to shrink down the passages and then will have to go through this whole process all over again. She also did a biopsy on my nasal tissue to try to find out why it's so swollen. She said she has never had to back out of a surgery like this before. I go back on Thursday for a follow up, to get the biopsy results, and to come up with the next plan of action. I have packing on one side and a big bandage on my nose still as it is bleeding very heavily. She said her even just trying to touch or work with the tissue would cause it to bleed profusely.  I'm not really in any pain or anything, just feeling some discomfort from the packing on the one side and with it bleeding like it is. So I'll find out more info hopefully on Thurs. But I'm so depressed that I went through surgery and wasn't able to get the sinus problem corrected. So the saga will continue I guess.

For those that are curious and are actually still reading, LOL, here's my history.  I've had sinus problems for about four years now, but the first two years looking back were not that bad at all. I'd get maybe 3-4 infections a year and they would be nasty and drug resistant, but would eventually go on a long term antibiotic and would finally kill it and then feel fine for a few months again. The past two years have been pretty awful though and when I was officially diagnosed with chronic sinusitis. I've had a sinus infection for 21 of the past 24 months and even months of antibiotics won't kill it completely. I go off and it comes back within 2-3 weeks. I've been to an allergist, ENT, homeopathic, etc. and have already been through one sinus surgery on different passages.  I use a nasal irrigation machine daily and a humidifier at night and hot steam baths/showers every morning. I've been on flonaise (sp?) and zyrtec the past two years and have tried several other nasal and allergy prescriptions as well. I've been on antibiotic and two oral steroids for the past two months in preparation for the surgey and was feeling better actually as the steroid helped shrink the nasal passges. But my prescriptions ran out 10 days ago and the doctor didn't think I'd need to refill them that close to the surgery date. Well, she was wrong and the infection came back even worse than before, hence the cancellation on the ethmoid passages yesterday as the surgeon couldn't even reach them.  All the C-Scans showed severe infection in the ethmoid passages which is why we elected to finally do surgery on them. But then yesterday happened, so we're back to trying to shrink the passages and attack the infection again with yet more antibiotics and steroids.

That's the quick history. But anyway, when she got an inside look yesterday, she said the sinus passages themselves actually didn't look that bad. Typically swollen nasal passages are a secondary result from the sinus passages, but she think it might be the other way around for me. That swollen nasal passages might be my primary problem, causing congestion and blocking the mucus and bacteria in the sinuses and causing the infections. So now she wants to try focusing again on the nasal passages before going back in for the second surgery on the ethmoid nasal passages. She took a biopsy and we should hopefully have those results by my follow up appt on Thurs. If the results give us a clue of what's causing the severe swelling and how to treat it. She wants me to go back to an Allergist for some specific testing and to try the allergy shots as I haven't tried that yet. (We always thought the problem was more in the sinus passage) and she is testing for a couple rare diseases that could also possibly be the cause. I don't remember their names, but she said they are treatable. So if we find a different route, we'll go that way and see what happens. Best case scenario, we get the swelling down for good and I can avoid a third surgery . But the more likely scenario is that we'll get the passages down and then go back in with yet another surgery as it's still very possible the ethmoid passages are part of the overall problem. So I'm kind of back to the unknown right now and hope to get more answers on Thursday. I'm SICK of being drugged up all the time and being in chronic pain. So I'm really hopeful we'll finally find the cause, whether it be tied to the nose itself or to the sinuses still or both. I just want it fixed so I can finally feel normal again. Two years is a really long time to feel crappy.

I swear I'm losing more and more brain cells everyday too, LOL! But seriously, I do struggle with memory and basic things that have always been very easy for me. I have a photographic memory and never had to study in school. I just read my notes and I'd remember everything exactly. Same at work, we have over 10,000 pages of guidelines and I can tell you not only what it says, but what page it's on, where on the page it is and what the page looks like. I was breezing through college level testing exams in 4th grade, was able to skip two grades in high school, got four BA's in my four years at college, and got promoted as the youngest manager ever at my company all by the time I was 20 years old. But now I struggle to remember basic things and can't recall things nearly as well. I feel like I've been dumbed down and it's so frustrating. All this long term medicine is having terrible affects on me.  Hopefully we'll get at least some direction at Thursdays' appt. 

