WE ARE GOING TO FFL!

You all have no idea how hard it was to keep all this in.  Secrets are HARD to keep!

Last year I entered the Once Upon a Time Contest sponsored by Lilly and Disney.  To enter, I wrote a short essay about our life with diabetes.  (Not easy.  It's no secret that short is not my forte.)

I found out in January that I won!  I won a trip for our family to attend the Children With Diabetes Friends for Life Conference in Orlando.  (This was before we found out about Ryan's cancer...so it wasn't a pity win.  Or maybe it was. I do have three boys with Type 1, right?)

When we got the news in March about Ryan, we thought the trip wasn't going to happen.  Then Ryan said, "We are going to make this happen no matter what!"  So the game was afoot!  Ryan went through all his radiation and the doctors all told us it was a great idea to go!  Even with the one tumor that popped up, they were going to move things around so we could get the radiation done before we left on the trip.

And then last week...after I wrote my last blog post...we received more bad news.

More tumors have popped up, and some of the old ones have grown.  He now has nine brain tumors that need to be taken care of.  We were sent to UCSF to the head of Radiology Oncology. 

Last Friday we sat in the UCSF office on pins and needles.  We knew that we were there to schedule Gamma Knife Radiation.  But we didn't know when.  Would they do it the following week?  Would we have to cancel our trip for him to receive his care.  (Ryan first...trip second...we knew this.)  But miracles happened and mountains were moved and Ryan will receive the special radiation the day after we return.  When we asked if it was safe to go they said, "He can have tumors here, or he can have tumors there...it's all the same."

So here we are...GOING TO FRIENDS FOR LIFE!   Are you reading these words that I am typing on the screen?????  It is happening!

Do you want to read my winning essay?  It is HERE.

And here is one of the press releases about our win HERE.

If you are going to #FFL12, please leave a comment.  I'll be easy to find...I'll be the hot mess with the purse that says, "HOPE."