Where to Start a Post

When I had my knee replacement, an online journal was kept chronicling the journey from start to recovery.

With every post there was a clinical post about the status and the progress. The emotions was also posted.

I'm beginning another journal of a journey I will be taking. I don't know how long this journey will last. Right now we are in the discovery phase. My mammo showed a suspicious area. I was called in for a biopsy. Just the biopsy caused great anxiety; I've done a post on that. Yesterday the results were delivered. The biopsy show malignant cells.

The daughter was with me when we met with the doctor. The husband was in Oklahoma on a job. The daughter and I sat in that office, already warned by the receptionist when she presented us with appointments for a CT that would have to be done the next day, which is today. We were escorted into an office, handed a box of tissues each and silently we let the tears flow. The shock to both was evident. Few words were spoken.

Soon the doctor appeared with his news and the tests that would have to be done, an appointment scheduled with an oncologists and we were on our way.

April and the childen visited tonight. The husband started his long drive home. He didn't want me to be alone. I was grateful to hear him unlock the door at midnight.

This first day of the official news felt like the very last day of my life. I couldn't imagine doing anything else but this cancer and how does one do cancer?  As the days past, we will make some adjustments and learn to live with this as long as possible. After the tests today, we will know more of what we are dealing with and in a few days, I expect we will pick up interests and daily life, a little changed but hopefully with some routine previously known.

Right now it's just the unknown, the fear and the changes that are imminent. Nobody likes change.

I'm going to get dressed and ready for the CT scan this morning. To be continued...

A Rabbit Sunday

Oh, I had plans to do a little housework. I thought I might make it to a theatre; I didn't even check to see what was playing. Instead I smoothed the sheets out on my bed from the night's sleep and tuned my iPad to some You Tube videos. I drifted in and out of sleep as the You Tube videos played on. At least I can rewind them and not miss anything.

Earlier I called the daughter and apologized about my apoletic fit she witnessed when she showed me the colors she was choosing to paint her living room, hallway and kitchen. As the husband says "It's not your house." As usual he is right of course so we made plans to go back to Stein's and I would stay out of her way, keep my eyes tightly closed along with my mouth and let her choose her paints.

This weekend is "no sales tax" weekend. While she was picking paint colors I went to the garden section and bought a Mandarin Orange tree and some cleaner for my granite counters. We loaded up all our stuff and stopped by the Sonic to get Carrie a chocolate sundae.

April was left off at her house, the new lawnmower she loaded into the trunk of my car for storage in my shed and Carrie continued the journey with me to my house.

She was excited about the harness I had bought for Bugsy yesterday. I told her she would have to wait until I unloaded the tree and the lawn mower and emptied the car of all electronics. We dare not leave anything of value in the cars parked on the driveways. You never know who might drop by after midnight for some of their own kind of shopping.

We are ready. Ready to harness up the bunny. I had already warned Carrie that she would not be walking Bugsy in the neighborhood. He would have to get used to his harness and leash.

She held him by the ears, raising his feet barely off the floor while I snugged the ties around his chest and moved on to the buckles around his hind quarters. Bugsy was calm. We snapped on his leash and Carrie set him down on the floor. For the first few seconds Bugsy was calm and a bit curious. Within a few more seconds Bugsy was off and running with Carrie trying to hang on to his leash. It slipped out of her hand and Bugsy kept racing around the kitchen table until he caught his leash in the leg of the table and mid hop he was jerked backward and sprawled out on the tile. He was screaming. I was screaming which stopped Carrie's laughter. She had no idea the bunny was frightened and not playing.

Quickly, I picked him up and had her hold him close to calm him while I unhooked his harness which was now pulled over his head and eyes.

We will have a better plan next time. Carrie has been informed that the bunny will wear his harness minus the leash until he gets comfortable with it. We won't try to walk the bunny around the table and chair legs and all of this will take some time.

Hearing the bunny squeal in fright was horrible. I couldn't just dump him back in his pen so I put the bunny gates up and got his litter box for him and let him loose in the dining room. I'm waiting for a chair to fall over from him chewing on stuff in there. We weren't going to let the bunny run free around the furniture any more because of his constant gnawing on things.

Poor Bugsy. I'll baby him for a bit longer then take him back to his pen.

