"It's So Much Fun Not Knowin Where You're Goin" Oct. 2013 Celebration! **6/22 FIN**

Great news! :yay: I hope everything goes well with your radiation treatments and that the side effects are not too bad for you. I look forward to your updates of how it is going! We will all be here when you get back to your TR updates. :thumbsup2
 
I have to admit, I was reading this very carefully, first scanning when I spotted "Mr. Cool smiley" which let me know this was GOOD NEWS!

Obviously it's always best to not get too far ahead of yourself but this is great to hear Amber. :flower3:

It certainly goes without saying that TR updates are very unimportant in relation to getting healthy so make sure you focus on that! We'll be here to read along whenever you're feeling up to it. But please do give some updates as you can on your progress. :goodvibes
 
Great news! :yay: I hope everything goes well with your radiation treatments and that the side effects are not too bad for you. I look forward to your updates of how it is going! We will all be here when you get back to your TR updates. :thumbsup2

Thank you! :) I really hope so too. And I will give the updates when I get used to it because while I'm doing treatments I'll be staying with my Aunt instead of at home because she lives so close to the treatment center. Like I said, I'm still going to do my best to keep up on TR updates and will hopefully post one tomorrow :thumbsup2


I have to admit, I was reading this very carefully, first scanning when I spotted "Mr. Cool smiley" which let me know this was GOOD NEWS!

Obviously it's always best to not get too far ahead of yourself but this is great to hear Amber. :flower3:

It certainly goes without saying that TR updates are very unimportant in relation to getting healthy so make sure you focus on that! We'll be here to read along whenever you're feeling up to it. But please do give some updates as you can on your progress. :goodvibes

Thanks, Rob. I added Mr. Cool smiley because I worried that if it was all a wall of text people might be a little anxious :thumbsup2

Yeah, I know but I love going through my trip and organizing the photos and reliving it. So, that's why I'll probably still try and do them no matter what happens with the radiation. But I will definitely post some updates, so that it won't be like "We haven't heard from her in forever... :scared:" No need to do that to anyone.
 
Day 2, Part 1: "I'll pray for you!"

So we set our alarm at 8:00 to try and get up somewhat early and get going. Unfortunately, that isn't what happened. Instead, we ended up snoozing until 8:15 and then again until 8:45.

At that point we finally got up, got dressed and left thr room close to 9 with a couple of granola bars and packs of fruit snacks to tide us over until lunch. We got into line and apparently got on a bus pretty quickly since I don't have notes that say otherwise.

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Here I am, on the bus and ready to go!

We ended up talking to a nice couple who was great and said that her husband had just finished chemo. In fact, when we got off the bus, she came up to me, took my hand and told me that she'd pray for me and hoped that I would get better. I returned the wishes to her husband and told her to have a good day.

Then we headed toward our park choice of the day.

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Animal Kingdom!

Since the day before we hadn't been able to get our annual pass, we headed straight to up to the ticketing counter and got into a line that was maybe 4 or 5 people long. It still took a while but we managed to get up there and get our Annual Passes, after which they took our KTTW cards away from us. (Foreshadowing? Definitely)

Then Marie had to get things put away so where does she park me?

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Right in front of a trash can. It'd become her favorite spot to leave me.

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I captured a bird walking by me, not very well. But here it is, just chillin.

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Look! Now we've got our fancy Passholder book! I read through it while we went ahead and headed over to the first FP+ activity of the day.

Since it was only between 9:35 and 10:35, we did hurry a bit since it had taken a while at guest services.

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This is the only picture I have of our whole trip over to use our FP+. Even to get on the ride.

So, I'll let you know that we're going on Safari! Did you know they have a special truck just for the handicapped? You load at a different area and it's all handicapped guests with their families.

We had an awesome host named Heather. So, without further ado, look at some animal pictures!

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Hippos!

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I wouldn't want to fall in there.

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A giraffe hides here.

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Day 2, Part 2: Finishing the safari

Okay, this whole update is just to finish safari ;) So if that's not your cup of tea, feel free to skip it.

