My Hope...

Tomorrow

I hope you will

hop and dance

with the Big Bunnies

as Paul Edmund does

each and every day!

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Judy

(via jeff)

http://bit.ly/32KDvd

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Shifting Sands

One aspect of illness and its effects on one's body is the less than exciting changes in energy and mood. Translation: I am all over the board; loose cannon on deck. Not what I have generally felt to be "myself" in this nigh upon 80 years. And with chemobrain I cannot seem to get traction in terms of soothing myself. Or even remembering what I went through the day before.

This experience might be a tad fascinating if the process were not so variable or if I were capable of learning anything anymore or had the energy of a slug.

NOT.

I found my weekly visit with the kind folks at Genesis Center this Wednesday to be as soothing as ever. I got another dose of Gemzar and had a nice chat with Dr. Muldoon and Holli (my intelligent and engaging social worker, she is pretty too) et al. My pain is greatly reduced and I have had two relatively decent nights sleep which is also good for my spirits.

My good friend, Angelo (recall...he is the one who probably has made all my world travels possible and gave me all my IPOD music) told me something charmingly uplifting today. He had spilled some milk under his refrigerator and was down groveling around cleaning it up when it occurred to him how wonderful it was to have the experience of cleaning up the milk. Angelo just started laughing. Very true in a quixotic sort of way. Marvelous epiphany shared. And definitely not from a Zen Devotee.

By the way...have you contributed to Angelo's Lifecycle ride coming up in early June? I hear that Richard and Geri, my friends in SF, and my wonderful niece, Susan Thompson*, have. I will be spiritually there on his handlebars all the way! Some folks lives make mine look like a cakewalk and Angelo is doing his part to help them out. Our proxy! Do make the effort to open your tightly clasped change purse especially before 15 April...

www.tofighthiv.org/goto/angelo

To add one more good thing, Paul and one of my nephews, Pod, spent a day entertaining me.

Not that they meant to. Our lakeside luxury hacienda, a high-end spec home that provokes Paul's unrelenting scorn, came adorned with a worthless tit of a waste disposal unit/dishwasher. I think the dishwasher finally passed away sometime recently after having been used about a dozen times. The disposal can handle toilet paper with gusto but struggles with tapioca residue. Paul and the "boys" (they are about 70 yo) went to work upgrading.

Wonderful!!! Paul bought a replacement for our "lil' disposal that couldn't" that was large enough to grind tree stumps. All the plumbing had to be redone. Then, after hours and hours of dismantling the kitchen and attempting to put the culinary Humpty Dumpty back together Paul dropped a critical screw into some abyss. The resulting explosion of expletives was most colorful. I don't think any Laurel and Hardy/Cheech and Chong movie could have surpassed this happening for comedic splendor. And, the new dishwasher sounds like a garbage truck stuck in high gear.

All turned out well. The disposal works like a dream now and Paul and I just pop our our hearing aids whenever we run the dishwasher.

Update on QueenJanita. She and the evil god of nicotine continue to live apart. Her initial period of perpetual slumber has now turned into mean-as-a-junkyard-dawg with tears-behind-the-eyes (not directed at me; just her patients/children/husband/friends/colleagues). QueenJanita is fabulous and brave to be going through this withdrawal and I greatly appreciate what she is doing despite her travails. My dear daughter...I did the same thing in 1968. This, too, will pass and you will begin to feel more winded and vigorous soon enough. Hang in there darling!

QueenJanita as of Today

Back to me and my own travails...although I am considerably better than last week I continue to worry about my situation. Not so much whether I live or die...although, trust me, that is not an easy conundrum to contemplate...but all the mess that spreads out from my ongoing situation that is so burdensome to everyone around me. I suppose that given I am the one ill I cannot do a great deal about it but try and banish my futile fretting from my mind. Easier said than done.

My final wish for the day is that the family of my sister, Patsy, who recently died, are getting some rest themselves after a hard few weeks. We all feel her loss...

Seeking selective mental oblivion,
Judy (via jeff)

Me working on Mental Oblivion

* Susan is one of the most caring persons I know. When Patsy, her mother and my sister, became ill she dropped everything and did her utmost in every way possible to provide support, solve problems, run interference with the impossibly complex and opaque medical system and on-and-on. I recall when we bought our hacienda here, about 9 years ago, she and her father, Doyle, showed up on our doorstep and worked like slaves in a salt mine decorating the place and working miracles on the rocky Arkansas hard pan to create a lovely landscape. Paul and I sat with mint juleps in hand observing their astounding labors in the oppressive heat and feeling awe. Often we waved at them and sent them waves of telepathic strength. I am so thankful she is in my life! I know of no finer person.

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Gravitas...

The only flaw in my current reality is that it sucks. Even with my garland of pain patches and round-the-clock sprinkles of happy pills my body hurts and aches constantly. Especially at night. The demons of insomnia, agony and malaise haunt me through the dark hours. My opiates keep me stuporous during the day yet fail to blunt my anxiety.
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In short, I am depressed. And poor Paul is beside himself now that I am actually manifesting my illness in a real way. He is a wonderful man but, like many a fellow I know, is not the best equipped to stoically face what probably will be a tragic scene played out in technicolor before his eyes. Even before all of this he and I did not have a firm grip on the medications either of us is supposed to take and the other complexities whirling up about us like dust devils. Now all is lost in the miasma.

Herds of friends and relatives have suggested I sign up for hospice services. The scenes around here remind me of a scene from Beatrix Potter. I am Pigling Bland reborn surrounded by Alexander's. "Pigling Bland listened gravely; Alexander was hopelessly volatile." *

The thought of hospice so shocked me that I could not fully comprehend what was being suggested. My idea is that I would, forthwith, be thrown into an ambulance and confined to a cozy, light-filled room chock-a-block with soft stuffed animals and plastic flowers never to be seen again. I have now learned that the good folks doing hospice attempt to keep you at home.

Jeff has made the case a number of times that I go to San Francisco and have a doctor...him...on 24 hr call. He points out that SF has hospice services second-to-none and that he has ice water flowing through his veins; the latter just what you need when you, yourself, are having a magnificently bad set of hair days. Jeff remains calm and "just right" no matter what tempest is blowing. His logic is unassailable but I know Paul will have none of it and I am too tired to face the disruption, I suspect.

You may gather that I have been blasted from my perch amongst the Immortals. I have shattered into a shimmer of fireflies briefly flaring to create an insubstantial cloud in the form of MizFlounce. In pain. Still beautiful. But blazing less brilliantly, more fitfully.

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Enough glamour metaphors. Trust me, bottom line, it sucks sucks sucks!
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Dana Jennings, a fellow who has a very aggressive prostate cancer, writes about his experience of cancer. He wrote recently words I very much agree with.

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....."None of us would choose to have cancer. But getting this unexpected mortality check has deepened my appreciation of and connection to this life. Each moment holds out the promise of revelation.

.....Cancer urges us toward the essential in our lives, toward love and kindness and paying attention to the smallest, smallest detail. We suddenly understand that ice chips spooned into a parched mouth, that being able to simply urinate, are gifts, the kinds of ordinary gifts that make up our lives.

.....So, yes, Easter and Passover beckon with their vernal tales of exile, renewal and redemption. I found out exactly one year ago today that I had prostate cancer. But I won’t know for a time whether I’ve been passed over.

.....Whatever happens, though, I’m ready."

Back to the trenches...

Judy (via jeff)

* The Tale of Pigling Bland, p. 25 by Beatrix Potter

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Pigling Bland and Alexander do lunch

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