#148 The Best Friend & My Husband

Being someone’s best friend means a whole lot of responsibility. I have other friends but my #1 top of the list best friend has been proving herself to me in ways that I never dreamed would come into play in our relationship.

When I found out that I did have breast cancer for sure and had started making all the appointments for all the other Dr’s.  I kept trying to call Diane in between all the phone calls…but she never did answer the phone for that whole week. We do live less than a 1/2 mile from each other, and if I didn’t tell her about my diagnosis soon I was going to have a huge melt down. I was trying so hard to keep it together so I didn’t make everyone else lose it while I gave them my awful news. I couldn’t wait anymore so I got into my wheel chair and pushed myself on over to her house a few streets away. She was on the phone when I went into her kitchen to find her and as soon as she hung up with whoever she was talking to she looked at me and said “you have cancer don’t you.”, I shook my head yes and we sat down to drink coffee and talk for a while. She told me that she had purposefully been ignoring my calls because she couldn’t take hearing if for sure.

 

All the time we’ve had to deal with me being sick there was a never-ending flow of friends, family and many gifts, some of paintings, some flowers were sent to me and some people sent me money when I really needed it the most. Let’s not forger the pounds and pounds of M&Ms that I couldn’t help eating…I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings ya know.

Anyway, we have had some people offer to help out around the house or just sit and read with me because my eyes don’t focus very well anymore. But for every ten people who offered to help us out only one or two actually came to help at all. I know people mean well when they offer help but that’s not something that anyone should take lightly. I really did need the help that was offered but we ended up going without or just doing the best we could to keep the house looking at least partially clean. Especially now when I have a 24 hr cough that never goes away. I couldn’t handle getting any more health problems. Here where I live we’ve been getting a lot of dust in the air (even inside through the filters).

 

When my sister Elaine decided to come to visit and stay with me, literally at my side, she did everything she could do to take care of me. She was amazing at remembering when all of my meds were due and she jumped awake every time I had a coughing fit in the middle of the night. Again I’ll never remember everything that she did but I could never thank her enough.

 

When Elaine went back home last month my bff Diane literally moved into my guest room so that she and Rick could take turns taking care of me when I needed someone to help me . Between the two of them I’m well looked after. I  had trouble all along with letting anyone help me take a bath but I’ve been told to only move when I absolutely have to. I broke down and with the help of a shower chair Diane has now seen all the scars from all the missing body parts and procedure scars. She’s been my friend for about 27 years now and I’ve never let her see all old my scars so I thought she might be a little shocked, she wasn’t and I now have baths more often that I could before. That’s not all she does. I won’t give you a list but she and Rich are taking turns with doing everything in the house, except when Jesse’s friend Danny stays over night to listen for my cough (Jesse works nights) and Rick and Diane are running on empty. I wish that I could do more than say thank you to them all the time but I think that I make it very clear how appreciative that Diane left her own family at her house and came here to care for me.

 

For those of you who understand bc lingo, it’s 6x9cm now and counting. My lungs are giving me a problem, but only when I want to breath so I’m working on holding my breath as long as I can at a time. I have to get back into bed now . I can’t believe that writing takes all my energy right out of me. My one and only thing left that I really love to do and it’s slowly fading away…just like everything else it seems. I’m trying to stay in a good mood and since I’ve needed him home all the time I decided that Rick should accept an invitation to go our for crab legs. He loves that kind of food but I never did so he’s probably missed out on a whole lot of having it for dinner. I promised him I would still be alive when he came home and scooted him out the door. He really deserves a night with a friend right now.

 

#147 Thank God my nurse works night shifts

Yesterday I wasn’t doing very well and I was in a terrible amount of pain. Normally I would be able to push the button on my IV pain meds and then I would feel a little bit better. When I push that  button it gives me a whole hours worth of pain meds all at once. I know that I have a nurse coming this morning to set up a new IV bag so I figured I would just wait for her to come and tell her that my pain button wasn’t working for the extra pain meds. I guess it was about 9pm last night when everything on my IV meds quit working at all. The only pain meds that I take are in that bag so I hadn’t been getting pain meds for hours before I knew what was happening and I had to call my nurse late last night to ask her to come to my house right away and fix it. She was yawning when I was telling her on the phone what was happening, but she came right over.

