September

Hard to believe summer is nearly over, especially as the high today is 90 degrees. When we first lived here, 30 odd years ago, there was no air conditioning, but we had a whole house fan in the hall ceiling that blew into the attic, and if we ran it at night and closed the window shades in the day, the house stayed perfectly cool. Now we have central air, and a window unit in the dining room which has windows on three sides (and is hotter than the rest of the house), and I can't imagine doing without them. I not only believe in the reality of global warming, I think it has been quietly gaining ground for at least 25 years. I hate hot weather. I grew up in Miami Florida, back in the ancient days of the 50s and 60s, and we had no air conditioning at home either. I didn't know anybody who did. If you got too hot, you went to a department store or the movie theater. There we also had a lot of rain, so it was nice and steamy as well as hot. Now the area is sweltering and having a drought, not an improvement. Even hurricane Irene didn't do much to change that; what they need is steady light rain for an extended time, and not torrential downpours that run off and not soak in.

Here is a photo from the 50s of me, my older sister, and our grandmother, in front of the house in Miami. The big awnings kept the house cooler and folded down to protect the windows in a hurricane. We had several hurricanes, what they mainly meant to me was that school was cancelled (if in the fall). Never thought about the storm itself, or how the house could be damaged with us in it. Sweet ignorance of youth.



The visit with the oncologist was uneventful and the only wrinkle is that I go next week for an echo cardiogram to check that all is OK in the heart department. I had one when I first began the chemo, and it is fast and painless, so no trauma to do.

I'm sleepy and want a nap, so I'll leave you with this bumper sticker: "Ever wonder what the speed of lightning would be if it didn't zigzag?"

All is well.

The result of the PET/CT imaging is back and everything is OK! WHEEE! I love that they called me so quickly, the waiting is the worst. Thank all of you for your kind thoughts and prayers. I see the oncologist next week, and then every three weeks thereafter, but at this point in time, there are no tumors or growths anywhere. I will still receive the antibody Herceptin for a year total, and thank you Uncle Sam for the Federal employee BC/BS insurance, we couldn't do this without it.

And thank you, S, for the yummy cheesecakes, I'm ready to celebrate with it. I'd also been ready to commiserate if necessary with cheesecake; it's the all occasion dessert, but celebrating is the best.

The photo is one from the Web, but the apparatus looks just like the one I was in, head first, for 20+ minutes while laying perfectly still. With your arms over your head, and your head braced in position. After receiving radioactive glucose and a contrast media, IV. All in all, though, not really that bad. I'm just glad it is over, and all is fine. And did I thank all of you??

Bumper sticker of the day: "If I must die, let it be Death by Chocolate."

Bits and pieces

I'm scheduled for another PET/CT scan later today. I know I won't find out anything about my cancer status for days, maybe a week until my appt. with the oncologist, but I've already started obsessing over it. Will the tech doing the scan drop me any hints if I ask? Probably not. Will it do any good to call on, say, Friday? My jaw muscles are so tight it's a wonder I can eat.

Anyway.

Willie has recovered from his sore hoof,so no more soaking, Hooray. My back is even on the mend from standing bent at the waist to hold his hoof in the water; if I removed my hand from his fetlock, out came the foot, usually kicking the bucket over as it did.

Let me see... Oh yes, Google adsense emailed me that I have a $10 check coming, thanks to nice people like you who click on one of the three ads up there on the top of my right sidebar. Of course, it has taken 5 months to accumulate $10, so I haven't planned on a big spending spree just yet. Still, it is nice, and thank you for checking them out.

I've been busy listing used books for sale into my data base, so far I've gotten around 750. This is for ABEbooks, or Amazon, they email me shipping manifests and I ship the book off, national and international. So if you have a burning desire for a book that hasn't been published in a coons age (see below), check them out. There is another button over on the right for that too, but it doesn't pay me (sigh); in fact I frequently spend more in shipping than I get from the sale, after all the monthly charges and all the commissions. I also think I've bought more books than I have sold, which is not resulting in the clearing out of 40 years of accumulated books that are in every nook and cranny of this house. But now that I have the Kindle, I'm hoping I'll stop buying print books (mostly) and I guess a lot of people are doing the same and paper books will be going the way VHS tapes went in recent years.

Our neighbor across the road has successfully trapped those pesty raccoons that have been raiding our cat food in the garage and our trash cans. The most elusive one was a huge beast and the big concern was that he was too large to get in the trap, until we borrowed a very big trap. And you know what was used for bait? Peppermint patties. Apparently coons are wild for peppermint, and as an added bonus, cats aren't interested at all, so no risk of catching one.

Well, one of our house cats (Mac) would eat peppermint, he eats everything, from jelly beans to cantaloupe, quite a scrounger if we let him. Here he is:











Thought for the day: "Never confuse movement with progress."