So anyway, I'm home now and not feeling too bad.  My throat has been really sore since I woke up from my sinus surgery attempt yesterday, which is from the tube they put down my throat after I was put under. It feels even worse today, so I looked in the mirror just now, and I have big red sores on the back of my throat and roof of my mouth. No wonder it hurts! Is that normal does anyone know?? That little floppy dangling thing (sorry can't remember what it's called, LOL!) is all swollen and red too. The sores, for lack of a better word, aren't infected or anything like that, more like red patches and scabs. It looks like they must have scraped it up quite a bit putting it in or taking it out. Anyone else ever had that from being intubated during surgery?   I didn't have that the last time.  My nose is swollen today as well, but it doesn't really hurt at all, and I can't even feel the packing up there. But I can definitely feel the throat! It feels even more exaggerated from having to breathe through my mouth and fighting severe dryness as well. I only got a few hours of sleep because I kept waking up so often coughing from such a dry throat. I guzzled down four bottles of water during the night and still couldn't get rid of that feeling.  Fun times!  

I'm so mean. 

Got a call from the surgery coordinator and finally got the surgery scheduled.  It's sooner than I thought it would be!  But that's a good thing.  It will be next Friday the 14th.  I've scheduled the following week off work, so if I'm feeling up to it, maybe I can finally use the forced rest to get caught up on fanfics, LOL! 

I'm sorry I'm so far behind on everyone's LJ's.  I'm being a terrible online friend right now.  I'm trying to do better.  :( 

My friend's Portia's little Boston Terrier, Lexi, died tonight.  She was only three years old, but had lymphoma.  We thought she was doing so well, but she seized tonight and died on the way to the E-vet.  She was a beautiful little dog!  Is it silly that I'm crying over a dog?!  I just love the tribute video she made for her.  She was almost finished with this video, but changed her original ending tonight with the sad update. 

http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/view_shared?p=3e78fbbb47abf44d99ccc2&skin_id=701&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url

I was driving to work a few days ago and it was a GORGEOUS day, so I stopped by one of our local parks that has waterfalls and got some pictures of the waterfall frozen in the heart of winter.  I thought it looked pretty cool!  :)    Both the falls and the river were frozen solid and people were walking on and behind the falls!  Very COOL!   I want to go back before it thaws  and go behind it too.  :) 







And the stairs I had to brave to get down to the falls!  Yikes!

For scifan1's birthday, I made a little SGA vid!   I didn't have much time, but I was happy to at least get something put together! 

Happy Birthday, Lea!!!!!!!!!  I hope you have a wonderful day!!!!  Thank you so much for everything!!!!! 


The video is called Finding Hope and can be found here.  It's just a simple little one about J/T and how together they are a family, finding hope within each other. 

And Audrey....thank you.  You know what for!  :) 

I met with the surgeon today on my way into work, but still don't really know any details yet.  Argh!  She just looked up my nose and looked at the CT Scan and showed me what she has to do in the surgery.  Pretty much what I already knew though, that she has to cut out the polyps, and cut out tissue to widen some of the passages, but then she also said today she would be breaking and cutting out some of the bones in the passages too to widen them.   EEK!  That sounds gross and not so fun!  But I still don't know when it will be yet.  She said a surgery coordinator will be calling me within a week to schedule it and that they're usually running about a month out.  So maybe end of March or so??  So in the meantime, I'm still stuck on the antibiotic and two different forms of steroid.  :(    It's still just an outpatient procedure though with about 2-4 weeks recovery time, so not too bad as far as surgeries go I suppose.  :) 

Belle is continuing to do well today! Her poor little legs are swollen and bruised today, but they told me this would happen. It looks horribly painful, but she's not letting it stop her! I am in continual amazement at their resilience and pain tolerence. I wish I could be half as brave as this little girl!  So she looks worse and it can't feel good, but she was bright and happy this morning.   (Especially after I gave her the morning's dose of pain killers!)  ;)  Petey has been sniffing her injures non-stop and then sitting quietly next to her, so he totally knows he has to be careful with her and that she can't play right now. I love that boy! 

