This month can now end

Posted by Sammy on Jun 20th, 2010 | one comment

I’ve made it 20 days into June and I’m done with the month. Today just tops it off with it being Father’s Day. I did surprisingly well most of the day. Yesterday we planted a beautiful crape myrtle tree with white flowers in the back yard in memory of Gary for Father’s Day. This morning I took Mikey to see the new Toy Story 3 movie. For those people that didn’t know Gary he was a HUGE Pixar fan. HUGE is an understatement really. He had friends that worked at Pixar and envied them because they were doing something he just dreamed of doing. So it was kind of ironic that of all weekend for this new Pixar movie to come out it had to be this weekend. It’s almost like Gary was showing me a sign or something.

So we went, and we enjoyed the movie. Went home and I had an art project for us. I wanted to do a stepping stone that will be placed in front of our new tree. So Mikey and I worked on that, it’ll take 2 days to completely dry up so I won’t be able to take pics of it just yet, would rather post pictures of the final product

As the day went on it started to hit me. I guess keeping myself busy had kept me from absorbing the fact that today is Father’s Day. It would have been the first one that Gary would have heard Mikey say the words Happy Father’s Day. I’m sad for my son more than myself. For the rest of his life he will not have a father to wish a Happy Father’s Day to. He got robbed from enjoying buying his daddy all of the tacky Father’s Day gifts and doing all of those daddy and me events. So on this Father’s Day I am sad for my son because he doesn’t realize it right now but he had the best father in the world and now he’s gone and there is nothing I can do to fix that.

P.S. Doesn’t help that I had the Disney Channel on and of all nights they picked TONIGHT to air Pixar Short films. Gary always found these to be hilarious. Ironic? Some weird coincidence? Or someone from above slightly interfering here??

A Disney recap

Posted by Sammy on Feb 8th, 2010 | no comments

I’m not going to go into the many details of the quick little trip to Disney that Mikey and I went on this past weekend with my cousin, her daughter, and my youngest brother. Overall it was an OK trip. I’ll admit that I did have 2 “moments” one was when the Move it Shake it whatever you wanna call it thing was coming down Main Street and I saw Goofy on the float and all I could think about was how Gary used to be Goofy at the Magic Kingdom. I didn’t have my sunglasses on so I’m sure some people were wondering why I looked like I was crying, when everyone else was having a grand ole time.

Then the other moment was during the 3pm parade, with Mikey asleep in his stroller. I was by myself for a moment and once again saw Goofy, and had another moment. This time I had my sunglasses on, good thing because there were a lot of people around us.

I’ll admit that of all the parks the Magic Kingdom (as expected) had a memory literally at every single turn. I of course did my best to create new memories with Mikey and we did manage to sneak in some fun. I let him get his face painted and let him pick out what he wanted, he chose the puppy pal face paint which really is Pluto and he was the CUTEST little Pluto in the entire park. He was so happy with his face painted that I couldn’t help but be happy for him.

First trip without Gary :(

Posted by Sammy on Feb 4th, 2010 | 2 comments

A couple of days ago my cousin, who will have a 2 year old officially this Saturday, asked me if I wanted to join her up at Disney this weekend to celebrate her daughter’s 2nd birthday. Even though I was cringing at the idea of going to Disney alone without Gary I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea because we’d be doing Disney sooooooooo differently than how Gary and I did it with Mikey. One of my aunts was able to hook us up with a timeshare that is just outside of Disney so we won’t be on property. We’ll actually have to drive in and park at a Disney lot *gasp*! No going back to the hotel mid-day that’s for sure.

I’m not worried about those details. I’m worried about walking into the Magic Kingdom, where Gary worked years ago. I’m worried about seeing things that I know we’ve talked about. I’m worried about seeing Goofy, because he was not only Gary’s favorite character but Gary also had the chance to dress up as Goofy on several occasions when he worked for Disney. I’m worried about being at the Happiest Place on Earth without my Gary because HE should be there with us.

It’ll definitely be a different experience but I know that Gary would want us to go. Plus poor Mikey insists that he’s going to find Gary at Disney, he’s such a sweetie. I don’t expect it to be an easy trip for myself, but I am hopeful that the distraction of two 2yr old’s having the time of their lives will be just the medicine I need right now.

