A Journey Complete...

Hey everyone,
    So I haven't posted in a while for lots of reasons. I have been thinking about what I wanted to do with this little blog journal of mine. It has been such a wonderful place for me to keep a record of my journey through was has most definitely been the most challenging year of my life. Thank you to any of you who have walked along this journey with me. In the last 18 months we have walked through double mastectomy, 2 rounds of reconstruction, finishing the Ironman and the loss of my precious dad. It has been a year of incredible highs and incredible lows to say the least. Given all of that I feel like the goal and journey I set out to document here is now complete. In my first post I talked about how I never originally felt like I was the type of person who's daily ins and outs warranted documentation but I wanted to document what I hoped to be a journey of encouragement, challenge and change. Those things have been done and it's time to say goodbye as we all continue on new journeys in our lives. I am so grateful to have had this place to share the highs and lows, the joys and sorrows of this crazy, messy, hard, joyful, victorious, heartbreaking, challenging, changing year. While our lives will surely have no lack of these things going forward - I hope what we have shared this year will be lasting.

So thank you. It's certainly been a wild ride. God bless, Merry Christmas and I wish an incredibly Happy and New year to you all.

All my love,
Hannah

Let loose!

Ya'll...it's been like 6 weeks since I last posted. Woah - sorry to leave ya hangin' like that! 

I have a good reason....promise!

The fun new news is that I am training to become an instructor at define !

(image from define body.com)

 I am SO pumped about this new journey and opportunity to further my involvement in this great community of fitness and health lovers but also to continue my growth and journey in my own fitness and leadership development. I will be training just to teach their DEFINE: Revolution classes (their super amazing, challenging spin class) for now but I hope to train to teach their other classes in the future too if I get the chance! 

I will hopefully be teaching by November or December in  the Houston studios so keep your eyes out for me and come take class with me! We will have a blast and you will leave with seriously one of the best spin workouts ever!

(image from define body.com)

To be clear - I am DEFINITELY still keeping my daytime/full time job at Women's Hospital in their NICU. I just can't imagine leaving loving on those sweet littles every day but I am psyched to have this opportunity at define to add to my profession and personal life and development (and not to mention general fitness!). The training for this is really doable but also time consuming so I have been a little less than diligent on attending to this little blog of mine. Sorry!!  So there you go - that's the reason for my internet absence but I know you'll understand and forgive me right!?!? 

So to add on to all that - I have been emotionally/stress eating like a maniac (read: a megastuff oreo's got nothin' on me!)

Just to be clear on the order of things:

Ummm ya....it was not pretty and my pant's were not exactly appreciative. 

So I marched my happy hippo hiney into my dietician's office and we talked about getting back on track but we also talked about me doing a juice cleanse to really get a hard restart. It wasn't her favorite choice but I do better with hard restarts like this so I decided to go with it. I chose to do the 3 day cleanse through DEFINE: foods . 

(image from define foods.com)

I have never done a juice cleanse before and it.was.a.challenge. BUT I finished it last night much to everybody's happiness and joy and am back to healthy solid foods today. 

I really do feel like doing something like this really helps to give me a hard kick on sugar, caffeine and all my carb intake and helps me reconnect properly with portion control so I am really pleased. The juices actually tasted really good and I wasn't as hungry as I thought I would be so overall a very positive experience (and 3 of them had cucumber in them....my least favorite food/smell/anything of all time and I still made it through!)!  Yay!

 Now to just lay off the temptation of biscuits and bread man... oh the temptation...

AAANNNDD...To top this all off - IT'S BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH PEOPLE! We are almost a year exactly from my getting my implants in the first time and I certainly am going into this October season much more appreciative and thoughtful having finally finished my reconstruction now. So the whole thing that started this whole thing gets recognized this month- now go out there, wear some pink and love on the people around you (with fakies or no fakies!). 

(October 2014)

All that to say - in life, in love, in food - let loose the juice people! You'll only be better for it!

Happy October everyone! Now let's start praying for some cooler weather because I'm ready for my boots and scarves and all things pumpkin! 

Have a great day everyone! I'll keep you posted once I officially am finished with define training! Thanks for stopping by!!

Lately...and a bittersweet birthday wish

Whew guys...it's been a whirlwind of a few weeks!

The big news is WE MOVED!

