Home Again Today

We laid my dear mother-in-law to rest on Sunday, with a celebratory service at her church of 30 years, Grace United Methodist. The pastor told stories of her zest for life, her infinite curiosity and interjected humor into the somber proceeding. He had only known her from his visits to the nursing home, so he seemed genuinely delighted to retell our stories of the Anne we had known.

A wonderful reception followed the service. Almost all of the family was there, in spite of the horrible weather and bad roads. The church ladies put out homemade cookies and cakes, coffee and iced tea. We supplemented with a large tray of fruit and another of meats and cheeses. We told stories, renewed acquaintances, and laughed much.

We then repaired to the Super 8 motel where we were staying, and then on to the Szechuan Palace, where our group of 20 chowed down on mega-dishes of Chinese Food. This family can certainly put away the food!

I spent yesterday with Bill, Bud and Carolyn. We seem to have a peaceful closure. Through the ceremonies we participated in, in the gathering of family and friends, it seems as though the last five years when she was functionally "gone" have now receded, supplanted by all the memories of the Anne we all loved and treasured. It is an unexpected blessing to have those memories back at the end.

Bill and Bud are down at the VA hospital in St. Louis this morning. Carolyn and I are driving down to meet up with them at Aunt Millie's house in Alton. Then cousins will take Carolyn to the airport and Bill and I will get on the road towards home.

Oh, and I got an email this morning that we have been approved as potential Malinois parents, whenever we are ready.

Blue skies and clear highways ahead.

Christmas Eve

I feel a bit bad about letting Christmas take a back seat to the arrangements for Anne's service on Sunday. Our Christmas Day will be spent driving up to Illinois--but maybe we can find some carols on the radio, and give our time over to a little laughter and cheer in spite of it.

This morning Bill has to go back to Johnson City to have his TB skin test looked at and pronounced benign. You'd think in this era we'd be able to take a digital picture and email it to them, but that has apparently not been thought of yet. Or maybe they think we'd photoshop the image? It's an annoyance.

I will do laundry and pack bags, and gather up all the stuff we need to take with us. I am amazed that I got all my errands done yesterday, and even got my tooth patched. The dentist didn't even have to numb me up, and the whole thing took less than 20 minutes.

The car damage is almost $5,600, but the insurance will take care of it on the offending driver's policy. We're slated for January 4 for that project.

Yesterday, the Malinois inspector deemed us worthy pet-parents, so we will be pre-approved for an adoption when I get back from the Orient. If that's what we decide to do. Sometimes, fate intervenes. Maybe the right dog will just appear when we're ready.

This time right now is bittersweet. Mom's passing, while a relief and a blessing, puts a damper on our spirits. It's another reminder that time is fleeting, and seizing joy wherever one can find it is imperative.

Happy Christmas to all.

More Details...

It seems as though all these days now are too busy. We still haven't figured out when we are leaving to go to Illinois, but in the meantime, here are some of the things on my list for today:

Order food trays for post-service reception
Download photos and print them for the picture board
Set up appointment for us with the lawyer
Make motel reservations
Take the Hyundai to the body shop for an estimate
Pay Bill's union dues before the end of the year
Find someone in Jacksonville to buy potted plants
Start packing clothes and stuff to take to Illinois
Go to work

Yesterday, Bill went all the way to Johnson City for his DOT drug test and TB skin test. I went to the Hyundai dealer, Office Max for art supplies for the photo board, Fedex to drop off packages, the hardware store to return a door closer, the pharmacy to pick up scripts, gas station, and Walmart. Then home to bake biscotti, deal with a no-heat problem at one of the rental houses and fix dinner.

My idea yesterday was to use potted plants instead of cut flowers at the memorial service, as the variety of "casual" flowers is limited this time of year. Anne was also not a stuffy person. Having big formal arrangements of cut flowers, cloying sprays of roses, etc., just wouldn't do. I'm not sure if I should do that myself when I get to Jacksonville, or delegate someone there to do that.

Bill's idea was to offer Pease's candy party squares (his mom's Christmas favorite) at the reception for family and friends. She used to send boxes of the precious treat, kind of a creamy bark-type candy with bits of hard crunchy candy imbedded in it, to us. A visit to their website and a call to Springfield led to the disappointing news that they "stopped making those" about a year ago. Rats.

Tomorrow, Bill has to go back to Johnson City to get his TB test read. The Dog Inspector, Dianna, is coming at noon. I have an appointment to get my broken molar fixed at 2:30. I plan on spending the evening making the picture board with photos of my mother-in-law.

I'm feeling a little stressed with all the details -- the ones I know about, and the ones I haven't even thought of yet...

What a Day!

SNOW!

Just when I think things are too incredibly boring here on the rural mountain top, I have a day like the past 36 hours to remind me that excitement isn't all it's cracked up to be.

We started off at Oh-Dark-Thirty yesterday morning, driving off to Knoxville in the pouring rain and heavy traffic before sunrise. We got lost in downtown Knoxville. We turned around and got back on I-40, ignoring Mapquest's directions, and found our way to the gigantic UT Medical Center. We waited. Bill's orders were wrong (they hadn't included the flu shots, the DOT drug-screening or the TB skin test), and so everything was postponed while he contacted the powers that be and got it all straightened out. After a very long time (I knitted almost a full scarf), he came out with 6 holes in his arms.

We got back on the road to go home, still slick and raining hard but at least now it was lighter. Bill wanted to stop at Bass Pro Shop and I was hungry, so I dropped myself at the Cracker Barrel and told Bill to come have breakfast with me when he was done. I finished my breakfast. I read my book. I read some more and drank more coffee.

After two hours, I got up to use the rest room, and found Bill at the front desk, frantically talking to the hostess. He had apparently been looking for me for two hours, walking up and down the table aisles, driving back to Bass Pro Shop to have me paged, walking to McDonalds. They were getting ready to call the police and review the surveillance tapes when I came up behind him.

He kept saying "I thought I had LOST you!" (as he scarfed down my leftover biscuits and jelly). "Where WERE you?" (Right here, reading my book). I refused to take any responsibility for him not being able to recognize his own wife of 27 years. At one point the hostesses and Bill were standing right behind me, wondering where I was.

Now that our day's drama was done, (we thought--go ahead and read on), we finally got to laughing about it as we made our way home to Rogersville. As we came into town, the rain turned to sleet and then snow, and I remembered that I needed to go by the library to turn in my time sheet.

And there on Main Street, minding my own business, stopped and waiting to turn left into the library parking lot, some decrepit yahoo in a beat up pickup truck rear-ended me. I didn't even have time to take my foot off the brake and hit the gas to get out of his way. Boom. The whole tailgate of my new blue car (with only 7,000 miles on it) was smashed in, the bumper broke (but cushioned the crash beautifully, it was amazingly gentle even with him going 30 mph and me at a dead stop).

Bill got all the information from the driver, while I walked through the snow to go turn in my timesheet. Bill called the insurance company, who told him to go make a police report. So off we went to the police station to get that done.

At this point, the snow was really starting to come down hard; big, fat, wet flakes about the size of a silver dollar. By the time the police were done with us, we were wondering if we were going to make it home and up our driveway.

We did get up to the house, and Bill immediately put the red car down by the road. We snuggled in for a snowstorm. I heated up some leftover pasta and we were watching a movie and being thankful that the day from hell was over.

Not yet, however. At 6 pm, the power blurpped off. It went on. It went off. It went back on. At 6:30, it went off for good. We had flashlights and candles, but we finally gave up around 7:30 and went to bed to stay warm.

This morning, the power was still not on and the scene outside was a classic Winter Wonderland. The house was about 60 degrees, and we started working our way through our morning rituals without electricity.

First, there was the problem of water pressure. Without juice, the pressure pump wouldn't fill the toilet tank or keep a shower running long. Bill got a bucket of water from the tanks down in the basement to fill the toilet tank after flushing. I ran a bucket of warm water (the water heater is propane, so it was still hot) for "bathing." I got out the bottles of hand sanitizer for kitchen and bath.

Coffee was our next problem. We use a manual drip coffee pot, so all we had to do was light the propane stove with a match, and we could heat water. But we grind the beans fresh each time, and it's an electric grinder. A combination of a food chopper and then pounding them with a mortar and pestle made an acceptable, if weak, brew. Note to self: grind some beans ahead of time for an emergency stash and put it in the freezer!

Breakfast was accomplished by throwing a pound of frozen bacon on the griddle and peeling the strips off as they defrosted. Toast went on the griddle too. Eggs in the omelet pan.

Bill got the old propane heater in the basement going (once it was the only heat source for the house, before the heat pump was installed), but it was still pretty chilly upstairs. We ran around cleaning house (we had nothing else to do), and when Bill went outside to chainsaw the trees that came down in the driveway, I decided to clean out my pantry, something I've been procrastinating about for months.

The power came back on around 1:30 pm, and glory behold, stayed on! I quickly printed labels for my eBay buyers and used Bill's deer carcass cart to wheel them down the snowy driveway, hoping to beat the mail carrier. When I walked back up to the house, I quickly washed dishes, took a shower and ground some coffee beans, getting ready for a possible round two.

Life is returning to normal. When the furnace kicked back on, it was 50 degrees in the house; Now, it's back up to 64. Thousands of people are still without power, but we're doing fine. A mere 18 hours without electricity reminds me of all the things I need to do to be prepared for "an emergency." This wasn't hard, but it prompts thoughts of what we need to do better next time.

