the grey girl's thoughts and jots along the road to self-sufficiency…

Monday, June 27^th’

Well I missed writing yesterday but I didn’t miss my exercises……got them done and I ate some yesterday too…..not really well but I did eat…..

Today I’ve yet to do my exercises they will have to wait until someone is home with me….. I have eaten some today and am feeling a little hungry again so that’s good.

I had oranges and my Ensure® for breakfast and am thinking of some leftover chicken soup for lunch……so today is a better day on the nutrition front……actually I ended up having oatmeal for lunch and an enchilada for dinner plus another Ensure®……so nutrition wise today was pretty good and I got my exercises done.

I think I will just journal for a few days before I post again there’s not a lot here so expect to hear from me in a couple of days.

Today I’ve done my exercises and added a new one to the routine with the tension band…..not doing so well on the nutrition part nothing has any appeal so far today……probably because the sushi I ate last night was so rich…..this will likely be a chicken noodle soup day instead but for right now I’ve had my Ensure® and that will suffice for now.

I’ve been tired today and slept quite a bit of the morning away I think I just needed the sleep healing up this abscess which is starting to look better. Now I’m restless for some reason …..cabin fever I guess……

I’m not sure I have a lot to say today so let’s get onto the gratitude exercise……today I am grateful that the worst of my neuropathy is on my left side and not my right. I don’t think I could stand being as disabled as the right side would have made me so I’m thankful it’s the left.

Well on to morning #3 of this journaling, I am just waking up and planning out my day…..things to take care of today such as my DMV registration and working on this will of mine.  I am having a bit of a problem writing the will as it is just so far off anything I’ve had to do lately it requires a whole change of gears. I bought myself the Wills & Trust Kits for Dummies book and am using that as a guide to getting this project completed. I may end up using legalzoom.com though.

Well I got through my exercises today and upped it to 15 reps per exercise so that is good……I managed to eat last night…..some salmon, green beans and rice so yesterday went well nutrition wise…..today I had some left over from dinner for lunch so that was good too…..apparently my lack of appetite is mostly due to my liver being so screwed up. The nurse says that is quite common. I am looking forward to some sushi for dinner tonight.

Man this blog sounds lame compared to what I was writing a year ago or so…..well almost a year now I started this blog last July…..but if it helps me to eat and exercise then lame it will be.

The nurse had a long chat with my girl and I yesterday about what it would be like at the end physically……that was a tough talk but I would rather know ahead of time than be surprised. Things like the liver controlling bleeding so I may get some blood where it shouldn’t be like in bowel movements or vomiting. Overall this doesn’t sound like a pleasant way to go.

But really I am more interested in the spiritual end than I am in the physical……that sense of peace that so many have described in near death experiences is what I am looking forward to…..there is no fear there and I welcome it when it comes my way…..I know I’m going “home”.

I’ve always left this blog open spiritually because I believe that’s the way the world should live….”home” is what you define it to be and if that is so then I have no fear of going “home” as it is someplace I dearly love to be.

We’re going to go back in time in the blog and add in an exercise I think is needed in my life right now………..that’s “what am I grateful for today” exercise….today I am grateful for my best gril…..my daughter…..I am grateful that my illness has drawn us closer together and that she is preparing herself for what is to come…..she knows how tough this will be but she faces it bravely and with grace for which I am thankful.

Well so an update was promised and here it is……my exercises didn’t go anywhere last night as I was much to numb and not feeling well…..stairs can be dangerous after all and I don’t need another fall.

I did start today with some simple exercises that didn’t involve the stairs and managed ten reps each of some curls for my arms with a tension band and some simple leg lifts against the wall so all is not lost for today, even if it is not as ambitious as I’d hoped for…..this is going to be a slow uphill battle to regain what I have lost……

Well there is one thing about starting at the bottom…..there is only one way to go from here and that’s up!

UP!

It’s been so many months since I played a song on here or wrote on here for that matter……time to gear this blog back up again and fight my way through this subtle depression that has got ahold of me.

So often I use the excuse that I don’t want to be negative on here so I don’t write but that’s not honest…..truth is I am not doing so well right now and it’s bothering me…..the neuropathy in my legs and my left side arm and hand are worse than they have ever been resulting in my needing help with a lot of everyday tasks that I could manage before but cannot now. Asking for help for me is frustrating. I don’t like to be dependent at all so this situation is frustrating and degrading to me.