Chicken

Here it is 4:30 am, wide awake and stiff as a board. Thursday Willie, my big bay gelding, was lame -three legged lame- in his pasture. So, figuring a stone in his foot N and I went to him with halter and hoof pick. He didn't mind having that leg picked up, but when I commenced picking at it, he yanked it back. So I tried again, and he yanked it out of my hands, reared and tried to strike (and his foot bled a bit from the frog). Time to call the vet. He came that afternoon, and tranquilized him so he didn't care what went on down there on his legs, and picked out the stone and checked for any abscess. That little stone cost $200. Now I'm doing the twice a day soak in warm epsom salts, for 10 minutes or until he kicks over the bucket, which ever comes first. And vile tasting meds in his grain for the pain. Anyway, all this to explain how I came to be so stiff it hurts. I'm OK on the bendy-over, but not so good on the straighteny-uppy. Never a dull moment.

Here is Willie:



And as an aside, I am SOOO glad the barn has hot water in the tack room, I don't know how I got along without it. Well, really I do know - I hauled buckets from the house, boo hiss.

I go on the 23rd for another PET/CT scan, see if all is OK from the chemo. Waiting is the hardest part of all this. Maybe that's why they call us patients; I don't want to think about why it is called a medical practice.

And this is what I call a perfect day.




Bumper sticker for the day: "How do I set the laser printer to stun?"

Sleepy

Just a little silliness to pass along.

It's 2:45 am here, and I am battling nausea every time I try to lie down. So, sitting up. I can hardly keep my eyes open.

I've been poking around in my stuff here in the computer room (closet) and have found neat stuff, lots and lots of memo pads with different artwork. Also, some older games (which are not compatible with WinXP, never mind Win7), maybe they will be worth something some day? They've hardly been out of the box. Let's see... Oh, I found some money ($35), it's mine now by crikey. Found my long-lost stapler, and my Garfield eraser. Special stuff, you know?

Last week N, C and I spent 3 hours on the dogs' coats. The black and white Newfy just needed raking to remove the dangling bits, but oh, what a mess the black one was. She has a 'cotton coat' that mats really easily, and being a barn dog, has tons of sticker bushes and twigs to give her the complete Rasta look. Her we have to clip to the skin. I have 3 pairs of clippers, and we needed them all. I wrote about this last year here, it's not like this is a big surprise, but each time we do it, I think longingly of a lab with a short coat.

I also cleaned out the garage last weekend, it took forever for it to dry, it was so humid. But it looks and smells better, got all the recycling done, while N mowed and trimmed. You know, I have another guilty pleasure -- driving through a neighborhood and staring into people's open garage doors. Man, I thought we had a lot of junk. At least we use my garage to park my car:




Granted, a Miata is a small car, but still.

I feel good about these little efforts, after so long of having no energy to spare. I still have to sit down while I'm working at tasks like defrosting the freezer, or doing laundry, but then I catch my breath and go on. I know if I constantly do things only in my comfort zone, that zone will get smaller and smaller. Better to push on, as I can.

I think I'll try going to bed again, so I'll leave you with this bumper sticker: "I could do so much more if I only had minions."

Butterfly award

An award! How nice! The butterfly award comes via SkippyMom, and includes 3 (luckily easy) steps:

1.) Link to the person who gave it to you.
2.) Answer some questions
3.) Pass it along to someone else.

So here goes...

Skippy Mom Her blog is one of the best I read.


Favorite color: Purple. The butterfly color itself, how serendipitous !

Favorite song: Oh, a hard one, it changes so frequently. Right now I'd have to say the one by Kenny Rogers "Water and Bridges".

Favorite Dessert: I don't think I've ever met a dessert I didn't like, but cheesecake wins in the long run.

Favorite Pet: I'd have to say my first horse, Poco.

















What wizzes you off? People who say they will do something, but then try to get out of it, or just blow you off. I've always thought that if I didn't want to do something, then refuse when asked and not when it's time to do it.

When I am upset I: Cry. So embarrassing, and often inappropriate too. I've pretty much given up agonizing over it, but it would be nice if I had more control of the waterworks.

Black or white: Black.

My biggest fear: right now? That my breast cancer is not in remission.

Everyday attitude: Mellow. Now that I am retired, the relief from being able to set my own schedule is enormous.

What is perfection to you? The love I share with my family.

Guilty pleasure: Eating smokehouse almonds. And then licking my fingers.

I'm passing this along to:

Lucky Lady
Flippy

Thank you, SkippyMom!

Bumper sticker for the day: "Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change."

