Happy 2013!

Boy are we glad to say goodbye to 2012.  

I know I haven't written in a while and there are a million reasons for that but most of all it's because we've been busy and emotional and the holidays were a lot more stressful than we anticipated.  In fact, Christmas sort of snuck up on us because we were so wrapped up in the emotions of the whole thing so we inadvertently ordered some things that weren't going to arrive until after Christmas.  Instead of worrying about it we decided we would celebrate Christmas in two shifts. On New Years Eve we celebrated Christmas part 2; Or as it's now known, "Second Christmas!"  It actually relieved some of the stress and we figured since everything is different this year anyway we may as well roll with that.

Even though some of our traditions went to the wayside we couldn't let the season pass without taking our annual holiday picture. Usually we go up in the snow but we decided in front of the tree would be sufficient.  I think it worked out just fine! 

Christmas Day we got up early (by teen standards, glad he's not little and up super early!) and did our first Christmas, made breakfast together and spent some time in the living room together which NEVER happens.  Later my Dad and Stepmom came over and brought dinner which was really nice.  It was decided on kind of last minute but we're thankful they came over, it was a difficult day for everyone and we're glad we could be together. David was up in the chair pretty much all day which wore him out but he didn't complain at all because that's where he wanted to be.  When he got back into bed he slept the rest of the night!  

As for how David is doing... they've changed some of his meds around. He's now on a full time antibiotic to keep infection away, he's on steroids as a kind of last ditch attempt at relieving some of the pain in his shoulder and they've increased his morphine dose at night to relieve a little more pain to let him sleep better.  We think all of those things are working to some degree.  He can actually lift his left arm a bit now because the shoulder isn't in as much pain. I counted the other day and it averages out to about 26 pills a day.  TWENTY-SIX!  Yum.

We've also noticed some additional numbness in his right hand and arm all the way up to his shoulder.  Why couldn't it be the other shoulder that went numb, the one that hurts from what we suspect is a rotator cuff problem. The right side is the bad side so it's not too big of a deal except that it's more pins and needles kind of feeling and it irritates him rather than hurting.  He mentions it in passing maybe once a day and I notice him touching it a lot with his other hand, putting pressure on the sensitive areas.  To most people that's nothing but coming from David that's a full on complaint!

We spent Christmas money from his parents on a new Blu-ray player and universal remote for the bedroom so he can watch movies a little easier than the old set-up where we had a computer hooked to the tv and the remote was cumbersome.  The blu-ray does netflix and amazon prime and oodles of other online streaming resources and he found a remote app he can use on his phone!  The man is set up with gadgets, just the way he likes it. Thanks Mom and Dad!

We expect to see David's parents here sometime this week for a visit, they're in Utah right now for the wedding of one of their Chinese grand daughters. Short story, they taught western culture/english at  universities in china for a couple of years and some of their students moved here to go to school. These students are lovingly referred to as their Chinese grand children. David is still getting treatment although luckily this will be a week off so nicely timed! 

Thanks for hanging in there for a whole year with us.  Yesterday was the anniversary (that word doesn't seem right) of David's diagnosis.  We've been wanting to post a "year in review" type of post with some thoughts from David (his family will laugh and expect about 2 sentences out of him) but as you can imagine we've been on a jumbled roller coaster of emotions lately and are having problems forming coherent thoughts. There's a lot of remembering what it was like a year ago, and that was no somewhere either of us really wants to go but it's kind of unavoidable.  At least right now things are mostly status quo with minor setbacks and we're used to this new normal.  It doesn't make it easy but it does make it predictable which can be somewhat comforting. 

Happy New Year!