The holidays, myeloma style

This year, the holidays pose more of an illness threat than usual. This is a popular time to get
sick for our family as it is what with all the kissing and handshaking at parties and such. The
swine flu has put an extra little wrinkle in things. I did finally manage to get Olivia and Tim the
shots. We actually had to drive into NY state to get Tim's. His doc did not have them and we could not find a place closer that did. Unforunately, I had a reaction to a flu shot 5 years ago
so I cannot get one unless I sit in the doctor's office with epinephrine at the ready and since
our docs don't have them anyway, I can't take the risk of having one done in a CVS and then having a reaction. So I am trying to be careful. I have warned Tim time and again that many MM'ers
do not shake hands and kiss folks when greeting but it's hard to pull back and have to explain
all the time. So I told him that at least with family and close friends, you can explain once and
they'll understand. No dice. The man never listens to me. Heck, I'm his wife and there's times
I avoid kissing him on the lips when there's any chance I've been exposed to something or Olivia
is ill and I may be coming down with it. Our moms and sisters would certainly understand.
It has gotten really hard to entertain now. My Thanksgiving crowd went from 15 to 7 last week. My sis and her
2 year-old were sick and my 18 year old niece was sick too so that made 2 sections of our family
that could not make it. What can ya do? At first I thought it would be great to have all those
left-overs. A step on my bathroom scale this morning has me re-thinking that. Now I have to
decide what to do about this Sat. Our town has a parade and "Home for the Holidays" event
every year and we have a party since our house it at the start of the parade route. I have to
invite folks with the warning that if anyone is sick or has had a live flu vaccine in the past 2
weeks, they can't come. My best friend's 2 girls are having the swine flu mist today and she
either has to postpone or not come. Olivia will be so disappointed. The thought arises too about
whether we should even have this party. Tim hates it when our life is affected by his MM and of
course, if things go smoothly and no one gets sick, we'll be glad we did not cancel it but
I always think to myself, if he gets sick and winds up in the hospital with pneumonia, was it
worth it? Tim has truly been blessed in this area. I read many accounts of MM'ers who get
pneumonia and UTI's repeatedly and it's miserable. We all did get the flu last year and thankfully it did not result in anything too serious but Tim was wiped out for 6 weeks. He
has never had that happen and thank God it was during his slow time at work. I have to make
up my mind soon. Olivia has so many new friends who come from nice families. We have gotten
to know them well and I would love to invite them but between not having a playroom or finished basement for the kids to hang out in and this swine flu deal, I have to refrain from that. I told Liv I would do something at the end of the school year when the weather will be
warm enough for the kids to be in the yard and there will be less illness floating around. Our church has stopped the handshaking and kissing of the "peace be with you" situation as well as the hand holding during the Lord's prayer. I am still in shock that people still drink from the challis though. Others dip their wafers into it. I am not phobic about germs though obviously I am more cautious now but I have to say that I always thought this was nuts. We have a lot of older folks in our church and it amazes me that they would take that kind of risk. I guess they have more faith than I that nothing will happen. I'll stick with my little plastic shot glass. So I
guess that the key is as always, moderation. Have the party but don't go insane with the guest
list. I know that everyone is really careful about not coming around us sick. Nobody wants to be
responsible for passing something to Tim. I always clean and disinfect bathrooms and doorknobs now especially after we have had guests. You know, an "ounce of prevention" and all that. I've already warned Tim that I really don't want a repeat performance of last year's hangover even with the cabinet full of cures we have. It's unbelievable that my hubby could get
through a 4 day drip of CDEP, a stem cell transplant, Velcade and Revlimid without hurling one
single time. Give him just one or two too many brewskis though and he's tossing his cookies
the next morning. This is a VERY rare event around here thank goodness but unpleasant none-the-less. It's not that Tim drinks alot at all. It's that he's not used to it anymore and his tolerance
is WAY down. Well, here's hoping we make it through this next few weeks in good health and with no hurling. It's a short wish list. I'm easy.