Off to the Big City

Bill made it home safely late last night. Now it's time to get up and do it again. I've decided I need a trip to the traffic and bustle of the big city to let me appreciate my sleepy, small town life. So we're going to Knoxville together--Bill to get his shots, me to knit and enjoy his company. He's done enough driving in the last few days.

I think the rush of eBay buyers has finally subsided to a few auctions per day. Those who have planned ahead have made their purchases. This week, I'll cater to the procrastinators. And the week after Christmas will be the wives who got "get what you want off eBay" from their husbands and the people who received money to spend on themselves. I'll probably shut down the operation when Bill goes to Singapore and take a vacation from auction madness for awhile.

This period of time feels like limbo. Waiting for Christmas, waiting for the trip to Illinois for the service, waiting for Bill to leave, waiting to buy my ticket and go too. There is plenty of planning to be done, but until the waiting time is over, nothing can be done.

Details...

The service for Anne will be held on Sunday, December 27 at 1:30 pm at Grace United Methodist Church in Jacksonville, IL.

Bill has done a super job getting everything organized, and plans on coming home on Friday via Knoxville, where he has to stop at the University of TN to get about 12 innoculations in preparation for his trip overseas in January. Cholera, yellow fever, typhoid, MMR booster, pertussis, tuberculosis skin test, polio booster, hepatitis A & B...the list is awesome. Because he does not have his childhood shot record, he has to get them all again so as to be documented. He'll then hurry home with his sore arms to meet the Malinois rescue inspector Friday afternoon.

I am off to see Mr. Acupuncture today. I have been experiencing a return of pain at my scar sites, and want to nip this inflammation before it has a chance to take hold. I also have to get to the dentist--the one tooth I didn't have crowned this year broke yesterday, so the repair is now critical.

Life is getting complicated.

Elsie Anne Valentine Plemitscher

Bill's mom died quietly at the nursing home yesterday afternoon. It is hard to feel the overwhelming grief that one expects at the death of a parent, mostly because she left us several years ago due to senile dementia.

Anyone who knew Anne in the past five years or so would not know what a vibrant, curious and energetic woman she was before her mind was stolen by disease. One only has to look at my husband to know her strength of character, her humor, and her practical, common-sense outlook on life.

I met Anne for the first time in the summer of 1981, when she was 52. She was a factory worker at Capitol Records' pressing plant, in the days when they still made vinyl LPs. She was also taking classes at community college, active in her church and many community organizations. She knew things--about gardening, raising livestock, how to use a grind-stone, how to compost. She recycled (before recycling was cool)! She knew how to de-tassle corn and how to get to a chicken dinner--starting with a live chicken. She was an enthusiastic Girl Scout leader; at one point her troop consisted of five blind girls, because, she declared, "they deserve the chance to be Scouts too!"

She read constantly, clipping articles of interest and sending them to friends and relatives. She bought a Nordic Track and started exercising everyday. Her drive was to constantly self-improve, and whether it took the form of canoeing in the deep woods in Minnesota, taking a class to learn how to write a story, doing the vocabulary exercises in Reader's Digest, dressing up as a clown for the hometown parades to entertain children, or playing dominoes with her grandchildren, she was always ready for action.

I remember driving with her up from St. Louis one night, in a car whose radiator leak suddenly became worse. I was all for calling Bud and having him come and rescue us, but Anne insisted we were just fine. We stopped every 5 miles and knocked on doors, begging water to refill the radiator. Anne knew how to charm even the most suspicious farmers in the dead of night.

When Juli was 10 weeks old, I flew out to see her. She immediately plopped us in the pickup truck and drove to Chicago to see the Petersons, then on to Wisconsin to see Aunt Carolyn, then back to Illinois to see her mother, Ruth, all in the stifling heat of summer, without the benefit of air conditioning (which she considered a wasteful, unhealthy invention). She and I hit every rest stop and truck stop for breast-feeding breaks, and she fixed everyone who seemed a little too curious with a gimlet eye, daring them to stare. I learned very quickly to follow her attitude, and became comfortable nursing Juli in public places without embarrassment.

After her retirement in the 1990s, she started her own business. She and Bud traveled the Midwest summer fair circuit, selling hot dogs and shave ice out of a trailer named "My Place." I first noticed something was off in April, 1998. The kids and I were on a driving trip to the West Coast, and stopped at Granny Annie's for Easter. We got up in the dark for sunrise services, but after driving around the cornfields for an hour, Anne announced that she was lost, and couldn't find the church. Bud was working in Florida, and I passed it off as isolated distraction because her husband had been gone a long time.

She started slipping away, and she didn't realize what was happening to her. After many tests and several years, no one knew definitively what was wrong. It wasn't Alzheimer's, it wasn't any other diagnosable dementia, but she was having auto accidents, wandering away in the night and losing touch with reality.

In November of 2005, she became a resident at Golden Moments Senior Care. At first, she recognized and conversed with everyone who came to visit. But over the past two years, she became more reticent, and eventually she stopped speaking all together. Where she had initially gained quite a bit of weight when she came to live there, she suddenly lost it all this year and kept losing. In the last few months, her diagnosis was "failure to thrive."

I knew and loved my mother-in-law. And I know positively that she would have hated the life she was held prisoner in. I would not be surprised if somewhere deep in her limbic brain, she decided that enough was enough.

Rest in peace, dear Anne. You had a wonderful life filled with people who loved you. We will remember you as you were before, and will not despair over your passing. In this case, it was truly a blessing, and I know this is what you would have wanted.

Another Rainy Day...

I'm not even sure why I got out of bed this morning. It's so rainy and gloomy again, I just feel like curling up and taking a nap, even though I've been up for less than an hour. Enough already! The pond is full, the basement is damp, the well isn't salty, so we don't need more precipitation right now.

But rainy weather is fine for things like wrapping Christmas presents and baking cookies. Bill misses the "Cookie Exchange." In NY, our group of friends would each bake batches of 3 or 4 different treats and then swap them, so everyone got a plate full of joy with a dozen or more candies and cookies to see Bill through the holidays. I won't get quite that ambitious, but I always enjoy trying a few new recipes each year, and I want to tuck some gingerbread into the packages for the kids, just so they can taste Mom's love from afar.

When I was 10, my great-grandmother "Ma" came to our house and made raviolis, noodles and an Italian cookie called "gesh-pel" (Sorry Mom, I know I'm not spelling it right, so I went for the phonetic representation). The cookies were simple rolled out rectangles, slit in the center and then one end was pulled through the hole. They were fried in Mazola oil until bubbly and crisp and then sprinkled with powdered sugar.

The raviolis took a lot of preparation. Ma brought a traditional filling of brains and spinach (at 10, I thought this was gross) that she had made in her home, and I think we also did one with the usual ricotta cheese too. The stiff dough had to be rolled paper-thin. I remember being amazed at my ancient great-grandmother's arm strength! With her one pass of the wooden rolling pin, you could see your hand through the dough, while I struggled with the springy blog and failed to make any progress. There were special tools--a frame to make the little pillows and a zig-zag cutting wheel to separate them (my default job, after the dough debacle). The dough scraps were made into noodles, which we draped on clean cloth towels to dry over the backs of every chair in the house.

While we were busy with the ravioli/noodle asssembly line, a big pot of my mother's tomato sauce was simmering on the stove, filling the house with the smells of garlic, oregano, fennel and basil. I loved the smell, but I didn't eat the sauce. As a child, I ate my pasta "naked," as my mother's sauce was always too spicy-hot for my young taste buds. And as I recall, my dad didn't eat pasta at all, except for the special occasion of Christmas raviolis. Mom must have despaired over both of us!

I pull these memories out in December, spooling them through my mind, and trying to remember the tiniest details. Replaying the visual pictures of long-gone, much-loved family and happy times of cooking, laughing and of course, eating, makes this time of year very special to me.

Animal Welfare Comes to Call

A few weeks ago, I signed us up to become "pre-approved" for eventually adopting another Malinois. Our initial references checked out, and now we are gearing up for a "home visit" from the ABMC inspector.

This impending visit begs the question, "what would cause someone to fail" a home visit? Twenty emaciated dogs in an unfenced yard right on the highway? Yep.

But it also brings to mind the needs we have in a future dog. We need a dog who does NOT chase cattle. That would be a death sentence, as we are surrounded by people who make a living raising beef, people who would not tolerate someone's pet running weight off their cows. We need a dog who can do stairs. Echo never went up and down stairs when we lived in NY (she would just leap over the porch steps), but when we moved here, she had to learn to negotiate the treehouse nature of our new place. At the end, she could no longer navigate the stairs, and we had to walk her slowly around the back and down the sloped driveway. She also could no longer come up to the loft to be with us while we worked.

I think this is a great process and am looking forward to meeting someone who agrees with us that this is a special breed, deserving of a good environment. I haven't seen "our next dog" yet on the site, but hopefully when we are ready, we will have all our approvals set up in advance.

I think I'm starting to understand...

Living in the land of "all deer, all the time," I've learned to tune out most of what Bill has been talking about for the past month or so. But this morning, I had a REVELATION.

