Dawn Musings

I'm up early this morning...oh-dark-thirty early. It's been awhile since I lay abed for a half-hour in the dark, and decided I might as well just get up. It's like revisiting an old, forgotten friend.

This time of day always reminds me of the year of post-surgical Pam, who couldn't sleep comfortably for more than four hours. I'd slip upstairs quietly to write on the computer in the pre-dawn stillness, trying to quell my fears, regurgitating my experience, trying to make sense of it all and struggling mightily for calm and grace.

Now, it's hard to remember the raw-emotion-barely-controlled of that time. The veil of blessed amnesia, the simple passage of time, has healed most of the emotional and physical wounds of that lost year. I have passed the year and a half mark. I am well. I actually have days where I don't think about it much, other than the momentary grimace when I catch a glimpse in the mirror after a shower or when I dress, or the underarm tightness I feel at night when I'm tired.

Still, to be honest, I think of myself as a "cancer patient." I am in the limbo of "Cured...But," always monitoring, always on the lookout for something sinister lurking underneath the obvious outward appearance of recovery. I'm having a hard time letting go of the inner invalid, afraid to celebrate too loudly, lest I offend the random gods like a character in a Greek tragedy. You know that character will be punished for her hubris, you just know it.

I worry about my flatline of emotions. Now that my inner calm matches my outward calm for the most part, I find I miss feeling passionate about something, anything. I am adrift, and I recognize that it's a self-protective mechanism, a method of trying to escape notice by Fate, so it will pass me by this time, without throwing another lightning bolt my way. Maybe if I stay really still and quiet, nothing bad will happen again?

I know this is ridiculous. None of us is in control of what happens to us. I am mildly surprised that I've somehow chosen this small-child-under-the-covers approach, rather than fiercely fighting for joy, wringing every last bit of experience out of life, (the "Living Each Day to the Fullest" model), that my past personality would predict. I feel humbled, chastened. Still afraid, I guess.

But then, the sun comes up. It's time to put all that garbage in a box, tie a big, fat red ribbon around it and shove it to the back of the mental storage closet, to be misplaced and forgotten until the next time I decide to clean out old stuff.

Hemming & Hawing

Good news! Well, sort of...as good news is never definitive, just a temporary postponement, a hedging of medical bets.

The right mid-lobe spot and the right lower-lobe mass appear to be 2-3 millimeters and "stable," meaning they haven't grown since the last CT scan, 3 months ago. They are most probably benign granulomas, scar tissue left over from a past infection, or exposure to histoplasmosis or tuberculosis. And, because we can't just leave well enough alone, the protocol is to repeat the CT scan in 6 months and then again in a year.

Luckily, I have the world's most absent-minded oncologist. Don't get me wrong, I love the guy. But I'm always the one who has to remind him that it's time for the 3-month Search-For-Lumps exam, remind him that I had a test and he needs to look at the results. My guess is that 6 months will pass, and if I don't say anything, I won't have to subject myself to more pointless CT radiation. As I said before, I'm done, and I'm comfortable with that. I don't need to go looking for trouble anymore, at least on the lung front.

He did the whole-body palpation yesterday (after I reminded him that it was time), and I am deemed cancer-free for another 3 months. Yippee!

On other fronts, Juli continues to improve. She was making meatballs last night, so I guess her appetite is back.

So, live moves on.

Juggling Much

I feel as though I've got 27 eggs whirling overhead, and it's a full-time job keeping them aloft.

The weekend was especially stressful, with daughter Juli in acute distress and hospitalized, no one seeming to know what was wrong with her. It was the return of the irregular heartbeat, non-stop vomiting, and dehydration that landed her in the hospital in February, 2008. Again, they checked her out, scanned her whole body, pumped her full of fluids and drugs, and sent her home with a shake of their collective heads. Intestinal virus? Anxiety attack? Nothing really fits. At least she is home again now and resting, starting to eat, and regaining strength. She calls me everyday, which is something I could really get used to!

We have also been living with the knowledge that Bill's dad is not doing well. His jaw cancer has returned, and is aggressively growing. He has started chemo treatments to prolong his life and quality of life for the time he has left, but this story is not going to have a happy ending.

