He really IS my child

 A long, long, LONG time ago, whilst working at camp, I ruminated to my future husband and another male coworker that I'd figured out the problem between men and women. The other coworker quipped, "you mean there's only one?" 

The problem is that women have so many thoughts so quickly that we edit them internally to bring the pertinent information to the conversation, which explains how we get from "eggs" to "shoes" in our heads but leaves the fellows completely stymied because we didn't fill in all the points in between. If we did, we would NEVER stop talking and every explanation would overwhelm all male sensors. The next time a woman says something that doesn't make any sense to you, know that it does make sense to HER, and probably any of her girlfriends in the area, and question whether you have the time to go through a point by point explanation, because she CAN give you one. I promise. 

To my amazement, Thing Two had a moment like that this morning. He'd asked me if we had an unopened grape jelly as he'd finished a jar yesterday. Never mind the facts that A) it should have been on the grocery list days ago if he was that low and B) he should have looked for it when he finished yesterday's jar to confirm we did indeed have another. 

I told him to get crackin' on his other morning jobs to get him out the door on time and that I'd find it. I found it, brought it out, and handed it to him. He states, in his morning voice, which is lower than low:

I dunno why we hung people for witchcraft cuz it's clearly useful.

I think I blinked twice and kept going with the corralling of Thing Three who was moving slower than molasses (these last few days of school are killing us. Just killing us. We will never make it past Memorial Day.) 

It wasn't until I sat down to confirm his above quote that he gave me the second half which tied it all together:

I dunno how else Mom found the grape jelly.

Aha! He mastered the "say the first part, skip the rest, and say the last!" WooHOOOOOOOO! 

***

Also, let's go, people. I've only received one guess as to what he purchased in a gift shop in DC. 

NOT a yellow version of the White House, but good guess!

Y’all are gonna think all i blog about is butts…

 You know how when a toilet flushes oddly you make a mental note of it whether or not you follow up on it. I should have followed up on it. This happened, right into our basement:

Disgusterous, as they say in Roald Dahl's The BFG.

                            Then this also happened: 

                     

My mother texted that we were “literally getting crap as the forecast”- see how prescient she is? Yes, Mom, but not in the way you were imagining…

Thankfully, God is so good that the Weather even held off until we were hosing all the segments off before we returned the rented auger thingie (can you tell I possess zero mechanical knowledge and vocabulary? This should have been obvious based on my previous post about removing the mower deck from the tractor). Liam was completely delighted that it was called an electric eel, haha!

                                      

PSA for today: always, always clean the hair out of your drain when you’re done bathing or showering. Granted, we also found Easter grass (which we don't even use) and small roots, but it looked like the main culprit was hair. 

Now we just gotta figure out the leaking into the basement part. We *think* it was only backwash from the overloaded drain but as there's no good way to check, we're not 100% sure. Someone needs to invent an endoscope for drains that people can rent!

Happy ending. Everything has been draining and flushing fine. We're making an appointment to have our septic tank drained just in case. Another PSA is your friendly reminder to not flush anything that doesn't come out of you yourself and TP. That's it. Flushable wipes aren't. Not when it comes to a septic system. Tampons also, sorry ladies, are a no-go. Thankfully our children are all old enough to be well past the "let's see if this fits down the toilet" stage as documented by Bill Cosby, to which my brother and I used to laugh ourselves silly.

All's well that ends well. Ha. Ha. Ha. 

A prodigal finds a new home

I don't know about your kitchen, if you are like us in acquiring a variety of mugs or if you prefer your coffee accoutrements to match, but this is some of our collection. 

The far right one, asking "now where did I put my coffee" is from my camp friend, Kimmy. Boy, does she know me or what? The back of it reads, "Wallet? Phone? Keys?" 

The far left one is from Square One Art, which takes kid art and turns it into all sorts of fun items like flags, mouse pads, magnets, mugs, etc. Damon drew the giraffe and I adored it so I bought one for me and his giraffe-obsessed aunt Muggin. 

The "BEWARE, not a morning person" one was an off-to-college-with-you gift from my mother. It's survived a bazillion moves and I haven't busted it yet, unlike the Lion King one she also sent to college with me.

The pink one declaring, "You are a courageous woman" came from my sweet sister-in-law, Jana, during chemo. I had many mugs of hot tea through the chemo process and each time I used it I felt so loved.

The insulated mug with the candy hearts with sayings all over them is from my dear friend Kathy whom I've had the privilege of praying with for, wow, around 15 years now!

