We’d planned on a productive busy-busy-busy day. Here’s how it’s gone so far.
I was up at 7:30, walking Ms. S. by 7:45. Had a bowl of cereal and then sat down at the computer to do a bit of house-related work. Woke J. up just before 9am.
A year ago, J.and I had dinner with some friends and this picture was taken:
So much has changed since then, huh?
Now I’ve replaced a breast with a BLO, am regrowing hair lost in chemo, and 10 pounds heavier. I’m also a non-smoker and in better health than I have been since my 20s. I’ve learned that I am, at core, incredibly resilient.
I also learned who my friends really are and what generosity truly means.
Today I’m not packing. I’ll be doing cleaning-type things — laundry, dishes, and the bathrooms — as well as some general organizing. The weather has cooled, so it’s a pleasure to be bopping around.
This was our big ‘get ahead and get going’ weekend of packing, what with being a three day weekend and all.
Instead, we’ve been playing. Sort of.
which is not a comment on my life, but the title of the new Simon Green novel. I just finished it and I can only say this: holy cow. Followed by, “you effer.”
It’s a great, fun, novel that introduces us to an ancient Drood enemy and host of traitors. It ends with one heck of a cliffhanger (hence the ‘effer’ reference).
In other news: I owe y’all a bunch of writing, going all the way back to Ashland in early June. I’ll try to get to that this weekend, in and amongst the packing.
I am writing and posting this from my laptop at 30,000 feet.
Nothing more needs to be said.
Yesterday morning, June 21st, my grandmother left this world after 89 years of doing just fine, thank you very much.
It’s been lingering all day. I didn’t sleep well last night, that’s the first problem; but I just haven’t been able to shake a deep sense of . . . BLAH.
I spent some time ‘sitting’ with the blah and came to two realizations: part of it is tiredness, but the other part is a reaction to the chemo. (Hold your ‘duh’ reaction justa moment, please.) You see, I’m ‘supposed’ to be back to normal. Or something akin to normal. Instead I’m still having trouble sleeping, I’m still experiencing food cravings, my body hurts (somewhere, all of the time), I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been (and not comfortable with it), and I’m having hot flashes. (On the bright side, my brain seems to be working more-or-less normally again.)
It’s damned uncomfortable being me right now.
The only thing that will fix this is time and hard work. Time will take care of the body aches and the cravings and the sleeping. It will also presumably lead to an increase in my energy. Hard work will take care of the weight gain, leading to an improvement in the aches and an overall feeling of increased vitality.
But I don’t have any motivation at the moment, plus it is HARD to even walk (still). I’m doing it, twice a day. But I am so not motivated to do anything else.
(/start whine) It’s HARD getting much of anything done. (/end whine)
In the hands of a skilled reader, astrology can be a useful tool. As proof, of sorts, I offer excerpts from Susan Miller’s forecast for Virgo, June 2010:
. . . Mars had spent an inordinately long time in Leo, reaching back to October 2009, and this is unusual. Mars typically spends seven weeks in a sign, not eight months! The placement of Mars in Leo put you in a holding pattern over the last months, but that’s about to end now.
. . .It’s also possible that you’ve had a lot of interaction with medical professionals lately, for the twelfth house rules health and healing. Perhaps you had surgery, needed long-term treatments, or required physical therapy.
One reason her forecasts are highly useful for me is that I am a double Virgo (sun and ascendant), others might find reading both forecasts for their different signs will yield a high probability of accuracy each month.
Please, stop what you are doing. Take a breath and close your eyes in memory of Jeanne Robinson.
The wife of Spider Robinson, Jeanne and Spider co-authored the influential Stardance trilogy in the late 70s. If you haven’t read it, do so now.
I can’t say it as well as Spider does, so I’ll let him do it. Moreover, my eyes are full of tears. Not for her passing, but for our loss.
Tonight when Sasha came home from her usual swim she started exhibiting signs of extreme pain. We’ve seen swimmer’s tail’ from her before, and stress fractures — this was something else.
She would sit (which she won’t do with swimmer’s tail) but not lie down. She wasn’t limping, she just refused to move at all, and her stance was very odd, like she was braced. She was so tired she was wobbly, but wouldn’t lie down. She ate, but didn’t pursue her bowl when she nudged it out of her immediate range.
Our vet has partnered with a group called Acces for after-hours care; we went there. After a careful survey, visual and kinesthetic, the vet tentatively diagnosed Sasha as suffering from a muscle injury, likely in the neck. Like a pulled muscle from fatigue. But a really bad one. They gave her a muscle relaxant and hydromorphine (aka Dilaudid!) and we all just hung out for awhile to see how she handled it. It definitely relaxed her, but the stress of the unfamiliar place was starting to freak her out a bit.
So we brought her home. J has her in the guest room downstairs. It took her about 45 mins once she was home to calm down, but she’s completely unconscious and sleeping on her side. Our only worry now is that she hasn’t had anything to drink for a lot of hours. She had wet food for dinner, so that will help any dehydration, but it’s something we need to pay attention to.
It was a very scary time.
