UPDATE: I'm a big kid now.

Or something like that.

Per usual, it's been forever and a day since I updated this thing so here's the run down....

On May 8th, 2015, I received my Bachelor of Science from Old Dominion University. I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a major in Communications and double minors in Graphic Design and Public Service.

On May 13th, I interviewed and was hired for my first, full-time job as a Marketing and Social Media Intern with the Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance, which I started on June 8th.

And finally, on June 22nd, I purchased my first pair of Christian Louboutin Heels. Which is, of course, the ultimate tell that I am finally a real grown up... Kidding. But really.

In all seriousness though, it's been a busy six months since I last blogged. My last semester of college was one for the record books. A few highlights included but are not limited to...

• Getting to spend a week in Honolulu and a week in Colorado Springs for Christmas break, then a week in Portland, Oregon for spring break
• Having my last semester schedule consist of just one, once a week night plus two online electives
• Receiving an academic scholarship from the Boomer Esiason Foundation and later being interviewed and featured on their website and having my graduation photo on their national Facebook profile
• Serving as Membership Vice President for my sorority and having the chance to mentor and welcome ten of the sweetest young ladies into our chapter, including my absolutely perfect and adorable little
• Being hired as Director of Public Relations for ODU's Student Government Association and getting to be involved with my university on a level I never knew existed, and in turn, meeting and creating friendships with some of the most driven young adults on our campus
• Standing next to my best friend on her wedding day and then making basically the entire room cry, myself included, when I gave my awesome maid of honor speech
• Getting to attend a 1500 person fundraiser as part of my internship, an event that I'd be helping plan since August
• Applying for and being selected as a finalist for the Kaufman Award, one of the most prestigious awards given by ODU to graduating seniors that demonstrated exemplary service and leadership
• Being selected as the Outstanding Student of 2015 for my major by the dean of the College of Arts & Letters
• Having all of my siblings be able to attend my graduation, the first time all six of us were in the same place since 2012

All in all, I'd say I pretty much had it made. It was definitely the best, and fastest, 16 weeks of my life. I am incredibly thankful for all the opportunities I've had so far this year. And for all the love and support that made it possible. I feel like I'm on top of the world right now and so very excited to start this next chapter of my life, as a real grown up.

Understandably so, I've been thinking about that phrase a lot lately and what exactly it means. Wondering at what point in our lives do we just snap our fingers and say "whoomp, there it is...I'm an adult now!" I've joked a lot lately about "having to be a grown up" and mostly, it's just that, joking. But there's also a hint of truth because for me, graduating college is definitely a turning point. A catalyst, shall we say, to all that is to come.

So, it's been a few weeks.

And a long few weeks at that. I honestly don't even know where to start.

I know the weight of this world can take you down like gravity.
And I know the current of yourself can take you out, out to sea. 

That, right there, pretty much sums it up. The weight of the world, and the current of myself. But I'll get back to that part. 

First things first... For those of you who aren't friends with me on Facebook, I'm in the hospital again. This is my fourth admission for the year of 2013. I've been here eight days. 

A good blogger would probably have updated when this first started, but I'll be honest, it's been a very long week. And it's taking damn near every ounce of strength I have to not fall completely apart. I'm going to say right now... this particular post is going to be a complete train wreck. And I completely understand if you get halfway through and have no idea what I'm talking about or think I'm being completely ridiculous. Because I probably am.

So, I was admitted to Naval Medical Center Portsmouth on Friday, June 14th for a "tune up." Yes, like a car. About twice a year, I have to come into the hospital for a 10-14 days at a time to just get an overall boost for my body. I get IV therapy, aggressive respiratory care, and various other treatments/tests. This is pretty routine for all cystic fibrosis patients, although the frequency varies. Some can go years without a tune up, some need it every 2-3 months. It all depends. 

