Monday, May 31, 2010
Moving right along...
We had a great group of friends show up on Saturday morning. They were all fabulous packers and helpers. Several said they might be able to come early Thursday, because of early release, but homework obviously takes precedence. We have all week, so if anyone wants to earn an hours' worth of extra $$$, they can drop by any afternoon, Tuesday-Thursday, to load up the second POD. The PODs are a brilliant moving and storage idea, and if we continue to be this mobile a society, I'm going to buy two. One as my permanent closet, and the other as my permanent art studio. Then we never have to pack or box the $%#^%$#^%& again.
Friday morning we shift gears, and I have to fast and head down for a PET scan. It's feeling pretty loaded - If I have to, I will roll with it, and get three more rounds of chemo. I just REALLY don't want the scan to find anything new. That would bum me out. If that happens, I take a break, and start a new type of chemo when I get back from my trip, yuck-o.
Still, the packing has gone amazingly smoothly, and we expect to be out on time, with a relatively clean house. Yesterday's volunteers repaired a couple of small dings where doors had banged on walls, and one towel rack that had been badly installed. And having a lot of stuff out of the house has given us more breathing room. It's sort of AIRY. Huge blessings on Sumati, without whose stellar organizing skills we would still be buried under frightening mounds of STUFF.
Love to all,
grundoon
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Fridays in the emergency room
My left ankle has been sore and swollen for about a week, off and on. Last week was rehearsals for Coppelia, so we were dancing on a hard, hard stage rather than our nice sprung studio dance floor.
Yesterday morning at chemo, I showed it to the chemo nurses. They had the same reaction I did, that I'd somehow re-injured an old ankle break, and needed to just stay off it. So I iced it all through chemotherapy.
Then yesterday afternoon I noticed it was even MORE swollen and sore than it had been the day before. Ok. Either there's a break or a sprain in there, or something weirder is going on.
I called the oncologist, and told them about it, they said go in immediately for an ultrasound, we have to rule out a DVT (deep veinal tnrombosis), the fancy name for a blood clot. They had no spaces in ultrasound, so they said go into the ER.
At about 2:30, on a Friday afternoon.
Well, the front wasn't very crowded, but man, the back was. Initially they put me into the last little curtained room, but then a bit later asked me politely if I minded being in the hallway. All 11 rooms were filled up, and they had two more ambulances coming in.
So the doctor's reaction was the same as mine = reinjured the ankle. BUT they still wanted an x-ray and an untrasound, just to be safe. If there was a clot, it could kill me, either by going and mucking up a lung, or in my case by causing a brain bleed. Not good.
In the mean time, I got quite the tragicomedy in the waiting room. The five other visitors I could see were respectively - Hysterical Mommy girl, who was alternately yelling for her mom, her husband, and a cell phone, and trying to run past the security guard. Where she thought she would go in nothing but a hospital gown is a bit of a mystery, but the nurses got so tired of it at one point they threatened to tie her down. Then we had Obese Diabetes lady, which infections along the backs of her lags (She refuses to lie down, so she has pressure on bad veins all the time), her son chewing her out, and then turns out SHE is caring at home for her demented mother, and didn't want to spend the night in the hospital to take care of a new systemic infection. Yick.
In the hallway with me was Hearing Voices girl, who apparently had been admitted for creating a "disturbance". The disturbance turned out to be that she had taken a dump on the floor of a restaurant in town. How lovely. Schizophrenic, I guessed, and that seemed to be the doc's guess as well. (I know, none of this is any of my business, but in an ER they don't worry about HIPPA violations by eavesdroppers like me.) While I was liying around waiting for my turn in ultrasound, the last guy was admitted, also a hall patient like me, for, get this, a rattlesnake bite. The classic way, too. He'd killed a little one, then picked it up to make sure it was dead. And of course it wasn't - struck him on the finger. He ALSO didn't want to be admitted, because his wife's parents were having their 50th wedding celebration the next day, and he'd still managed to clean toilets and bathtubs for it BEFORE a friend convinced him to go to the ER. It really does make red streaks up your arm. But I got to see the baby rattlesnake, in it's own personal ziplock. And it really does make red streaks up your arm.
