Thursday, September 20, 2012

When you find out your mom has brain cancer-your world stops-or at least that is how it felt for me.

I'm sorry that I have been away for so long, but as you can see from my title for this post-you may understand why. On July 9th I found out that my mom had a tumor on her brain. I booked a flight to Chicago and on July 10th, the very next day, she had brain surgery. At 7pm on July 10th I learned that they were not able to get all of the tumor and that it was a Grade 3 tumor on a scale of 1-4 of how severe the tumor in the brain can be. Right now she is undergoing Chemo and Radiation and is doing a little better. The tumor is causing issues with motion for the right side of her body and it also is causing Aphasia which makes it difficult to understand at times what my mom is telling us. The doctor's outlook isn't very good and they had told me to move up my wedding date but I'm not going to. Sometimes we fight harder when we have something to look forward to or hold onto. I'm scared. Once my mom is done with radiation...I don't know what will happen. I pray daily that things will turn around and my beautiful, kind, caring mother will be ok. As for wedding planning-you can probably imagine that it has been the last thing on my mind.

In other news my husband is home and I am so happy and relieved that he is safe. I am sleeping a little better at night and I no longer have the feeling like my stomach is constantly in knots or that I am on edge all the time waiting for phone calls or updates. My duties as FRG Leader for his unit have also greatly diminished now that almost everyone is home-Thank God. I felt for the longest time like I had 2 jobs and not only did I not get paid for the other but I paid out about 500 of my own money. sigh.

I'm sure that you can imagine that money/debt has been the last thing on my mind. My credit credit debt has increased but now I'm more motivated than ever to get it paid down. I'm still sticking with my original plan of paying off my ECSI loan first-I'm using the lowest balance method to gain the instant gratification that I need to keep me inspired to pay down my debt. If I make 350 payments for 4 months I'll have it paid off by January-which is my goal. The original loan amount was for 1800 and I have been given 50 months to pay it off-umm...yeah...no thank you. Let's see if I can make my goal.

Hopefully you will start hearing more from me. I'm going home to Chicago for two weeks soon-I can't wait to see my mom. Hope all is well.

Lauren