And the one beside that with the cherry blossom is a tea infuser, the first one we've added to our collection as we've discovered how much fun one can have with loose teas. Zita has a matching one, completely coincidentally, which makes me laugh!

No, the above photo is not how much coffee I consume in the morning, thank you very much. I just wanted to show off my new coffee mug and his friends. See the little guy, second from right, with the blue stripes? He's a prodigal mug. 

Dada and I were on a Trash Bash, which is exactly what it sounds like: we live in Ohio where the wind gets a bit full of itself and often recyclables which were in fact tossed into the proper recycling bin blow back out and go adventuring unsupervised. Therefore, there is plenty of trash in the farm fields, yards, and ditches around our corner of Ohio. It looks terrible and hurts my hobbit/wood elf heart. 

Dada, who loves me and has earned his mansion in heaven for putting up with my Shenanigans all these years, agreed to help me clean some of it up since we were out walking anyway. 

I hereby interrupt the original story to brag on this man a little bit. Through a lot of self-denial and self-discipline as well as a bunch of exercise, he has lost over thirty pounds this winter! I'm so proud of his dedication, especially in quarantine, especially in a house where there are Oreos. And ice cream. His personal Kryptonite. Way to go, babe! You are doing great!

So we were on one of our walks and had three grocery bags full of recyclables, some assorted pieces of trash, two glass beer bottles, and I spied a poor, sad coffee cup in the dirt. Did he fall of the roof of someone's truck as they accelerated past the intersection? Did he take a tumble from a tractor? How did he get here? 

Well, I couldn't just leave the little guy there, so I brought him home, gave him a good soak, a quick scrub, and a run through the dishwasher. When he was shiny and clean I poured some fresh, hot coffee into him to test him out and voila, he has a new home and a purpose. And friends. Now, where to put him?

As we were lugging home all of our trash/treasures, I kid you not, we spotted a bald eagle soaring over the field across the street from us. I jiggled the bags and chirped how none of this stuff we were hauling would now end up in the bald eagle or in his prey, and I think that's just about the best thanks we could possibly have gotten!

Yes, we drink out of Mason jars around here. Yes, that's a rubber Duckie in with our glassware. Have I blogged about that already? Hmmm. I'll have to investigate while you wait in suspense! 

 

Well, I'll be!

 

I'm not sure how the challenges work via an Apple Watch. Is it individual and random? Is it individual and based on previous totals? Is it the same for everyone who wears one? I haven't asked another real person, so your guess is as good as mine. Here was my December challenge (I know it's tiny, click on it so you can see it larger)- you can see I'm not quite there but I'm so very close. 

I know 2020 brought a lot of ridiculousness with it and I understand that that's putting it nicely for some of you who have suffered very real losses. I don't mean to downplay any of that. There were also opportunities, such as being home with our kiddos for pretty much nine months straight... 

Well, okay, that clearly falls under more than one category and it's not always "opportunity" and I feel perfectly justified in acknowledging that. I'm fairly sure anyone with children would admit that there are times when you absolutely need to get away from them and that does not indicate that you're a bad parent or that they're bad kids. It proves you have a healthy mental outlook, I think! Save our Sanity!

2020 provided me with the previously unthinkable: 

I became a runner. 

That is, in the sense that a runner = one who runs. 

I'm still staggered that I'm talking about me, the one who absolutely loves the 0.0 bumper stickers that proudly claim, "I don't run" in the face of all the just-as-proud 13.1 and 26.2 stickers. I'd wanted one of those stickers for Pepe but never got around to it and now I can't because this fall I started running.

Some of you who've known me forever are probably like, "shut the front door! What!? Since when? What changed!?"

I was thinking about that today on my walk in the 30 degree weather and I decided it was a combination of things.

One, the aforementioned many months in the house with These People that I Live With. It is nice to have an outlet that they're not terribly interested in.

Two, I figured since it's more of a "when I get covid" instead of an "if I get covid", I might as well have my lungs in the best possible shape going into it. I know exercise does good things in that department, and I really do feel like now my lungs are as strong as they were when Dada and I were training for the Bike to the Bay in 2017, pre-cancer. That's exciting and gratifying.

Three, I've always loved going for walks yet I haven't been a fan of running since I was a kid. I felt having to do laps in gym class and forced track and field days took the fun out of running for pleasure like on-the-spot races with friends. 

But I always liked the idea of being a runner. Except that meant I'd have to run. Ugh.