Some moments are just HARD

Posted by Sammy on Jan 24th, 2010 | 4 comments

This evening was just hard. I don’t know why all of a sudden I broke down. I quietly cried hiding my face so that I didn’t have to hear little Mikey say “Mommy don’t cry”. For some reason our song popped into my head and the tears just came pouring from my eyes. Then the random thoughts of Gary not being there for anymore Disney trips with Mikey. He won’t be there to see Mikey graduate high school or college. He won’t see Mikey get married or see and enjoy his grandkids. We won’t have the moment in the nursing home racing down the hall in our power scooters like we had talked about when we were newlyweds watching two teens racing down the aisles at walmart in the store’s power scooters. We always teased each other about it and I was secretly hoping to grow old with him, but that’ll never happen. Never. Yeah he’s “with” me. But he’s not WITH me. I hate the fact that I can’t sleep in my own house. Things will never be the same.

Everyone else’s lives has returned to normal and mine is still upside down. It’s not getting easier, its getting harder. Just like our wedding officiant, turned reverend for Gary’s services, said at his services, its the weeks coming when I’ll need the support the most. When everyone else has returned to normal, that’s when its going to hit me and he couldn’t have been more spot on.

A fabulous family vacation

Posted by Sammy on Oct 28th, 2009 | no comments

We originally had a Disney trip scheduled for both my birthday weekend and Mikey’s birthday weekend. Got awesome rates so why not go. Well once we learned that Gary’s last chemo treatment would coincide with my birthday weekend we had to cancel that trip. Then during that trip we learned that Gary would need to be back up at the NIH a few days before Mikey’s birthday weekend therefore messing up that trip.

We even had considered having him fly into Orlando instead of Ft. Lauderdale to meet us up at Disney but thankfully we didn’t do that because this last trip, that was just for diagnostics, was REALLY hard on Gary. Before he left he was having these fainting spells and seriously had bruises and cuts all over his body. It was BAD and what made it worse was that he was going on this trip all alone. On that trip he learned that he’s been suffering from sinusitis and they gave him antibiotics and flonase to help.

Now once he was home he wasn’t much better. He had these HORRIBLE headaches that would basically incapacitate him. He got NO relief at all even during his sleep. None of the really good narcotics he had helped. Finally we broke down and went to his local oncologist, Dr. P, to see what’s up. He told him to continue with the antibiotics and flonase (which he wasn’t using religiously). He did order an MRI of his head because he did want to check for inflammation of the lining of his brain due to the depocyt.

So after the doctor’s appointment he miraculously started to feel better. Then last Thursday came when we were supposed to leave for Disney. He was once again incapacitated by those damn headaches. They were so intense that he wasn’t able to move from the same spot on the couch all day long. Finally he was able to get to the car and we decided to go anyways. I was very sure that he would feel better once we left,

And he did. He felt a ton better. He had a few headaches but overall he did FANTASTIC on our mini-vacation. We got him a scooter so that he didn’t have to do the walking and that made all of the difference.

To top it off last Friday as soon as we got back to our room (I tell you I’ll NEVER forget this moment), I took my cell phone out of my bag and put it on the table so I could check my emails before napping. As I had my phone in my hands it rang and it was Megan, the Research Nurse at NIH. I immediately picked up. I knew why she was calling just wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear what she had to say.

I’ll preface this by saying that I didn’t want to hear any results from his restaging before we left because I didn’t want it to ruin our trip. I wanted us to have fun and forget everything that is lymphoma and chemotherapy. Everything! Well what happened next was the most amazing thing probably next to the birth of our son. Megan told me that she didn’t have all of the results back yet but his bone marrow biopsy results came back NEGATIVE for lymphoma. Yup you read that right. N-E-G-A-T-I-V-E!!!!!!!! I got all choked up when she told me and asked her if she was sure and she was.

This has been the best news yet. Yeah it was great the day we found out his spinal fluid was clear but we’ve known something wasn’t quite right with his bone marrow for over 2 years and to know that its NORMAL is beyond fantastic.

So that made our mini-vacation one neither of us will ever forget. We all had a reason to celebrate on that trip.