Time

Today would have been my mom's birthday, she would have been 93, but she passed 13 years ago, at 80. It doesn't seem like it has been that long to me, sometimes when I am half asleep I hear what sounds like her voice, but it is R, my daughter, that I hear. Lots of mom's ancestors lived to be into their 90s -- her mom died at 98, and doing genealogy I find many who lived to over 100, remarkable for the time when medicine was so primitive, if available at all. Mom was born in 1918, the year of the big flu epidemic that swept the world, especially in England. Her folks lived on a farm here in West Virginia, and certainly benefited from limited exposure to travelers and such. She had a twin, but her sister (my aunt) died at 57 from a stroke, so 80 was pretty remarkable given that Mom had diabetes and a bad heart.

I had a second transfusion and will probably need another, if my extreme fatigue is anything to go by. The oncologist doesn't seem too concerned, although he says many have the entire 6 cycles and never need blood, but I try not to read anything dire into his comments. I worked in the blood bank at the hospital for 5 years or so, and the vast majority of blood was used by bone marrow cancer patients, post ablation of their own bone marrow. That, and extreme bleed-outs from trauma, which were always a crisis for us, especially on weekends when there were only two of us in the blood bank. Glad all of that is over and done with, I can't imagine having that kind of stressful job now, tho it seemed OK at the time.

I've been slowly (very) organizing our photos from the last 30 years - I should say, ours + my parents' + N's parents' + my grandmother's photos. I did real well there for a while, but now it feels like such drudgery with no end in sight. I gave up on chronological sorting and went with categories like horses, pets, our kids, family and (drat) miscellaneous, for each collection. When the kids were small, I always got triple prints made and sent one set off to the grandparents, and now I have three prints of each back again, in no particular order. The albums that I do have are just going to stay the way they are, even tho a lot of what is in them is meaningless now -- flowers, friends, photos too dark, too light, bad exposure, etc. and I am rigorously throwing away all the negatives. And if it is a photo I took, and even I can't identify who or where or when, out it goes. I have 6 huge plastic tubs to go through, and if I don't do it now, when would I?

I can't think of what I wanted to write here, so I'll post this for now and stick the rest on above or within this once my chemo brain spits the topic out.

Bumper sticker for the day: " The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age."

Playing possum

Last night we caught a possum in the have-a-heart trap, the last night of our pest control contract. At least we caught something for all the $$$ we put up. I think we will be buying one of these traps to use ourselves as needed for raccoons. Also, as we drove past some neighbors on the next road, I saw a trap in their yard too, so maybe someone else caught our marauders.

Wednesday was the last (6th) cycle of my chemotherapy and I celebrated with turtle cheesecake, yum!











Now I go every three weeks (instead of every week) and get the herceptin, the antibody to the her2.neu antigen site on the tumor cells, a targeted treatment that I will need to take for an entire year, but at least it doesn't make me ill. Just a little headache-y during the infusion. Sometime in August I will get another PET/CT scan to look for metastatic sites, so fingers crossed until then. The infusion center at the local hospital will be moving in August to a new location, which I hope will include more comfortable chairs, both infusion ones and regular chairs for the family. Probably not though.

Not much else to report from here, so here is the bumper sticker for the day--"Beware. Karma has a wicked sense of humor"

Us vs. Raccoons

We have those miserable destructive creatures, raccoons, making nightly visits to our garage, through the cat door. They pull everything off the shelves to get to the dry cat food container, spill it all over the floor and then s*** all over the garage. Last week we contacted a pest control business, and they started on Monday setting have-a-heart traps. So far no joy. It is complicated, as we have to shut the garage cats up at night so they don't get caught in the traps themselves, and they are all pretty wild, of the four only one will let me pick her up, and that's probably because at 15+ years she's too slow to get away. Then we have to spring the traps in the morning before letting the cats out of their (garage) prison. I saw part of "over the hedge", an animated movie about suburban wild animals, and the main character is a raccoon, which I did not find amusing whatsoever.

Only one more chemotherapy cycle (as far as I know now) scheduled for next week. My hair is now more fuzzy as it grows in -- I call it my tennis ball hairstyle. The second wig I got, where I went to a store rather than ordering from a catalog, is much more comfortable and a better color match. It is a sort of long shag style. I still flinch when I catch a glimpse of myself, with or without the wig. I have a sort of phantom sensation that my hair is still there. I feel like it is brushing against my face or neck, for example, and then when I put my hand up I find nothing but fuzz. Weird.

I have been e-shopping some lately, as I don't have the energy to go to the mall. My latest find is a new quilt for the bed. Nothing like lying in bed for hours staring at nothing much to reveal the tattered-dy bits of the bedroom decor. I did scrub the bathroom to high gloss last week, I was sore for two days afterwards, but boy did I appreciate it the next night as I was on the floor "worshiping at the porcelain throne" so to speak. I need new throw rugs in there, I found.

