Open-Gown Monday

Once more into the fray, time to don my pink gown (opens in the front for easy access!) present myself as Good-Patient-Plemitscher, compliant-not-complaining, perky-and-positive, and just what is it with me and the alliterative-hyphenated thing lately?

Coffee...need coffee. Last night, the three humans and two dogs consumed massive quantities of home-cooked surf and turf, accompanied by two bottles of wine from the 1990s! The good stuff. The cellar stash. The laid-down-for-more-than-10-years-reds. Oh my, died and gone to Napa Valley heaven, that's what it was. I love visiting the Goldbergs--it's like being right in the middle of an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, without stuffy and obnoxious Robin Leach narrating, just 3 too-loud people yakking and laughing all at the same time. The dogs were barking at us, we got so raucous.

Now in the foggy light of morning, I am reflecting that for everything I've been through, I haven't reformed my evil ways. I eat seriously char-broiled steak (OK, there was some divine marinated swordfish too!) and drink red wine, and wake up with parched tongue and pounding head, go straight for the very thick and hot Peet's blend to pull myself together before my battle with C'Ville traffic and the inevitable undressing.

Today, I offer up a small morning prayer of the BC post-patient:

Lord, you alone know how tired I am of being felt up by men other than my husband--please grant me the patience not to go into auto-defense mode and hit one of my doctors this morning.

Packing My Hick Suitcase

I have real luggage, really I do. But for a quick road trip, nothing beats the Walmart plastic bag.

MaryAnn and daughter Ashley have been on a recycling/reusing theme for the past week, and I am feeling quite smug, as I've been using those ubiquitous plastic bags for hauling around clothes, toiletries, lunch and dog supplies ever since they were invented.

I once checked into the LAX Hilton with my 5-year high-school reunion frock and cosmetic supplies, snacks and (many) bottles of libations all stuffed into a 30-gallon black plastic garbage bag, slung over my shoulder. I clanked a bit as I strode to the elevator, but I wasn't planning on ever being there again, so why not? I paid for the room, I should be able to bring whatever luggage I please, right?

So, lunch and snacks in one bag, a bag of dog supplies (water bowl, food bowl, ziplock of kibble, pouch of treats, nosey halter, short leash, long leash, yard tie-out, bunny, baby and birdie toys, car harness--Heavens-to-Betsy, I think I have more accouterments for the dog than I ever did for myself or my kids!), a bag of clothes and overnight toiletries, a bag-o-medical documents (new lab reports, list of drugs and supplements I'm currently taking, phone list, doctor list, list of questions to ask, clipboard, blank notepaper, book to read while cooling my heels in multiple waiting rooms). Is there any room left for woman and dog in this car? To my fellow highway travelers, I probably look like I'm just headed home from grocery shopping at the local W-M, instead of on a cross-country tour of Appalachia.

I woke up this morning laughing at myself. This will be my 9th round trip to Charlottesville, VA in six months, and that's really not so bad. But ask yourself this: If you were given a diagnosis of cancer, what would be your first thought? Would it be, "Gee, let me find a good specialist close to home?" or would you be completely idiotic like Bill & I were and say, "Great! Let's drive 300 miles each way for our appointments, so we can be forced to buy a new car as soon as we're done paying for all the medical expenses! Well, we really didn't say that, of course. But the Law of Unintended Consequences applies, and that may well be the eventual result of our foolishness.

I like my doctor at UVA. I love seeing my friends, Mark & Jo & Kona & Paco, when I have to go to C'Ville. But with gas more than $3 a gallon, and 82K on the car, I'm beginning to think that the caution about not making important decisions when you're facing a life-threatening illness is no lie. We were in a panic and we were doofusses.

I'm glad I went to UVA--they caught the multiple cancers, took care of it all at once, thus saving me going through this trauma all over again with sequential diagnoses, and they did an OK job of taking care of me through the initial stages. But now, I kind of wish they would just move their facility about 300 miles closer to me instead of me having to haul my car full of Walmart bags up I-81 yet again.

Once again, old war movies come to mind: "How do I get a transfer out of this *blankety-blank* outfit?"

Fear and the DON'T GO THERE Box

I have been afraid for most of my life. (Today's waking revelation).

I know you think I'm joshing you, but it's true. The take-no-prisoners, tromping-through-life-with-abandon, risk-taking, rule-defying, loud and obnoxious say-whatever-just-to-shock-you persona I have constructed is just a buttressed defense against the scared little kid I am inside.

Actually, I was less afraid as a child than I was as a young adult. And I became even more afraid when I became a parent. My biggest fear (I think), is letting people down, not living up to my responsibilities or who I think I should be, leading a life that is dishonorable, harmful, hurtful, or worse...insignificant?