So, like most of my medical adventures, I didn't "present" normally. The infusion nurses said there'd usually be swelling or a red area further up my leg. There wasn't. They said it would be very painful. Apparently my definition of very painful is a bit wonky these days. And yes, there is a partial occlusion deftly hidden behind my left knee.
So oh goody, on top of the other treatment, I get to have a shot of blood thinner every day for a month, and try to keep that little sucker from growing any more. Who knew? But I'm glad I went ahead and went in, and didn't just blow it off as a sore ankle.
I'm in good spirits, just trying to remember to prop it up and help it circulate whenever I'm sitting down (ha ha ha.) Anyone who has mad packing skills, and can get over in the next couple of weeks would be HUGELY appreciated.
Love to all,
Chris
Monday, May 03, 2010
Some fun from Christa of Manolo For The Brides
Win it!
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This giveaway will end at 11:59 p.m. EST on Sunday, May 9, and the winner – chosen via the trusty random number generator – will be announced the next day along with yet another awesome giveaway! Good luck!
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Fifth anniversary
It was gorgeous day here in Davis. First really pretty summer day we've had - everyone in shorts, and a nice breeze. Tess and I went to our ballet class, although I didn't do the whole class - one of the nastier side effects of taxol drugs is that they make your joints ache, and that one has been hitting me pretty hard lately.
I came home, and Kevin and I had talked about going to the farmer's market, but I wanted to just sit and putter for a bit. So we had a cup of tea, and he went merrily off in his kilt, and I puttered. You know Kevin gets chatted up a lot just because of the accent; add a utilikilt in, and it takes him four hours to go to the co-op. Everyone from the teenagers to little old ladies want to have a gossip with him.
Meanwhile, I was canning asparagus. We'd had 5 pounds of leftovers from Fiddlers, and I was curious to try a recipe I ran across. I invented the pickling spice, and it smelled heavenly. It ended up being four quart jars, which doesn't look like much (I always want to at least fill the canner, so I require seven jar recipes) but I suspect once we open one it'll last a while. One of my dancer friends made me a bloody mary a while ago with some homemade tomato juice from last summer, and it was deee-lish, and that's how we got inspired to do the asparagus. You know that fresh tomato taste makes canning so worth it. One of the weirder spices I put into the pickling spice was cardomom, so there's a chance they will be awful. I've already made chutney and three kinds of marmalade this spring, so I'm not very sentimental about stuff I don't like. I dump it down the disposal.
Then Kevin came home. I went off to sit by the pool at Jenny's house for a bit, and he went to the theatre to see if the ballet crew needed help. Tessie's performances are next weekend, and we just moved into the theatre yesterday. Kevin has been needing some guy time, and a couple of the adults who dance with me are lots of fun, so I was enouraging him to go and paint and pound nails.
Tess and Chloe went off to a birthday party. Sixth grade is now apparently the age where they switch from all girl parties to mixed ones. This was a pool party, but from 5:30 until 10 pm, and the whole class was invited. There's apparently a 6th grade dance, and lots of rumors about who is going with whom.
Kevin and I had a cocktail with Jenny and David, and then wandered home. He and I had gotten gifts for each other, and they are pretty telling.
I have a new bike, a one speed, except for the fact that it's blue it could be the bike ridden by the wicked witch in Wizard of Oz. I love it. Davis is totally flat, so I don't need gears, and I can step across, so I can ride it wearing a skirt, and when I'm doing chemo I'd far rather ride upright. But I've been longing for baskets - one for the front, and one for the back, (to stuff Toto into, obviously). Kevin hunted around all six of our local bike shops, and found an actual detachable wicker one for the front, with a handle and everything. It's perfect, and I did the happy dance.
