Cancer News

My grandmother just got back from the doctor's and the cancer is non invasive. It didn't spread anywhere else!

Nocturnal Torture

Today is the funeral for my cousin, Kenneth Proctor, and I arrived last night from a day of travel. I'm trying to stay in PST (West Coast) so that I can still function when I return home next week. Unfortunately, the dog (Benji) and cat (Mystique) of the house have found a new play toy: my sanity.

1am EST (10pm PST): It begins

3:15 EST: No rest for the wicked...or the cuddles

I assumed that Benji (the dog) needed to go to the bathroom, so I let him out. While attempting to let him back in, Mystique (the cat) ran outside too. The chase was on...

Once I finally tricked them back into getting inside, I tried to go back to sleep. It was a futile effort.

4am: Mystique and Benji took turns taking over my spot on the couch

5am: Benji was at it again

6am: Morning came and my alarm was persistent

It's going to be a long day.....

Faith in Humanity Restored

So, as some of you may have heard, 13 people died this week in the Navy Yard Shooting. This is located in my hometown of Washington, DC and one of my cousins, Kenneth Proctor, was shot and killed. As I am currently residing in the other Washington (Seattle), I was unable to make plans to visit for the funeral due to the expediency of the tragedy and having already booked a flight for the October.

 My job allowed me a bereavement day on Tuesday, which I spent calling my family and offering to help in any way possible though I knew that there was little I could do. I set up SKYPE chats for the weekend so that I could at least have my face seen by the family.

On top of this, my grandmother was going into surgery on Thursday to remove the breast cancer from her mammary duct. My mother was taking off work to go with her to the surgery since she was understands whats ahead. My mother has have multiple surgeries for breast cancer removal and I had a similar surgery not long after I turned 18 for a removal of a lump the size of a tangerine that was found. Needless to say, when it rains, it pours. However, on Friday, in a strange turn of event, my company became my personal BAMF.

I was pulled out of a meeting and walked down to HR. I panicked because I thought that I had done something wrong, though I was assured that it was not the case, but they wouldn't tell me what was going on. I had resigned to myself that I was getting fired.....

As I waited for the other shoe to drop, I was informed that one of the core values at my job was family, and that they were saddened by the turn of events in my life.

I assumed I was going to get another bereavement day, or they were going to offer to send flowers to my family since I couldn't be there. And then the other shoe dropped. They understood that financially I couldn't reschedule my ticket but they wanted to pay for the change.

So I'm leaving Tuesday morning to fly home for the funeral. It includes 4 days of PTO (instead of the 2 days I was going to originally take when I went home in October), a paid flight (they didn't end of changing my tickets, so I have to figure out what to do with that) and they did this all without any request from me.

Apparently, good people still exist in the world.