Survivor is the only reality TV show I watch. I have been watching it since it went on the air in 1998. Some seasons have been better than others, some of the survivors have been more fun to watch than others, but through the years for some reason I keep watching.
This morning we are celebrating real survivors, including my favorite survivor pictured here.
Feel free to support our team and raise money for Breast Cancer Research and Support here
Having already lost the title of ‘family blogger’ to Elisa last year she just keeps raising the bar. Elisa actually tweets now too, but today she really outdid herself.
Today was a very special day for me and my family. Today was the day that my port was removed! Those who have dealt with a port themselves, or had a family member with a port, will understand the significance of having it removed. Many patients will leave their port in for a year, or more, after chemo. It is a decision that each individual makes along with their oncologist.
Read the whole tale on Elisa’s blog
Over the last year I have grown accustomed to sitting in waiting rooms…waiting. Today was an easy wait, it was a short procedure, and a positive milestone. So there I was watching something on my ipad, tweeting away on my phone when a nurse walks up to me and says “Mr. Cohen, your wife is fine, we are almost done she just sent me out to get her phone so she can take a picture”.
Just like that I lost my title as the person in the family who takes their phone everywhere and takes pictures of everything, since I don’t think I can top sending a nurse out of the OR to get my phone for me.
Back in 1991 (yes 1991) my grandmother enrolled in a class titled “How to speak computers with your grandchildren”, unfortunately she was the only person to sign up for the class so it was cancelled.  She passed away in 2004, she was obviously just a little ahead of her time, she would have loved this.
Hard to believe it was four years ago today that Abe and Jack were born.
Here they are last night enjoying their Carvel* Birthday Cake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CHIxzcRAEU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qczMnAsJKwY
* no birthday is complete with out a Carvel Ice Cream cake
Today is my wife Elisa’s birthday, of course I wanted to make the day special for her, so I accompanied her to her scheduled chemo infusion today. It’s not that I am a cheap date or anything but hey they validate parking at the hospital. Ok ok we are really going out for dinner later on today after we get the chemo out of the way.
Elisa described the whole chemo routine on her blog a few weeks ago. Today when asked for her date of birth all the nurses wished her a happy birthday. With today’s infusion we are now 75% of the way with chemo, 4 more to go.
A friend of ours who works in the hospital was nice enough to leave a balloon and cupcakes in the infusion room.
The cancer center at St. Barnabas Medical Center is not exactly where we planned on celebrating Elisa’s birthday this year, but we will make the best of it, and plan a much better celebration for her milestone birthday next year.
Happy Birthday Elisa!
Elisa’s blog can be found here
Twitter followers probably have some idea what has been going on in my life for the last couple of months, if you don’t long story short in early June Elisa (my wife) was diagnosed with breast cancer, and since then it has been a frenzy of doctors, more doctors, and even more doctors.
I am not going to tell the whole story over again here, mostly because over the last couple of months Elisa has proven that she is the real blogger in the family, and tells the story much better than I could.
Yesterday we hit the first of many milestones along this unwanted journey, the fourth round of chemo and the last of the Adriamycin / Cytoxan cocktails. Make no mistake there is still a long road ahead, 12 more rounds of chemo (Taxol), with surgery, and radiation to follow, but on this journey you find and appreciate the milestones where ever you can.
All this has me thinking about time, you all know the expressions “treasure every momentâ€, “don’t wish away a day of your lifeâ€, “Carpe Diemâ€, but right now for me time can’t go fast enough. For me it is difficult to take life one day at a time, if I could at this one point in my life I would fast forward a few months. Of course I can’t do that ( I was absent from superpower school the day they taught manipulation of time) but like everything else time is all about perspective, and I keep coming back to this scene from A Few Good Men:
If that doesn’t work for you there is of course a Seinfeld reference that works here as well
It’s been a week since the beds arrived, and lets just say that bed time has become an interesting experience around here. So far we have had to remove their dresser from their room, put them back in bed about 10 times a night, and be very worried about them opening the windows. Today I decided it was time to put the demolition crew out of business, you never know they might actually be bored enough to go to sleep.
This will take care of the window problem
This will keep them from emptying their closet (or at least emptying it again)
and this will protect the hall closet (right outside their room) and keep them from spreading toilet paper, paper towels, towels, washcloths, and other things all over the house
Place your bets on which device they defeat first!
Well we blew our goal of an Emergency Room free 2011 this weekend, when Saturday night Abe woke up crying, coughing and wheezing badly. So off to the emergency room where it was determined to be Croup cough, which they tried to treat with steroids and a nebulizer. This picture was taken around 9:30 PM.
Unfortunately the first treatment didn’t really clear him up, and once they had to administer a second treatment they decided to admit. While at the time it was hard to argue with that, the second treatment did the trick, and this is what he looked like at 1:00 in the morning.
By this time of course we had been admitted, and finally about 3:00 in the morning we finally got upstairs to a room and got a few hours of sleep.
Sunday afternoon they finally decided they had observed him long enough and we could go home, here he is very happy to be rid of all the tubes and wires and ready to go home.
I wish I had video taped his arrival at home and reunion with his twin brother Jack, they are so rarely apart from each other and they obviously really missed each other.
We are of course lucky to have Grandparents who drop everything an help us out, whenever we write a new chapter in our Adventures in Parenting book.
After a very early night for everyone in the house last night as we were all exhausted he work up just fine this morning and ready for a normal day of causing chaos and mayhem.
Hopefully we won’t be seeing the emergency room again anytime soon.