We bought and moved into our first house the last few weeks and couldn't be more thrilled for it to have finally happened! Needless to say though - it has been an all consuming task between that and getting our apartment rental ready for the next tenant! I am thrilled to have painted, replaced floors, cleaned, unpacked most of the boxes, put stuff on the walls, cleaned some more and today finally be on the way to being moved in! Of course going from an 800 sq ft garage apartment to a 2200 sq foot house we have a little ways to go to fill it out but we are on our way there! So hooray for that!! We are officially tax paying, mortgage owing red blooded American dreamers.

So that's been the big thing. I've been back on the workout wagon too! I got my membership back at Define which has been awesome. I've been hitting up the 5:30 am Rev and Body classes mostly which has been a fabulous way to start the day! If you're in Houston and are looking for an awesome place and way to stay in amazing shape check it out!

So to wrap this little post up - today marks 3 months exactly since Dad's passing. 

I miss him like crazy. The last few weeks I've wanted to call him and tell him all about the things going on - especially with the new house. Dad would ask me all the time when we had dinner what kind of house we wanted to be in, the neighborhood, etc. and I am sad he isn't here to come see it and share a pot of gumbo. 

Tomorrow is also his birthday. You would have been 64 tomorrow Daddio. I am so sad that we can't celebrate together tomorrow but I hope you know how much you are missed and loved and we will light a candle and sing Happy Birthday in our most awesome obnoxious opera voice and think of you! Here's one of my favorite pictures of me, Emily and Dad on his birthday a few days ago. 

Happy Birthday to you Daddio - smoke some amazing ribs, make something spicy and make sure they send some cake from RJs to you from us. 

Love you. Miss you. 

Until next time guys!

-H-

The week...

Oh man you guys...this is just going to be a real, raw, vulnerable, uncomfortable (for me) post. Real life. Real moments. And bad punctuation. And run on sentences. And sentences that start with a capitalized And...I think we all will survive.

Alex and I both agreed last week truly felt like one of the longest weeks of our lives.

Our/my tank(s) are low. We/I are/am exhausted. And blessed. And overwhelmed (in good ways and bad). And just....ya...

Let's unpack it a bit shall we -

We got back from vacation 3 days before my surgery. It was a great week with Alex's family in North Carolina at the outer banks enjoying each other and celebrating his grandfather's 90th birthday. I cherish these weeks each summer and am so grateful that we have the opportunity and blessing to be with family in such a beautiful place.

                                                 

We also came back on Father's Day. That was hard. A much harder day than I had anticipated.

We are in the middle of trying to buy/close on our first house, set up moving and trying to find someone to sublet our apartment for the remainder of our lease. So ummm ya that's stressful on it's own.

Basically I sort of feel like I am going through life akin to something that looks like:

and I would really love for it to not progress to a full blown:

Ok that's being a little melodramatic but you get my point...

Surgery and recovery has gone well - I do have a mild post op infection at a few of the fat grafting sites but everyone in this house can all agree that bigger was definitely better in this situation. I am exactly as big as I was before my mastectomy and cosmetically things are much improved and the few red spots I had post op are healing very nicely. I'm still on weight restriction and can't work out yet except walks but I have my next post op on July 9 so I'll update after that!

Then Saturday (June 27) we had my Dad's memorial service. It had been delayed for quite a few reasons and it was a beautiful service celebrating the amazing grace that restores us all in Christ Jesus our Savior. It was also 10zillion times harder than I thought it was going to be.  I came home after more exhausted than I've felt in this whole process and slept for 5 straight hours.

I'm still struggling and missing my Dad a lot. I am back at work this week in my normal'ish routine (still can't work out yet but that's coming) so that is helping but my heart hurts. I was talking to my sister about it today (who has officially surpassed me in the maturity and dealing with stuff level...she's pretty amazing. I am so thankful for her) and I think she put it so well when she said that through this process you have so many moments where you want to scream out thanks and gratefulness to Dad and for who he was and became...but there is no one to thank. You are just left empty handed with empty thanks...and empty hearts and empty hands. I know that the Lord fills those places of emptiness and grief and questioning of the "why's" with his peace and joy that truly passes all understanding and I find so much encouragement in each day where/when his joy does indeed come in the morning. But the emptiness is sly...emptiness is a creepster...emptiness snatches you at the moments where you don't expect and drags you in...And by the grace of God we are met where were are, we are filled by faith and walk by faith and not by sight- knowing we are not made for this world and that we are restored and will see Dad again someday.