The only topic left to explore here is the weather, and I will spare all of you that. (It's hot.)

A thought for the day:" People are more violently opposed fur than leather because it's easier to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs."

I vant your blooood

I had to get two units of blood transfused last week, it took 5 hours, but I feel a lot less tired for now. (I've donated blood lots of times, but I never thought I would need some myself.) White cell count really low too, I'll probably get a bone marrow booster (Neulasta) for that next week. From what I read online, it can be pretty grim for a few days afterward, but I don't want to get an infection and have to be hospitalized. Meanwhile the advice is for lots of hand washing, staying away from people with colds or the flu, washing/cooking food thoroughly, and staying away from crowds. That pretty much rules out trips to WalMart on several levels.

My hair is growing in and so I have this fine white crew-cut all over my head. I hate it, and try my best not to see myself in mirrors.

But all in all the chemotherapy is going pretty well, with only minimal nausea and so forth. And the insurance is now covering 100% of costs, as we have met the catastrophic limit for out of pocket. Yay! Just as an example, the two units of blood + infusion came to $1500. I am really really grateful to Blue Cross.

Bumper sticker of the day: "There's no time like NOW to postpone doing stuff."

Thunderstorms

There have been entire summers when we didn't have a thunderstorm the entire season. And then there is this summer.. ..
thunderstorms and torrential rainstorms regularly. Last night was a real hide-under-the-bed storm at around 1 am. The horses were out and I was standing on the back porch with my mega flashlight trying to see if the beasts were under the old barn, out of the rain at least. So of course they were "hiding" under a tree and were soaking wet. They were visible only when the lightning flashed, and so N and son C put on slickers and went out to round them up. First step was to corral the dogs into their stall, lured there with a hot dog since they too were quivering from the continuous thunder and lightning and wanted only stokes. Then he opened the big barn doors and the horses nearly knocked C down getting to their stalls. They shut the doors and came back in and the thunder still roared, up until 4 am. Nobody got much sleep.

Today's forecast was more of the same, so we left them in the barn, and it never rained a drop, and thundered not at all. Still we left then in tonight, and the biggest storm is due to hit shortly. I'm using the Macbook so I don't lose the entire post should the power go out unexpectedly. Around midnight the neighbors decided to treat all of us with fireworks, and I am sure the horses now think they are doomed to be violently assaulted every night. Since this is the county, none of this is illegal; just poor manners.

The thunder is getting closer and I will soon have 3 chicken cats trying to squeeze into little balls under the bed, they hate the noise so much they won't even come out for treats.



Bumper sticker for the day: "Oh NO! Not another learning experience!"

Still hanging in there

I didn't intend to let my posting here slide so long, but I didn't want this to become a long harangue about breast cancer treatment, and yet there is little I think about except the next step in my treatment.

Last week we went to a local antique mall and I found something neat. There was a wooden box, about twice the size of a cigar box (dating myself again) with an inlaid design on the top and there on the front, the initials of my name (MH). It was only $40 and I never thought twice about getting it. When we got it home, I wiped off the dust and crud (carefully) and when I got to the bottom, I thought I saw some writing. Turns out there was an inscription in ink, barely visible through the scuffing and staining, that said "V. M. Hartley, (a date in April), 1858." Because I do genealogy stuff myself, I looked up the name in the 1850 census records and found a Virgil and Matilda Hartley in a county near ours, just over the line in PA. His occupation is listed as "carpenter". How about that? The inside of the box has a lip for a tray, which is missing, and I would say it most recently has stored hand tools; but probably it was intended as a flatware box. I haven't been able to find any significant event associated with that family, like anniversary or wedding date or birthday, but I'm still looking. Lots of new genealogical data is showing up on the internet all the time. I'd like to find a way to bring up the ink inscription (I tried UV light and it doesn't help) so I can trace it out on paper and keep it with the box. For now it sits in regal splendor on my dresser and holds some jewelry in boxes. A neat find.

Mostly what I collect is fountain pens. I may have written here before about the types of pens, and some of the best ones I have found were at garage sales and flea markets, but I think over the years there are a lot more collectors and fewer pens to go around. I watch Antiques Roadshow all the time, and I have so far never seen a pen there, which is great, because that might encourage new collectors. The best thing about collecting pens is that I can store a lifetime of pens in a shoe box. I pity those who collect bulky stuff, like china or weather vanes and so on, they end up with half their stuff stored in boxes in the basement for lack of room to display all of it. My only problem is to keep writing with a few at a time, so the ink will flow. I can understand why ball points were such an instant hit, back around WW II, blobby and smeary they were, because they wrote right away, no wiping or blotting needed, and no need to find a refill ink bottle. I had my father's fountain pen I used in elementary school, until I dropped it somewhere on the sidewalk one day when I was dashing home to avoid a rainstorm. I went over every inch of ground I passed, but I never found it. I have an identical pen now, but it isn't quite the same, you know?

