Long Hard Haul

Well I am still here believe it or not, but since my last post back in October it has been a wild wild time!!!!

On October 8th, I was in hospital for a day surgery to get my gall bladder out. All this happened due to being pregnant!! Who knew (til after the birth) that this is a common thing amongst preggy women!! geeez!!!!! A few days later, I got a call from my surgeon saying I had to see him ASAP in his office! We knew for a while there was another issue besides the gall bladder and a few diagnosis possibilities were given to me. When I got that call though I had chills up and down my spine.

The following day I was the first patient in his private clinic. I had a dangerously blocked common bile duct that had to be operated on immediately!!!! The following week, October 19th I underwent a 5 hour Wipple procedure! For those of you who have never heard of this or don't have a medical background, basically I had to get 10% of my stomach removed as well as a part of my pancreas, small intestines, some lymph nodes removed and have the common bile duct cleaned and reconnected to everything again! I was in the ICU for a day or so and then on the Special Care Unit for another couple days before being placed in my own private room. I was in hospital for almost 2 weeks.

This type of procedure is very very rare for someone my age (38 years old). Because of my age and good health practices I had that in my favour in my recovery. This procedure is normally done on people 50-60 years old and more men than women! I am still recovering almost 2 months later and I still am unable to lift my little boy. I am not able to lift anything over 5lbs... (he is now about 21 lbs) although I am slowly working on that and getting my strength back. I am giving myself a couple times each day to lift and play with my sweet William. I am still very tired and find myself in alot of pain and discomfort in the early evenings. But things could be worse... I could be dead....

Thats right, you read that as I said. This issue I had could have become pancreatic cancer if it wasn't detected in time. It is one of the types of cancer that is hard to detect until it is too late. Basically if it wasn't for my little boy being born and giving me gall bladder problems this other issue would never have been detected until one day I went to my doctor complaining of really bad back pain (which I would have thought was pain from a car accident I had back in 2006 and wouldn't have bothered going to the doctor). The doctor would have run a series of tests and scans only to come back to say there was so much cancer on the pancreas there was nothing that could be done and within a year it would be game over!!!!!!!!!!! I went weak in the knees!!!!

THANKFULLY....... I am VERY happy to report I am cancer free. My surgeon called it an "auto immune". Something that (very rarely) just naturally occurs in the body. But if it was undetected there was still the possibility it could have developed into the big "C".

My sweet William has literally saved my life! He is my hero, my world and my universe.


A mother's love is so very strong with their children. The bond is something you can't describe unless you have a child. The bond I have with my boy is just all that much stronger knowing that I will now be in his life for a much longer time than I feared was going to happen. I had to wait over 3 weeks to find out if I had cancer or not! It was the longest and scariest 3 weeks of my life!

Since coming home from the hospital Oct 30th, I have been doing alot of sleeping and resting and getting my strength back. Sewing and quilting has been like a distant memory. I still have many things to complete that I had planned to do for this season. Now that I'm getting a bit more energy, I am also finding I'm having a hard time kicking my butt off the couch and getting downstairs to my sewing room. I have never been one to watch tv or lie around for hours on the couch, and these past couple months thats all I've been doing!!!

(William's first Halloween!! He LOOOOVES frogs! So this just had to be done! I got home in time to see him in his costume and have his first halloween!)

But last night, I finally kicked my butt off the couch and sat to my embroidery machine to stitch out some Christmas towel set samples. I did a bit of binding on a quilt project tonight and finished it!!!! Yippeeee!! I'll post photos later.. shhhh its a Christmas gift!! I'm hoping to try and get to my sewing room each night through to the end of the weekend if I feel up to it and work on some stuff. I have things to get done and time is getting shorter and shorter!!!

I really hope once Christmas is over and we are back to some form of normal, I'll be able to post more frequently to my blog here as I have missed it alot and have missed reading and posting to some of your blogs out there! I'm anxious to get back to posting on projects I'm working on and getting back into swaps and other fun quilting blog stuff I was involved in before William was born and I was so sick. As tradition goes, come the first day of January, I'll take out my project book again and make my list of projects I want to do and complete. AS well as start my Christmas list of the gifts I need to make for next year. With a baby in the house, time is all the more precious and so I'll be starting my gift making by January/February!!! Yep you read right!!! That's how I did it this year, and had it not been for the crazy Fall season I had I would have been all finished AGES ago!!!!

So, before I go, I thought I would also give you a little update on bambino!!! Can you believe he is 7 months already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He started crawling about 2 weeks ago and we can't keep up with him!! And now the new thing is (which he started last Wednesday, Dec.1st), learning how to stand up with the help of his crib railings, chair, or anything else he can figure to use to haul himself up!!!!! I said to him the other night as Mum was giving him his bath and getting him ready for bed (as I still can't do those things myself yet) "William!!!! Slow down!! what is the rush!!! You are growing up wayyyy to fast"!!!! He just looked up at me with that two bottom tooth smile and laughed! Changing him is a REAL challenge!! He is such the wiggle worm and all he wants to do is roll over and start crawling away! Forget putting him on the change table now!!! I'm figuring I might just have to put him on the floor next and sit on him!!! LOL Joking of course!!!!

We took him to meet Santa today and get his photo taken!!! The photographers were amazed how easy it was to take his photo!! He was laughing and smiling the whole time he was in Santa's arms!!!! Poor Santa is probably easing a sore knee right now too as William kept bouncing up and down with excitement! From time to time he would just look up at Santa and take him all in!



He is a very sociable baby! He puts the charm and flirt on everywhere we go! Myself, Trevor and William went out to breakfast the other morning. William had all the dining customers in our seating area in the palm of his hand! He is such a great baby and we are so blessed! The only time he cries is when he is hungry or tired! He LOOOOVES food!!! I make all my own baby food and he sees the spoon coming and he goes APE!!!! We were given a small jar of commercial Squash baby food. He HATED IT! Trevor tried feeding him a couple spoonfuls and William squished up his face and cried! Don't blame him. Trevor and I both tried a taste of it and nearly gagged!!! Guess William prefers Mama's home cookin!!!!!

Well I best be going and get some sleep. I have been suffering from a touch of insomnia the past few weeks. I think my body clock is all fooled up where I was sleeping so much all day and night each day. I hadn't planned to write as much as I did tonight, but I guess I had alot of catching up to do and it just started to flow out of me. hmmm perhaps I should put my insomnia to good work and use it to do some sewing, knitting or blogging!!!!!

Til next time!!

Quiltingly Yours
Andrea