Ouch!


Awww! 

My puppy, Belle, had major surgery yesterday on both of her back legs.  She has a condition that is common to the breed called Luxating Patella, where basically the knees keep popping out of place.  She was unable to walk so the surgery was her only option.  There are only three vets in the state of MN that  can do this surgery, so I chose Dr. Betty Kramek, the Head of Orthopedics at the U of MN Animal Hospital.  She's hard to get, but I was lucky enough to get an appointment with her.  So I met with her on Monday and she did the surgery on Tuesday.  Belle was already able to come home today and is doing really well!  She shocked the surgeons by WALKING already today.  Normally, it takes six weeks before they can take a step!  And she hasn't cried once.  She is a strong and stoic little puppy!  It will still be a minimum of two months before she can really walk, and then she will need physical therapy for a few months after that.  But the fact that she's already limping around is a very good sign.  And this surgery, although considered major, has a 100% recovery rate, so she will be good as new in six months!

She can't be allowed to walk or jump for the next eight weeks, so I have to crate her or carry her and keep her on leash at all times.  It will be a challenge keeping her still I think, if today is any indication!  :) 

Here are a few pictures of her today. 





And a few more graphic ones of both knees under LJ just in case.  :)



I'm glad it's over with and that she's doing so well!  What a relief!

Tomorrow, I have my own appointment with a Ear Nose and Throat Surgeon to find out what's the next steps for me.  I have Chronic Sinusitis and have been on six rounds of antibiotics since September and am currently on yet another antibiotic plus two forms of steroids until I can have sinus surgery.  I've had it once before, but now I have polyps that need to be removed and the ethmoid passage has to be widened.  The surgery itself is simple, an endoscopy that is done as an outpatient procedure.  The not-so-fun and painful part comes from having your nose packed and then having the packing removed....*shudder*  But mine will be minor compared to Belle's.  At least we'll be laid up together, LOL!

It's been a long week and it's only Wednesday.  Definitely looking forward to the weekend.  :)  

I know I'm a few days early, but as it's the start of another really busy work week, thought I'd share these now when I have a few moments.  :)  Took these a few weeks ago with my new camera.  I LOVE it!!!!  I got a Canon XTi, and it's amazing!  Haven't had much time to play with it yet, but I did set up this little photo shoot and took these in about 15 minutes before work one day.  :) 

Happy Valentines Day everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Tonight we went to the final show of the US Figure Skating Championship! My pictures didn't turn out the greatest, but thought I'd share them anyway.   These are all taken on 300mm, so sorry some are blurry from camera shake. I'm trying to learn about aperture and ISO and stuff like that.   I have a lot to learn, LOL!  It was a lot of fun though!

                    

Just for fun, I'd thought I'd share these two pictures taken from the front of my house. 

This was taken in June.  See the tall birdbath and pretty flowers.



And now the same view taken a few days ago.  The circled blob is the same birdbath, this time buried under three feet of snow. 



What a difference six months can make!  LOL!  I'm dreaming of my flowers again now and longing to see them again.  LOL! 

Well, Belle experienced her very first New Year's "monster."   I had to turn it into another Milestone video for Miss Belle. (There are two prior "Milestones" videos for Belle as well. Learning the stairs and First snowstorm. The third one came tonight unexpectedly. )


Milestones: Monsters! can be found here.   LOL! 


I was so engrossed on making her little video, that it took me a while to realize that I couldn't find her anywhere, and she wouldn't come when I called her.

Then I saw this.    Poor puppy!  



Mean person that I am, I started laughing and grabbed my camera again.





Guess the monster won this one.