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No animals out this time :(

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Little elephant.

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More elephants!

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I dunno why but I always think this part is so pretty!

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I mean, look at it.

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We got the lion this time! Though he didn't look at us.

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There was a lioness but she ran away. Oh well.

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Baby rhino!

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Rhino is stealthy

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Curly horns!

And thus concludes our safari. You may now return to your regularly scheduled Trip Report.

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In my defense, not many people hang by in front of trash cans, so it was an easy spot to get into with the knowledge that we wouldn't be in the way XD
 
Aww what a sweet interaction with that couple on the bus. That is such a nice story. You look adorable with your bow too.

Hmm, they took your KTTW cards away? Interesting.

:rotfl2: I don't know why I found that funny that Marie parked you by the trashcan.

In my defense, not many people hang by in front of trash cans, so it was an easy spot to get into with the knowledge that we wouldn't be in the way XD

See that makes sense. But it's still funny. ;)

Haha, I know why that Safari island looks so pretty. It's shaped like a Mickey Head! :mickeyjum
 


In my defense, not many people hang by in front of trash cans, so it was an easy spot to get into with the knowledge that we wouldn't be in the way XD

Still! Not cool.

Aww what a sweet interaction with that couple on the bus. That is such a nice story. You look adorable with your bow too.

Hmm, they took your KTTW cards away? Interesting.

:rotfl2: I don't know why I found that funny that Marie parked you by the trashcan.

See that makes sense. But it's still funny. ;)

Haha, I know why that Safari island looks so pretty. It's shaped like a Mickey Head! :mickeyjum

Aww, thanks Rob :) I do love my bows, I'm very happy with them and actually in the next update, I'm going to talk about it.

Yes, they took them away. As I said, it's going to be important later.

I didn't find it funny, but Marie laughed when I kept pointing it out.

That must be it! It's just so lovely it makes me want to dance like Mr. Cool Smiley :cool1:
 
Having fun reading your TR! First of all, congrats on the good news! I will keep you in my prayers that you find out after the CATscan and treatments that you are cancer free pixiedust:

I too had to chuckle when you pointed out that Marie's fav spot to park you was in front of the trash cans only because that's where my family tells me to stand when they are heading to get FP's lol Hope your annual passes work and you don't have to retrieve your KTTW cards.......
 
Having fun reading your TR! First of all, congrats on the good news! I will keep you in my prayers that you find out after the CATscan and treatments that you are cancer free pixiedust:

I too had to chuckle when you pointed out that Marie's fav spot to park you was in front of the trash cans only because that's where my family tells me to stand when they are heading to get FP's lol Hope your annual passes work and you don't have to retrieve your KTTW cards.......

Thank you! :)

Well, I guess it is easy to find people there. But it isn't always the most pleasant smelling place to be next to :rotfl:

Well, we'll find out about our KTTW cards right in the next post.
 
Day 2, Part 3: "That smells delicious!"



So now that we were done with Safari, we decided that it was time to eat food. So where did we go? None other than the most delicious smelling place in Animal Kingdom! Flame Tree Barbeque! Last year, I'd wanted to go and Marie had us go to Pizzafari instead, so this year she promised we'd go.

The lines were insane, so Marie got in one and I made my way over to a pin trading board right by one of the seating areas to look at all the different pins and among them I found a Carl Fredrickson pin, so of course I snatched that up.

Meanwhile, Marie was having bad luck. See, although we'd used our magic bands to access our FP+ reservation not even 30 minutes earlier, it was completely deactivated toward charging, room opening, and snack planning. Given that they hadn't given us back our KTTW card, we couldn't use it either. Instead, Marie had to charge the whole total to her credit card at a whopping $45.00. Oops.

We went to find a place to sit and a nice employee helped to carry my tray and took us all the way down to the best seating area out there.

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We both got the same thing.

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Chicken and rib combo with chocolate mousse and grapes.

I don't like ribs but I figured I'd give them to Marie if she was still hungry. Don't worry, that wasn't a problem.

