Dec. 17, 2009

I guess time flies even when times are rough. The last time I wrote was Ally’s birthday on Sept. 29, but it seems that that day was also the day my last grandparent, Grandpa Baragar, passed away. This was a difficult time for me because it brought back feelings of when my dad passed away, nearly 5 years ago now. As with any death, we all made it through, but sadness will linger forever.

The day that we buried my grandpa, Oct. 6, my mom was going through emergency eye surgery. About 5 weeks prior to her surgery she was leaving work and her right eye (her “good” eye) seemed blurry and like she was looking through a spider web. Luckily for her she has an eye surgeon whom she sees on a pretty regular basis because in 2003 her left eye had a detached retina (which in all actuality, she is legally blind in her left eye anyway). So she called her surgeon after cautiously driving home and she was told to come in right away. That night she had emergency laser eye surgery because a blood vessel had broke and her lens had cracked. The eye was supposed to heal on its own after the laser surgery, but never did which lead to the eye surgery on Oct. 6. The surgery went well, but was more intense than expected and after about 6 weeks the surgeon was not happy with the result and the eye was starting to tear away from the retina, so on Nov. 24, two days before Thanksgiving mom was back in surgery for the same procedure and had to start all over again. So we’re playing another waiting game, but we’re all hopeful this one worked and as soon as the gas bubble that was inserted into her eye dissolves, we hope, she will have 20/20 vision in that eye (which has never happened to her).

All the while these events were going on, my sister-in-law Amy was going through quite a bit of abdominal pain and had been to see many different doctors and had many different tests done. As it turns out she needed her gall bladder removed because it wasn’t functioning at all. The week of Thanksgiving she was in the ER twice and finally on the second visit she refused to leave until they removed it. Two days after Thanksgiving she was gall bladder-less and she is recovering perfectly.

That bring us to me and my issue. Last week I went to the doctor for a problem or what we thought might be a problem, but it turns out it’s probably not…so I won’t even get into that. But while I was at the doctor I had him check out a spot on my forehead that I had been watching for the past few months, just out of curiosity. He looked at it under a microscope and thought he better remove it. He called it a "non-healing skin lesion". When I was leaving, I set up an appointment to go back on Tuesday of this week to have it removed. As it turns out it is basal cell carcinoma, which is a form of skin cancer. The good news is I won’t die from it and it’s the best cancer to have if you ever have cancer. So my next step is to see a dermatologist to have more of the lesion removed and hopefully be done with the whole “cancer” word forever.

So as you can see there has been many unpleasant things happening since the last time I posted, but the good news is Christmas is next week and the new year is upon us and I hope 2010 will bring many happy memories for our family and yours!