24 Hours Left

Today, Amy Jo is off to Kansas City to take care of business at work before she checks in at the hospital tomorrow morning.  She baked cookies for her advisory class (NO...she will NOT be teaching today!) and gathered up some materials for her subsitute teachers to ease them into covering for her at work during her recovery.  Her students know something is wrong, but they haven't been told yet about Tumzilla.  She plans to tell them today herself rather than letting them find out through the St. Teresa's rumor mill. 

The staff and administration at school, of course, were told last week.  The support has been incredible.  The principals, fellow teachers and staff are making things as easy as possible for Amy, and it appears that everyone is gearing up to make her recovery as stress free as possible.  Any one who knows Amy understands that her job is her life...and Amy has been so sick the past 6 months (without a diagnosis) that she's been feeling guilty about losing passion for her students, her athletes and her work life in general.  The fact that her brain was getting squished to smithereens inside her skull by a large foreign object is no excuse.  Amy is not used to making excuses at work.  She is used to performing and doing a good job, so this entire year (in hindsight) has been, (her words) "torture" for Amy.  Since just getting out of bed without having a blindness episode, dizzy spell, falling down or tremendous headache each day takes such effort, it's understandable that she would lose some passion.  For us at least.  Amy, of course, is still concerned about her students.  Go figure.

When she is done taking care of business at work, she'll head to her sister Aarons house to spend her last night with Tumzilla and her family.  Her mother and sisters will transport her to KU medical center at the crack of dawn and Heather and I will be hanging around too.

Before I sign off for the day, I want to mention one of her best friends Heather MacIntosh.  For those of you who don't know Heather, Amy and she have been the best of friends after meeting at St. Teresa's.  They have traveled to Africa, Cuba, Mexico, and all over the U.S. together.  They have been roommates for several years, and soul mates for much longer.  Ironically, Heather was diagnosed with breast cancer in January and has just had a double mastectomy (at the ripe old age of 37).  Even while this tumor was killing Amy off bit by bit before her diagnosis, she was by Heathers side during her ordeal.  Well guess who was right by Amy's side during this whole thing last week?  One week out of surgery, still bent over from the pain in her chest, Heather spent the entire day at the hospital with us while Amy was getting her dignosis, meeting with the surgeon, etc.  Pretty cool to have friends like that, huh?

Tomorrow is the big day and I'll have plenty to post when it's all over.  Stay tuned...