Pictures from the last post

The airplane ride to Seattle!

Jordan and I were so bored after about 10 minutes into the flight! lol

When Joie flies she needs to find here happy place where things like gravity, pitch, roll, turbulence, and, most important, STOMACHS don't exist. lol

I have no idea what Mom and Dad did on the flight, but I wanted a photo and the best ones of them are the ones where they are caught unawares. :)

In flight Photography

Mount Rainier! Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?!

The Sea of the Cascade Mountains. Pretty!

Puget Sound From Tacoma. Actually from the parking lot of the church we went to on a ridge just up above the bay. It was pretty. It is too bad that camera's don't always catch the things that take your breath away. :(

The Monument at the US/Canada Border

Vancouver!!!

Yea! We are finally here!

Today seemed like a week! We left our house at 8:30am to get on our flight to Seattle, Washington. By the time we got through security and to our gate, they had already seated our section (Southwest does seating a little funky, lol) and so we just jumped ahead of the line to board. Mom and Dad sat together on the flight and Joie, Jordan, and I sat together. It was a short flight of about an hour.

The views outside the window were amazing! I love the Cascades! It was so cool to see the topography from an airplane! We were able to see all of the dormant volcanoes that dot the plain lands and through the Cascades and flew right by Mount Rainier!! It was wonderful and it made me miss Grandpa Hale terribly. I wish that he could have been there to point out all of the geological marvels that we flew by. I had tons of geology questions. It is easy to think geology for me when I am in the air. I can see things so clearly from that point of view. I love it. :)

Since we got to Seattle so early, we went to church in the Skyway Ward. It was a wonderful ward and the people were so friendly. The spirit flowed strongly throughout testimony meeting and then through Sunday school. By the time Relief Society started I was hurting to bad to pay attention to anything. I had been sitting for too long and I was pretty cold. Two things that can spark bad pain attacks. I do not like it. After the meetings, the ward has a tradition of "Break the Fast" where they do a potluck and break the fast together! They had invited us fourteen gajillion times . . . and . . . well . . . we were hungry! So we went. Lol. Talk about feeling out of place, but welcome all at the same time. They were pleased that we would come and join them. The people in that ward know how to make people comfortable. ;) People were always asking us who we were, where we were from, if we were visiting or had moved into the ward, and then making the rounds again to talk to us again about anything! It was fun! I felt pretty special in that ward. They didn't know us from Adam, but were still willing to share all that they had. It was truly ONE CHURCH! No lost sheep in that congregation. And in testimony meeting there was not one quiet stretch of time! It was person after person, group after group! And it was pretty entertaining. Never a dull moment where you wished you could fall asleep like there are so many times on fast Sundays. Lol. It was great.

After that, we hung out in the rental cars until Nikki, Jeremy, Jerrod, Erika, Jon, and Brit's flights came in. Joie, Jordan and I played a card game to pass the time and had a hilarious time! Once everyone was packed in the vans, we got a quick bite to eat at Jack in the Box by the Qwest Field, the closest I have ever been to a NFL game, lol, and then hit the road for Vancouver!

None of us were prepared for how long it would take. lol I still don't know how long it took, but I think around three to three and a half hours. I was so cold that my right hip was starting to act up again and there was nothing I could really do about it. Everyone in the car was hot so the A/C would go on, then I got too cold so the heater would go on! Eventually, as we got into North Vancouver, they left the heat on and rolled down their windows. lol I had my heat and they kinda had their cold. :)

The stop at the boarder was uneventful, thank goodness! They do have a cool monument there that has a cool saying on it. I knew I wouldn't remember it, so I had Erika write it down. Unfortunately, I am blogging at 4:30 in the MORNING! Erika is fast asleep, so I will get it later. The picture is the only souvenir I got. THEY DIDN'T EVEN STAMP PASSPORTS! The whole point behind getting a passport is to get the stamps to brag about the places you've been to outside of the country, right?! Sigh. I'll live though. :)

Well. There is nothing else to write about right now. I am going to do my best in posting while in Vancouver. It is a special experience and should be documented. :) Plus, I know I have about 50 people who will be excited to see that I have posted. :) At Jordan's homecoming and other places, so many people commented on how I haven't been writing. It was funny to me at first, but then I realized that more people were reading my thoughts and feelings than I was aware of. Not only that though, people have been wanting more. It made me feel shocked, humbled, and loved.

