Max has a fever.

Poor Maxie has been tired and fussy.  He's been running temps up to 101 and making a sinus-y sniffle sound.

Here he is again, with some weirdo.

We had dinner at Granny and Gramps' house.  Here's gripey Gabe, fussing at Granny for not having any ice cream ...

But he was quite happy to eat vanilla yogurt instead.  (Gabe is having a hard time maintaining the diet he likes since both of his parents are vegan now.)

Granny and Gramps have a new kitten named Stinky.  It was a stray that wandered into their yard.

Gabe wanted to name him Rath, after the new Ultimate Ben 10 character that looks a lot like Tony the Tiger.

"They'rrrrrrre grrrrreat!"

Here's Dan, wrapping up a muffin to take home.  He's lost 44 lbs.!

Max, watching the kitty and the birds with Gramps ...

I said it yesterday, but it didn't work, so I'll try again ... Hopefully Max will be better TOMORROW!

Tornado-phobia.

Gabe rarely chooses to grace us with his presence this summer.  Given the choice, he prefers to spend most of his time at the Barndominium with Grandma and Buddy, especially when Joe is there.

So if there's no Wii playing going on, Gabe is out the door.

His other big deal this summer is worrying about tornadoes.  He obsesses over the clouds in the sky  ("Are those tornado-warning clouds?") and starts to panic when the wind blows.  I'm not sure how he acquired such a firmly-implanted fear.

Since he's seemed interested, I've been reading him books about tornadoes and hurricanes, watching weather forecasts with him, and talking about storm preparedness.

But maybe learning about tornadoes was a mistake.  Maybe I shouldn't talk about them at all.  I'm really not sure how to dispel his fear, since it is 99% irrational, and everything I say just seems to compound it.  I'm not getting any Great Mom awards for this one.

Oh, and guess what.  Max is sick.  He's spiked a 102 fever a couple of times in the last 24 hours.

He's been fussy all day but was feeling better just now when we were out searching the sky for tornadoes.  Hopefully he'll be well tomorrow!

A ride in the MRI machine.

At 6:30 this morning we found a little courtyard at MD Anderson to play in as the sun was coming up.  (Although my check-in time wasn't till 8:30, we left at 5:30 to miss the traffic!)  Max is getting used to the trip and sleeping the whole way.

Since kids aren't allowed on the 4th floor at all, Dad and Max had lots of time alone together.  And as always, Max was an "official" visitor.

This was my first ever MRI, and I felt a little nervous about how I was going to be still for that long!  They asked if I was claustrophobic and wanted a sedative.  I didn't want a sedative, but in the end it depended on what their apparatus looked like, and how closely the experience would resemble being slid into a drawer in the morgue!  

For a breast MRI you have to lie on your stomach.  So I just lay there, shut my eyes, and kept them shut for the entire procedure, and I didn't feel anxious.  I put in the earplugs and listened to the noises ... a snapping sound and a burping sound followed by a series of tones, then a noise like a washing machine with a built in alarm clock.  The time passed quickly, and I hovered in a semi-sleep state until the tech wheeled me out.

So anyway, no news about results yet.  I guess I'll get a call from the doc next week.  Max took a long nap when we got home after his big day out!

In other news, the Blue Menace made another appearance today, and this time he looked even more menacing!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

When Max gets hot, little beads of sweat appear on his nose.

Here are the babies playing together tonight.  

I'll post about my MRI results when I get them!  I'm supposed to see Dr. Arun again on Thursday.  Goodnight!

Max's fat lip.

Last night after my run, Dan brought me this little guy, screaming and with the front of his shirt covered in blood!  Max had fallen and busted his lip.

Now that Max is mobile there's no stopping him.  He's running and climbing!  (Ironically, though, I think he was only walking when he fell and hurt himself.)

I'm always afraid he's going to get hurt playing too rough with Gabe, who means well but sometimes is not as gentle as he ought to be.  He wants so badly to be able to pick Max up ...

The danger, of course, being that he will drop him ...