The washing machine is playing a tune now so I'll leave you with today's bumper sticker: "Any small object when dropped will hide under a larger object."

Running on empty

I don't know how frequently I will be able to post here. My weekly chemotherapy for breast cancer is very tiring and it makes me truly ill, many side effects one after the other, for several days afterwards. I still see all of your comments in my email, and I appreciate that I am going through this with support from all of you who comment. The chemo has been two cycles so far, with 6 or 8 cycles total. They have had to change my treatment plan because the first program was well on the way to shooting my liver down in flames (slight exaggeration). But the weekly herceptin treatment (monoclonal antibody) will be continued for a full year. Yeah me. I will try to keep in touch here, and hopefully I will be able to report that the treatment was a complete success against any potential metastases. And it is possible that the side effects will wind down somewhat once my body is more acclimated to feeling like s**t all the time.

Meanwhile, carry on...

Bumper sticker for the day: "Boldly going nowhere"

Will it ever be springtime?

The weather here is so weird. One day a sunny 78 degrees, the next 50 and rain. And more rain. I'm starting to grow webbed feet, I think. A few days in a row of nice weather would be heavenly. Right now the grass, carefully fertilized and pre-emergent treated for weed control, is 12 inches tall and lush beyond belief. And too wet to mow, so it looks like the rough at a golf course. Too bad we can't keep it so long, but it wound fall over and look horrible, half cropped off and half neatly trimmed. I hate mowing. If it was me, I'd plant Zoyzah (spelling?) grass, the one that gets a few inches tall and then stops growing. That or astroturf; or better yet green cement...

I go tomorrow for the next Herceptin infusion; the one last week was without a glitch, and no aftereffects either. Then next week I get the full 3 chemo drugs, given that my liver enzymes are OK. They called me back in Monday to repeat the blood work, but I won't know the verdict until I see the oncology doctor next Wednesday. Keeping track of all of this, with times for the doctor and times for the infusion is an ongoing battle. I used to keep track of really complicated meetings, deadlines, appointments and so on when I worked, but I guess I've lost the knack since I retired. Still it is nice that when appointments go into overtime, there isn't anywhere else I need to be, so it is just the boredom of the endless waiting room. I should find something to while away the time other than reading, which I find too hard to concentrate on, and it interferes with people watching.

Below is a photo of me at the infusion room, glassy-eyed from looking at the wasteland of daytime TV. Mostly I watch the weather channel and the shopping channel. I enjoy watching the shopping channels although I have never bought anything, it is fun to make fun of the gaudy jewelry, the kitchen gadgets, the ugly expensive clothing, and the poor women who have to stand there in front of the cameras and extol the virtues of something for 15 minutes at a time. If it were me, I'd just say, here is a pair of capris in 10 different colors, go for it.




bumper sticker of the day: "Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don't have film."

Cycle one is Done

Yesterday I had my first "cycle" of chemotherapy for my breast cancer. It started with an 9:30 visit with the oncologist and blood work, then a trip to the infusion room at the hospital. We were in without waiting, but the actual infusion of anti-nausea drugs first and then the three drugs individually had us leaving at 5:30 -- a long day. I had a reaction (hives) to the last infusion and the infusion had to be stopped while they gave me Benadryl, slowing things up further. I had also taken a steroid for three days, and an anti nausea injection/pills for delayed nausea. Thank god for the port (which wasn't too great for the insertion --I had a skin reaction to the tape over the incision for the port and ended up ripping the bandage off and smearing Benadryl cream all over the area, and then using ice packs.) I go back again next week for just the Herceptin infusion, and then weekly for that and three week intervals for the other two drugs. You see why it is so hard to keep all this straight?

I did cut my hair very very short. It looks like a man's haircut and not what I asked for, but oh well it will fall out soon enough. No pictures of this do here, though! I don't plan to get a wig as of now, they sound itchy and hot, and take a fair amount of maintenance, so I will go the scarf/turban route for now.

The cats here in Feline Manor have been total pests lately. There are blue jays outside the living room window competing for nest space (I guess) and the cats are flying from window to window to watch all the flittering. This is a big nuisance when they are standing of the back of the couch in front of the window whacking me with their tail. Why do cats do this? You'd think all that tail waving would pretty much scare off a bird, not to mention doing that "ack ack ack" noise in their throats. Maybe my cats are just retarded, but damn I wish they'd stop banging on the lamp shade. It cost way more than they are worth!!

