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.