The doctor called back and said that he wanted to look at another option called chemoembolism. This is basically a chemotherapy treatment that is injected directly into the tumors in order to kill them. It's supposed to make you much less sick than regular chemotherapy and it's much less invasive than surgery to removed the tumors. He's still going to present my case to the other specialists at the conference because he said there my be some issued since I have a heart murmer and high blood pressure that developed during my pregnancy and haven't gone away. I'm still on hold for everything till the doc gets back from the conference in mid august sometime. I'm in a much better place emotion wise than I was during the last post. I'm okay with having to do something about this.

Valerie came over today and watched Riley while we went to the movies. We went and saw Hellboy 2 and The Dark Knight. I won't ruin anything for anyone. I really enjoyed Hellboy 2. I like it much better than the first one and truly enjoyed the entire movie which was full of action and comedy. I'll definately see that one again.

The Dark Knight was a little different. I did enjoy the movie but it is not a movie for children. It did portray the darknest of the batman comics to the extreme. It showed the joker as the psychotic killer that he is but left out his outward charm. I won't be seeing this one again.

I'm currently reading The Chase Brother series by Lauren Dane. I love this series. This writer has found a perfect way to mix in a more erotic slant to wonderful love stories with strong women and men that find ways to be together in partnerships. I just finished the 4th book in the series, Making Chase. This was a wonderful story that showed strong families are made from many different things. It melded the heroine's strong family that emerged from an alcoholic father with the hero's family that was strong due to the love and support of a strong parental unit. Both the man and the woman were strong members of their family and I love the way she brouht the couple together. This is considered erotic romance. I have found that there are several writers of erotic romance that I absolutely love. Yes, they have the very steamy sex scenes with words that I wouldn't want my child saying. They also have some incredibly talented writers that can weave an engaging tale that keeps you turning the page just to see what's going to happen next.

I love to read. I've taken some flack about some of the books that I read but it's not going to stop me from reading them. I read all books. I have favorite authors in scifi, fantasy, romance, comedy, suspense, horror, childrens, young adult and even non-fiction. There are incredible authors and stories in all genres of books. I read because I enjoy diving into a book that can transport me to a world created by my imagination using the authors guidance. I love movies too but for me movies are a way of mindless entertainment. I don't have to image what a movie is trying to show me cause it's there on the screen. I find myself reading more and more and escaping into my own mind instead of staring at the TV. I do go through periods where I don't pick up a book for months though and during that time I find myself watching TV while I stitch. I can't remember the last time that I sat down to just watch TV. I'm always doing something else like stitching or playing a video game or computer game or playing with baby while the TV is on. When I sit down to read though, I read. Reading is my time. Justin takes care of the baby and I let my mind go to a world of the author's making while my body relaxes from the day.

The doctor's office just called. I'm not happy about the news.

Most of you will remember my horrible liver surgery back in '04 when they took out a quarter of my liver due to tumors that were caused by the estrogen in my birth control pills. When we decided to have a child, I consulted my liver specialist. He warned me that being pregnant elevates the estrogen in my system and the tumors had a possibilty of coming back even in the short time of the pregnancy. We decided to risk it anyway and were blessed with Riley.

During the last month of the pregnancy, 4 small tumors appeared. When I had an MRI in January after Riley was born and it showed the tumors had grown to about quarter size. The doctor advised me at that time to do nothing. He wanted to do another MRI in July after my body had a chance to recover and see if they tumors had gotten any smaller. He told me that there was a good chance that my liver would regenerate itself and make the tumors smaller.

I had my follow up MRI on 7/12. They called me today to let me know that the tumors had not gotten smaller. They haven't gotten larger. The doctor is recommending I have a laser surgery procedure to burn the tumors off my liver. My options at this point are either this surgery that he's recommending or waiting another 6 months to see if my body can heal the tumors. He tells me that the chance of them healing are now very small since there hadn't been any progress in the last 6 months. He also tells me that there is a chance that they will get larger if I wait and if they get larger then I'll be forced to go through the same surgery I went through in '04.

My gut says "keep the surgery away!!!". My brain says "it's smarter to have the laser surgery than to risk the worse surgery".

The doctor told me to think about it and he'll contact me in 3-4 weeks when he gets back from a conference. The conference he's going to is going to discuss some new procdures for these kind of tumors so the doc wants to take my films with him and discuss my case with the guys presenting the new options and see if there is a better way to approach this.

I hope there is a better way.

Okay. I'm going to try to follow Valerie's example and start blogging again.

I'll have to find stuff to talk about though.

