Roberta and Dawn Meet

Roberta and Dawn meet for the first time

Deborah tells me that it is time to post a new photograph; the last was a bit gruesome, although it documents the current dominant feature of my life. I had a new fill on Monday, the last one, thankfully. Each is more uncomfortable than the last and it makes sleeping almost impossible.

My friend Dawn came to visit on Wednesday. I have been trying to lure her back to Portland for years. I believe that Dawn, Roberta, and Akhri and I are destined to work together. It was fairly late (for me) when I called Roberta that night, but she came over and met Dawn and they hit it off right away. The room was positively electric with energy. Dawn wants to stay in England for another year to pick up another Master's degree. Then she's hoping to go into a PhD program at PSU. Roberta has big plans for bringing treatment programs to Clackamas County. She good at networking, brainstorming, and firing people up. She's a whirlwind of energy, but can use someone to help her direct it. She goes off in about ten different directions at once.

I’ve decided to curtail the job search for a while. I have been sending out resumes with typos on them, containing the wrong email address and a typo in my home address. It proved to me that I’m cognitively not yet up to the task. I think my unconscious is protecting me from myself. And I have another surgery coming up soon. It’s kicked off a moral dilemma for me. I’m supposed to be looking for work if I’m receiving unemployment. I know other people receive unemployment when they have no intention of looking for work. However, I’m not able to do that. I guess I will have to bite the bullet and refuse those checks for a while until I am able to look for work again. I’m not happy about that, but I’m not very good a being dishonest, either. My EFT group helped me sort out this problem last night. It’s not like it will be that long until I get back on my feet again. The next surgery will be an outpatient sort. I know that’s still somewhat debilitating, but not nearly as difficult as the last one.

As I get better, I realize how out of it I have been. My energy is improving to the point that I can do limited housework and that makes my world a little more pleasant. Today I ran an errand; I drove to Powell’s Books on Hawthorne by myself. Up until now I’ve only gone out on very short errands, within one mile of my house. Or I’ve gone to doctor’s appointments, or to my therapist, only doing what was absolutely necessary. I’ve had to protect my energy reserves very carefully. However, this was an extraneous errand, one I did just for the fun of it because there was a used book there I’ve been wanting for a while. It was not essential to the continuance of my existence. After that, I bought some office supplies at Fred Meyer’s then I took myself to lunch. This was a small milestone, but one of significance to me.

I’ve been able to set little goals for myself each day, like light housekeeping chores. Chira and I took a walk this morning at 5 am since we were both awake after very little sleep. It was about two miles. I slowed down considerably by the end because my saline filled expander started to hurt a lot, but at least my legs were up to the task. It did give mea reality check, though, about how much exercise I need at present, which is not a lot. Less is more.

Rising Optimism, Inflated Expander

I was crabby and whiny last week, peeved that my recovery from surgery and chemo isn’t speeding along the way that I would like. My disciplines were falling apart. I wasn’t meditating, I wasn’t exercising. I was a mess.

Well, I’m still a mess, I’m still not meditating, I’m still not exercising, but I feel a rising optimism. Suddenly, I don’t give a damn that I don’t have a job, that I am not doing what I’m supposed to in terms of my discipline. In a very significant way, I’m doing just what I need to do.

What accounts for this change of mind? I’m sure a lot has to do with the fact that my homeopath gave me a new remedy last week. I managed to reorganize my office (with Petra’s help) which also improved my outlook. I had a very nice weekend with lots of visitors. And the weather is cool and rainy, which tends to cheer me up. Don’t ask me why.

I went out on my ebike today to pick up some Coconut Bliss ice cream (a fabulous vegan treat). It was drizzling and I rode through the rain; it felt so good. I suppose I was made for the Pacific Northwest. I actually like the rain. It is cleansing and invigorating. I find endless sunshine and heat oppressive after a while.

Earlier today I had my appointment to get the penultimate fill for my expander. The doctor announced that I was 490 ml and had 160 more to go. I was adamant that I was at 510 and had 90 more to go. She was insistent and decided to show me the medical records, taking a rather patronizing tone. It turned out that I was right. She said, yes she had made an error in math. Howard pointed out that she had made an error in arithmetic. As a patient, it behooves one to keep track of these things. It’s painful enough expanding it this far. To expand it further than necessary would be really painful and time consuming.

I had another 50 ml of saline added today. The photo shows how peculiar it looks. The expander is huge and placed really high. This is the way that they always do it. And one can see the Frankenstein breast on the left, after the reduction. It’s hard to imagine cramming 40 more ml of saline in there, but that’s what’s happening next week. We scheduled surgery for the implant for the 18th of September.