So, I bluster. Thinking perhaps that volume trumped content, that a brave front would keep the demons of weakness at bay, I strode through life defiantly doing the very things that scared me, being arbitrarily argumentative, saying whatever popped into my head at the time, and presenting a made-up picture of a Powerful-Woman-Not-To-Be-Messed-With. Sometimes, I even believed it myself.

People close to me knew some of the truth--Bill, my kids as adults, Mom, close friends--but for the most part, the facade held up pretty well for most of my years until now.

But the post-cancer Pam is having a hard time patching the mortar in that wall lately. It all seems so stupid. What is the point of being Powerful-Woman-Not-To-Be-Messed-With, if something so elemental as your own body chemistry messes with you? It means that PWNTBMW was a complete lie, and now the only roles available for this over-the-hill actress are Poor-Girl-Putting-Up-A-Brave-Front, Damaged-But-Carrying-On-Anyway, The-Good-Patient (yuk), or False-Cheerful-I'm-a-Survivor-Hooray-For-Me (double yuk)!

I just feel so...put-upon and passive. As if from now on, I'm going to be a person that things happen to, instead of the heady person I wanted to be, the one who makes things happen. As I write this, I can already hear the emails and phone calls, asking if I'm depressed. Not really, no. I just feel a bit aimless, rudderless, trying to figure out who I am, at this late date. Not the same, yet still battling the same old demons of self-doubt and fear.

Cancer took away my confidence, my misplaced faith that nothing bad could happen to me. That confidence has been shaken before, and I've always recovered, scarred over a little, but with my optimism refortified. The process is tortuous and it takes time, and I am not a patient person!

What is bringing all this to the forefront is my trip back into the belly of the beast tomorrow. Back up to UVA, Charlottesville, the scene of the crime, so to speak. For a check-up for recurrence (there's that fear-inducing word). I tried to talk my way out of it, complaining that it was too far to travel for a quick "hi, I'm fine," meet with the too-saccharine team at the Breast Cancer Care Center, but the doc and his nurse insisted.

"What's left to examine?" was my practical, cheerful, emotions-in-check question. Wow. Sorry I asked, when I heard the nurse's response. Great. More stuff to worry about. The problem is that once this thing called cancer happens, you're never done with it. The hits just keep on coming. So I'm putting on my Good Patient suit, marching forward reluctantly, head down and sighing all the way. [insert expletive here].

Now, there's a DON'T GO THERE box in my head, a place where I put all the scary stuff I can't deal with immediately, and it's getting a little over-full lately. That's all. But I'm beginning to wonder if I need a bigger box, because stuff is starting to bulge out of the top and sides. And if I upgrade to a larger container, doesn't that start to take up space in the closet that used to be reserved for the good stuff, the stuff I want to keep, the stuff that makes me happy?

So, no, I'm not depressed. Angry? A little. Resigned? Oh yes.

This is the COOLEST thing....

I found this interesting analysis of my very own speech patterns at: www.blogthings.com/whatkindofamericanenglishdoyouspeakquiz

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English (I assume they mean Californian/Ubiquitous Newscaster when they say GAE?) 15% Upper Midwestern 15% Yankee 10% Dixie 0% Midwestern Try it yourself and see!

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

(Thanks to CrazyAuntPurl for the link)

New Computer Skills (Bear with me, please)

Ok, we're going to try something *NEW* here: Posting pictures within the text of the post. If I follow MaryAnn's excellent directions without messing up, you should see a picture of Dave here in Rural America:

Yippee! I can learn something new! Thank you MaryAnn!

Cranky & Distracted

I'm in a bit of an agitated snit this morning.

Rather than subject everyone to the woe-is-me-fest, I think I'll go put in a load of laundry and exercise on the elliptical for the length of the washer cycle, and try to clear my head before posting later today.

Life Lessons & Lawyers

I spent this morning talking with Lawyer #3, the first two having turned down the "privilege" of representing me in a legal action against my former radiologist, my former gynecologist, or both.
While I'm quite thankful that I'm not dying in the near future or dead due to their negligence, it also means that any lawsuit I might bring isn't worth enough for it to be a moneymaker for a lawyer working on contingency to pursue.

This barrister was a little different though. Once he carefully familiarized himself with the complicated timeline and details, he started to get angry enough to at least consider what could be done to hold these people accountable for neglecting to inform me about my probable cancer, 14 months before I was actually diagnosed. He asked for a month to ponder my options. That's something, at least.

While my fraught-with-human-error story is way too complex to go into here, the lessons I've learned from the process are noteworthy enough to share:

Always, always, always get a copy of the results of every medical test you undergo, as soon as the results are available. Read your report, ask your doctor questions about it, and file it where you can find it again. Don't wait for someone to call you and tell you that there is something wrong. Never assume that no news is good news.

Keep copies of films like mammograms--sometimes they can be put on a disc--and your test results, and haul them around with you to share with any new doctors you see.

Once a year, find out what doctors are writing in your medical records about you. Request a complete copy of your file under HIPPA regulations. Read it and correct it, just like you would with your credit report.