It's all about being male. Deer hunting has all the essential boy elements: Sex, Competition, Toys, and Bragging Rights. The goal--shooting a deer--is secondary to the process. If I had the task of filling the freezer with venison, I would treat it as another chore to tackle and complete. I would choose the most efficient method of completing the task. I'd put a pile of corn in the backyard, a gun by the door, and while I was vacuuming or cooking dinner or folding laundry, I'd check out the window, and blast the darn thing when it showed up to feed.

Bill says this is NOT the way to hunt deer. Yesterday, he explained the foreign concept of "fair chase," meaning, you must figure out where the deer are going to be, track them, look for signs that the males are in the rut and looking for mates (that's the sex part), buy all sorts of stuff (guns, stands, clothing, doe urine, no-scent shampoo and soap, etc.) to stalk stealthily, get up in the dark and sit in the woods for hours on end, come home to the little woman cooking breakfast, spend the rest of the day sleeping, and then go out again before sunset to do it all again. It's a game.

Why this game is interesting is beyond me. Here I thought the object was to bag a deer and move on to the next thing. Apparently, drawing out the process, obsessing about it, worrying about where they are, talking about it (before, during and after), is what it's all about. The journey, not the destination. I would find this highly frustrating.

No wonder we women go to the store and buy meat in packages. The hunt is just too time consuming for goal-oriented multi-taskers.

Winter?

"You have a jacket on!" Caroline sounded shocked, when I came back from dinner break yesterday afternoon. While everyone else wears sweaters, scarves and ear muffs at the library, I am still in short sleeves and light pants or skirts.

But yesterday at 3 pm, it was in the 30s outside and looking like snow--and I broke down and put on the light spring jacket I keep in the car for such emergencies. Yes, even I was a tad chilled on my trip to the post office. It didn't last though.

While we spent the evening at the library doing our normal library things, we also decorated several trees, strung lights and dressed our environment for the holidays. Caroline brought out several hats (she was wearing the Dr. Seuss Cindy Lou-Who number) and asked, "do you want the reindeer horns, or the Santa?" I chose the Santa, and even managed to carry off the festive look for about 15 minutes, when suddenly my ears turned bright red and sweat started pouring off my face. I had to ditch the hat, or risk self-immolation, right then and there.

Snow is indeed predicted for tomorrow. It seems a little early to me, but it is December--in New York, I'd be looking at below-zero weather this month. At least if I start burning up here, I can go outside in my T-shirt and chill out without turning into an ice cube.

Poor Neglected Blog...

Where have I been for a week? Here, just slogging through life.

Thanksgiving was just the two of us, so there was no giant 28 pound turkey, children running through the house, oldsters sleeping in chairs or other holiday traditions. I roasted a chicken for Bill and myself, burnt the stuffing when he came home late from deer hunting, steamed some broccoli, and forgot to put cream in the onions. A total lackadaisical Thanksgiving. We had a nice meal and watched football together.

The rest of the week has been a blur. I'm listing auctions, going to work at the library, doing the first of the month chores like changing furnace filters, checking salt in the water softener, dosing the septic system with bio-spores. I cook, whenever Bill shows up home from the woods, cold and hungry. I knit, I read, I sleep. Just ho-hum life.

I'm gearing up to wrap Christmas presents and send them out to my far-flung family. I expect Christmas will be as quiet as Thanksgiving was.

Too Easy

I should just get over myself.

Psyching myself up for weeks, file folders under my arm, crib-sheets of facts at my fingertips, ready to talk enzymatic pathways and hormone methylization, I sallied forth to do battle with Dr. DaSilva.

"So do you want to change to the aromatase inhibitor?" he asked, halfway through the checkup.

"No way!" I got ready to argue my case.

"Okay," he said cheerfully, writing in my chart. "We'll keep you on the tamoxifen for five years, no problem."

It's all good news. No lumps or bumps, no sign of recurrence, healthy Pam. I have graduated to check-ups every four months instead of every three, I got the meds I wanted, and there were no arguments. Chest scan, blood tests, bone scan and annual gyn in March. I'm a free woman until then.

Today is Thanksgiving, and I have so much to be thankful for!

Big Day in Medico-Land

Today's my big 2-year oncology check-up, followed by a session at Mr. Acupuncture's House of Blessed Relief.

I've got a list of meds I need new scripts for, a file folder full of genomic test results, and a stoic attitude. My goal is to stay on the tamoxifen (for better or worse) and hope that the five years on that drug will suit me better than switching to an aromatase inhibitor. I hope that my doctor will agree.

There is a trade-off when one decides to get involved in the decision-making of one's own health care. It means I have to take responsibility for the choices I make, knowing that I am not nearly as knowledgeable as my doctor, but also knowing that no one cares more about me and my care as I do. Ultimately, I have to live with the results of my decisions. Would I rather hand that over to the doctor, or make my own choice and accept the consequences, good or bad.

So much second-guessing goes on. If the cancer comes back, would it have happened if I had chosen the other medication? If it doesn't come back, is it because I chose to take one drug over another? Who's to say that taking this blasted estrogen blocker has had any real long-term effect on my individual survival (since all the studies are based on large-population statistical studies, like the one that says it's not cost-effective to give all women aged 40-50 routine mammograms, because it only saves a few lives)?

It boggles. In the end, I shrug my shoulders and move on. What else can I do?

Too Soon

We met Chica on Wednesday--a sweet dog, very affectionate and most desperate for attention. But it made both of us realize just how much we miss Echo. We're still too sad and not ready to give our hearts away again. It wouldn't be fair to the new dog to always be comparing to the old dog.

Bill made it safely to Illinois, and is presumably sitting in Cousin Steve's "tree stand" at this moment, for opening day of deer season. Steve's stand is actually a kind of a boys' clubhouse on stilts in the woods--I always expect there to be a "No Girlz Allowed!" sign over the door when I see it. There's plenty of room for a full pack of manly men and their guns. I imagine the haze of testosterone is miasma-like this morning.

His plan is to hunt through the weekend with his cousins-in-laws, then go to St. Louis with his dad on Monday for the big oncology consult. He will come home on Tuesday, just in time for my oncology appointment on Wednesday. His dad may come to spend Thanksgiving with us, or he may decide to stay at home. All plans are tentative. We are in the land of "playing it by ear."

I continue to do the homebody thing, with forays into library-land two days a week. I made a really boneheaded mistake yesterday--sending an Inter-Library Loan book back to the wrong recipient. But I think I made up for it by getting the check-in and check-out computers back on line after an electrical brown-out scrambled their brains. One plus and one minus. It's the story of my life.

Technologically Challenged

I try to keep up, really I do. But information overload, new-fangled communication pathways and "progress" continue to confound my learning curve. No sooner do I master the latest, the latest changes to something I don't have the time or the inclination to learn.

Back in the 90s, it took me about a year to figure out how to type computer commands in DOS. Then I had to learn to use Windows 3.3 when my fave shell Geoworks fell behind in market share. Then there was the Internet, online banking, search engines, email, routers, wireless (which I still haven't deciphered), hard-drive sectors, Windows Me, XP, Vista, and now 7, Facebook, MySpace, blogging, etc. I'm tired. I'm tired of learning new technology, only to have it replaced every year by the next new thing.

My son no longer Blogs, he Tweets on Twitter and shares RSS feeds from Google Reader. (Huh?) I have resisted Twitter, mostly because I suspect my inate verbosity would be inhibited by the 144 character limit. Is it another example of people not having enough time to properly compose an epic, settling for a brief snippet instead? Form over substance? Maybe not. It may be as simple as choosing a more succinct and superficial type of communication ("I'm sitting on the porch") over the complexity of delving into the more complicated issues of the day. I know I'm overwrought enough lately by politics, economics, news of human venality, and natural disasters enough to say "I'll think about all that...tomorrow!" Maybe it is better to just sit on the porch and Tweet that fact to the universe.

Ruminants as a Constant Topic

Bill's home, and the talk is deer, deer, deer--blah, blah, blah. It doesn't matter what the discussion is about, it always reverts to deer. If it weren't for the fact that the freezer is venison-challenged, I'd be less patient than I am. Note however, that so far, there are no actual deer being harmed in this exercise.

He gets up before the sun and goes to sit in the woods. He keeps seeing deer, but they are either too small, or in a place where a shot would be inconvenient, or they see him before he sees them.

I am trying mightily to act interested, but after three or four days of yakkety-yak about the habits and locations and behaviors of said pear-eating bandits, I get bored. Just bring me the meat--then, and only then, will I listen to the Great Hunter story with enthusiasm.

Life Goes On

I spent yesterday morning at the Computer Hospital, getting upgraded to Windows 7 and knitting quietly while Steve did his magic rebuilding of my files. The talk turned to dogs (as it often does these days), and Steve was lamenting that he couldn't find a home for his big dog, Chica. "No one wants a big dog," he said. What popped into my head was "I want a big dog!"

Chica is (according to Steve), a sweet Siberian Husky/Yellow Lab mix, about 5-6 years old. She lives a sad and miserable life on a chain in Bean Station. Steve and his wife can no longer afford to take care of her, either in money or time. She was getting into trouble in the neighborhood while they were at work, (hence the chain), and what she really needs is a place to run and dig, and a family to pay attention to her.

It occurred to me that this is a dog who needs a home--and I have a home that needs a dog.

I am completely surprised that I would even consider this so soon. It feels a bit like a widow who got engaged at the funeral. I haven't met Chica yet, but I am intrigued.

When Bill comes home today, I think I will talk to him about this. I know, I know--I said I wasn't ready, but spending a week alone here, I was lonely, for the first time in thirty years.