It’s getting to the point that I need to take pain medication. I was able to go through the mastectomy without using them, but this process is much more painful, especially at night. As long as I’m sitting up, I do fine. Lying down is a different matter. I barely slept last night. I really hate pain meds because they make me feel groggy and I get constipated. However, those side effects are beginning to seem minor at this point. I took 5 mg of oxycodone with a cup of green tea this afternoon and that was a good combination, although not one that will work after 4 pm, I would imagine.

We Are Going to Pump You Up

Yesterday I went to the doctor, as I do most Mondays, to get Pumped Up. I have an expander that is meant to expand the skin where my breast implant is to go. I was getting 70 ml of saline injected in each time until two weeks ago when the usual injection caused my mastectomy scar to pop open in one spot. Also, I suddenly had a lot of stretch marks.

I went to the doctor to have her check out the new hole in the scar. She gave me a prescription for a topical and an oral antibiotic and sent me on my way. I decided to skip the next appointment to let things calm down a bit. Of course, this was during the time that I was feeling down, and an effect of that was going on a pill strike. I just couldn’t deal with taking my vitamins much less prescriptions, so I didn’t.

On this last visit I informed the doctor that I hadn't filled the prescriptions and she was a bit alarmed. She said it was common for the body to reject the expander and that there were signs of redness. Also the hole in the scar wasn’t healing well so it was time to bite the bullet and actually take care of it. She gave me new prescriptions and I promised to fill them and follow directions. Then I had another injection, this time of 50 ml.

In the past several weeks she has asked me at each visit if I had enough pain pills. I was a little puzzled by the question. Although the fills were a little painful, especially at night, I rejected the idea of taking pain pills on general principles. I’m just not into taking drugs, prescription or otherwise.

I changed my tune last night. Ouch. It was a bad night. I was up for hours. We’re getting to the point where this is no longer easy. The expander has to be expanded to be larger than the remaining breast, but it’s already a lot larger and I have 90 ml more to go (or two more sessions.) The expander is now huge and hard and the skin is stretched impossibly tight. I ended up taking one pain pill but that didn’t help much. After an hour or so I took another. Finally I got some sleep. I’m starting to wonder how I’m going to get through this next phase.

So cancer is the gift that keeps on giving. I’m ready to have this episode over and done with but there’s still more to slog through. I remembered that a woman in my support group had an infection from her expander so I'm going to be careful and take all my antibiotics, as much as I dislike them.

A Visit with to Port Townsend

On Saturday, Howard and I drove to Port Townsend to see Ande who was in the midst of packing boxes, trying to get her life down to the few possessions that could fit into her car for the cross-country trip she was about to embark upon.

Ande and her daughter Aster lived with us for many years when our children were young. She and I co-parented together. Aster was two years older than Gavi and two years younger than Jasper, right in the middle. Those were very lovely years that I remember with great fondness.

Aster is now living in Washington D.C. working at some really well-paid job that’s fairly boring. She took her LSATs last spring and did spectacularly well and is now looking for a law program. My boys, well, one is in a rock and roll band and one is an actor.

We reminisced a lot about when the kids were little, the times we had at the Blaine Street house in Port Townsend. It was so good to sit and talk to her.

Ande is also a cancer survivor, breast cancer and lymphoma. The breast cancer was a minor episode, but the lymphoma was not. She was very proactive about her care and found a doctor that she could work with, one that was primarily a researcher. She and I both have fairly low opinions of doctors as scientists. Doctors seem to want to adhere to orthodoxy. They do not make the distinction between longitudinal studies and randomized trials when looking at research.

The type chemo she did worked on the mitochondria, just the stuff that I’m interested in (see the links on side bar). Of course, these are not fancy new drugs. They’ve been around for years so drug companies can’t make a lot of money from them.

On Saturday night Howard and I went to see Joey Pipia’s show. He has a little theatre in the industrial section of Port Townsend where he does little shows. This was a close-up magic show. Eben and Paul Black happened to show up that night as well. It is a 30 seat house, very intimate. He does a very nice show. I had a lovely time.

After the show we went back to his house and had pie and tarts and champagne with his family and Eben and Paul. It was great to see Jenny and Sophie and Phina again. They have such a lovely little house there.

The next day was Sunday and Ande had to cook a large pot of beans to serve at the fire department’s booth at the county fair so she was continually popping in and out in between stirring the beans and taking them out of the oven and such chores as that. We had breakfast at the Salal Cafe and she popped in there for a while then went back to her beans. Howard and I walked downtown and peeked in a few stores. We drove by the old Blaine Street house which seemed to have been “remuddled” a bit. We finally left in the afternoon for the long drive home after visiting the co-op for lunch.

