#85 One of us is going on vacation

I thought more about Hawaii, and although I had a blast with Ray when we visited him there a year and a half ago I’m too afraid that my lungs wouldn’t do well in that humid weather. In other words Rick’s been told by me and Ray that he’s going to Hawaii without me. I’ll be staying home all by myself…well with my animals anyway. I don’t want to have issues with house sitting and pet sitting but mostly I’m just too scared to go anywhere anymore. Yesterday I was having a really difficult time breathing because of the weather here(extreme heat and humidity)  and had to go see my doctor to order more oxygen. He wants me to wear it all the time but I don’t see that happening. It can be a major pain in the ass, not to mention that this unit I have is really heavy and I have to either keep it upstairs or downstairs but I can’t be moving it around. I also had a concern with Rick’s health but the doctor yesterday said that he would be fine to fly so I called Ray and told him that I couldn’t go but that I was OK with Rick going. Ray explained to me that someone would be going in my place, he was just waiting to see if I was going first because his condo isn’t very big.  I was told that their mother would be going in my place.  Ray isn’t even going to be  there for the  whole nine days that he wanted Rick and I to stay but he thought it would be a nice vacation for us and we’d have some time alone in Waikiki before Ray came home from Tennessee in time to have the ceremony to receive his Captain’s Bars. So, Rick only found out that his mother was going in my place after he told Ray that he’d be there. Yes, I’m sending my husband on a nine-day vacation with his mother to Hawaii. Poor Rick…Poor, poor Rick. Don’t feel too bad for him though, he is getting to go to paradise for nine days.  Rick made a remark about being concerned about me going out to do karaoke without him while he’s gone and I had to laugh. “Really? You think that in the condition that I’m in you need to be afraid that some other guy is gonna hit on me while you’re gone?” Get real! Like I told him…I’ll stay home and take care of all the things that I always do and maybe have Diane over to stay with me because she’s been wanting me to teach her how to do the next crochet stitch. She made a whole blanket all be herself with the one stitch I taught her last time. Now I’ll have no choice but to be in a good mood all day.  I didn’t want Ray to not have any of his family there for him…and now he won’t be there alone.

#69 Home again…but out of M&Ms

I ended up spending past week or so in the Hospice inpatient center because I was having too much pain to handle at home. They were so great to me and the doctors and nurses helped me to find enough comfort from the pain that now I think I’ll be able to stay home even when I’m having a hard time managing all the physical problems. I had told them that I didn’t want to have any medical equipment at home but I think I would rather have a few things here instead of needing to stay inpatient if I don’t absolutely have to. I’m still getting used to being back at home and I’ve been sleeping a lot and eating like I’ve never eaten before. I guess one of my new meds makes me really hungry all the time and of course I usually only want anything sweet. I think I’ve gained back ten pounds or maybe more but I really don’t care as long as I can get back to having some sort of the normal life I had before all this cancer crap started up again. It could be a lot worse and I’m very grateful for everyone who has been checking up on me although I don’t usually speak to anyone myself because I’m still very tired from all the new meds. I think it’s going to get better as I get used to takeing them and I will be able to do more but I’m definitely not pushing myself to get back into the swing of things too fast. I want to give myself time to get used to the new normal so that I don’t make things worse for myself. Rick and Jesse have found a two-week old kitten that some kids dropped off at Jesse’s work and they are bottle feeding it kitten formula every three hours, it’s too cute but I don’t have any interest in taking care of a tiny baby kitten. I hope it gets bigger fast so that we can try to find someone who will want to keep it forever. Not many people are willing to put this much effort into caring for a kitten so I’m OK with Rick and Jesse giving it a shot to get older and healthy enough to be adopted. They both say that they want to keep it forever but our other two grown cats don’t like it because it’s very noisy and so small that it scares them. Our dog won’t even get close to it. He’s scared of it too I guess. I wouldn’t drop it at a shelter because they would just put it to sleep and if we can try to help it I think we should. I think having this new baby in the house is changing the mood around here and keeping the subject of me all the time, I love that part. I’ve had my breakfast and fed the kitty so I’m going to try to crochet for a little while until Rick gets up and then I’ll go see if I can spend just a few minutes out back with my weeds. I miss doing things outside. Just sitting around makes me feel useless and that gives me more time to think about how bad I feel so I really do need to get back to doing at least a little at a time. Now would be a great time for M&Ms to just find their way to my house. The caffeine and sugar in them really do make me have more energy and put me in a much better mood. I still say that they are going to be my cancer cure. I havent found anything else that has the same effect on how I feel without taking more meds, and they just taste so darn good. I think I may have an addiction to them but if you’re gonna have an addiction then I say” bring on the chocolate”!

