We Interrupt This Program...

Note bone on lower right: not supposed to be there like that

 

So who thought yesterday "Oh, I can walk safely—it's not bad out," then proceeded to fall, break her right wrist in 3 places, spend 6 hours in ER, 1 hour at orthopedic doctor's office, and has surgery this Friday to fix it?

Let's just say it is not what I had planned this week. Or any week. And we did not need this additional complication in our lives. Yesterday drained us both, to put it mildly. (How grateful I am for Warren; he was just leaving for the office when I went down and was there for every minute that followed.)

Typing is slow and I am clumsy using just my left hand. My dictation skills are decent, but my editing skills are hampered. So don't expect too much from me for the next few weeks.

In the meantime, life rolls on. Right? 

My Analog Life

2024 has arrived. Now what?

I am still (no surprise) figuring out what my life looks like post-medical catastrophe: physically, mentally, emotionally. On the very plus side, as in "wildly positive," I am walking daily (okay, there have been some weather call-offs) with a good pace and increasingly distances (a mile to two plus). Given that my first post-catastrophe walk was .16 miles from our driveway to the end of the block and back, with me hanging onto Warren's arm, I am thrilled.

But I would be kidding myself if I think I am back to my pre-catastrophe self physically because I am not. And will never be in some areas. That's just the reality of age, long-term cancer, and the catastrophe. (And on the mental front, yes, my intellectual capacity took a hit too. Given that dementia runs heavily in my mother's side of the family and I am at significant risk for developing it, I am keeping an eye on when I have blips that are more than just forgetting a name.)

But, back to 2024 and my continuing to shape my new life. As I have shared with close friends, I am learning to create a flow that seems to work best for me now. One huge piece of my life now is that I am spending more of my time in what I will call my analog life.

Here are some things that my life contains.

A jigsaw puzzle that my friend Maike, who knows that Warren and I (especially Warren) are huge admirers of Frank Lloyd Wright) found at a thrift shop and sent our way:

Books, books, books, the old-fashioned way:

Reactivating my sourdough starter, which bit the dirt during the medical catastrophe. I know, I could have asked my next door neighbor to give me some of his starter, but, hey, starting it is no big deal:

And other pieces that were already in place and continue to give me a quiet space to work (head or hands or both): letters to friends (of course) and walking (previously mentioned), washing dishes by hand, taking time to watch the seasons and the skies and the weather and the birds. There is a farm near my father's house where the last two times I have gone to see him, there has been a huge murmuration—starlings, perhaps?—as I am heading back home driving past the farm. "Wow" does not begin to describe the sight.

Back in my earliest days home, my friend Katrina, in response to my comment that I did not have the strength and energy to talk on the phone more than 10-15 minutes, and how some (including my father) would blithely plow past that limitation, sent me a timer. Oh, Katrina! What a gift! I rarely used it on the phone calls, as I could see on my phone how long the call was lasting, but what this timer has done for me is given me controllable time back. I know, I know. Phones have timers and alarms. Our 1970s era stove has a timer clock for the oven. But setting the dial on this timer and letting it run until its distinctive ding, has made my baking and other activities (my now daily nap) so much easier to track. Who knew?

A life changer! 

The catastrophe and some other important matters impact how and whether we will do much (any) traveling this year other than getting to Mayo sometime later in the year. I hope. I am doing telehealth appointments right now; I do not have the physical capacity yet to drive to Rochester and flying, even without factoring in Covid and flu and RSV, takes even longer than driving. I told Warren this weekend that I have made peace (reluctantly) that I will never get back to Maine, a trip we hoped to take last July but scrubbed because of Symphony matters. I realize it is highly unlikely I will make it out to the PDX area this year to see my family. It is what it is.

Fellow blogger Laurie recently wrote about her "football sweet potatoes" and I asked for a photo, which she gladly provided. My interest was prompted by photos from Orlando at Thanksgiving, scrubbing sweet potatoes as big as his head, even adjusting for camera angle. (I called and asked; adult confirmed the sweet potatoes were massive.) My son Ben is making plans, still tentative, to come back here in May, with Orlando (who starts kindergarten this fall!) and I hope that all comes about, whether we are scrubbing massive sweet potatoes, baking a pie, or just hanging out in the sweetness of time (analog, of course). 

The Last Pesto of 2023

 

On its way to completion. Note: the photographer—not the kitchen—was tilted.

This morning I made the very last batch of pesto for the year. 