I will be traveling up to Illinois next week to be with him, and help him get his affairs in order. It's all complicated by the fact that Bill is at sea and not due home until mid-August, which may be too late--his dad may be too drugged out to be lucid, or the cancer may spread to his brain, or he may be gone by then. No one really knows how this is going to play out.

Part of my trip will be to ascertain when Bill should come home, so he will at least have an opportunity to see his dad one last time and say goodbye. Another goal is to get clear on the arrangements for Bill's mom, who has been declining in a nursing home for the past few years. All in all, I am not anticipating a pleasant trip, except for the fact that my son, Alex, has decided to meet me there for a few days and help me handle the stress.

Alex and I will also travel to Danville, Indiana at the end of our trip, for a family get-together with all the cousins and to celebrate Aunt Mary's 85th birthday. That, at least, should be fun.
Alex and Echo and I will get a hotel room in Indianapolis on the 13th, and he will fly back to Seattle the following morning. I will then come on home to TN, while Bill's sister will drive back to Illinois to be with her father.

The logistics are the juggle-eggs. There are appointments with lawyers and social workers, bringing family and friends up to date, and dealing with Dad himself. There's dog boarding. Car maintenance. And a million other things.

Today, the car goes back to the hospital in Kingsport for the annoying "Check Engine" problem that has re-emerged, and an oil change. And then there's that pesky lung CT--I get the results at my 3-month oncology follow-up today.

It's only 9 am, and already I feel like taking a nap!

Coyote Calling

Saturday night at sunset, the unmistakable call of a coyote came floating down off the mountain. I do love the fact that there are predator mammals on the mountain. But I also worry that my dog looks an awful lot like a coyote, because there are hunters in the woods who would think nothing of shooting them.

Still, it feels like a wild place, a primal place, when you hear that sound. Not a wolf-like howl, but more like a yipping puppy with a resonant warble in the throat. There's nothing like it in the world, other than "coyote."

I first heard the sound in the Guadalupe Mountains in West Texas, in March of 1979. Dave and I spent a cold, windy night on those upper plains, listening to a whole community of them, conversing back and forth. Coyotes are solitary animals, unlike wolves who travel and live in packs, but they do let each other know where they are with their calls. I haven't heard them since--until we moved to Devil's Nose. Bill had never heard them until this winter here, and he was as enchanted as I.

The more I live here in the arms of the forest, the happier I am.

Peaceful Saturday Morning

I'm up early this morning, enjoying the dawn. Ray and Elaine are visiting from California, so I gave them my bed downstairs, while I am sleeping in the alcove in the upstairs loft on the airbed. It's comfortable, but when the sun rises, it comes through that window and awakens me.

Thursday was a long, tedious, boring day. I sat in so many waiting rooms, I got an entire hat knitted before I even got in the car to come home. The acupuncture treatment continues to amaze me. There is simply no way to describe how wonderful it is to go through my days without pain. To be able to use my arms without thinking about whether it's going to hurt...well, it's just the best thing ever.

The CT scan was, of course, really nothing. Just a bunch of forms to fill out, a long spate of sitting around waiting for my name to be called, and then a quick lie-down on the table, hold my breath 3 times when the machine told me to, and a goodbye. I didn't even have to change into a gown. I don't know why I get so excised about it.

Well, actually, I do. It's the mental game that gets me so upset. When the radiology tech cheerfully asked, "so we're here to check out some spots," I replied "No, we're here to cover my doctors' a***s." I am really not a very good patient anymore. Surly, in fact.

Then it was off to the muffler shop to find the cause of the Check Engine light glowing on my dashboard. The owner's manual said it could be caused by exhaust leaks, and since we've never had any work done on that in 107k miles, it seemed prudent to check it out. It was determined that one or maybe two oxygen sensors were bad--at $116 each + labor--or maybe it was just the indicator light, because after driving it around, they couldn't get the light to come on again. I decided that since doing nothing wouldn't harm the engine, I'd pass on replacing the expensive sensors.

Then, just as I was about to leave, as they were bringing my car down off the rack, they noticed my muffler was about to fall off (rusted out mounting bracket) and a heat shield was loose. So they welded everything together again, charged me $0, and I was finally on my way home.