#66 I was tired of waiting

I tried my very best to keep those terrible bandages on as long as I was supposed to but it just didn’t happen. I think that for the average person having great big strips stuck to their side and chest wouldn’t get in the way of moving around, but I have to move my arms every time I take a step on my crutches. Even in my wheelchair I have to move my arms sometimes so the bandages just wore off a little bit early. I do have to admit that the scars don’t look as bad as I was thinking that they would and that makes me very happy. I was expecting a six-inch cut between my ribs to be healing over but instead all I found under there were four little one inch cuts that were almost all the way healed. I still feel like I was speared right through the chest from the back to the front though. I have a few bruises left from where they must have had to prop me up onto my side during the surgery that make me feel like I’ve been beaten up. I did still have the bandages on when Rick convinced me to go grocery shopping with him yesterday but as soon as we came home I could feel that they were mostly unattached so I just helped them along a tiny bit. I don’t think that the surgeon will be upset about it though because I told her to begin with that nothing with me ever goes as planned. It does look like they stayed on long enough to do their job and Rick put bandages on the cuts so that they don’t get infected. It feels so good to be able to move freely again, although it does still hurt a lot. I decided that because I was able to get around the house better in my wheelchair that I should start getting back to my normal routine, so I cleaned my kitchen and mopped the floors but now I’ll be chilling in my recliner and watching a movie while I try to recover from my whole one hour of house work. It feels like I did a lot more than I actually did but I’m just happy to be able to have done anything at all. It drives me crazy to just watch my house getting dirty and not being able to do anything about it. Rick and Jesse have been in charge of the housework so it definitely wasn’t done to my satisfaction. I don’t need everything to be perfect but when the trash can is over-flowing(I took out the garbage too) that’s just too much for me to handle. I bought a great big bag of M&Ms to keep me busy for a few days and Rick and Jess had some errands to run so I’ll have the house to myself for the majority of the afternoon. To top it all off my mother bought me three packages of yarn to go into the blanket that I’ve been crocheting. Now if I can rest up enough to get outside to the weeds in the back yard I’ll be satisfied with what I’ve accomplished for the day. I told Rick this morning that when he wanted to know how I’m feeling all he has to do is look at the yard and see how it looks. If there are a bunch of weeds then I feel terrible. Next step will be turning the pool blue again because that’s bugging the shit out of me too.

#65 Easter candy has healing properties

I had a wonderful dinner at mom’s house yesterday, she makes the best comfort food.  (right up there with Rick’s comfort food) I wasn’t able to stay for long because the pain from walking on my crutches was worse than usual. Somehow I managed to get sores from the bandages so every step got worse and worse. I can’t wait to have all the bandages taken off by the surgeon so that I can start to get back to doing some daily chores without worrying about getting sweaty because then they start coming loose. I love ham and all the trimmings and mom sent Rick and I home with a dish of the chocolate covered strawberries. It’s always nice to have some leftovers for later. I would have liked to have both of my kids at the dinner table with us but Justin was working the night shift, not to mention that he’s on the east coast, Jesse had to have her dinner delivered to her at work, thank’s to her daddy she had her meal just like she liked it while it was still hot. He took her dinner before he sat down to eat so that she wouldn’t miss out. I don’t know if she knows that he waited to eat until after she had her food but she knows that he would do anything for his little girl to be happy and well taken care of, that’s just how he is with his kids. His own father would never put a bit of food on his own dinner plate until all the kids at the table had made their plates so I guess that carried over to how Rick takes care of us. We didn’t have a big party or tons of candy around, we just had a nice small family dinner with the ones who could make it to mom’s house and that’s perfectly fine with me. I like the quiet. I would have also liked to have the rest of the family there but everyone can’t always make it to every holiday. Easter isn’t as big of a celebration as it was for us when our kids were little so there wasn’t as much candy and gifts as there used to be. I did leave with a big bag of dark chocolate M&Ms though so all was right with the world. My mother has been planting a garden around a huge tree in her back yard and the plants were starting to come up so it’s looking like summer is right around the corner, and we should have plenty of veggies to eat soon. Rick decided to try to grow potatoes in our back yard so between him and mom we won’t be going hungry. I think they’re planning to make a ton of salad, I am surprised that the dirt in my back yard is good enough to grow anything but weeds. I want so much to go out and do yard work, any work outside would be OK with me. Unfortunately, I can’t do anything that makes me sweat at all yet. I never realized how much I love to be working outside until I couldn’t. I’ve run out of yarn so I can’t work on my blanket until I get some more so I’ll have to come up with an idea of something else to keep me busy. I’m getting very tired of just sitting around the house when I know there are things that need my attention. I know that I shouldn’t complain when things could definitely be worse, but here I am complaining. I need something to do. I think I’ll eat some of the M&Ms and think about that.

