SolandMonica.com

Well, I have been wanting to update since the game, but haven’t found the time!  It ws soooooooo much fun!  We were able to connect with Brian at Angel’s Stadium, and he took us (Sol, myself, Bianca and Jeremy) on a tour of places we’ll never get to sit!  It was really fun!  We went down and saw the underground batting cages, the doors of where the owner sits, and the Dugout Seats where we watched batting practice from!  We even touched the dirt!!!  🙂   The game itself was a lot of fun, too!  We stayed all 12 innings and the score kept going back and forth with the Angel’s losing 10-7.  Some football scores aren’t that high!  🙂  Not only was everything paid for (from parking to food), but during the game our entire section won $5 gift certifcates to Claim Jumpers Restaurant!   I was even given a ball signed by Vladimir Guerrero!  How cool is that?!?  it was such a fun time and we were extremely blessed by the Angel’s organization (and Shelley and Lore who, with their daughters, watched Kai).  Thank you Patty, Shelley, Lore and Brian for making this happen for us!  We are so thankful!

Sea World…Kai and I went with Sunshine and Madison to Sea World on Thursday!  It was so much fun!  Kai was in such a great mood and loved every single minute we were there!  He was so interactive with the shows and even was clapping and cheering for Shamu to splash everyone!  He loved feeding and petting the dolphins and bat rays, as well as seeing the sea lions, otters, penguins, polar bears, baluga whales and all the fish!  He was captivated by it all and will tell you all about it (complete with hand motions) if you ask him!  It was a great day and I am so thankful for feeling well enough to spend such quality time with him exploring the world of the oceans!  It was a precious gift to share that day with him.

Tonight I had a girls movie night with Laura and Dawn, and we saw “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2”.  Laura and I had seen the first one together as well.  Cute movie and a fun night of popcorn, soda, peanut M & Ms and a chick flick…my favorite things!   

Thank you so much for praying that the bone pain would go away.  I felt pretty good both days and was able to really enjoy them fully!  Please pray as next week approaches that my white blood cell count would be high enough that they would be able to give me chemo and not have to give me any shots afterwards!  Wouldn’t that be wonderful!

I hope this finds you all well and enjoying time with your own families and friends!

Love you and good night! 

Monica

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The big news for today is that my hair is starting to fall out.  I am so bummed about it!  I was fine last time, but going through it again really makes it harder.  It has been growing now for 6 months and is finally at a point where I can style it.  Now it’s going away again.  At least I have a bazillion cute hats to cover my bald head. 

Today I felt well all day and even spent time in the pool with Kai at, his friend, Madison’s 2nd birthday party.  It was really fun to play with him in the water.  Sol asked him if he was swimming and his reply was, “No, I hitting people!”  with a huge smile on his face.  The other kids were so friendly with him and didn’t mind being swatted with a noodle!  🙂 

Thanks for all of your prayers.  Kai is sleeping better and longer, and my side-effects are at bay for now!  🙂  It has been a good few days for me.

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Hello Friends,

Sol, Kai and I are walking this weekend in the 24-hour Relay for Life.  It was kind of a last minute decision.  All the money raised for this event will go to the American Cancer Society (ACS).  It is not for any specific cancer, but rather for them all and the support that cancer patients have all received from ACS.  Just this one event will raise more than $100,000!   

Join us at Cal High on Saturday from 3-4 pm as we walk the track.  We are really excited about participating in this event, and wanted to let you know that we would love to have you join us for an hour or so.  We’ve heard that this walk is a time of hanging out and showing support.  🙂  If you can’t make it at that time, please come any time to hang out, play games, eat food, enjoy live music.  I’ll be there from 9 am Saturday to 9 am Sunday.  The survivor lap is at 9 am on Saturday, and I’m really looking forward to that.  I feel this is going to be a time of healing for me as I let it sink in that I am a survivor!  Could this walk have come at a better time?  

I know that this is pretty last minute, but we wanted to let you know!  Maybe we’ll see some of you on Saturday!  😉

Please know that it is really important to me that Monica’s Mamo Mamas make their goal of $10,000.  Thank you to those of you who have already supported them!  (Click hereto give them your support.)   They will be walking in the 3-day Susan G. Komen walk in San Francisco!  Good luck on those torturous hills!  😉

Love,

Monica

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Well first of all, I want to describe picking up my mom and Kai at the airport. We were so nervous that he would be mad at us, but as he came down the escalator he was all smiles. He said, “Dadoo” and “Mommy”. As he jumped off the escalator, Sol picked him up, and we stole some much needed and longed for hugs. That was all we got, as he was much more interested in going up and down on the escalators and petting the little doggie that was there. He was the same happy little boy but with a larger vocabulary.

