Dr. appt. nerves

Tomorrow, we go for Tim's check-up. I don't know if it's just my nature or what but I always
expect to be seeing the other shoe drop when we go to these things. I start thinking how tired Tim has been
and wonder if the MM is back. Last week there were just a few bubbles in the toilet after he had
gone and flushed and I asked him if he has noticed his urine being foamy. He said he doesn't pay attention and doesn't care. I never get used to these appts. even when we were going
every month. I bring a book to read in the waiting room but I am so antsy
that I can't concentrate on it anyway so I don't know why I bother. I usually wind up seeing someone I know and talk away the time which always helps the old nerves. Last night as I waited in my car for Olivia to get out of cheerleading practice, I had one of those "ton of bricks" moments as I
was listening to one of our favorite Springsteen songs on the radio. It just hits me out of the blue that "oh yeah, my husband has cancer and he could die." My husband must have these moments too but he never shares them with me really. The other day, he said something that
was so sad though. It was the day we celebrated 25 years together. He surprised me by bringing home a little package from the jewelry store. It was a pretty ring with a little diamond and he confessed to being totally stuck for ideas for gifts but I was touched. We were not doing anything to celebrate this day 'cept just remembering it but I guess the last few birthday IOU's
I've gotten made him think a gift from him was in order. It made me pretty emotional but I sucked it up and then when I said something about "can you believe we've been together a quarter century?" he kind of muttered something about him "being outta here now though." I said that
he WAS NOT outta here but it broke my heart to realize that he is thinking about the fact that he may not be making certain anniversaries and I WANT HIM TO SO BADLY!!!!! This is so hard to live like this. We are not alone in this but it still feels like such a lonely journey. A guy who was my neighbor growing up is in end-stage liver failure right now from a genetic liver disease he was dx'ed with 20 years ago. He is just a few years younger than me and they have
4 kids. His older sister stepped right up and got herself tested to donate a part of her liver to save him and I just heard that she got to the last series of tests and found out she was not
a match. Ugh, it's so sad. They kept his disease secret all these years but now I know why his
wife broke down on me when she heard about Tim's MM. This really sucks. I can't stand seeing and hearing about all this misery sometimes. It's too much. As the holidays approach, I find myself again wanting to go on vacation somewhere and bow out of the normal grind. It's so painful sometimes to be going through the same old motions when nothing is the same for us anymore. Tim and I don't even want to lay eyes on his sister-in-law after what she did last Christmas and wonder how to accomplish that without depriving Olivia of celebrating the holiday or reliving the whole mess ourselves. I gotta get better at this "one-day-at-a-time"
thing. My life just seems too overwhelming to me when I think of all I have to do and be on top of. Well, I'm off for a little walk with my favorite pre-teen and puppy. Gotta unwind a little bit.

Nurse Denise/Lunch with Lori the language-challenged

So today is not starting out much better than yesterday. The Chihuahua attack has left our puppy with an infection in her eye and stuff oozing out of it. I've been rinsing it with warm water and smearing antibiotic ointment in it. From what I can see, I think she got cut on her lower lid where it meets the eyeball and there is a little bump there. She has a vet appt. tomorrow morning for shots and to get her spaying stitches out and hopefully this eye
is cleared up by then or the doc tells me it's no big thing. I took Lacey out a little after 5 am
this morning. I don't get this. She peed outside and then came in and pooped in the diningroom. Dang! Then we went back up to bed where Tim was in the throws of another allergy/asthma reaction. So I got him to take a Zyrtec but we didn't really get back to sleep today and he is exhausted. Then Olivia woke up with ANOTHER stomach ache and said she couldn't go to school. I gave her some dry cereal and water to drink and told her she would have to go when her stomach felt better. If this doesn't stop, I may have to have her seen by
a gastroenterologist. I drove her to school about 20 minutes late with a note. Ugh. I feel like a nurse 'cept I'm not making 70 thousand a year. On a lighter note, my older sister Lori is on vacation in Columbia this week. She has friends from there whose family still lives there. Lori is quite the traveller and she knows a good amount of spanish. Working in a field with many nationalities and travelling to CA for business alot has kept her pretty brushed up on it. What she lacks, I guess, is the proper accent. She is a pretty smart person, booksmart I guess you'd call it, but when it comes to sticking her foot in her mouth, well.... she has made it an art form.
The other day at lunch she decided to ask her friend's sister(friend speaks English, sis that lives in Columbia does not) how her trout was. Lori probably thought she was hot stuff knowing how to say trout. Well, it turns out if you do not pronounce the word for trout just right, what you wind up saying is the word for body odor. The woman made a strange face and didn't reply.
Someone enlightened Lori and I guess there were no hard feelings 'cause the woman sat next
to my sister for lunch again yesterday. Lori figured she had it licked because the woman was having chicken and she'd seen "arroz con pollo" on enough menus to feel confident. She again goofed with the pronunciation and wound up asking the woman how her ass was. They all cracked up laughing and made a scene in the restaurant so I guess there is no offense taken from the language-challenged gringo. I think she better stick to por favor and gracias.
I almost forgot. Today is 25 years since Tim's and my first date. Wow, a quarter century. Time just FLIES, doesn't it?