I finally cleaned out the computer room, where I am now. It had gotten the brunt of all the stuff I brought home after I retired in 2006, and it was on every flat surface in here, and then on the floor. I once again have too many pens, but I like them so they stay. It was a running joke, that my co-workers would ask, can I borrow a pen? and I would say, Weeelll I guess; blue, black, red, ball point, gel writer, disposable, refillable, Drug company logo (special on Viagra), retractable or capped?? We aim to please. My candy jar was another big hit, always full of chocolate, etc, none of that butterscotch or peppermint stuff, just good old chocolate or peanut butter varieties; or both. I left them the jar when I left, but I doubt they kept it up, it ran me $25 a month, even on sale. They probably got more use out of my microwave, toaster, and mini fridge, all of which I left too. I couldn't bear to hear the complaints at home when still more stuff had to go into the attic, probably never to see the light of day. They could rest quietly next to the 3 not-cable ready TV sets, do you know how hard it is to get rid of stuff like that? We have a very weak recycle program here, limited to trash, period, at the curb. Travel to a transfer station where they charge by weight, a typical load being $50. No wonder there are so many "orphan" trash heaps back off the road, filled with old washers, old tires, and everything else you can think of and some you can't like deer carcasses after hunting season. Yuck.



This is the four of us, taken back in August. Very rare as usually one of us is taking the photo; and rare because we are are all dressed nicely (pretty much; I don't know WHERE N got that green striped shirt..) Anyway, back before the Feb cancer diagnosis...

I still think of before cancer ,after cancer, even when I am getting dressed (can't wear this, too much (non) cleavage, etc.) Funny. There are those many so worse off... I try to keep a sense of perspective about my situation...


Bumper sticker of the day: "I'm speeding because I have to get there before I forget where I'm going."

All Clear

What a relief! The PET/CT scan is clear, no sign of metastases. The visit to the surgeon resulted in once again syringing out fluid around the incision, but he also scheduled the port placement. It is to be installed (sounds like a new washer, doesn't it?) on April 1st. Chemo tentatively scheduled to begin on April 4th. In between these two visits is a trip to salon and cutting off most of my hair. Soon I'll be what a comedian once described as having less hair to comb and more face to wash. I.e., bald. I will find out what my bare head looks like, and I'll see how much it bothers me to be bald.

Below is a photo of my ice candle. It burned down very fast, and although I expected to get a hollow cube that I could insert a new taper inside to burn again, the shell proved to be far too fragile, all melted away in the center and nothing left to hold a new taper. I may try this with paraffin wax instead of soy, once I get some paraffin.



My kids (well, to me. They haven't been kids in 15 years or so) have surprised me, asking routine questions about the port placement, the incision, etc. I would not have been surprised if they had completely ignored the whole issue, other than hugging me more lightly. I have yet to take R aside and explain that all this has an impact on her, that she is at greater risk for breast cancer and that her doctor will probably suggest a mammogram sooner than at age 40. She tends to get prickly when you surprise her with new things, which is why I have put this off. But soon.

It is 3 am, time to return to bed for more (hopefully) sleep. I'll finish this later.

OK, photo in place -- looks sorta like a jack-o-lantern, doesn't it?

My therapist has forwarded to me a list of meetings that take place locally for cancer patients, family, and so forth. One of the contact names is of a social worker that helped take care of Mom when she was with hospice, back in 1998. She was very helpful and incredibly patient with Dad and my sister, no small task. So I will definitely check these meetings out, once I have a routine set for the chemotherapy. I was surprised anything was available locally, this is a very small city/large town and we lack a lot of the amenities found in big cities.

The chemo port is still on for Friday, I hope it will be painless and easy, I'm not feeling very brave these days. Knock me out, that's what I want.

Thanks once again for all the caring commentators that read this, it means more to me than I can say.

Bumper sticker for the day: "Never do anything you wouldn't want to explain to the paramedics."

Tired

I had a PET/CT scan yesterday, and am feeling the result in the left side of my chest quite a bit. I see the surgeon tomorrow and I expect he will not be thrilled to hear I put my left arm above my head for the 30 minute scan, resulting in pain and swelling. This means it is not completely healed, here 4 weeks after surgery to remove that breast. I'm too tired to really work up any anxiety. I won't hear the results of the scan, which looks for metastases, for several days.

The ice candle I mentioned is made by putting a (store bought) taper down the center of a cardboard form (like a milk carton) and then packing the container with broken ice cubes. Then you pour molten wax over the ice, and as it melts/cools you end up with voids in the candle. Peel away the cardboard, dump out the melted ice, and you have a candle like swiss cheese, but thanks to the taper can still be burned. The book pictures look neat. Maybe later today.

The rain yesterday was awful, the thunder and lightning nearly continuous for 30 minutes at a time, with squall following squall for hours. I was glad the horses and dogs were in the barn, warm and dry. As it was, the cats were flinging themselves under beds and whatnot the entire time. They would venture out when things let up, only to dash back under, body low and tail between their legs, when the thunder started again. Other than providing dark places to hide, there wasn't much we could do to help them. One cat was very brave, and commandeered all the best window seats, completely unfazed by the commotion. Luckily we never lost power, and all the wind did no damage.





