Happy Thanksgiving!! :o)

💜

^ This was taken of me about this time of the year 3 years ago

HAPPY THANKSGIVING everyone!!! I hope everyone has a wonderful day! 🙂

I am so incredibly thankful for SO much!  I was asked this month “why don’t you participate in posting on Facebook every day what you are thankful for?”  Are you kidding me?  I find that SO foolish!! I would not!  I am so thankful each and every day of my life that is extends way beyond this month. I truly did not believe I would be alive to see this holiday.  When I was diagnosed, it was in Feb, but it would have been Januray or December 2011 from how sick I was back then if I am honest with myself. With that said, when I went in and they said how much time I had left (not much) I figured it was shortened even moreso because I had been sick longer than what I said. I suddenly pictured dieing in the spring and all of my family celebrating these holidays without me. I felt terrible for them. Yes, people die every day but just having someone tell you you are going to die so young, much harder to swallow.

As I am so thankful to be alive, I thank my doctors for this along with so many people who have sent me their prayers.  I believe my will to live along with the medicine, my doctors who have put so much though with their education into my specific treatment, with a mixture of prayer and strength I have been given is what really pushes me day to day.  I am thankful for the love of a man who has been with me from High School. I cannot imagine where I would be without him. Over a decade together with the most challenging year of our life this year. He was just 29 years old when being told your significant other of more than 10 years doesn’t have much time left.  Most couples cannot even imagine especially at our age. He was willing to travel any distance no matter what the costs just to get me the best care in the world.  He never left my side that long month plus in the hospital and slept in a chair every day before being upgraded to a cot in which he stayed hour after hour, day after day, week after week. He didn’t go to work and was even sweet enough to eat all of that hospital food they were trying to shove in my mouth! Aww! 😉   I am thankful for the 4-legged beautiful doggies of mine, my boys, who have traveled with us all over the country and have lived in more states than most people have.  They love their adventurous life and they are my world! I am thankful for family and friends.  I’ve had more people reach out to me that I never would have guessed.  I am thankful for many of you that I don’t know that are following my journey. I am thankful that with this horrid cancer and the pain I have, I don’t have all the other symptoms from the chemo.  I do not have cold sores in my mouth, I don’t have that metallic taste when I eat food, I don’t have any affects that you can see on the outside. My skin looks just fine and have gained every pound I lost back and then some. My hair has grown like crazy and I never lost my brows, lashes or any hair on my legs or arms even with a hard chemo!  When you look good, you feel good, so for this I am thankful! I could go on and on about every little detail I am thankful for but I tell God every day and this blog entry would be books long, so just know I am one thankful girl.  🙂

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and appreciates everything they have!  Let it be a wonderful holiday for all!  💜

My spleen needs blood!! :(

My nephew (well bff son) and I at Detroit PurpleStride in Sept

^Can’t remember if I posted this one or not…but I haven’t taken new pics this week so I pulled one from 2 months ago 🙂  (Take new tomorrow)

I got some clarity today about my spleen and platelets. I spoke to my oncologist who advised the cancer is cutting off blood supply to my spleen and my spleen is taking my platelets and the loss of blood supply is causing my spleen enlargement.  Once again, NO SURGERY allowed!  Surgery to someone like myself who’s cancer has already spread is like putting gasoline on a fire. I really need my fire to burn out with water (we’ll call chemo) then to spread and increase.  I was told NO exercise, do NOT over excurt myself and to be CAREFUL.  No lifting, twisting, bending, running, etc.  She said I need to stop running around and “doing stuff”.  haha… wow. What a blow!  What bride doesn’t exercise before a huge day???? Oh, this one! Awesome.  I haven’t dieted, I haven’t “worked out”.  Grr!! I only quoted working out because some people say walking is working out but I believe it’s sweating in the gym and running 10 miles but to each their own! 🙂 I’ll just be a fatty.