Besides, Steve said if I took the dog, he'd upgrade Bill's computer for free...

So Quiet!

Bill is in Philadelphia this week, working as a First Engineer on the USNS Pollux again. At first I thought I would go up with him, then I remembered I have a job now and can't take off at the drop of a hat. Rats. I must be content to putter about my too-quiet house, cleaning up the Bill-just-left-detritus, and cooking things Bill doesn't like for myself. My salmon last night was delicious.

I surprised myself this morning by Googling "Malinois Rescue." I too am now convinced that Echo was a true Belgian Malinois, not just a "faux." When I read the descriptions of the breed's behaviors, I think "that's my dog!" Agility, car travel, prey chasing & digging, verbalization--it's all there. Am I ready for another high-maintenance dog? Not yet, I think. I still see Echo out of the corner of my eye, everywhere I go. I am planning on going to meet Bill in Singapore in January or February. And I know I'm not ready to take on another full-time project like a new member of the family this soon. I am giving myself time to heal and time to think about who the new dog might be in the future.

The news from Illinois continues to be bad. Bill's dad was told yesterday that the cancer is back (if it ever really went away, I have my doubts--more likely it was a bad read on the last CT scan), and the doctors are recommending that he go back into chemotherapy again. Dad will have to decide whether a few more months are worth the side effects that were so debilitating to him this summer. No one is talking about a cure--this is just a postponement. Bill will be going up there the week before Thanksgiving, and go to the next appointment with his Dad to talk to the medicos himself.

So we are "on hold" for the moment. Waiting for the next set of circumstances to determine our plans.

Echo Memories

Echo 10/23/09

Bill and I have been spending a lot of time talking about and remembering our Echo, dredging up our memories of her over the past ten years. We are strangely comforted by this retrospective, and we spend a good deal of the time laughing over her antics.

Good dogs are "made," and it took a long time for Echo to become part of our family. I thought at the beginning that she had potential greatness, but when we first brought her home, she was a scrawny, nervous wild thing. The shelter told us she had been "living on the street" for almost 5 months before Animal Control could capture her. Then she had been incarcerated in the pound for another 4 months. She was not socialized to humans. She had a mind of her own, and it was geared toward escape and food she could catch and eat for herself. She was incredibly fast. Shortly after she first came to live with us, she went out into the woods behind the house and came back with a full-grown rabbit in her jaws. On our daily walks, she snatched up bees and grasshoppers and chomped them down.

Echo was named by the shelter, presumably for her big ears. We never knew if she had been another family's pet, or what she had been like as a puppy. Slowly, she began gaining weight and filling out, developing a "coyote tail" and a thick, healthy coat. I enrolled her in an agility class, hoping to focus some of her physical talents and speed into a controlled activity, help her bond with me, and burn off some of her boundless energy. But she was still a delinquent in spite of her smarts and abilities--she was not patient. She hated waiting her turn to do the course, and would bark at the other dogs when they made mistakes. At the end of our intermediate course, we were asked not to return until Echo learned some basic obedience skills.

Surprisingly, she got along with our cat. The cat either detested her or tolerated her, I could never make up my mind which. At first, the cat's head was always wet with Echo slobber, but they eventually negotiated a truce of sorts. Echo would chase any strange cat who ran, but "her" cat stood her ground and suffered as Echo charged and sniffed her. At one point the cat brought a flying squirrel into the house--but it wasn't quite dead yet. The squirrel took off, zooming from living room to dining room, trying to get away. Cat and Echo raced from one end of the house to the other, and Echo won. I asked Echo to give it to me, and to my astonishment, she dropped it into my cupped hands. I knew then that we were finally having some success on the path to civilizing the dog.

But for those first six years in New York, civilization was at best, a fleeting concept. She liked us well enough, but she never really got the idea that she belonged to us--she was still her own dog. Whenever the kitchen door was opened and the human was inattentive, she'd bolt for the horizon. We spent a lot of time driving the streets, trying to coax her to jump in the car to come home. There was never a chance of catching her on foot, you see.

When we changed the environment, she changed. Who knew that by putting her in the car and moving 800 miles, we were creating the dog we had always wanted? Part of the change was that she was maturing and calming down, but the real change was that she had room to roam free without a leash, plenty of scents to track down, and a job to do--patrolling her property and protecting me. The roadtrips to the west coast also helped--she became dependent on the humans in the car when we traveled to unfamiliar territory.

She still liked hunting her own food, to the exclusion of all other activities. I saw her often digging furiously for an hour or more, trying to get at a chipmunk or vole. She would even take logs in her jaws and move them to get at what she was digging for. She loved charging a flock of turkeys, and making them take wing. She still ate any buzzing, stinging insect, inside the house or out in the yard.

She was a "talker." Snuggling on the couch, she would tuck her big head into my armpit, expose her belly and groan and gargle when I asked her to talk to me. Eventually, she'd regain her dignity, shake her ears, sneeze and leave, as if she were disgusted with herself for showing such baby-like weakness.

I remember when long-haired Alex worked at the deli, she would bound up on the couch with him when he came home from work, sniffing and rooting around in his hair. This evolved into "snoofering" when we moved to Tennessee. When I came out of the shower with wet, clean hair, Echo would look up expectantly, and follow me until I sat and let her rub her nose in my hair. She would sneeze (in my ear, usually), and rub her neck in my scent. (She also liked Bill's Old Spice deodorant, and would do the same with him, trying to rub that scent onto her fur, tickling his armpits and making him laugh). And it wasn't just pleasant smells she liked to acquire--many times she'd come home from our walks with her neck covered in cow flop or deer poop, and then it was instant bath-time, despite whatever we had planned for the day!

She was always remarkably intelligent, but she became confident and calm over the past four years and incredibly, increasingly lovable to us. She finally learned to trust us, and she lost most of her younger fears. Even when she was so sick there at the end, she would still get up and follow us, wagging her tail and trying to please us.

I miss her like crazy.

Family Stuff

Bill has decided to postpone his trip to Illinois until after his work-week in Philadelphia. The plan now is for him to go up for hunting season on Cousins Steve & Alice's farm, the week before Thanksgiving. If his dad is amenable, Bill will then bring him down here for a visit at the end of the month. We will then drive him back, or put him on a plane to get him back home.

Dad is reluctant to leave Illinois however, because Bill's mom is not doing well. I spoke with the head nurse at the nursing home yesterday. The diagnosis is "failure to thrive;" she is basically just fading away physically now. She continues a slow and steady decline, losing weight each week, despite attempts to intervene nutritionally. The family has decided that feeding tubes are not a good option, given her near-catatonic mental state. Instead, hospice services have been instigated to keep her comfortable. Knowing my mother-in-law for many years when she was a vibrant, active and pragmatic woman, I know in my heart that she would agree to this course of treatment. But it is still a major strain on everyone--essentially "giving up" on a much-loved person, despite the fact that she has not been mentally "present" for three years now. We are commending her to her God's gentle graces. It's hard.

I am trying to be at peace, trying to live without stress. Sometimes, I feel dangerously detached while I am working on maintaining a state of calm, worry-free existence. It is essential to my own health that I don't become "inflamed," emotionally or physically. I do miss feeling feelings with my past great intensity. This side-effect of surviving cancer worries me--it's as if after all that drama, what's worth getting agitated about?

Bad ju-ju is ahead, it's unavoidable. I just have to trust that my body and mind are protecting me with this weird emotionless numbness.

Autumn Doings

It's 8:30 and Bill is sitting at the computer. His clothing and work stuff is strewn all over the living room (not packed in a seabag), and he's drinking coffee and cruising the Internet. Am I wrong in thinking he's not going to Illinois today?

This morning we watched four does (two big mamas and two yearlings) in the backyard, eating the honeysuckle and browsing through the lawn. Bill discovered he could open one of the small hooked windows and effectively have a "gun-port" to shoot through when muzzleloading season starts this Saturday. Perhaps this is what quelled his desire to get on the road this morning? I find it hardly sporting to shoot "yard deer," but we're down to two packages of venison in the freezer--who am I to quibble over which deer he shoots and where?

The mornings are cold and clear, and the days sunny and warm. This is the best! I love this time of year. We are past peak color on the leaves, and about half of the leaves have fallen on the ground. I have emptied all the garden pots (putting the dirt on the outside beds to augment the horrendous clay soil), and brought in the rubber plant, the rosemary, and a couple of pots of parsley for the winter. There were also two pepper plants that were still pumping out peppers--I will experiment and see if they can finish producing fruit indoors.

Work at the library continues to engage me. Yesterday, the main server died an ignoble death, preventing us from doing most of our library work via computer. All check-in and check-out had to be done manually, the computerized card catalogue was down (forcing me to remember my Dewey Decimal System when someone came in looking for books on dreams, or anatomy, or local history), and I couldn't process my interlibrary loans. New library cards were issued, but we were unable to enter them in the system, so we couldn't hand the actual card to the new patrons.

I found I wasn't nearly as frustrated by the problems as the old timers, who were fit to be tied. My laissez-faire attitude of "oh well, we'll do it the old-fashioned way" carried me through the evening without aggravation. It will eventually be fixed. No worries. Whatever.

And my dental appointment went as expected. All of my teeth are falling apart. I can only afford to crown two teeth per year, so we're just repairing the next one on the list before the end of the year. Then in January, we'll do two more. And so on.

