It's been a rough week for dogs.

This is Sebastian. He was my Auntie Jeanne's baby boy, and we lost him today to a mysterious autoimmune condition.

After a whole lot of vet visits, tests and trips to the ER, his poor little body just couldn't fight it.

My aunt and uncle, my cousins and grandma are all deeply saddened by the loss of their sweet boy, and my heart just breaks for them. My whole life, my entire family has been just full of dogs and they have always been members of the family.

Another friend's dog, Tif's Sugar, is happily back at home where she belongs, after being missing for several incredibly sad days. This is a dog who's always looking around the corner for an open door; she's a runner, Tif says. A very kind stranger found her wandering without her tags, took her in, and gave her a home...but found the courage to bring her back to her family when he discovered who they were. Tif says he was a man who loves Boxers like Sugar especially, and had already named her, making it doubly hard for him to say goodbye to the companion he was falling in love with. This is a very, very good man, and the world needs many, many more like him.

So, it's been a rough week for dogs.

Mine are all fine, thank the deity of your choice, although Pea is starting to show her age, the thing that terrifies me the most. Stella seems to grow more every day , and get smarter and more interesting every day. Sparky is still the best little sidekick-budddy dog anyone could ever ask for. I am incredibly lucky right now, but I know that someday I will face the kind of pain and fear that Tif and now Jeanne have to deal with.

Knowing that makes me try harder to be present in every moment that I've got with them and enjoy every minute of them. My dogs are my best friends, my protectors and comforters and sidekicks and comic relief - like when Stella just now decided that licking Conner's ice cream bowl and spoon wasn't enough...so she grabbed and made off with the entire bowl. Like I said, she gets smarter every day. ;-)

Tonight, I have a massive migraine, which makes looking at this screen miserable, but I'm doing it anyway. I'm tired, and I'm sick to my stomach. I have severe pain in my hip, and pubic area and we won't even talk about the back of my neck. But I'm not going to bitch and moan tonight.

I'm counting my furry blessings tonight.

For Tif and her family, I'm relieved and happy that Sugar is home where she belongs. For Jeanne, John, Keinan, Erik and Grandma, my heart breaks right along with yours. I'm sad for all of you tonight, and I wish I could be there with you. Love you.

I'm not sleepy...Ok, fine, I'm lying, I am sleepy.

I'm sleepy. Very, very sleepy. Headache-y and sleepy. I'm the kind of sleepy where I start talking and saying things that don't make sense to anyone else, because what I'm talking about is happening in my dream and not in real life.

It confuses them. I can't imagine why.

Well, ok, I guess it confuses me a tad too. But mainly, it means I'm really damned tired and should be sleeping, but I'm trying NOT to be sleeping right now. My sleep patterns are utterly bizarre these days and I'm trying to get them back in line. I mean, up at 6, napping from 2-6 or 7 and then staying up till 2am is just not optimal.

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Now aren't you glad I shared that? It was a battle I was destined not to win, so off to bed went I. And far, far better felt I when I was done with another epic nap. I was so exhausted and confused that I was having trouble remembering if it was am or pm even before I zonked out.

But, luckily, I took the nap, got up when I was supposed to, fed the doggies, and conjured dinner for the two kids at home with me in the form of a pizza delivery chick.

This, folks, is about as exciting as it gets these days - and part of the point that I'm trying to get to. I feel like I spend half my time sleeping and the other half my time trying not to be sleeping. That combination is creating some significant problems in my life right now. I mean, if my body wants a nap, it gets a nap. No problem there. I've learned not to argue with this body by now. However, there are things I want to DO when I'm awake instead of constantly feeling like I'm either groggy still waking up or dozing off before the next nap.

Yesterday I did manage a big step, a major milestone, whatever you want to call it: I knitted an entire row. Yup, that's an accomplishment right now. It's been so long since knitting didn't HURT that it's almost like I'm afraid to do it now.

I can't figure out if I'm afraid of the pain, or afraid I'm no good at it anymore, or what in hell I'm afraid of, but countless projects lay in stages of completion, neglected out of fear. Other projects, in other media, are sprinkled around too, some barely started, some not even that far. These are the things I thought I'd try since I "couldn't" knit, and I've wound up afraid of all of them too. Has the medical community got a term for fear of craft projects? (they probably do...)

Cancer stole a lot of things from me, but I never imagined it would take away that happiness and calm I'd found in yarn. I want it back, but I'm not doing very well at figuring out how. I know there's still going to be some level of pain, but I suspect that my tolerance and ability is giant leaps and bounds from where it was a couple months ago, based on my hand and finger capabilities doing other things.

Maybe if I sat down at the swift and ball winder, and wound all of the delicious luxury yarn I bought in Santa Cruz almost 9 months ago? Maybe if I pushed through and finished something, even something as tiny as a little knitted snail? Maybe if I organized my printed-out knitting patterns? Maybe if I quit writing about it and just sat down and did it?? :-)

I did try spinning for a short while last week and was very pleased with the outcome, physically and mentally, so maybe the "get off your ass and just do it" Nike-inspired approach is the way. I just want the incredible sensation of calm and happiness that I used to have the minute I picked up my needles! I've thought about gathering my things and driving somewhere "pretty" to sit outside and knit but it's too damned hot.