For Kevin, I found this great fanny pack, made by Kelty and full of bells and whistles. It is both a butt pack and it has a shoulder strap so he can carry it as a Man Bag. THEN it ALSO unfolds into a day pack, so you can take it travelling. Two water bottle pockets. He and I are constantly searching for the perfect travelling bag, big enough to stuff souvenirs into, but no so big as to be awkward. I'm usually overloaded, and he doesn't have quite enough room. But the combo cracked me up - very high tech, and very elegant low tech. (Although it has a snazzy plastic clip to attach it to the front of the bike.)
We ate Indian food, and then settled down to watch a silly movie. I made it about half an hour, and then realized what I really wanted to do was curl up with my book. So that is what we did. We actually went out the night before and ate a huge mound of Indian food, and that was our anniversary date. Tessie came along, because really Kevin married into a family, not just me.
So that was the anniversary. I'm still bald, or bald again, and I fall asleep at 8 pm. Another good piece of news is that I might not have to do 12 rounds of chemo. I've done six, and we can tell I'm responding because there's a lymph node above my clavicle that I can feel, and it's getting smaller. Presuming everything else is responding this well, we'll do a PET scan, and I might be able to take a break after 9. That would be GREAT, since the chemo is wreaking havoc with not just my joints and my vanity, but my poor digestive system. Haven't lost a lot of weight, but it's creeping down, and the side effects definitely increase over the course of chemo.
So that's our news. All my love.
grundoon
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
My summer dream trip
EAST.
Drive through desert.
Arrive casa del Fargus two days later.
Hang out in Taos for a few days. Drink all of Fargus' wine, and get blisters from guitar music.
Drive east to Rancho Jet-Poop.
Read all of Jet-Poop's comic books.
SOUTH.
Drive east, Tennessee? Visit town, where I was born...
Covington
Skyline Drive
Visit czeano's parents in Sparta.
Chapel Hill, visit Don and Monty.
Alexandria, chez Good/Estrada residence.
Be terrified of large guns.
Eat custard with Liz of Del Ray custard shop fame. try to determine if I bounced a check 6 years ago.
Wine and dine the HONS.
Visit dr. doyle. Drink melomel and cider. Have pagan ritual.
NORTH.
Manhattan? New haus of infinite monkeys with jongleur and FAB.
Drink Serendipity scotch with The Custodian!
Endycott. Tiffanys. Also Aunt Dot and Uncle Daivid.
NORTHWEST.
Toronto - wine and dine eh2, we owe them one.
WEST
ONTARIO. Anyone who doesn't mind mosquitoes in the north woods is welcome to visit, although I have to pick the time. DON'T come during the family reunion, it's a full house and then some.
Leave Ontario.
Visit Maline and George in Leadville, Wisconsin.
grundy goes shopping with maline, wertperch does guy stuff with george.
Various and sundry Michigan noders, including some grand high [clampe|muckymucks] and mutants.
HOMEWARD, via Laramie.
Good luck with that.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Grundoon Goes GammaGirl
Monday, March 01, 2010
Twenty-three things to do on steroids
Many bothans have died to bring you this information. ----that is all----
1) Alphabetize your CD collection. (2:30 am)
2) Paint your toe shoes with cobalt blue watercolors. (1:30 am)
3) Fold laundry load dishwasher forget what you were doing fold more laundry leave in pile on end of bed so it gets kicked and unfolded. Never put away.
4) Give wertperch all your credit cards and checkbook, so you do not spend money, because you are effectively hypomanic, and you need the money to close on the house.
5) Do not spend money. I tell you three times.
6) Start an ENORMOUS oil painting of yourself from the first cleavage calendar. Get scared of creepy stare-y blue-green eyeballs in self portrait.
7) DO NOT SPEND MORE MONEY.
8) Find Pogo books at comic book store, and ask wertperch to please please PLEASE let you buy them. Gloat to pogophile friend. Consider selling all Heinlein pulps on Ebay. Wish for a copy of grampa's comics, which would solve all the loan complications.