If I had known then what I know now, I could have caught this cancer more than a year before my doctors got around to telling me about it. The thought that haunts me is, "what if I hadn't gone back a year later for another mammogram? What if I had skipped a year or two?" I had always considered myself to be an intelligent and informed patient, but I was passive when it came to getting the results and reading them for myself. I trusted my medical caregivers to tell me if something was wrong, and they dropped the ball at a critical moment.

My only recourse at this point may be to make sure everyone I know understands the mistakes I made, and hopefully prevent this sort of recordkeeping snafu from happening to someone else.

Memory

I woke up this morning thinking about the power of memory, and how Dave and I remember many of the same things from our 37-year shared past, but we remember them in different ways. There's also the added bonus that he recollects incidents that I have completely forgotten, and vice-versa. Between the two of us, we're almost able to reconstruct events, feelings and sequences with uncanny accuracy--but then there are also random, total blanks for both of us.

We always think we're going to remember things with the clarity of the moment they happen. "I'll never forget this moment!" we declare. And then, decades later, we do forget. We need photos or journals or another person (with a better long-term memory) to jog us backwards.

Dave was the photographer, I was the writer, so you'd think that between the two of us, we'd have a pretty good photojournalistic account of our trips and our history. But we're both disorganized packrats--we never throw anything away, but who knows where to find Pam's America diaries or Dave's thousands of slides?

Dave brought up a heavy container from the basement on his last evening here. Inside was a treasure--black and white 8 x 10 prints and contact proof sheets that Dave developed himself in the on-campus darkroom when he was teaching me the basics of photography. Candid portraits of "our gang" at a Thanksgiving party, complete with babies in backpacks (who are now in their thirties!); moving day scenes; my first wedding, on campus in 1972, when the trees were baby sticklings and most of the college hadn't been built yet; group photos of long-haired hippie boys and granny-dressed hippie girls! What a hoot!

In some cases, Dave would remember all names that I had forgotten. I could remember the venues (and even some of the food we served--why would I remember that?), that Dave couldn't recall. Luckily, sometime in the past, I had written the year on the back of the photos, otherwise we would both have been guessing the "when." Because Dave still works at the University, he had a much better handle on the "where."

There was Molly, looking beautiful, in her BIG 70s eyeglasses (we all had HUGE spectacles and fluffy layered hair)! There was Donan and Galvez, Leslie and Tiger, Terry and whoever her boyfriend at the time was. My mom and dad playing pool together (yes, they came to our college parties), and looking...well, the age we are now! And young! Oh my goodness, our faces so unlined, so unmarked by experience, or grief, or life, or sun-damage!

There is almost a sense of ruefulness for how naive, how sweet, how relatively simple we all were; a sadness of time gone by in what feels like a blink, but was actually three-plus decades. The power of memory is that it does remain so vivid, it takes us back to times and places where we recapture the feelings, even though our bodies have changed and so much more experience has stitched itself into the matrix of mind and character. Time marches inexorably on, yet staring at the pictures, I can almost step right back inside the person I used to be, and remember darned near everything, even the painful stuff I worked so long and hard at forgetting, thank you very much.

There's a lesson here, but I'm not quite getting it yet. I'll try again: We thought ourselves fully-formed at that young age, I can see it in these photographs. There's an unguarded joyfulness, a hint of arrogance, a patina of confidence. The years and experiences we've added to that baseline of young adulthood, positive and negative, change us, but not necessarily in any fundamental way. Looking back, from the perspective of middle-age, I feel a nostalgia for those simpler people, but I don't feel very much changed in any significant way. It's still us, just more layered.

Maybe it's just the inevitable differences between the Pam 2.0 version versus the current Pam 5.5?

Time for Dave to go home...

Wow, we've had fun, but now it's time for Dave to go home. We've accomplished quite a bunch of little niggling projects, but mostly, we've just reconnected our friendship.

I'm glad we had some significant Weather for Dave to enjoy--yesterday it snowed twice (with sunshine in between), which delighted he-who-lives-in-Southern-California. I could hear him out on the deck, clicking away with the camera. He is also taking pictures of the interior of the house, which was his daughter's request.

Today on our drive to Nashville, he'll get a chance to see the countryside he missed in the dark when he arrived. We'll take Echo with us, as she loves the opportunity to "leave her mark" in the rest stops of America.

Safe trip, Dave. Thanks for a great week--it really lifted my spirits!

Tempis Fugit

Yes, the time does fly by. La comida Mexicana es muy bien, or was yesterday, for an early Easter supper. Dave and I came home over-full and ready for afternoon naps!

We accomplished quite a bit yesterday (I say "we," but it's really Dave doing all the work). Today we are off to Henard's Lumber and Hardware, for supplies for our last projects--reworking the configuration of the closet rods and the rewiring of an antique lamp that came out of Bill's parents' home last fall. I sold a few things on eBay last night, so those packages have to be put together and sent off to their destinations. And, I'm running low on drinking water, so a Walmart trip is probably warranted.