We were sitting right down by the water at a table right at the edge of the deck.

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So we had a beautiful view of Expedition Everest, listening to the screams of all the riders and enjoying our meal.

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And we saw this little guy when we looked over the edge into the water. Yet another reason as to why I won't move to Florida :P

Once we were done we had to head to Guest Relations in order to try and get the mess undone. However, when we got there we were told that we had to fix it at our resort. They did, however print us new KTTW cards.

After that, we went to wait in the shade because we were supposed to be meeting up with Hayley of Magical Ribbons fame. See, we had ordered some bows and had free shipping on them, so we'd decided just to meet up with her while we were down there. She picked Saturday since she had another delivery to make in Animal Kingdom.

Plus it was nice to just sit in the shade and do some people and animal watching.

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Look at this poor little birdy :( It was injured and couldn't walk on its other foot.

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Other birds were behind the fence.

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The injured bird ran away from everyone else but kept getting closer to us.

After that we had a quick meet with Hayley who gave us our bow order and then made plans to meet up with us at Magic Kingdom that night.

Bows in hand, we made our way over to meet some of my favorite characters, Pooh and Tigger!

A super great cast member named Amanda was waiting out at the front and I traded her for a Lightning McQueen pin and chatted a little bit before we headed down the line to meet the big celebrities.

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I love Poohbear.

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Look at him! He's such a cutie.

As you'll notice, he's closer to me than Marie and he'd given me extra hugs. This would become a pattern over the course of our trip. Poor Marie, though there would be some exceptions.

And of course we had to get his autograph, which was what was in my hand. Last year we didn't do autographs but this year, we decided that it was the a good idea.

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So here we are getting one from Tigger.

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Tigger was better at giving both me and Marie a hug. But he gave me an extra one after that.

Once that was finished, we went over to Expedition Everest because we had a FP+ reservation from 12:50 to 1:50.

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We ended up in the very back and got to see the Yeti. Well, I did. Marie was scared so she closed her eyes. It was adorable!

Since we were headed to It's Tough to be a Bug, we walked past the meeting place of Dug and Russell and decided, we might as well get in line.

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Russell was very friendly and he flirted with me a lot. He flirted with some other girls and tried to leave with them too! That Russell.

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Dug likes to get pets on his nose and ears.

Both he and Russell signed their names with lots of hearts. I'll add pictures of the autograph book at the end for you to see :P

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Note Russell holding my hand. That boy.

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It was a 'yay!' for my celebration button, which Russell had noted and wanted to make sure everyone knew.

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This one is one of my favorites, despite the fact that it's all blurry.

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Mmm Flame Tree. One of the absolute best QS locations in Disney. Yum!

And what a great seating location looking over at my precious AKA Everest.

HOLY COW!!!!!! Alligator sighting. Well, it IS Animal Kingdom after all.

Aww Pooh. I assume the characters are more or less the same in "texture", but I always find Pooh to be so much softer than the others. Great for a hug. :hug:
 
Great updates! We really fell in love with AK this year, and it looks like you two were having a great time there too! :woohoo:

What a shame about the Magic Band glitches. I suppose it's bound to happen as they are so new, but I can see how it would be pretty frustrating when you're trying to buy a meal!
 
Getting caught up on your updates! We also had an AWESOME Safari driver named Heather on our trip...I wonder if its the same one? I think we got a picture with her, so I'll have to post it on my TR. :goodvibes

What sweet interactions and pictures with the characters. :hug: Gotta love that Disney magic.
 
Mmm Flame Tree. One of the absolute best QS locations in Disney. Yum!

And what a great seating location looking over at my precious AKA Everest.

HOLY COW!!!!!! Alligator sighting. Well, it IS Animal Kingdom after all.

Aww Pooh. I assume the characters are more or less the same in "texture", but I always find Pooh to be so much softer than the others. Great for a hug. :hug:

I actually didn't enjoy it as much as I thought that it would be.

