Grateful As I’m Working It

Since my craniotomy, I have had a lot of admiration for my neuorosurgeon, Dr. Weaver and his entire team at Vanderbilt.  At first it was very personal and drove me to a very deep love in my heart to the team who brought me out of that surgery and into the room where I could see and hear my husband and children again.  I truly had no idea what to expect.  When I entered the operating room on February 27th, it was pretty terrifying and as I had never in my life seen so much equipment in a room before with huge lights and I wasn’t even wearing my glasses, which means I can’t see pretty much two inches in front of my face without squinting.

I came out of that surgery after two and a half hours, they said it would take at least five hours. I was able to talk, recognize my family and friends, see of course with the help of my glasses (that would have been very cool if my optic nerves had somehow been given a nudge to give me twenty-twenty vision), be able to ask Noel and my friend Kandi to take the hose and stick it into my mouth to suck out all of the mucus.  I know, TMI, but I have to give these two people major props for doing this so many times throughout the nights because it was disgusting and that’s unconditional love right there!  I have a feeling the next craniotomy, they have already plotted to sucker someone else to stay with me.  You’ve all been warned!

Now, back to Dr. Weaver and his team.  I am floored as I look back over the past few months as I have had set backs both personally and professionally, but thinking back over these months, I have one of the rarest and most aggressive forms of brain cancer there is, yet I’m able to get up and take care of myself and my children on a daily basis, I practice yoga and go for daily walks, cook, I have been running all of the social media for the web series, Dates, attended our screening at the Nashville Film Festival, have been writing, and now preparing to launch our series next week, which was supposed be months ago, however, I think I may have mentioned that I have brain cancer.

I think the reason isn’t just my passion for this project, but it’s my devotion, loyalty, and gratefulness to the people who helped make this series a reality and I’m excited for the public to see everyone’s talent and hard work that went into it.  So, thank you to my cast, crew, family and friends for keeping the passion and drive alive in me throughout this crappy diagnosis and for continuing to support me through the personal and professional parts of this.  I have a genuine desire to make people laugh because laughter is just freaking good stuff and if I can bring some laughter to the world, then I’m not just doing my job, I’m truly living the dream.

It’s on a personal and professional level that I also have so much love for Dr. Weaver and his team.  I cannot believe that this is me, this evening, sitting at my desk, with two computers, in my happy place, multi-tasking, wearing my Never Give Up t-shirt, surrounded by photos of people I love, editing, writing, while my children are singing upstairs and playing ukuleles or guitars or mandolins (I can’t keep up), and just in awe.  I’m crying as I write this because I am just so grateful.

What I want to share is this: Always believe in yourself and if you want something to be, then make it so. I don’t see anything I do as a bucket list.  I just see it as the things I say I’m going to do.  Don’t wait on things; DO things!