Potpourri

Here's a mixed bag of what has been going on with us lately. We have been so busy since school let out it's been crazy!

My health: Is good! I feel great. I was told that adjusting to the synthetic thyroid hormones would be a bit of a rollercoaster ride, but it hasn't been at all. The first couple of weeks, I could tell my body was adjusting to them, but after that I have felt just fine. Just like normal. My voice is back to normal too. The only issue that remains is that my scar is still attached to the muscles in my neck. Most of the time I don't notice it, but sometimes it is uncomfortable. After the summer is over, I'll go back in and they will basically cut out my scar. So they will remove the part that is attached to the muscle. That should solve the problem. That is just an office procedure with local anesthetic. Doesn't sound like much fun, but at least it's not another hospital stay.

RAGBRAI: is less than a month away! Wow! We are really getting ready. This last weekend we went camping with the kids to "practice" camping. We will be sleeping in a tent that whole week. The kids had slept in a tent before, but only in our backyard. So last weekend we went camping for two nights and the kids did great! That had a wonderful time and slept well in the tent. We were able to make lists of everything we would need for RAGBRAI. Actually living out of the car helped us realize what we'd forgotten that we would need and how to organize it better.

Camping: The camping trip I mentioned above was at Pine Lake. That's near Eldora, IA for those of you who know Iowa. It's about an hour from our house. We chose it simply because they had available spots to reserve when we finally got around to reserving a spot late last week. We had to choose a campsite on the internet and just guessed at which one we would like, and we loved it! It was a nice wooded site. It had been raining on Friday before we went, so it was a little muddy, but not too bad. All Billy wanted to do was ride his tricycle around practically the whole time. He got very muddy! We all brought our bikes, but we only rode them in a small loop around the campground with the kids. Julia is working on getting more confident on her two wheeler with training wheels. She is very tentative and nervous about going fast. But she got better this weekend. We also went on a short hike to the lake, and went swimming at a nearby beach. But I think the highlight for everyone was making smores over the campfire each night. That was definitely Julia's favorite part. The first night I stupidly grabbed Julia's stick the she was roasting a hot dog on by the metal part that was still hot, and got a pretty bad but small burn on my hand. Luckily it was not bad enough to ruin the trip.


Our crazy schedule: Since Julia's preschool ended, we have been very busy. We've been to the zoo, dentist appointments, a once a week preschool class for the kids, a once a week sports class for all four of us to help the kids learn how to better throw, catch, hit, and kick a ball, a big indoor playground for Julia's birthday, Julia's castle themed birthday party, a 5k run (my first in 6 years - ouch!), and I took a quick trip to California (more on that below), then the camping trip, and this week my brother and his family come to visit, next week we head to Wisconsin for Dan's family reunion, then we have a couple of weeks to prepare for RAGBRAI and we're off. Whew! I'm looking forward to the two weeks in August when we don't have anything planned (at the moment)

My business: Okay, this is a super long post, but if you've read this far, there's only one more piece of news that many of you may already know about. I started a small home based business this month. So along with all the other things we've been doing, I'm trying to get this going too. I am a home sales consultant for the MicrodermaMitt. It is an all natural exfoliating mitt that leaves your skin feeling and looking smoother, softer, and younger. I never thought I'd do anything like this, but I love this product and everyone else seems to love it once they try it too. If you want more info about it, send me an email and I'll give you more details. This product is what ironically took me back to Redlands, the town I grew up in, for some more training. Strangely, a good friend of mine from college moved to Redlands a couple years ago and lives on the same street I grew up on. She is the one who discovered the MicrodermaMitt and got me involved. So I went to visit her to learn more about the mitt and how to sell it. It was a quick but fun trip and I got to see some old friends from school and some family as well.

RAGBRAI

It has been brought to my attention that I never explained what RAGBRAI is! I forget that there are people reading this that are not familiar with Iowa! :-) So....

From their website....
RAGBRAI®, The Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa®, is an annual seven-day bicycle ride across the state. Heading into its 37th year, RAGBRAI is the longest, largest and oldest touring bicycle ride in the world.

During the last full week of July, a group of people ride their bikes across Iowa from border to border. Iowa is bordered by two rivers, the Missouri on the west, and the Mississipi on the east. So the idea is to dip your back tire in the Missouri river and then your front tire in the Mississippi. Each year they pick a different route across the state. It is not a race, just a bike ride. They limit the number of registered riders to 10,000. But add to that support crews and non-registered riders, and you have an enormous group of people pedaling across the state. People come from all over the world to participate. The ride averages 472 total miles with each day being anywhere from 40-80 miles.

Last year it came through Ames and we hosted some campers in our back yard and one rider in the house. Dan rode the day the ride came into Ames. We were so impressed with the whole production, and how much fun everyone was having that we decided to do it this year. Dan wants to ride every day, but I'll be happy if I get 2 days of riding in. I will be content to drive the van, take care of the kids and set up camp.

Does that explain it enough Stasi? :-)

Update

Well, I haven't had much to report for awhile. That's a good thing! Things are going very well on the whole. I am feeling great, my energy level is normal, I'm working out every week, so things are good.

First the fun news! Our team has officially been selected in the RAGBRAI lottery! Which is great! So the planning can start in earnest now. We have a team of 8 people plus our two kids (who will ride in the car) and we are really looking forward to it! I am pretty excited about the concert that is happening the first night - the Barenaked Ladies. I love their music and love the fact that they put out a children's CD. We will camp in the main campground that night, and then we will apply for housing in the other towns. But that just means that we will have someone's yard to camp in instead of the main campground. (easier access to bathrooms). It is bound to be a fantastic time! Can't wait! 73 days to go.

Today I saw the surgeon again about my voice and my scar. My voice is not 100% but it is a little better than it was a month ago, so he is satisfied with that. As long as it is making progress, he is sure it will come back in full force. But it may take 4-6 months. As for my scar, it is still attached to the muscle underneath. So, the first step is to inject it with a steroid to see if that will loosen the tissue up enough so that it will let go of the muscle. He did that today - two injections into the scar tissue (ouch!). We'll know if a couple of weeks if that will work. If not, I will have to have the other procedure which basically will be to cut out my scar. But I can do that at anytime, there's no rush. In fact, he recommended I wait until after the summer so I don't have to worry about a fresh scar while doing summer activities (like swimming, sweating, etc) Hopefully that won't be necessary though. So this is all a little annoying really, but not a huge deal. And if this is all I have to deal with after having cancer, I'll take it. I see the endocrinologist next week. He will check my hormone levels, and I'll have an ultrasound to get a baseline so they can tell in the future if I have anymore growths on the thyroid tissue that still is present.

That's it for now! Hope everyone is doing well! I wish I could tell who is reading this blog, or at least how many people are reading it. I'll see if I can figure out how to put a counter on it.