Well, it's not going to kill you

Breast Cancer 3 day walk - almost live from San Diego

Go visit Jen's blog Amazing Trips where she has chronicled the first 2 days of the 3 day walk.  It left me in tears that she and her friends are walking 60 miles in 3 days to help people like me survive.

You should go visit Jen anyway because she's a riot.  Mother of 1 boy/2 girl triplets and toddler Henry.  Where this woman finds her energy I have no idea but she carries on undeterred by kids, job, etc.  well assisted by her loving husband Charlie.  I think Charlie should establish a husband training school, he is as amazing as Jen.

To all of you out there doing these amazing things to raise money for breast cancer research, equipment, whatever thank you from the bottom of my heart.  If not for a digital mammogram my cancer probably would have not been caught so early.  And attended to while it was still very, very small.  And if not for research money digital mammogram machines might never have been invented.

And in the interest of rabble rousing if the community you live in does not have a digital mammogram it's time to start making some noise, raising some money and getting your community at least one.

The Pink Glove Dance

I was sent this email by a friend who has a friend who's daughter-in-law thought up this project.

"Our daughter-in-law,  Emily (MacInnes) Somers, created, directed and choreographed this in Portland last week for her Medline glove division as a fundraiser for breast cancer awareness.  This was all her idea to help promote their new pink gloves.  I don't know how she got so many employees, doctors and patients to participate, but it started to really catch on and they all had a lot of fun doing it.

When the video gets 1 million hits, Medline will be making a huge contribution to the hospital, as well as offering free mammograms for the community.  Please check it out.  It's an easy and great way to donate to a wonderful cause, and who hasn't been touched by breast cancer?"

If you're reading this blog you've been touched by breast cancer, you know how ugly it is because you've read about it here.  Drop whatever it is you're doing and go watch in now.  It's a blast!

The Pink Glove Dance

For those of you who are interested

This is an article from the Sonoma County Humane Society that features Larry, Colin and I.

I've been blessed with knowing Carol Rathmann for almost 20 years now.  I knew exactly who to turn to when Larry crossed his arms in his hospital bed and said I need a dog.  What would we all do without our dear friends to support us?

Colin is turning into a bit more of a hand full than we had imagined, nothing like a 110lb dog who hasn't had his bad puppy manners tamed to keep you on your toes.  But he's really mellow and even people who are not especially fond of dogs love him.

We went to dinner at a friends house last week and one of the guests not known for his passionate love of dogs was trying to figure out how he could smuggle Colin out without us noticing.

We're all still alive reposted - spell checked this time

But exhausted!  Between Larry and I we've been to the doctor 4 times this month and that doesn't include visits to Dr. Sanity.  Oh and of course that doesn't include all the time he was in the hospital and rehab last month.  And Larry has 2 more visits next week.  One for his eye and one for physical therapy.  He's hoping to be transferred to crutches at the physical therapy visit.  I don't want to burst his bubble but I think it going to be a more gradual process so I just keep my mouth shut.

The other thing we did was adopt a dog.  We brought him home Wednesday and it feels as if he's always been here. No pictures yet, can't find my damn camera cable.

When Larry was in the hospital in Oakland he said "I need a dog"  I promptly got in touch with my friend who is the director of the hospital for the Humane Society and said "Larry needs a dog"  Carol is the person who found Max for us so I knew she would know the right dog when she saw it.  It had to be big and it had to like cats.  Well, he's definitely big, a combination of Brindled English Mastiff and German Shepherd.  His face looks very Shepard, all black and eyes that just make you melt.  He was raised with 2 cats and 2 small dogs.  The family had to downsize and there just wasn't room for 110 lb dog.  Carol said the owner was weeping when he turned him in and it's easy to see way.  He's about 18 months old as mellow as can be and CUTE.  She sent us pictures of him on Friday, we went to visit on Sunday and fell in love. I went to the shelter fully prepared not to like him but one look at his face and it was love at first sight.  Even better he walked over to Larry who was in his wheel chair and put his great big head in Larry's lap.  Larry just lite up like a Christmas tree.  It was the first time I've seen him really smile since he came home from the hospital. The owner said he was leash trained but my version of leash trained and his are 2 very different things.  I spent half the day yesterday yanking on the leash telling him "don't pull on the leash" and feeling terrible for doing it.   We solved that problem by making a visit to Healdsburg Dog House.  Natalie has a wonderful harness  that circles his body and the way it's designed you can very easily reel him in if you need too, teach his to walk properly at your side and we can leave it on for a long time as we want (I have a feeling it's going to be a long time, he's very smart but he's also 110 lbs and can be some what "difficult" to handle him.  We will be going to dog school but that will have to wait awhile as he's going to be Larry's dog I want Larry to do the bulk of the training.We'd been home about five hours when I glanced over at the couch.  Larry was sitting there, Colin had his head on his lap and was sound asleep.  Last night I couldn't get to my camera fast enough but Larry was stretched out on the couch sleeping and Colin was stretched out on top of him sleeping.The owner said he was leash trained but my version of leash trained are 2 very different things.  I spent half the day yesterday yanking on the leash telling him "don't pull on the leash" and feeling terrible for doing it.   He had to got back to the hospital yesterday to get his foot checked, they had removed a foxtail from his back foot when he came in.  In order to get in there on the appointed time I had to take him to Dr. Sanity's with me.  She frequently has other dogs come to sessions but I was a little worried about his manners of lack thereof to be more accurate.  He behaved very well. And best of all while Colin got his foot checked Carol and I got to spend some time talking to each other.