Observation: All over this great land of ours, women complain that men don't talk. Well, I'm here to tell you that in East Tennessee, the men will not shut up. I endured two hours of mindless blather while waiting at the muffler shop. War stories, intimate medical histories (do I really want to hear about his PTSD?), bragging about their cars, tales about their wives. MEGO people! (My Eyes Glaze Over). So, I paid for the car repair, just not in dollars.

Like I said, I'm downright surly.

Ray and Elaine arrived that night around 2 am, having driven in from Nashville and Thursday was blessedly over. We all ran separate errands yesterday, and then met up for supper at the Pig 'n Chick. I had one of the best pieces of salmon I've ever eaten! Grilled (not fried!) fish in Tennessee. Who would have ever thought?

Off to See the Gizzard....

Well here I am, feeling sorry for myself yet again. Today I deliver myself into the arms of the Medical Machine once more, in its continuing quest to cover its collective behind. Today is my second CT scan of the "suspicious spots" on my lungs.

I know--whine, whine, whine. It's what I do best. Railing at the fates, bargaining with divine powers, generally plodding forward with a sourpuss face, a chip on my shoulder, and an inner child who is whimpering in fear. I hate the way these continuous medical tests make me feel--like a cancer patient.

I want to be SO DONE with all of that. For the last few months, I've felt like I've been on the verge of turning a corner, actually forgetting some days about where I've been, and almost forgiving my body and the random universe that turned my world upside down and changed my life forever. Trying to get past it all, not so much as to go back (because that just isn't possible), but to go forward without carrying so much resentful baggage.

It is what it is. And I'm just so gosh-darned lucky to have skated on the edge of the mortality pond without falling through the ice and drowning. I've been existing somewhere between gratitude and guilt, relief and resentment. Every time I think I'm getting a handle on it and mastering my emotions, it's time for another reminder that it's not so distant after all. The possibility of it is always lurking, just waiting for another test to reveal that I didn't get off relatively free.

I have already decided that this is my last CT scan on this particular quest. I don't feel like being an enabler forever, and I'm tired of subjecting myself to still more hefty doses of radiation that feed my fears. I'm still not convinced that it wasn't the constant mammogramming back in the 70s that gave me cancer in the first place, back in the days when the doses were inordinately high compared to now.

So today's test is my line in the sand. No more poking and prodding and no more looking for trouble. I've started to feel like a healthy person again, and I'm not going to let the medicos' fear of litigation rule my life.

Foliage

Rust never sleeps, Dad used to say. And the trees that didn't block the TV satellite last year, will certainly grow enough the following spring to do so this year.


Thanks to a contact through Renne at knitting group (she knows everyone!), two strapping young men came yesterday to remove the offending branches for the nominal fee of $30. With ropes and crampons, chain saw and courage, Ragen scampered 50 feet up my giant ash, while Renne's friend Renn stayed on belay. Fifteen minutes later, I had a patch of blue sky and TV reception again!


And an added bonus--a big bunch of mistletoe to dry, hang and admire (and maybe smooch under, when Bill comes home?):


Surprise! Last night, we had a late (Mid-May? Very late!) freak frost predicted, so at 11 pm, I ran out and covered all the seedlings on the porch:

There's always something that needs to be done around here!

Chicken Redux

I have had such a hankering lately for that most pedestrian of dishes--chicken salad. Since a distressing quantity of my Super Easy Lemon Chicken was still hanging around in the fridge, I came home from knitting group on Friday, and made this:

Addictive Chicken Salad

4 cups cubed cooked chicken breast
2 cups diced celery
1 medium-sized sweet onion (Vidalia)
1/2 cup chopped, toasted pecans
1 Tbls. pickle relish
Enough Mayo to bind loosely
Salt & Pepper to taste

I've been living on this for the past two days. I eat it on lettuce leaves, or ciabatta bread, topped with sweet-hot mustard, or mixed with a Tablespoon of barbeque sauce. I firmly believe that our bodies crave what they need, so what is in this humble chicken salad that makes it so compellingly delicious?