Tomorrow, we'll have clear driving weather to Nashville. Dave will drive the way there, so I can rest for the drive back home. Echo will come along with us, so she doesn't have to be alone all day in the house. She's happiest when she's on a roadtrip. She'll also get a trip on Sunday, when I go up to Charlottesville for an overnight, and an early appointment with Dr. Brenin at UVA on Monday morning.

And then, it will be April. Where does the time go?

Easter Sunday

I felt very smug and self-satisfied yesterday when I called up my Mexican restaurant, the recently relocated El Pueblo, to see if they were going to be open today. "Ola, esta abierto manana, por favor?" I asked. "Si, senora..." he said, adding something else I didn't understand. Here's the rub: I can construct the sentences and ask the questions, but I have yet to be able to comprehend the answers I get back! So much for attempts at Spanish fluency. But the result is that Dave and I will have a Mexican Easter dinner, and I don't have to cook!

We had another fun day yesterday, working through the list of chores (changing high-up lightbulbs, vacuuming, replacing the UV water-system bulb), and having some outdoor recreation time. We went to the dump, then up to Pressman's Home, the weird ruins of the old facility of the printer's union. I showed him the even-more-rural parts of the countryside, where things are greening up nicely and starting to bloom.

At sunset, we walked up back and down a path I hadn't been on before, remarking on the tiny plants appearing in the dead leaves, the weird fungi, the aggressive lichens on fallen limbs. It's so great to walk in the woods at this time of year--the sun is warm, the breezes are cool and the bugs aren't out in force yet. As soon as the sun dipped behind Devil's Nose though, the wind became cold and unrelenting. Time to go home.

We spent the evening going through old scrapbooks of times spent together when Dave lived with us in Vallejo, and then the years the kids were growing up far away in New York.

Today, our plan is to shoot foam into all the little holes in the house where we can see daylight, spray insecticide in the hornets' nests up under the eaves, and maybe even correct some of the lighting fixture issues in the house. Everything that we can do now means fewer annoying chores for a work-weary Bill when he gets home in 3-4 weeks.

*************
My friend Rob is now in the middle of his Interleukin-2 treatment trial for Stage IV melanoma at NCI in Bethesda, MD. His travails are profound, but his sense of humor is intact. Grant that his struggles will be rewarded with a successful outcome.

Another beautiful spring day in East TN

Wow, things are just starting to pop everywhere! Tiny violets, swollen tree buds, wild onions pushing up and out into the sunlight. I do adore spring here--it comes early, stays late, and delights the senses each new day.

Dave and I did go up to the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park yesterday, and tromped around the exhibits and trails. It was a great day for it--I even have a little sun on my face from all the outdoor activity.

Today--more sunshine, more fun. And a big Happy Birthday to MaryAnn too!

Post 201

Have I really posted 200 times? It seems hard to believe that I've written that much, come this far, been doing this for so long. Doing the blogging thing has been a cathartic exercise and kept me sane throughout the past six months. I guess I'll just keep doing it until I don't need to anymore.

Today, Dave and I will continue our pattern of doing a few chores, then exploring the property, then recreating--I was thinking since it's such a nice day we might go up to the Cumberland Gap and take in the big view of the countryside, and go stand in 3 states at once.

Like the years between never happened...

I picked up Dave in Nashville last night around 9 pm, and it was 2 am before we made it home to Rogersville. The drive out was stormy and exciting, but I had left at 2 pm, because I knew bad weather was on the way. I stopped a few times to let the violence of the storm pass me by (torrential, firehose-on-the-windshield-like rain, high winds), and we hooked up without trouble at the airport.

The drive home was so much fun, both of us talking rapid-fire, catching up and observing world events with immediate connection.
"So what's Juli like?" he'd ask.
"Have you ever seen Wonderfalls, an obscure TV series...?" I'd start.
"I bought the whole series the day it came out, it was the best series I'd seen..." he said, before I interrupted "...the main character, that's my girl, brilliant, completely unmotivated..."
"Yep, yep, I can see that," he agreed.

So, after 20 years, we clicked again immediately, talking through the night and the miles with the comradery I've remembered and missed.

Today, we hiked all over the backside of the mountain, then Dave tackled the kitchen cabinet trays I've been dying to install for 3 months. In the afternoon, we hiked all over the bottom land down by the creek, got the mail and explored the new flowers down by the pond.

It is so great to leapfrog the distance of years and miles, and find commonality and companionship with an old friend.

