I had a very frustrating night last night. At 6:45 Saturday morning, I awoke doing my absolute best to ignore "the cough." You know, the cough that means I'm coughing up copious amounts of blood. Maybe, in my delirious state, if I ignore it, it will go away. WRONG. But the real kicker in this situation is that I'm not home. I'm with family in Austin, TX, sleeping on a couch. Waking up scared, sick, and still drowsy, I'm not thinking straight. Not to mention I'm really nauseated from coughing so much/coughing up blood/swallowing more blood because I have no where to spit it out. I start an albuterol and realize that I am going to be sick. Luckily (I think) I wasn't, but and I finally finish my treatment and fall back asleep. However, the most frustrating thing about this situation is that I'm NOT on antibiotics, which in the past has been the only time this hemoptysis has occurred. And I took my Vit. K that day. So now I'm actually clueless as to the cause of this, and that scares me. Now I'm planning ahead though. Along with my nightly glass of water, I'm keeping an empty cup next to me in case this happens again tonight... I really hope not.

My doctor's appointment is in 3 days, and to be perfectly honest, I feel awful. Just terrible. I'm afraid I haven't improved enough to my doctor's satisfaction and I'll be sent to the Hole for the first time in almost 2.5 years. I've actually come to terms with it, really. Worst case, I'm right and I'm not shocked. Best case, I'm wrong and I'm thrilled I don't have to go!! My only real hope is that I'm testing out hypertonic saline for the first time at my appointment so maybe they'll let me slide again, but I think I've slide by long enough. Tuesday will be the test. Obviously, I'll let you know the results.

On a lighter note, I'm getting some good quality time with my family this weekend. I haven't seen this brother/fam since our May crawfish boil so it was long overdue. And my niece is growing so quickly!

OH! I'm done with summer school!!! I couldn't be happier to have two more classes out of the way. And with one of those classes came the idea of a different future career than originally planned, and it's worth looking into! I may be doing grad school instead of PT school! May. I don't know what the future holds yet, obviously, but I like having serious options. We shall see!

My family lately has spent a lot of time watching old home videos. I've been watching videos from when my oldest brother was crawling to when I was around 9 years old and everything in between! Birthdays, holidays, sports, and then just those fun times playing as siblings at the house. It really was fun seeing people/pets who have passed away that I miss dearly and watching the memories I don't have, or times when I wasn't even alive! It really has been fun watching these. Thank goodness for VHS-to-DVD converters!!

I guess I should call it a night here soon. I'll keep you updated on my doctor adventures on Tuesday.

-Andrea