Four, I ran across an editorial about someone who'd declared she would never be a runner. Then she stopped to think about that and decided that she was limiting herself, boxing herself into a "never." The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why I (or anyone) would do that. It was kind of the kick in the pants I needed.

 I decided to try it. I thought I'd probably fall down dead in a ditch (there are LOTS of ditches in our neck of Ohio. TONS.) after just a little while. Sometimes Dada graciously went with me and sometimes I went alone. I bought new shoes. Now I had to do it, right? Spent the money, now just go do it. 

So I did. Sometimes it gets easier, though I haven't experienced that "runner's high" yet- pretty sure that's a myth or else I'm not running long enough. Sometimes it feels like someone is winding the sidewalk ever longer and that I will never, ever make it to that stop sign, but I can make it to that driveway or maybe even that fire hydrant or, now that it's Christmas, that blow up Buddy the Elf. Sometimes I can do a whole strip and sometimes I plan to die quietly on the golf cart trail so someone will find my body sooner rather than later. 

I've discovered that my legs seem to understand what's going on and for the most part they are very cooperative. They could keep on doing their thing without much input from me.

Which is great because sometimes the aforementioned lungs are like, "what the (insert pirate-y language here) does she think she is doing? This again? Oh for the love." 

You wouldn't think breathing would be the hard part. Sometimes I just feel like there's not enough air, which is ridiculous as I'm outside and you can't get any more air than that. Apparently there are things to learn about breathing, who knew? I'm eternally grateful that God created us with lungs which would breathe on their own when we forget to. Thank goodness. I'm still figuring out the whole breathe-in-for-this-count-hold-breathe-out-for-that-count thing. It'll take awhile. I now know why runners rarely look like they're having fun. They're busy trying to breathe, to not die, to remember where the mean dogs are, to watch for the slippery parts of sidewalks, to figure out where to cross the street. Clear your head, my foot! Again, good thing legs know what to do because if I had to tell them on top of everything else that poor Brain is attempting, we'd be stopped. 

I've only done a dozen runs in 2020. And see, that right there is what I'm up against- myself. Why did I write "only" when I should be proud that I've done a dozen of something I'd sworn I'd never do? Sometimes it's really hard to get out of your own head. Days when I can't run the same segment I'd done in a previous run are very irritating; "why is this so hard!? I did it last time!" My mom has called me the least competitive person she knows, and that's probably true when it comes to myself vs others. All my competition comes to a head with myself, just like all my self esteem issues stem from "will I measure up" and "will I be good enough" vs "do I look okay?" It's why breast cancer treatment wasn't as hard in a lot of ways as writing a book or painting would be. Hair comes and goes; I'm okay with or without. Same with boobs. I didn't mind mine until they started being sneaky, and I'm fine without them. Plus, there are two distinct benefits of running with a flat chest: no bounce and no under-boob sweat! 

I've discovered I'm also a fair-weather runner, which should surprise exactly none of you, and if it's below 50 degrees then a run ain't happenin' because I'll possibly be wearing leggings under my pants as it is. So I go for walks. I've figured out a relatively safe, slightly over two mile loop and now a three mile one as well. And yes, we have parks with trails, but I think I'll stick to sidewalks and streets first before I go crazy with the tree roots, walnuts, and wet leaves underfoot. 

All that to say this: try something new in 2021. I don't know that the weather will cooperate at all for me to run again until maybe March. Maybe. But I can walk. I was thinking today about how my Grammy loved tramping through the woods and fields, and here I am, rambling about, trying to get my miles in. I'm sure when warmer weather rolls around that I'll find many things I'd rather be doing than exercising (reading, for one), but maybe my watch or one of my apps will have a challenge that sounds doable that I won't hate doing. 

And who knows? Maybe I will learn to love it.

So tell me: what have you put off trying because 2020 has been a dumpster fire? What's holding you back? What are you waiting for? If you need permission, here's mine: 

Go try it. You're allowed to hate it. You're allowed to quit. But if you give it a shot, you might surprise yourself and everyone around you. And we all want someone to cheer on these days. So go for it! And tell me about it so I can check on you. 

Happy New Year!  

How does YOUR belly button smell?

 I feel like I may have already talked about this, and I also feel like it should have a may-not-be-suitable-for-adults rating, but my mother is a fan especially of parenting tales, so here goes.

Thing 3, who is ten years old (so tuck that away for future reference), was goofing around at the dinner table. He's developed a habit of holding on to his feet and then smelling his hands, especially while watching TV. Naturally, we correct him when he's doing this and yes, my mind also immediately went to the SNL skit with Mary Katherine Gallagher putting her hands in her armpits when she's nervous and then sniffing them. I keep telling this kid that they're not going to smell any different from the last five minutes (or five times he's tried it). He begs to differ. I don't want to know.

