Shan and Alfred the Tumor

June 20th - Shanna goes in for an MRI on her back. She has had back pain all her life, but it has gotten really bad the past 3 months.

June 22nd - We get a call from the doctor that one of the films is showing a mass in her belly. It was blocking on of the camera angles to her spine. Doctor calls us in.

June 25th - Schedule CT Scan on stomach to get a better picture of what the mass is. Our general practitioner refers us to a surgeon friend of his.

July 9th - Talk to surgeon about the mass. It appears that it is touching her liver and he doesn't want to operate since he is not a liver expert. The mass is 17 cm in diameter. He doesn't know what it is.
Surgeon Fikkert refers us to Dr. Stephenson (a liver expert that is supposedly the best in the area if not the country). Take lab test to determine if it's cancerous.

July 13th - Found that it is not cancerous according to her blood levels.

July 25th - After numerous cancellations, reschedules, and push backs we finally get in to see Dr. S. You can only imagine our irritation in this matter and frustration that the doctors aren't in more of a hurry to see us than they are.
- Dr. S. has a med student that was about 25 years old to come in to see us first. Not impressed with him. Dr. S. was in his young 40's. Maybe later 30's. nice guy. Nicer than I expected. He says the mass is one of three different types of tumors. He believes it is benign. Wants to schedule surgery soon, but not tremendously in a hurry. Says it could rupture if hit hard enough. He is going on vacation Aug. 6th for two weeks so we have a one week window to get the surgery done. He schedules it for Monday at 11:45 am.

July 29th (night before the surgery)- 6:00 PM to be exact. Shanna is having to drink clear liquids only all day. And clean her self out laxitaitivley ( i just made that word up). We get a call for Dr. S's nurse saying that Dr. S is out of town and his flight got canceled. The surgery has been canceled and she doesn't know when it will be rescheduled. *insert cuss words, extreme screaming at the nurse, bad name calling, bad name calling, telling the nurse that Dr. S better refund my moms plane ticket for coming up here for nothing, etc, etc.*
7:00 PM Dr. S calls. Shanna answers. (side note: Shanna is a corporate travel agent and happens to have access to her work terminal from home.) Dr. S says he is stuck and can't get home. Shanna asks where he is and he tells her. Shanna says and I quote "that's bullshit". She types in some buttons and finds Dr. S a flight that leaves at 8:47 PM arriving at midnight. He says, "put me on it." she takes his cc number, and the whole time I sitting there not beliving what's going on. Flight booked. Surgeon is coming home.

8:00 Get a call from Dr. S again saying that flight has been delayed. He tells us that the surgery will be Monday or Tuesday and he is going to try his best to get in.
- Shanna decides not to eat anything still in hopes of having surgery tomorrow.

5:00 AM. Dr. S . Calls. He is on his flight and coming home. Surgery is on for 9:00 am.

-

email I sent out at midnight on Monday.
Here is an update on Shanna: She made it through surgery just fine. The mass (Alfred is what we called it) was stuck to her gal bladder. So they removed Alfred, the gal bladder, and 3 cm of her liver too. The doctor said it was a benign tumor that was pre-cancerous. Meaning that it could have turned into cancer if left in her. Thank God it was detected when it was.

Shanna is recovering in ICU tonight, and all her vitals look great. She has a great attitude about it and is just resting. They are keeping her abdomen numb with an epidural for three days to help with the pain. They say those first 3-4 days are the worst as you can imagine. So she has some aches and pains in her collar bone and chest area which are common with this surgery but all in all she is doing great!

P.S.
To add on to all the mess, Jonah was running a 102 degree fever the past 48 hours. Looks like he finally broke the fever, and he also got his first tooth in the meantime!

Wednesday Aug 1st.
Shanna is doing great. She has an epidural that is taking away most of the pain. I wish we could take it home with us and leave the hospital. May come home tomorrow.

Post-op stories to be continued...

Hoop-It-Up Dallas Part II

Team Name: Vanilla
No secret why we named ourselves vanilla. We were made up of four white guys in a heavy black population.

Rusty – He has played in every HIU with me except one in which I played in San Antonio. Rusty was my college room mate when I attended Howard Payne. When he is in shape, there aren’t too many better players that I have played along. The problem – he hasn’t played basketball in 3 years (so he told me). He just started running months ago, so he was in a little bit of shape but as you know basketball shape it completely different from any other shape. The thing that makes Rusty so great is that he can shoot lights out. He has a shooting touch most people dream about having.

Kevin – He was Rusty’s high school assistant coach. He is in his late 30’s and also a great shooter. I played along side Kevin in two other HIU’s and this was our third tour together. When Kevin catches fire from outside, you can pretty much write it up as a victory.

Ryder – I met Ryder approx. 15 minutes before our first game. He is a friend of Kevin’s, and we needed a 4th guy. He was 6’2, a little lighter than me. Could jump pretty high. He knew his role on the team. He didn’t have to do much. He got rebounds, shot when he was open, didn’t force the issue. He was our Fabricio Oberto.

Myself – In a normal gym game I would play the point forward. I can take up the ball if needed, but enjoy playing on the wing along side a good point guard and running the floor. I can shoot from outside, but it’s not my biggest strength. Passing, playing down low, and slashing to the basket are my biggest assets. Since we already had two great shooters, there was no need for me to play outside. I planned on playing on the low block all weekend long despite the size of my opponents.

There were 24 teams in our division that were divided into 6 different pools. The top two seeds of each pool made it to the championship bracket on Sunday. They also made a consolation bracket so everyone had the opportunity to play on Sunday. The Sunday brackets were win or go home style. No double elimination or guarantees of a second game.

