The ball will drop and the clock will strike twelve in a few hours and 2022 will come to an end.
It’s been a year.
January brought us a Razorback🐗 win in the Outback Bowl, a 4th straight AFC Championship win for the Chiefs 🏈and a trip to KC to see ‘Wicked’ at the Music Hall with my friends.
February we took a trip to Dallas for Hailey’s White Coat Ceremony for Physical Therapy school. (She’s almost done, yay!)
This trip involved a party at Las Palmas-the restaurant of one of Logan’s fraternity brothers. If you ever get to Dallas-it’s a must-go! Cadillac fajitas for 2 with bone marrow butter and the Diablo margs are my recommendation!
In March I took a ‘Cousins Trip’ to Estes Park, Colorado with my sister Kim, ‘sister-cousin’ Angie and cousin Tony that involved a ghost tour at my fave hotel, The Stanley, and muumuu wearing trips to the Safeway. I also got a chance to make it down to La Junta to see several of my Aunts and Uncles and eat some incredibly delicious Mexican food. We also said goodbye to my Uncle Tom that passed away unexpectedly.
Ethan had his two eye surgeries in March, removing his lens and replacing them with implants to get rid of his glasses-forever!
And the bald kid turned 18!!!!
April brought the beginning of my shoulder debacle with a surgery and 30 days of IV antibiotics.
Also a belated birthday party for the bald kid, including a visit from his Grandpa and Grammy Teresa to celebrate him.
Easter came and since he was 18 the egg coloring party with sissy just wasn’t his thing anymore apparently.
Hailey was also here in STL with us for her first clinical rotation at an outpatient PT office.
I turned 51 and had a small group of amazing people celebrate me in KC. I also got to do what I love and and lead a mobile sign-painting party for my step-mom and her super fun employees!
May brought our stepsister Marlene and Olav from the Netherlands to STL and we got to meet them for the first time along with Ethan’s cousins, Tom and Nicole.
Brian and I also got to watch our beloved Royals play those red birds…of course we lost. Still true blue fans!
My nephew Taylor graduated from Indiana University, which I missed because of my shoulder issues AND a nasty bout of pan colitis and anemia that landed me in the hospital in June.
Also in June Brian, my sister Katie and I made a short trip to Texas to see my Aunts Mici and Kathy and lay to rest the sweetest woman, Kathy’s mom- MaryLou. It was good to see them, and our other ‘Texas family’ along with my cousins Chris and Christina from Chicago and their 3 kiddos-even with the bittersweet circumstances.
I also made a quick trip to KC for Father’s Day and to watch my ‘niece’ from Colorado play softball. (Who btw is going to play softball at Dartmouth next fall!)
Brian and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary June 29th! (who would have thought we’d last this long???)
July brought our cousins Mike and Sydney to MO. Hailey and Logan joined us from Dallas to help us introduce the NOLA peeps to the best bbq ever at Joe’s-where we met Chiefs player Chris Jones, and drinks at the coolest Irish Pub in Weston, O’Malley’s. We went to the Kenny Chesney/Old Dominion concert and had wings at The Peanut. It was a short but sweet trip and I can’t wait for them to come back and bring their little guy.
Brian’s sister Amy and her boys came up from Oklahoma for a few days and we had a blast spending time with them.
I also saw a new Ortho doc and got the fabulous news that my shoulder was now dead (avascular necrosis) and I need a replacement.
And the middle boy Parker turned 23!!
In August we took the bald kid to Dallas to be Hailey’s ‘show and tell’ for one of her peds PT classes. Ethan loves being the center of attention, and we really enjoyed meeting Hailey’s classmates and professor. We visited the Perot Museum in Dallas and it was fun for all of us-especially the bald kid.
Being in Dallas requires dinner at Las Palmas-and again-fabulous!
That night may have also involved a 40oz and a traffic cone…..
The end of August brought another trip to KC for my baby sister Kate’s Bachelorette Party. Hilariously fun day with her awesome friends and new family!