To all my friends going out drinking tonight – be careful! Be safe 🙂   I sorta wanna partayyy but… I also want to be a home body. People don’t realize I’m not home enough, ever.  I go to the hospital, a lot, workkk and everything else.  Plus this pain is back at it. It’s ridic!  Oh, to clear things up.. I had a couple friends question why the other day I wrote I was fabulous following saying how I couldn’t believe I wrote that the next day because I was miserable all night.  So – at the time of my posting I was feeling FINE. Good, great, happy just fine but then a few hours passed and I got super sick so I updated how I felt that night. Got it?  I make no lies on here.  If I’m feeling crazy, you’ll know, miserable night… you get my point. No need to fake feelings in writing. 😉

Sooo…I accomplished more today being at HOME then yesterday out and about with my check list with times. Ha! Funny how that happens. The internet can be such a beautiful thing.  You can shop, basically order whatever you want from clothes to food to a gym membership, hell you can order a gym DVD then work-out from home. Who needs to leave home?  Oh! …us working people. 🙂

Random thought – last week someone I me approached me at the hospital with, “Hey! thats the girl that knows all the lyrics to Colt Ford songs!”  hahaha…. random… I love Colt Ford! I received his CD along with Taylor Swifts new one the day they both came out as a present, spoil me more! 🙂

Tomorrow is THANKSGIVING!!! Reminder for those who hadn’t heard….  I hope everyone has a great night tonight and a wonderful day tomorrow! 🙂  xoxo

Spleen Giveaway!!

                          ^On our way home tonight we made one laststop and I spotted a purple dog toy stocking bag which clearly I had to buy for my boys… they love it!  Look at tank ripping it open 🙂

Who out there is in need of a pretty spleen???? I gotta nice big one for sale!! I’ve got an extra one. I don’t need it. Damn thing is causing me nothin’ but PROBLEMS!!!!! The thing put me in the hospital for a week in August after a burst which NO ONE has experienced pain until you experience a spleen burst and it causes you to literally go BLIND from your body going into shock. It was the worst pain of my life and hard to even explain. It’s pretty unreal.  I basically felt like I was dieing, I went blind and couldn’t breathe.  All of the narcotics given to me by IV in the ER wouldn’t even take the edge off the pain. Ever since that happened over 3 months ago I’ve had complications. My chemo had been withheld week after week for 13 weeks while my nurses in infusion tried to administer it and I’m constantly being told, ‘sorry not this week, your platelets are still too low’. Very frustrating!

I checked my voicemails before heading out at 8am only to hear the results left from my bone marrow biopsy on my voicemail. I wasn’t prepared for that one! Sometimes you recognize the voicemail phone number and are expecting to hear ‘its your second home, call us back’ not to hear big news.

So whoooooo out there goes shopping for 12 hours only to buy a few items and not accomplish a list of things I was ready to do as I left my house a little before 0800?? Me me me!!!! Don’t ask. Basically I set out on a mission today, all proud and ready to go with my list printed out that I had done up last night with a time schedule and all and just ONE of my items on my list was checked off today. This item was supposed to be done later in the day and  I might of been able to make it to Martinsburg to get more things accomplished if I stuck to the plan but no. Got sidetracked in Hagerstown, MD and didn’t even make it to West Virginia. Insane!  It’s after midnight, we got home almost 30 minutes ago and now I have to sit online and finish everything.  Why didn’t I just get ready this am (to make myself feel better about getting things accomplished) and then sit my butt on my bed with my computer and do everything from the wonderful web???  No idea what I was thinking.

Oh gosh it’s funny though… It seems like whenever we are places Tim likes to proudly tell people about my diagnosis. I generally hold him back when I can tell he is about to spill it but today we were at a place and it wasn’t until at least 1 hour+ into being there that he brought it up which caught me off guard and I couldn’t stop him. They were completely shocked and had no idea which is the normal response I get. They advised “Wow! I can’t believe it! You look like a normal, healthy, beautiful young girl!”  Yup…. It sure hasn’t affected my outward appearance.

So if any of your are following my story today you may be thinking “ok… You said you got your results…gunna tell us?!” Haha! 🙂 sure…  I was advised today (sum’d up version):
               Ashley, we held a conference today to go over your case. We had the oncogist team, myself (hemotologist), and pathologist team and your bone marrow looks completely fine. The cancer has not spread to it, it is producing fine. It is your spleen. Since your August doing your spleen has been taking your platelets. Your spleen has become enlarged and even if we gave you continuous platelet transfusions… Your spleen would take them.”