Life goes on.

Back to Busy, But...

All of a sudden, life is getting busy again. Bill is leaving tomorrow for Illinois to see his dad through another round of medical tests, then he is due in Philadelphia on Monday for another week of work on the USNS Pollux.

I would consider accompanying him on his travels, but then there's the little matter of my having a job now. I knew this was going to be trouble! This morning I have a dental appointment, then I'll go straight to work at noon, and not be home until tonight.

And there's always plenty to do around here--the garden needs to be put to bed for the winter, the leaves are a constant clean-up chore, and the basement is a mess again. The dishes and laundry are constant, and something always needs to be fixed.

There is no dog hair to vacuum up.

Last week, Mr. Professional Carpet-Man came and cleaned all the rugs and furniture. I still find Echo in my knitting and on fabric items in the house, but there are no more dog-hair tumbleweeds rolling across the carpet.

I am still sad.

Autumn Sunrise

Arising early yields an unexpected reward:

It is good to greet a day that begins this way.

BioChem 101

I had a long phone consult with Dr. Veltmann, the biochemist, in New Mexico yesterday. The results of my UEM test are in, and he spent about an hour explaining everything to me. My brain was seriously taxed, but I want to be well-versed before I see my oncologist, Dr. DaSilva, on November 11.

The bottom line (for those who have no desire for the long science story) is that my estrogen profile looks really, really good. All those pills (25 per day--GULP), have had the desired result. Estrogens are like cholesterol numbers--there are good guys and bad guys. My "bad" estrogens are being converted to the "good" protective estrogens at a more efficient rate. By comparing my test results of 2 years ago, when my bad guys were off the chart and my good guys were low and struggling to keep up, we can see that the Sam-E, DIM-PRO, and B-vitamins are facilitating the metabolism of bad to good. Almost all of my good estrogens are now at high levels and my bad ones at low levels.

Since my cancers were ER-positive, fueled by the bad estrogens, this is presumptively great news.

So here's how it works: The body produces Glucocorticoids, which are converted to Androgens.
The primary ones we are concerned with are DHEA which is converted from 17-OH-Pregnenolone to Androstenedione, and the Androstenedione that is converted directly from 17-OH-Progesterone. This is then converted to Estrone (E1) by the enzyme Aromatase.

The oncologist is talking about putting me on an Aromatase Inhibitor, which will disrupt this conversion, effectively wiping out all estrogen production in the body--the good guys along with the bad guys.

But that's not the whole story of estrogen. Estrone (E1) is converted back and forth to Estradiol (E2), (meaning that if the body has an excess of one, it converts some to the other, to keep the two in balance). But E1 also converts in a one-way direction to three other compounds, using the liver's Cytochrome p450 pathways. Two of these three E1 metabolites by themselves are bad guys, 16-alpha-OHE1 and 4-OHE1. The other, 2-OHE1, is a powerful anti-cancer protectant. But the two bad guys can also be converted to good guys: 16-alpha can be transformed to Estriol (E3) and 4-OHE can be changed to 4-MeOE1, if you don't have a mutation on the COMT gene. I have this mutation, a SNIP (single-nucleotide polymorphism) on the COMT and another one on the CYP 1B1 pathway from E1 to 4-OHE1 (which gets converted to the good 4-MeOE1). These mutations are probably what caused or contributed to my estrogens going crazy and fueling my cancers.

According to this latest test, I am close to where I need to be, except for production of E3 from 16-alpha. I have a little too much of bad 16-alpha, and a low level of good E3. The idea that my oncologist understands this biochemistry and will prescribe Estriol to a cancer patient is, shall we say, not bloody likely. So, Dr. Veltmann and I have decided to up my dose of Sam-E, to assist the COMT conversion pathway instead.

The bigger issue is the Aromatase Inhibitor that Dr. DaSilva has mentioned he wants to switch me to. This shuts off the conversion of Androstenedione to Estrone (E1), effectively robbing the body of all the good guys while shutting off all the bad guys. It also leads to a complete and dramatic menopause, more effectively than surgically removing the ovaries. This drug blocks all estrogen production, from all over the body--from fat cells, adrenal glands, etc. After superficially understanding the complicated biochemistry of this system, I fear this drug.

First, I find this explanation of good estrogens versus bad estrogens extremely plausible, given what we know about the delicate balance between LDL/HDL/Triglycerides in regulating cholesterol in the body. Hormonal systems are extremely complex, and I'm pretty sure being in balance is more important than just turning off the estrogen spigot.

Second, I am wimpishly afraid of even more dramatic menopausal symptoms. I'm barely tolerating the truly awful hot flashes, the loss of short-term memory, the insomnia, the night sweats, due to the tamoxifen now. Tamoxifen works in a different way--it sits on the estrogen receptor site of every cell in the body and blocks the entrance gate, but it doesn't interfere with the production or metabolism of estrogens throughout the body.

We are still awaiting the results of the full-month cycle spit test, but the results will be in before my appointment with Dr. DaSilva. Hopefully, I will be able to digest all this information enough to talk to him coherently, and convince him that I'd be better off staying on the tamoxifen.

The Dogless Life

It's very weird. Each time I walk into another room, I keep expecting to see Echo--bounding off the couch, ears up, tail wagging, ready for a walk outside. When I am upstairs working on the computer, I have half an ear out, listening for her padding up the stairs to the loft. When I've been involved in a project, I suddenly think, "did I let the dog in?"

We're very sad, but coping for the most part. We tell funny stories about her, and laugh through our sudden tears when one of us says, "do you remember when she...?" All normal processes, but it's hard to get used to being without her constant presence. So much of our daily structure revolved around her needs, and we are suddenly rudderless.

Bill is coping by cruising dog-adoption websites, prefacing each "listen to this!" with a disclaimer of "I know we're not ready for this now, but..." He has decided that Echo was indeed a Belgian Malenois, after doing research on their behaviors and putting to rest the issue of her black-spotted tongue--it turns out that lots of breeds have this characteristic, and it does not denote any Chow-chow heritage by itself. He has stopped calling Echo the "Faux Malenois."

I am just taking it one day at a time, trying to desensitize myself to the jolts of remembrance and the eerie absence of my furry friend. I'm waiting for time to do its magic, and the images of her death to be replaced by mental pictures of her alive and active.

Sigh.

Independence Day...of a sort

In anticipation of having the carpets cleaned on Wednesday, I started cleaning up the floor clutter this morning. I was booking right along, swamping out the canning jar collection, the piles of "to be filed," the heaps of clothes "to be mended," the books that never got home to the bookshelves, when I happened upon a great big compilation of what I like to call "My Breast Cancer Homework."

This was my life, for two whole years. Notebooks full of hospital-provided info, pamphlets on clinical trials, tumor classification flow charts, worksheets on radiation and chemotherapy side effects and remedies, articles ripped out of magazines, medical abstracts printed off the internet. In one giant leap of faith, I heaved the whole hearty mess of it into the trash.

The niggling voice of "what if you need it again?" was drowned out by the pragmatic realization that if I get cancer again, all of this past information will be either uselessly outdated or cheerfully thrust at me again. In a big binder with a pink ribbon on it, thanks so much.

For the moment, it felt great to throw it all out. Liberating, in fact. Nope. Don't need this anymore. Done.

And then tonight, I came across this gem: Rethinking the War on Cancer http://www.newsweek.com/id/157548/page/1

Seems as though 37 years of research hasn't done much except cure cancer in lab rats, mostly because the funding is going to "scientifically elegant" studies that tickle the NCI's curiosity, without showing much in terms of actual human patient benefits.

I certainly can't complain of the advances that I personally benefitted from. But it appears that this dovetails into the ACS's statement earlier this week that the scientists aren't really sure why cancer diagnoses are proliferating at a spectacularly alarming rate, and survival rates aren't increasing proportionally with the increases in early detection. This article explains some of that, and gives a window on why the research is striking out on preventing metastises, which is what kills most cancer patients. And focusing on treatment isn't working out that well, after all.

I have been supremely blessed in my treatment options, and for the moment, all's well. But these rogue cells are sneeky little buzzards. They mutate (that's what started the problem in the first place), and they adapt. For every treatment thrown at them, they seem to find a way around it. And so far, the scientific approaches haven't begun to understand the mechanisms of why good cells go bad.

The one sure thing that cancer taught me was that we all have an undetermined expiration date. This was of course true before I had cancer--it just took that experience to make me believe it. I am more determined than ever to enjoy and treasure the life I have, and make every moment count. We don't get to choose what happens to us. We only get to choose how to live with it.

Better Today

I woke up feeling sad, but not overwhelmed like yesterday. Today, there is just normal grieving going on, not the shock and guilt we felt when Loki died suddenly one morning, 10 years ago. Maybe it's the awesome healing power of rationalization, but I know we did all we could for Echo, ultimately couldn't save her from her inevitable demise, and gave her mercy and peace at her end. I'm okay with that.

Bill is having the harder time of it I think, because he wasn't able to be here for the closing chapter of the story. Though he left Monday knowing that he probably wouldn't see his dog again, it was hard coming home to a suddenly dogless house. But we're both dealing with it, and we will heal with time.

In the words of Forrest Gump: "That's all I have to say about that."

Echo Laid to Rest - Epitaph for a Good Dog

It is a glorious autumn day. Cool breezes are shaking a floaty, colorful rainfall of leaves onto the forest floor, the warm sun is shining, and the birds are calling. I just came up from the pond--where Bill had prepared Echo's final resting place, and I just finished burying her.