To top off the neuropathy I have another of those annoying abscesses under my arm which is very painful and is leaving my right arm rather useless strenth wise. So another week of antibiotics so heal up the abscess, that will be good…..the side effects of running toxins through your body can last a while so I’ve discovered…..

Ok enough of the medical nonsense…..oh wait one more thing,…..my appetite…..i don’t have one so if I talk about finishing a meal like it’s a marathon race it’s because it is…..I just managed a whole taquito which is a lot for me so yay! I’ve been drinking an Ensure® every day too, so hopefully that will help pick up some, where I am lacking in nutrition because I’m not eating.

Ok…..while I was writing this I was thinking maybe it’s not a bad thing if the blog kind of serves as an exercise and nutrition journal in a way too…..it may be of use to someone going through the same situation I am. To redefine that situation I am a stage IV triple negative breast cancer patient, the cancer has moved to my liver. I’ve been hospitalized a few times in the past few months as shortness of breath and weakness took their toll. I stopped treatment a few weeks ago…..I guess a month or so now……I am at home on hospice care attempting to regain my strength now……hence this blog….I’m finding a blog to be what you need when you need it…..and right now I need a reminder and a reason to remember to do the exercises…..so this blog will be it……

Well…..it seems that waiting for the words to come back is not working as it’s been months now since the words have been there…..so I’m just going to write anyway…..

I’ve had the worst case of writer’s block ever…..there just hasn’t been anything to say that didn’t seem negative and I hate writing about the negative side of all this but my brother said something this morning that was so true it gave me pause to think about that. He said that even in the pain and the confusion that there is something there to be learning and that’s true so here I am again to try and make some sense of all this.

Medically I am stable right now……I have stopped all treatment as it was just making matters worse and not benefitting me in anyway. The chemo was making me increasingly weak and ill and unable to do anything so I stopped it. It’s been a few weeks since I did that and slowly I am beginning to feel a bit better. I plan to start a new exercise regime so that I can continue to build up my strength again to the point where I can get out there and do things with my girl…..this is difficult to get into doing.

I am on hospice care now and that is working out well…..I really like the nurse they assigned to me and she is taking good care of me. It has made things easier to deal with as well insurance wise as they handle everything.

So just a little update for today and my exercise plans so maybe that will help me get this done. I have problems getting up the stairs now so I just need to get out every night and practice with the stairs just now I can’t leave home till I can manage those stairs again as I live in a second story condo.

I will update this tomorrow as to how the exercises went…..this quite literally is one step at a time…..

Well….I suppose this is more than one step rolled into this post….but we’ll just call it one because it is the accumulation of several steps taken over the past few months…..

I’ve not been writing much at all the past couple months due to a few reasons I’m going to share with you today…….

First of all….January brought me more insurance snarls with my COBRA coverage….none of which were my fault…it resulted in my spending my days badgering folks via telephone and basically doing their job for them…..it also resulted in my going a month without treatment……several times I heard the consoling words….”yes mam….I can understand how stressful and upsetting this must be”……well…no…actually they can’t even begin to understand what it is to know that the insurance you paid so dearly for is not doing their job and is leaving you stranded when your life depends on it……I was sick for much of that time….going without treatment and without the meds I need to make life a little more comfortable and manage the resulting side effects of chemo…..

Needless to say….I had a rather uncomfortable January and part of February……then I had a few more medical difficulties….the last regime of chemo was not having any effect on the tumors in my liver so we have now started a new treatment protocol…but in the meantime my liver not functioning well caused a massive fluid buildup in my gut….I was admitted to the hospital for treatment to drain the fluid but unfortunately it has saturated the soft tissues rather than pooling in a spot where they can drain it off safely…..I feel good about the new treatment protocol and am very hopeful that this is the one that will turn the tide for me……so that’s it for my medical update…..

You know….sometimes when it seems as though you just can’t take it if one more thing goes wrong….that’s the time you just have to curl up…take care of yourself….and hold on to hope as though there were nothing else in the world….the hope that Love has a plan for your life and knows each step of the way….the hope that Love heals….the hope that Love is guiding every foot step along the path…..that is what I’ve been doing for the past few months….curled up…holding on….and hoping and trusting…..

I think I’m finally ready to write again…..

Zen quote of the day ~ No snowflake ever falls out of place!

“All safe and blessed ~ we shall meet at last!”

