I'm still here!

 Hi! You may remember me. I used to be a blogger, haha.

Sorry. Summer sends routine out the window in both good and bad ways. I'd like to think I'm getting more sleep, but I am pretty sure it's only that bedtime anad waketime have shifted further back. The city pool is open, so I've been walking the lazy river... well, duck-walking it actually, as it's less than three feet deep and I'm trying to keep my top half submerged to use the water pressure as compression to do my arm exercises. We went on vacation and are home again, so that's another cause of radio silence. And now there's Christmas in July party prep and a family get together and a summer check-in with students and we went to the drive-in movies and we've had probably a literal boatload of ice cream this summer (for sure a kayak, maybe a dinghy) and we're doing yardwork when we won't melt or sink- we've had some wild weather- and I'm going to PT twice a week and we are still painting the basement around all the other things. If summer is supposed to be a time of rest then I'm pretty sure we're doing it wrong.

But if it's time to squish in as much stuff as possible, then we are probably doing "fair to middling" as the saying goes! 

Thing Three gets his braces off this week and is working albeit grudgingly on his required driving hours. Band camp will start up soon which is one of his favorite weeks.

Thing Two is jobhunting and living off PBJ despite us having all the meats. Dunno what he'd have done as a caveman. We giggle that he is indistinguishable from our plastic skeleton friend- the one currently on the front porch in swim goggles and swim trunks- both in circumference and paleness!

Thing Three is plying tourists down South with caffeine and sugar at two different jobs and seems to be doing well despite the following text exchange:

Absolutely revolting start to the morning: smooshed a cockroach on the ground behind my counter and then five minutes later it appeared dragging its half-popped not-yet-corpse body along the edge of my counter.

To be fair, that's how a lot of people feel before coffee on a Monday morning. "I'm not dead yet."

Taking a stomp to the exoskeleton and then dragging all your innards up a vertical cliff is an entirely different ballgame...

I said "feel." "Must...get...to...Monday...morning...staff...meeting...nggghhh..."

Haha

***

Have a terrific Tuesday, everybody!

Oh shoot, I'm out of practice. Thanks to everybody who checked in about my blood clot! Poor Dada earned many gold stars for giving me all 60 Lovenox injections and now I'm back on twice daily Eliquis for the next few months. I have no movement restrictions so I'm going about business as usual, fighting through PT to get back range of motion and all the things. The party line seems to be "keep doing what you're doing and we will ultrasound the area this fall."

Me, shrugging, "okieeeedokieeeee."

AND today is my very last dose of the first year of a medication I'm to take for 3 years, so I'm a third done. Woohoo! My doc is pretty sure it's the main culprit behind my hair thinning, so it's looking like baby bird hair and no eyelashes or eyebrows for two more years. Good thing I didn't open the mascara I bought a year ago when it looked like they were finally making a comeback... it'll be all ready to go for back to school 2028! 

NOW y'all go and seize your week!

Keeping things interesting

 I used to be boring. Seriously. Before cancer, pre-2018, I'd never even had a cavity or a broken bone.

Now I have a blood clot.

I guess officially it is a DVT though it is in the upper inside of my beleagured right arm, not either leg. Never even thought about getting one there. Saturday morning I awakened to a more-swollen-than-usual hand and an arm that felt like it was someone else's but had been sewn onto my body. When I bent my elbow for a few seconds and then released, the skin went from pinkish-purple (not my usual skin tone) to yellow-white before returning to the shade of rose. 

Of course it was on a Saturday. Of course I'd just seen my oncologist and my PT gal on Thursday. So here's me, playing phone tag with the oncologist on call whom I've never met. He encouraged me to go to the closest ER but that one didn't have ultrasound availablility until Monday, so we rerouted to the hospital attached to where I had chemo, got my vascular ultrasound, and within 15 minutes of being finished was formally informed of the blood clot. However, the tech had already showed me on the screen the spot that didn't squish together under compression of the doppler wand, so I was unsurprised to get the news.

I have been on 2.5 mg of Eliquis as a preventative measure since my venogram on April 20th, with the hope that this wouldn't happen. I didn't really dream that it would be an issue, but here we are.

I discontinued the Eliquis and have been upgraded, lucky me, to twice daily injections of Lovenox for a month. On Saturday, the hospital gave me a dose and a half, I think, to tide me over until my prescription was filled. However, the pharmacy was out of stock and won't have it until today, so yesterday it was back to the hospital for another dose to get me through until I can pick up the meds. Thankfully, the ER doc from further away coordinated with the closer one so I was able to get yesterday's dose without the longer drive. I love it when a plan comes together.

Poor Dada had no idea what he was getting into when he vowed, "in sickness and in health" and probably never dreamed that he would be giving me shots in my belly, the outsides of my thighs, and the back of my left arm since the right is off limits due to the lymphedema. Once again, I am more medically interesting than I want to be!

Just checkin’ in

 I dunno what all y’all are doing, but I am spending more time shimmying (to music popular when I was in junior high) atop my rickety step ladder in the basement than I am painting. 

For those who are curious, that would be Guns & Roses, Aerosmith, U2, and so forth. Tomorrow I might switch it up and go way back so I hear Solomon Burke’s “Cry to Me”…

For those of you curious about the other part, it’s Dragonfly by Behr paint, which is a gray-green that I hope will go well with the tile we have yet to purchase. I’m doing the cutting in, the boys can enthusiastically (or not) roller the rest. I have just enough of my Dad in me that I want to be precise so I have to keep reminding myself that:

A) I have one good, non-dominant arm and a less good dominant arm in a compression sleeve with a fun knee sock over it to protect it from paint. I cut the toe off so it’s working very well! I had PT yesterday and the gal said, “hey, you’re already warmed up and it won’t take me 15 minutes just to work you loose enough to do anything with! Can you pant before you come every time?”