I told her that I was really sorry that I had called her at home after she had worked all day but she made me feel better about calling her. I like my nurse…she understands what the pain can do to people. She ended up having to take the needle out of my port and insert a new needle and luckily the new one flushed perfectly. I was in so much pain by the time that she had it working right again that I actually felt the pain meds go into my body, normally I wouldn’t feel the pain meds at all. I asked her why that would happen and she said that I was moving around too much. I hardly do anything at all and now just taking a bath is a big deal. I don’t know how I can do less that I already do.I think I’ll spend my time watching a movie this morning so I don’t try to clean anything because I know I’ll hurt myself if I do. I do have a box of M&Ms and a pot of fresh coffee to comfort me.

My best friend Daine was here for days doing dishes and cleaning my floors so I think that just watching her do all the work that she did was what hurt me. I did probably do one or two things without realizing I was doing anything at all because she was doing so much. I don’t know how she has put up with me for twenty seven years (I think), but she’s the only reason that my house looks as good as it does. Thank you Daine! I hope you’re coming back soon, but for visiting or watching a movie or something.

 

#146 Humility, my own lesson with it

My take on life is most likely not what everyone else sees. Things that used to be very important to me are way back in the background, and different things are up front now. First lets take my morning routine. I wake up a little later now than I used to because I get up every few hours throughout the night. After each four-hour ‘nap’ I try to do one or two things that I would have before waited for the afternoon to get working on. Then there’s sleep its self. I have to take pills for this that and the other(right now I have pneumonia again) that usually makes me a little sleepy so the four-hour sleep thing actually works out fine. I would have thought that only sleeping in four-hour intervals would make me tired all the time, but it gives me a little bit of time after each four hours to do a few things. This morning I woke up and had a cup of coffee and read a few pages of my book and decided that I might have enough energy left to knock out a quick post.

I know I’ll have to write it quickly because I’m already getting tired, hopefully the coffee will help with that so that I can stay up a while longer. I have my M&Ms too so one more cup of coffee and I’ll be fine . I have a friend who I haven’t seen in a few months that showed up a few days ago and wanted to know if it was all right if she came to stay with me for a while to help with all of the housework and to keep me company. It’s nice to have people come over to see what they can do to help us out. We need help all the time so we have friends coming and going throughout the days. Some just come to keep me company and those are the ones who can’t help with any other needs. I think that kind of help is so precious. I’m not one who normally likes to have a lot of people around the house because I’m embarrassed that my house isn’t always clean anymore. That doesn’t seem important these days. I told her that she’s welcome to come and help out for a while. She should be here sometime today.

Then we have the bills. I can’t ever find the words to convey how embarrassing it is to have to admit that we can’t make ends meet anymore. I’ve always hated having to admit that we need help but I’m putting my pride away and asking for help in different ways. First we just signed up for state services for food and health insurance for Rick, he needs to be able to keep taking care of his heart. He went for over a week without taking his heart pills and never told me because he knew we had no way to come up with enough money to pay for his meds. We now have decided that we can’t just go without some things.

I’m setting up a way for people to help us financially if they want to. I think Elaine is working on a way for people to help in different ways. Some want to mail a check and some want to pay bills directly, and some just want to send cash or a money order. Elaine will make sure that if you want to help financially then it will be excepted in whatever form you wish. I think that letting people send us money is right up there at the top of embarrassing/humiliating. I’ve come to accept that it’s alright for me to say when we need help, and boy do we need help! Like I’ve said before we have helped so many other families when we were able to over the years and I wish I knew how hard it was for the people we were helping. I always just figured that they were happy to have some financial relief and that was the end of it. Well, that is so not the end of it. I remember feeling so happy about giving people whatever they needed, but I think that now its my time to learn how other people feel about having to except charity. Thank God we’ve never had or used credit cards, I don’t like to make payments on things, so if we didn’t have the cash to purchase anything we just saved up for things.