I am still thinking about having all my hair cut very short, before the chemo makes it all fall out. It would save finding all the hair spread on my pillow or going down the drain, and make it look less patchy as it comes out. I don't want to go to my regular hairdresser, as I don't want a total tear-fest. I am thinking I will cancel my appt with her on the first, leave a message about why, and just go to the shop at the mall, where no one knows me. Chicken way out, isn't it? I am not comfortable telling anyone, and make N do it for the family, our good friends, etc. My emotional control is suffering too much to handle the reaction from anyone, first person. All the messages here have been so encouraging, it positively makes my day to read all the kind thoughts being left by all of you.

I sell used books on Abebooks.com and have had quite a few orders the last few weeks. The only problem is that when Windows crashed on this computer and had to be re-installed, it wiped all my files, including the inventory for Abebooks. The uploaded one on the server at Abebooks can be downloaded back to me, but it won't include the location as that is not stored on the server. So finding a book is pretty time consuming, they are listed under book number but not which box they are in. Teach me to do backups more often than (for example) last August, (wince). It does feel good to find new homes for all these old scifi and mystery books, even though I make very little money on them; I don't even clear the original price of them, after the packaging and postage and whatnot. Still it beats pitching them (there are thousands) or donating them to the library or a used book store, where they will (probably) pitch them also. Hate to see that. One of the recent ones was a $2.50 book with $9 shipping to go to the UK, guess it's a hard to find title. I never order anything online where the shipping is more than the item cost; I just add things to the order to bring the shipping back to reasonable. Retail therapy for me, when I don't have the energy to go out to the mall. And I love getting things in the mail, a little like Christmas, when I order most of the gifts online.

Onward and upward, no appointments today, so I can lounge around all day. I bet I look back on these days with nostalgia once the chemo starts.

Bumper sticker for the day: "Whisper my favorite words : "I'll buy it for you" "

Pending

Just a quick update: I saw the oncologist and got (confusing) information about the Time of the Chemotherapy. In all, I will take chemo (herceptin, for those interested) for one year; but in the beginning I will take two other drugs that will make my hair fall out and maybe my fingernails fall off, my mouth to blister, and a whole host of other side effects. I'm at the point where if I could call it all off I would. But I feel like a cog in a wheel, borne along on a path I can't see. Somehow I thought there would be more empathy from my surgeon/oncologist, and certainly more encouragement, but I can't decide if they feel this is so routine for them, or if they are pessimistic about my chances. N asked the onc. about prognosis and he hemmed and hawed and told us about a patient who lived 10 years after chemo. Ten!! I intend to live into my 80s if not more (I'm 60 now). Ten years out is nothing. Maybe they just don't want to get my hopes up. I have a PET/CT scan on Monday the 21st, to look for "mets" (i.e., metastases) which I am sure they will not find because my tumor was found at such a small size; 1/4 inch. I have an echo-cardiogram to get a baseline of my heart function since one of the drugs can cause heart failure. Gulp. I've had an echo before, it's OK.

Moving right along, the earthquake/tsunami in Japan is so horrific in the telling, I can't fathom what it must be like to experience it. And I totally get that many of them won't enter a buiding should there be another quake. We lived for a several years in San Francisco and felt a few minor quakes. At each one, we would stand still and think, are we done? Or is this the big one? It wasn't, but the mini quakes were always a reminder that we lived right on a fault line. When we were in the process of moving here, there was a whole series of mini quakes, and all we could think of was that tiny baby still in the ICU downtown, how vulnerable she was, so tiny. We couldn't get out any too soon for me. But in Japan there is no place to go that hasn't been affected, and now the nuclear reactors blowing up. I don't think the Japanese are being up front with the dire-ness of the problem, I guess it's that Oriental saving face and not wanting outside help that hampers them. I send good thoughts to all of them.

I have been so tired, I haven't done any candles in a while, but there are some I want to try, and hopefully this tired feeling will go away once I have assimilated all the stress of my situation. I want to try an ice candle next, see how that does. I see the surgeon today to get the last staples out, and schedule having an IV port placed in my chest for the chemo. Maybe I'll feel awake enough to do the candle afterwards. If so, a picture here I will place. There is no try, only do, or not do (Yoda wisdom). When we are waiting and waiting so much, we can bring along C's portable DVD player for distraction. I know we have several unseen movies somewhere in this house!

Thank all of you for the lovely comments, it really does help me when I read each one. I just hope I don't become TOTALLY obsessed with this cancer thing, how boring that would be. I will call my BGFF in Florida once I know more and vent to her, poor woman! I wish I could fly down there, but I am tied here for now, and she is going through some tough times now herself. It's so unfair (as if anything in life is fair.)

