Cancer Update and Drama Queens

I haven't written in a few days, and tonight I've been busy, reading all about Jim and Garret's adventures (and MISadventures) in an RV through the western US. Boy! Do I wish I could just chuck it all and go galivanting (my mother's word) around the country!!! I am soooo jealous of these guys! http://jimandgarret.blogspot.com/

OK, back to real life. John is now waiting to hear from Abington Hospital about getting a biopsy done on his spleen to find out what these 2 spots are. For the record, Dr. Swaab, his oncologist said they are very small (1.5cm and 2.5cm) and they weren't there 6 months ago. It's also possible that it isn't cancer, but given the fact that John had Lymphoma and one of the places the cancer was evident was right near his spleen, it could be cancer. Hopefully, please God, if it is indeed cancer, they are catching it early. It's also possible, once they get in there , that they might just remove the spleen right way. The spleen is like a sponge that filters your blood and it's a very spongy organ. They might not be able to get a good reading with a biopsy and removal might be necessary. They CAN'T remove the speen laproscopically, because they need to see the entire organ and if they try to remove it laproscopically, it could come out like spleen soup! So he'll need to have open surgery and removed the spleen in one piece. OK, now that everyone has lost their appetites! LOL Hopefully John will hear from Dr. Tey at Abington soon and get this arranged and over with! What I don't want to happen is for them to schedule it for the first week of December! A good part of that week, I'll be in Pittsburgh with Danielle.

Danielle has applied to and been accepted to Indiana University of PA, in Indiana, PA and also Point Park University in Pittsburgh. Her major? Theatre! oh, and English Education. Dani has to audition to get into the musical theatre program. Her sister, Gina did this 6 years earlier, so I'm a pro at waiting, nervously, while my kid sings, dances and acts her way into college, competing with hundreds of other kids wanting the same thing. Gina tried to convince Dani not to do this. The competition is fierce! You have kids who were the best in their high schools, getting the leads to the plays. Now you're in college and all these kids are now having to really compete, for the first time, to get parts in the plays at the college level. Some kids get cast in a lot of things, some get so close but never quite get cast, some, like my daughter Gina, get cast in the musicals, but in the chorus or as the understudy (as a mom, you want to slip ex-lax into the other's girl's coffee so your kid can have the chance to go on and perform!).

Gina was fortunate enough to be cast as Dinah Lord in The Philadelphia Story at De Sales University, in Allentown, PA where she attended college (and got RAVE reviews I might add!).
Here is the review: From the moment that Regina Poletti walks out on the Labuda Center stage at DeSales University, her performance as Dinah Lord lights up Act 1's production of Philip Barry's "The Philadelphia Story." Poletti, who plays the delightfully impish tomboyish younger sister of Main Line heiress Tracy Lord, is just great fun to watch, a troublemaker with a "Capital T." She mugs and sasses and stirs up Barry's 1930s period comedy of Philadelphia Main Line manners as she irreverently stokes the fires of mischief.

She also was cast in a musical revue called The World Goes Round and they also got rave reviews! (review: Christopher Brossman, Jeffrey Dietzler, Angela Pomo, Regina Poletti and Tina Marie Connell speed up the tempo with "Coffee in a Cardboard Cup." AND Poletti and Denise Nelson bring down the house with their put- down of fame in "The Grass is Always Greener.") The article is long so I just put the cool stuff about my kid here. :)

She understudied Buddy in West Side Story and was in the chorus as a Peurto Rican girl. She was also in the chorus for Hello Dolly!, Cabaret and Crazy For You. Partway through her sophomore year in college, Gina nearly changed her major but her advisor talked her out of it. So now I like to tell people my daughter is a Drama Queen (and she really is!) and she has the degree to prove it!

Now she works for a radio station in Wilmington, DE, doing voiceovers for commercial and writing and producing commercials. She also recently got her own radio show that airs on Sundays.

OK, got off on one of my many tangents... back to Dani, my future drama queen. So Dani and I will be travelling to western PA (we live outside of Philadelphia) so she can audition for college and I'd hate it if John is in the hospital that week. I get so nervous while they are doing this audition process!