Rather Delayed Update

   Well, it's been awhile. In that time, The Fella got his employment authorization document (Early January 2014), got a job, then got his green card! Whee! It's been quite a ride lately. And best part-- he's eligible for health insurance and other benefits at the end of this month. YAY!

   The other major thing that's come up is having my thyroid removed. Not sure if I mentioned it in a past post, but I found out in March of 2013 that I had a nodule on the right lobe of my thyroid and was told "possible thyroiditis". I was prescribed steroids for a week, then told to take Aleve for a week. I had a fine needle biopsy done on the nodule shortly after stopping the Aleve and found out it was benign. Still had some troubles, but with all the immigration stuff and wedding planning (amongst other things), the thyroid thing took a back seat until a couple months after the wedding. Then, I just couldn't handle it anymore. I was tired, my neck was uncomfortable. I was having difficulty breathing (always felt like something was stuck in there and made it difficult to get comfortable at night to sleep). Stuff like that. Yet on the other hand, I wasn't experiencing many of the symptoms of being hypo- or hyper-thyroid. I was really cold a lot of the times (not totally out of character for me) and I started always feeling like I had a cold or the beginning of a really bad cold. I finally decided to go in in December. They ultrasounded they thyroid and nodule again and checked my bloodwork again. All of my stuff came back normal. No idea why.
   In January, I was *really* fed up, not feeling great, and was sick of dealing with it. Went back to the doctor and she referred me to an endocrinologist. In the end, that was one of the best things that could happen. Talked to the Endocrinologist the end of January and he did some more blood tests and did a quick ultrasound at his office. Consensus-- I have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis and the recommendation was that due to that and the fact that the thyroid was rather enlarged and inflamed (because of they thyroiditis) and wasn't going down and that I had a 3 cm nodule; it was recommended that I have the right side of the thyroid removed...at the very least. A total thyroidectomy was recommended if I was willing to go that route. Got a referral to a general surgeon and saw her a few days later.
   Well, we saw the surgeon beginning of February and set a surgery date for the 19th. The plan was to remove the right side, make sure the Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve and my vocal cords were undamaged, then do the left side at a later day. Whee! Well, that was until I got a call from the surgeon the day before surgery saying that the more she thought about the particulars of my surgery, the more uncomfortable she was with it and wanted to see if I was ok with a referral to a person that does this surgery all the time. So, they found a person in Denver that does this and referred me down there.
   So, at the beginning of March, The Fella and I found ourselves in Denver consulting with the surgeon. And much to our joy, she was friendly, informative, listened, and was totally ok with doing this surgery. It was brought up again that I could have half the thyroid removed or all of it. She discussed the pros, cons, and maybes of what both entailed and what I had to look forward to as far as surgery and complications and what options I had for medicines and treatments. By that time, I was totally fed up with the thyroid, how crappy I felt, and was ready to be done with the whole thing. So, after a bit of discussion the plan was made to remove all the thyroid...the next week.
   March 11th was the big day! Went to Denver the night before, met up the next morning with one of my aunts that lives in the area to check out the Museum the next morning before surgery, then headed to the hospital to get checked in. Surgery went splendid! There were a few surprises, like the fact that my thyroid was more scarred, enlarged, and otherwise in rattier shape than they thought. My lymph nodes were really inflamed since my body was attacking (and had been for quite some time) the thyroid and trying to kill it off, and there was a small amount of damage done to the cartilage of my trachea. Not much, just a bit of thinning on a couple of the rings, but enough to weaken that spot some. The surgeon said she was really glad I decided to have it all removed at the same time because of that. They managed to save 3 of the parathyroids for sure (not sure what happened to one of them) which is awesome! You only really need to have one functioning one, but as she said, the more she can save, the better off I'll probably be. The parathyroids control your calcium levels. So if you don't have any, you're on calcium supplements the rest of your life. Not exactly and ideal thing. Anyway, after I got out of recovery (vaguely remember some stuff from when in there, but not much) and got to my room and kinda rejoined the world on the same mental plane of existence, I was doing pretty ok. Sore and in pain, but not doing too bad. Spent the night in the hospital and was released the next afternoon. The first few hours out of the hospital and some of the next day were CRAP. I didn't keep up on my pain meds when we were getting the discharge time worked out, so I was in some serious pain when we finally got to the motel room. Popped 2 Norco, then snuggled with my favored ice pack and a couple of heat packs. Ice for the surgery site, heat for the back of my neck and shoulders because holy crapola did they hurt! Some of that is from how they have your head positioned during surgery, some is from hunching after surgery as a form of comfort and protection for your neck. Heat packs are your friend. Oh, and definitely sleep as upright as you can handle. Trying to get up from laying on your back hurts and if you're like me and have sinus issues anyway, laying down after they've aggravated your throat with that breathing tube is a bad idea. Gunk will drain and collect near the back of your throat which is not fun. Especially since you're coughing up gunk anyway.
   Fast forward to Friday-- post-op check up with the surgeon that morning because she wanted to take out the thin suture she used and steri-strip the incision. She did that so that I'd heal up with a less noticeable scar since I apparently have very fair, light, delicate skin and no wrinkles to hide a scar in. I'm just so happy to have the thyroid gone, that honestly, as long as it didn't look like someone did a botched job of cutting my throat then I was good with the dissolvable stitches or a suture like what she did. LOL.
   As of tomorrow (Tuesday, March 25), it's been 2 weeks since surgery. And I feel *GREAT*. I'm sure I'll come off of that as my natural thyroid hormones fade out of my system and I'm totally dependent on the synthetic hormones. But honestly, the fact that I can breathe normally again, swallow without hindrance, and move my head to the right comfortably without feeling a nodule catch, those alone are worth this. I've seen some pretty horrific post-op horror stories about this, but I didn't run into that with mine. It pays to have a good surgeon, I'll grant that. I honestly think if the first surgeon did it, I might not have had as good a recovery as I did. It took almost a full week after surgery to completely regain my range of motion with my neck, but with a bit of stretching and gently moving my head around I got the full movement of my head with no trouble at all. I still have to keep the steri-strip on until Friday, but from what I've seen of the incision site so far, it looks like it's healing up really well! YAY!
   And that really long post is pretty much what's going on around here so far. LOL.