We used to talk frequently when I was doing volunteer work with Pets Are Loving Support.  But I stopped doing that years ago so our conversations have been via email and phone.  It was a total delight to see here happy and smiling.  Her husband died 4 years ago (hard to believe).  She still gets together with 4 other people that were in her hospice support group once a month which gives her great comfort. That's about it except for the ugly tenant wars and I've turned those back over to Larry.  My brain is fried to a crisp, I angry at them for being so stupid, and angry at myself for being so intolerant.  I'm perfectly happy going back to taking care the the money side.

OMG, I just got off the phone with my 21 yo nephew who is madly in love with Sarah Palin.  I keep telling him I'll eventually convert him from the dark side.  This kid is as smart as a whip, intelligent, funny, witty, loving, caring, supporting but he doesn't have a lot of guidance in  his life.  So while his little brother is attending UNR ( University of Nevada of Reno), he's still attending the local jc trying to find his way.  He's so funny he decided that his apartment was occupied by 2 ghosts so he went to the local Catholic Church he attends in Hollister, got a bottle of holy water and sprinkled it in all four corners of his apartment.  He says the ghost is now gone.  One I established the holy water was not stolen ( don't even ask) I agreed that the ghost was probably gone.  This is why I LOVE to talk to him!

I remember when had him up for a visit when he was about 3.  He's ALWAYS loved mechanical things.  We had a VCR that had died and Larry was going to toss it out, I said NO, let's keep it for Chris it will keep him entertained for hours.  And sure enough it did.  We started of just giving him a screw driver.  Pretty soon the questions started coming "what do you think will happen if I do this, or this or this."  He ended up with a pair of scissors and a wrench in addition to his screw driver.  He had the time of his life.

Well it's time to take Colin out, gee I wonder who's going to do that? So I'll close for now.  I think things have settled down enough that I might get some regular posts going.  But in the meantime I'm thinking of all of you.

If this post seems a little disjointed - it is there's been a lot going on and between dog wrangling and loading the wheelchair into and out of the car my lower back is killing me!

Well I just discovered I'm being followed by an award winning journalist - corrected*

How very cool!  Maybe she can help me spread the word on my latest crusade.  Yes you know me, the consummate tilter at windmills.

This one is the FDA.  Larry has to catheterize himself 4 times a day.  He is allowed 12 catheters per month.  So I wash them in the sanitary hand soap, dry  them and put them in plastic bags so he can reuse them.  To me this seems to me to be a walking invitation to a very  bad infection similar to the one he had a few weeks ago when he didn't know where he was, who he was or what year it was.  I was looking back at my archives but there's nothing really clear except he spent 4 days in the hospital getting pumped full of IV antibiotics.

So FDA here I come.  As I said I'll probably be tilting at windmills but when have you ever known something as small as that to stop me?  Also I have a question for you out there.  I'm putting together a wisdom box to send to my 18 yo niece at college.  Someone should benefit from our collected wisdom as women right?

So far I have one of my many breast cancer bears to remind her that young women get breast cancer as well and perhaps they should arrange for someone from a local breast care center or the ACS to come and teach a group of them the proper way to examine their breasts.  I know that wouldn't have helped me since mine was SO small and up against the chest wall but they should know the basics.

A copy of the Giving Tree so she remembers it's good to give but save some of yourself. 