9) Read the paperwork for the house. Realize favorite clause is the warning that living in a development with a golf course on the north end (Yeah, are we yuppie, or what?) is the warning about ERRANT GOLF BALLS all caps, in bold. HOW DUMB WOULD YOU HAVE TO BE NOT TO KNOW THIS?
10) Drink heavily. Booze offsets the effects of the steroids. Ask doctor(s) if there's a problem with drinking gingerale and vodka, with candied ginger, starting at, oh, say, 10:30 in the morning. Docs say, for three weeks, if you are controlling the hypomania, then yes, just don't take benzos at the same time. Consider this as good advice. Celebrate by DRINKING. Thank you, Jethro Bodine. Toss me a PBR.
11) Sort more CDs. Fold clothes. Consider alphabetizing the books. Try to resist. Start cleaning up the backyard, find an old pot full of glorious orange Oregon dirt. Dye everything white in the house orange with Oregon iron oxide. Find that wertperch wants to kill you, even though you've dyed his boring white tee shirts. You talk too much.
12) Aphabetize the books, and start boxing up the ones you don't want. Anyone want any books? If you pay the shipping, I send to you.
13) Cook strange things at midnight. Have stomachache the next day. Drink all the booze in the house, which isn't much, except for wertperch's exotic beer stash.
14) Take hydrocodone on an empty stomach. Hurl. Eat cheerios. Hurl. Visit new house, and christen it by hurling in the master bath. Consider peeing on the corners, it would show about the same amount of class.
15) Try not to kill wertperch, or cause wertperch to kill you.
16) Try to resist the temptation to chase bad drivers down the street, and go generally postal. Go to the grocery store with cancer survivor across the street (GliomaGirl), using stroller to haul booze. Don't take babies. Realize that both of you have the attention span of a gnat, and cannot have anything remotely resembling a normal conversation. Have fun anyway. Notice the tellers looking extremely disturbed about the six large bottles of booze that you are putting where the baby's butt would be. Get the giggles. Talk loudly about cancer survival, complete with head wounds. Realize that we probably do not project the image of responsible moms. Make garbled fuckfuck noises. Drink, not so heavily, upon returning home.
17) Spend many, many minutes on phones with LARGE BUREAUCRACIES, medical, and bankinal, realestatinal.. Try to decide which to hate the most.
18) 3:00 am - surf furniture stores. Do not steal credit cards back from wertperch. Consider freezing cash card into a block of ice.
19) Look for cocktail dresses actually named after cocktails. DO NOT BUY THE COCKTAIL DRESSES. Realize menfolk of family have better taste, and furthermore look better in cocktail dresses than grundoon does, and have found cooler dresses. Wonder if menfolk are all really gay. Think it unlikely.
20) Shop for large caliber handguns and chainsaws.
21) Write really complicated emotional stuff, and decide NOT to post all of it. Lose battle. Post it anyway. Cry all day, and have nightmares. Take extra-strong sleeping medication, and still sleep for only four hours.
23) Search for cobalt blue suede boots and chaps for GammaGirl superheroine costume. Find them in England, on Ebay. DO NOT BUY THE CHAPS. Decide to wait until AFTER the house closes. Wear gammagirl wig and tiara to POOlates class.
23) Dance ballet class, on pointe, for 2-1/2 hours. Still get so wired that you consider going to the ER for help, after talking to all medical offices for more than 20 minutes, and still not getting answers. Try not to kill wertperch. Go out for a beer, drink mai tais, and find out it's salsa night at the Grad. Call the ballet dancer who might be available. Go and salsa for two more hours. Get happy. Dance with sweaty boys, and do the ballet/hiphop/salsa with Maia. Consider the merits running away to Morocco to become exotic dancers. Drink more mai tais. Find out that next day thighs will hurt, a LOT, and it's still worth it, because you haven't gone postal. Lather, rinse and repeat. Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.