Miracles for Mickey

Stay caught up! Read -  "Is This Patient Still Walking?" I didn't want to tell anyone about my tumors. It was such a scary, confusing time in my life, and I wanted to figure some things out on my own and with my family before announcing my situation to the whole world. I wasn't ready for the massive amounts of stress and worry I knew this would cause everyone in my life. I've never been one to put myself at the center of attention, and I knew that once my little neighborhood and school found out about my brain tumor, I'd be the talk of the town. But sometimes, no matter how hard you try to keep something a secret, (especially this BIG of a secret), people find out. And since I knew that was probably going to happen sooner rather than later, there were a few people I needed to tell first. They needed to hear it from me. One of the first people that needed to know was my softball coach, Jill. It was pretty obvious she had to be informed since it...

Stay caught up! Read -  "Brain Tumors and French Toast" There's a lot that has to happen after finding out you have a brain tumor. It's sort of like finding out you're getting married! Just...not as exciting. There's lots of research, lots of phone calls, lots of emotions. But the biggest thing, (and probably the most obvious), is you need doctors. You need to find someone who knows what the heck is going on, because you definitely don't. That's the story I'm going to be sharing with you today. I'm going to tell you how we found the right doctors. I know that doesn't sound super exciting, but hang in there. My mom and I walked out of the hospital after my MRI on April 18th, 2016 and I asked her to do me a favor. I asked if we could keep this quiet. I didn't want to shout to the whole world that I had a brain tumor. I didn't want to cause mass amounts of worry. It was already so hard to see how my mom was reacting to the news, ...

On the morning I was told I had a brain tumor, there was only one thing on my mind. French toast. Lets just get one thing clear - I am NOT a morning person. Not at all. Not even a little bit. Any day I have to wake up before 9 a.m. is not my most favorite day. Since I'm not a morning person, I've never been much of a breakfast person either. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love breakfast food, just not earlier than 9 a.m. My MRI that morning in April of 2016 was early. I had to be at the hospital around 7:30 a.m, so my stomach was definitely empty. My mom had promised we could go to the Kneaders across the street and get french toast after, so I wasn't too worried about my noisy tummy. The MRI technicians that day were super happy and cheerful, which was confusing to me. How could anyone be so happy and cheerful that early in the morning?? My MRI lasted about an hour, but they had to keep pulling me in and out of the machine to either adjust my positio...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!! Okay, so maybe Christmas is technically over, but since we are now officially treating every day like Christmas... MERRY CHRISTMAS!! I knew I wanted to do at least one blog post about Christmas and I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I've spent basically the whole month of December trying to think of exactly what I wanted to say. And you know what I came up with? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was stressing out really bad because it was Christmas and I was focused on getting presents for everyone and I was stressed about school and doctors appointments and I was trying to think of a good Christmas themed story that I could talk about and for some reason I could not think of a single story. I thought of taking an easy route and just going with the classic, "What Does Christmas Mean To You" topic. And of course when I think of what Christmas means to me, I think of Jesus Christ. I think of his birth and his life and how much he has ...

Bear with me. I have a lot of thoughts and stories running through my head right now about this topic, so hopefully I can adequately write down everything I'd like to. So first off, since part of the title of this post is "Aware of Angels" I thought it would be appropriate to explain exactly what that is. If you have explored my blog at all, (even though there's not much to explore right now), you might have noticed that there is a tab on the left side. If you open this tab up, you'll see I have three links there. The first link takes you to the official website for Aware of Angels, so go check it out when you're done reading this! Aware of Angels is a non-profit organization that was started by Season Atwater in July of 2014. They raise awareness for kids and teens who have rare or undiagnosed diseases. Since it's based out of Utah, the majority of the photography has been done within the state, but there have been a few families who have traveled ...

Aware of Angels @season.atwater.photography Hello and welcome to my blog! I'm going to be completely honest right now. I don't know what I'm doing. I legit don't know the first thing about blogging! But I guess I have to start somewhere so...here it goes! Since this is my first ever blog post, I figured it might be a good idea to introduce myself by giving you my best "first day of school introduction". My name is Mikaela Gage but my family calls me Kaela and my friends call me Mickey so really you can call me whatever you like. I am 19 years old and I'm the only girl in my family with four older brothers who are also my best friends. My favorite colors are blue and pink. I love dogs, penguins, being outdoors, MARVEL, Netflix, Sprite, and Jesus. I also have a disease called von Hippel-Lindau. Now the first time I ever heard about von Hippel-Lindau was about a year and a half ago when I was diagnosed, so I'm still learning. But basically,...