I think that I missed this entire Christmas season because I did everything but hide in my bed to stay away from people. I wanted my family to have a good time, but I think that I could have helped to make it a better holiday, even without any money. I know that my mood swings are coming from all the meds and the pain I’m going through. I’m so used to having a lot of pain but this is way more than what I’ve ever had to deal with…and it’s only going to get worse. I did finally get my mother to agree to take me to make my final arrangements while I’m able to have a say in everything. Of course I have a long time to go yet but I didn’t want to wait until I can’t go with the family to choose what I want. Rick and mom need to make theirs as well. I don’t think that anyone should wait until their too sick to go and have a say in their own final wishes.

I might think about things differently now but it’s only because I don’t want all the difficult things left for other people to take care of. My muscles are all very stiff when I wake up…every time I wake up, but then it gets a little better as I get up and move around a little bit. I get very excited when I’m able to finish any chore on my own, and I make sure that everyone in the house at the time knows that I accomplished something on my own. Here is a recent pic that was taken just hours before my sister Elaine left to go back go back to NC.:

#145 I’m still here…I think?

I had the most pleasurable stay in my new Hospice inpatient unit lately and just arrived home Christmas day…I think. I don’t remember things very well anymore so if you need info on anything that is important, for God’s sake don’t ask me. I was having uncontrolled pain so the hospice team thought that I should be under their care at a facility that I know was supposed to be in kind-of-a hospital setting…but it was really more like a resort.

I was in such terrible pain when I arrived there, and it took an entire day to get the Medical Director in there to see me (he thought he should be the one seeing me because all of my prior medical issues with getting the right treatment) and then I waited hours for a nurse to come that was trained to hook up my port to give them IV access. It seemed then like it took forever, but considering what they were able to accomplish, it was a very short time after all.After all of that and a few more hours to have the meds delivered…they did it. They knocked down my pain level to a level that it hasn’t been in years. I’ve told you all about the tumor pressing on nerves (my own conclusion by the way) but when I told the Medical Director where all I was having pain he said that I was absolutely right.

It’s not often that any Dr would agree with me but this one did a through medical exam and after feeling the tumor he actually said “Oh my God! that’s way bigger than on the scan” Finally someone listened to me and understood that I knew what my future was looking like. It only took a few minutes for him to decide to give me the only medicine that has ever work on pain for me and he ordered that I have a Patient Controlled analgesic pump. He actually told me he was going to give me higher and higher doses of it until I felt better. I didn’t want to be in a haze and he didn’t want me sleeping all the time so we found the right amount that worked for me.
Now I’m home again. I did have to go in another time to increase the dose, but I think I’ve found the right amount of medicine to continue to let me function.

Now, when I say function, I don’t mean doing anything that takes much energy at all. I’ve had to have a hospital bed brought in because I can’t climb the stairs in my house without hurting myself.
I keep trying to do more around the house but I only end up hurting myself.My sister Elaine has come from NC to help out for a few weeks and my friend Diane has been here a lot decorating and cleaning.

This month I’m focusing on trying to raise money to pay some bills that I just can’t put off anymore. I did manage to get together enough money to pay all of the household bills…now I have to get my car paid for. I own my car free and clear…However it has a repair that has to be done before I can take it to get current registration. Rick called the insurance company to let them and the department of motor vehicle to let them know that the car isn’t being driven because of repair issues.

I’m trying to find a way to set up a legitimate bank account for people to donate into (so they know that this is all above table). I’ve done fund-raisers before but never for myself, so I’m at a loss as to how to start it. In the past I would always choose families for Christmas or friends of our kids’ families and have car washes. Now I know how it feels to have to ask for help, and it’s a horrible gut wrenching feeling that I don’t wish on anyone.
Hopefully it isn’t too late to talk to Santa?

#144 I’m about to lose my mind!

I’m still really sick from changing my pain meds and I’ve been trying to sleep as much as I could, but I keep waking up every two hours in pain. I know that I’ll be better soon but when you’re in this much pain it’s really difficult to be patient about it. Rick and Mom took care of Thanksgiving and I pretty much just tried to stay out-of-the-way. I guess it’s better than last year when they had to bring me dinner in the hospital. I’m trying to look on the bright side…but it isn’t very easy right now. I’m so sick and tired of being sick and tired. I feel like I can’t do a damn thing anymore without having to pay for it for days afterwords. I wanted so badly to have the house looking nice for my family to come here for Thanksgiving  dinner, and I didn’t do that much, at least not enough to put me in the shape I’ve been in since then. My whole body hurts, and I know that some of that is from switching my meds, but just for one day I would like to feel healthy.