Let the holidays begin

GREAT NEWS TODAY. Just got back from Tim's doc and he is still in remission. No m-spike.
It's been over a year and a half now since any chemo meds. We are HAPPY about this. In 2007, we went into the holidays in a bad way. We had just found out that Tim's transplant had tanked
and he had pretty much gone through all that for nothing. It was already tough going into our
first holiday season with the "cancer cloud" hanging over us but that news was devastating.
Then last year, I was so trying to enjoy the holidays. The shock of his cancer diagnosis was behind us, he was in remission and feeling good. Then both of our tenants broke their leases
which threw a ton of work onto my plate and I went through a breast cancer scare that dragged on for 7 weeks. I can't begin to tell you what was going through my mind. A young child to raise
and both of us with cancer???? 5 or 6 days before Christmas, I am laying on a hospital gurney
having my left boob sonagrammed and I knew they found something. She was using this little
plastic thing and shooting the sonagram through it to get a measurement on what she found.
I just about lost my mind. She left to go show the doctor the pictures and when she came back
she told me I was fine. I broke into tears. It turned out to be water cysts and nothing more.
She did not know why I reacted so emotionally. Then I told her the situation and she said.
"OH. I understand now." Tim and I were so relieved. I told Tim, "So much for that boob upgrade you thought I'd get. Looks like you're stuck with the original equipment!" So today is my sister's birthday. We had an oncology appt. and I am
always nervous but the last 2 times we saw this doc on a family member's birthday, we got bad
news. I try not to be superstitious. Someone told me a long time ago that it is sacriligious to
believe in superstition. Makes sense. I don't want to believe that a broken mirror, smashed
spider or the number 13 on a calendar has more control over my life than God. So Lori's
birthday turned out to be the one that we did not get bad news on. We don't go back until
February. YIPPEEEEEEE!!!!! We are so going to drag every ounce of enjoyment out of this
holiday season that we can. I am not going near ANY doctors now. I, personally have had so many bad things happen when I get near a doctor or medical facility. They sent a reminder for
my yearly mammo a few weeks back and I was like " yeah, like I'm ever gonna make the mistake of doing this before X-mas again. See ya in 2010 suckers." I don't care if I have a whole
appendage falling the freek off, I AM NOT GOING to any doctors. So a big HOLLA to God for Tim's continued good health. Today is a good day. Break out the chocolate!

Mom's always last on the list

This is the theme of being a mom and when you are a caregiver too, you can jack this theme up
a gazillion percent. You remember to do everything you have to do for everyone else and forget
or just never get to ANYTHING you want to/need to do for yourself. Will it ever change? I dunno. Two weeks ago as I was getting into bed on aThursday night, I realized I had completely forgotten about my book club meeting. Today, I just got home from picking Olivia up from school and have
been so intent on not forgetting Tim's flu shot appt. that I forgot there was an MM support group meeting today. I totally missed it and they were talking about something I wanted to hear. I spend every second of every day doing for other people and never get to my stuff.
OY!!!!!!!!

They say God never gives you more than you can handle

I'll never forget the day someone said that quote in front of my brother-in-law Mike.
He called BS on it right away. He said, "I don't believe that. Look at the people who
commit suicide." You don't have to look far to find people in desperate situations. Sometimes it really seems folks get more than they can deal with. I opened an e-mail yesterday from a woman Tim transplanted with who we have remained in contact with. (Is "with" a preposition? My senior year English teacher would be mad to read that sentence) Marlene is a single mom and just a year or so older than Tim. I hated seeing her go through a stem cell transplant by herself
and did whatever I could do to help lessen her fear. She just went back on treatment a few weeks ago and would you believe had a stroke at work a few days ago. She DROVE HERSELF to the hospital
in the middle of it and after doing scans and telling her she had a stroke, they also found lesions
on her brain and told her she has MS. I just want to scream at this news. She moved here over 20 years ago from LA to get her baby son out of a bad neighborhood. Her family is across the country and Jersey is home to her now. This girl is not getting a freekin' break and I'm pretty
darn mad. I just started going to Bible lessons at my church. I don't get to church enough and being raised Catholic(I'm Lutheran now) I don't know diddly about the bible. We were reading
a passage a few weeks back where God threatens to punish a man as well as generations of his family to follow if he disobeys him. Kinda flies in the face of that "forgiving God" stuff. I sat there
and wondered which one of my ancestors screwed up so bad that I have them to blame for my
tales of woe. Now I'm wondering what the heck kinda grudge is being played out on my friend
Marlene. I just don't get it sometimes. I gotta lay down. I've got a stomach ache just thinking about this.