At some point during the weekend we realized that we really hadn’t left anything behind in Port Townsend. Yet another of my ties to it has been broken now that Ande is moving away. We decided that we missed the salt water. I love the smell of it in the air. But Port Townsend is no longer my town. It was cold and overcast and uninviting. It was good to get back to Portland, to the warm weather and our lovely house teeming with our beloved friends and family. Our life on Blaine Street was a fine life while it lasted but I’m happy to be where I am now.

Visiting Chelle

I took a trip with Howard this weekend. It was a rare event for us to spend so much time together. Usually if we go on a trip, he goes with Andrine and I go with David. I wanted to visit Chelle in Bainbridge to catch up with her and then go to Port Townsend to say goodbye to Ande Grahn who is just about to leave to go to graduate school in Massachusetts.

So the first stop was at Chelle’s house in Bainbridge. Chelle and I have been close friends for years and years. Our children are roughly the same ages. Chelle was recently diagnosed with breast cancer so we’ve had a lot to talk about. Fortunately, hers was stage one, grade 2, so she had a lumpectomy and will soon have radiation. She can skip the chemo part, thank goodness. Her tumor was HER2-NEU positive, which means she’ll be getting herceptin for a year after the radiation. Her prognosis is excellent. But it’s so odd that we were diagnosed within a year of each other.

Anyway, I hadn’t been up so see her in a while and every so often I need a dose of Chelle. She’s just a delight to hang out with. She and Hank (her husband) live on several acres which she has turned into a paradise. She’s an amazing gardener. We sat on her patio sipping cool drinks and watching the goings on in the lush landscape. You wouldn’t know that the bee population was severely threatened when sitting in her garden. She had all sorts of flowering plants that they were happily visiting. We saw all sorts of birds there: towhees, junkos, chickadees, wrens, just to name a few.

I was tired from the drive and went to bed fairly early, but Howard stayed up talking to Chelle’s two boys, Luke and James. Howard had a great time with them. Luke showed him plans for the house that he is remodeling. He’s using all the money he makes from that job to pay off his boat, a Boston whaler. He got some tiger wood to replace the mahogany on it. Howard was very impressed how Luke had become another Hank. He’s into making things, manipulating physical reality. He brings home fish and crab that he caught.

Howard and I had a lot of time to reflect how our kids are becoming us. Jasper is an actor, Gavi is a musician, each elaborating on the different aspects of Howard’s talents and proclivities. Jasper seems to be coming into his own. He assembled a great production team for the fair. The show was a triumph and now he’s got the confidence to put on his own shows. He’s was just about to run off to a meeting with the members of his new production company when I talked to him last.

Gavi’s band has been recording for the past several days in our family room. Their band had a real bonding experience while on Chautauqua and are much more solid as a consequence. They have about six new songs to record before Yuri goes back to Bellingham. They each have one more year at college to complete. Ben (the drummer) is living in our basement and Shawn (the bass player) lives quite close. It’s such a pleasure watching them on stage. We saw them at a bar the other night. The sound was very muddy, which was a problem, one that Yuri said they had straightened out by the next gig. But of course, I love watching Gavi on stage. He looks so relaxed and natural. He’s got a great voice, too. I love the people that our children are becoming.

This process of growing older is so interesting. Here we are, older and a little wiser. I've heard that people on their death bed don't express regrets that they didn't spend more time at the office. However, I wonder if that will be one of my regrets. Maybe I should have spent more time at the office. It doesn't appeal to me at present, though.

Oh, No! I Forgot to Trust in the Universe!

It’s been a rough week for me. I’m so tired of being tired. My mind is ready to move on to the next phase of my life and my body is not. I’m still in the healing phase and it’s pissing me off. I’ve been in a snit brought on by my wild impatience to be fully recovered.

I keep watching the job postings and feeling a sense of despair because I know that I’m in no shape to take on a 40 hour a week job. Even a part time job would be a bit much right now.

I went to an Ayruvedic practitioner last Friday. I rode my electric bicycle there, a distance of about seven miles. He said I had no business riding that far, even with the electric assistance. Instead the most I should be doing is walking for 20 minutes twice a day. He said I should meditate and breathe a lot. He says I’m still far too overtaxed from chemo and surgery. He’s absolutely right. However, that realization put me into a funk.