 

I was looking forward to getting the last check from worker’s comp so we could pay for the bills far enough ahead for Rick to start getting a paycheck. Because Rick had been released to go back to work we expected a final check from worker’s comp, but it was nowhere near what we thought it would be. I honestly have no clue how we’re going to get through the next month. Rick is out right now trying to find a job that he can manage without hurting himself anymore than he already has, but we didn’t know that he was going to be cut off like he was. On the bright side, now we can settle the claim for the personal injury, and hopefully it will at least cover all the bills. I’m not even thinking about buying Christmas presents anymore. I’m more concerned with just getting by. I don’t even have the heart to put up the tree. I had planned to put it up days ago, but I could barely move so I figured I would just wait until I was feeling better. So much for feeling better.

 

I know Rick will get hired on quickly with all the experience he has under his belt. I just can’t believe that all this shit happens to us. I’m starting to feel like the universe has it out for me. With any luck at all we might get the settlement money from the accident before Christmas. But with our luck the attorney’s fees will be more than the settlement. Just another case of truth being stranger than fiction. Rick told me not to worry and that everything would work out fine, but at this point I’m having a really hard time not worrying. I probably shouldn’t have put all of this in my blog, but I’m stressing about it and this is how I process everything. I hope nobody reading this was looking for a happy post.

 

I just found out about the worker’s comp check (or lack there of) so maybe I’ll be in a better mood later, but right now I don’t think I could take anymore bad news. I’m all out of sunshine! I think that considering my situation I need and upside down pink tree…it seems so appropriate.

 

 

#143 Yep, I’m still here

Even though Rick has been in a tizzy about getting his pc to work again I really didn’t want to miss out on my morning posts, luckily my lovely daughter suggested that I use the laptop that we gave her last year for Christmas to be able to write my posts with. Jesse can be a huge pain in the ass sometimes, but she also is the single most kind and generous person I’ve ever known. When we bought her this laptop we also bought two others for Justin and Ashley. And because we aren’t rich, we went to a reconditioned laptop store and were able to get all three, with new cases for less that we would have paid for one brand new one. All three kids were happy though because we had been telling them that there might not be any presents under the tree at all because we were hurting so badly financially. Rick would sell a kidney to be able to give our kids what they want for Christmas, but as they get older the presents seem to get more expensive…go figure.

So this year Rick and my mother want to have the holiday family get-together at our house. I tried to get out of it because I would have to go over my house with a fine tooth comb just so that I’m not embarrassed to have family here. Don’t get me wrong, they would probably not give a shit what my house looked like…it’s all me. I did manage to get the entire downstairs cleaned to my satisfaction, and then I spent the whole day yesterday trying to nurse the pain I had caused myself by doing things like reaching up with a swiffer duster while standing on one leg with nothing to hold on to just to clean my ceiling fan. Every time I touched the damn thing it started spinning around. Jesse and her best friend were told that they had to clean Jesse’s bathroom and the downstairs bathroom before I would give them the car keys to take all their friends skating. I still have to do a little more on the bathroom that Jesse ‘cleaned’,but at least she tried. She hates to clean.

This morning when the pharmacy opens I have to go and pick up my new meds. I haven’t taken this particular kind in years, but I do remember that one of the reasons that I didn’t want to keep taking them before was because they gave me way too much energy. Rick would have to demand that I sit in the recliner and take a break after six straight hours of doing chores. Now with as much as I need more energy just to do simple things, I’m hoping that it will work better for me this time. I do remember that it worked great for pain though so I can’t wait to see what happens.

