I'm alive! I know I haven't written in a month but I just plain didn't feel like it. My life has been kind of all over the place and I just haven't had the urge to write. I'm not even sure where to start with all of it.
Early in December Anthony had ear surgery. Two years prior to that (almost exactly two years to the day) he had ear surgery to put in tubes because he got frequent ear infections. The tube in his right ear never fell out, and actually turned sideways blocking the drainage. We gave it a few months to try to allow it to fall out on its own but it didn't happen. So the dr went in and took it out. Easy peasy. He seems to be doing better and has a follow up appointment with his ENT specialist tomorrow.
Christmas was hectic and wonderful as usual. The kids were spoiled rotten, my husband spoiled me rotten and I got him a few small things then two worthless pieces of paper that I paid $200 for. I got him hockey tickets but thanks to the lockout, the game I got the tickets to got officially cancelled just a few days before Christmas. So basically I owe him a Christmas present still.
Our new years was pretty uneventful. My mom took my kids and we went to a friends house where I drank a little too much and had a headache the next day. Happy New Year!
The least fun thing I have to update on is my own surgery. The day before Halloween I went into my OB/GYN for my annual pap. I was shocked when two weeks later he called me to tell me it came back abnormal. They reassured me on the phone that it was "barely abnormal" and "just above average" and they were sure it was nothing, but they scheduled me to come in three weeks later for a biopsy anyway, "just to be safe." I was confused and scared because just one year prior was when I had Noah and had my post baby exam that showed nothing, so how could something happen so quickly? And honestly, that question still lingers, we still have no idea how it all moved so fast. I went in for my biopsy as scheduled and exactly one week later I got a call from my doctor saying that the biopsy "came back more abnormal than the pap did" and that I had high-grade moderate dysplasia. That means I had pre-cancerous cells growing on my cervix that needed to be surgically removed. If you have low grade, mild dysplasia normally the plan of action is to just watch and let the body correct the issue itself, but mine was high grade, moderate which meant that the cells needed to be removed before they turned into cancer. So we scheduled it then and I had my surgery on Jan 10th. During the surgery they took more cells from deeper inside the cervix to ensure that there weren't more cell and that they weren't further progressed than the biopsy showed. I go in to read the pathology report and get my post-op exam this Thursday.
So 2012 ended and 2013 began with a little bit of health issues but I have full confidence in both my doctor and in Anthony's doctor that everything was taken care of and settled in both our surgeries. I'm ready to put it all behind us and move forward.
Moving forward for me means more school, and working on my photography. God willing and hard work put in I should be done with school in about a year and a half at the most. I realize I'm behind about 90% of my high school graduating class in getting my degree, but I figure better late than never, right? Then I got a gracious offer from a talented friend to build a website for me and my photography and I may take her up on it. (IF the offer still stands, that is. ;) We'll swap, pictures for a website!) I've been taking some pictures for friends and family, trying to build up a portfolio basically. I really need to decide how serious about it I want to be basically. I would love to go full speed ahead and try to launch a whole business but I don't know how realistic that is. First of all, the market for photographers in San Diego is pretty saturated, and I feel like no matter how much effort I put out I'll still be just part of the crowd. Second of all its not like time is on my side, in a sense that.. I don't have any. I would only be able to shoot on weekends and even then I would be sacrificing time with my family (Which is something I don't get a ton of) to do these shoots. So I think the plan right now is just to get the website built, get my portfolio built by offering cheap shoots at work and photographing friends and family and just basically do it on the side. If I seem to catch attention and business comes in, then I'll think about getting more serious about it. If not, then I'll just keep taking pictures of my family and whoever happens to ask.