I took home this ginormous flower arrangement from the funeral. It was stunning and I couldn't bear to see it go to waste so we crammed it in my jetta and put it right on our table in our little garage apartment. It fit right in (sarcasm).

I paired it down today to what was left living. I kind of love that all that was left of that enormous arrangement was purple and gold (Geaux Tigers right Dad?), two pink roses and a thistle...for some reason I find some pretty awesome symmetry in that.

So I'm sorry for the bummer post ya'll but that's where we are right now. I promise to get back to the more bubbly, joyous posts of yore but for now I'm just being where I am. Thanks for being there too.

And we must end on a happier note so HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY weekend everyone! Be safe, blow something up (at a safe distance away from anything flammable or you know - alive) and celebrate the awesomeness that is our independence! See you guys next week!

Day 1...Again

Third round of Day 1's...

And this one has by far been the EASIEST! Hallelujah! Now - we are back in Spanx/compression tights for the next month and I haven't ventured much outside yet and my last surgery was in the fall so we will see how this goes heat wise but so far so good!

Surgery went really well. My surgeon recently went into private practice and now does her surgeries at Memorial Hermann Memorial City so it was a new hospital experience but overall a good one (with the exception of the registration girl I had for pre-op but I'll save that for the mail survey).

After a few good talks with my surgeon and barring anything disastrous happening - we both kind of agreed that this would very likely/hopefully be my last implant surgery. We went from a 535 cc round high profile implant all thew way to I think a 685 cc high profile round implant (history: started as a 32D, went flat w/ the mastectomy, got expanders, first implants bringing me from flat to a small 32C  per my request, got rippling through both sides, new implants will take me back to a full C/small D likely once all the swelling goes down). Should I get rippling again - that may possibly be how my body takes to these implants but we both feel pretty confident that with this new, larger implant filling out the whole pocket and the fat grafting she did should avoid all that (oh ya and the fact that I'm not training for Ironman!).  So fingers crossed! Feeling good so far!

**PSA*** My plastic surgeon is Melissa Crosby with Memorial Plastic Surgery  (she left MDACC for private practice a few months back). I could not be more blessed to be under this woman's care. She is incredibly kind, compassionate, prompt, realistic, patient and above all very very very skilled. This has been my 3rd surgical procedure with her (not to include all the tissue expander stuff) and each step of the way she and her team have set the bar high and met it. While I'm of course super swollen still - I can already tell a major positive difference since my last implants. If any of you are in the Houston area and looking for a surgeon- I could not give a higher recommendation than this. Seriously - if you want the best - look no further.  ***

Ok back to day 1 (x3)...I of course slept the WHOLE dang day away yesterday. Then all that sounded good to eat was lucky charms...so I proceeded to eat all the marshmallows with some cereal double fisting straight out of the box and killed it a reasonable amount out of a bowl like a real adult.  I did take my prescribed pain meds 2x yesterday but I'm back to just ibuprofen today which is good. I am back to sleeping on the couch (you can read in previous posts this is the way to go for your first day or two after surgery ladies unless your bed is super close to the floor). I am a belly sleeper so being on the couch is the easiest and best way to keep me on my back or slightly on my side bc I will flip like a pancake if I'm in my bed.

I tend to get a little overly ambitious when I feel this good post surgery so I think I may start today with a little mani/pedi if I get that far...or maybe just some new girl netflix streaming, laundry folding, house straightening and a chai tea on my couch. We shall see what the day brings.

So that's where we are friends! Stay tuned for day 2!

Switching gears...

It's been a while since my last post..needless to say a lot has gone on and I have been less than inspired to blog. Ironman is over. Hard to focus...but here's one moment to switch gears. So back to boobs for the moment...

So...in the spirit of transparency..

I had my six seven month post-op follow up with my plastic surgeon a few weeks ago. When we did my original surgery we went smaller than I was before - that combined with some serious leaning out from Ironman training and I ended up with some pretty awesome unsightly rippling on both sides.

So in the spirit of eternal, fuller, perkiness - I'm going back in for revision surgery tomorrow morning. We are doing a full implant exchange with a larger, fuller implant essentially taking me back to the size I was before and doing another round of fat grafting in the hopes of getting rid of the ripple effect.

So fingers crossed after 7:30 tomorrow AM we are on the road to bigger better boobtown...

See ya on the flip side!