But for the most part, Max loves playing with Gabe and is surprisingly tolerant.  He doesn't even seem upset about the fat lip.

I thought I should mention here that Dan and Gabe got a Wii yesterday.  Our house is the place to be!

Dan has a story to tell about how he lost some important papers and had to close his bank account and start a new one today.  I will let him tell it.

I'm headed back in to MD Anderson for a breast MRI tomorrow ... hoping for good results.  The radiologist had warned me that, because of the breastfeeding, there may be false positives.  Well, dish me up another serving of fear and alarm.  I'd prefer a false positive to a true positive, though.  If you pray, please mention me!

"No, I'm Mama!" Max talks.

Max and I have been having arguments about who Mama is.  I tell him, "I'm Mama."  And then he repeats, "I'm Mama."  To which I reply, "No, I'm Mama."  And he says, "I'm Mama."  And the argument continues!  (He thinks he's Dada too.)

His other favorite words are "ball" (of course), "tractor," "flower," and "bubble."

Max busted his lip this evening, apparently, while I was finishing my exercise.  He's not a happy camper right now.  But this morning he enjoyed watching Grandma getting beat up with a balloon.

The Blue Menace.

About every other day this summer (or as often as these clothes come out of the dryer), Gabe puts on his Lego Batman shirt and blue athletic shorts and calls himself "The Blue Menace."

Guess I have been so caught up in my own appointments that I've neglected to get him a haircut for some time.  Dan frequently tells him, "Your hair looks weird.  Put on a hat," before we go places.  So today we decided it was time to stop making fun of Gabe and his goofy hair and actually do something about it!

Much better!  Today Gabe and I were giggling at some "Ben Diez" videos on youtube.  Ben 10 in Spanish!

Here's the two-car garage Dad is building.  I'm not sure he meant for it to be so tall ...

I love miso soup.  I finally found some miso to make it myself, and this is the note I found as soon as I opened up the lid.  Well, whaddya know.  Bingo.

The kids played on a slip-and-slide for awhile tonight, so I guess the Blue Menace's costume is now in the dirty clothes.  

But I'm sure we'll see the Blue Menace again soon.  Probably on Thursday.

Negative cytology, and the "New Normal."

Dad drove me in to MD Anderson today for my mammogram (first ever) and ultrasound today.  Happily, Max slept for most of the trip in and out.  

Here he is dumping one of their puzzles all over the floor.  At the cancer center Max has to be signed in as an "official visitor," and we have to verify that he hasn't been running fever or anything.  I had a mammogram today (which I found not uncomfortable in the least, despite rumors), and an ultrasound of both breasts.  The ultrasound wasn't painful, of course -- till they decided to stick needles in!  They pulled some fluid out of a galactocele and a lymph node in my right breast and armpit.  Within 15 minutes I had the cytology report, which stated that there was unequivocally (apparently) no cancer in either spot.  What a relief!  I'm still having an MRI on Friday, though, to make sure there are no other "spots."

So, so far so good.  A lot has happened since I last posted regularly.  Times have been tough.  We lost a family member, and life can never be the same. 

I've been processing all of my new knowledge and trying to decide what to do.  At first I got in the mode of thinking, "I'm dying, I'm dying."  But after awhile you start to realize that you're going to keep living until you're dead.  Life won't ever be the same, but you can make your peace with the New Normal.  

I know now that I won't be going out of this world with all the same parts I came in with.  The question isn't "if," but "when" to have the surgeries.  This sucks, but cancer sucks harder.  Now if I say, "I'm probably going to get cancer," it's not because I'm being pessimistic/fatalistic.  The odds are actually stacked against me!  So I will wait as long as I need to and think I can, and then I will do what I have to to become a "previvor," someone who survives cancer by preventing it from starting.

Also since I quit writing, Max has become quite the walker (and talker!).  It (the walking) actually happened on the day I found out I was a carrier of the gene.  A few hours later, he just stood up and started walking.  The next day, he was walking across the room, and now he is walking everywhere!

So, barring any more bad news I might have to process, I will try my best to rejoin the living.