Salty Zebra

   Disneyland truly is one of the happiest places on earth for my husband and I. Several times over our relationship, including our honeymoon, we've popped down for a few magical days. It's been about ten years since the last time we did this, and both of us are starting to feel like it is time. Yes, we've been to Disney World since then, but it's really not the same. Because I've been to Disneyland so many times, it's a familiar, comfortable booking process for me, but just in case it's new to you, I thought I'd share my steps. What Comes First?  With most trips, you need to decide whether to book the flight or the hotel first. Most of the time this will land on the side of the flight, but because we are blessed with the ability to fly for free with my daughter's airline benefits (she's a flight attendant), the first piece of this puzzle I need to consider is the hotel. Because of the huge variability in hotel and ticket prices with Disneyland, ...

 I have a condition called foot drop. It comes about when there is an impingement, or pressure, on the nerve somewhere between my brain and my foot. It causes my foot to periodically, and unexpectedly, not lift my toe up all the way when I'm walking. When I am wearing just socks, this usually doesn't cause much of a problem, but when I am wearing shoes, it causes me to trip over my own feet.  Historically, when this happens, I feel really dumb how foolish am I that I can't even pick up my feet right when I'm walking? But my doctor, recently, taught me that this condition is inherent in my system. No matter how much my brain tells my foot to pick up my toe, my foot is not getting the message. I could look at my foot the whole time I'm walking and tell my foot with every step to pick up my toe, and I would still not do it every once in a while. Now, perhaps this is because my foot doesn't have ears to hear my mouth speaking, but that's what nerves are for. And...

  As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. Ecclesiastes 11:5  I’m a researcher at heart. There is very little I take at face value. Trust, but verify. I want to know your sources. Did you just hear that on TikTok or is there an actual study to back that up? And when it comes to studies, are we talking a long-term study with thousands of participants, or a case study with one or two?   In 2024 I faced a quandary. According to the scans, my tumor had grown by more than 20%, perhaps as much as 50%. I was being referred to the brain tumor center for further treatment because it was in a location that, at that time, was deemed inoperable. At my first visit, I met with an ARNP who would oversee my care, a neuro oncologist that would discuss chemotherapy options (there weren’t any for my type of tumor), and a neuro radiologist that would discuss radiation treatmen...

  Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord. Psalm 27:14  Have you ever found yourself in the Waiting Place? I wrote about this last April with regard to waiting for Jesus to return and take us home to be with Him. This week it’s taken on a different connotation for me. Two weeks ago, I heard a speaker share about when Jesus asked the man at the well, “Do you want to be healed?” (post coming soon, once the song it discusses is released 😉 ). This last Sunday, God followed it up by a teaching, at a completely different church, on healing, specifically discussing the story of the man born blind and his healing we read about in John 9 . All this stirred up in me the old questions I have about healing. Things I thought I had resolved and found peace with are churning once more in my heart and mind. I *think* this is God’s doing, that He wants me to revisit these things and explore them with Him in light of a new season of my life. It’s uncomfortable. I d...

 Last year about this time, I wrote to you all asking for a little help from my friends , and you showed up! We raised $357.68 in donations over the month and I wanted to share with you today how that has influenced my blog this year.  First, it showed me that there were real people out there reading what I was writing who actually valued it enough to contribute financially. That means more than I can possibly express! I love  writing, but it's hard when you put things out into the blogosphere day after day and you wonder if anyone sees it, if anyone cares, if it's making a difference. When you all showed up for me last December, it encouraged me to keep writing, to keep traveling, to keep learning and sharing things with you. THANK YOU!!!  Next, by having some level of financial income, my blog was legitimized as a business. This enabled me to open five different credit cards and two bank accounts earning me 365,000 points/miles and $1,200 in account signup bonuses....

This is not a how to post, I'm writing to let you know that you are not alone. One of the most common complaints you hear in the chronic illness community is over bad doctor appointments. Now, I'm not talking about ones where they give you a tough diagnosis, ironically we call these good appointments because we actually got somewhere we can work from. I'm talking about the appointments where your condition is misunderstood, your symptoms are brushed off, and you leave feeling hopeless and helpless. Those are bad doctor appointments and, sadly, I've had two of them recently.  The first one, a neuro PT appointment actually, was with one negative type of medical provider. This one thought they knew everything there was to know about Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) . While at first this seems better than those tropy doctors that have to pull out their phone and Google it, in reality it can be much more dangerous. You see, this provider had seen a couple, meaning 2, patients wi...