Other voices

For the first time in months, I have been perusing the Breast Cancer blogs on the net again. I'm not sure what I'm looking for, but maybe it's perspective? Hope? A final farewell? I feel like I'm pushing myself back into the storm, if only to remember what it was like when I was actively in it, so as not to lose the connection (with the group I never wanted to be a member of)! Just when I feel myself starting to get beyond it, I feel a nostalgia for the intensity of last fall. Like The Godfather, it keeps pulling me back in...

There are some astonishing blogs out there--really amazing, honest, infuriating, funny, sad, and ironic stuff. One article, "Gag me with a Pink Ribbon," at http://www.assertivepatient.com/ had me laughing so hard, I had to go get a cold cloth for my head. The author declares, "It's a disease, not a marketing opportunity!" and catalogues her outrage at products such as Breast Cancer Barbie, (she suggests marketing companion dolls such as Prostate Cancer Ken and little sister, Benign Girl, who "loves her big sister, but doesn't want to grow up to be like her!"), provides a mural of herself made out of pink M&Ms entitled "What I See in the Mirror--and It Ain't Pretty!", and sports a militant attitude about surviving not just cancer, but the whole falderol (spellcheck isn't working here, so I apologize) of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Last October, when we were in the thick of it, Bill complained about the barrage of pink-marketed items we had to wade through everywhere, saying, "Thanks, but I think we're aware now!" There is an element of exploitation when marketing everything from yogurt to power tools by slapping a pink ribbon on the package and supposedly donating a paltry percentage of the sale to the Susan G. Komen Foundation. It's gotten out of control.

Another blog, entitled As the Tumor Turns at http://www.spinningtumor.blogspot.com/, features truly amazing art and photography, as well as articulate posts about dogs, Mexico vacations and life in general, as well as the daily struggles of adapting to post-cancer life.

I hesitate sharing these in one sense--for people who haven't lived this, some of it is pretty raw, and might be taken the "wrong" way, whatever that is. I found some of it offensive too, but I am also encouraged. All these voices provide a community of people who are pathfinding their way through it, just like I am.

Since I can't afford therapy (and could barely tolerate the smugness of it in any case--I'd have to hold in my snorting impulse, I distrust psychobabble so), blogging has become the place where I try out my emotions, work through conflicts and learn to heal myself. Reading other people's blogs gives me touchpoints of similarities and differences, a way to gut-check what I'm really feeling and see if it rings true to myself.

Still fussing...

My satellite woes are continuing, so I'll be brief.

Steri-strips came off at Dr. Huddleston's yesterday, my stitches look great. I told him I'm not ready for nipple reconstruction, so I am to see him again in 6 weeks. Maybe I'll be ready to face that then. I continue to experience great relief from the surgery he did on March 7. So this is what it was always supposed to feel like? What a revelation!

Dave comes tomorrow. The house is a mess. What else is new?

Satellite Redux

Today, the ongoing problems with the internet satellite will hopefully be resolved. According to Billy, who inspected everything on Friday, the satellite was never installed properly to begin with--wrong location, wrong type of cable, wrong everything. The workmen are supposed to show up early this morning and do everything right this time. We shall see, I have my doubts...

This of course happens smack dab in the middle of printing postage labels, managing auction wins and other chores where the computer is my lifeline. I can hope that it will take them a brief visit to make it all right, but my experience with them in the past colors that hope--I won't be surprised if they shake their heads and tell me they have to go get another part, or throw up their hands and tell me they'll come back still another day. In the meantime, I'm still stuck in the land of frustrating dial-up. If you're getting a busy signal on the phone, that's where I am--waiting for something to download. Try the cell...

World Washed Clean

What a rain last night! Big booms of thunder, searing stabs of lightning, torrential downpours!

This morning, everything looks pressure-washed clean in the sunlight, as if the gloom of winter itself has been hosed away. Daffodils are blooming at last, and I'm going to declare that spring has begun, despite what it says on the calendar.

My dear friend Dave is coming for a 5-day visit on Wednesday. I met Dave when I was a freshman in college in 1970. We worked together at the student radio station KUCI, and shared a house with other friends when we all graduated. He and I traveled all around the United States together 1977-1979, camped on Hawaii & Maui for a month in 1981, and he was my "best man" when Bill and I married in '82. He came and stayed with us through my labor with Juli, and lived with us in Vallejo when Alex was born, our unofficial "au pair," who rocked Alex through bouts of colic and picked Juli up at pre-school. There's a bunch of old history between us, but not much recent contact except for brief visits in the last 20 years.

I'm looking forward to his company and plan on taking full advantage of his superior abilities! He's already said that he'll change lightbulbs, drill holes, saw wood and help me wash the dirty dog. Dave to the rescue once again!

Home stretch...

There's only about a month to go before Bill comes home, before the kids come to visit, before taxes are due, before spring is really here. I'm often living in the thoughts of what is coming, rather than what has been--and that's a good thing. I know the popular wisdom is to live in the now, but having had some harrowing "nows" lately, sometimes I think it's just better to go to a happy place of looking forward to something else. Looking forward got me this far, relatively unscathed.

