On the Road with Annie and Pat

Hi My Friends!

I'm sooo glad to finally get online! I've tried twice before this to add a blog and was terribly frustrated when both times they somehow got erased before I was able to post them!! It was while things were happening and I really wanted to connect with you all again! I'm really sorry. Please forgive me.

I'm forever grateful for you. I'll love you forever. Thank you My Friends! Even if I don't know you personally, you have been my dear friend. Thank you. And you peoples who I do know, THANK YOU!! I could not have done it myself. My family was (still is) amazing, Pat was (still is) incredible, Dr Sugarbaker did an awesome job, but you were there for me too. I know there was lots of love in different forms, and God heard our prayers and answered them. Thank you.

I wanted to share about my plane rides and all the yummy things we got to eat at the airports, arriving in beautiful Washington DC, the fancy shmancy "W hotel" we got to stay at, cacthing the metro(train) practically every day, all the fun stuff prepping for surgery, being conscious after surgery but not being able to speak or move the way I wanted to, waiting a loooong time to be moved out of SICU into a room, having the best room in the place, meeting wonderful people who work in the hospital, the crazy request that I stand up and walk around 3 days after surgery with an IV, 2 weighty chest tube cassettes to carry and 6 drains, 3 dangling from each side of my ribs and a catheter, long dark nights thinking about you (my friends) and being grateful, asking Pat to go out of the room to eat because it made me fee yucky, getting blood drawn at least once a day, hospital food that was really hospital food (blah!), calling my amazingly amazing cousins on our cell phones who came to visit and realizing they're the people I'm looking at who are in the waiting area right outside my room, getting to stay at their home and meeting the whole amazing family including Granma and Peapop(sp?), how weird it was to not be able to eat, how sad to have 1-2 tablespoons of food equal a meal for me, .. so much missing and so much more to share!

I think about you, my friends, every day. I am grateful. Thank you.

Now it's a different life. Life goes on. It always does. Good or bad, life goes on. My first day at work was October 31. It was fun getting to share candy on my first day back at work. I gradually got back into it and am ready to work a full week's schedule.

Now it's New Years Day. I wish The Best for all of you. It's challenging times, but we can do it. Do Your Best. Make the best out of every situation. Do good things. It'll all work out.

It's almost 2 in the morning. I'm at Diane's house. My family is waiting. It's been an AWESOME year. Here's to 2012, that snuck up on us and was here before we were ready! We're gonna top 2011! HAPPY NEW YEAR my friends !!! I LOVE YOU !!!

(sorry if this is goofy. i didn't proof read it or anything cuz i need to get it out to you)