 Ever since my brain tumor and surgeries, my husband has stated time and time again that I am, "More Spunky." I've been trying to pay attention and figure out why this is. Turns out my personality hasn't changed, my filter has just become defective!  We all have an internal thought life. As we look at things around us, our brain processes what we see, and we think about it. You might notice a beautiful sunset and admire the color palette in the sky. You might wonder why someone would wear that shirt with those pants. You might wish you were at home taking a nap instead of wherever you happen to be at the moment. This is completely normal and everyone does it, it's a part of how we experience the world. The challenge I happen to be facing is that my internal life is slipping into my external one.   On several occasions recently, I've caught myself by surprise as I realize that the thought I had intended to be inside my head had come out of my mouth instead! And...

   As a young wife and mom, I struggled. I was also young in my faith, having only started walking with Jesus a few months after my first son was born. Everything was hard. I had four kids under 6, one of them newly brought into our home from a war-torn country with all the trauma that goes along with it. The other 3 were no cake walk either with serious food allergies that had to be catered to, making it so that I had to make nearly everything we ate from scratch. I was also in the early years of my marriage, and we were simultaneously learning how to be good Christians and good spouses, and had mastered neither. I heard the story of Esther, and I wondered, could God have brought me here for such a times as this?   Fast forward several years and I’m two years into braces, not a fun journey, and facing complete reconstructive jaw surgery. Months of recovery while trying to balance caring for and homeschooling four kids. My husband was travelling regularly, being gone...

 I have an Adult Pilocytic Astrocytoma. That's a WHO Grade 1 benign brain tumor. So really, it should be no big deal, right? That's what I thought when they told me, and for nearly a year afterwards. Benign sounds, well, benign right? From Webster's 1828 Dictionary (the only real dictionary 😉): Benign BENI'GN, adjective beni'ne. [Latin benignus, from the same root, as bonus, bene, ancient Latin benus, Eng. boon.] 1. Kind; of a kind disposition; gracious; favorable.      Our Creator, bounteous and benign 2. Generous; liberal; as a benign benefactor. 3. Favorable; having a salutary influence; as the benign aspect of the seasons.      The benign light of revelation. 4. Wholesome; not pernicious; as a benign medicine. 5. Favorable; not malignant; as a benign disease.  Doctors seem to want to make you feel like you're doing good, you've got a win, everything's fine. They tell you, "Good news! Its a WHO Grade 1 benign tumor." You walk away thinking...

   In case you didn't know, as I didn't until recently, May is brain tumor awareness month. I decided a while back that I would be honoring this month in a variety of ways, and as I was working on putting these wheels in motion, I also found out that May is Ehler's-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) awareness month AND Lyme Disease awareness month as well! Being that these are my three main diagnoses, I was pretty surprised to find that they all had the same month where they were highlighted. You'd think I was born in May, but I wasn't, I was born in July. At first I started to back pedal my brain tumor awareness agenda for my blog and Facebook, but then I began to feel more and more clearly that this year I was just supposed to focus on brain tumors, and so I will. Who knows, maybe next year I'll be highlighting Lyme Disease since that is the one I've written about the least?  Brain tumors are not as rare as you might think, and more than one million people in America a...

   Last week I did my regular checkup and MRI for my brain tumor. I have had a lot of neurological symptoms, so we were a little concerned going into this one. We had decided in advance though that regardless of the outcome, we were going to do our big Disney trip coming up in May. That made me feel a little better, but I'm not excited about the idea of doing radiation, so I was probably holding my breath a little.   As I mentioned in this post , the whole idea of living six-months at a time, essentially living life on a lease, is overwhelming. You don't know quite how to feel. You don't know quite how to plan. You just don't know, that's the kicker. I get that no one knows , but still, for the most part you can make plans in life and know that you will likely get to follow them through.  So we got up at o-dark-thirty to head into the city for my MRI since traffic is so bad at that time of day. We made it with some time to spare though, so we sat in a waiting ro...