Recently, I have had the overpowering awareness of how many people are . . . touched? . . . by me. It is an uncomfortable feeling for me because I don't feel like I am doing anything that should evoke kinds of words and feelings like: "hero", "I look up to you", "You touch my heart", etc. It troubles me so much, but last night after I had packed, I picked up a very special book to me. When I had been released from Primary Children's Medical Center after my bone marrow transplant (BMT) my outpatient coordinator gave me a children's book called "The Blue Spot". It is about a blue spot that hangs out in the book and has everything it needs until one day (today) it decides it is missing something and asks you to tilt the book to the right. It runs (like blue watercolor) across the pages! You finally say, "Hold on! Where are you going? This is my book and you belong in it!" The spot replies that for so long he has had everything he needed, but now he is curious to see if there are any more spots in the book and to see if they would be his friend. Knowing the value of friendship, you decide to tip the book to the right and follow the blue spot to the end of the book where a yellow spot is found! Then you slightly close the book and the colors run together to make a green spot. New friends right there at the end! Anyway, it is not the story that I love about the book. My outpatient coordinator had all of my nurses, doctors, fellows, and anyone who has helped me through the last (at the time) two and a half years at the hospital sign the book. When I opened it for the first time I was overwhelmed by the comments in the pages. They were all touching and along the lines of love, spirit, hero, example, happiness, joy, etc.

When I picked that up last night and reread the comments in the book, I felt overcome with love, tenderness, remembrance of hope at being done with cancer treatments that had turned into sorrow when I relapsed AGAIN and finding hope in something else, and trying to figure out what exactly is going on inside my thoughts. It is a muddy maze without any clues as to where to go from where I am. I am trying to find out where I am in the maze with no vision of how big the maze is or what it even looks like. It is quiet frustrating, frightening, and lonely trapped in the head on my shoulders. Not knowing if what I am thinking is actually how I feel or if it is the front I put up for other people to see.

For example, I am a different person when I am at home and when I am up at Primary Children's. At home, we don't acknowledge the big elephant in the room and continue our lives as if it doesn't exist. At Primary Children's, my emotions are close to the surface and I cry most of the time I spend with particular people. It isn't fair to those people that from the moment I see them, I cry. They wish with all their heart they could do something to take away the heartache, sorrow, shame, and anguish that floods my being at that moment. I stop crying, out of habit. So now I am wondering which person am I really? Am I the person that doesn't mind not mentioning the Huge White Elephant in the room? Or am I so distraught that I need to talk about it? When I have talked about it it feels good at the time, but then that goes away, and I am left with all the overpowering sad, down trodden feelings that I don't know what to do with, but ignore them. So does that mean that I am in denial of what is really going on and am not working within the realms of reality, or am I just following the crowd I spend most of my time in and am comfortable with how "things roll"?

I do not know and this is what bogged down my brain as we drove from Seattle to Vancouver. Sometimes crying. Most of the time trying to crowd out the thoughts with the heavy bass booms of the music playing in the car and then trying to keep my brain busy so it couldn't go back to the black cloud. So which one am I? Or do I play all the parts and just pick and choose which one depending on the people I am around so that I can get their attention? I DO NOT LIKE THIS FRAME OF MIND! I WISH IT TO STOP AND TO STOP IT MUST! THIS WEEK IS GOING TO BE FUN! EVEN IF IT KILLS ME!

Extremely Odd Hour For a Post LOL

Yes it is not my normal time, but I am taking advantage of feeling good while I feel good. :)

Yesterday was almost a breaking point. I was so sick and tired of hurting that I didn't even take pain pills in the morning when I got up and just decided to hurt. My brain did a pretty good job at suppressing the pain, but when ever one of the nurses at MSTI asked how I was I just said I wasn't answering that question. I got a lot of sad looks from people.

Then Nick, one of the nurses came, sat down, and talked to me about what was going on. The tears I had been holding back just spilled over. I couldn't contain them anymore. I was so frustrated with my body. It can't fight like it used to. I feel like it has given up and when it hurts the most is when it drags me down to it's level and I start really feeling like I want to give up, call it quits. It is demoralizing. I don't like feeling that way and it aggravates me to do so. And then it aggravates me more because I don't have anyone around me that I can just cry into their shoulder and be comforted. When I start crying around here whoever is in sight starts crying and that just ruins the cry. :) I feel like I have to buck up and be strong for them so I never get a good cry unless I am alone and can't hurt anyone with my tears. That is why I am lonely. There are plenty of people to share my grief with, but I don't want to wallow. I want to be comforted and strengthened. That doesn't happen very often and when it does I can't get enough of it.