Rick also told me yesterday that he wants to put up our Christmas tree today. I guess he wanted to have the house decorated before the family comes over. Last year he didn’t help at all, Diane and I had to do it ourselves while Rick watched TV pr played his games. To be honest I really don’t remember because I had my hands full of lights that someone had just thrown into a box. I am curious to see what decorations we have left. Every year more seem to hit the void. My favorites are the ones that my kids made for me when they were just old enough to be able to write their own names on them. I think everyone I know has at least one tiny little popsicle stick snow sled with glitter on it, and a red ribbon to hold it to a tree branch.
So today while Rick starts digging out all the Christmas decorations, I’ll be sitting in the middle of them all trying to figure out which lights are still in good working condition.  I’ll gently pick out the broken balls ans play where’s waldo to find enough extension cords to be able to plug everything in. I really don’t enjoy the process…but I love having the tree all lit up in the evenings leading up to Christmas. I also have a green and white wreath that hangs on my front door, this is the closest one to mine that I could find a picture of…except that my front doors are white so it looks really pretty. Happy holidays everyone. cin

#142 I’m being forced to take a break…I don’t like it!

I am unwillingly going to take a vacation for a little while, just until I can either get my computer fixed or find a nice cheap used one that will do what I need it to do…which isn’t very much really. Normally, I write a post every morning while I have my coffee and M&Ms, but I think that I’m going to have to take a break for a little while. Not that I want to…because I really don’t. I just don’t have a choice.

Not too long ago, I caught the cord of my head-set on the front of my wheelchair,  I didn’t realize that I was tangled up in it before I started to back away from my desk and saw that my computer tower was slowly tipping over. It literally looked like is was falling in slow motion so I didn’t panic and try to catch it, I thought that if I did that I might do more harm than good. So, I held the cord to the head-set and tried to let the tower down as slowly as possible. Even when the tower made its way all the way to the floor it didn’t make much of a sound at all, and nothing looked damaged at all…not even the head-set cord had anything wrong with it. I went to refill my coffee, which was what I was trying to do to begin with, and I came back to write my morning post.

Everything was going along as usual until I realized that I was hearing a very loud beep coming from the computer tower. I had no clue wait is was, and after writing a few more lines I decided that I might have shaken something lose in the tower and that I should just save my blog post for later and re-start the computer. I shut it down and tried to restart it…but something went very wrong. I must have done something really bad for it to not even be able to start Windows. I begged my husband, although he didn’t want to do this at all, to open the tower and just look to see if there was anything obvious…like a loose wire, or something unplugged that he could just fix and I could get back to my writing. Nothing found, and he gave up.

My little brother knows pretty much everything about computers, but he has a very demanding job as well as a family with two little kids, so you can see why I wouldn’t want to ask him to check out my problem. I didn’t want him to feel obligated and possibly miss out on anything important. Rick did ask Jason if he could take a look at it, and I was given very bad news about my little computer friend. When it tipped over, the hard drive was running…now I can’t fix it. It’s going to have to have a new hard drive installed, or I’ll have to find a very cheap pc . I love my computer. It isn’t anything expensive or difficult to use, it’s an e-machine. I don’t ever do anything but write my blog posts, check my fb, and talk to some other women with breast cancer online. I have no need for anything fancy, actually I think a fancy computer would simply be wasted on me. I just need to find a way to fix my sad little broken pc. I’ll look around and price some hard drives, hopefully because of the holidays they will be on sale somewhere.

So, I’ve been using Rick’s gaming pc every morning, I usually wake up three or four hours before he does, so that I don’t get in his way. No problem there. Jesse has been needing to use Rick’s pc too lately to look for a job (she didn’t like the ones she had, too much drama)but she stays up late at night and now Rick has things on his computer that he doesn’t want there (no, it’s not porn or anything vulgar). I told him if he didn’t want anyone on his pc when he isn’t awake then he should change the password.