Echo went to sleep for the last time at 9:30 this morning, in the back of the red car where she was always so happy. She was lying on her "double-stack" dog bed, with her chin resting on her favorite toy, Hedgehog. There was no pain, and the vet and I sent her off with our mutual tears and gentle words, both of us stroking her soft, furry ears for the last time.

I know I will spend the next few days, weeks, maybe months, automatically looking for her in the house, thinking "I have to take the dog out," or "is it time to feed the dog?" These animal companions of ours become such an integral part of our daily lives. They worm their way into our hearts, and it is so hard to let go. But what I did this morning was a loving mercy, a refusal to let my friend suffer any longer.

As long as there was a chance she could be treated (or would quietly expire on her own), I kept the faith with her. But yesterday, the Leptospirosis test finally came back, and it was negative. The only good news in this is that Bill and I won't have to be on doxycycline for the next month ourselves, since it transmits easily to humans. So, after ruling out the lepto, we were left with the obvious signs of a massive and ultimately fatal abdominal tumor.

The vet said she was a fighter--any other dog would have been dead three weeks ago. Even if we had taken her to UT and spent thousands on further treatments, the vet said the outcome would have been the same. Bill and I concurred.

She stopped eating anything at all on Monday, and as she grew progressively thinner over this week, I could see how the tumor was taking over her body. I just couldn't bear to put her through any more drastic measures; Bill, still in Philadelphia, said not to wait.

So, I did what I could for my canine friend. My dog Echo protected me on the property from other dogs and human strangers and was a whiz at catching and eating any stinging insect that made its way into the house. Her insistence on exploring the woods every day got me outside and on the road to physical and mental recovery from my surgeries last year. She was a constant source of amusement and laughter with her doggie antics. She traveled all over the country with me, logged more than 30,000 miles, left her "mark" in hundreds of highway rest stops, and invariably took the best bed in every Motel 6 we stayed at.

While she was a fine "townie" when we lived in New York, she came into her own when we moved to Tennessee. At last she had acres to run in, critters to chase and watch (she especially liked making turkeys fly), and she mellowed into a total country dog here. She loved digging for chipmunks and squirrels. She even got over her fear of water, happily trotting through the creeks, especially if there were frogs and fish to stalk.

We noted, however, that she still loved sleeping on the couch when the sun went down.

She was a great companion, and a faithful friend. Rest in Peace, Echo. We loved you greatly, and you returned our full-hearted devotion with your own.

"The dog is the most faithful of animals and would be much esteemed were it not so common. Our Lord God has made His greatest gift the commonest. " -- Martin Luther

It's That (Pink) Month Again

Thank you, I'm so aware of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

In Walmart yesterday, I experienced my annual annoyance at pink-themed merchandise--including the extra bonus this year of pink-packaged Halloween candy for the kiddies. The mind boggles. Never to early to let them know that the world is dangerous and cancer could strike at any moment. And be sure to go home and tell Mommy (and Daddy too!) to go get a mammogram!

Oh, wait. This is on the heels of the ACS waffle-fest yesterday about how mammograms really might not be that great as a screening tool because you could get an aggressive tumor the day after you have your negative mammogram result.

What? After a generation of being told that "early diagnosis saves lives," now we are being told by the scientists that it ain't so.

Seems that while breast cancer diagnoses are through the roof, not all of the tumors found are of "the type that will kill you," (at least not right away?) and the ones that will kill quickly aren't being diagnosed fast enough to save you. And the survival rates aren't improving, despite all the added screenings and surgeries.

Are women being thrown under the bus here? Is this just a precursor to the coming nightmare of supposed "universal" health care (which isn't really health care, it's just super-regulating our health insurance, which is not the same thing at all).

So they start the debunking process of the only relatively cheap, wide-range screening tool we have, working to destroy the confidence in the efficacy of the mammogram, leading to lowering the number of women being screened (which isn't all that high to begin with, despite all the Pink Snickers bars!), which will fit right in with the government's future inevitability of rationing care based on the cost versus the value of a middle-aged woman's life to society at large.

Grumble, grumble.

In Great Britain (that model of efficiency that Congress points to as an example of what we should have here), women over the age of 50 who have the same Stage I-C breast cancer I had are being sent home without treatment and told to get their affairs in order. In other words, "You're not worth saving."

I thought my initial diagnosis meant certain death, but after being educated for the last 2 years in an up-close-and-personal way, I am now looking forward to being an old lady someday.

There's something really insane about flogging people to "be aware," while telling them quietly that it may not matter anyway, because the test isn't all that great after all. And, by the way, we're getting you prepared for when we tell you that you aren't worth treating.

And, I am NOT handing out pink candy to children, that's a grumpy "Roger" for sure.

Rethinking "Ugly"

Thanks to MaryAnn and Hannah having a little side-comment fest going about my new Crocs, I've decided to re-evaluate my initial aesthetic judgment. My new mantra is: "A Comfortable Pair of Shoes is a Beautiful Pair of Shoes!"

I spent some of yesterday looking on eBay at Crocs and decided that there are some v-e-r-y clever knockoffs coming out of Hong Kong right now (mine are Made in the U.S.A.). I looked at other colors, and frankly my dear, none of them rocked my world. I even found a pair with teeth and eyes. Bill liked them best of all.

Now THOSE shoes make a statement!

Looking at my humble, Dust-Bowl Brown, New-Best-Friends, they don't look so bad after all. And they feel marvelous!

P.S. Echo is hanging in there. We made it through one more night peacefully.

Echo, would you like mustard and relish with that?

When Echo was an adolescent, I enrolled her in agility classes to burn off some of that excess energy and give her a bonding experience. She was very fast, extremely smart, and completely intolerable to all the other dogs. She would bark at them when they made mistakes. She didn't want to wait her turn to do the course. The hardest agility move for her was where she was required to lie down and stay in one place for 3 seconds. The training reward in the class was small pieces of hot dog, which we humans held in our mouths, (because our hands had to be free for gesturing to our dog), and doled out when the dog completed a move successfully.

I remembered this yesterday, and though she hadn't eaten much of anything for 36 hours, she perked up at the smell of Nathan's franks and ate a bowlful of small pieces. She even kept most of it down for about 18 hours. When we got up early this morning to take Bill to the airport, she upped a little undigested hot dog, but most of it stayed in her. But this also tells us that her digestion is slowing way down, and we're becoming more convinced that we're dealing with a tumor, not Lepto.

We still need to know whether it is Lepto (or it could be Lepto AND a tumor), because it is a contagious disease that could transmit to us. If the test result is positive, Bill and I will have to take a course of doxycycline ourselves.

Today, the only thing she would eat was a bowl of cooked, crumbled hamburger meat. But she's drinking clean water again out of her bowl in the house, and she went for a slow, short walk up the back hillside this afternoon. She's sleeping comfortably on the couch now (she can still get up and down on her own).

I suppose the question is "how long am I going to let this go on?" Every time I think she's a goner, she perks up, wants to go outside, or eats something. She is still responsive to us, alert most of the time, wagging her tail when we speak to her. She's trying her best, and I'm not ready to give up on her as long as she isn't in pain and exhibits normal dog behavior.

Bill said his goodbyes this morning and told me he'd trust my judgment, if I thought she needed to be put gently to sleep at some point this week. She hasn't given up, so I'm not going to give up on her either. I'm not there yet.

Still holding on, Waiting & Hoping...

I don't know what to tell you about Ms. Dog. She is steadily getting weaker, has no interest in even the most esoteric of our food offerings. We're now into the mail-order specialty sausage, cottage cheese, ice cream, bacon--what normal dog would turn her head away and get up and walk away when you held a piece of bacon under her nose?

We've offered everything we can think of--she perks up when we talk about it, she sniffs it tentatively, but then turns away with an expression like "Nope, that's not it." She's waiting for us to bring her something worth eating, I guess.

Bill's idea this morning is...wait for it...Cat Food. Whenever we visit a house with cats, Echo's first order of business is to find the feline food and eat it all up--preferably while the cat is watching of course. There's a hint of the forbidden (because we always scold her for this behavior), it's stinky, and might interest her nose enough to get some nutrition down her.

In the meantime, we worry and we sigh and we fret. There just doesn't seem to be much we can do for her.

Bill is headed to Philadelphia tomorrow for a one-week temporary assignment as First Engineer on an old friend, the USNS Pollux, an SL-7, the biggest steamship on the planet. I once visited Bill on this ship down in New Orleans, and was amazed at its size and complexity. To give you an idea of the scale of this leviathan, I took a walk one morning from the stern to the bow and back again. It took a full 15 minutes of brisk hoofing. The ship's holds of seven parking garage-type stories can carry an entire Army Division's equipment in one cross-ocean trip, including helicopters (with the props folded down), Humvees, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Strikers, tanks, etc.

Bill was aboard the Pollux, anchored near her sister ship USNS Bellatrix, immediately after Katrina's landfall. The Bellatrix could not move out of the way of the hurricane because the main shaft was torn apart, so they battened down the best they could and rode out the storm. For months post-Katrina, the ship made fresh water from its de-salinators for the city, pumped its own diesel fuel into emergency fire and police vehicles, set up a dialysis facility on-board for hospital patients to come to, and housed and fed visiting veterinarians who were caring for all the abandoned pets. I'll bet you never heard any of that on the news, did you? The captain made these executive decisions on site, and didn't consult with FEMA or even the Navy in Washington DC; he saw a need, and did what he thought was necessary.