Anyway, he informed our dinner table, "did you know that when you stick your finger in your belly button and smoosh it around and smell it that it smells like poop?"

Some of us at the table thanked our lucky stars that we didn't have company and considered moving to the Yukon. Or Dubai. Or anywhere other than with present company. 

Another of us, who shall remain nameless, thought about it for a moment, checked their own belly button, and then stated, "I have to disagree with that."

So Mom, aren't you so glad you asked?

Please, all of you, send us better conversation topics than "what does your belly button smell like?" Send help!

This is what an EEG looks like

I've been musing about a game we played at camp called, "I Have Never." You're supposed to tell the truth. Everyone is in a circle with an It in the center. It declares, "I have never _____" and they fill in the blank with something they've never done. Whoever else that applies to also leaves their spot in the circle and everyone scurries to find an open spot/chair/whatever and whoever is left becomes the new It. 

I used to say, "I have never been to Disney." It was true. I didn't go until I was married with three kids when my sweet hubby's whole family went together. 

Now I can no longer say, "I've never had an EEG."

I am smiling under the mask (made by the wonderful Annmarie) as my kind, chatty tech Christy prepped me. It involves me doing... absolutely nothing other than coming in with clean hair, haha! My kind of test! No fasting, no needles, WOOHOO!

She told me exactly what to expect before she even started fastening things to me. First off, she measured my head and figured out where she'd need to put the electrodes. She used a waxy crayon-like marker to denote where all the connections would be made. Then she swabbed me with a cold cleanser of some sort and started attaching the sticky parts with a paste. She said they used to use, back in the day, something similar to rubber cement which was awful to get cleaned off and made it look like you had dandruff for three days post-test. I'm always glad for advances in the medical field, haha!

So here's me all stickered up with my wires attached. The two on my chest are electrodes for my heart measurements. Dada mused that it looked like a nightmare to untangle and she laughed and commented that, "yes, it can be a spaghetti nightmare if you're not careful when you're cleaning them!"

For this particular EEG, which happens in the sleep lab, for the first several minutes all I had to do was open and close my eyes a few times and then keep them closed. What a great test for a mom to have to take! Christy even told me that if I fell asleep that it would be perfectly fine. She had me relax completely for several minutes in the quiet dark, I suppose to establish a baseline. While I was relaxing, I rambled around camp in my mind. I started up the hill at the pool where I realized how many pine needles there were on the ground as I waited for everyone to collect their towels and make it out of the pool house to join their group. Then we roamed, some campers sprinting, some lallygagging down to the camp store, and from there my memories took me into the kitchen where I relived some fun times washing pots and pans with Mot, one of the only times I really got to spend with him before he got married, and with Dan Dan the Marine Man as he sang alternate lyrics to the "Chicken Dance" which had me crying with laughter, and with Renee as she exclaimed, "the Hobart ate my scrubbie!" 

I could have reminisced all day, but that part of the test finished. 

Next, she used a strobe light that strobed at different speeds for a few minutes with breaks in between. My eyes were to stay closed, thankfully. Even in the movies, like "The Incredibles", this kind of lighting is not my favorite, but is doable. 

The final part of the test is hyperventilating. For three minutes, I was to breathe very deeply. That's a little harder than just sitting there, but I kept thinking, "I've been exercising; I can do this!" She told me, "you're doing great. One more minute!" At that point I knew I could finish, though I did feel fizzy, not dizzy. 

The last part is peeling and unwinding everything back off and then, bless her heart, she gently scrubbed off all the paste with nice, warm water. We giggled about how getting your hair washed is always the best part of a hair cut, and then she really laughed when I told her I appreciated that she didn't just use Mom Spit to clean me up, though I guaranteed it would work! She said she was pretty sure that would violate a whole lot of protocol, but also agreed that it would be effective.

Then she towel dried my hair in a rubby-rubby style that reminded me of how Grandmama used to do it when I was small enough to have that done! I felt like a fluffy baby chick when she was finished with me, haha! She walked us back out and wished us well and that was that! 