Our first game was at 9:30 in the morning on Saturday. I personally always hate the first game. You get about 2 minutes of warming up between the game prior and the start of your game. This is with 7 or 8 guys trying to shoot at one basket with maybe two b-balls being used. This isn’t very practical when trying to get used to the elements (wind, sun, rim, backboard, etc). Speaking of elements…the three point line (or two point line in HIU talk) was about 12 feet from the basket. It was definitely not the whole 18 feet like a normal basket. This also took some getting used to…especially since we had two three point specialist all shooting with their legs making their shots go WAY long.
Needless to say we didn’t shoot well that first game at all. We ended up ending the game in a tie. 14-14. The rule for a tie was OT going to 2. You play all your games by 1’s and 2’s, so a two pointer wins it right away. I scored a lay-up and then they missed a three. The proceeding play killed the game. We got the rebound, cleared the ball, and had a wide open shot in the middle of the court. Kevin went up for a little floater expecting to get fouled. The guy punches Kevin in the stomach so blantly that he actually apologizes to Kevin right after wards. The ref didn’t blow his whistle…The rest of us were shell shocked and watched as they cleared the ball and jacked up a three to win it.
We lost by one.

Our second game was against some Latino flava. They had one big boy that was probably 6’3 250. We were kinda scared at first and trying to figure out how to play him. We quickly found out that he was soft! I was able to post him up at will, and even get a couple blocks against him. We killed this team 20-10. Rusty and Kevin both found their range. And we hit at least 7 two pointers this game.

Third and final game of the day. We found out earlier in the day that if we won we would be in a three way tie for first. All the teams beat the team that we beat 20-10, and the team we were about to play beat the team that beat us. So if we won, we would be in a three way tie with 2-1 records. When this happens that go to point difference. The Team we were about to play won their game against Team A by 4. So if we won and beat them by at least 4 we would get the 1st seed and get a bye the first round on Sunday. (meaning getting to sleep in an hour later and resting one more game.) Well this game was our toughest all day. They were physical, and had one good shooter. We were in a battle. Rusty started off hot. We went up 11-6. Then they came back and tied it up 11-11. Then I caught fire and made 5 straight post up moves around the basket. They battled back yet again and we were going back and forth. It was tied 18-18 with about 30 seconds left. We called a timeout and Kevin says, “if I get a look I’m shooting”. We proceeded to talk about setting a back pick on my guy which would make them collapse on me underneath leaving Kevin open outside. This worked to perfection. Kevin set a hard pick and I took both the defenders with me. Kevin got the ball at the top of the key and drained a two pointer to win it.

So since we lost our one game by 1 point and the other team lost their one game by 4 points we got the second seed.

*Stay Tuned for Sunday’s action.

Hoop-it-up Dallas Part I

Location
The site of this year’s Dallas Hoop-it-up was Fair Park. Before I discuss the things wrong with having it at Fair Park, let me list a couple of places that Dallas has hosted the event before.

West End – This was my personal favorite. Although the courts are really spread out, you had a lot to chooses for shade, food, and entertainment in general between games. The only thing I didn’t like was the distance you would have to walk between courts. You could play your first game on court 12 and then have to play your second game on court 256. Kinda ridiculous.

AA Center – This one was one of the worst. Played in the parking lot of the AA Center. There is no shade what so ever. Although the West End is located near the AA Center and you can get there relatively easy for some good food. Side note: The highlight of the AA Center one was when a storm blew in and 15,000 black people ran to the parking garages for cover. You could see them all poking there heads out of the different levels. It was high comedy, trust me!

Ameriquest Field a.k.a. Ballpark at Arlington - I had a lot of the same feelings about this location as I did about the AAC one, but the difference was that I lived 10 minutes from the Ballpark at the time of this event and could go home and get back relatively easy.

Fair Park – This was by far the worst site I have played at yet. I felt like I was in a Visa commercial.
Parking - $8
Bratwurst - $3.50
8 ounce Gatorade - $3.50
Water - $3.00
Getting sunburned out in the ghetto that is otherwise known as fair park – Priceless.

I don’t know if anyone has ever been there, but this was my first experience. The only other time I have been to the state fair is during Texas/OU weekends.

First, the site of HIU was WAY in the back. We had to drive behind the carnival section, over the rail road tracks, and park right next to Ghettoville. The one plus about parking was that we didn’t have to walk far from our car to the court. I think there were only 40 or 50 courts max. (this is not that many considering West End had over 200+)
Second, one of the things I loved about HIU was that you could buy a Gatorade bottle for $5 bucks and get unlimited refills of Gatorade all weekend. Well supposedly, Gatorade has backed out as a sponsor. They have been replaced with “Concessions by Cindy”. Biggest sponsor that HIU had was Whataburger. And although I enjoyed my free spin at the wheel where I won a free BOB (which I redeemed the following day), I still loved my $5 unlimited Gatorades.
Third, They charged you to re-park. On Saturday, we had a 2 hour break between our 2nd and 3rd game (which is not unusual, and another reason I don’t care for HIU but yet continue to give them my money and time). We decided to all get in one car and go get some lunch. Well we asked the lady if we had to pay again to park and she said yes. So we ended up not going out of the park and spending an additional $8 to park AGAIN. We instead donated our money to Concessions by Cindy and I had a Brat and Gatorade for $7.00. I do have to say that the Brat was probably in the top 5 Brats of all-time, however. Still contemplating if the Brat was worth $3.50. I’ll get back to you on this.

The one good thing I liked about the location/setup was that you played all your games on one court. You didn’t have to go to the bracket and see where your next game was and where that court was located. Everyone in your pool played on that court. Even gave you an advantage of scouting them out before you played them. The disadvantage of playing on the same court all day is the refs. One ref is assigned to one court for the day. Meaning we had the same ref ALL day. This was especially costly on Sunday.

*Stay tuned for comments/analysis on actual Game Play.