Last chapter for Jacksonville

I was going to try and do this wonderful blog about my trip and every little detail that I did. I'm forgetting most of it anyways by now.

The best parts of the trip were when we didn't have any classes. C's teacher at school has a mother in law going through breast cancer. She asked me since I was going if I could get her any information that I could about it. So when we registered and got our nametags, I had dh grab a bag and we went to all the exhibitors that we could. Every table when I picked up something, I had dh grab it too. Any free pens or papers or information I thought would benefit the mother in law, I made sure we got two copies; one for me and one for her.

I met more women from our bulletin board. It was great fun matching up names and pictures to the women I knew just from their posts about breast cancer. In a way it's like going to another church group or ward. You know that no matter what, you have that common bond that you immediately have even if you've never met anyone from that group before. Luckily for me, I knew quite a few women from the last year. This time around, I made sure I chatted more and enjoyed their company instead of hanging in the back being afraid.

I was thrilled to see Danica there. I met her last year and was too shy to talk to her. She shouldn't have even come this year. She developed chemo induced leukimia and had just spent 3 weeks in the hospital getting a different type of chemo and having all sorts of drugs put in her. I'm very in awe of her fighting spirit and I'm so happy that I was able to see her in person. I met up with my friends Kat, Cynthia, Michelle, Theresa, and so many other amazing women including Bethany and Tammy Lou aka The Titty Fairy as she called herself.

My favorite time of the whole conference was Friday night. It was after the first boring class and welcome reception. Dh and I didn't have a lot to do. He was content to stay up in our room, so I went downstairs and tried to see if I could find anyone. A group of about 4 women were in the bar that were from our group, so I sat down, got a Pepsi and joined them. Throughout the evening, more and more people would join us. I think we ended up with about 25 women trying to cram our chairs together to sit together and chat. There were a few drinks there, but no one was out to get drunk. Just laughing and having a fabulous time. Forgetting for awhile that the reason we were there and enjoying each other's company was the fact that we all had breast cancer. I heard the funniest diagnosis story and tears were coming out of my eyes I was laughing so hard. Everyone else was too. No one else would think it was funny, but when you've been where we are, you take it where you can get it.

Saturday was fine. Classes sucked. We slept in and it was heavenly. That king size bed was awesome! First time Jason and I have slept in a bed where we weren't crowded together because of a sick kid or someone throwing themselves on the other in our sleep. We barely touched! We had room! I missed my babies, but they were having a great time with grandma.

Sometime in the afternoon, I forget when, we went for a walk to the Jacksonville Landing again. Jason didn't take me to Hooters, maybe he thought it would be in bad taste. I thought it was so stinking funny. Me in Florida for a breast cancer conference and we would eat at Hooters of all places! Dang it. Too bad it didn't work out.

We ended up at the American Cafe. We didn't want a huge meal, so we had dessert. We split something called a Smores Sundae. It was a giant bowl of ice cream with graham cracker crumbs, with vanilla ice cream, and marshmallow topping on top. It was apparent that it had been toasted some how and was dripping and crispy brown on top. On top of that was chocolate syrup drizzled over it. DAMN!!!! That was the best dessert I've ever had. I would go back to Florida again just for that dessert. (now that I think of it, I believe we went on Friday night)

The last class was Breast Reconstruction. A woman doctor from San Francisco taught it. She didn't mince words and told us what certain procedures did and what benefits and cons were associated with each. She told us flat out why she didn't do some and why she did others. She was the first doctor I met that seemed to be doing it for more than cosmetic reasons. She was there to help women recover themselves after or during breast cancer. Thank the heavens above!! Too bad she lives in San Francisco. She gave great advice. There was a Q&A period after class and I was able to ask her about if there were any surgeons she could recommend in the Portland area that did the type of surgery she did and that I wanted to have done. She thought for a minute and said that there weren't. She is a microsurgeon and very few surgeons want to go through the extra special training it takes to do that.

Thanks to her class, I've decided that I want to get a DIEP flap procedure done. The way she does it, she doesn't use any muscles like a normal TRAM flap would. No abdominal muscles or latissius muscles. I wouldn't have to sacrifice that and I'm glad. I need all the muscles I have since there aren't that many. lol More to come on this later.

So our return flight left at 6am out of Jacksonville. We would have to be at the airport at 4 am. Which means leaving for the airport around 3:15 or so. Which means getting up at 2:30AM to get dressed and ready. That's all fine and dandy, except that I stayed up to watch the most boring Academy Awards ever and that didn't end until 12:30pm on the east coast. Which is where I was. Dumbest move ever.

Good thing we got up when we did. Not only did our taxi not show up like we had scheduled, but the one that did show up hit traffic. He managed to go around it and we got to the airport just fine. Cinnabon was closed and I was so hungry that I got a dry nasty one from the cheapie little mart across the gate from where we were waiting. But while I was there, I saw my friend Danica being pushed down the way by another YSC gal. I was able to give her a hug and wish her well on her journey. That put a big smile on my face.

The trip to Denver was fairly uneventful. It's dang hard to sleep on a loud noisy plane sitting up, so I didn't. We prepared to rush across the concourse when we got to Denver like we had to last time. Thank heavens it was only 2 gates over. I had time to hit the bathroom and get a magazine while dh got a sandwich from Quiznos for us to share. We were only supposed to have 30 minutes on the ground in Denver before the next plane took off. They were a bit slow getting everyone figured out and that's what gave us the time to do what we needed.

The nice thing about this flight is that this was the only one where we were sitting next to each other. The bad part was when there was a loudspeaker announcement asking if there were any nurses or doctors aboard. Thankfully there were and went back to the lady who was having some trouble. About 10 minutes after that happened, we started to descend. Then the pilot gets on the loudspeaker and explains that we have to have an emergency medical divert in Salt Lake City because the lady that was ill, had to get medical attention beyond what they were able to get her on the plane.

So we land and the paramedics get on board. They take their time, get the lady on a wheelchair and eventually wheel her off the plane with an IV hanging above her head. We were on the ground a good 45 minutes while all this happened. I believe that they pulled her luggage off the plane so that she had all her things. Then we were on our way and made it to Portland. We go to collect our luggage and it appears that one of my bags didn't make it. Great. Somehow when we were in SLC, they took one of my bags off the plane while retrieving the other ladies stuff and didn't put it back on. So it was flying via Delta airlines later that day and we would pick it up later.

When Jason's mom and L came to pick us up, I was so glad to see my baby. I sat in the back with her and she kept touching my hand and patting it and wanting to hold it. She would stare at me and tell me she missed me and wanted to go home. I needed to hear that. I didn't think she would miss me at all. I'm glad to know she still loves me best!