Phones, Pet Stores and Play

I paced myself yesterday. I didn't want to over extend myself. Though I noted the floors needed vacuumed and the beds made, I paced myself. So slowly did I pace, I never got around to do anything.

 

Waiting till the stores opened, after getting all spiffed up, eyeliner in place and lips brightened with 'Cherries in the Snow", I headed across town in the Marquis. A red convertible Corvette caused me to snap my head around as it passed by me. It was 56 degrees and the blond female driving it had the top down. My car's heater hadn't yet started blowing warm air on me and as enclosed as I was in that behemoth, I was cold. I surmise her convertible was a new acquirement and Spring wasn't worth waiting on. I remember when I got my convertible. In the month of November for a few hours every day it was warm enough to drop the top and I did. The next year arrives and the top stays up, the car stays parked and me and the Marquis strike up our relationship with each other for the remainder of the year.

 

The husband is still sitting on a rig in Lindsay, Oklahoma and he expects to be there through this coming week. We don't mind, neither of us. His job consists of him sitting in a mobile home on location watching the drilling crew put pipe down the hole and if something pressures up or loses pressure, he scuttles outside and over to the rig to tell them or figure out what the problem is. Out of his 12 hr shift, he may put in 3 hrs of actual "on rig" time. When they decided to drill only and not core, all of his equipment is ordered out of the hole and he gets to hang out for 2 or 3 days doing nothing until they go back to coring then he has to be there while they pick up his bit and tools and get them started back in the hole to core. If the bit and pipe make it to bottom without getting stuck or in a tight place he still gets to hang out and watch the roughnecks; then he has to determine when they have tagged bottom so they can start drilling with his core bit.

 

Ahhhhh..l want a job like his. I don't want to run up and down long hallways, having never enough time to really attend to your patients needs as should be done. Right in the middle of making sure IVs are on time, IV sites need to be restarted as one has infiltrated or the patients has pulled it out, the pumps in other rooms are shrieking and then someone codes...and it's "all hands on deck" for resuscitation. Sometime I would be home sound asleep in my bed and shoot straight up into a sitting position to go over what I had done that day to determine if I had forgotten something critical.

 

Whaaaaaa...I don't want to do that anymore. Nurses are lucky they don't all end up with fibromylgia, bad backs and bad knees.

 

On my trip yesterday, I met April and Shane at Stein's (home improvement store) where we replaced her lawnmower with a new one, same size and brand. She had picked out a shade of yellow paint and I was appalled. It was almost chartreuse. OK, maybe not really but it was a bright bright yellow. I thought she was going for a more 'gold' yellow color. She tried to reason with me saying it was going to have a "wash' over it and it would be toned down. We couldn't agree; she wasn't going to discuss it so we didn't get anything. Now I wish I had left her alone to select what she wanted. At least the walls would have been painted a fresh new color. Maybe today we can go back and I can manage to keep my lips together while she selects a color. The husband impresses upon me often that that is HER home, not mine. Sometimes I actually listen to him.

 

After leaving Stein's I headed for the Pet Store. We have a huge one here, aisles that seem endless stocked with supplies for any pet kept critter you can imagine. I never make it all the way around the place. Right now I'm focused on bunny stuff. The manager paged Chantall to the front where I stood and introduced us. Chantall is the bunny lady.

 

Bugsy ended up with some chew sticks and a mineral wheel. She assured me that Bugsy would be fine sleeping outside and it was best to keep his food dish full. "He won't overeat. He will stop when he gets full." Both pieces of information relieved me of a bit of worry about him. I still took two blankets out to his condo. One draped over the condo an and the other was used to close off a portion of his door to cut down on cold air coming in. I left a small portion to the side clear so he could get in.

 

I got a brochure on "Beginner Rabbits'. I'm surmising that title meant me and not the Bugsy. He has been a rabbit all his life. I'm so quick to catch on to these things.

 

Listed in my brochure, foods, habitat and health of rabbits and what to watch for. Today I'll be going back once again to the pet store to get him some medicine for fleas. I notice a tiny brown object moving through his white fur last night as I held him on my chest and petted him. That flea had no change of hiding in that white background.

 

Along with those few things I purchased for him, I got him a halter so we can walk the bunny. Carrie is so excited. We haven't tried it yet as I just purchased it yesterday and Carrie was at a birthday party for one of her friends then fell sick and was vomiting so she didn't spend the night with me. Today we may halter up the bunny and let her walk him around the house until both of them get acclimated to each other.

