Ladies man

Ice Cream Tasting

Christmas is coming

Remember the real reason we celebrate...

False Alarm

We got a call for lungs Thursday at 10:07 and found after about ten hours (and lots if tests and sticks) that they were not good enough to be transplanted.. Hopefully another call comes soon!

Liz Taylor Visits

The Chos visit!

My helper friend Maggie!

High calorie plan

Pumps pumps and more pumps

Hospital breakfast

Heyyyyy

I'm in the big house

Gets me through each day....

IV Time

Thanksgiving

I remember 8 years ago having a very a quiet Thanksgiving because I had just gotten home from getting new lungs - and did we have so much to be thankful for.

This year is a little different - I'm hooked up to oxygen, a feeding tube and now IVs for an infection, but I am so thankful for so many of you. 

Happy Thanksgiving

xo

Tube Time

Check up week

I had a check up yesterday and I am up another pound.  As Laura likes to say: WOOT! And there is only one person ahead of me that is my blood type and size, so lungs are coming soon!!!

xo

Weight gain

I'm up two pounds! Yahoo!

xx

My guts are coming out!

I am still recovering from The Feeding Tube.  It's been a slow process and I am pretty weak still from being so thin.  But I am here! Thanks for thinking of me.  xx.

Guest Post - First Class Panda

Hi - this is a very special guest blog by Natasha's friend Laura.  Nothing in this post can be blamed on her... it's I who is the frigid-food-loving-crazy-person.  Natasha would never deface perfectly nice photos with unsightly thought bubbles and crass comments, but that's never stopped me.

The two of us have a couple very important interests in common: 1. Good Food, 2. Shopping.  I haven't been doing much shopping lately because I've been too busy spending every single dime that I make on doggie poop bags, but a girl still has to eat.  Natasha introduced me to the Taste of The South End in 2010.  She promised me tons of delicious food, more wine than I'd ever seen, and people watching that would be blog-worthy.  There was a Lot of food here, but not all of it delicious.  There was a lot of wine, but not all of it drinkable.  The people... yes, there were a lot of delirious idiots running around shoving food in their faces while holding wine glasses and texting at the same time if you can believe it (and I'm sure you can).  I left this event stuffed to the gills, but not convinced that the food was the best part of this night.  It could have been the charity (not really) but likely it was just the mass amounts of weirdos to stare at in disbelief.  If you've never experienced this night, you should give it a shot and bring your appetite and camera!

 

As much as I love food, Natasha loves it more.  Here she admires 6 pieces of over-priced and over-fancy sushi at some crazy restaurant that we had to wait like 2 weeks to get into in some tiny hole in the wall down a street that I could never find again.  This was sort of a weird experience.  No customers were there and they were all like, "we're booked all night long" and we're like, "there is Nobody Effing here you crazy-ass Bs, like the sushi chefs are out back gambling for Eff sake!" and then they didn't let us come in and eat their food, we had to go back 2 weeks later... like what?  I'm sure that this sushi was probably really good, but in all honesty... I can't remember.  This was probably 2 years ago, so I remember the experience way more clearly than the sushi that cost $8 billion dollars.  -- also the hostesses were dressed like hookers in my memory...

The Martha Stewart thing.  I love being crafty as much as the next obsessive-compulsive woman, but Natasha is much better at this than I am.  She gets her magazine and actually READS it.  I let them stack up in a pile and then eventually I'll lazily flip through it looking at the photos, and then Tash will be like, "oh did you see the article about.... how to grow your own toilet paper and then blend sparkles in it!?"  And obviously I have to admit my lack of reading her magazine like, "ohhhh, no it's still sitting there unread... maybe I'll get to it next week..." and then I totally don't, because I don't have the patience to read through her 25 steps to create something that she promises to be easy but is actually ridiculously complex and makes you want to pull your hair out.  So many times I've been tricked by her empty promises of gorgeous tissue paper flowers and ended up with a ball of sad looking paper and a mountain of frustration.  Tash has a lot more patience than I do...

So anyways, I hope that you all enjoyed my guest post here at Breathing and Butter and Tash will be back to blogging soon enough!  Leave her a comment to say Hello and What's Up.  Thanks for the chance to post!

