Welcome!

Hello! I'm Elyse and I have been kind of a spotty-blogger in the past. I'm working on it and decided I needed to start a brand new one because it has literally been two YEARS since I last posted on my tumblr. I have a teaching blog that I'm also working on and it's on Blogger so I decided to make it easier on myself and start the new one here! 

Anyways! Like I said, I'm Elyse. I am 27, a mother, a wife, a teacher, and I'd probably be more if I had the time. I have two BEAUTIFUL children named Audree and Eliott. A is 5 and E is 10 months. 

My husband's name is Alex and we have been married for 6 years. We met FOREVER ago and he is willing to put up with me and all of my craziness! 

I am a 4th grade teacher and I LOVE it! I am in my 4th year of teaching and it's my first year in 4th grade. I've taught 1st for three years and while I loved every minute, I am definitely more of an older-kids teacher! 

As I mentioned before, this is not my first try at a blog. I recently decided to get back into blogging because I am in "isolation" from radiation. I have had hypothyroidism for the past few years and everything was going normal. Over this past summer I realized that my symptoms were coming back and it was time to get my levels checked anyways. I made an appointment and I went during our October break. During the visit, my doctor asked me if I had ever had an ultrasound done on my thyroid. I said no and she said she wanted to get one done that day. Across the hall we went and she showed me a nodule that she said she could feel during the exam. She then told me that it was at about 1.5 cm and that when they reach 1 cm she likes to do a biopsy. I asked what that meant and her response was that she wanted to do a biopsy right then. It was an in-office procedure with 5 needles right in my neck. No numbing! She told me that 95% of the time it's nothing. 4% of the time the nodule can be taken care of with an adjustment in medication. less than 1% of the time does she say that the thyroid should come out. 

She called two weeks later and said that she wanted my thyroid removed. My results came back as "atypical cells" and (even though I wasn't supposed to look) everything online says that it usually means cancerous or precancerous. Three weeks later I was being prepped for surgery and my thyroid was removed. 

Two days later they called to tell me that the pathology on my thyroid showed Stage 1 Thyroid Cancer. Weird! 4 weeks after that, I have to take this scary high dose of radioactive iodine and I have to be at my house for five days with no one else. The kids have gone to my mother-in-law's and Alex is staying there too. 

5 days of peace should be wonderful, right? No. It's boring. I LOVE having the kids running around and Eliott destroying anything he can get his hands on. I LOVE Audree showing us the interesting outfits she has come up with as she does a fashion show for us multiple times each night. I'm sure there will be one day where I look back and regret not soaking this all up but right now is not that day. Today is day 2. I have two more before they can come home. I just want to be normal! This has been a whirl-wind last couple of months. I cannot believe I had an entire organ removed and that it had cancer in it. I cannot believe that I had to take radiation to kill any thyroid cells that are left over in fear that they will regenerate and be cancerous again. Like...seriously? 

So anyways, my goal for this blog is to document how things are going with the four of us! Here we go!