Bumper Sticker of the day: "Global warming: Live long and perspire."

No news

The only thing new on the breast cancer t-shirt I bought, see here:






That suits me a lot better than ones that say: hope strength faith or whatever the flavor of the month is.

I got the infected laptop back, with a $150 ransom. I know it is worth that, but damn I wish I had thought of starting it up in safemode to delete the bogus file. I reassure myself that it wouldn't have worked anyway. Right?

I went to see the Phys. Asst. on Monday and got the scoop on the local oncology docs. Basically there are two main ways to go: either through the WVU Cancer Center or to the two oncologists in private practice. I'm sure I would do OK in the Cancer Center at the university medical center, but my experience in working at the center is that people sometimes get lost in the shuffle. All new residents in July,
Faculty who take vacation (or just lots or trips), etc. etc. And the WVU hospital is different, because they tend to get clients from a very broad area in the state, and there is a colorful name for the more rural of them, which I won't write here.

As an aside, why is it socially unacceptable to use derogatory terms for African Americans, but still OK to call people in the Appalachian mountains "hillbilly" or "redneck" or "gritley"? When my daughter was in early elementary school -- Catholic school, she was teased about where we live, which is well outside of town -- horses, you know -- called gritley etc. I told her to ask the mouthy girl where she was born, and when she tells you somewhere in the region, or even in far-away Pittsburgh, then tell her you were born in San Francisco, and then see who is gritley and who is not. I thought she could also mention that her parents are both college graduates (a very high percentage of WV kids do not finish high school, much less college) but didn't want her to rub it in. But I got to thinking, why is it OK to do this? Any teacher overhearing this would never blink an eye, but to me it's part of making a child into a thing, and it is OK to browbeat and bully, at least until things reach an incendiary level. Just my two cents worth.

Anyway, using the university also means you will have student docs, nurses,therapists, etc, every time there are rounds, and other times too. I also feel like I'm in a fishbowl. So I'll pass, at least for now.

N finally sold his purple VW bug, his "retirement project". It has been sitting under the old barn roof and covered, so it didn't look too scratchy. It hasn't moved in 5? years, but buyer pumped up the tires put it on tow bars and hauled away to Clarksburg, a 50 mile trip on the interstate. Hope they made it. And man, I'm glad it is gone, it sat there reproaching us for the money we spent to have an undrivable car. So lets don't think of that anymore.


I've held on to this post waiting for the photo at the top, but meanwhile this computer suffered a complete meltdown and I had to restore Windows, wiping all the files on the hard drive. It is now up and running, but has nearly nothing on it. The wiped files included 4 years of income tax records, including 2010 which had not yet been filed. Major headache.

bumper sticker: "I'm marching to a different accordion"

Coping

I didn't get the drain out (it is still in, at 8 days post-surgery) but it hardly matters. When I saw the surgeon he had "unexpected" results to tell me. I have another "infiltrating tumor" in addition to the DCIS before, and he did take 5 lymph nodes (explaining why my incision reached all the way under my pit) and that of the 5 nodes, one has tumor cells also. He told me I need an oncologist "for the next phase" I think his words were. I forgot to ask stage and size, I was still processing an invasive tumor. I go to the surgeon today for the drain and sutures out, I hope to learn more. I have found an oncologist that everyone seems to favor, two partners actually. Will call for an appointment after the stitches are out.

From what I have read, the next step is to get a body scan (MRI or PET, I think) to look for another tumor elsewhere, and then (if found) chemo and/or radiation. The radiation is ironic; I wore a film badge most of my working life as I handled radioisotopes used for biomedical research, and I made certain they were always, with a few exceptions, background.

I hope that nothing else is found, and that removing the breast and the positive node is all that is necessary. Maybe just monitoring. They did take blood for a tumor marker measurement (CA 25-27 I think; why can't I remember to write these things down?!!) I thought at this point I would be looking into mastectomy bras and prostheses, not contemplating chemo/radiation. Life sure has some ups and downs...

I want to thank all of you who have commented, most coming in from a post on "Iwasntbloggedtesterday" it has been both unexpected and thoughtful, to get such support in this crazy time. Retiring in 2006 left an ever-diminishing group of friends, one of those things you don't think about until it happens, though I treasure the support from the ones that remain. It is *awkward* to call someone for lunch and then say "Oh, by the way, I have cancer." Kind of a conversation stopper, don't you think?

Well, if my hair falls out that will save a lot of explaining, I guess. I wonder what my bald head would look like?

I'm coping, one day at a time.

Bumper sticker of the day: " Buckle up! It makes it harder for the aliens to suck you out of your car."