I think in order to have a future, you have to be able to envision one. So often, that's exactly what a cancer diagnosis takes away from you--the faith that there is a future, that you'll ever again have the luxury of planning things for later, with reasonable surety that you'll be able to be there to see those plans to fruition.

I am now at a point where I can't believe how good I feel physically. It's an absolute miracle to be without the pain and constriction that I lived with as "normal" for the past 4 months! What a difference it has made in my mental attitude as well. I now feel like I'm on the downhill side of the mountain, the home stretch of the race. I'm starting to believe in the future again.

Celebrating Early

I've decided to have my birthday today instead of tomorrow. Since I am celebrating by myself, I don't see any reason why I have to wait one more day.

I endured more medical indignities this morning, took my packages to Fedex, and finally saw the satellite people (although nothing will be fixed until Monday morning), so my chores are done for today. Saturday is usually a big eBay listing night, so I'll be working tomorrow night. Tonight, I have a new disk from Netflix, a rack of Baby Back Ribs in the oven, and a little cake with confetti I bought at Walmart on the way home. Why not? I may even open a bottle of champagne and drink too much of it!

55 years old. Wow, that sounds so ancient! It's a good thing that I'm so immature, or this could be depressing. It's good to be here.

Persuing health as a life goal?

I want to avoid making my life a series of measures designed to simply extend my lifespan. Now that I've danced with mortality in a particularly frantic and fearful way, there is a temptation to make survival the overriding theme of my life from now on. Perhaps pushing "healthy living" to the background is what got me into this mess in the first place, but I'm not sure I want the preservation of my body to become my number one priority from now on.

When everything I do revolves around the illness and the avoidance of more illness, the only net result I can see is that I will become a colossal bore, especially to myself. Maybe a long-lived bore, but what good is that? I hate just being about this. I want to leap-frog a couple of years in the future, where people will forget this ever happened, and we'll talk of something other than how I feel. Comparing aches & pains, talking about our latest surgeries or medical indignities...this is what getting old sounds like!

I also resent that now a good portion of my life is going to revolve around bi-monthly or semi-annual checkups with various specialists, constant tests and re-tests to ferret out any hidden problems, taking daily medications and handfuls of nutritional supplements, eating right, daily exercise, and all the rest, always monitoring in the background for something out of the ordinary, something that might signal "danger!" I did these things in the past (or so I thought) in a matter-of-fact way, and look where that got me. Now I have to do it consciously, and I'm cranking about it.

Just this week, I will have been to see a doctor or had another test five times. Next week, there will be another appointment, and again, another the week after that. I am starting to feel that from now on my real life is going to be sandwiched in between doctor visits, instead of the other way around.

And I'm one of the lucky ones. I skated through this experience with a minimum amount of medical intervention--I didn't have to go through radiation, or chemotherapy, or any of the normal post-op treatments that most patients have to endure. So why am I being such a baby about this? Maybe the trick is just to do what has to be done, and forget about it in between the times I have to present myself for observation and more testing.

I'm either going to have to develop some sort of mode where I can put these health-related activities in a mental box that doesn't slop over into the rest of my life, or find a way of integrating it, without it overshadowing everything I do or think or feel.

Clean-up Day

It's been a very busy few days. Monday was all about the doctors, pap smear in the morning, unveiling in the afternoon. Yesterday, I was also running--to the post office, Fedex, the gun store to pick up a tonic that MaryAnn purchased for me on her trip to Sam's Club. In between, I've been packing up all the auction items I sold over the weekend and hassling with the gravel guy and the satellite guys. No time to sit and post anything!

Today looks like more of the same. I need to gather my trash and take it to the dump, and sometime this morning, I need to go downtown and get the blood tests my Nurse Practictioner
ordered for lipids, Vitamin D and blood sugar. So this is what getting old is like? The clock is ticking, I'm running as fast as I can, and I'm still falling behind.

My computer has some kind of downloading virus that I need to attend to, the bathroom needs cleaning and the dog is pleading for a walk with those big brown eyes.

Gotta run...

Darken the shades, remove the bandages...

"I can see!"

No, no, that's some other movie, starring Bette Davis...

The bandages did come off (in a bright room), and wow, it looks and feels so much better. This was the right decision--to jetison the happy-but-clueless crew at UVA and find someone who cared as much as I did about such silly things as appearance. I am very pleased, and as an extra bonus prize, I can now shower with abandon.

I'm to return in a week for another check, and he will talk to me and schedule the next step in the reconstruction process, which involves prosthetic tattoos and more aesthetic "improvements." (Why does it embarrass me to say nipples and aureoles? I don't know, but it does. You'd think after all this I would be beyond indignity, yet still, I blush. It's just a little creepy to think about).

For now, I am very pleased, and glad I had the "fix-it" surgery sooner rather than later.