Hrm.

Anyway...enough whining about my yarn problems and craft-funk. Medically, all quiet on the north-state front. I'm having bits of lymphedema here and there, which is always a bitch, but it's pretty mild overall. The prolapse is still prolapsing. I'm still experiencing lots of random pain at random times, which is significantly problematic. Significantly. But I deal with it, as usual.

Headaches, including some migraine-level monsters, have been a big player in this week's fun. W H E E. We all know how much fun those are.

Sometimes I can eat, but not any more often than before. However, there's been a breakthrough: I've found that sucking on hard candies - cinnamon red hots are my favorite; little sour candies; suckers; jawbreakers (the Penny Candy store in Live Oak is a wonderous place!!) - can help alleviate the nausea, help with my dry mouth and trouble swallowing, and generally make me feel better sometimes when I can't eat. This is a wonderful revelation.

The bursitis in my hips is acting up, causing lots of pain. The left is still far worse than the right, and when I see Andy for my normal monthly visit next week, he's going to shoot me up with cortisone again on that side. We did that last summer, and it kept things pretty well under control for the year, so I'm hoping for a similar result. Hopefully the right side won't progress to a point where I need to do anything like that. Hopefully.

I think that's about it for me... Anna's fighting the yearly battle with the gnarliest bug bites you'll ever see on a kid. She's basically going to spend her weekend kind of zonked and zombied because I have to give her benedryl when she gets these giant things. One of them landed her in the Kaiser urgent care ward on a Sunday, way back when we first found out how violently allergic she is to bug bites, so now we treat all bites as if they could go supernova on us! Cortisone cream and benedryl and lots of "watching." This time, she's got some that I can't ID as mosquito, spider or anything else known, so I've got to go Google these strange shaped boogers.

Weekend update, over and out. Goodnight(day) and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Smoke gets in your eyes

And no, I don't mean the song...

For meteorological reasons that I will never entirely understand, no matter how well they're explained to me, I am lucky enough to live in the place that all the smoke goes to. We get it from fires up here in the Sierra foothills, the Santa Cruz fires, the Santa Barbara fires, you name it. Just from taking puppykins out to go potty, I'm having major throat & lung irritation and a big headache.

Lordy, I hate fire season!! I hate the smoke, and I hate worrying about friends and family. We finally went so far as to put up a California map in the game room - it serves a dual purpose: Lloyd marks every place he's ridden to on his death machine with small colored pins, and I mark everywhere we have a friend or relative living with bigger white pins. That way I can always run upstairs and check out the map to see how close a fire is to someone whenever I need to, instead of trying to figure it out from news or online maps.

So anyway... The big news from up here is that the kids are home. The first couple weeks of them being home are always a major adjustment period for all of us. I think of it as the Mommy Hangover period. They always come home completely different human beings (in a number of ways) from who they were when they left. Mommy always manages to make some sort of change, usually on a random impulse, that affects us a lot, because we're the ones who have to handle the follow-up for the rest of the year.

This year, for example, Trevor came home with contacts. The reason for getting him contacts? When he was at the beach swimming in the ocean, he couldn't wear his glasses, so when

he got out of the water he couldn't see her. Goodness knows he'll be in THAT situation constantly, right? So she says she'll pay for them, but it's now on us to replace them regularly, make sure he's using them right, cleaning them, etc. from here on out. Gee.....um, thanks.

It's also a rough couple of weeks because leaving Mommy is genuinely hard on the kids, but especially because they have to come back to reality. No more staying up till midnight (we got email from Anna timestamped after 11:30), no more 100% playtime at the beach, pool, museums, etc - instead, it's back to a normal bedtime, cleaning rooms, unpacking their suitcases, doing laundry, daily chores and getting ready to go back to school. Like I said: reality, and we all know reality bites. I just have to remind myself that they're always like this at first, and that the Mommy effect does wear off in a week or two. It's just hard while it lasts.

I KNOW I shouldn't be so annoyed and upset by this stuff though. I know that. But I am anyway... I raise them for 11 months of the year, and in 1 month, suddenly everything is disrupted and I freak out. She and I do talk about things, and our conversations are good, both for us and for the kids. It's just that we all know I do not handle change well at all, for one,

and there is a distinct jealousy issue there that she will always be loved so much more just for being Mommy, and her time with them is all about fun and games and playtime, while I get the job of actually raising them and don't get to be the one who has so much fun with them.

ANYWAY............

On the medical front, there is blessedly little to report. My new medication for my bladder seems to be helping, just in that there is less pain from that area and fewer feelings like I have a bladder infection. I'm still working on those evil disability forms to get them done, and Andy sent me a copy of what he wrote up for them, and it's wonderful. He kicks ass. Hopefully everything can be done and mailed off to the lawyer by the end of this coming week. I'd been using my early morning time to work on it, before Lloyd got up, but I learned rather quickly that I'd have to get up a LOT earlier for that to work out now that the kids are home! Anna popped out of bed before 7 yesterday. I'll figure it out somehow though.