The weekend with my sister, Karen, and my mom was really fun. It wasn’t all that active, but hanging out was just what we needed to do. On Friday, Karen and I did girly things. We had our fingernails and toenails painted and watched chick flicks. On Saturday, we continued our girl time by going to a movie and shopping.  My cousin, Rachyl, hung out with us on Saturday night, we played games and had such a good time.  On Monday, we walked to breakfast and then went to visit my grandma in Santa Ana before dropping my mom off at the airport.  Kai had a hard time saying goodbye to Grammie; he’s really going to miss her.

I really missed all of the joy that Kai brought to our home.  One of Kai’s favorite sayings now is “I did it!” He said it for the first time in the bath tub as he used hooked a plastic boat and fish onto the fishing pole dadoo was holding. He thrust his fists in the air and proudly declared his independence, “I did it!” The rest of the weekend was full of cute things like putting his Cookie Monster to bed, taking Cookie to the potty, shifting his plate from Grammie to Mommy when he realized that Grammie’s ice cream was gone but Mommy still had some to share, watching (only inches away) a caterpillar crawl around, kicking his soccer ball around the concrete “yard” and just being curious about EVERYTHING!  It was so good to have him home.

This morning, Karen took Kai to daycare as we left at 6:15 for our 9:30 appointment.  (Is LA traffic horrible?)  We had some time before the appointment, so we went to breakfast and talked through all of the questions that we wanted to ask.  It was helpful.  We finally got to the appointment and waited as he looked over all the reports, films, scans and slides that we brought with us.  Great news…the CT last week showed nothing…it was clean!!!  In asking our questions, he never really gave us a straight black and white answer.  I think this is because there is still so little known, even the experts only see 4-5 angiosarcoma patients a year, that the causes and effective treatments are uncertain.  After talking to him for almost 2 hours, we walked out of the office with these comclusions:

1. Radiation is a “reasonable proposition”

2. More Chemo?  – “hard question, probably not now”

3. CT scans every 3 months.

4. Eat a generally healthy diet – leafy greens, fiber, limited red meat.

5. Recurrence risk is high, but we’re hoping that it doesn’t come back, but if it does, we’ll tackle it then.

So the plan is to proceed with radiation and do CT scans every 3 months to detect anything should it arise.  So in essence, the plan remains the same.

I have to run to a dentist’s appointment, but I’ll write more about how this makes me feel later.  Thank you for all of your prayers and concern.  You are all so wonderful!

Monica

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  Well, I finally did it.   I purchased a wig.  It might sound a little strange, but I was fine being bald.  It’s the awkward stages of growing it out that frighten me.  So here it is… LONG and Blonde! 

 I had blood drawn today for surgery.  Nothing to report, just a step closer to the big day.  Anyway, Sol and I are going out tonight.  The last free night we have before surgery.   Thank you, Catt for babysitting!  🙂  We really appreciate it! 

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Thanks to everyone who voted in Round 1 of the Star 98.7 Rock Star radio contest! Because of you and your votes, we have moved up to Round 2 out of 175 bands that were eligible at entry. It’s down to only 25 bands now.

This is great news, but now we really need to kick it up a notch. The band with the most votes in Round 2 will compete with 4 other bands picked by the judges for the grand prize. The winner gets a record deal with Dave Matthews’ label ATO Records, $25,000, and a West Coast tour.

The voting process is exactly the same as it was before. The main catch is: you have to “confirm” your vote by opening your email and clicking on a link in a response email that the radio station sends you. Your vote doesn’ t count unless you click on the link in the response email!

Anyways, here’ s the link to the radio station contest:
http://www.star987.com/pages/rockstar2/vote2008.html

We are the 10th band from the top of the page.

Again, all your support is greatly appreciated. Please do what you can to get the word out to anyone you know who might be vaguely interested in helping out. And if you have more than one email address, or if your household has more than one email address, be sure to vote with all of them. Each valid email address gets counted as a vote. Thanks so much!

INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO VOTE AGAIN:
After you confirm the response email, the web page with the poll to vote will no longer contain the poll “circles” to make another selection; even if someone else besides you voted on that computer! In order to vote again, you either have to use a different computer, use a different browser like Firefox, or clear your “cookie” files.I’ve tested the process of clearing your “cookie” files and I know it works. It’s a good house cleaning thing to do on your computer anyways, so if you want to know how to do it here are the instructions:

How to manually delete cookie files in Internet Explorer 7

1. Exit Internet Explorer 7, and then exit any instances of Windows Explorer.
2. Click Start, click Run, type inetcpl.cpl, and then press ENTER.
3. On the General tab, click Delete under Browsing History in the Internet Properties dialog box.
4. In the Delete Browsing History dialog box, click Delete Cookies.
5. In the Delete Cookies dialog box, click Yes.

How to manually delete cookie files in Internet Explorer 6

1. Exit Internet Explorer 6, and then exit any instances of Windows Explorer.
2. Click Start, click Run, type inetcpl.cpl, and then press ENTER.
3. On the General tab, click Delete Cookies in the Internet Properties dialog box, under Temporary Internet Files.
4. In the Delete Files dialog box, click to select the Delete all offline content check box, and then click OK.

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A quick update about my band:

The CD release party went well on Wednesday.  Thanks to everyone that came, we had a really good time.  The new CD is now available as mp3s and in CD format.  It’s called “Leaves Change in the Fall”.  If you’d like to listen to snippets of the music you can click on this link.  Here are also links to buy the music from iTunes for mp3s and CDbaby for a CD if you’re interested:

Leaves Change in the Fall		Deep Roots

The other CD is call “Deep Roots”.  It was our first CD and has a beautiful song called “Prayers that Follow” that was originally done as a short out-take, but that seems very appropriate these days.  You can listen to it on iTunes or from this link (it’s the last song on the page). 

I also wanted to thank everyone for voting for our video. The radio station hasn’t posted any updates or rankings so I don’t really know how it’s going, but I’ll keep checking and I’ll let everyone know if there are any updates on that. I’ll also probably make another big push for eveyone to vote again before the deadline! 😉

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 A very special thing has been done for me.  Arlie Ankerberg, my pastor’s wife, has graciously given me a precious gift to share with all of you. 

 They are flat metal rings with the inscription “Monica’s Inner Circle” on them.  They come on black necklaces, but can be put onto keychains or worn around the wrist.  It is a reminder to pray and is also a token of our appreciation for all the prayers you have already said for us.  I have MANY of them and really want you all to have them.  The cost would be great for me to ship them to all of you, so I am asking those of you who want one to send me a self-addressed, stamped envelope, and I will send you as many as you request.  Here is our address for those of you who do not have it already: 

We really do appreciate all your prayers and support.

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On top of all the instruction I gave in the posting below (or the last email for those of you who get the email updates) after you confirm the response email, the web page with the poll to vote will no longer contain the poll circles to make a selection.  In order to vote again, you either have to use a different computer, use a different browser like Firefox, or clear your temporary internet files.  If you need help deleting your temporary internet files, click on this link to automagically search Google.

Thanks again, and just in case here’s the link to the voting page once more:
http://star987.com/cc-common/mainheadlines3.html?feed=216310&article=2403680

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Thanks to everyone who checked out our video.  It helped put us in the running for the official voting which starts today.  Now is when we really need your help.  Round 1 for voting starts today Dec. 3 and goes until Jan 2. 

It’s very simple to vote.  All you have to do is go to the radio station website, choose our song entitled “Seriously” (which is about halfway down the page), input your email address at the bottom of the page, and press the “Vote” submit button. There  is only 1 vote per email address.  However, if you have more than one email address you could vote once for each email address that you have.  Good thing I have several email addresses. 😉

Here’s the catch:  you have to “confirm” your vote by opening your email and clicking on a link in a response email that the radio station sends you.  Your vote doesn’t count unless you click on the link in the response email!

Anyways, here’s the link to the radio station contest:
http://star987.com/cc-common/mainheadlines3.html?feed=216310&article=2403680

All your support is greatly appreciated.  Don’t be shy about sharing this link with other people too!  If you have any questions, please let me know.   Thanks!

P.S.  The bands are listed in alphabetical order on the voting page.  The name of my band is Greenleaf Avenue (like the street in Whittier that we live on!).  Here’s a sample of what the listings on the voting page look like:

Gazz – Gazz 

Sell You Something – George Hartline 

Confused – Ghosts On The Radio 

Manipulation – Greenhouse Effect 

Seriously – Greenleaf Avenue 

Hannah Ford – Hannah Ford 

The Hazard Band – HAZARD

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