Roman Rolland once said, "It's the artist's job to create sunshine when there isn't any."
Welcome to my world.
I'm a student, a wolverine (grrr), an artist, a reader, a fiancee, a daughter and these are my thoughts...

February 21, 2011

Book Review: The Match ("Savior Siblings" and One Family's Battle to Heal Their Daughter)

Another book from LibraryThing!  I finished reading The Match and found myself wanting to learn the rest of the story, how Katie is growing up.  This book is about amazing, new fertility options that can help people who either have a genetic disorder that runs in their family or help out a family with an already sick child.  Selecting fertilized eggs for healthy genes or certain genes that match a sibling is a complicated new field of medicine and ethics and this book takes the academic arguments surrounding it and puts names and faces on the controversy.  In the book, you meet the Trebing family, whose daughter Katie is suffering from the terminal condition of Blackfan Anemia.  Her parents eventually decided to have another child whose genetic makeup with be a perfect match for Katie's, and therefore able to donate cord blood or bone marrow to help heal Katie.  This story follows their decision making process, the controversy they encounter and the long months of Katie's healing through the help of her brother, Christopher.  Sprinkled in amongst the story is the technical knowledge regarding the procedures that brought Christopher into the world and the battle to save Katie's life.  This is a well-written book that never gets too bogged down in the technical and yet gives enough information to help keep everything in perspective.  Oh, and it will probably make you cry. 

February 13, 2011

Back At It

I'm back!  I realize its been quite awhile since I've written.  My life has been crazy ever since Thanksgiving!  My boyfriend of 3 years proposed to me the day before Thanksgiving and our lives have been filled with wedding planning and preparing for our marriage.  Its been magical and amazing and hard and wonderful.  B has been the most amazing fiance and has taken on so much of the planning.  We are doing a lot of things ourselves, such as making the save the dates and its been fun to work together.  Also, this semester, I've been student teaching full time.  Its absolutely exhausting and I've never slept so much during my time in college as I have these past 2 months.  Its been hard to continue doing the things that I love, such as art.  I'm already looking forward to being done just so I can get back to creating and crafting.  Thankfully, I'll have a lot of wedding things to create!  I'm going to try to be more faithful in posting because I find the writing to be therapeutic and relaxing in the face of the stress of this semester.