More Cake Pix!

Alrighty, I promised pictures of my "Winter Wonderland " cake so here they are :) I had a lot of fun designing it and I think it helped me decide that making specialty cakes is my ultimate goal after finishing pastry school. In 5 weeks, I have to start an externship and am going to be applying to a bunch of wedding cake bakeries to hopefully learn more about how to design awesome cakes.

Finally, some good news!

Ok, so the last couple weeks were really difficult, waiting to get the result of the MRI that I had on Halloween. Fortunately, we finally got some good news :) My doctor said that he and Kaiser's neuro-oncologist in Redwood City agree that it looks like the 2 rounds of chemo that I've done have stopped the growth of the new tumors they found! Mom and Dad went to the appointment with me and we left the doctor's office with tears of joy. Much better than my appointment a couple months ago when Dena and I left in tears of shock and fear. I was given the thumbs up to start another round of chemo which I'm about halfway through and feeling terrific, other than the slight hangover I have from celebrating with some friends last night :) I tend to be a pessimist, so I don't necessarily think that I am out of the woods yet, but it feels really good to breate a sigh of relief for a while.

On Thursday, Nov 6th, my classmates and I displayed our "wedding cakes" for our finals of our cakes class. I'm really happy with how my cake turned out and I'm going to post some pictures of it either later tonight or tomorrow since I'm at Mom & Dad's house now and don't have my computer with the pictures on it.

That's about it for now. I just wanted to finally let you all know about our good news and thank you so much for the well-wishes, happy thoughts and prayers you've all been sending my way. On that note, there's one topic I wanted to address... I know a lot of you know that I'm not particularly religious. Regardless of my feelings about religion, I absolutely respect other people's feelings about the power of prayer and I appreciate and love all of you who have said prayers for me. Who am I to say that it is not those prayers that have stopped the growth of my tumors??? Of course, I can't dismiss the amazing results of modern medicine, but all of your prayers certainly can't hurt :)

With love,
Laurie

O-BA-MA!!! O-BA-MA!!!

Ok, Ok, I know some of you might not be as pro-Obama as I am, but I swear, this was one of the most exciting nights of my life (except for the nights that my nieces and nephew were born of course!). I'm sorry that I haven't updated my blog in a while, but I've just been a little MIA lately. I haven't been returning emails or phone calls very regularly, but for no real reason other than just kinda hibernating with the change in the seasons. I'm happy and content and just enjoying school and a little solitude. Weird, huh???

Let's get it out of the way... my medical update. I had an MRI on Friday (yes, Halloween, go figure!) It was different from all the other MRI's I've had. I usually have a few pictures taken, then they pull me out and inject a contrast dye, then take a few more pictures, and it takes about a half hour. This time, they inserted an IV and had the contrast injected throughout the process and I was in the machine for about an hour and a half. I'm told that the machine that I usually have my MRI's on is 1.5 teslas (a measure of magnetism) and this machine was 3 teslas. I was also told that this is the only 3 tesla machine that Kaiser has, so I'm pretty lucky that it was local for me. I'm really feeling like I'm getting top-notch care :) I have an appointment with my local oncologist for November 12th, but I think I'm going to call my favorite doc in Santa Clara to see if I can get some info before then. For now, I'm just trying to focus on all the other exciting things going on, and trying not to worry about the results of this one test.

On to school... This week is finals for my cake class (doesn't it seem like I'm always doing finals???). We have to create a "wedding cake", basically a 3-tiered cake with a theme. I'm doing a "winter wonderland" cake. It will be covered in light blue fondant with ice sickles, snowflakes, snowmen and pine trees. We're going display them on Thursday when my mom (and maybe dad) and Erin will come check it out. We'll take lots of pictures that I'll put on my blog. Then, of course, it's up to you guys to tell all of your friends who might be getting married that I'm just the best wedding cake designer ever, tee hee!

I'll let you all know as soon as I get results from my MRI and I'll post pix of my cake as soon as I have them.

Much love and many hugs and smooches to all of you!!!
Laurie :)