Spring Break Part 4 - Washington DC (fun stuff!)

It wasn't all medical stuff and misery in DC.  I got to do some awesome tourist and friend and family visiting stuff too.  Que pictures of adventures...

Subway Gals

Dad photobombing my picture of the capital

Ah, much better!

I have never been to DC when this wasn't under construction...

At the Smithsonian...

Butterfly garden!!!!  

This jerk hitched a ride on my chair

And some more fangirling was had when I saw Global Flipping Mamas being sold at the Smithsonian!

And the cool part was I recognized the products before I saw the label! 

Another thing to remind me of SAS.  I think I need one of these in my dorm room...

Rawr!

Mom orchestrated this pose :0)

Botanical Gardens....

Can you tell they are related or what?!?  (My mom and my cousin) 

 Museum of crime and punishment with ROOMIE (aka Stephanie)...

Hubba hubba

Newseum day...

Dan's politician photo

 Me on either side of the same section of the Berlin Wall...

In Soviet Berlin, we have no smiles.

My first memory!

Asked my brother to get me condiments at lunch.  Does he know a POTSie or what?

We all became enamored by this elevator wall...

DIY sushi for dinner! 

Awweeee!

I did other stuff too, like catch up with my friend Chloe and watch quirky movies with my cousin and her cousins.  Good times were had.  :0)

Spring Break Part 3 - Washington DC (Medical Stuff)

  The problem with waiting so long to post is that I kind of forget the exact order of things.  So I think my first day in DC was a doctor appointment day, but I'm really not sure if that is 100% true.  But let's go with it.
   For a more detailed account of the appointments and test and stuff, you can see my caringbridge site. 
  For a basic summary, I had a bunch of really horrendous tests and FINALLY GOT SOME ANSWERS!!!!
  I have some instability at various levels in my spine with flexion and extension.  But then with rotation, my C1 and C2 are way to wibbly wobbly.  I guess during the test I was only one or two degrees away from dislocating my neck under my own muscle power!  Yikes!  So that means several things:
1. I am apparently lucky to still be alive and not a quadriplegic
       The doc explained it that my brainstem and spinal cord is like a banana   And you can only twist a banana so much until you start to have problems.
2. I have to wear a beast of a neck brace anytime I'm moving to prevent a dislocation
3. I am having surgery on May 14th to get my C1 and C2 fused
      They are taking a part of my rib (que Adam and Eve jokes) and using it to stick my C1 and C2 vertebra together.  I will be in the hospital for about three days, laying in bed for about eight days, and then I can fly home from DC to do the rest of recovery.

I was skeptical about the wibbly wobbly neck being the cause of my shaky time, but it's been several weeks of wearing the neck brace and I haven't really had shaky time!  I had a local neurologist appointment last Tuesday and they said my reflexes and strength and stuff look better too!  I'm so flipping excited that I found out what was causing the weakness and that I can control it.  Before, I worried that I would just waste away not knowing what was happening or I would find out that what was causing the weakness was progressive.  Plus, I only need one surgery to fix it.  I may have other fusion surgeries or the tethered cord surgery in my future, but it's not something I have to worry about yet.  :0)

And here is my looking fly in my super sexy neck brace:

I'll have to get a more recent picture up now that I have decorated it with stickers!

New York Part 2 - Fangirling

   Some of you may know about my slight  obsession with a British TV show called Doctor Who. Well, when I was in NYC, I dragged my parents around Central Park in the freezing cold so I could take pictures where some scenes of the show were filmed.  And I couldn't just do this all calm-like.  No, I went five-year-old style giddy and probably embarrassed my parents by looking like this:

Except I was also holding a sonic screwdriver.

Ok, so here are my pics from a truly fantastic day in the park.

Don't Blink.

Don't even Blink.

 And yes, I gave my parents a lengthy explanation about how the weeping angels were quantum locked and blah blah blah and I used to much jargon that I think they thought I was talking about something I learned in school at first...

Not quite the right rock yet...

Ah, there is the right rock.

So now I must take eleventy-billion pictures...

Including this one of my dad

And the fountain

And when we realized this was also the fountain from Friends, Mom and Dad got a little fangirly too...

Wrong bench but I tried.

The bridge

Oh and this was welded into the floor of the bridge.  I really don't want it to just be a coincidence...

Oh, that was a good day!