Sheesh. This is supposed to be an uplifting post. So much for that. :(

I want to thank Heavenly Father for my good days. I wish there were more and I think he does too. I am thankful that I have a day where I don't hurt, I want to go do something, I have things to do, and I have a good attitude. Not everything is perfect, but it is good and that is all that it needs to be for me now days.

I also want to thank those that offer their shoulders to cry on. I know it isn't easy for anyone to be around me especially during the bad times. I am thankful still and wish I could break down without caring, include more people into my grief zone (that sounds horrible, but I try to keep people out of that because it is horrible) and let more people buoy me up. God knows I could use it.

Nothing New to Report

Nothing new, but I figured I should write anyway. This is supposed to be insightful, but it can't be if I edit what I write and only write when I feel good or there is something to write about. I am just going to throw out what ever is going through my head at the moment so this might get a little crazy and I am probably going to regret saying something, but oh well, insight is what I'm going for right?

So right now I am listening to a song by Yanni, trying to take my mind off of my lower back hurting. It has hurt almost all day today, but it got worse around ten o'clock or so. I took five mg of oxycodone which dulled the pain, but it isn't gone. I am tempted to go take some more, but I would rather avoid pills like i would the plague. I am starting to like the affects of the medicine too much. I am still playing things smart and only taking them when i really need to though. I don't want anyone freaking out on me ok?

I got blood, red blood cells, yesterday, so I have been looking forward to the perkiness that I usually get afterward. Unfortunately, when I address one problem, my body comes up with another. It has been hurting ever since yesterday morning so I have needed to drug myself with oxycodone. Therefore I am not feeling the perk because i am drugged or hurting. What I really want to do is get out of the house and do something. I don't have any money to do something so that limits my options quite a bit. I am saving up money so I can pay some bills and still have money to go and have fun in Vancouver. I have done what I have gotten angry at others over. I was just as dumb and haven't been saving up for activities to do in Vancouver. I just didn't expect some of the bills that I have, but. . . lol. . .isn't that how it goes for everyone? You go along thinking everything is fine and then . . .wait a minute. . .it isn't! Something you either didn't expect or just didn't take care of sneaks up and it feels like it has you trapped in a corner with no where to go. Hmm. Sound a lot like my last three and a half years.

Three and a half years. I can't believe I have been doing nothing for three and a half years. Well, all the cancer crap I've been doing, sure, but. . .that has not been very progressive. . . not progressive. . .but. . .I can't think of the word. I haven't done anything to help myself be more sustaining or anything. My body has limited what i can do. I hate it. I have found myself identifying me as two entities, if you wish. There is me, Jenna. And then there is my Body. I don't trust my body any further than I can throw it. Which I can barely lift a 20 lb chair, so I'm thinking I won't be able to budge my 149 lb body. I am just so frustrated with my body right now. I'm getting sick an tired of being held back and being afraid to do something because after i do anything active I know my body will be screaming at me for the next couple of days to a week. Things are getting a little lonely. Loneliness and frustration are not a good combination. I have caught myself wishing that the ball would get rolling downhill already. I'm getting very sick and tired of it all. I don't have the energy to do anything, I don't have the resources to do anything. so i am stuck at home. Twiddling my thumbs trying to come up with something to do.

Honestly, I think things only seem bad right now, because I had a fun night last night so I went from a high and feeling somewhat like an average girl in her twenties, to my ever present happiness-sucking cancer life; still stuck doing the same things over and over and over again and I'm sick of the same things. Today for example, I woke up, read Twilight for a while before my body started to ache more than i could put up with. so i got up, took some Tylenol, ate some chex, slowly. I had to take a book i had sold on amazon.com to the post office so I got ready in five minutes (even though I don't have that much to do I feel even more bummish if I waste my time more that i already am) and went. I was sick and tired of being in the house and thought that if I moved around more I wouldn't hurt so much. So when I got back, I walked around the house three or four times with Jasper. It was fun, slow, and time consuming, which I liked. Unfortunately, after two laps my hip started to hurt. I made one or two more laps just because I could and I really wanted to do something other than play World of Warcraft or dink around on the computer for another 17 or whatever hours. Jasper had left his ball in the garage so I went to get it and ended up throwing the little tennis ball against the closed garage for twenty or thirty minutes until I was really tired and hurting more. What can I say, I was desperate for something different. When I came inside, I was looking around my room for something to do and my caught a project that I had stopped long ago. Aunt Debbie, when i lived in Utah and going through cancer crap, came and dropped off materials for making "jiggle boxes" as she called them. She made them to put into boxes being shipped out to places by the church. They work as rattles for babies and then as the kid grows up it can help them learn their colors. Anyway, I still have all those materials and today I figured, well that it was something different. I put in a movie, sat in my recliner and worked on putting together some boxes. All in all, it was a very boring day.