I'm sorry to see Bill go for the week, but I am also immensely proud of the work he does. If they need him, I'm all for his going to contribute. He'll be back on Friday or Saturday, and we'll see where we are with our own domestic dog-drama then.

Echo Updated

Once again, we trekked Echo over to Church Hill for a vet consult yesterday afternoon. She was so excited about riding in the car, she tried mightily to jump into the driver's seat, but her back legs failed her. Bill had to lift her into the back.

After much waiting and finally much discussion with the vet, our best guesses are that she has a tumor (spleen, liver or kidneys) or a bacterial infection called leptospirosis. If she has a tumor, there is a 75% probability that it is malignant and will kill her. If she has lepto, it is treatable by a six-month course of doxycycline. The smart and economical choice seemed to be to rule out or confirm the lepto infection, rather than doing ultrasound or exploratory surgery, looking for a tumor.

So now we wait. Test results will be back sometime in the middle of next week.

She is getting progressively weaker, because she is not eating much of anything. We were up at 5 this morning, cleaning up the results of dog barfing. I'm not even sure she could tolerate 6 months of antibiotics, as they mess with her tummy so much. But we are hoping for a lepto diagnosis anyway. The other prognosis is just too grim and final.

Echo ate about a tablespoon of tuna in water this morning for breakfast. She appears to like it straight out of the can, as opposed to having it in a clean dish. What is up with that?

Back to wait-and-see.

Library? No, it's a Video Rental Store!

Last night, I felt like I knew what I was doing for the first time at work. I moved calmly and seamlessly from one task to another, didn't get irritated at anyone, didn't make any obvious, flustered mistakes, and didn't once apologize and tell anyone that I was new.

For starters, my feet didn't hurt. I swallowed my shoe-pride and bought a pair of ugly brown Crocs on Monday. I can live with the lack of style. I can ignore the color. Saints-Be-Praised, my dogs aren't barking anymore.

Second, I took in a container of leftover Venison Bourguignon and shared it with (read: pushed it upon) my co-workers. I put some in a cup and heated it up for my boss, so she could eat while she was swamped with computer work at her desk. She is now my biggest fan. Everyone else swooned a bit too. I am IN! (Thank you, Julia Child).

Third, I started identifying the small things that drive me crazy already, and working on solutions to those problems (because these things also drive everyone else working there a little nuts).

Who knew that the local library is actually the new Netflix/Blockbuster? Daughter Juli tells me that all the 'net blogs are touting money-saving ideas, such as "Don't rent videos, borrow them from your local library!" She says that she recently read a news article that said that Blockbuster has closed more than 800 stores, and that libraries are now the primary source for renting movies.

All I know is that when I got the library job I was thrilled, thinking that I'd be around all those BOOKS! I'd be helping people find research materials, deciphering the Dewey Decimal system, and sharing unlimited access to the written word with the world.

Instead, my two main activities at work are: managing traffic for public computer usage, and dealing with eleventy-billion DVDs. I check them in. I take them out of the cases, slip them into sleeves and file them alphabetically in the storage bins. I re-shelve the empty cases. Two minutes later, someone brings the same case back to the desk. I check it out. I find the disc in the storage cabinet, take it out of the sleeve and put it in the hard case again. Again and again. Over and over.

Yesterday, instead of re-stocking the empty cases on the shelves, I just let them pile up on the desk until they literally started sliding to the floor. My thinking was, if I put them back, people will just check them out again, and I was too busy to deal with it (the library was a madhouse since we had been closed for the prior three days). I was too busy defusing computer conflicts
("but I can't wait until someone else is done!") to get upset over movies.

The other problem is the DVD shelves themselves. They are too deep for the cases, so every time I do re-shelve, I have to re-straighten everything, pull out the cases that have slipped to the back, re-alphabetize everything again and shore up the sliding mass of movies. About the hundredth time I did this yesterday, I thought (in my best internal Jimmy Stewart voice) "now wait just a gosh-darned minute!" There must be a better way to do this.

I got out the yardstick and did some measuring. All I'd need is 12 pieces of wood, 1" x 2.75" x 35.25" long. I could slide these spacers into the back of each shelf--then, no matter how many times people messed with my DVDs, they would slide in to the spacer and STOP! They would all go to the edge of the shelf, and no further. Yes, I would still have to shore them up laterally, but no more digging and slipping and hiding!

I asked the director if this would be a good thing. She countered by telling me to just go to Henard's Lumber and get what I needed on the library's account. She also said "I like people who take initiative!" I felt like I had just won a gold star in Library!

And who knows, maybe someone will check out a movie, and then miraculously decide to read the book. It could happen, right? It would be a start at least.

A little knowledge is a sad thing

Echo's abdomen is suddenly swollen, and when Bill brought it to my attention last night, my first thought was "spleen." We looked at dog anatomy on the internet--everything is so packed in together, it's hard for amateurs to discern between liver, kidneys and spleen. Bill went online last night and started researching dog medical issues. The news is not good.

There's not much we can do for Echo. The vet can do an ultrasound, or surgery to remove the spleen (which is also exploratory for other issues such as liver and kidney), but the bottom line is that Echo has all the symptoms of a spleen tumor, and 75% of those in older, large-breed dogs are malignant. Even if it's not cancerous, the surgery itself is extremely dangerous and the long-term prognosis is that you can extend the animal's life by only a short time. Most dogs in this situation die suddenly from an internal bleed (this is what we are pretty sure happened to our first dog, Loki.), or slowly because of mini-hemorrhages from the tumor. Performing surgery just hastens the process, costs a ton of $, and gives the dog more discomfort.

In the meantime, poor Echo is just as sweet as can be, but getting weaker. She's not eating or drinking much (pressure in the stomach squeezes the other internal organs), and last night, she couldn't make it up the final six steps to the loft--her back legs slumped on the landing, then she turned around and went back down.

Bill and I had a little cry, and went to bed. This morning, Bill went down to the pond with a shovel to pick out a spot for her final resting place. We're determined to support her as long as she appears reasonably comfortable, but we're coming to the realization that the end is probably coming soon. We've pretty much given up the idea that she's going to recover. We love our loyal companion, so we will try our best to do right by her.

Feeding Miss Doggie

Echo had a good day yesterday.

She went down to the pond to see her dog-friend Bear, and the two of them spent some time sniffing and peeing on each other's property. She made it back up the driveway, although she took her time and did it slowly. Her eyes were quite yellow, but she had a decent appetite.

Echo seems to be tempted by novelty foods. Yesterday, it was a can of albacore tuna packed in water that got her attention, fed to her bit-by-bit. She also seemed interested in Bill's Rice Chex, so she tried 3 small handfuls of that (with vanilla Ensure as the liquid). She drank about a litre of water--but not from her dish, of course. No, she likes the nasty rain water than collects in the folds of a tarp in the yard. She took a few pinches of grated cheese from my hand. She had no interest in egg, milk, Gatorade, rice, chicken or anything she ate enthusiastically the day before.

I'm thinking we need to get back on a regular feeding schedule, instead of trying to get her to eat a little all through the day. Maybe she'll eat if she is allowed to get a little hungry? She also smells very bad. I know that dogs don't sweat, but she really needs a bath. We are reluctant to stress her out by putting her in the tub, but it may be unavoidable. Bill and I cleaned our house yesterday instead, trying to keep the doggie smell down to a minimum. He vacuumed, while I swept and mopped the kitchen and bath floors, scrubbed the crud off kitchen cabinets and wiped tables.

Today I am off to Kingsport for an acupuncture treatment, shoe shopping (still trying to find something that doesn't kill my feet at the library) and a run to the liquor store for Marsala, brandy, tequila, and wine, for cooking.

I like cooking with wine. Sometimes, I even put it in the food...

Venison Bourguignon - OMG, can stew really taste this good?

I spent yesterday cooking, oh-so-happily.

After seeing Julie & Julia, I have been obsessed with the legendary Boeuf Bourguignon recipe that got Julia Child published after ten long years of recipe testing. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I have never cooked even one recipe from Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961). I was, in a word...intimidated.

I know. I have a Culinary Arts degree, I am an excellent cook, but somehow, I just never took the Julia Child plunge.

I watched Julia's The French Cook on PBS when I was in elementary school. I would walk my brother home each day for lunch (our new school had no cafeteria, until I was in fourth grade), and I would make lunch for the both of us. We would then munch away the blistful hour, watching Jeopardy! with Art Fleming, and then Julia's show. My dreams from childhood then became: appearing on Jeopardy! and learning to cook like Julia.

Having made it as a contestant on Jeopardy! in 1994 (and acquitting myself honorably), the only thing left was to cook like Julia. I was going to school in 1994-95 in Culinary Arts at Adirondack Community College. Though we made tons of classic French sauces (in the footsteps of L'Escoffier), we never made anything with them. Our experiments ended up in the soup pot for the cafeteria, who controlled our budget.

After seeing the movie, though, I was inspired. I checked out Julia's book and vintage videos from the library, and decided to take the plunge. Having a freezer full of venison, it seemed like a great place to start.