From Miss to Mrs.

   Long time, no post! Lots of stuff has been going on and I think it just might have settled down...maybe. Time to play catch up.
   The Fella had his interview June 11, 2013 and all went well and ended with an approval! :D It took a bit of time for him to sort through his stuff, sell some, store some, put in notice that he was quitting, notifying people, etc., but he got it done and flew over here September 4th. YAY! While he was getting his stuff in order, I was getting my stuff and some of the wedding stuff taken care of. Once he got here, there was more wedding stuff to take care of, getting his social security number, adding him to the bank account, lease, and a few other things, and some other miscellaneous stuff that I can't recall. LOL. Everything worked out and we got married September 27th...then honeymooned in Vegas for a week. Whee!
   Since then we've been working on getting my name changed on stuff which is taking a bit since the government was shutdown and I had to wait to change my name on my social security card, hence delaying some stuff. Whee? We've definitely been enjoying the married thing though. Something about it is just...wonderful. Not sure what makes it different, but it is. Huh. Anyway, we filed for the Adjustment of Status, Employment Authorization Document, and Advanced Parole last week and got the text stating they received our crap. Now we're back to the waiting game. Fun times.
  Other than that, that's pretty much it. Been keeping entertained at work and such, but nothing overly exciting. Well, nothing I want to post about online anyway. LOL. As usual life happens and sometimes the stuff in life isn't fun to deal with, but you kinda have to. :)

Approval!

