happy new year. doozy.

What a new year so far! 

Oh my. 

It has been a heck of a week in the Carson-Stoll-Finn household.

2018 has kept us on our toes. And it's only Thursday! 😝

The drive back to Minnesota from Wisconsin Dells on New Years Day took about 8 hours instead of 2 because hubby's car had some issues. Eventually my mom ended up coming to pick us up after we'd made it to St. Charles (thanks mum!!!). The car is now fixed, and a surprising bonus - it ended up being really interesting to be a 1-car family for a couple days. Hopefully we can do more carpooling and strategic driving in the future. Soon it will be biking season again so I can take my two-wheeled vehicle to work. 

Then on Tuesday I caught a cold. I did high-dose vitamin C which tends to help me, and sure enough, the cold is almost gone today! But...as you probably remember from my past posts...colds/flu/viruses tend to be quite hard on my platelet count. 

And sure enough, as of yesterday evening I was at a count of 12. I'll get another blood test tomorrow morning. If I'm up, we'll just increase my Nplate injection and things should stabilize. If I'm down, I'll either get platelets or IVIG or both. 

I actually feel a lot better tonight than I have in a couple days! Far less woozy and my nose/throat are much better. So I'm quite hopeful that my count will be back up. My platelets have been fairly stable over the last couple years, and my ITP has definitely been in the backseat. Hopefully it can remain in the backseat, and I'll be in remission before 2018 comes to a close. Wouldn't that be lovely? 

A special perk of yesterday was getting to see the ALSOPS!!! My dear seminary friends! They stopped at the office on their drive back to Illinois. Oh how sweet it was to see them. I accidentally photo-bombed....

Seeing them always brings me such joy and happy memories. Hopefully Justin and I can go and visit them this summer!

Work has been moving right along this week. Winter/spring is the busiest season of my job, and I really enjoy my team, day-to-day work and projects. 

Justin is attending the visitation and funeral of a scouting friend named Todd who passed away suddenly last weekend. So tragic and untimely. His friends have created a GoFundMe page to help defray funeral costs and support his wife, Shayla, and their children. Here's a link. Thank you for holding Todd's family and friends in your thoughts and prayers over the days and weeks ahead. 

I'm working on curating a Spotify playlist called winter chill vibes. Here's the link.