First, you need to know--the stew was AWESOME. My whole house smelled terrific while it was cooking, and I spent the whole day salivating. What I thought would be complicated, was so easy. Though detailed, Child's instructions were step-by-step, with no surprises. I was tempted to fiddle with the recipe, but squelched that impulse, wanting to know how it would turn out if I just followed it exactly. It was perfect.

And even if you have no venison (my only divergence from the printed recipe), it would be excellent with a cheap cut of beef (use Lean Chuck, Sirloin or Top or Bottom Round steak):

Boeuf Bourguignonne by Julia Child

[Beef Stew in Red Wine, with Bacon, Onions, and Mushrooms]

6 oz. chunk of bacon - Remove rind, and cut into lardons (sticks, 1/4" thick & 1 1/2" long). Simmer rind and strips for 10 minutes in 1 1/2 qts. of water. Lift out bacon pieces and rind to a side dish and dry on paper towels. ( Pam's note: Keep water boiling and add 24 small boiling onions for 10-30 seconds. Drain and rinse onions in colander under cold water)

Preheat oven to 450.

In a dutch oven or 5 qt. pot - Saute the bacon in 1 Tbls. Olive Oil over moderate heat for 2-3 minutes and brown lightly. Remove bacon & rind to a side dish with a slotted spoon. Reheat fat until almost smoking.

3 lbs. lean beef, cut into 2" cubes - Dry the meat well in paper towels. It will not brown if it is damp. Saute it, a few pieces at a time, in the hot bacon fat until nicely browned on all sides. Add it to the bacon in the side dish.

When all the meat is browned, add 1 sliced carrot and 1 sliced onion to the hot fat. Brown the vegetables and remove to the dish with the meat & bacon. Drain all fat from the dutch oven.

Return meat, bacon and vegetables to dutch oven, and toss with 1 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. fresh ground pepper, and 2 Tbls. flour. Set dutch oven in the lower third of the hot oven and bake for 4 minutes. Remove, toss again, and return to oven for another 4 minutes. (This browns the flour and covers the meat with a light crust). Remove from oven, and turn oven down to 325.
Add to the meat in pot: 3 cups full-bodied young red wine (I used 1.5 cups of cabernet, 1.5 cups shiraz), 2-3 cups beef broth, 1 Tbls. tomato paste, 2 cloves mashed garlic, 1/2 tsp. crush thyme, 1 crumbled bay leaf, the blanched bacon rind. Bring to a simmer on top of the stove, then cover and place in the 325 oven for 3-5 hours. Meat is done when tender to the fork.

While the meat is cooking, prepare onions and mushrooms:

Peel the 24 cooled onions by cutting off both ends and removing peel with fingers. Poke paring knife into the root end about 1/4", cutting a "cross" so the onions won't burst when cooking. Heat 1.5 Tbls. butter and 1.5 Tbls. canola oil in a saute pan. Wait until the butter stops foaming, then add onions. Roll them around by shaking the pan over medium heat for about 10 minutes, browning on all sides.

Add: 1/2 cup beef broth, 4 parsley sprigs, 1/2 bay leaf and 1/4 tsp. crushed thyme. Cover and simmer at very low heat for 40-50 minutes, until tender but still holding shape, and stock is evaporated. Set aside.

Wipe 1 lb. mushrooms with paper towels and cut into quarters. Heat 2 Tbls. butter and 1 Tbls. oil until foam subsides, then add half the mushrooms. Shake pan and toss for about 5 minutes, until browned. Remove to side dish. Repeat with remaining mushrooms. Set aside.

When meat is done, remove from oven. Strain all liquid into saucepan, clean the dutch oven, then put the meat and vegetables back into the pan. Add the reserved pearl onions and mushrooms.

Heat the liquid to a rapid boil, skim all the fat off with a spoon, and reduce to about 3 cups, until it is thick enough to coat a spoon.

[Pam's Note: I was hungry at this point, so I hurried it by adding beurre manee, equal parts of soft butter and flour, stirred to a paste and whisked into the broth until it thickened]. Pour sauce over meat and vegetables and toss to coat. Simmer for 2-3 minutes over medium heat, sprinkle with chopped parsley, then serve.

Accompany with salad, the rest of the red wine and good crusty bread & real butter.

Fabulous.

(It's supposed to be even better the second day, after being refrigerated. Just reheat gently, stir gently and serve).

Pam: Bring to a Rapid Boil, then Simmer for 24 Hours until Thoroughly Annoyed

Echo update: She is eating less and less each day, and getting progressively weaker, unfortunately. Bill and I have decided to let her set the pace and trust her dog instincts. Last night, she gobbled down some cooked rice, but eschewed her latest favorite, scrambled egg. This morning, she lapped up some egg and milk mixture and ate some cooked venison, but turned down bread, kibble, rice, scrambled egg and yogurt. Right now, I'm cooking a chicken breast and hoping that will tempt her today.

In the meantime, I have been unbearably steaming in my own body heat. The Effexor and Spruce Lignan no longer keep the constant hot flashes at bay. I am waking up several times a night in a soaked nightgown, staggering out to the couch to lie under the fan. I sweat like a marathon runner at work. It never abates, I am hot-hot-hot, all the time.

Imagine my thrill when the latest issue of Cure magazine touted an article on cancer treatment-induced hot flashes! At last, some new ideas! After plenty of yada-yada, yeah I know what causes them, here's what the article cheerfully concluded:

"Simple lifestyle changes may help reduce the severity of hot flashes. Experts [ahem] recommend trying to avoid circumstances or activities that may trigger hot flashes. Stress is a frequent trigger, so practicing stress-reduction techniques, such as meditation or yoga, may be helpful. Other suggestions include wearing lightweight cotton clothing and sleepwear, staying hydrated, and avoiding alcohol, caffeine, and spicy foods."

Gee. If only I had known this before! [insert major sarcasm here]

I threw the magazine clear across the room. Thanks a lot, Cure. Sheesh. No help here.

I am so darned tired of being CHEERFUL about this. The few times the hot flashes stopped, (at first with the spruce lignan, then at first with the Effexor), it was such a relief I almost wept with gratitude. Then they came back with a vengeance. Like a present, snatched away, just as I was getting ready to open it. Hot, cold, hot, cold--I pile on clothes, then fling them off (at home anyway; I just fan myself and sweat vigorously at the library).

The last time I was at the oncologist's, he asked if I was taking the tamoxifen.

"Of course," I replied. "How can I argue with a 41% increase in survival rates? Who wouldn't take it?"

Dr. DaSilva allowed that a great many of his patients just stop taking it because of the side effects. I got a good girl award for being a stoic, compliant patient. But I wonder how long I can continue to live like this. Some days, it's downright unbearable. And the aromatase inhibitors he wants to change me to have even more heat potential, plus the added bonus of bone loss, bone pain and heart arrhythmia. Oh joy.

Bill's suggestion was to tell my nutritionist/biochemist Dr. Veltmann in New Mexico about the proposed change in meds. Dr. Veltmann has me peeing in cups and spitting in tubes to measure whether I am still pre-menopausal (suggested by my extreme heat reaction to the tamoxifen) or truly now in menopause. I will know the results of all these genomic tests in early November, just before my next oncology check-up.

I am trying to be a smart patient about all of this. But some days (and nights), I just want to climb into a vat of ice and stay there.

Echo, the Dog with 9 Lives...

Just as soon as we start thinking this is the end, the pup fools us all.

Yesterday morning, we were at a nadir. Yesterday afternoon, Echo went out to pee, then hiked up the mountain in back, sniffing out squirrels, marking territory and generally acting like a normal dog. She ate a variety of fresh foods (chicken, venison, egg), and also took some kibble soaked in milk. I stopped the antibiotic and re-started the Sam-E and milk thistle to support her liver.

This morning, her eyes are white again. When I let her out, she circled the house and then headed down the driveway for the pond. I called her back, and she made it slowly all the way back up and then up the 26 steps. She was tired, but she ate a breakfast and laid down for her morning nap.

Weird and yes, wonderful. We are dog-controlled yo-yos. One day at a time. Learn the lesson, one more time.

Poor Echo

This morning, Echo's eyes are jaundiced, a sure sign that her liver is shutting down. Bill and I have been talking (and crying), and we've decided to keep her as comfortable as possible and let her go in peace, on her own schedule. It's very sad.

She gobbled down some venison this morning, and took some bread soaked in egg and milk. Last night, she enjoyed some of the plain yogurt Bill went out to get at Food City at 10 pm. She may yet recover, but we are preparing ourselves now to deal with losing her. We're back to wait-and-see.

Relapse

We thought we were on the road to recovery, but this morning Echo seems worse again. This may be a "two-steps-forward, one-step-back" kind of thing. I may have let Bill's panic push me into giving her more food than she could handle yesterday.

I am off to work my first full day at the library at noon. We'll just have to take it one day at a time and see how she does.

Crisis Abating...

It looks like we may have Echo for at least a few more thousand miles. She's eating food and drinking water. She's still terribly weak, and her spirit has more gumption than her body has stamina. But she's going outside and making it back in, to flop on the couch or the futon.

However, it looks like I'm going to be cooking for the dog in perpetuity. She will not eat dog food of any kind, canned or kibble. She will eat scrambled eggs, boiled chicken, and the aforementioned venison. I have a recurring vision that soon she'll be demanding turkey dinners with all the trimmings, Beef Bourguignon, Chicken Kiev and Veal Oscar. And ice cream for dessert.

If it means I still get to have my companion animal around for awhile, I'll do it.