My dad wonders why I like to sleep late in the day. It is so that I don't have to come up with stupid things to do to keep me preoccupied while I wait for the inevitable. It all makes me so frustrated. I wish I could spend my time doing something worthwhile. Not just wasting away wishing the end would come quicker. I feel like it is such a waste! Not only that, but by just sitting here wishing for the end, I am letting not only myself down, but Heavenly Father too. I feel like such a disappointment. I could have been great. I could have done so much in this life if I hadn't gotten sick. Now I feel like I could still be great and should, but I am so tired, so afraid, and so alone that I don't know what to do with myself except for . . . well, let people down. That is really what I do best.

k. I am going to stop my mind wandering there. It isn't healthy to just let my mind rampage as you just saw. So. . . top problems I have besides my happiness-sucking cancer, I would say, are boredom, loneliness, and boredom. I have other worries, but . . .well. . . who doesn't. :) Good night.

A Totally Fun Day

Today was awesome! It was so much fun! A few of the ladies in the branch took me, Mom, and Joie to get pedicures! My first one! I have been looking forward to it for a week and I loved it! I was so nice. I loved the massage, the girly talk, being with the girls, the laughs, and the "It's All Greek to Me" toenail polish! The girl who took care of my feet was Lori. She was very conversational and it was fun. I think I am addicted. :) lol I already want to go back.

After the pedicure, I came home and spent time with my family. I really wanted to play World of Warcraft, but I have been noticing how I have been responding when I have been called away from it or played early into the mornings. It has been getting a little out of hand, but I have loved every minute of it. I have been meeting new people, playing well with others, and feeling as if I am accomplishing something. All the while though, I have been . . . neglecting (I guess) my family, the people that I should be spending most of my time with. So tonight, we got together and played Rummy Cube. I got it for my birthday. :) I even asked Mom for someone to play it with. :) That made her laugh. We had fun. We played two hands and by then it was nine thirty and Dad was tired, so we stopped.

Now it is two hours later and I really want to play WoW, but I think I am going to read instead. I am reading the third book in the Twilight series for the second time and things are just starting to get interesting. Anyway, I'll post pictures of my pretty toes once I can get a decent picture of them. :) I don't like shooting at night the lighting is all screwed up and I prefer natural light anyway. Wow, now I am rambling. :) Anyway, love you all tons. And thanks for the great day girls! It feels great to be pampered. :) And I felt great too. The cherry on top. :) Night!

A Happy Birthday, Yea!

Today was a good day. A gift I am sure. I felt aweful yesterday and today I felt so much better it is crazy. Yesterday I had "tummy problems" (take that as you wish) and was nauseated pretty bad. Today was great. I didn't have any problems besides fatigue, but that is just a given everyday occurance.

Tonight Mom, Dad, Joie and I went out to eat to celebrate my birthday. At first I didn't want to go out, but have the money go towards helping people on the trip to Vancouver. But then Dad said something that made me realize that I was using myself as a rug, which isn't right. I cried for a bit and then I figured well, screw it. I'm going to have some fun. So, I did. Thanks dad for giving me advice that I needed. I appreciate it when you do. :)

Also tonight, I was playing World of Warcraft, as I usually do, and came across a character whose name was "Drugged." I told him I liked his name and that since I have cancer drugs are okay. :) I think I kinda took him by surprise. lol. It was pretty much outta the blue. :) Anyways, we ended up spending 3 hours just talking to each other as we quested. It was fun. More fun than just dinking around on my own. Anyway, he has a condition where his body doesn't contain magnesium well at all and so his muscles spasm and hurt. His life has pretty much been ruined by it. We had a lot in common and there for a lot to say. It was a great chat and I look forward to chatting with him again. It made my day compelte. I am totally at peace with my day. No regrets. :) I'm glad. Days that have regrets suck. Well, I am off to bed, regret free. :) Night!

The Unexpected Things in Life

Ya know, I had something unexpected happen to me today. I recieved a card in the mail for my birthday from the last people on the planet I expected it from. It was sweet and reduced me to tears. It was from a few people that I hold very dear to my heart because of the last few years and what they wrote made my day, week, month. I haven't felt that good physically, mentally, or spiritually so it felt great to get that card.

It is amazing at how well God looks after his children and makes sure that someone is always there to say the words that he can't, "I love you and am always there for you." Thanks to all those people that pay attention to and act on the impressions of the spirit. It really makes someone's day, week, month when you do.