The. Very. Last. Batch.

As I noted when I resumed writing again, my lengthy time away and the many demands on Warren (the Symphony, the house, me!) meant the garden was ignored and neglected in its final weeks. Tomatoes fell to the ground, peppers went unpicked (not that we had a particularly great crop this year), and everything in both gardens went to rack and ruin (well, everything except a few last handfuls of the Trail of Tears black beans, because those babies were survivors). 

So how did I make this last batch? No, I did not buy basil, although I am sure I could have found some little packages of overly aged and outrageous priced basil in local supermarkets. (Yes, I just looked. 1.5 ounces for $3.99 at one store.)

No, the basil was out of this year's garden. The same one that was in shreds when I finally returned home.

And the magician who made that happen? You have to ask? Warren, of course.

While I was, ahem, indisposed, Warren did some looking online about freezing basil and then making pesto from the frozen basil. He read enough to know what he didn't want to do, then proceeded with his own simplified version: pick it, wash it, chop it, freeze it. While I remember him telling me he had done that while I was still away, when I returned home and saw two half-gallon freezer bags full of dark green stuff, my first question was "What is that?" 

This morning, on a mission to clear out our refrigerator freezer (the basement freezer is another story), I saw the basil first thing and realized it was now or never. 

I chose to make it now. 

As it turns out, making pesto from frozen basil is the same as making it fresh, without the tedious and lengthy washing and cutting. (Thank you, again, dear Warren. You really are amazing.) 

Looking just right.

And that is how the very last pesto batch of 2023 came to be. Some went to neighbors on our right and neighbors on our left, and the rest went down into the aforementioned basement freezer for another time, another meal, another day.

A very nice and savory and satisfying note on which to bring this year to an end.

End product! 

Little Bits

Little bits. 

Little bits of memories, little bits of music, little bits of holiday treats, little bits of sunshine, little bits of rain; these have been some of the underpinnings of these last days of 2023.

Just little bits.

I continue to recover, in little bits, from the acute medical crisis of the fall. A long-distance friend who lives with chronic and debilitating illnesses reminded me, after I noted my slow pace of improvement, that given what I went through, I was doing great.

A little bit of chastisement, albeit nicely said.

A longtime friend walked by this morning with his dog while Warren was leaving, and after he called from the sidewalk, "So how are you?," both Warren and I realized that Bill had no idea what had happened this fall. Warren waved as he drove away, and I gave a short version of what we had gone through. I then told him (and Maisy, his dog) to "wait right there," and dashed into the house to bag some biscotti. 

Just a little bit, because Bill didn't need to carry a lot of weight while he finished walking Maisy. Bill took the biscotti and said, with great relish, that when he got home, he was going to "dunk the hell" out of the biscotti in a cup of coffee. I emailed him a little later this morning and told him that if I had a coffee/bake shop, I would name the biscotti the "Dunk the Hell Out of Them" biscotti. 

A little bit of humor, a lot of friendship. 

I have been walking almost daily (yeah, I dropped the ball during the Christmas weekend due to other demands on my time and energy) and today when I left the house to walk, I noticed I had a large chorus of voices competing in my head. (No, I do not hear voices; these were calling up situations, past and present, where I wanted to respond to (i.e., argue with) someone.) To shake my mood, I made myself focus on the trees and yards and sky. One pine bough near the sidewalk held a drop of water from earlier rains. I started looking as I walked for other drops caught on branches or bushes.

Just little bits, but my search refocused my mind and attention.

2024 holds some challenges and changes, some of them large and at least one of them HUGE. No little bits there, at least not from where I stand. So I tell myself to savor these little bits now, as we spend down the remaining days of this year.

I recently came across, artfully woven into an essay I was reading, two lines from "How Do I Love Thee?" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: I love thee to the level of every day's/Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I had not read that sonnet for decades and seeing those lines, standing alone, made my heart reach out to Warren, who has been by my side through all of this. (Note that Warren has always been by my side; recent events just elevated my needs and deepened our relationship.) I shared those lines with my poetry-damaged husband (some teacher or teachers really did a number on him back in the day) and then explained why they moved me. "That is you, dear Warren. You are with me for the most quiet needs, from morning to night. And I don't need to count the ways of how I love you to know that."

And that is NOT a little bit. 

Grandma

Grandma Skatzes would be 130 years old today.

130.

