Welcome To My Life

Happy Thanksgiving! 🍗 I am thankful for my health, my family, my friends and the abundant blessings I have in my life. I am especially thankful to have my health as well as a healthy family. I am in my pediatric rotation and I see all these children that are terminally ill, and I honestly don't know how these families handle this but they do, with such grace and strength.  As I mentioned last week, this is the season that I love to volunteer my time and give to the less fortunate. It is so humbling yet heartbreaking to see these families that merely have the clothes on their back, if that.  I am so blessed to have such a great life full of love and laughter, and friends and family. 

With the holidays approaching, I always like to find a way to give back somehow. I'm so blessed to have the simple things in life like the ability to see and hear, and just overall good health. I'm even more fortunate to have a loving family, a truck, a roof over my head and food on the table. Every year, I buy food and give it to my friend to prepare to make thanksgiving meals for the less fortunate. (I can't cook 😔)  We then hand out food at Kakaako and some parks and beaches around Hawaii Kai. We also give them clothes and blankets that we no longer use. There are a lot of homeless families so I save my son's clothes and toys and give them away. This past week, I got to volunteer at HUGS. HUGS is a nonprofit organization that holds respite once a month in Kaimuki or Kapolei, and allows parents to drop off their ill children and their siblings, so they get a chance to just be kids. Not only do the parents get a break, but the siblings of ill children get a chance...

In my senior year of high school, I felt a lump in my stomach. I weighed roughly about 105 lbs give or take, so I was pretty skinny. When I would lie down, I could feel this hard, round lump in my stomach and it was uncomfortable. I proceeded to tell my mom, who then told me, "It's just your abs", because like I said, I was pretty tiny. Fast forward to 6 months later, the lump got bigger and I told my mom so she felt it and her first reaction was, "OH MY GOD! You're pregnant!".  😒Umm no. This was the lump I was telling her about. She took me to get an ultrasound and turns out I had a cyst on one of my ovaries. I was freaking out and thought I had cancer! They biopsied it in the following weeks and thankfully it was benign and non cancerous. 🙌 I ended up getting surgery to remove the 8lb cyst. It was almost like having a baby!  I was in the hospital for over a week, and stayed home from school for almost a month to recover. It was one of the scariest ...

I'm not sure if any of you have heard of the game, "Fortnite", but it has taken the world by storm. All the kids are OBSESSED with this game, especially my son, and even his dad. They wake up early, play all day to night. They won't even get off to eat! My son was invited to "Fortnite" birthday parties where the kids were asked to bring a laptop or ipad so they could play Fortnite together. I thought that was insane! My issue is that my son, is so addicted to it and he only wants to play Fortnite. He watches videos when he can't play and his attitude is horrible. He doesn't listen, he talks back and he can't focus. I've heard many other parents are having the same issue. I'm so close to taking a hammer to the XBOX! But, I'm hoping I can use it to my advantage to get my son to listen and do things. Therefore, I have taken away XBOX privileges and depending on how my son acts while on grounding will determine if he gets his privil...