I went on strike this week. I stopped taking vitamins. I didn’t go for walks. I didn’t meditate. I didn’t do much of anything but sit around and mourn my losses. I’ve lost my health, my job, and my sense of myself of an effective person in the world. The point is, I’ve got a lot of grieving to do. And grieving takes time. It comes in waves. It doesn’t do any good to ignore it. I know this for a fact. And the healing process is going to take its own sweet time.

I talked to my therapist today, who was very helpful. Thank goodness for the reality check. She pointed out that when I was first diagnosed I didn’t really slow down. I kept working while my co-worker went through her chemotherapy and I took on her clients as well as my own. Then I had surgery, chemo, and then surgery again. Now I have the opportunity to process it all and what it means to me.

I talked to Lynn, a member of our now-dispersed support group and she’s going through a similar process. She finds herself beset by anger and grief these days. Now that we are done with the surgery, radiation (in her case), chemo (in my case), you’d think we’d be a little happier, but no, there’s still more emotion to wade through.

I survived the chemo, barely, and then once I was only slightly better I had reconstructive surgery which really pulled the rug out under my feet. I’m still trying to climb back on to that rug. In fact, I’m still trying to find the damned rug.

Meanwhile, on the up side, I’m making plans to visit friends. I’m going up to see my dear friend Chelle tomorrow and then it’s on to Port Townsend to see Ande before she goes off to graduate school in Massachusetts. Howard is going to go with me. For once we'll take a trip together. We rarely spend time together these days so this will be a good thing. I tend to isolate when I'm in a negative mood, but that's not very useful. He's very helpful and supportive if I give him the opportunity.

Also, in terms of being more positive. I’ve started playing the banjo again. I gave it up as I became weak with chemo, but now I'm strong enough to enjoy playing it. I’ll probably never be any good at it, but it does cheer me up. I’ll keep at it, though. It’s part of my plan for the afterlife. When I was a child I was told by a playmate that I could never get into heaven because I hadn’t been baptized. Instead, I could only go to the front porch of heaven. I figured that as long as I was going to spend eternity on the front porch of heaven, it made sense to learn to play the banjo.

I talked to my nephew Bruce last night about cancer. He survived testicular cancer and has been disease free for 18 years. He kept wanting to know what I’m learning from this. His lesson seemed to be to get focused, prioritize, and get moving. Mine seems to be the opposite, about slowing down, learning to trust in the universe, and learning not to push myself so dammed hard. It’s not a lesson I find easy to absorb.

As I go though all these trials and tribulations, mainly bourn out of my own impatience, I realize that my main problem one that my EFT group pinpointed at the last meeting: “Oh, no. I forgot to trust in the Universe!” Well, here’s to trusting in the universe a little more. I will find the right job at just the right time. I’ll keep looking and trusting that I will recognize it when it appears. After all, I recognized the last one when the time was right. It’s not the time for it to appear and therefore it isn’t showing up. And that, as my hero Stuart Smalley would say, is okay. Everything is unfolding as it is supposed to. I just have to get on board with the Plan (not my plan, but the Master Plan). As my mother used to say, long before John Lennon did, life is what happens to you when you're making other plans.

Lazy Days of Summer

Linda and William at Cow Creek

It’s been a while since I blogged. Linda Grace was here last week and we went down to Myrtle Creek to visit our friends, Deborah and William. We spent a couple of days floating on the river, which was a perfectly idyllic way to pass the time. I could use more river adventures.

My family is still on Chautauqua. Diane has been keeping a Chautauqua Journal with lots of photos. I wish I could be there but it just isn’t possible right now. I would fall apart in the heat.

I’m feeling better, but still don’t have a lot of energy. I keep wondering if it’s that I’m horribly lazy. I’m not accomplishing much. But healing takes energy and I’m still healing.

I’m contemplating my next big project. Roberta wants to start a treatment facility in Clackamas county for veterans returning from Iraq who have substance abuse issues and PTSD. More that that, she wants me to head a task force in Clackamas to put in place a continuum of care for the whole county, youths to adult. It all sounds pretty exhausting but I suppose we can start to meet with people to explore this idea. I’m starting to talk to people, and set up meetings in spite of myself. I’d really like to get my friend Dawn on board, but she’s in England now. I talked to her today and she was intrigued, but she’s also going to start working on a second masters degree in Manchester.

My main accomplishment has been to covert my bicycle into an electric bike. The story of that saga can be found at my ebike blog. I’ve been having fun with it. It really is great at going up hills and that’s what I need at this point. At the same time, I can pedal it, which extends the range of the battery and gives me some exercise. I miss the light-weight bicycle it used to be, but I’m enjoying the fact that I can ride so much further.