#51 My husband just asked nicely.

I’ve been doing ok lately, I don’t have the energy that I want to have but I was able to go across the street to my new neighbor’s house and help her with her weeds the day before yesterday, hopefully I’ll be able to spend some time in my own yard too but that’s gonna have to wait a few days so that my brand new sunburn fades a little bit. I had my best friend Diane over all day yesterday so that I could pass on what little I know about crocheting to her and she brought Rick and I home-made vegetable beef soup for dinner. That probably doesn’t sound like much for the average person to do in a day but it took everything I had to stay awake until seven or so and I think I fell asleep still holding my book. I was very surprised at the number of people who were upset at the fact that I was considering not keeping this blog anymore, oddly enough the ones who I didn’t want to upset were the ones who don’t want me to stop writing so that was a bit confusing. I went to the grocery store not long ago and bought myself a five subject note-book to write down what I wanted to say without showing the world everything that I was thinking, I thought that would fix everything. I could just keep my note-book to myself and not worry at all about what I was putting in “my book”.  I still have a brand new note-book . Well, I’ve been thinking about the reason for this blog and my reasons for the decisions that I make about everything. I’ve considered keeping my thoughts to myself but I’m afraid that if I try to do that my head will just explode from all the pressure. The reality check I had because of this was that I’m not going to be here forever to help fix everyone’s problems so I need to get the ones who rely on me the most to work out their issues on their own now so that they’ll be able to do that on their own later on. Rick and I were watching tv the other day and out of nowhere he asked me to start writing my blog again. He said that he likes to read it even though he knows everything that’s going on as I find out, he likes to see what I write, he didn’t make a big deal about it, he just asked me nicely. I was very surprised that he was even reading my blog because I usually talk to him while I’m writing and ask his opinion on just about everything before I post it so there was nothing new for him to read about. He explained to me that he could see how me writing down everything that I’m thinking was helping me get through some very tough times and that he thought that it would be a mistake for me to stop doing what was helping me get through everything.  He’s right, as he usually is about what I should do. So I’m back at my keyboard, and I’ve been given a direct order to stay out of the sun today. I woke up in the middle of the night and wasn’t able to get back to sleep so even though I went to bed early, I only actually slept for a few hours. I hope that doesn’t mean that I’ll need a nap this afternoon or I won’t sleep through the night again tonight. Rick made me eggs and toast to go with my coffee for breakfast and he just left to spend some time with his friend this morning. It’s very quiet in the house and I have absolutely nothing to do but relax and maybe watch a movie. Oh yeah…and we both quit smoking last week so it doesn’t hurt so much to breath. Go figure.