As a child, I marveled at the notion that she was 10—10!—when the Wright brothers made their first flight at Kitty Hawk. As a teenager, I remember her chuckling over the fact that she lived to see men land on the moon.

130.

Grandma saw numerous wars in her lifetime, most of which family, ranging from cousins and in-laws to sons and grandsons, served in. World War I was the one that made the deepest impression on her. She kept a framed copy of "In Flanders Field" on a wall in the living room. Grandma had optic nerve damage from an early age on and could not read the small print of the poem, but it made no difference as she could recite it from heart and always did on November 11.

130.

Grandma was born when Grover Cleveland was president. Jimmy Carter was in the White House when she died in 1978. All in all, she lived through 16 different presidents. She did not talk much about politics, although she had admiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's actions during the Great Depression and World War II. Grandma did not vote until she was almost 80. I suspect her husband did not allow her to in earlier years, and her disabilities, both visual and auditory, posed barriers that no one thought to work around until much later. It was my aunt Ginger who finally arranged for special aides to come help Grandma work her way through a ballot and vote from home in the 1970s. Grandma was delighted that she had finally cast a ballot.

130.

My family rented an apartment in my grandparents' house and we lived in the same house until I was 14. For all the bad in my childhood, I had an unshakable refuge in my beloved grandmother. When I was little, Grandma would tell me nursery rhymes and quote poetry. As I got older, she would share stories of how the family and the community made it through the Great Depression. She encouraged me in reading and writing and capturing the world as fully as I can. Although she never said it, I suspect Grandma wanted me to have a larger view of life and its opportunities, and pushed me in those ways to move into the world.

130.

Grandma died in March, 1978 while I was living out in Portland, Oregon. I was walking home from college on what was then a typical early spring day: a mixture of showers and sun. On the way, I saw not one but three (three!) different rainbows in the sky. When I got home and my then-husband broke the news of my grandmother's death, I immediately thought of those rainbows. They were Grandma's goodbye to me.

130.

As Grandma aged, her hearing and vision became so limited that the best way to communicate with her became spelling into the palm of her hand. She would puzzle out the words, then respond in her soft voice. During my hospitalization, when I was intubated (and sedated) for several days, I apparently tried to communicate by spelling out words in Warren's palm. I do not remember any of this, but Warren said I did that several times. "Just like Grandma," I marveled. I couldn't talk because of the ventilator tube, but my innermost self pulled up an old, old memory of spelling with Grandma. 

130. 

It is Jewish tradition when speaking of someone who has died to say, "May her/his memory be blessed." Grandma, your memory is always blessed. 

Some Assembly Required

Photo by Tekton on Unsplash

Many of us out there spent more than one night before a child's birthday or Christmas putting together complicated toys for the next day. The box and the instructions always said "Some Assembly Required," which really meant "Anticipate far more steps, tiny pieces, and inscrutable instructions than you have ever seen."

That's how I feel about myself as I move forward as "the woman who lives afterwards." 

Some items/issues/whatever are resolved. I just completed in-home physical therapy today, way ahead of schedule. I speak with the surgeon Monday about the next step (removing the gallbladder, which has never been an issue but needs to come out per every single doctor who has ever seen the image or read the reports on it). The living room is no longer my bedroom (yes, that was the reality of the initial homecoming, as I could not climb the stairs—all 13 of them—to the second floor). In short, life moves on.

And yet...I am still picking up tiny bolts and saying, "But where does this go?" or "Wasn't there a special tool included in this package?" 

I am still assembling myself.

My friend Tani and I exchanged lengthy letters over the summer about accepting the reality of being disabled; we are are now discussing being OLD. Myeloma and 19 years of treatment had already aged me. This recent medical catastrophe just added to that. As I told my physical therapist as we concluded my last session, I know I have to be more patient with myself as I continue to regain muscle mass and physical strength, but I also have to be realistic about how far I can push myself. Some of that is recovery, which will go on for many weeks; some of that is age.

But I am walking again, as in "outside," and that is an absolute gift. 

Picking up some threads from my past, I may (possibly, likely, maybe) pick up tracking our food expenses again. That all came to a halt in August. I "could" have resumed tracking for November, when I was home again, but I lacked energy, capacity, and bandwidth to even try. December...maybe. I look back at my post on July 1 where I ask whether July can be lean and am pleased to report that July was lean: either $115.61 or $157.57.  The discrepancy is that in July, per both my oncologists' offices, I started drinking one or more protein drinks a day, and those run around $20.00 a box. It is food; it is not medication. BUT Warren doesn't drink them and it is so specialized that...you can see where I am going. 