Nita

Hello everyone…my apologies for being absent….I’ve not been well the past few weeks….and I’m afraid I don’t write very well when I don’t feel well…I find it difficult to concentrate…..but…we’re going to give this a shot anyway….*smiles*….

So…big day tomorrow…Valentine’s Day….did you take care of those special people in your life?….I say people as I am one who gives to my child…..

Well…if you have yet to do something special for someone you care about….I have a suggestion….

 http://www.pawsandstripes.org/home.html

Give a gift to more than one person…the above is just a suggestion that I liked for Valentine’s Day…if you scroll down the page they have a special listed there….if I got this I wouldn’t even care if the card came late….better yet…get your own card…even better…make one….

I chose that organization and gift idea because of something someone mentioned to me….and I’d like to quote what he had to say about this organization….

“I watched them work, the dogs tap the soldier when something is coming that may trigger PTSD, and the soldier has to recognize that there is no threat and physically and verbally let the dog know he/she has the situation. It allows the soldier with severe PTSD to back into public to live a productive life.” ~ Robby Oliver

“I’ve trained dogs for about 20 years, and I couldn’t help following them around amazed at how those dogs worked. It’s very moving to watch.” ~ Robby Oliver

“It can be people, load noise, many things. But the dogs stay SUPER calm, and in just a second or two the soldier is calm again as well. It’s like watching a dance.” ~ Robby Oliver

Well…it would seem there is something to be said for puppy love….quite a bit actually….check them out and buy a unique Valentine’s Day gift!

Anyway…those are my thoughts on Valentine’s Day….Sincerely wishing every one of you a day filled with love….

Love….click here!

“All safe and blessed ~ we shall meet at last!”

Nita

Well…I had said that I would write a bit about some of my choices in my purse emergency kit and my reasons for those choices….I’ve been rather busy this past week and a half….I was out at my sis-in-laws again trying to accomplish things for the move and I kind of wore myself out and just needed to rest when I got back…you know…this really and truly is one step at a time….

So…my reasons behind some of the items I included……

 P.U.R.S.E. KIT #1  

The duct tape – well…other than the many obvious uses for duct tape that make it worth carrying, I choose in the end to include red duct tape…there is some white and silver and some print duct tape underneath the red…but in the end I decided red was the most useful colour to include….it’s most obvious and probable emergency use…temporary repair of a broken tail light….saving me getting pulled over and given a fix-it-ticket on a night…that if I have a broken tail light is probably already stressful. Also…should I be in a more rural situation in an emergency…red would be my second colour choice to carry after trail blaze orange…no point in getting lost if you have to cut cross country now is there…..

The knife, flashlight and the tin itself – pretty cutsie eh!?!….well actually these are both decent quality items that serve the purpose well…they are items I switched out and got more feminine versions of for a reason…I wanted the whole overall look of the items in my purse to be coordinated and cute…not because I am a bit fanatical about things matching (although I am)…but because if I am in an emergency situation with only the items in my purse to rely on….chances are good that I may be stranded with strangers…and the odds that at least one third to one half of those strangers would be male are probably pretty high…the chances that I would make the choice to stick with a group of individuals I don’t know in an emergency…well that’s almost a given…for starters I am handicapped…I can’t run…here in California an earthquake is the primary disaster to prep for…so there’s a good chance I could be literally stuck with a group of people and have no options whether I could run or not…and even if I could run…I know I am most likely to stay and try to help…because that’s who I am. Given that set of possibilities and my handicapped condition…there is one thing I would aim for in a situation like that…and that is to be underestimated…and hopefully ignored, if I feel that any of the individuals I am stranded with are a threat to my well-being. Let’s face it…pretty and cutsie are going to be of more help to me in a scenario like that than tacticool items that might lead someone to believe either A) that my skill level is beyond what it is…or B) that I may be knowledgeable enough to be a threat….I’d much rather be underestimated.

The magnetic buttons – well…I happened to have these sitting around in my sewing kit…I have a vintage sewing kit that I inherited and it came with a lot of cool extras…the magnetic buttons were in there…I stuck them to the bottom of the tin thinking there they might at least get used….the obvious use is their intended one for garment closure…they also make a neat little stand for a tea light candle giving it added stability…a tent flap closure on a makeshift shelter….handy for sticking a reminder note to the dash of my truck…or to stick a note to the exterior of my truck should I need to leave it…any other possible uses?…leave a comment with your idea….