Christmas Time 2010

December was a busy month for us. Besides Davis having surgery, I turned 29 (I should mention that in November Josh turned 30)!! Josh took me to the Dillard House up near the GA/NC line for a night. We woke up had breakfast at their fabulous family style restaurant and then we even went horseback riding. It was Josh's first time on a horse. We had a great time but it was COLD. The temperatures were in the single digits and we definitely had to dress in tons of layers to not freeze. It was a lot of fun and Josh did a good job of making me feel special on my birthday.

We also spent a lot of time with family this month which was wonderful. My brother, Chris, who lives in Los Angles flew into GA for a day before he drove back to LA. We got to go and have dinner with him and Lily and Davis got to spend some time with their Uncle Chris! My parents also went with us to something called Journey to Bethlehem. It is a recreated walk through of Mary and Joseph's trip to Bethlehem mixed with a live nativity. It was very well done and we will definitely do it again next year!

Lily also had her Christmas performance at her preschool. It was so cute. The performance consisted of telling the Christmas story by way of songs. The kids did great, I enjoyed seeing Lily on stage. After the performance we went back to her preschool class and enjoyed a little class party.

Christmas Eve was spent at our church, The Vine. On Christmas Eve the Vine doesn't have childcare for kids under 2, so Lily got to come to service with us for the first time. She did great until the very end when we did the candlelight part. She desperately wanted to hold the candle which wasn't going to happen, her response to that was to throw an all out tantrum during the singing of Silent Night. Nice!

Christmas morning we went over to Josh's parents house. We opened our gifts at home and then went over and spent time with Jay, Katy, Liam, Grammy and Grampy. We had a good time and the kids got lots of great toys and clothes! It's always so fun to hang out with family and let Lily and Liam and Davis play together.

My parents were supposed to come over for Christmas dinner but my dad was having some trouble with his neck and wasn't feeling good at all so we postponed our Christmas until the next day. We ended up going downtown to their condo to celebrate so that Dad didn't have to venture to far out since he still was feeling pretty bad. We did enjoy going over there and hanging out.

We kept up our tradition of giving Lily and Davis 3 gifts total. This helps to remind us of what Christmas really is about and celebrating Jesus' birth by remembering he is the best gift. Jesus received 3 gifts upon his birth from the 3 wise men.

Lily's Christmas presents from us:

Aquatic frogs (real living ones in an aquarium)

Princess Stamp Set

New Baby Doll

Davis' Christmas presents from us:

Tricycle

Wooden Hammer Tower

play cellphone

The Results

By Friday I was patiently waiting for the phone call that never came but since she said Monday was a possibility I wasn't too concerned when I didn't hear anything. By Monday mid-day I decided that I should call and check to see if the results were available. The nurse paged the Dr. to call me with the results. Not 30 minutes later my cell phone rings. Unfortunately, my cell phone barely gets service in the house so I immediately grabbed the phone and ran outside into FRIGID weather. The temperature was maybe 20 degrees outside and I ran out the door without a jacket. The Dr. started to apologize for not calling me earlier as she had gotten the pathology report on Friday. At this point she starts to explain to me that the biopsy had been sent to Paris to the leading pathologist for "this type" cell makeup. At this moment I felt confused and unsure what she was really saying. So I tried to ask for a little clarification. It went basically like this: "So, what your saying is, the pathologist here in GA found something that didn't look good (she called it an atypical spit or something like that) and to confirm what he was seeing he sent the biopsy to a guy in Paris to confirm what he saw?" The Dr. responded: "Yes." I then asked, "How long until I know the results?" She said in about a week. I then asked her, "if this was your child would you be worried about these results?" This is where the conversation takes a turn because up until this point I thought she was just saying that the results came back a little funky but she had never said cancer or anything like that. She responded by saying, "yes, I would be pretty scared because there is just not treatment for this kind of thing." WHAT?! Did she just basically say that Davis has some sort of incurable disease. I was floored and FREEZING and numb all at the same time. For that brief moment in my life, my mind started racing to, what are we going to do, how is this going to change our lives, I should start praying right now. I numbly responded, "well, I am glad that we took out the lump then. Some friends had questioned why they took out Davis' lump because their son/daughter had an enlarged lymph node and their doctor never mentioned removing it." By this point she gasped and said, "Oh gosh, I am so sorry, I just told you about the wrong patient. Your son's name is very similar to another patient that I did surgery on last week. I am so sorry. Please disregard everything I just told you." WOW. To go from believing for about 10 minutes that Davis had some kind of incurable cancer to being told that it was a mistake was an incredible emotional roller coaster. My main emotion when the conversation ended was RELIEF. I was not mad or upset or angry, just relieved. The second emotion that course through me was saddness for the parents that will be getting that horrible news that had just been relayed to me. The Dr. closed the conversation with, I will call you in the morning when I am in the hospital and can access the results. She did call me the next morning and the results were much different than the ones I heard yesterday. Davis' lymph node came back "reactive lymphoid hyperplasia," which is a benign condition and since the lymph node is removed there is no further treatment necessary. I can't help but be thankful and grateful that Davis is FINE and the road to recovery is complete for him and in the same breath I ache for the family that is getting devastating news that will likely alter the course of their lives forever. I don't know their names or anything about them except that the results of their childs biopsy are severe and will be confirmed by the Paris pathologist by Friday. Please say prayers for that family and thank you once again for all the prayers that you have said for our family and Davis during the past month.

The Surgery

Davis went in for surgery on Dec 7th. I wasn't nervous until that actual day. I had no idea how it would all go. His surgery was scheduled for 11:30am. I was kinda nervous about that because poor Davis was not going to be able to eat anything until after his surgery and that is a long time for a little one to go without food. Luckily I was able to do clear liquids until 8am so he got a breakfast of juice and jello! Josh took the day off and helped me with Lily so I could take Davis to the hospital. We drove down and got there on time, but when I was trying to find a parking space I couldn't. The entire parking deck was FULL, but for some reason they let you drive in anyway not knowing that there were zero spaces. So I wasted probably 15 minutes trying to find a spot. I was not able to find one so I drove out to the pay booth and asked the attendant where I could park if the deck was full. She told me that there was valet parking across the street. I informed her that I did not come prepared with cash to pay a valet. I was getting anxious and upset because I was late now in getting Davis to his surgery. I started to cry, the parking attendant felt sorry for me I guess because she had me park in some reserved spaces there. We made it upstairs to the surgery center and got checked in. Davis ended up getting into surgery around noon. They had given him some sedative to help him get drowsy and calm before they took him back, but the opposite happened. He got wound up, but he was wobbly. When they came to take him away he was wide away but altered. They let me walk him back to the OR doors where at that point I had to hand him off. It was awful. He freaked out and you could hear him even after the doors closed. I became a basket case but thankfully got to wait in our private room instead of having to go back into the large waiting room.

They came back about 45 minutes later and let me know that he was out of surgery and that it all went well. I still didn't see him for another 3o minutes or so. They finally brought him in and you could tell he wasn't feeling great. He sat in my lap for another 30+ mins before they finally discharged him. We won't find out the results until Friday or Monday. After we left the hospital and I was able to give him some food, Davis was back to his old self!

Here are some pictures from the adventure we had!