Some Catching Up

I’ve got a bunch of pictures that I want to put up here and some stories that got lost in the chaos of the two weeks in the hospital and the subsequent 1 terrible, horrible, no good week that I’ve not blogged about yet….so I’m gonna try to catch up and update all at the same time.  It’ll either be brilliant or a massive verbal diarrhea – We’ll see, eh?

I’ve received a few requests for our address and also a few offers to help out and while I am so appreciative and thankful – this “humbly accepting help” and not just “telling everyone that it’s no big deal, that you can do it all on your own“……this is difficult.  I’ve wanted to respond and say “No, really, we’re fine.  We’re totally okay. We can do this.  Don’t worry about it.”  and yet, it’s not true and so I swallow and breathe and say “thank you” and it feels so wrong and yet I need the help so badly.  What a totally messed up head trip this all is.  Man!

I also wanted to mention that I in no way am belittling the help that we have already received in meals, and gifts and finances and help, especially from our family who have helped so much.  Everyone who has given has made a huge impact and again…..I’m so SO Thankful.  We would not have made it this far without each and everyone of you.

……………

Lets go back…..Way back, before all the crazy hospital time.  Actually, “the crazy” started way before this, but we’re just gonna go back to the day before my birthday….well, there’s a little lead up and then we’re going back to the 17th of September.

Geli had been feeling “off” for quite a while.  It’s been about 9-10 weeks now, but she had been on oral antibiotics for about 6 weeks to try to combat some infection as a result of some ingrown toe nails.  In the 2 weeks before she was hospitalized, she’d been doing REALLY poorly.  The nausea and vomiting was horrid and she was on 3 different anti-nausea meds and was still barfing.  She was not eating a lot and right before they admitted her, she had pretty much stopped eating because she’d been feeling sick and or barfing for over a month and she couldn’t handle the thought of barfing anymore.  Not eating made her feel worse but the fear of barfing was overwhelming her.

We were trying with everything in our power to convince her to eat, mouthful, by mouthful and at the same time we were attempting to get her to drink the recommended 2Litres of water per day.  Trying to gauge how much she was drinking versus how much she was throwing up versus how much she might have actually kept down while at the same time “encouraging” her to drink while she was fighting putting anything inside of her……this whole scenario felt like it was slowly destroying both her and me.

All this time, Xani kept asking about having a birthday party to celebrate her birthday.  Her actual birthday is June 30th.  That would be 14 days from Geli’s diagnosis, and 4 days from Judah’s birth. It was such an insane time.  We had vaguely tried to throw something together over the summer but it didn’t happen and we didn’t try so hard to “force” it to happen.  I just promised her that we’d do something after school started in the fall and we thought that the weekend of the 17, 18, 19 would be good for Geli and her counts too. HA!

As the date got closer, Xani kept asking about it and I very wearily attempted to put something together that would be fun and easy and be a special celebration of her 12th Birthday with her friends.

Angelica helped me to decorate the house on that day and the distraction of it all was good for her. 

We made her a hat just for fun and also made flag streamers.  I dunno if we even got any pictures of the streamers?

Here they are….you can see them peeking out of the top of the photo…..as I’m going through these pictures and talking about this event…it honestly feels like it was a life time ago and not just under a month ago.  My life has some bizarre “time warp thingy” going on right now.  Everything feels like it happened a million life times ago or like it was yesterday and there is no rhyme or reason to it.

She had asked about having an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen.  We typically don’t eat dairy and ice cream would definitely fall under the “dairy” category.  In the past, I’ve baked a cake that Siah (with a dairy and egg allergy) could eat or else I’ve just bought a cake and gotten something else similar that Siah could eat.  The reason why the rest of us don’t eat dairy, is not because we are allergic to it, but the rest of us have sensitivities to it and it makes us feel pretty nasty if we eat it.

In the middle of all that was happening, I had the bright or maybe insane idea to “make” an ice cream cake.

I ran out to the store and bought  3 tubs of soy ice cream – one chocolate, one vanilla, and one strawberry – and a bag of Oreo cookies.

I opened up all the cookies and scraped out the insides and then crushed the cookies into crumble.  I let the ice cream soften and then started building.

I put a layer of Chocolate into a pan, and then smooshed the cookie crumble in on top of it.  I, then, added a layer of the strawberry and then the layer of vanilla.  I sprinkled the remainder of the cookie crumble on top  of the cake and added gum balls all around the edges.

It looked fabulous and tasted great and the best part……..it didn’t make anyone feel icky because of the dairy.

Xandra had a great party and enjoyed herself.  I was just so glad when it was all over.  How sad is that?