Pie

McDonalds has a new s'mores pie that you all should get.  Here is a little video of it.  I don't know what happened to the sound : (

Feeding Tube

I had a checkup yesterday and I know I posted last week I was having trouble gaining the weight back that I had lost.  Well, it's been too long without any weight gain.  Actually I lost even more weight (72 lbs) so it has come time for a feeding tube.  I mentally prepared myself for this all last week because it's obvious I am too thin and it's making me really weak, so I'm okay with it.  It was not a shock and I think actually it will be a good thing because it will take some pressure off of me to keep trying to gain weight.  So tomorrow my lung surgeon is putting a peg in, which is this little tube that comes out of your belly and you hook it up at night to get hopefully 1,000 extra calories a day.  It's also really nice of my surgeon to be doing this for me, I'm pretty sure a transplant surgeon isn't normally spending his days putting in simple feeding tubes.  Hopefully this will help me gain some weight and feel stronger.  I've never had one of these before, so I am a tiny bit nervous but it's totally necessary at this point I just can't consume enough calories to offset the amount my lungs are using up.  I'll document the feeding tube process and share it with all of you as I learn : )  

Shopping happens

sometimes I think I might buy everything on the internet and there will be nothing left for anyone else...

isn't she pretty?

Food Delivery

Lobster delivery from my friend Joey!

And it gets harder...

I'm having a lot of trouble gaining the five lbs back that I've lost and it's partly my own fault because I am so tired of eating, too tired to cook, feeling not that great and so on.  My lungs have really taken a hit over the last 2 weeks and I think I'm in the place I was before my first transplant.  This is how sick I remember being I think, where basically all I could do was lay on a couch all day because my lungs are just working so so so hard to do anything and sometimes even thinking of doing something gives my lungs trouble - seriously.  So last time I got a false alarm call in October and that was great for all of us because we knew that meant we were at least moving in the right direction and real lungs were not far off! And then I got the real call November 12th.  So I can only hope this time things happen the same way.  Please pray that lungs come, I guess when they are meant to, and everything is as it should be. 

xoxo

Cuteness Overload

Pool

I am starting a lung pool.  $20 a day, and only one person can have a day

(will update as people pick days):
*the person closest to the date wins, if not on the date

I'm still here!!

I know it's been a little bit since I posted, I am still here, I am trying to no avail to gain some weight back after my last doctors appointment...It's a little bit of a viscous cycle really because the tinier I get the less I feel like doing anything that involves using energy (i.e. eating) and the less I eat the smaller I get! I've been cooking a few things to try and help (those will come in later posts.)  Other than that nothing new is going on, I'm slowly starting to be able to do less and less.  Lungs cannot come soon enough...

I love fall

Fall is a great season for breathing! But I also love fall for the colors, the apples, the cider, the pumpkins, the sweaters, and boots, and crisp air.  To get in the spirit my nails are sporting a fall look

Lasagna Cups

I got this idea over at Framed Cooks to layer little lasagnas in a muffin tin. You do everything the same way you would a real size lasagna but instead you use Wonton wrappers (found at any grocery store) instead of lasagna noodles (and to make it easier you cut them into circles, cut a stack of them at a time) Spray the tin with Pam, and cook for about 30 minutes. 

Covet

I am really coveting this bag.  It's Dolce & Gabanna and it's like $2220! Gah! But it make my heart do a little pitter patter, it does it does

Thanks

I just want to send a shout out thanks to all of you that think of me so often.  I'm really lucky especially on check up weeks to have so many people think of me, and text me and email me and everything.  I'm really really lucky to have so many caring thoughtful people in my life, and a really great support group, and a few very special BFFs that are always thinking of me! And I know even people that I haven't seen in forever keep me in their thoughts and I really cannot tell you have much it means to me.  I would never be able to express it, seriously.  It keeps me going...

Check up week

I had a doctor visit yesterday in ny and not that greatest news ever....I lost FIVE POUNDS.  Yeah, FIVE POUNDS.  That's like A LOT OF weight, and under the agreed weight we have set before I need to get a feeding tube.  So, for the next 4 weeks it's going to be eating eating eating, or the dreaded feeding tube is going to happen.  Maybe to make it more fun I'll post on random days lists of things I eat. Other than that, my lung function is down to 19%-20%, and last week they did 4 transplants, so things seem to be moving again, they had a lull for awhile! This is good news!

Pig Party

More things I bought

Things I bought

When my lungs are particularly crappy I tend to buy things online (to make me feel better....) Last week I had one of those weeks and had lots of packages came which included these:

Hiiii

So we're having a big party Saturday so I have been MIA! There are big preparations for this, so actually I kind of hope the call for lungs comes on Saturday haha! How did all of you survive the storm?