#48 The day got better

When I wrote my post yesterday I wasn’t thinking that I would be able to do anything that required any physical excursion but after I finished my coffee and went up-stairs to get dressed I found myself putting on clothes that I could get dirty in so I took a small radio and some trash bags, and of course my last cup of coffee and made my way out to the garage. I knew it was large trash pick-up day and I had some things in the garage that took up enough space in the garage that made it impossible to park a second car in there. Jesse and her friend who we call cakes have started a new job together that’s about an hour drive away and she’s having problems with her car over heating so they needed to take my car to work and leave cakes’ car in the garage which ment that I would have to work around her car, I don’t like driving other people’s cars so I left it there. I was surprised to see that someone had already started to clean out the garage and throw away some of the trash that I had been complaining about. I think it was Jesse but she won’t fess up to it. I saw some things that I didn’t even know that we had out there but I went though everything and bagged and boxed up what I wanted to throw away and i started taking it out to the sidewalk, hoping that the large trash  hadn’t already been taken because I didn’t see any of the neighbors trash out in front of their houses, I was sure some of them had put some things out but it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong about something. I figured that if I had already missed it then I would just bring it all back up to the house and put it in our trash cans a little at a time. I didn’t even get it all out there and a white truck stopped and the guy asked if  it was trash, I told him it was and he parked right next to my pile and started loading. I told him that if he gave me a minute that I would bring out everything that I wanted to get rid of and he did wait and took it all. Now I know what happened to all of the trash that my neighbors had in front of their houses. It felt really good to have something to keep me moving and I was exhausted afterwords but it was so worth it. Now all I have left to do is to sweep up the garage floor and it’s done. My lungs feel like they’re on fire this morning and I think I may have gotten a little bit carried away with all the dusty and dirty junk in the garage. I know that I did more than I should have but I couldn’t help it. My christmas decorations are all in one area now, that alone was worth all the effort. When I came inside I washed the dishes but that was the end of my chores for the day. I know to anyone who lives any kind of normal life doing these things don’t sound very difficult but to me it took everything I had in me to accomplish my goals. It makes me feel good to know that my house is taken care of and sometimes it can take me up to a week to dust everything and clean all the floors. I’ve never let the fact that I have one leg and move around in a wheelchair stop me from doing what ever I wanted to do so whywould I start now? I refuse to give it up  because then what would I have to do. I’ve already given up doing anything outside of the house and I can only crochet for so long. I’m going to take my bath this morning and go back out to the garage and sweep up the floor and make sure that I didn’t miss anything. I’m so tired all the time so I have to take advantage of any energy I have to get things around here taken care of. I woke up this morning and felt like my lungs were on fire so I think I’m developing some kind of infection in there, hopefully not another pneumonia. I have no interest in spending anymore time in the hospital.

#41 I know how to end the scarf now

My youngest, my daughter Jessica, just finish earning all the credits she needed to graduate high school this week. She’ll be walking with the 2012 class in May. I still wake up sometimes and think I need to get up and get both of my kids ready for school, but when I sit up I bed I realize that they don’t even live here anymore and all I have to do is make my coffee. It’s so wonderful to have peace and quiet in the house and be able to do whatever I want to do everyday, and I certainly don’t miss the morning scramble to get them on a school bus. Justin is doing great in New Hampshire and Jesse is now job hunting like her life depends on it, she has to earn money to help her friends pay bills in their apartment. Jesse does come by every few days and Justin calls me every day so I still get to know what they’re doing most of the time anyway. I like hearing them talk about grown-up things like bills and medical insurance, and lets not forget groceries. Rick and I have all the time in the world to do whatever we want but it’s funny that now that we have the time we don’t feel well enough to go anywhere most days. Mom tried to get me to go out to dinner last night and I had to send Rick without me because I’ve been so tired lately that all I’ve been able to do is sit in the little recliner and crochet scarves for Justin and Ashley, Justin told me they needed them because it’s so cold where they are and he works outside on a ranch. I tried to do chores in the yard and spent a few hours cleaning out all the leaves that were in the bottom of my pool and each time I do any work I end up not being able to move my right arm the next day. I thought making scarves would be a good way to keep me busy without hurting my arm and I was right. Did you know you can look up crocheting a beginner’s scarf or hat or whatever on you tube and they have whole videos with step by step instructions showing you every stitch and how to do it? I had no idea three days ago and now I’m able to make things, and they look like I know what I’m doing. My mothers been trying to teach me to crochet for years but all I could ever do was make the never-ending blanket because I didn’t know how to end it, even my kids when they were eight and ten would crochet little chains and other things and take them to school and sell them to the little girls to put on their hair for a dollar. Last week one of Jesse’s friend’s grandmother crocheted me a chemo hat and it’s really cute but very hot; if I do chemo it’ll be nice to have and the thought behind it was priceless. I think I’m going to try to look at how she did it and see if I can make one too, that should keep me busy all day. Rick made the appointments for the lung specialist and the ultrasound so in a few days I should know more about the spots that are showing up in my lungs. I do hate waiting but this quiet time around our house is just what I needed. I spent many, many years stopping fights and calming down screaming teenagers and lets not forget changing dirty diapers and cleaning up condiments off the living carpet, getting the emptied water cooler sucked out of the dining room rug. I don’t miss them being little at all, but I do think that them becoming nice well-mannered adults and moving out just when I was starting to be able to have a conversation with them without someone screaming, was a little backwards. I would have liked it better the other way around. I love a quiet house and I’m so very grateful for a husband who makes sure I don’t want for anything…ever. With the exception of having cancer…again…I have no complaints. I take that back, I am running low on M&M’s.