 

One more stop and I was ready to head home. AT&T was my next visit. I left with an upgrade on my cell phone. I didn't get the iPhone5. The iPhone 4 was good enough. The difference in the bigger screen on the 5 was not enough to entice me to spend 200.00. My upgrade to the iPhone 4 cost me 99 cents and I was good with that. It has Face time on it where my iPhone 3 did not. A few other features were better then what I had on my old phone, the speaker appears to be more clear and I was satisfied with my purchase. I don't use my cell phone to surf or read my mail very often. I have the minimum amount of data time. I prefer to use my iPad at a hotspot which are now all over the place. I just noticed yesterday, Burger King has joined Wendy's and McDonald's and the parking lot at Lowe's with WiFi. I have a WiFi app that finds all the WiFi's around me so I can park and surf should I feel the need. I can only text those who have iPhones. It's free. I blocked texting with the charge. I'm not a big fan of texting. For gripes sake, pick up the phone and talk. I figure if you can't speak to me then it's not really that important that you contact me.

 

Occasionally I will leave a text for the husband if he is on location on the rig. He can get the message and call me later but I could just as easy have left him a voice mail. No! Wait...it's EASIER to leave a voice mail. All that typing on that itty bitty slippery screen using ones thick thumbs suck.

 

I love technology. Some of it makes no sense to me. I feel as though texting was a step back in telephone usage. Ol Alexander G Bell would have been appalled at our neglect of the wonderful voice over distance invention he inspired. Now we are back to Morse code refined.

 

I'm on my second cup of coffee. I have promised myself that I will not leave this house until I tidy it up a bit. I want to check the theatre listings here and I might just sneak off to watch a movie today.

 

Whatever you decide to do, make it enjoyable. I'm gone!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spring What? Where?

Our spring is dragging her feet. Oh, yeah, right... We have sunshine and green grass. The bushes are blooming. Why, right next door a Federal Rose has shaken out her skirt, fluffed it up a few times and the beautiful deep pink and white cup sized blooms are masking the green leafs competing for space on it. The small flower bed beside the sidewalk to the front of this house has rows and rows of thick green shoots pushing up which will quickly wave their golden flowers throughout the spring and summer.

 

Today I will buy a small lawnmower. I ruined April's little lawn mower last year by running it over some metal stakes. The engine seized up and oil sprayed from the little machine and greasy grey smoke bellowed and belched. May she rest in peace.

 

At 35 degrees last night, Spring is blowing raspberries at us. Give us lawns to mow and demand we wear sweat pants and sweat shirts to do it? I call "not fair". As I sit here, I hear the electric furnace  clicking on and the bunny rustling around in the cordoned off dining room.

 

Though the bunny wears the prettiest white fur coat, I hesitate to leave him out when the temperatures  droop.  The "baby gates" were clipped into place last night. At least that part of this process to block the bunny off into one room has gotten easier. When I first purchased those expandable closures, I was really to pitch them out the door. Frustrated with them because they would not stretch to the doors' casings and cling tightly enough to keep the bunny from standing on his hind legs with front paws on the gate and watching it collapse!

 

Finally, after days of working with it, I got it right! It no longer takes me 20 minutes. He spent last night in the dining area.  He ate my Michelangelo coffee table book. I have a two tiered table sitting against the back window  in front of the drapes in the dining area. That book was on the bottom shelf of that table.  He likes to get behind that table and behind those drapes. Now I know why. There are bunny tooth marks all around the edges of my book..and the bottom of the drapes in the dining room have holes nipped into them and the painted baseboard has gnaw marks too. That bunny will be spending his future nights in his pen outside. After all, that white heavy coat he wears should be enough protection from the nippy temps.

I need to get a quick shower and hit the road. Besides the lawnmower I need to purchase, I need to make a stop at the pet store to get the bunny a mineral block and a wooden chew thing so he quits eating my house and belongings!

Carrie spent the night with her sister last night and today she is attending a birthday party at the zoo. One of her friends is having her party there. I suggest they all dress warm. I think it will be a chilly day here and these children do not tolerate the cold very well.

A quick shower and I'm gone!