Usually, I do my tune ups at the end of spring semester and the end of fall semester. At the beginning of May, after my classes ended, I skipped my usual admission. I wasn't feeling that sick and decided I could handle it at home. I did extra treatments and really focused on my health for a week and I felt much better. But after a few weeks, I felt crappy again. And by the middle of June, I called my doctors and told them I wanted to be admitted. I wasn't completely at critical mass sick, but I knew if I tried waiting any longer I would be.

I had a procedure done first thing Friday morning to get a picc line placed. For the record, a picc line is a semi permanent IV line that runs from my upper arm to my heart for IV antibiotics. Typically, they can be used for 2-6 weeks but my usual is 3 weeks. My usual tune up is 1-2 weeks in the hospital, then around 1-2 more weeks of IVs at home with the picc. 

The first few days were chaotic, as always. My health is incredibly complex. At home, I have 16 different medications (a total of 21 pills and 10 nebulizers/inhalers, three different times a day) plus, 2-5 digestive enzymes and insulin with all food, plus 6 cans of a high calorie supplement through a g-tube overnight, and finally, two 30 minutes sessions of respiratory therapy through a VEST system. 

Kind of a lot, huh? Well, when I'm in the hospital... I have even more. Add in two more 30 minutes VEST sessions, 1-2 oral antibiotics twice a day, oral steroids, and depending on my cultures, 1-2 intravenous antibiotics through a PICC line in my arm anywhere from 1-4 times a day, for 30-90 minutes at a time. Needless to say, it's complicated. Particularly when you consider than certain medicines can't be taken together, I have two different basal rates and two different carb rations for my insulin, lung function tests to be taken twice a week, half a dozen specialists to see, labs to draw, x-rays/ultrasounds/various other tests and procedures to be done... oh, and I'm still a full time college student and have to accomodate my class schedule so I don't fall behind. 

Then, you have to consider that fact that every 12 hours, I get a new set of doctors and nurses to work with. I've been doing this for years and I barely remember everything. Try only getting 12 hours. Please don't me wrong, I don't blame my doctors or nurses at all. I know they are doing their job the best they can, but I am high maintenance, to say the least. Understandably, it takes a few days to get the kinks worked out. Things get forgotten, certain orders don't get written clearly, information doesn't get transferred over at shift change and well... the new people don't quite understand me or my disease. I'm on a Peds ward where the majority of the patients are still in diapers. But, I'm not a child. I'm 21 years old and I know what's going on. And I'm stubborn, I'm not going to agree to something if I don't know or understand why I'm being told to do it. Sometimes, it can be a power struggle. I understand and respect that they know medicine, but they have to respect that I know my own body. Again, I'm not blaming anyone or even angry. But I would be lying if I said it wasn't stressful those first few days.

Long story short, my disease is complicated. And every admission takes some time to get things running smoothly. There were some minor issues over the weekend. Had a meltdown one night because of some miscommunication with the residents and ended up paging my doctor at 12am.. oops. But it got worked out. By Monday, things were going pretty decent. I was given passes to leave the hospital for a few hours on Mon, Tues and Wed so I could attend class. I was still coughing a lot and was pretty exhausted, sleep is a precious commodity in this place, but all in all, I was doing okay. My weight and my lung function were both improving. 

Thursday, however, was a much different story. As far my health goes, Thursday, June 20th was one of the worst nights of my entire life. Definitely in the top three. Around 1pm, I went to the OR for a double procedure. The first part was an endoscope of my stomach. I've been having some pain around my g-tube site and they thought it could be an ulcer. The second part was a bronch lavage of my lungs. A bronch is a procedure where they go into my lungs with two different tubes, a scope to take pictures and a tube that squirts salt water in, then sucks it back out to try and clear some of the sticky mucus. They are also able to take cultures of the mucus to test for bacteria. This is where things took a turn for the worst. I've had several bronch done before, but my doctor said this time my lungs were the worst he has ever seen them. They are red, irritated and inflamed and bled every time he touched the tissue.

