Victoria Wedding Photographer – Kathy Paton

it’s only the beginning of december but after last weekends huge dump of snow, i can honestly say that i’ve had enough of it already. now let’s move on with our typical west coast winter, rain and more rain.

but i think that mother nature has other plans because it’s snowing again today. not as much as last weekend but the day is not over yet. doesn’t ‘she’ know that i have plans for today? outside! doesn’t ‘she’ realize that snow wasn’t in those plans? like getting our christmas tree and taking our family picture for the christmas cards. geesh!

ok, my little rant is over. for now anyway! i may be back later if this keeps up!

rewind to last weekend: it began snowing on saturday and stopped on sunday night. 20 inches of the white stuff on the ground by the time it finished. the rain began falling on sunday night and stopped monday afternoon. by the end of monday, ALL the snow was gone! ALL of it! flooding and power outages everywhere!

a few pictures from last saturday. derek was like a little kid using his new snowblower. he was out there every couple of hours.

the mri results came back today. emily has a "lesion that most likely represents a benign nerve sheath tumor of the tibial nerve". these are also known as schwannomas. everything else appeared intact and normal. it needs to be removed surgically but we don’t have a date yet. i’m so releived that the report came in today and now i don’t have to worry about it over the weekend.

thank you so much to everyone who phoned, emailed and left comments. i truly appreciate your love, support and positive thoughts more than you know! you are all very special people to me!

this picture was taken back in november. i took em and ty out one afternoon for a mini shoot and i still haven’t finished editing. ugh! but i am happy to report that my to-do list is looking much better these days!

back in july, emily sprained her ankle while running at the beach one day. i took her to the clinic when i got home to have it checked out. nothing serious, just keep ice on it was all the doctor said.

about a week or so later, she developed a lump just behind her ankle bone on her right foot. it doesn’t bother her to walk on it but it is painful if bumped or poked. so, i took her to our family doctor the first week of september. he sent her for xrays, just to make sure the bones weren’t damaged. the xray showed nothing at all so he then sent us for an ultrasound. he’s thinking it’s most likely just a ganglion but wanted to be sure.

the ultrasound was booked for the first week in november. it showed that the lump was actually a solid tumor and an mri was recommended asap.  i am very fortunate, working in the lab, to have access to some of the best pathology experts in our province. these pathologists are the doctors that actually determine the disease state from biopsy samples and diagnosis patients for physicians. i sat down last week with one of our best pathologists and he went through the ultrasound report with me. 3 out of the 4 differential diagnosis for this tumour are benign and don’t pose any serious threat to emily at all. the fourth would be the worst case scenario, which is cancer, if the tumour is attached to the bone. it doesn’t appear to be attached to anything from the ultrasound but an mri was recommended to confirm.

so, this afternoon, emily had the mri on her ankle. she did extremely well considering she had to lay there completely still for about 40 minutes. after 20 minutes into the scanning, the tech called me out of the room to tell me that they were going to have to inject the paramagnetic contrast agent, which provides a high sensitivity for detection of vascular tissues, such as tumours. emily HATES needles! she freaked out, began crying and begging me to not let them poke her. i can’t tell you how hard it was to listen to her pleading with me, to not let them put an i.v. into her arm. i calmly explained that she needed to allow them to proceed so that we can find out what this lump on her ankle really is. she was such a trooper. thank god for topical anesthetic! we will get the final report in 4 to 5 days.

regardless of the outcome, the tumour will be removed. the doctors figure it will  begin to cause her grief eventually, because she is a dancer.i am trying very hard to remain positive but i know this whole thing has been weighing on me heavily. whatever it turns out to be, we will deal with it as it comes.  one day at a time.

with my daughter.

flash fired. bounced off wall/ceiling.

even though it’s out of focus, i LOVE it! i need to capture more of these!

december is yet another month that is full of birthdays for me.

and the most special one belongs to my wonderful husband, derek! we celebrated his 41st birthday on monday. i had planned a full course roast beef dinner, complete with yorkshire pudding and all… but because of the storm, we lost our power (for about 8 hours) so we ended up at a restaurant for his birthday feast.

so, what do you get a guy on his birthday who has pretty much everything he already wants an needs?

you get him a new remote control for the t.v. in his workshop! a remote that he should NEVER lose! again! ever!

the worst part of his birthday was that he ended up getting food poisoning from his meal and was sick for the better part of the night, poor guy!

i have been pretty lame with the blog posts lately. i have lots to post about, i just haven’t had time to post. seems to be an epidemic around here… not having enough time. now that emily’s play is over, i am really going to try to make a true effort to post more often.