St. Patrick's Day 2010

Happy St. Patrick's Day, although technically the day is over. This is the one day of the year that being irish makes you awesome. You may notice that I'm blogging at 3 in the morning. This is not because I just got back from crazy St. Patrick's Day festivities. Although, that might make things more interesting. No, I'm still awake because I don't sleep much at night. I started having nightmares awhile back, probably because of the stress, so I just stopped sleeping at night. I find it much easier to sleep when the sun is out because it's soothing. As a result, my days have become my nights and my nights have become my days. Since I'm awake, I might as well blog. I know I'll be regretting this when I have to wake up at 7 to go to the hospital. Tomorrow, technically today, is transfusion day. The lovely day that I get to experience every two weeks where I go to the hospital and spend 6-8 hours getting blood and other goodies. This time It's two bags of red blood cells and a bag of phosphorus. Oh, the joy.

As I'm sure you've noticed, I've given my blog a makeover! I was getting tired of the old template so I went template hunting. Unfortunately most of the good ones aren't free so this is the best I could find for free. I'm thinking about splurging and paying to have a template custom made for my site but for now, this one will work. I've also added a box that allows you to become a fan via facebook. When I started this blog, I intentionally didn't make a facebook page for it because I didn't want to seem conceited. I'm not a big deal. However, after seeing how many people have been signing up for email subscriptions, I decided it was worth a shot. To my surprise, it took less than 48 hours to get over 100 fans. I think now I have almost 200 fans. I am so happy to see so many supporters of my blog! I also added a playlist so that you can listen to some music while reading my blog. I love music and my itunes is open pretty much 24/7, even when I sleep sometimes. I thought it would be a nice touch to add some songs that are either inspirational, emotional or just plain fun.

This past week has been crazy hectic. On sunday, my mom and I went to brunch to celebrate the good news. It was delicious, chocolate fountain included. Then I headed out to the legends to meet up with some friends for a hotel sleepover. It was the first time I've done anything social since January 2nd. I had more fun than I expected and was so glad that I went. The only negative was that I've spent this week being incredibly sore from being that active. The rest of my week was spent doing homework. My goal is to finish all of my schoolwork before I leave so that I can be essentially graduated. I won't be able to attend graduation but I think it's important that I finish everything and graduate on time. Since I'm missing graduation, I'm hoping to at least have a graduation party before I leave.

As a general update, my mom has spoken to my doctor in Minneapolis and we've settled on some dates. April 1/2 my mom and I will visit Minneapolis and I'll get a ferriscan done. The ferriscan is the test that measures the levels of iron in my liver. We expect these levels to be greatly decreased from my last test (based on the blood tests that measure the iron in my blood). Then we'll come home and celebrate Easter. The next weekend, April 8-12, I'm taking a trip to NYC by myself for the first time. I'll be staying with Laura, an amazing woman/friend who is originally from KC and now lives in NYC and works for MTV. She's incredible and has done so much for me over the past two years. This trip will be the last time that I will be able to visit my favorite city for at least a year. The next weekend, April 17/18, my mom and I will pack our things and move up to Minneapolis. Again. This time, i'm not coming home without some healthy bone marrow. The week of the 19th will be spent doing the pre-transplant tests and check-ups, bone marrow biopsy included :(. Then sometime shortly after that we will start chemo. I don't know the official start date for chemo yet, we won't know that until we get closer to the time.

Well, I think that's it for now. I'm trying to blog more frequently so you'll be hearing from me within the week. Maybe.

Reason of the Day: I'm not a big sports fan, but the Kansas Jayhawks won the Big 12! and K-State Wildcats got second. Much more Kansas success is expected throughout March Madness. Also, NDT (National Debate Tournament aka BIGGEST DEAL EVER) is coming up and three teams from KU qualified! This is extremely rare and impressive. Two of these teams consist of Patrick and Sean Kennedy, both of whom are East graduates and assistant coaches for our debate squad. A KU team won the NDT last year and one of these three teams could win it all this year. KANSAS PRIDE is always a reason to smile (RTS).