Recovery was absolutely hell. I was under anesthesia, so that was rough to begin with. Hazy, weak, exhausted. I had a breathing tube in the entire time, which makes for one of the worst sore throats you could ever imagine. Because of the position of my head during the whole thing, my neck muscles were throbbing. Then, the procedure itself is difficult on the lungs and can cause chest pain and severe coughing afterwards, but because of the shape of my lungs this time... Let's just say, I wouldn't wish that it on Adolf Hitler. Gut wrenching pain every time I took a breath. Coughing up pure blood, almost non stop for hours. I've coughed up blood before, but never like this. Before it's been tiny drops, mixed with mucus. This was bright red, pure liquid blood, 4-5 chunks at a time, every 10 or 15 minutes. If you ever want to be literally scared for you life, try being half conscious and seeing that in a bucket on your lap. And the icing on the cake? The combination of the drugs, pain, fear, and probably the fact I hadn't eaten all day, gave me a migraine headache that made me genuinely considered chopping off my own head. Okay, not really. But it was bad. To put things into perspective, there have been two times in my entire life I have ever cussed on Facebook. Both have been about my health. One was Thursday night. 

About four hours, three doses of morphine, two doses of dilaudid, benadryl, tylenol and a caffeine pill later... I could actually stand to have my eyes open. 

So, that was my week. I know a lot of people have been worried about me and I'm sorry I've been so negative and out of touch. As much as I would love to say I'm doing better now, I'm not. Physically, yes. I'm better than I was Thursday. The pain has subsided for the most part. It hurts to cough, but otherwise it's significantly better. As of this evening, the blood is finally gone, but I'm still coughing much more than normal. And there have been no migraines, so yes, physically, I am doing better. Emotionally though... I feel like I'm standing on tight wire across the Grand Canyon and it's pouring down rain. 

I quoted a song lyrics by Tenth Avenue North earlier and I said I'd get back to it.. but I'm afraid I have to cut it short for tonight. I was hoping to get to the point where I explained the meaning of any of this, and that there's a lot more to this week than just the hospitalization. But just recapping took longer than I thought. I started writing this over four hours ago, and this is as far as I've gotten so... yeah. I need sleep now. Hopefully, I will have time tomorrow to get on and attempt to put the rest of the chaos that is in my head into words. 

And now that I have probably successfully ruin anyone's mood that has read this post, I'll finish on a positive note. I should get to go home tomorrow. I know I will feel better once I do. This place is a seriously killjoy. I can't wait to see my puppies and sleep in my own bed. And as delicious as they might be, eat something other than chicken nuggets for lunch.

If you give a mouse a cookie...

Tonight, I was in the mood for chocolate chip cookies. So, I made 5 dozen. And 2 dozen pumpkin muffins. And 2 loaves of banana bread. Go big or go home?

Other than my impulsive, ridiculous attempt to be the next Betty Crocker... today wasn't all that exciting. I woke up with a migraine, attempted to drink a cup of coffee and took some ibuprofen, and went back to sleep on the couch. Woke up a few hours later, started reading This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, went a little crazy in the Kindle Store and downloaded 26 new free books to my Kindle... oops. Then ate some dinner, went to the grocery store for chocolate chips and came home to spent three hours baking while watching Chasing Mavericks. And now I'm sitting here, eating chips and salsa and watching Friends. Again, kind of lame for a Friday. It was, however, a pretty exciting week in the life of Jillian Goodwin. So let's recap!

To start, summer term started Monday. I'll be honest, I wasn't looking forward to it at all. There was only 12 days between semesters. I felt like I just finished classes, because well... I had, ha. Also, while I'm not a stranger to summer classes, I was very nervous about ODU's classes. I've taken summer school at TCC every year since I was 16. But TCC does twice a week classes, for ten weeks... at ODU, it's four days a week, for six weeks. Intense, terrifying, overwhelming... just a few words that came to mind thinking about it.