He changed the password right before he went to bed (the night before last), and when he woke up he had no clue what he had changed it to. We’ve tried everything to reset the password, the computer, and even called the manufacture. They said that all they can do is send him a disk in the mail that should help him fix the problem. I don’t think I’ll ever agree to use his computer again. Somehow, even though I was asleep when he changed the password, it’s still all my fault. And everyone else’s fault too. He’s very, very touchy about his gaming pc because he waited years to be able to have one. I totally get why he’s so upset about all of this right now. But I did find out that he now remembers changing the password to one that I could easily remember…but he never told me what it was? Hmmm

I’ll be back as soon as I can,

All my Love to everyone, cin

#141 Canceling Christmas? I hope not

 

I never have been one to make a big deal about Christmas…but Rick waits all year for it so I try to go along with whatever he wants to do. We did get some very exciting news yesterday that is going to make the holidays much happier for my family. We didn’t win the lottery or anything like that, but we did find out that our lives are about to start getting back to normal if all goes well from here on out. After Rick was hit by a car while unloading his truck at work we had to get a lot of lawyers involved. Three different firms have been helping with getting him the compensation that he deserves, as well as all the medical treatments that he’s had to have for the past few years. A few days ago we found out that worker’s comp wanted him to go back to work and they also agreed that he has a permanent partial disability that will limit what kind of work he’ll be able to do for the rest of his life. I know that I mentioned in an earlier post that Rick thought he might like to go back to working in management of a telemarketing company, and he also wants to work some place where he can put to good use all the experience that he has from being in a truck. Now he’s able to start actually going on interviews. Yesterday his own Dr agreed that Rick is able to start working again, as long as he starts off only working part-time with limitations. We were told that for the first six months he’ll have to also go to physical therapy and have massage therapy to help with the pain of getting used to a work setting. What was funny was that both when the nurse walked in, and then also when the Dr came in, they both came straight to me, took my hand, and asked how I was doing. Rick finally said something after the Dr did it too. Sorry babe, but I’m just more important. jk 😉

 

We really thought that this was going to be a very sad Christmas because we simply won’t have any way to go and get any gifts for our kids…let alone all the rest of the family and friends that we would normally get a gift for. It’s not that we ever were rich, far from it, but we always managed to find a way to give a little something to everyone. The year before last my mother and I spent two weeks straight baking every kind of cookie we could think of for the family, and everyone else we could think of also received a nice dish of assorted goodies. Chocolate dipped pretzels were the easiest to make so I loved doing those. Mom likes to make candy so we also had a few hundred home-made peanut butter cups…a lot of those ended up at my house because they’re Rick’s favorite. But, last year we didn’t have enough money to buy all the ingredients to make as much as the year before, not to mention that I spent most of November and December in the hospital having surgeries, so I couldn’t help mom bake. I was released from the hospital after my mastectomy late on Christmas day. I missed all the good stuff. Rick did bring me a tiny little Christmas tree in the hospital with a few of my gifts from the family to put under the tree, so I know that I wasn’t forgotten…but it’s never the same as being home with the family. The nurses wanted to know if he had a single brother.

 

I doubt that I’ll be able to do much, if any, shopping this year, but I do have the knowledge that everything can and will start getting back to normal. I don’t have a clue how long we’ll have to wait for the lawyers to finish with all the final details, it usually takes another six months to find out what the end result will be. But in the mean time, Rick can get back to having somewhat of a normal life again. I love having the house to myself when he’s working, and I know that working makes him feel so much better about himself. None of this was in any way his fault, and I feel bad for him that he’s had to go through any of it. So this year Christmas, although it won’t be back to normal just yet, will be a time when we can at least be happy about life again. All the endless medical crap with both of us has definitely taken a huge toll on all of us, but now we have something to look forward to again. It’s been a long time since I could think about anything in the future and he happy about it. This year we have a Grand Daughter coming, Rick will be working again, and hopefully in a few months we can start slowly paying back all the family that’s been helping us, and if we play our cards right we might even be able to find a few small gifts for under the Christmas tree. This is the one that Rick wants to put up this year. He thinks that he can cut a branch of of out front patio tree and put his favorite little blue ball on it too. For the past twenty five years Rick has managed to hide a blue ball somewhere on the tree, no matter what colors I use for the rest of the decorations. He says it’s ‘special” to him. I think it’s funny.