Starting the day with a heart attack

So this morning, I am making my oatmeal when the phone rings. I get a computerized message from my daughter's principal telling me my daughter has not shown up for school and is being
marked absent. I immediately go into panic mode because 1. I dropped my daughter off at school 2. I am a card-carrying worry-wart 3. We recently had a luring incident in a town nearby
4. I just watched a show about unsolved crimes which spotlighted a lot of abductions and last but not least 5. I have never owned a pair of rose colored glasses and always think the worst.
I try to call the school right back and the darn message is still going on and won't release the
phone line. FINALLY it ends and I call the school. It's busy. I call again and again, still busy. I
am freaking by this point. What the hell is going on? I've got visions running through my head.
I get out the phone book to see if there are any other numbers listed for the school. None.
So I dial the school # on my cell phone as I run out the door and jump in the mommy van. I procede to lay rubber(that darn thing is pretty peppy) and start flying for the school knowing I
will probably be pulled over before I get there(thank goodness Tim has done the wood floors for half the cops and we know several of the rest too). I hit re-dial over and over and finally I get
a ringing and I pull over. NOW I have to listen to their automated answering system. This makes me nuts. Of course the number you have to hit is always the last option. I get a woman
and start to tell her why I am calling and she says "hold on" and PUTS ME ON HOLD. Then
another woman picks up and I start explaining again and she interrupts and says they just started a new computerized system today and it seems to have malfunctioned. I am about the
20th call from worried parents and she assures me that Olivia is in class and fine. I tell her,
"I am halfway to school in my car and having a heart attack here." She apologized for the inconvenience. I turn around and go home to my luke warm, lumpy oatmeal. About 15 minutes
later, I get a call. AGAIN with this damn automation. It is the school principal again with a recording saying that by error, that phone message went out to every parent in the school. He
apologized for the inconvenience. Nice way to start my day. The thing that ticks me off the most
is I'll bet you a whole lot of money that the MEAT-HEAD that brought us this debacle this morning makes well over 100K a year. You'd think he had enough gray matter to get this
working right before they put about 500 people into heart failure. The parents whose kids walk to school must have really lost their minds. Just one more example of how my outrageously high property taxes are working for me. Yippee-ki-yay.

What the heck???!!!!

Politically speaking.......AAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
My state just elected a man for governor who walked out of an ethics hearing because he was caught doing unethical things and refused to answer their questions. He promises to lower our taxes but he has been caught not paying his own. His campaign was won by complaining that
our current gov. did not create jobs and lower taxes. Newsflash. You cannot expect to bring tons of jobs into a
state that is in this terrible recession handed to us courtesy of the "fat-cat" bankers that cashed in on writing bad loans. You also cannot lower property taxes when the "garden state" is in
debt up to its rutabagas and you are now losing millions of dollars in sales tax revenues due to the recession. It's simple economics people. I sincerely hope this guy is not as bad a guy as he appears to me. I just still can't believe he got elected. Years ago, Tim and I were making a gas stop in Vermont on a day we were coming home from vacation there. Turns out the shop owner was born in NJ and had moved to VT years before. He had just gone back to Jersey for a wedding which was in a pretty urban area of the state. I'll never forget the way he said,
"yep, that state sure is goin' to Hell in a handbasket." Tim and I still laugh about it. I'm not laughing too much today though. That guy was more right than even he knew.
By the way, does this handbasket make my butt look big?