B) It’s a basement. We will not be hosting the Queen. 

I did renew a pool pass which I do intend to use, but as the nights here have still been in the 50s I am not ready to get into a pool for the early morning lazy river walks yet… maybe next week. 

So, back to the stepladder!

And happy birthday to Mama Dean! Have a great day!

Blathering on

 Sometimes I really do forget I have a blog. Other times it's just a busy life season. Once in awhile it's both!

In the month of May, I've had about half a dozen physical therapy appointments and an OT check in on top of wrapping up the school year. Thing Three performed in both a band concert and the Memorial Day parade. I've had two follow up appointments from last year's docs, some dry needling, made a trip to my hometown for a weekend, snuggled babies at church, wrapped up one preschool class with a zoo field trip and an evening spring program, and this week is Thing Three's last week of school while I try to fit in all the online training I need to have done before the end of June. There was also a visit to a retirement home with the preK crowd in addition to my school fighting off yet another wave of germs. Yeesh. No wonder I'm tired!

Arm/shoulder-wise, things are... meh. I'm wearing my compression glove and sleeve daily, I'm doing my PT exercises more often than not, I'm still seeing more swelling than I'd like, but this may just be my new normal. I don't know how we're to know if the vein stayed open since the venogram without imaging, but none has been ordered yet and the follow up appointment isn't until the middle of next month. I'm wearing the reductor kit at night while I sleep, pumping in my cool Darth Vader vest and sleeve* daily and now have a mushroom-shaped pad? pocket? pouch? thing that I wear with the stalk end tucked inside a compression bra and the shroomy end sticking into my armpit. The thinking is that it will help bust up some scar tissue and increase range of motion by loosening all that up. Jury is still out. I've worn it to bed twice. I think I'll try alternating that with the reductor kit since when I do the kit then my hand is swollen in the morning but if I do nothing then this tightness isn't going to be helped even passively... I don't know. I now better understand being over something even while in the midst of going through something!

* Funny story- I was also issued a pair of shorts that attach to the pump because it's easier to order them and get it all at once than to add pieces later. I figured I'd never need the shorts, but whatever. Then I spent an afternoon vigorously yanking out honeysuckle bushes, including one extra hard yank which landed me on my "butt-ducks" as our kids used to say. I'd already been only a foot off the ground because I was using my legs in a squat instead of my back, but I still sat there laughing at myself for a minute. The next day, my butt-ducks and rear thighs were so tight and whiny that I thought, "hey! I can use the shorts!" So for two days that's what I did and, boy, if you've never had your butt-ducks rhythmically squeezed and released, it's really something. I don't know what, but it's something! I can just hear my Grammy and Gramps laughing at me!

I have little news to report on progress made in the basement since the death of the sump pump. We are looking at tile flooring because we know it's only a matter of time before the new sump pump also croaks and we have zero desire to rip out carpet and padding yet again. For the tile we have a first and second choice, we think. We have not taken measurements yet. We also have paint swatches since we were never wild about the color down there in the first place and it's been... well... this fall will be our 12th year here, I think, so we figured we might as well paint before we do the floor.

None of that was on the Bingo card for 2026. In fact, I have paint swatches taped up in the foyer because that's the room I'd painted most recently and it has held up the least well. When I showed Dada my colors, he sniggered and said it was exactly what was already on the walls and that at least I was consistent. I'd be offended except for the fact that he's right; they are almost identical. *sigh*

Thing Two made it home safely from his welding training this semester and has become a bump on a chair at the tall table. His basement bunker is out of the picture, so even though he's still not getting fresh air or sunshine, he's at least visible. Until he turns sideways, anyway, and then he disappears. He's so skinny! Miracles happen every day, and the proof is that my 20 year old Honda, Pepe the Pilot, survived the entire excursion of getting him to and from class daily through winter in Cleveland, involving both extremely rutted back roads and freeways of crazy drivers. Thank you for all the diligent prayers- they worked!

Thing One is working two jobs and having the typical summertime computer issues of something deciding to quit working and never mind that it has 8 years of art on it. Pshaw. Why should it boot up and do its job? This is in addition to whatever maintenance issues the jobs themselves run into. I believe the quote I heard was, "why is it whenever something happens we always have to tear out a wall??" Apparently when someone puts a coffee pot under a leak and then never checks it again... well, let's just say that we have all been introduced to our friend Gravity and that it doesn't bode well. Otherwise, having fun with the housemates and living the dream.

And we still have Boooooosley, who turned 9 on Cinco de Mayo, is no smarter than when we brought him home at 4 months old, and will probably live forever. Loudly. Ridiculous.

I hope all of you experience a GENTLE transition from spring to summer- goodness knows we all have whiplash here from Ohio being wishy-washy at best about what season it thinks it is- and that the end of the school year brings a routine in which you can breathe, and I don't just mean allergy relief. Take good care of you and revive your spirits. 

What's that saying, again?

 Life is what happens when you're making other plans. Is that the right one? Or maybe I mean, "no good deed goes unpunished."

Over spring break I scrubbed all our kitchen cabinets. Then a sealed, unopened jar of honey fermented and leaked on our counter behind some other items and we had ants.

I scrubbed the walnut floor in our library, then the basement sump pump died, flooded the basement, and now the basement stuff is all sitting on my clean library floor.

I surrender! I get it- no more cleaning!