Basically my blood is producing just fine and my counts are all great but since my spleen is taking my platelets it’s obviously causing those numbers to be low and my spleen to be enlarged. I’m now having more and more pain from this daily on my left said between my spleen and my pancreas. Not good.  They are only saying that they will keep an eye on it and possibly another CT scan again sooner than later but otherwise surgery is the only option they say, besides possible radiation.  Who knows.  This is all somewhat fresh news. I mean, I’ve been saying for a while ‘ok… well my platelets became an issue since my spleen rupture in August… I know spleen enlargements can be a cause of low platelets… do you think we may have a connection here?!’  but now they are listening.

Ok, it’s late, I need to get to doing online work.  Night y’all! 🙂

Flop of a day…

I simply feel like today was a flop. I’ve been on a downhill on my roller coaster journey lately and it makes making plans hard.  You make a list, well ok I do, I am big time into lists and plans and basically have a check list every day of my life.  I get so frustrated when I am writing down the same things day after day after day.  I am unable to accomplish these things and nothing goes as planned.  I laughed last night… in a teary eyed miserable sorta way, that I actually wrote “I feel fantastic” on my blog yesterday while I was so sick again last night.  This spiral is going straight down and I am just getting to be more and more sensitive to food by the day.  I ate some food last night, healthy obviously but it still didn’t sit well with my insides.  I was crazy sick all night last night.  Today I was fearful to even eat because I don’t have time for the instant fatigue feeling I feel followed by the sickness.  I didn’t eat until later in the evening once again and was very careful and felt full after just a few bites.  I actually so far handled it ok. Very soft food, mostly juices and more enzymes. Also, yes I did say I went all day without eating again and to many who say ‘that’s a no no, you should be eating small frequent meals’ yes, I used to do that, now I just listen to my body.  I am very aware of what I should do and how to listen to my body and I’m very in tuned, thanks 😉

While I was sick and up all night, nice and wide awake because for some reason my body forgot you should be sleeping at 2..3…4am… I a read story online about someone being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and saying “I’m a dead person” and that was that.  They didn’t bother to change anything or research or try anything new, according to the article.  They lived their life up the best they could after diagnosis and died 4 months later.  I felt sad for this person. Why?  Why think that way and not want to fight?  I don’t know this person and maybe they have their reasons and that was best for them but for me there is no way.  I’ve had people tell me in person to my face “Your days are numbered but I wish you the best” … really?  How do you not know if you are going to die in a vehicle accident tomorrow and I become cancer free and live to 100?  How do you know what my future holds?  As a matter of fact, who are you?!   I still speak to this person.  I don’t think they really realized maybe what they said or how it meant.  Then again, yeah they did. They are much older and certainly know but I always give people the benefit of the doubt.

Anyways, I filled up my narcotic prescriptions today and the pharmacist said “This drug hasn’t been refilled since April so we are going to have to call your doctor”  Hmmm… so basically, I am supposed to be filling up my drugs more often (and selling them on the streets… jk 😉  ) and using them, then weaning myself off and using them only when need be? Huh.. ok…   I called my oncologist and got the nurse who advised “Ash I talked to the stupid people and told them yes it’s a real script and yes she can have her drugs”  haha! Thank you!!  LOVE knowing everyone at my hospital and am so thankful for so many of them!! 🙂

Have a great night y’all

Don’t forget it’s Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month!!

It’s November!! Tell everyone that its Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month!!

Hello world!!!! I tried so so so hard to make the best of today!! I did my best.  I didn’t go into my work as I wanted.  I did clean, do laundry and showered!

One thing was sure known….it’s Opening Day in Michigan!! (hunting season) haha I sure heard about this enough today.  I heard about todays opening day more than I did in April.  Speaking of baseball, ‘Miggy keeps the MVP in the D’!! Woohoo!! 🙂   and we got Torii Hunter yesterday! whoop!

