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Monday, April 30, 2012

School's out, school's out!

Er, well, almost.  Classes officially ended last Friday, and this is Finals Week.  Profs love finals week.  It's the one week out of the semester when all students miraculously care about learning passing classes and turning in all assignments.  Who cares that the paper was due at mid-term, right?  It's finished now, so we profs should drop everything to grade that paper.  I joke, though.  I seriously love my job.  Graduation is Saturday morning, and that's my favorite part:  seeing those bright smiling faces with their newly minted degrees heading out to face the world head-on.  Some of them become friends, and some of them I will  really miss.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

That explains a lot...

In my last post, many moons ago, I referred to my February blahs.  I could not understand why I was so run down and tired all the time.  My dad was diagnosed with cancer in early February, so I attributed most of the fatigue to stress.  In mid-March, my husband informs me that my "visitor" skipped in February, so we bought a test, and it was a big, fat POSITIVE.  We kept fairly quiet, because I've had two first trimester miscarriages in the last year and a half, but last week I went in for an ultrasound and saw the baby and heard the heartbeat! I'm currently 12 weeks, and  I'll be having a c-section on November 2nd, unless I go into labor on my own before then.
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On March 25, my dad lost his battle with cancer.  He was only 58, and it was not expected.  His first cancer diagnosis was is 1998, and he was given 6 months to live.  In February 2012, he was diagnosed with a different type of cancer, and lasted approximately 6 weeks.  He passed away in the hospital after surgery to remove the cancerous cells.  The doctor said there was no real explanation, but the surgery was just too much for him.  His heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver all shut down, and Dad had made it very clear that he did not want to live on life support.  My mom had made the decision to stop life support at 9 pm (to allow family time to get to the hospital), and his heart stopped around 8:30, with many family members in the room.  It's hard.  I miss him.