A copy of the newest edition of Our bodies, our selves because she's only got one body and she should learn as much as she can about it

.And a funky little art kit of a wooden body with paints so she remembers she also needs to play.   She's a civil engineering major with a minor in concrete management.  She wants to build roads.

Any other ideas???  Jen, Eliza, Tiffany you're all way younger than I am, Connie, Erin, Nik, Little Miss Sunshine what would you at our advanced ages include?????  I was thinking of finding her a magic wand because every girl needs one - or at least a cigarette holder (She was Ursula in  her dance school's production of the Little Mermaid 
, the one with the grayish wig is Marissa and as she called them her unruly tentacles.  Notice the very long left arm trying to wrangle a tentacle?   After her performance her mother turned to me and said I bet you didn't know she had that in her.  My reply - oh yes I did.  She is truly her mother's daughter!  *correction, no arms are shown wrangling tentacles, that was another picture.  And I remembered to run spellcheck this time : )

We now return to our main story

When I had arrived the night before he told me surgery was scheduled the next day (Sat 9/5)  My sister Jan and I arrive at the hospital at 10 am to find out that surgery is scheduled for 1pm.  Ok it's a wait but not bad for Kaiser.  Jan and I head out to the cafeteria (NEVER, EVER eat in the cafeteria at Oakland Kaiser, just take my word for it)  We arrive back at Larry's room at 12:30 and he's gone.  A wonderful (one of the few) case managers sees us looking blank outside the door and he offers to take us down in the staff elevator and locate Larry.

The usual pre-op stuff is going on, the anesthesiologist asks if we eaten, yes, his reply was I hope not downstairs!  The surgeon, an amazing man comes and explains what he's planning to do which is remove the ball from the socket, clean it up,  clean up the socket, repair the socket, reinsert the ball and voila.  He's also going to try to do the knee at the same time depending on how the hip goes.  The hip does not cooperate with the plan.  The ball is riddled with arthritis and the socket is much more badly damaged than expected.  It could be repaired to an extent but Larry would need a hip replacement in a couple of years.  So total hip replacement it is.  The knee didn't get done.

Jan had gone out earlier to get us some provisions in case we got hungry - we're mostly on the same wave length food wise salami sandwiches on sourdough and red whips.  We had been told the Piedmont Ave was only a block away but it could be another country.

We finally get to see Larry about 7pm.  He's telling me that he sees mice moving on the ceiling and he's in a pod in a warehouse and he could be alone or there could be dozens of other pods there.  Ok, this brings back to many memories of the last time he was in the hospital.  I ask him what his name is.  He smiles at me and replies Benjamin Franklin.  I said (rather sharply I gather) don't you start with me.  He immediately said my name is Larry Carey, I am in Kaiser Oakland Hospital and it's 2009.  Jan tells me later she's NEVER heard me talk to him like that.

By this time it's about 8 pm and I send Jan home after swearing an oath in blood that I would take a taxi to my hotel that is an entire block away.  I stayed with him until 11:30 more to reassure myself that he's really not in an altered state but also to help him touch the "ground" again. 

The next morning I call and he says he's really in a bad mood, he'd rather be alone.  I said great because I'm exhausted and I'm going back to bed.  I read a bit then slept until 5 pm. He's still not feeling social but I'm hungry so I wander over to Piedmont to get something to eat.  In the meantime he has found out that knee surgery is scheduled for the next day (9/8)  probably for sometime in the late afternoon.  Jan and I confer.  I plan to arrive at the hospital at 11 am.  Jan will leave work in Sunnyvale at 2:30.  Surgery starts out being scheduled at 6, then 7, then 7:30, he finally leaves for OR at 8 pm.  The surgeon says he's supposed to say this surgery will take 2 hours but he knows it will really take 3 to 3  1/2.  Again an outstanding anesthesiologist and OR nurse.   He happens to be from Jamaica and tells us we MUST go there because their are many, many Carey's in Jamaica.  Works for me!

I don't usually like to leave the hospital while Larry is in OR but Jan and I were starving at this point so we head back to Piedmont Ave for some food.  We get back and then begins the wait.  It was about the same time as the wait Sunday but seemed so much longer because it was dark and the hospital was quiet.  The surgeon finally comes to talk to us, I told him he looked as exhausted as I felt.  The knee went great so now we're in a holding pattern to get him stable and into rehab.  I'd had the good sense to talk to the charge nurse the first day I got there and made it clear I wanted him transferred some place closer to home, and I reminded the charge nurse EVERY DAY.