So back to me?  Eh. I’m not exciting today. As I said, I tried so hard to do things I needed to do but this dang chemo was just kicking my butt! I know my body has to get used to this chemo although it’s less harsh than my last one, it’s still harsh and my body has to get used to it.  I kept getting sick and then I’d get hungry. AHH! So icky!  Thats basically my day.  I tried to do the most while sickly and groggy and just am happy I can chill out now, nice and clean from my shower ( I couldn’t shower since my biopsy Monday because the hematologist advised I had to wait until today so this was a big deal) and relax in my bed of clean sheets/bedding and the smell of my yummy candles glowing.  Love!  I have neighbors over now chatting with Tim and their chatter is kinda like calming background noise because I feel so relaxed now.

Ok people! Tomorrow is “Purple for a Purpose” which is basically something that millions are doing nationwide to bring awareness to pancreatic cancer.  I would LOVE for everyone reading this to participate.  How can you participate?  Wear purple!!  Ladies, purple nail polish, necklace, ring, shirt, earrings, bracelet, undies, shoes… anything! 🙂  Fellas… same things! You can sport purple! Boxers, bands, ties, really doesn’t matter. Be creative!  So just ‘wear purple for a purpose’ whether its for me, for someone else you know, for a celeb you love that has been affected or died etc.  I’m sure many of you will do this and thats awesome!! 🙂  I may not even know this, you may wear it privately and not say but hey at least you and Him will know. If you want to wear it proud then take a pic and send it to me!! 🙂  Send it to my email, friends or family – send me a picture text!!!  I personally think everyone should send me pics of you, a group, your dog, I don’t care but wearing purple and send it to me and let me post it on my blog here.  Please!

Well I must call it a night on here. I simply hope everyone really knows the importance of bringing awareness to pancreatic cancer.  This is awareness will bring the much needed research and funding to this terrible cancer in which needs advancement to save lives!  My life may not be saved.  I MAY DIE from this cancer! I need everyone to be honest and know the truth.  Though my truth is I am going to fight like hell, I feel if anyone can fight this beast it’s me.  I have a rarer form of pancreatic cancer that has spread to my lymph nodes, liver, stomach, bowels, abdomen, cervix and my cysts on ovaries.  I just wanted to remind everyone.  This is inoperable and incurable but which research and funding we can find a cure.

Night all! xoxo

Dr. Oz – Call me! :)

Hot guys & baby animals

^ This pic was taken this past weekend in Delaware.  I thought that book was just hilarious…. Hot guys…baby animals?   hahaha!!!  Too funny!  No I didn’t purchase it.  🙂

What a sad day in America.  😦

My body is so sad as well.  Sick sick sick sick sick what a waste of a day from how sickly I feel. I was just miserable sick all night long. Yuk. I had way too much pain as well and the oxys were just not doing a thing. Today was just one of those days where I felt like hell and I’d stand up from my bed and just fall back down.  Ugh!  You ever hear someone say “well not every day can be rosy”  really?!  No kiddin.  I mean geez we know this but one should not be so dang miserable right?   I just hated wasting the day away.  I even somehow fell asleep asleep (I never take a nap) and somehow was out and my phone rang and I had that “What day is it, where am I?!?” feeling.  Scary!

So over the past couple months I’ve had many people say “You should be on Dr. Oz” “We should contact Dr. Oz and you should go on there to promote pancreatic cancer”  etc.  and they’ve wrote him so Dr. Oz…. you there?  Reading this?  Please do a pancreatic cancer segment!! I’d be happy to tell everyone about it and with me it’s EVERYWHERE but you can’t tell it from the outside.  It’s pancreatic awareness month and I think Dr. Oz viewers, all billion of them, should be aware.  That’d be a good audience I could tell! 🙂

Lastly – Anyone out there that has emailed me this past week and wondered why I haven’t gotten back to you…… I will!  Promise!! I’m just too yucky to read them now, I’m just praying this post makes sense.  haha!   Ok, have a great night y’all!