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   This morning I woke up to a text on my phone telling me that my case status had been updated! I checked out the uscis.gov website and I found out that the USCIS approved The Fella's visa! YAY! We still have a lot of stuff to do yet, but at least we're over the "worst" bit of it. :D Now I have to send a copy of the initial application packet and some other paperwork to him. :D The US Embassy over in Frankfurt will send him a packet stating some stuff that he needs to gather and some paperwork that he needs to fill out. There's more than that, but I don't want to bore you with all the gritty details. LOL. Still, this is a *big* step forward.
   I was really surprised to see this notice though. Right now, California Service Center (the center our paperwork was sent to) is horribly backlogged. So backlogged in fact, that they're still working on visas from July. Freaking. July. Very little of August and September have been touched as well. They're supposed to be doing these applications in the order they're received and while I am extremely grateful that we have our approval, there should be no reason whatsoever that a bunch of people from late November and beginning of December have gotten approvals while people from July are being told that USCIS is doing what they can and they'll just have to wait. It's bullcrap. So anyone with a K1 visa from before November, I'm sorry you're waiting. :( You should have had this long before now and I really hope you get your visas approved soon!

Post Germany Trip

Well, I made it to Germany and back in one piece. Yay!  I absolutely loved it over there. Such a beautiful place to be!  I even got to go to Paris! I'll admit that I have mixed feelings about Paris after having been there though, but first let me give a synopsis of the trip.


Flew out of Denver 5 May and landed in Frankfurt 6 May. I didn't have trouble going through US security--there's a reason I'm stating this and you'll see what it is later--and made it to my gate early. We ended up boarding and leaving early, so that was pretty awesome! I had a pretty uneventful flight over and we landed in Frankfurt early.  Clearing German Customs and claiming my baggage and meeting up with my boyfriend went well and without any trouble. Yay! Since there was construction on the Autobahn on the way up, he (The Boyfriend) opted to take a different route home. We took a few wrong turns, so we had a very scenic drive back to his place over near Heidelberg.  It was fun and definitely worth it.  I got to see some gorgeous scenery that I probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. I got to meet his family, then I did the "I made it here alive" call to my parents and posted on FB for everyone else before called my cousin to figure out when to meet up with him. Not a bad first day there I'd say. 


Monday-Thursday we went and checked out Heidelberg, Mannheim, and different sites in the area. I got to see Heidelberg Castle, Luisenpark, Sinsheim, and a few other things, including a fair/carnival in Mannheim!  Friday-Sunday we went to see my cousin and his family over in Grafenwöhr (he's in the military and is stationed there). I haven't seen my cousin in quite a few years and hadn't met his wife or kids yet, so that was really awesome!  It was good to get to see family I hadn't seen in years. 


Monday-Wednesday was more local sightseeing and hanging around the house and trying to decide where to take a spontaneous mini-holiday to. We opted for Paris (he's been there a few times before, so he knew how to navigate the city some and what was awesome to see) so we bought plane tickets and made reservations at a motel and flew out Thursday afternoon.  The next morning we did our own super quick tour of Paris and went to the Eiffel Tower, walked around Notre Dame, checked out Montparnasse Tower, Centre Pompidou, Hôtel de Ville, Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville, Père Lachaise Cemetery (we checked out Jim Morrison's grave--awesome!), Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, and back to over near La Grande Arche de la Défense where we were staying. I know we saw more stuff just walking around, but I can't recall what they were.  I became somewhat well acquainted with the Paris Metro and RER since that was our main form of transport besides our feet. My legs hated me for 2 or 3 days after that, but that's ok.  We got back Saturday evening, then I unpacked and repacked so I could leave Sunday.


