“Slip sliding away”

It’s been a busy few months and I’m finally getting around to entering yet another blog. Over the course of the past couple months I’ve taken on a new skill set that I am applying right now. I guess you’re never too old to learn new tricks.

Last month I took a soak in the hot tub as I was having tense muscles attributing to headaches. The hot tub worked wonders and I got out of the soak feeling 100 times better, for what would only last 1 minute. My muscles were loosened and the headache was gone . But after leaving the relaxing soak in the hot tub and drying myself off “good enough”, I stepped into the kitchen to quickly turn on my tea kettle before I changed out of my swimsuit.  I thought this plan was a good one but I obviously didn’t dry myself off as well as I had thought,  a small drop of water fell on to the tile and my well laid plan shot  out from underneath me much like my feet. Needless to say a future as a ballerina or a bird is off the books.  As my feet flew out I went to catch myself with my outstretched arms and heard a crunch coming from my right wrist. As I laid in agony Brent came to check on me, mostly concerned that I didn’t hit my head.  I told him no but I’m pretty sure I broke my wrist as I was moving my fingers and twisting my hand back and forth to see if it really was broken.  He said your wrist isn’t broken you are moving it, get some ice on it and it’ll start to feel better.  You could tell he wasn’t impressed with my flying abilities but he got me an ice pack. 5 minutes in I wasn’t tolerating this at all and told Brent that we needed to go to the emergency room.  For us not only is my oncologist several hours away so is our local hospital for emergency services when you do something stupid at 7:00 p.m.   I wrestled myself out of my swimsuit put on some sweatpants and a t-shirt which was extremely painful to do and we headed off to Grangeville , with Brent driving and sighing that he was taking me to a hospital for something that should have been avoided.  When he questioned me why I wasn’t more careful I told him I was just missing that sweet smell of antiseptic that only a hospital can offer.  I don’t think he found that humorous in that moment as he has spent way too many days sitting in a hospital watching me be in pain, being unconscious, and being sick.  But he got me safely to the Grangeville Hospital where they treated me quickly, got me in within just one or two minutes after I walked in, provided much needed pain medicine, rolled out a mobile X-Ray station , X-rayed my wrist (which now  had a golf ball sized lump on it), told me immediately that yes I had a  compression fracture,  and placed it in a splint.. So after 51 years  of not breaking a bone (just shy of my 52nd birthday)  and over 12 months since my last visit to a hospital, I “broke” (dad pun) that record in more way than one. So as you read my above tale I hope the Simon and Garfunkel song “Slip Sliding Away” is your new earwig.

How does that above paragraph apply to learning a new skill? What is my new skill?  It surely isn’t flying or being generally graceful. Rather it is learning how to use talk to text programs. Since I’m typing this up on my Chrome, it is not as good of a program as my Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook and the Dragon software  My office purchased for me to use at work, allowing me to talk and have those words transcribed into programs I most use.  Frustratingly, the program associated with chromebook ( Which is what I’m using now for this blog) does not seem to recognize simple commands like period, next line, comma, and sometimes the simplest of commands like delete. So as you’re reading this you may notice horrible grammar, lack of capital letters, and random words thrown in as it also picks up background noise – this is the best I can do.

Let’s move away from the fact that I needed to experience the pain of breaking a bone in my body (worse pain than having a mastectomy and reconstruction), and to see how fun it is to have a cast that goes up and over my elbow so that the simple tasks of getting dressed, putting on a hat, putting on socks, driving, opening a bottle (not while driving), trying to cut something, etc etc. My health, well-being and continued positive attitude has stayed on the up and up.  I’m using this opportunity of only having one usable arm to just reinforce that I am truly a princess and I have the most amazing husband, friends, and coworkers to not only help me  in my continued times of need but to also laugh with me as I truly prove that I’m a walking disaster ( i considered taping hot salsa packets and wearing a chili necklace as a Halloween costume so that I’d be going as a hot mess).

Yesterday was my scheduled treatment day and Brent and I headed to Spokane so that I could get in to see my oncologist for treatment and hit up some other doctor’s while I was there.  The first doctor  I visited was my dermatologist. I had been putting cream on my face to treat some precancerous cells and although now my face has red marks and scabs all over it he thought everything looked great and I did exactly what I needed to  do for preventative action. He’s probably the only person that could look at my face right now and say whatever you did looks great on you.  After getting a glowing report from my dermatologist we were off to see my oncologist.  She too gave positive news in regards to my health and she is giving me a break from the harsher chemotherapy drug Abraxene. The reason for this pause is first, I am doing well on the cancer front, but second we are hoping that by decreasing and pausing the chemotherapy infusion, that the neuropathy I’ve been experiencing in my feet could get a chance to recover. She had hoped that increasing the amount of Gabapentin and decreasing the amount of chemotherapy would help my feet out.  To some degrees it really has.  The greatest part of having a break from my chemotherapy drug is that although I still go up every 3 weeks to get my immunotherapy, I walk out of treatment feeling much more energized, much less tired, and in overall good health.  For those of you that have gone through chemotherapy you know how poisonous those drugs are and how much it can wipe out your system for several days if not even longer. So to be able to get a nice long break from taking that aggressive and impactful  drug, has been wonderful.

So now I want my brother to stop reading and just step away. Michael pour yourself a glass of wine or a tumbler of good scotch because if you don’t step away I’m sure my friends all the way back in Wisconsin will hear you start screaming, ranting and raving.

I have added a new tool to my medical toolbox to try to treat my neuropathy that I had mentioned above. Several folks I’ve known have had success by visiting an acupuncturist to treat pain or other issues. At this point both my oncologist and myself felt “what is it really going to hurt?” It’s not as if I’m stopping my modern-day medical treatments, and it’s not that I don’t have faith in those medical treatments (look where I am now compared to my initial prognosis, thumbs up to you – modern science),  but at some point you need to open up your mind to try new and different things. I’m still taking my Gabapentin, I’m still working with physical therapy to try to strengthen my core and return some feeling back to my feet, I will pick up chemotherapy after a break when my oncologist says it’s time so that I can stay on top of this damn cancer hanging around (somewhere) in my body. For now, I  am a going to try acupuncture to see if it will give me the relief I desire in my feet. Now mind you if you’re my brother reading this I am not replacing the other more modern Medical Treatments that exist out there but instead I’m supplementing them with this technique to see if there can be some help with the tingling, the burning, the pins and needles, and the numbness in my feet.  I’m only two treatments in and they have to be spaced out quite far as I chose a doctor in Spokane, although I am looking for one closer so I can try doing this a little bit more frequently. The second visit I felt that I could feel some comfortable tingling in my feet where before I could feel nothing. Fingers crossed.

As I wrap up this most recent blog of mine, I appreciate those of you that take time out of your day to read these in comment.  I write these primarily as a form of therapy for myself but also in the hopes that my story will help someone who may be going through the same experience.

Finally, I would like to thank my friends, my family, my coworkers, and even some of my employees, who have served in the armed forces and have defended our freedom. There are too many for me to acknowledge individually and I fear I would forget at least one of you.  Happy 100th birthday to the Marine Corps, which both a previous supervisor (John Ruhs) and my cousin (Bill Robards) have proudly served in.