Soon, it will be all gone...and then I'll have to find something else to eat compulsively.

A Plethora of Plums, One Peach, and Other Marvels

There is something so satisfying about growing food for personal consumption. Subjecting oneself to the vagaries of "home farming" requires several acts of faith--that spring will come again, that the rain will fall and the sun will shine, that the pests and the birds and the vermin will leave enough to harvest for the human table, and that the cycle of life will go on.

I never lose my sense of wonder when my annual gardening hopes are rewarded with tangible signs of success.

A single peach (on a tree that was not supposed to bear fruit until 2010!) and my magic bean patch bring me joy:

And look at all those pears!

The peas, beaten down by the torrents of rain, are blooming:




Nature provides both the sublime and the annoying, as other signs of spring abound; yes, that's an American Dog Tick on Echo's fur:


Echo is on Frontline, so the ticks don't bother her at all--but she carries them into the house, where they must be found and destroyed before they jump onto us. (I am not on Frontline, and there's nothing pretty about scratching my head and finding a tick on my scalp!)

Dump Day

There's just no getting around it, I must go to the county landfill today.

I am reminded of a poem I used to recite to the kids when they were little, something to make them giggle, with just a touch of didactic "and the moral of the story is..."

Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout
Would not take the garbage out!
She'd scour the pots and scrape the pans,
Candy the yams and spice the hams,
And though her daddy would scream and shout,
She simply would not take the garbage out.

And so it piled up to the ceilings:
Coffee grounds, potato peelings,
Brown bananas, rotten peas,
Chunks of sour cottage cheese.
It filled the can, it covered the floor,
It cracked the window and blocked the door
With bacon rinds and chicken bones,
Drippy ends of ice cream cones,
Prune pits, peach pits, orange peel,
Gloppy glumps of cold oatmeal,
Pizza crusts and withered greens,
Soggy beans and tangerines,
Crusts of black burned buttered toast,
Gristly bits of beefy roasts. . .

The garbage rolled on down the hall,
It raised the roof, it broke the wall. . .
Greasy napkins, cookie crumbs,
Globs of gooey bubble gum,
Cellophane from green baloney,
Rubbery blubbery macaroni,
Peanut butter, caked and dry,
Curdled milk and crusts of pie,
Moldy melons, dried-up mustard,
Eggshells mixed with lemon custard,
Cold french fried and rancid meat,
Yellow lumps of Cream of Wheat.

At last the garbage reached so high
That it finally touched the sky.
And all the neighbors moved away,
And none of her friends would come to play.
And finally Sarah Cynthia Stout said,
"OK, I'll take the garbage out!"
But then, of course, it was too late. . .
The garbage reached across the state,
From New York to the Golden Gate.
And there, in the garbage she did hate,
Poor Sarah met an awful fate,
That I cannot now relate
Because the hour is much too late.
But children, remember Sarah Stout
And always take the garbage out!

Shel Silverstein, 1974

Okay, it's not that bad yet. But today is the day.

My Bug-Killing Dog

This 2-inch long, monstous stinging insect found its way into my house yesterday:

Echo loves big, stinging insects. She spends many happy hours out in the backyard, snatching wood bees out of the air and chowing down on hornets and wasps. When they enter the house, she goes into full-hunter mode.

It only took her about a minute from spotting it before she snapped it up and rendered it dead.

Having that dog around is better than owning a fly-swatter.

Chicken

I get so bored with eating poultry. On the one hand, chicken is the most versatile of protein sources--on the other, it always tastes like chicken. Last night, I decided to do something different and came up with this:

Super-Easy, Super-Lemon Chicken

Preheat oven to 475.
Grate the zest from 2 lemons onto waxed paper and mix with 1 tsp. salt and 1 tsp. sugar.
Loosen the skin on 3 large, bone-in chicken breasts, and rub 1-2 tsp. of zest mixture into meat under the skin of each breast. Place in 9 x 13 roasting pan, blot dry with paper towel. Season with salt & pepper.
Juice the 2 lemons and add to 1 can low-sodium chicken broth; add remaining zest mixture; pour into bottom of roasting pan.
Roast for 30-40 minutes, until skin is very brown and crispy, and internal temp of chicken is 165F. Let rest while making sauce:

Pour off liquid into saucepan, skim off fat. Cook juices on medium-high heat until reduced to 1 cup, about 5 minutes. Add a cornstarch slurry (1 tsp. cornstarch to 1/4 cup water), a little at a time, until sauce thickens.

