Family Sessions

🎗20 Years Cancer-Free Today!🎗

Hello, friends! I was hoping to make a bit of a longer post explaining what is going on but I feel like crap and things got moved up, so long story short, I am having surgery to have my gallbladder removed on Monday afternoon. While I've had a ton of fun this summer, my relationship with food and with my body has been pretty terrible, if I'm being honest. After things got really bad and I went to urgent care and the ER in the same week after Labor Day, we figured things out and I've been working to get things scheduled. The surgery wasn't going to happen until November 19th and then plans to move it up were made yesterday at 3:30pm. I dropped about 10 pounds between June 1 and August 1 this year, and have dropped about 18 pounds since this time last year at this time (completely unintentional - I was actually working on gaining weight and doing pretty well with it, so I'm pretty devastated to lose all that progress) but here we are. It's a pretty simple procedure. I'll be home Monday night. I'm terrified because of past medical trauma and the fact that I haven't had any surgeries since getting my port removed at the end of my chemo treatments when I was 7 or 8 years old. But, I'm VERY ready to start feeling better. My parents will be up here for at least the next week and a half and I'm not sure what my recovery will look like exactly (and I know people will want to help, but I'm just not sure what I will need right now. I'll probably post how I'm doing and what I'll need as things go on). My mom has agreed to send out updates to a text group and an email group, so if you want those next Monday/Tuesday, comment here or message me with how you want to get updates (and contact info) by Monday at 11am and I will get everything set up. I'll probably be using these as well - at least for next week. Please let my mom send out messages as she sees fit (I love you all and I personally don't mind people reaching out to me personally asking for updates, but I want to minimize that in these groups. There likely won't be a ton of updates, but some have asked for them. Would appreciate any good vibes, love and prayers on Monday ❤️

Guess it had to happen eventually with the amount of things I've been doing outside. This happened at the end of July and is a little out of order, but I'm really behind with pictures. While camping in Ouray, a black bear entered our campground in the very early hours one morning. The guys in our group got up to check things out and eventually got the bear to go away. All of our food was locked up and away from camp. No food or anything that would attract any wildlife was in our tents. While we were out of camp later that day, the bear came back (we can only assume it was the same one), made a couple of good-sized tears in my tent, and pulled things out. It pulled my duffle bag out, but didn't try to get into it and pulled my sleeping bag partially out. There wasn't any gum, lotion, lip balm or any toiletries in the tent. The bear messed with a couple of other things in camp but didn't destroy anything. It seemed obvious the bear didn't find what it was hoping for. We still had one more night of camping, but we decided to move to a different camping spot. As we were leaving the campground, we learned that two other campsites had been visited by a bear that day. It could have been something as simple as the campers before us maybe set up their cooking station where my tent was, but I really think that bear has been fed by people on multiple occasions. Please, please, please don't feed the wildlife! Don't leave food for them, don't leave your trash. This teaches them abnormal behavior and can lead to the bear attacking a pet or a person. They're getting ready to hibernate again and are searching for food. Leave them be. If a bear notices you and starts to approach, make yourself look as big as possible and make noise. Back away slowly and don't run. If you see a bear and it doesn't notice you, back away slowly in the direction from which you came. Respect all living things while enjoying the outdoors. If you have an experience with any problematic wildlife, report it to the Parks and Wildlife office for the region (CO)- All states have their own agencies that handle those types of reports, which can be found online). Also, sometimes shit just happens.