I am both stepping away and back into some of my volunteer activities with our community legal clinics. Yes, I will stay with the Justice Bus project as an attorney wrangler; no, I have turned over a court/clinic joint project to other volunteers. 

I am reading a lot. A lot. (Best fiction read recently? The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters. Just stunning.) I may (may, mind you) take up some long set-aside personal projects, although I think my initial focus around here is on getting rid of more of my/our clutter. (We have three types of clutter in this house: His, Hers, Ours.) I am not writing yet except for letters, some inserts into my long-gestational novel, and this, my second blog post post-catastrophe. 

It will come. I say that with hope.

In the meantime, some assembly required. Where did that little must-have-to-complete-assembly tool go? 

My One Wild and Precious Life

 

I did catch the last of the butterfly weed (this photo was taken in 2022)

My last post was three months ago today. Rereading it today, I see I was blithely taking stock of my garden and nattering on about how many medical appointments I had in August. 

What I could not foresee (who could?) was that three days later, two "routine" and "low-risk" endoscopic exams would set off nine weeks of hospitalization and skilled nursing facility stays (the first stay cut short to send me back to the hospital) for acute pancreatitis. Finally, on October 27, I came home and have been home ever since. Still a long road ahead as I rebuild core strength and muscle mass, but at least I am home. 

Home, home, home. 

Given that the earlier predictions had been that I would likely not return home until the end of November because of the severity of the extensive internal infection and damage, I was beside myself with joy as Warren picked me up to bring me home (the skilled nursing facility is about six blocks from our house). "Oh, look, the leaves are falling! I didn't miss fall after all!" I repeated some variation of that in every block until we pulled into our driveway. 

I still say it whenever we run errands. I still say it whenever I look out the window and see the last leaves of the season drop to the ground. 

This unexpected medical event was not only a shock to both me and Warren, but also a huge eye-opener as to the fragility of life and the unpredictability of time. We had always imagined I would die after a long, slow, fade-out from the myeloma and that there would be "time" to enjoy life together before that happened. Ha. I coded during my first hospital stay from sudden and acute hemorrhaging; Warren was present when this happened, so he got the full shocking impact of watching the medical team rushing to save my life.

A life-changing event? Absolutely. How could it not be? For him, for me, for us as a couple. Our lives moving forward will be forever shaped by this. It has been a crash course in what commitment means. For me, there is even a stronger sense of what Wilma Mankiller meant when she wrote about surviving a near-fatal accident: "there was the woman who lived before and the woman who lives afterwards." I am not the woman who lived before August 23, but I am very much the woman who lives afterwards. I don't know what that means yet, but here I am.

Contrary to my usual approach of being open about my medical status, we have both kept quiet about this one. Warren did not have the bandwidth to field questions about me, especially while he was launching the Symphony season and driving 25 miles one-way to see me in the hospital. He has spent hours and hours and hours with me, both while I was away and after I got home: caring for me, watching out for me, helping me recover. (As has my dear friend and former PCP, Pat.) But time to talk about me or answer questions? Heck, no. As for me, I had zero capacity for visitors while being treated and even after returning home. I had no capacity to even talk on the phone, let alone anything more. Even writing an email was a stretch for a long time. I am slowly regaining strength but I am still guarding my time and carefully watching my energy levels as I move forward into my new life. 

Besides the simple and stunning gift of life, there has been another upside to this catastrophe: a reset of my attitude. Talk about the scales falling from my eyes. I look around and think what an amazing thing life is. What an amazing thing the world is. I sit at the kitchen table as the sun comes up and watch its rays spangle the frosted grass into a thousand diamonds and tiny rainbows. I step outside to see the impossibly blue sky (we are having a prolonged fall of brilliant sunny days) and take in a deep breath while I stand there, lost in gratitude at seeing that vivid sky over me.

The late, great poet Mary Oliver said it so well (in so many ways and in so many poems); she was a huge advocate for the importance of nature to our well-being, seeing it as a life-giving, healing force in our sometimes narrow lives. Oliver's challenge from "The Summer Day" seems most apropos as I move forward: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?"

As I take stock from where I sit, writing this, I wonder. There will likely be a garden next year (as you can imagine, this year's garden ended up in tatters with my hospitalization). I am starting to bake again. I have been writing. But the question remains: what do I plan to do with my one wild and precious life?

Time will tell.