Riley Is 6 months old now. He had his 6 month check up yesterday. He's 27" tall and weights 19lbs 2oz. The doc says he's in the 75th percentile. He's able to sit up assisted, transfer objects from hand do hand, follow people with his eyes, recognize mommy in a photo, babble at will and imitate ooh sounds. Doc says he's doing great and found it hysterical when Riley kept winking at the female nurses (taught to him by daddy of course).

I'm currenty reading From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris. I just recently started reading this series. It was recommended to me after one of my friends saw that I read Laurell Hamilton's Anita Blake series. The name of the series is the Southern Vampire series. It's about Sookie Stackhouse. Sookie is a waitress at a bar that can read people's thoughts. This book is about her life and her desire to find a special someone while she wades through the muddy waters of the supernatural community of vampires, shapeshifters and fairies. This series surprised me with the quick depth of the characters. Not many writers can make you care about new characters as quickly as Ms Harris has managed to do in this series for me. I find myself waiting for the new release to see what happened to the minor characters as much as to see what Sookie gets into next. For those of you that like a little bit of romance with your fantasy this series rocks.

I've been stitching on Santa's Dragon from Dragon Dreams but I haven't gotten very far on it. I find that reading is just more appealing right now. It's just so much easier to pick up a book and read a few pages in between taking care of Riley than it is to get out all of the stitching supplies.

June Already

Sorry that I haven't posted in so long. There just isn't anything fun going on in life right now. I work, I take care of the kid and I sleep. Nothing too fun in all of that. I am gonna try to sneak out this weekend and see the new Narnia movie.
I finally finished Fish City but scatterbrain that I am, I forgot to take a picture before dropping it off at the framers. DUH! It is now at Nease's needlework being framed and I have no idea when I'm getting it back since I told her not to panic over it.

Nothing going on in this neck of the woods.

sleeping through the night

The little guy may actually be getting ready to sleep through the night finally. He didn't wake me up until 5:30 this morning which is 2 hours later than usual but only 1 hour before I normally have to get up so by the time I finished feeding him, it was time for me to get up and get ready for work so I got up early this morning.

Work is finally starting to settle down a bit. Would you expect an insurance company to give you $3000 to replace a tv that only costs $1200? I realize that the person paid $3000 for the tv 4 years ago but plasma tv's just don't cost that much anymore.

Valerie dear... you have forgotten about your blog!

webshots update

I've updated my webshots album here:

by vjinton

I've added a album for the beading that I've been doing which include those banners out of the Far Away Places Book that Medieval Needle gave me. They turned out great and I'm really happy with them. You can clearly see that The Dragon was the first one that I tried since I didn't get the top of it as tight as I should have but I fixed that problem since then.

I put a few new pictures of Riley in there too.

tornados suck

I used to think that tornados were an awesome act of mother nature and were pretty cool. After dealing with claims for the last 3 days, I'm sick of the word tornado. They are still awesome acts of mother nature but I'm not sure that I consider them all that cool anymore. I've lived through several tornados being from Texas. I've even been in a car that was picked up by a tornado when I was a child but this is the first time that I've been on the insurance side of one and I don't like it at all.

Growing

I had to put away all the 0-3 months cloths last weekend. He's not wearing 3-6 month cloths a little early. I guess I should have figured that he would grow faster than average since I did too. I wonder if he'll hit 5 feet tall by 5th grade like I did.

Do you any of you guys know where I can go to look up if adding a little bit of baby cereal to his nighttime bottle would hurt him at this point? the 6oz bottles aren't completely satisfying him. I remember my mom starting to feed my brother whole milk and mashed potatoes when he was 3 months old but I don't want to do that to my little one. I rather transition from formula to cereal to baby food and then to people food.

I need to update my weshots album again. I've finished My own happy ending from dragon dreams, the anniversary sampler from victoria sampler, and happy new year from calico crossroads. I've also finished some beaded banners that came out of a book that Medieval Needle gave me. I've managed to finish 3 of them and I need to start a folder for beading I guess since I've been doing more of it.

Say What?

At Riley's last check up, the doctor commented to DH that Riley should be eating every 4-5hrs now instead of every 3-4hrs. He then proceeded to tell Justin that we should make him wait for his bottle at least 4 hours so that he would start to go longer between feedings. This baffled me. I've never heard of making a baby wait for food. I refuse to listen to my child cry cause he's hungry or dirty. I can easily fix both of these issues and I'm going to. I started giving the little guy 5oz per bottle instead of 4oz and sure enough he now goes 4 hours between feedings. Problem solved.

The doc was happy with his grown and the strength in his arms and legs though so he looks great even if he wants to eat all the time.

Have you guys ever heard of making a baby wait for food? This is nuts right?