MAKE YOURSELF A CUPPA - IT'S A LONG ONE !!!!

my most heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you who has emailed, sms'ed, called and prayed for my sister, jo and for our family over the past few weeks.

i feel like our family can take a collective breath now and move on with life. for the past few weeks our lives have revolved around hospitals and doctors and all things medical - it's time to cast open the curtains and let life back in again.

jo was discharged from hospital on friday, may 26 with a script for oral antibiotics and instructions to go back to the doctor within a week if the lump on her neck had not shrunk. she was quite ill over the weekend and with our encouragement (and mum's insistence) she went back to the doctor on the tuesday.

he sent her for MORE blood tests and an another mri on the lump on her neck. the news wasn't good. she had a second lump on the base of her skull and the specialist wouldn't rule out the possibilty of a tumour. he readmitted her to hospital and told her he would be operating on her on wednesday morning.
for whatever reason he decided to seek a second opinion (and this doctor is one of the most arrogant people i have ever met - my nursing friends who know him say he NEVER seeks second opinions so God knows why he did this time) and emailed jo's results to a neurosurgeon in brisbane at the PA.

wednesday morning he marched into jo's room and told her that she was being transferred to the gold coast hospital and would be seen by the brisbane neurosurgeon that afternoon and possibly operated on that night. naturally we all thought the worst and after much pleading on jo's part, they let her go out to the school to say goodbye to jarrod and to go home to see kye (mum was looking after him) and then brett drove her up to the hospital on the gold coast.
that afternoon she was assessed by not only the neurosurgeon from brisbane but he also had her seen by an ENT specialist as well as a vascular microsurgeon. whatever this thing was in her neck it was nasty and it wasn't going to be an easy op.
she was so ill they delayed the surgery until thursday and they had her back on a drip and pumping her full of antibiotics overnight.

it was the hardest few days of my life - i wanted to be up there with her but brett was the only one who would have been allowed into ICU had she ended up there and i was much more help down here helping with kye and jarrod. plus i was one of the main organisers of the bonfire night for kait's school that was on saturday night (another long story - see further down this post) and i just had to be here.
i spoke to jo briefly on thursday morning and we shed a few tears and said some things that have been a long time in coming. to say that my attention span at work on thursday was not 100% is an understatement. it was the longest day of my life.

jo was in theatre for just on three hours - the lump on her neck was a bronchial cyst with involvement of the major artery running into her brain. the second lump on the base of her skull was a second cyst forming. she was so ill they decided to just drain the cyst this time and when it grows back at a later date, it will have to be removed. she was just too weak this time for them to remove it - the surgeon felt she may not have survived the surgery had he tried to remove it
they drained as much of it as they could and established that there was NOT a tumour underneath it, which is what they suspected. they put a drain in her neck, which came out on sunday. she was on pretty strong painkillers and wasn't very coherent the few times i called so i just let her rest and got brett to give her our love each day when he went up.
the good news is that she arrived home yesterday afternoon - very tired, very skinny but alive. she was so happy to see the boys but went home and went straight off to bed.
the road to a full recovery will be long and the surgeon told her that the cyst will grow back but next time he hopes jo will be strong enough to have the op to remove it.

again i just can't thank each and everyone of you enough for your prayers and support and friendship over the past few weeks. if i could jump on a plane and fly around the country and hug you all one by one i would.
thank you from the bottom of my heart and on behalf of my family, jo and her family too.

as i mentioned before kait's school had their big bonfire night last saturday night. a huge success again despite the security guards having to call the police to deal with some trouble making inebriated teenagers - why can't they just stay away from this family occasion...???
the school only has 87 chidren in it, 4 staff but each year for the past 26 years we have had a bonfire night each june to raise money for the kids. we have fireworks; a produce stall legendary for it's pickles, relishes and craft; a cafe serving freshly made cakes and brewed coffee; a bbq cooked by the parents; rides; entertainment....etc, etc.
this year we estimate we had about 3000 people through the gates and we had banked by the end of the night about $30,000!!!!
not a bad effort for our little country school.
it is a huge undertaking - this year we made and sold 850 dozen lamingtons, we peeled 80 kgs of onions, we made 40 kgs of coleslaw; we cooked and sold over 850 steaks; we mixed and cooked almost 8o kgs of doughnut mix.
this year we were lucky enough to have 55 dozen krispy kreme donuts donated which sold out in record time.
now to add a little bit of excitement to the mix, the P&C president decided on friday that it was a good day to go into labour and have her baby !!!!!
(congrats on the birth of little lyannah may, rondah and justin)
so as P&C VP i was in charge and with the help of jane, rondah's assistant and andrew, our gorgeous and slightly crazy principal, we managed to muddle our way through the night and come out relatively unscathed.
tired and exhausted but happy with our results.
and the good news.....we get to do it all over again next year.....LOL

if you have reached this far into this mammoth post - well done !!!!
not much more waffling to go *wink*

a HUGE congrats to the most gorgeous and talented miss marie and miss ruthy on their appointments to the every moment matters DT. both marie and ruthy are the sweetest girls around and have been a tower of strength to me over the past few weeks. it is a well deserved accolade my dear friends and i am so looking forward to seeing what you guys get up to.
love you both to bits.

last thursday i was shocked, amazed, blown away when this arrived in my mailbox.


thank you so much ruthy....i love it so much and i was so surprised to receive it.
you are such a blessing in my life.

i have also managed to scrap a page this week which i found very theraputic. it is for the craft attic's weekly inspiration - every second week i post an inspiration to hopefully inspire some of the girls to scrap outside their comfort zone.

this week's inspiration was to scrap using purple - my inspiration...??? miss kait has a real "thing" for purple at the moment so i scrapped a purple lo for her - doesn't she look so grown up in this pic...??? it was taken first thing in the morning on her 10th birthday in may.
every other week the very talented kim geling posts a sketch for us to scrap.

and that dear friends....is that.

be happy, stay safe and look for some laughter in your day

~*~ shazz ~*~