Everyday gets better & better

I can't believe how easy this surgery was. I was only in the very mildest discomfort yesterday, and today I don't think I'll need any meds at all. I still itch a little, but for the most part, I don't have to think about how I feel every minute of the day. I am still being cautious in my movements, as I don't want to pull anything or strain anything.

My mental fog is lifting too. I honestly think there might come a time where I don't count this as the seminal experience of my life. I'm hoping it will eventually recede into the category of "bump in the road," rather than define the journey into two parts, before cancer and after.

I emailed my surgeon at UVA, who wanted to see me in late March, asking if I still needed to drive 600 miles (round trip) to pop in and tell him "I'm fine." His nurse called me back and said that Dr. Brenin does indeed want to see me, because he has to check for recurrences. That set me back a bit. Just how would he do that and what's left to check? It occurred to me that I really have moved on, and I've started to think of myself as "normal" again, not as a post-cancer patient. In my mind, I'm done. Apparently, this is not the case, and I am still under suspicion for the time being. But I think I'll ask for clarification anyway--if he orders more tests, I'd like to do all that in one trip, rather than do the back-and-forth travel that defined our lives last fall.

Spring is coming, and I'm feeling good, lucky, and grateful.

Doing fine this morning...

I suppose I could blame the anesthesia, for there is always a bit of amnesia after every procedure I go through. Already, I can't remember my last thought before going under, or recall waking up in recovery yesterday. General anesthesia is like a time-blink; one minute I'm there, and the next minute, I'm somewhere else. All of yesterday was pretty foggy, thanks to the pharmaceuticals.

I slept comfortably and deeply, until 5 this morning. I can lever myself upright without help, which is a major difference from the last surgeries--and a good thing that is, it would have been very embarrassing to have to call MaryAnn to come help me get out of bed! It didn't occur to me that I might have trouble, and I didn't. I have very little pain, only intense "itching and prickling" in the center of my chest.

As yet, I don't know what the results will be, as I am completely gauzed up, and exhorted to just leave everything alone. I will go to Kingsport on Monday afternoon for the "unveiling." At least it's just soft gauze, and not the ridiculous mega-ace bandages I've had to wrestle with after the past surgeries.

I am moving about very slowly, but only because I want to be careful. Another couch day is planned.

Home after surgery

Thanks to all for your prayers and good wishes.

Surgery went well, I'm resting comfortably at home. I had my soup, sandwich and nap, and am in good shape. Able to putter around, feed myself and take care of dog. Very little pain, whatever there is, is easily controlled with Tylenol#3. I expect I'll be sorer tomorrow, but well on the mend by Sunday or Monday.

Let's hope this is the last surgery for awhile. I am entirely too familiar with the process!

Nesting

I spent the day cleaning up my habitat. It was almost like pre-labor nesting, getting ready for whatever comes next. Sweeping, vacuuming, wiping down countertops. Shaking out blankets and fluffing up pillows. I've got 8 episodes of Battlestar Galactica ready to go when I get home.

I know the drill--nothing by mouth after midnight, comfy clothes, no makeup, jewelry, deodorant, handbag, etc. A pillow to cushion the seat belt for the ride home. I'm almost an expert at this pre-surgery prep routine.

The nurse called to tell me they don't need me to check in until 8:30, so I'll at least be semi-awake for the drive over. I expect I'll be home by mid-afternoon and will post then.

New Driveway Gravel

The big thrill of the day is to be the re-graveling of the driveway. Yes, I know--my life is just too exciting, and you are so jealous.

When we first moved here, the driveway was a four-wheeler's obstacle course. Giant ruts, carved by water seeking the lowest level competed with humped hillocks just waiting to grab the undercarriage of an unsuspecting car. As you gunned the engine to gain enough speed to get uphill, you had to steer wildly to make the curves and avoid the road-rally dangers. Passengers were exhorted to grab tight onto a hand-hold and rise out of their seats to avoid being tossed around the interior of the car on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

Shane, (of Shane's Bobcat Service), changed all that. He came and graded courses for water to flow, filled in the dips and leveled the bumps. He poured two big truckloads of gravel over all, and we had a civilized driveway. Now, after almost 2 years, the gravel has been pulverized by tires and pushed into the earth, leaving bare ground in some spots. For once, we're planning ahead--we're putting more gravel down before the surface degrades into ruts and bumps again.

It's not glamourous, but it makes me happy. It's kind of like getting our teeth cleaned twice a year and rotating our tires. We're finally grown-ups, doing the right thing whether we want to or not.

Severe weather again...and a visitor

I really enjoyed the last two days of 70-degree sunshine. Now, we're getting the giant front that's sweeping across the south, bringing winter again. We're supposed to get a bunch of rain, with colder temps and maybe snow behind it. So it's back to being a hunker-down season.