What else... I'm trying to get back into cooking for the family far more often. That's one of my big goals of my recovery, and I figured that them coming home, and school starting was the perfect time for me to get into that. Of course, we also need to watch our budget dramatically, so the two things are going hand in hand. I'm trying to plan out most of the week's meals so that we can go to the store once and know we have everything we need on hand for that week. To start, I'm only committing myself to cooking 3 times. I figure if I commit to more, I'll just end up burning out really quick - I need to ease into it. So, that's a major thing in my recovery. It might not sound like it, but it really, really is.

So, to that end, I'm doing a lot of skimming my magazines for new recipes to try out, to see if we can expand our repertoire, looking in my cookbooks, etc. I'm trying very, very hard to get back to knitting, too. It's been so long since my fingers were able to stand it, it almost feels alien to me and I'm really borderline frantic to get it back. I have sewing I want to do too, and felting and spinning, and it frustrates the hell out of me when I can't manage to get any of it done - sometimes because I don't feel well enough, or hurt too much, but sometimes because I piddle away my free/awake time with minutiae of the day and never get to it.

I honestly think that's about it! I didn't do so good with trying to update more than once a week, but there just hasn't been that much to talk about! I will keep trying to be better, I promise Mom! ;-)

For now, I'm going to quit piddling and get to doing something productive. Sedentary, but productive!

Weekend Update

Oh, poop...I managed to let another week go by without updating all y'all on the fun stuff in my life. There hasn't been much going on, but still!

Well, first of all, I have learned that I should be funnier. Damn. If this blog had been a hell of a lot funnier, I might have got mentioned in the Newsweek article about young people handling cancer with humor, like Megan did. Her blog, "What's up your butt?" inspired this blog, and was mentioned in the article. Yay for Megan!

Anyway... the medical news update...

I went to see Dr. Davis, my gynecologist, on Monday to see about that gnarly little prolapse problem and my bladder issues.

Basically, my vaginal canal is prolapsing because of lack of support and weakened muscles and tissues. Luckily, at this point, the prolapse is NOT bad enough to need surgery. That may change at ANY time, of course, and if it does, I will need surgery. I made sure that the doctor understands that my BCCTP coverage ends about a year from now, so if there's any chance I'm going to need surgery at some point, I need to have it before that coverage disappears. No more coverage, no surgery. We just can't afford it, period.

Dr. Davis has also figured out that I have interstitial cystitis, which is a bladder problem, and which explains a LOT of my life. I'll let WebMD explain what it is:

Interstitial cystitis is a chronic inflammation of the bladder that causes chronic pain and discomfort. Symptoms often include a sense of urgency and increased frequency of urination. The bladder is a hollow balloon-like organ that collects urine from the kidneys and holds it until it can be expelled. The walls of the bladder consist mainly of muscle that relaxes as the bladder fills and contracts to empty it. The inside walls are covered with a lining of cells that protect the muscle from contact with urine.

Inflammation associated with IC causes the lining to scar and the bladder to stiffen, which affects the way

the bladder expands. In about 90% of IC cases there are pinpoint spots of bleeding visible in the lining. And in 5% to 10% of cases, there are ulcers or sores known as Hunner's patches.

Interstitial cystitis causes mild to severe pain in the bladder and surrounding pelvic area.

Well-that explains an awful lot, now doesn't it? Dr. Davis says that the condition also acts in such a way that it inflames the MAST cells in the lining of the bladder and cause a histamine reaction.

Basically, what all of this means is that I have a possible/probable explanation for some of the constant pain I'm in, the constant need to pee, the frequent feeling like I have a bladder infection when I don't (test sticks say no), and the difficulty and pain emptying my bladder.

The good news is that there are things that can be done about this. Yay! There are medications I can take, and there is a procedure called a cystoscopy that we will probably be doing. That involves threading a camera into the bladder to look at the walls and see how inflamed the lining is, and wash the inside of the bladder with a couple different solutions to soothe and medicate it. The doctor's office is working on the logistics for that.

The only bad news is that one of the meds, which I've been on for a few days now, seems to be hitting me HARD with gastro-intestinal side effects. In short, I am SICK. Nausea, vomiting, cramps, diarrhea, painful gas bubble, stomach pain, intestinal cramps, you name it, I've got it.

So, where does that leave us? Well, for a few days, still sick, hoping that the side effects go away! I'll let everyone know when the cystoscopy gets scheduled. It'll be a Monday, it'll be up at Feather River Hospital and it will be done under heavy conscious sedation to general anesthesia, depending. Hell, put me under, I don't want to be awake if I don't have to be!!

The prolapse will be considered under observation for now, but if it gets any worse, then Dr. Davis will have to go in and surgically yank things back into place.

Otherwise, we've just been goofing off around the house, trying to get some small projects done, and preparing for the impending arrival of the children. They'll be back all too soon, and there are school supplies to prepare, clothes to get, you name it. I'm trying to get at least a little bit of something useful done each day before I collapse into "sick and icky" mode and do nothing.

I think that's about it.........but I'll try not to wait a week next time! The longer I wait, the more I forget.....