Sunday was a bit rough. I did not like leaving, but alas, it had to be so. Made it to the airport, cuddled with the fella awhile, then cleared Customs (didn't take long), cleared Security (who eyed my bag with a bunch of Ritter Sport chocolate bars kinda funny, but let it through), then went to my gate to wait. Here's where crap started to kind of go downhill. Plane was supposed to leave at 1:30, but sometime around 1 they were asking all the Economy Class passengers to limit themselves to one personal item/bag on the plane and check the other because the plane was full. Sometime around 1:30 we were starting to board. We ended up taking off about 2ish. The rest of the flight was uneventful and we actually landed on time in Denver at 4 pm. Yay! Mobile phone battery died 10 minutes after landing, so I was incommunicado for the rest of the day. Cleared US Customs and Security (the lines were just really, really long), then waited almost 45 minutes for my luggage, handed in my Customs Declaration form (a matter of seconds), and headed for the front door to wait for the shuttle back home. That was about 5 or 5:15. Well, since my battery on my phone was dead, I missed the call that the shuttle was running late because the one van broke down, so they had to wait for the other to arrive and instead of picking me up at 6 as planned, it'd be closer to 7. Oi. There was another person waiting for the shuttle too, so when they didn't show up and were about 30 minutes late her daughter called and found out what happened. The shuttle didn't show up until 7:30. It's about a 3 hour ride home and we had to stop for fuel at Fort Morgan, CO. I didn't get to town until 10:50 and it was after 11 by the time I walked home. Dropped my luggage off, then went to reclaim Bear from a friend's place and talked to them a bit, so it wasn't until 12am when I got home for good. Notified other people that I was home, alive, and safe, then went to bed close to 1am. Talk about a long day! By that time I'd been up over 24 hours (I did nap for about an hour or so on the shuttle ride home). And guess what? I had to get up Monday morning so I could go to work!  At least I made it home ok and got about 5 hours of sleep. 


Oh, back to my mixed thoughts on Paris-- Parts of Paris were just beautiful! We were over in the business district, so the area wasn't that bad and a bit cleaner. The places we ate at over there had at least one person on staff that spoke enough English for us to order without major issues. We did eat lunch somewhere in the middle of Paris which had awesome food and although the staff didn't speak English we were able to point at the pre-made sandwiches and get some food.  On the other hand, Paris seemed to be a rather dirty place and a lot (not all, but a surprisingly large portion) of the people were quite rude. The Metro usually stunk. Where I had been in Germany was much cleaner and although a lot of the people were brusque, I wouldn't call them "rude." I'll admit though that I'm from a small city (about 900 people). Until this point in time, Denver, Colorado was the biggest city I'd been in. There are some really dirty parts to Denver, but something about Paris just really didn't appeal to me. I'd definitely visit again-- there were things that I didn't get to see this time that I'd love to go see. Personally, I couldn't live there though since there though. WAY too many people.  I've never been able to figure out the French language, so I think that's part of why I didn't care for the place either. How they say words and how they're spelled usually don't match, so you're left wondering what the heck they just said. Or at least I am. I tried to learn a bit of French one time, but other than counting to 10 and saying please, thank you, shit, big, small, exit, and cabbage, I really don't know much.  


As for German it was easier for me, but that's partially because I'd learned some of the basic sentence structure and pronunciation rules in 5th grade and I've always had a fascination with the language. I know a little bit, but nowhere near enough to have a conversation. After 2 weeks there, I do understand a bit more, but I definitely couldn't communicate by myself. With the help of a dictionary or phrasebook I can kind of make what I want or need known. Still have a lot to learn of the language and culture though. 


Some major differences I noticed between the US and Germany:

• They really like carbonated mineral water (I dub it "fizzy water). That stuff is vile and evil in my opinion.  Generally in the US we only use something like that for mixing drinks. It has not other purpose. lol
• They don't believe in lines...or at least lines as the US understands them. If you're waiting in line in the US, people generally don't cut in front of you. Not quite the same in Germany. There's a line looking thing and where ever there's an opening, someone (generally more than one someone) will make a move for it no matter if they're farther back in line or next in line. The opening is free game for all.
• The cashiers in stores get to sit down on chairs at the register. I haven't ever seen that in the US. All our cashiers have to stand. It's enough of a difference to make me notice it.

That's about all I can think of right now.  I had a blast going though! I can't wait to go back. :)