Despite my reservations... my classes went excellently! I'm taking two communications classes; Introduction to Public Relations and Public Relations Project Management. I have the same professor for both classes, Dr. Burton St. John. I've heard really great things about him as a professor, so I'm happy about that. And, he scored major points with both classes when he started off with "I know four day a week classes are rough and you get burned out by Thursday. And guess what, I do too. So unless we absolutely have to, we aren't having class on Thursdays."

My intro class is a moderately sized and pretty standard as far as assignments go; one quiz, two short papers, two in class assignments, a final project and a final exam. My project management class is a bit more interesting. There's only 9 students, which is officially the smallest class I have ever had. And, it's a brand new class to the program, so it's in a developmental/experimental semester. We have a syllabus, but Dr. St. John told us that it's flexible and we can make changes if something isn't working. And finally, 80% of our final grade is based on a semester long group project. Also kind of nerve-racking, but groups were assigned on Tuesday and the two girls I'm working with seem chill, so it should be okay.

Overall, it was a good week. The classes will be fast paced, but not as overwhelming as I was expecting. These are my first Public Relations classes (which is my actual concentration), so I'm really just excited to be finally studying what I want to do with the rest of my life! Just from the first week, I know this is a great career choice for me. It's something that I am passionate about and it's something I am naturally good at. Many of the personality traits and skills needed to be successful are ones I already have and value. I feel so comfortable with the topics and eager to learn more. I'm excited for the rest of the semester and even more for my future career in the field of PR :).


In addition to starting a new semester, I also got a MacBook Pro this week! Wooooo! My Sony Vaio has been acting up for several months now. It overheats really quickly and then shuts off in the middle of me working, multiple times in a row. Since I couldn't afford a new computer, I talked to my dad and he offered me his Macbook. He said he wasn't using it much since he had a computer at work and an ipad for home. It is two years old, but he restored it to factory settings so it's basically good as new.

It's going to take a while to transition everything from my old laptop to this one, and adjust to the Mac Operating System, but I'm very excited and thankful. I used Macs at TCC's art school for three years, so I am familiar enough.. but I only used them for the Adobe programs. Getting use to the overall format and organization will be a learning experience.


The next exciting part of my week is that I decided to try my hand at selling clothes, not just buying them. I went through my closet and I also had about three boxes of charity donations I hadn't dropped off yet. Pulled out everything that was brand name and in nice condition and put it on hangers. I knew of two women's consignment stores in Norfolk and one junior's store in Virginia Beach. On Tuesday, I went by two of the stores. Double Take is a high end women's store, they took 7 of the 10 items I bought in. Ditto is a teen's store and they took 14 of 20 items. Both stores have a 60 day contract and I will receive 40% of the proceeds if my items sell. On Thursday, I stopped by both stores again, Double Take took another 7 items and Ditto took all 20! I also stopped by a store called Act II, another women's store, to see if they would take the items that Double Take passed on. They took 7 items, also on a 60 day contract but they give 50% to the consignors. So all together, the three stores took 55 items. Hopefully things sell and in two months I'll be holding some pretty looking checks, that I can go spend on more pretty looking clothes, of course :)


I also got offered a part time job this week. It was brought to my attention by my childhood art teacher. She has a friend who recently had her elderly mother move in with her. The woman is looking for someone to "babysit" her mother, who cannot be left alone, so that she and her husband can still go out on the weekends to run errands or just see a movie/go to dinner. It would be Friday or Saturday evenings, and perhaps during the day on Saturday too. I spoke with her yesterday. She asked me to put together a schedule of when I am available and call her back after the holiday. I think it will be a good opportunity for me because it is not too strenuous. With my health and my full time schedule at school, I have to be careful not to push myself too far when it comes to working. It is really easy for me to over do it and get sick. I don't see that happening with this job though because it is only one or two nights a week. Enough that I can have some spending money, but not so much that I get worn out.


Overall, I'd say it was a rather pleasant week. I do feel bad about not posting at all though. And for this post being kind of mundane, ha. I did say no promises though :P But really, I'll try to be more interesting next week. Hope everyone has a great holiday! :)