Philly fun is all done

The beautiful Lisa Niemi Swayze and I yesterday

^This is a picture taken Saturday of Mrs. Swayze and I

Awesome day with a DETROIT LIONS WIN!!!

Well the Philadelphia PurpleStride event was frigid but fabulous.  They said it was to date the biggest purplestride event of the year – cool!  It was a nice time and interesting enough ran into someone I had met at the DC event in June. Though I didn’t meet any Stage 4 people actually I didn’t meet anyone currently fighting pancreatic cancer, but this is pretty normal at these events.  With all this coldness I am so ready to head to Miami! 😉

Today is a total renew day!! With losing an hour I woke up early then one should and mapped out what I needed to get done along with a revised (Ashley’s) regimen.  A little more hardcore boot-camp style of kickin’ cancer. I started the day on my treadmill followed by a wheatgrass detox drink.  I can only juice today and take in as little as possible because I am getting my CT/PET scan tomorrow.  This is exactly what I need anyways!  A nice detox.

I am going to be adding some cooked foods to my diet and of coarse keeping it vegan and gluten free. I LOVE cooking nowadays and trying new recipes!! Ready to try to new things 🙂

Tomorrow:  CT/PET  AKA  figure out what the heck is going on inside my body and why my platelets are flat lined and I can’t get chemo.

Us. NOTE – Tim is NOT flipping off the camera he said he was trying to point at me

Maddie and I approaching the finish line

Maddie and I

Below are a couple pictures of my juices.

Orange – I’m not a grapefruit fan so it’s a bit tangy to me but a fabulous immune boosting drink!

3 Carrots
1/2 Grapefruit
1 Orange

Yum 😉

Green Machine – Not the best tasting but so good for ya!

Kale
Celery
Broccoli
Spinach

Green goodness

Well hello Philly!

Later Cali!

Who wants to join me in the fight???

At the pancreatic cancer gala on Saturday some fabulous ladies had actually recognized me and came up to me and started chatting. Then they so kindly invited us to come to their office on Monday so of coarse I was going take em up on that! 🙂  So before we had to fly out we swung by and had the pleasure of meeting more of the pancan crew who work so passionately on the pancreatic cancer cause in so many ways.  Thank you pancan!!!!! 🙂

We had a nice flight back to DC via Denver. We didn’t get home till around 2:30AM but the most beautiful 4-legged boys were as happy as ever to see us!! I cannot wait to attend the beautiful gala next year and anyone out there is welcome to join me! 🙂

Oh! and silly me I didn’t realize the whole Miami-NASCAR event next month was my 9 month “present”…didn’t put it together, can I still blame “chemo brain” even though I’ve been denied for a bit?  I think so 😉   Tim tries to get me something or do something special for me on my “anniversary from diagnosis” every month.  Some may say I get a bit “spoiled” but I’m fighting HARD for my life people… I call it deserved. 🙂

Catch y’all later!

Universal Studios for Halloween Horror Nights

Sooo I am a little bored on the plane

 

Woah guy! Don’t have too much fun!

 

I see whats so exciting now…

 

 

 

Sweetest Day!! :)

My LA view

Sweetest Day was pretty sweet for my yesterday!!  No, not the fact my Michigan State lost… so NOT sweet 😦  BUT I found out I am going to Miami next month for the NASCAR race!!!  Yes I watch cars go round and round 😉  Carl Edwards is my guy!!! Love him!! I’m your typical FORD girl!! 🙂  Then…. I find out there is a pancreatic event there as well!!!!! 🙂  How fabulous!!! One of my closest friends just moved down there and will be joining me.  🙂  It’ll be good.

Today was such a nice relaxing day.  Kinda one of those days where although I am out of state, I still didn’t know what to do.  I’ve had the ‘been there done that’ kinda thinking when trying to start the day because we’ve done it all here so it was nice to just drive along the coast, head to Calabasas and to Universal City, Hollywood and relax on Venice Beach.  Tim loves the sports car, actually having a need for speed.  Though I hate to admit it….we are driving a Chevy….. yeah 😦  Disappointed in myself but… whatever.  She’s a Camero.

be SO good

Heading out to do something Hallow-weeny tonight 🙂