 

Justin and Ashley made it to NC, where Rick’s little sister lives, and they’ll be staying there with her for a little while so that they can find new jobs and save enough money to get their own place after the baby comes. I do wish they had moved back to Arizona, but I know that they will be in good hands with Rachael. She always has done her best to help out all of her nieces and nephews when she could. She takes after her father in that way and many others. He was a great man. Rick is hoping that we’ll be able to go and see our Grand Daughter when she’s born, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to just yet. Like I said, it could be a very long time before we see a penny from him being hurt. But at least we know that this whole bull shit legal thing will be over soon. I just hope that I’m feeling well enough to travel that far. I walked a long way yesterday on my crutches to Rick’s Dr and now I’m paying for it this morning….but it was a well wort it trip.

#140 I’m healed? Ah…NO!

So, yesterday afternoon I was out side on the patio talking to Rick about his appointment Thursday with the lawyers, and I asked him what the date was. I never do know what day of the week it is and most of the time I can’t remember what day of the month it is either. He told me the date and I suddenly remembered that I had something to do. I looked in my purse for any appointment cards and found on from my pain center with a time of 1:45 yesterday afternoon. I called my mom and asked her to take me, because my car needs to have repairs done, which I can’t afford right now, and she made sure that I was there on time. Thank God for mom. I waited longer than usual in the exam room for the PA to come in, but I didn’t mind because he always spends a lot of time talking to me so I just figured that he was talking to someone else(I could hear him in the next room) and he would be in as soon as he could. When he came in he sat next to me and said “How are you doing?” I said “shitty,how about you?” He said the same thing, “shitty”. He wanted to know why I wasn’t doing well and I told him about how I thought that I was starting to have problems in my arm. I did have a lot of lymph nodes taken out when I had my breast amputated (I think the word mastectomy doesn’t do it justice), twenty-eight the last time and eight the first time. Even one being taken out can cause you to have a lot of pain and swelling in your arm. I haven’t had any trouble with it in this past year so I’m not convinced that it isn’t the tumor in my arm pit pushing on things that are causing pain all the way into my hand.

 

I watched for any swelling or anything like this before, but I never saw anything.  And, I’ve usually been able to get relief from the pain pills after I healed from each surgery. I’m a little worried that this is only the beginning of the problems with my arm.  Anyway, the PA wanted to change my meds(which he does every so often) and scribbled for a while on some paper, trying to figure out the correct amount of the other pain meds to equal what I was already on. I would have needed a calculator for all those math problems. After a while he gave up and went to go to the back office to speak to my Dr and ask him what he thought should be written. When the PA came back he was laughing. I asked him what was going on and he,still laughing, said that some Dr had called my Dr and told him that I didn’t have breast cancer…that he thought that it was a misdiagnosis. I wish I was a fly on the wall for that conversation.

 

When I was first diagnosed and still had all the tumors in my body I had to be admitted to the hospital for pain. I insisted after almost a week that they call in my own pain Dr because he already knew me and I trusted him. They refused until I started screaming in pain, and I also sent my husband across the street to the Dr’s office to tell him personally that I needed him and why. My own Dr showed up in my hospital room at about eight pm when he was on his way home for the night. When he came in he sat down held my hand and put his head in my lap and cried. He told me that no matter what happens he’ll be there to see me through this. I believed him then and I still believe in him now. He chewed out the hospital staff and changed the meds I was on and I was able to go home two days later. If he hadn’t come in to help me I don’t know how long I would have been there. I don’t have a clue what Dr would have called him unless it was the Medical Director at the hospice that I was in a few months ago who wanted me to have more scans and tests to prove what my prognosis was after I had my surgery. They do have to make sure that you qualify to be in hospice so I know why they wanted more proof. But, if they would have told me at the time what they were looking for I could have had the reports from the Cardio Thoracic surgeon and the pathology reports sent to them. I didn’t know then that they didn’t have everything.

 

I haven’t seen an Oncologist for about eight months now because I didn’t have any reason to go to one. I wasn’t having chemo and I didn’t know that I would need to be continually getting tested for something that doesn’t go away on its own. I made all of my choices clear to all my Dr.s and I figured that they would all talk to each other when they needed information. Anyway, my own Dr knew better than to believe that it was all a mistake and thought that the one who had called him and told him that it was all a misunderstanding was an idiot. I’m very glad now that I insisted on having my own Dr come to the hospital because he saw for himself that there was no mistake and that I simply wasn’t going along with all the usual treatments for IDC. Some people (including Dr.s) think if I’m not doing chemo and radiation that I must not have cancer. It only it were. I did ask my PCP to get me a referral for another Oncologist so that there wouldn’t be anymore questions about my prognosis. Just incase I need proof from now on. So now I start the new meds next week, I know that I’ve taken them before but I don’t remember if I had any problems with taking them. Hopefully it’ll help me without giving me any more issues to deal with.