Eat. (I remove the skin and don't eat that, as tempting as it is--but leaving it on during the high-heat roasting keeps the meat moist and juicy).

You could also do this with a whole chicken--just remove the backbone with poultry shears, open up (butterfly) and press to flatten. Use 3 lemons instead of 2, and stuff 2 Tbls of the zest mixture everywhere, including the thighs and legs. Roast 45-60 minutes, until thigh internal temp is 170-175F.

I Am a Big Red Flower

Yesterday the rain let up for a few hours, allowing me to finally transplant the last of the seedlings--rosemary, basil, fennel, parsley, spinach, more tomatoes (I mean really, does one ever have enough?), tomatillos, poblano peppers, and eggplant. I played in the dirt until I was as muddy as the porch, but since the clouds started blowing over again, I figured the coming rain would wash my mess on the deck away.

Standing on the porch and admiring my finished project, and while I was talking to my mom on the phone, a tiny hummingbird flew up to check me out. It hovered about a foot away from me, at the level of my stomach. I could see its facial markings and individual iridescent body feathers.

I was astonished that it would come so close and hover for so long. It was staring at me. Then I must have imagined seeing an imperceptible shake of its head, and it zipped away.

It was only later that I realized I was wearing a bright red shirt. The hummingbird must have thought it had stumbled upon the biggest feast it had ever seen.

Time to Build an Ark?

The deluge from the sky that started a week ago seems to have abated this morning. Last night, as I was wandering around in my constant version of unbearable nightly body heat, the sky was flashing and booming--a real shaker in the pantheon of "scattered thundershowers."

My transplanted seedlings are drowning. Tomato and pepper leaves are turning yellow. Tiny mushrooms are springing up in the pots. Gutters overflow and water pours from the sky. And the forest? It's a jungle out there! Hopefully, it will dry out today enough to mow soon, or this place is going to start looking like Sleeping Beauty's overgrown castle.

Stomach Sleeping, Not Sleeping, & Who Stole My REMs?

I have been a walking Zombie this weekend. It reminds me so much of what it felt like being the mother of infants, staggering around, strung out and nerve-shaky, never really sure what was real and what was weirdness, perceived through a fog of fatigue and seeming like a bad re-run of Night of the Living Dead.

I love to sleep. I was not able to get to sleep, stay asleep, or get any kind of brain recharge for 3 days. I'd go to bed at 11 and lie awake until 2; then I'd be awake again at 4 and unable to get back into the Arms of Morpheus. I'd drift off on the couch around 3 in the afternoon, and be up fidgeting and jittery again at 4:30. Repeat cycle.

And I've been waking up and finding myself sleeping on my stomach. Not the full-on "swimmer's posture" which was my only way of sleeping before my surgery, and a position my chiropractor despaired of and deemed harmful to my back. I haven't been able to put any pressure on the bionics at all for so long now, and I had to learn to sleep on my back (only when completely exhausted) or my side. But somehow in the middle of my snoozing, now I'm turning more onto my tummy than I have in 17 months.

Last night, I went to bed at 1 am, stayed comatose until 4, got back into the slumber until 8, when I awoke refreshed and feeling normal. It was such a delight, I just laid there and savored the feeling of having reset my brain function to standard operating procedure again.

Whew. Let's not do this again anytime soon.

It's a Luna Moth!

Look at this amazing creature I found attached to my door frame yesterday!

It is a "Luna Moth," about the size of a deck of cards. These forest denizens are very shy and rarely seen. I first read about them in The Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, one of my all-time favorite books about the Appalachian Mountains.

I have only seen one other, about a year ago, flapping around in the outside flood lights at night (hence, "Luna" -- they come out by the light of the moon). That one was larger than a big man's hand, and it made me wonder if I was hallucinating.

When I see something like this, I can only marvel at the infinite variety and beauty of nature all around me.