The time had finally come….in September my baby sis Katie got hitched to Aaron!! What a weekend it was-lots of family made it in town to her wedding and she made a beautiful bride. It was an amazing time and I’m so glad we were a part of their special day. And I inherited 2 new gorgeous and sweet nieces-Taylor and Madison.
Hailey Jayne turned 26!
And we had a great time selling some Salvage 2 Chic stuff at our friend’s event;
The Rough & Rigid Monster Bash. So thrilled to be invited and can’t wait for 2023!
In October we took a trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for my sis and bro-in-laws “Framilymoon”. It was a week of sun and sand and cocktails and relaxation and lots of laughs. I even got to check off ✅ a ‘F*ck it Cancer Bucket list’ item of swimming with the dolphins and a sea lion.
November brought another opportunity to check off a bucket list item with a trip to Paris, France and Amsterdam with our dear friends the Williams. It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me and I’m so grateful and thankful they invited us. Much like our trip to Mexico it was full of cocktails and laughs-lots and lots of laughs! The Eiffel Tower, the Seine dinner cruise, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, Notre Dame, Jim Morrison’s grave and more made Paris a non-stop adventure from the minute we landed.
Amsterdam was much more chill and relaxed and we really enjoyed it. Especially getting to have dinner with Marlene and Olav! And the Red Light District, the Anne Frank house, the boat canal tour, the Heineken tour, the cheese and wine and beer and the ‘coffee house’ visits gave us a little break from the fast-paced city of Paris. We would definitely go back!
December came, and I can’t believe the year is almost over. Mother Nature jacked with lots of people’s plans, but we did make it to KC for Christmas with the family. And then back to STL for our celebration with family here. The ‘Great Big Ball of Glory’ was its biggest ever at
19 lbs! And the murder mystery game I wrote-and then accidentally deleted-but didn’t tell anyone until I got them to dress up in ridiculous costumes and read their character descriptions aloud…..was a hit, but needs to be finished.
We surprised the kiddos with a Christmas gift trip to the Dominican Republic in September ‘23 -even the bald kid!
And my darling hubby turned 54!
Like I said, it’s been a year.
I’m scheduled for a right shoulder replacement January 17th. My Ortho doc is going to try and do a hemi-arthroplasty, where he just replaces the dead humeral head and upper humerus and leaves the glenoid cavity. But he won’t know until he’s already in there. I’m dreading the PT following this surgery, especially since my daughter and bossiest child around will be here for a few months for her last clinical rotation at Shriners. She’s sure to keep me on schedule with my exercises.
My cancer lesions have been stable all year, with no new ones-yay! But I started having headaches recently, so I’m getting a brain MRI to start the new year. They will be doing a specific tumor protocol and only 2 locations within the BJC imaging system do that protocol so we couldn’t get me in until the 5th. Along with the headaches, my tumor marker labs have jumped way up out of the normal range by 33 points. The only possibly positive thing about that is these labs are notoriously unreliable, and can be attributed to inflammation or other illness-and my shoulder mess could be causing those to be so high.
As I finish up my 3rd year with stage four breast cancer, otherwise known as the ‘average median survival’ I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous about this MRI. We all know how much I love (hate) MRI’s to begin with….good thing I’ve got some Ativan and wine from France to get me through…..
But I intend for 2023 to be just as exciting and fun and crazy-hair-on-fire busy as 2022 so Momma ain’t got no time for a brain lesion! So if you could send up some good juju for me that these headaches are just that-and not brain mets, I would greatly appreciate it! If having stage 4 cancer has taught me anything-it’s that I can’t take one single day for granted.
not. one. day.
I look back on 2022 and cherish the memories it gave me and my loved ones. Even with the heartbreak and loss, it was a great year, and another one I survived. Being that I’m starting year 4 with MBC, I’m exceeding the ‘norm’ and ‘average’
(like those words have ever been used to describe me!?) I feel like I’m living on borrowed time.
But then again, aren’t we all?
I hope you and yours have a Happy and Healthy New Year and 2023 brings you all you wish for!
Love and hugs
-k