#139 I just found out

I’ve been waiting, and not patiently I might add, to find out what my grandchild is going to be, and I just got off the phone with my son and his fiance. It’s a little girl! YAY!! 🙂 I had a feeling that it was a girl, but I didn’t want to tell everyone that and then be wrong. I figured that I would just wait and see. I love the idea of having a baby girl in the family. I do think that boys are easier to take care of, but it’s more fun to shop for a little girl. I was also told that the baby is to have my middle name, which I think is wonderful. Rose was the middle name of not just me, but also my great-grandmother, my aunt, my cousin’s little girl and probably a few more people on my dad’s side of my family that I’m not remembering right now. I don’t know for sure how the first name will be spelled so I won’t try to spell it because I don’t want to get in trouble for doing that. I have a feeling that this baby will have two wonderful parents tripping over themselves to make her happy…always a good thing in my book. Congratulations Justin and Ashley. 🙂

Rick has started making sugar cookies for us. Not for the holidays, just to snack on. I can’t remember a time in his life when he made cookies. I’m always the one who does all the baking, and every once in a while he would help me out a little, but for him to suddenly start baking took me by surprise. For his first attempt he did very well. I think they were as good, if not better, than the ones my mother and I make every year around Christmas. It can be very tricky to have a sugar cookie come out well. They weren’t dry and were perfectly baked( I did help with baking them), and I have to admit that I did eat most of them when he wasn’t looking. He wants to make another batch today, he wanted to do it last night but I talked him into waiting until the kitchen was cleaned so that he didn’t end up with a huge mess right before bedtime. I guess I’ll have to get up soon and start getting the kitchen ready for him to play in. He does have a habit of leaving flour trails every time he does anything where flour is involved in one of his kitchen projects.

 

I do have a few chores that I plan on tackling, and I’ve had my coffee and M&Ms already. My mom bought me a sharing size bag of M&Ms, but I have no intention of sharing them. I’ll share anything else in the world…but I can’t give up my sugar. I swear sugar is an addiction, probably one of the best kind of addictions for someone to have. I still have to call Jesse’s Dr to find out why he didn’t call in her meds yesterday, her throat is still healing very slowly so she still has some infection in there that needs continued antibiotics. I really hope that having the surgery will keep her from ever having anymore infections. I think she’s had enough of them to last her a lifetime.

 
It’s very quiet in the house this morning, so I’m enjoying it very much. So far today I’ve only seen Rick and the animals, Jess and Abraham are still sleeping. He’s the little boy that she’s been co-raising ever since he was born. He has to be the biggest three-year old I’ve ever seen, and he calls me Grandma Cindy, which makes it easier for me to have a little kid around. I normally don’t like having kids in the house because they move too fast for me and make too much noise…not to mention the messes they can make before you have time to stop them. But Abraham has become a part of the family and now I’m more used to having him here since Jess came back home. I know Rick just loves him to death, especially because they think very much alike. Rick freely admits to thinking along the same lines as a three-year old. We only have him over once in a while but he sure does take over the house when he’s here. I don’t have any idea how it happened but this young man looks exactly like my daughter…even more than he looks like his parents.

 

I went a very long time without any little ones around me, but it’s looking like I need to get used to the idea that my kids have grown into being parents themselves. I hope that I’ve done a good enough job for them to be able to do a good job too. Hopefully I can help them to make better choices than I did. I didn’t have a clue how to raise a child back then, and I flat-out refused to take anyone’s advice on how to raise my kids. I so wish that I had taken some of that advise because it would have made my kids lives so much better. I don’t want to over-step my boundaries so I’ll have to be careful about making sure my advice is welcome before I go giving my opinion. Anyone who knows me at all will understand how that might be difficult for me to do. Wish me luck. 😉