Overall, nothing to it. I'd go back. ;) 

 

The continued port saga

*Advisory warning: there are photos within that may cause embarrassment when viewed in the company of others. Or not. Viewer discretion is advised. Sorry, Mom.*

Of course, within twenty minutes of hitting the "Publish" button to blog the other day, I received a phone call. It was my surgeon. He informed me that in his 20 years of practice he's never had to move a port, that patients have previously received radiation just fine wherever the port may lie, and that he doesn't feel it needs to be removed while another is inserted on the other side. He also said he would do the surgery for me if I wanted to do it, but he didn't recommend it. While the odds are small, there is still the risk of potentially puncturing and collapsing a lung. He'd await my decision.

Then the radiation doc called right after that to give his two cents. His concern is that I would forego a "simple surgical procedure" which would lead to potentially more skin damaging issues longer term. Because the skin over the port is raised and thereby closer to the radiation field, the uppermost parts of the skin would receive higher doses (I think?) than the sides. In other words, if my skin was flat as it would be without a port, it would all receive the same amount of radiation. Leaving the port in makes it uneven, but the physics team can tweak whatever it is that they do. Plus, if there is any metal in the port itself, the metal can "scatter" the rays so that it isn't hitting directly where it's suppose to hit. I guess. We're not talking super hero laser beams; still, he wants his treatments to be the best they can be. 

"So you're in a gray area. Can we do it successfully with your port staying on the right side? Yes. Neither of us would ever sacrifice the big picture of treating your disease for something unsafe. We can do it either way. It's your choice."

"Thanks a lot."

We both laughed.

I told him I'd think about it.

I did ask what the odds were of me ending the 33rd treatment  without any skin damage regardless of moving the port. He said they'd be there for me the entire way through treatment to talk about skin care and to be sure to let them know about little things before they turned into big things. 

I also called my oncologist who's been with me since the beginning. She said she didn't see a need for me to have the port moved.

In the end, after polling my nurse friends, badgering poor Dada, relentless texting to other friends, and a phone call with my mother, I decided that if it was truly a big issue, the radiation doc would have said, "you have to have it moved, period." And then that would have happened. Since he said that the team can work around it, I'm opting to go that route to avoid an extra surgical procedure. I suppose time will tell if it was the right choice or not. Who knows if insurance would have even deemed it "medically necessary". 

Lest you think badly of my radiation doc, please understand that he has transferred into my team very recently. The doc I would have had at this juncture has left and I'd never met him. We had met with one of his partners who was wonderful and very thorough and exceedingly kind. My new doc told me that from now on he will be requesting that ports go on the non-cancer side, so this is a big deal to him and I'm confident that he would have brought this up had he been here as part of my team from the get-go.

Tomorrow I go in for the simulation and I can't wait to tell you all about it! 

Today is 4 weeks exactly since my BMX (bilateral mastectomy- not dirt bike) and I've noticed yet another Thing I Should Have Figured Out Had I Really Thought About it: when your arms are spread out (think taking a selfie) or up, your chest spreads as well. When your arms are down at your sides, your chest relaxes. My surgeon had told me my arms would most likely be spread out during surgery, so guess who looks super flat when her arms are out (and yes, I'm sucking the belly in lest anyone get distracted from the matter at hand)? 

And guess who looks concave when her arms are at her sides? 

It isn't bothering me, but it makes me snigger a bit, especially when I flex. To be brutally honest, I don't miss the boobs. Not at all. I am loving being braless, though today is the first day I haven't had either a compression shirt or an ACE bandage on. It's a little chilly, but I don't have nipples to give away the fact that I'm cold. Ha! Sorry, Mom. I'm reveling in the soft T-shirts friends have showered me with and I'm realizing why so many ladies in my online community love their camis up against their skin.

Anyway, I am happy. The areas around the drains are still a little itchy but they're mostly healed. The actual incisions look great.  

Left side

Right side

I certainly never dreamed m'boobs (or lack thereof) would be on the Internet, but there we are. I've been told by more than one person that this blog has been recommended to someone who is on a breast cancer journey themselves and I'm so humbled that God would use my story to hopefully help someone else feel less alone or less afraid. I also hope that they are seeing that life really will go on despite the diagnosis, the chemo brain, the impending radiation burns, the surgical scars, the annoying drains, the less than desirable side effects, and everything else cancer would like to throw at us. Yes, there are tears and tantrums, but overall life is good! I am blessed. To all of you who are along for the ride, thanks for being here and thanks for being you. 

PS The phone just rang. It was the radiation office calling to let me know I need to have a pregnancy test done tomorrow morning before the simulation takes place later. It never ends, hehe. If you can't find me, odds are good I'm in a doctor's office somewhere! 

Have a great week!