Yesterday, as I was singlemindedly carooming down the driveway on the way to the post office, I was startled to come face-to-face with a BIG blue heron, standing in the pond next to the dock, as I drove across the dam. My presence didn't appear to startle him back, he just stood there and gave me his big, defiant, heron-eye. I wish I had my camera next to me--usually they take flight whenever I appear, but this time he just stood still and posed.

He's standing there eating my pond fish, of course. I was going to go to the Farmer's Co-op today, because the Farley's Fish Farm truck is coming this afternoon, and I wanted to get a few cups of minnows to start re-stocking the pond. Now I wonder if I'm just going to end up buying the heron a fish dinner. I like the fact that I have this amazing bird hanging out at the pond, but from what I've read, they can eat an astonishing amount of fish. Maybe I should think of it as a pet that I don't have to take to the vet and buy heartworm pills for?

If he (or she) is inclined to get all tame with me so close, I could live with that. But if it starts to invite friends over to raid the pond and stay up all night playing loud music, I may have to put my foot down.

Busy Week Ahead

I don't know what to expect after the surgery this Friday, so I'm trying to get things organized enough that I don't have to do anything strenuous for the week afterward.

I've gotten back into the swing of eBay selling, and am busily shipping out boxes of stuff that sold this weekend. It feels good to be doing something again, especially to be making money again, and clearing out inventory from the depths of the basement. I seem to be classically inertial in this business--when I'm in motion, I want to keep doing it; when I stop, I dread getting started again. At least I managed to get going again, after a very long hiatus--until this weekend, I hadn't sold anything since last June, when I packed up the dog and drove west.

So, it's good to be busy. Feels productive and useful. I may not be posting regularly this week, because I want to get the house clean and errands run before I lose the use of my arms again. That may not happen, but I don't want to be caught unaware and get frustrated if I find I have to battle my way back to strength again after this latest surgery.

That said, I am looking forward to getting some of my issues with the original reconstruction resolved with the surgery on Friday. I'll have another 6 weeks to recover from that before Bill comes home, and by then, I should be in good shape to enjoy activities with him and the kids, when they come to visit in April.

What can I look forward to?

I have been pondering this week the questions I really should have resolved long before now. Trying to make sense of this reprieve I've received, after having been jostled on the street by a dark stranger, and then passed by. How much time do I have? What do I want to do with whatever more time I've been given?

My father died suddenly at age 68, my seminal experience with unexpected death. Now that I'm coming up fast on age 55, I think of this as terribly young to have to check out. Thirteen years doesn't seem like enough time at all. But the real question is, whether I have 2, 10, 20 or 40 more years, how do I want to account for that time?

The fact that I and my peers have made it this far already is in itself, a modern miracle. Historically, women didn't do too well in the mortality sweepstakes--it was a rare old bird who made it past 50 or even 40, what with continuous pregnancies and childbirth, overwork and substandard nutrition, poor sanitation and infectious diseases. Five hundred years ago, most women didn't live long enough to have to deal with menopause, or breast cancer, or osteoporosis, the things women my age seem most concerned about.

We've gotten spoiled about living long, and living well for a lot longer. Even 80 years ago, a man or woman could expect to die while still in their working lives. The implosion of the Social Security program is a testament to how few people actually made it to the magic retirement age of 65 then, as opposed to now--in the 1930's, there were 47 workers for every retiree; by 2020, there will be 2 young whippersnappers for every SSI recipient. Falling birth rates can account for some of the discrepancy, but the difference is largely because we are all living much, much longer.

Our parents expect to live into their eighties, nineties and beyond, and until this happened to me, I did too. Now, I can't assume anything. I now have to face that my Life Clock is finite. I knew it in the abstract, but I never looked at it with anything other than a "Later, MUCH later," attitude. My own little Scarlett O'Hara "I'll think about that tomorrow..." delusion.

So it all comes back to the pondering. Now that I know my time is limited, what am I going to do about it? What is important to me? How do I want to live?

Like I said, I should have figured this one out a long time ago...

20% off your next surgery!

I did the pre-admission dance yesterday at Holston Valley Hospital. Height, weight, BMI, blood pressure, patient history, current meds...the same old routine I have become depressingly good at. I spoke with the anesthesiologist. The nurse entered all my particulars in the computer. Copies were made of my driver's license and insurance cards. I was given mountains of (helpful?) paperwork with cheerful titles like Your Day Surgery Handbook and Pain Management & Your Comfort, HIPPA notices, maps, instructions, hospital policies, cafeteria menus, dress-code, sanitation procedures, visiting policies...STOP already with the paper!

Then, a surprise! "If you'd like to pay in advance today for your co-pay, deductible and 10% patient portion, I can offer you a 20% discount," the clerk chirped. Wow. Next thing you know I'll be getting direct mail pieces with clip-out coupons for pizza, hamburgers and outpatient surgery!

I took the discount, paid the woman, and allowed myself a moment to reflect on how weird my life has become.