It was pretty awesome to have such a great view with such great background screams ;)

Marie didn't believe me at first, I had to show her and she still didn't believe me so I had to zoom in extra close on the picture.

Pooh is so much softer! Well, except for Duffy. I think Pooh and Duffy are the softest ever. I love hugging them most.

Great updates! We really fell in love with AK this year, and it looks like you two were having a great time there too! :woohoo:

What a shame about the Magic Band glitches. I suppose it's bound to happen as they are so new, but I can see how it would be pretty frustrating when you're trying to buy a meal!

Thank you :) And we were having a great time at AK, much more than last time. I guess we were just feeling the magic :wizard:

Yeah, it definitely caused a damper on the situation :( And all the lost time that we had to spend trying to get things fixed. Ugh :sad2:

Great character meet and greets! Also, I love the view from Flame Tree BBQ seating too.

Thank you, it was pretty awesome :thumbsup2

Getting caught up on your updates! We also had an AWESOME Safari driver named Heather on our trip...I wonder if its the same one? I think we got a picture with her, so I'll have to post it on my TR. :goodvibes

What sweet interactions and pictures with the characters. :hug: Gotta love that Disney magic.

You definitely do! I wanted to get a picture with her but forgot :headache: But I know I'd recognize her if I saw her.

It was great character magic, I'm so glad that I got it :hug:
 
Real Life Update 2

Alright, so I'd called my doctor that I'd meant with about radiation after not hearing back for over a week and I got some news.

It seems that there were some complications with the PETscan with viewing it and when it compared to the CATscan I had it didn't quite match up. Basically, they think that there still might be some cancerous activity. They aren't sure yet but for now radiation is on hold indefinitely.

If there is some activity still, they will end up going in and doing a biopsy. This scares me because after my last one is when I went into a coma for two weeks. And I know that was a different set of circumstances but, I can't help but fear it all still. I just wanna run back to Disney and hide from all of this because it was supposed to be radiation and done and now there might not be that. Who knows what the timeline could be if I do need that biopsy but it will mess with the trip that I was planning to Canada for three weeks.

To make things more difficult, Marie had to leave today. She'd been on leave of absence for 6 months with her job, so it was time for her to go back. She's just been around for all of the treatments, so being without her is super difficult. Especially given that I don't know anymore when or how long I'll be able to see her with this new time table.

When I get more news I will go ahead and share it. I hope that this whole thing is just a fluke and things can get started in a timely enough manner that I will be able to go to Canada for a week or something in January.

I'll try and update soon. Thanks everyone for sticking with me, it means a lot.


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Amber, I am so sorry to hear this obviously. Believe me I am praying for the absolute best for you. :flower3: Stay strong!!!
 
So sorry to hear your news Amber, but be very disheartening .... just try to stay strong and draw strength from everyone you can ... and remember, see what a little wishin' can do?

Will definitely be praying for you
 
Real Life Update 3

Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry for how long that I've been away! A lot has happened in the past two-ish months and I just wasn't always in the best of places.

I had radiation which started on December 12th, after they found out there was nothing else to be worried about. I had to have 17 treatments and due to the way that things worked out with the polar vortex of doom (-15F temperatures anyone?) and machine problems, twice I didn't get to go on top of the whole Christmas and New Years days off. So I finished radiation at January 9th. It was a painful and tiring process and I'm glad to be over with it.

I have another PETscan in March to see if I'm cleared officially but given how well the last one went, it's all but certain I'll be in remission for sure!

I'm in Canada at the moment, visiting Marie. I left for her house on the 10th and I'm here to the 28th, which is another reason I've been away. However, she's got work and I have time so despite not having my trip journal with me at the moment, I think I'll be able to write it from memory.

Also, if anyone is interested in seeing a picture progression of how I've changed from start to finish, you can find one here. And click on each of the pictures to make them bigger and get information at the bottom about what stages I was at. I'd just post it, but I'm sure some of you have no interest in seeing what it looks like to go through everything and I don't blame you.

I hope to write an update right now so, hold on :)

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