By Wednesday it's clear Larry is stable, fine and grumpy.  I decide it's time to go home. Thursday I get a call saying he's being moved but giving me no information.  Friday they called and said he's being transferred to Sebastopol ( about 40 minutes away)  YES!  Once again the Kaiser dance began.  Transport was coming at noon - great I'd be able to spend SOME time of our anniversary with him, transport was coming at 2, transport arrived at 2:30 which meant he didn't get to Apple Valley until almost 5.  I'd promised FWF that I would be there but it's about 1 1/2 hours from Sebastopol to Cloverdale.  So we talked on our anniversary - our 10th anniversary we just talked.  Well at least he's alive.  I was planning to see him yesterday but fear of the fires moving stopped me.  I FINALLY got to see him today.  He was sitting in the hallway when I came through the front doors and his face lit up like a Christmas tree.  Talk about having a boost to your ego!

We still don't know what the plan is except that he cannot put any weight on his left foot for 3 months.  At this point knowing he's safe, well and in a good nursing home let's me go with the flow.  Apple Valley is nice, clean, relatively current furnishing and the staff I've met are wonderful.  I cannot tell you how that eases my mind.

Thus ends the current installment of Larry and the flying Gator.  I'll keep you all posted.

What I meant to write about

I'd been feeling terrific for the few weeks prior to the tenant fiasco.  I was able to set a path I wanted to explore that had been becoming more and more persistent in my brain. The path of discovering or re-discovering my spiritual self.  While I'm a Catholic (non-practing) but once a Catholic always a Catholic I've discovered.  I found this very interesting book I was ready to explore along with my Highly Sensitive Person book and workbook. 

Well so much for that idea.  I first have to get myself back to neutral then I'll have the resourses to begin the exploration.

If you're at all curious about HSP may I recommend this website.  It's done a world of good clarifying things to me about how I relate to the world, how it affects me and how I can better cope.  On one of the pages is a self test.  I checked all but 2 of the questions, uumm think I'm a bit highly sensitive?  I also had Larry take the test and then we talked about it.  Now he understands a bit more about how I function in the world and it's made a difference in how he interacts with me. 

This is what reconnecting feels like in music

controller="true"autoplay="false" autostart="0" loop="false" height="20" width="100">Mary Chapin Carpenter - Almost Home

no I have no idea why some of the html code displays on this page.  If anyone has pointers on how to fix it please, please, please let me know. Also I promise to disable the autoplay when I make my next post.

And I did disable autoplay - notice that false up there. It appears to be ignoring me

Reconnecting

Therapy the last few weeks has been incredible, stunning, amazing, enlightening - I don't think I have enough adjectives.

Last week I turned a corner.  Yes there is still that kernel of fear in the back of my brain that the cancer may return but it no longer carries the power it once had.  The same thing for going forward with therapy.  I know there are some seriously painful times ahead (Thank you American Express) but I no longer fear them.

It will be hard, it will be painful but it will not have mastery over me.

Also in the last week or so space has opened up in my brain to let my spiritual self to come to the surface.  Although I was raised Catholic (once a Catholic always a Catholic) I don't need or want the "traditional" church (especially with this pope).  So now the task is to find the right way to develop and express that spirituality.

I'm FINALLY reconnecting to the world around me in a concrete manner.  It's not easy but it's very rewarding.

Tomorrow I will post about how it feels in music.

This is where you get to hear a proud aunt

As you all know I worship and adore my nephews and my niece.  Marissa is a chip off the old block.  Like me she loves science and math.  She's planning on being an engineer.  She wants to build roads and the high speed rail system.  I'm more partial to the high speed rail system myself but what ever makes her happy makes me happy.

She's spent the month of July at Calculus boot camp at Chico State.  That's where she's going in the fall as an engineering major.  She's been first in her class most of the time (17 kids, 3 girls).  She claims it's not because she's the smartest but because she does all the assigned work.

Can you imagine 6 hours a day in the classroom, 3 -4 hours of homework of calculus each night??  It makes me shutter. Calculus and I were not friends in college.  We tolerated each other but just barely.

I'm so proud of her I can barely stand it.  The added bonus of being first in the class gets her an extra $100 credit towards her textbooks.  Passing the class gets you $600 and knowing the cost of text books that extra $100 will come in very handy.

She also gets her tuition covered because her dad is a retired disabled veteran.  Nothing earth shaking, he was in Officers Candidate School and injured his back.  She should be able to get her tuition covered every year - as long as she and her father are speaking which could be somewhat questionable once she turns 18, but knowing my sister it WILL be taken care of.