I think I have to go back to bed....

and pull the covers over my head while I'm at it. So today, I get an e-mail from my tenant.
Her dog is going to be put to sleep on Wed. She has been dreading this for a long time and
they just finally figured out what was wrong with the dog and Gertie is now in an advanced
stage of lymphoma. I feel bad for them and our tenant kept telling the vet something wasn't right and they missed the diagnosis. Not that this is more important at all, but I will probably be looking for
a new tenant soon too. The dog was the only thing keeping her there(you cannot find nice apts. around here that take animals. We normally don't, but made an exception for her.) She wants to get away from my downstairs
tenant, who is a pain, and they apparently had a little fling which ended badly so I think she'll be
off to a garden apt. complex soon. She's the best tenant we ever had and we'll be sad to see her go but as for her affair with Mr. "going through a bad divorce" there is a quote in the movie "moonstruck" that says, "Don't shit where you eat."
My apologies to sensitive ears. But really, did either of them really think it was gonna be "happily ever after" jumping into something on the rebound or that it would be fun having to live in the same house with an ex lover? So, then I take my little pup off to the park where she is attacked
by a Chihuahua who is not on a leash. It was the saddest little thing and I would have liked
to shoot the woman 'cept she is a damn neighbor and swears her dog has never done that,
even though he snapped at Lacey just a few minutes earlier. THIS IS WHY THEY MAKE LEASHES PEOPLE. The damn dog get her right in the eye and Lacey was screaming when it
happened and crying afterward. I swear if I did not get them seperated, I would have kicked that darn dog a mile. Now I wonder how Lacey will be with other dogs and who could blame her
now if she is afraid. The other day, we were at Olivia's soccer game and some woman was walking 2 HUGE pitbulls on a single, Y-type leash and didn't see my pup on my lap and her dogs came right at me and almost jumped on top of us. I was not happy. I'm afraid of those dogs and after the one killed Tim's aunt's dog, I am very wary of any large dog around my puppy. There are just some larger dogs that see small dogs as prey and there was no way that this woman would have been able to control these huge dogs if they decided to attack. I had 2 dogs rush up to Lacey last week too that the guy didn't have leashed. He apologized and leashed them but for Pete's sake people, there are leash laws here and they're for everybody's safety.
What's that saying, there are no bad dogs, just bad owners. I'm starting to see that now. So then I got on the phone with the place that did my sleep study. It was almost a month ago and I still have
not gotten the report on whether I have apnea or not. Turns out the pulmonologist they sent my file to has been the hold-up and he is not the one I specified that I wanted, he is this quack that
my primary care doctor recommended instead and the same idjit that told me I had a pulmonary embolism 7 years ago and could die, have a stroke and yadda, yadda, yadda. He shot
me full of blood thinners and my cardiologist came in and told me he was wrong. There was no
blood clot. My neighbor, who is a chiropractor, told me this same doctor told one of his patients
she'd had a heart attack and he was wrong. So I just told the sleep study place and my primary care doctor that I would not even be in the same room with this quack, let alone let him handle
my medical care. Now please send my file to the doctor who I specified!!!! I'm not happy about
how this day turned out. And I was supposed to start a diet today. I'm going to pick Olivia up from school and we are heading straight to Dairy Queen for ice cream and I'm gonna spend the rest of today kissing my little doggie. I need a happy fix.
P.S.
SO CLOSE!!! We got to the DQ and as we walked across the parking lot, Olivia said she had a stomach ache and we went home without. She is still getting these tummy aches and if it doesn't stop, I may have to ask her doctors if further testing is needed. This has been a bad day!
But when everything turns to cr**, there's always chocolate. Olivia seems to be feeling better already, she just grabbed a chocolate donut from my stash. Would it be too weird to put my pajamas on at 3:00 in the afternoon?

A day in the life of a carp

Today, we went in for Tim's blood draw. We will see the doctor next Friday for the results.
Everyone that works at the myeloma dept. at this hospital could not be nicer. They are always
smiling and polite. I sometimes think that they must have employee meetings where they are
told by their bosses that they had better behave this way towards the patients OR ELSE. I've even thought that they must get to thinking the old, "there but for the grace of God, go I" type of thing being around cancer patients all day, so they have that grateful thing going on all the time. I know Tim's doc, in his sometimes tackless manner, told us once that myeloma is a cruddy disease and he walks out of work often thinking he's glad he doesn't have it. Thanks doc. That's an obvious piece of information we didn't need put into words. But there is one guy whose personality stands in stark contrast to everyone else there. Dino. He spends his days taking blood all day. He takes blood, receives 24 hour urine
samples and walks them across the hall. Boring job, I admit, but gosh, make the best of it pal.
It's also pretty low stress too. You don't have to make life or death treatment decisions. You don't have to give people bad news. I swear he just has no personality and always looks like
he's just a little miffed about something. He speaks in a monotone. In 3 1/2 years, I don't know if I have EVER seen him smile. You try to make conversation and show some interest in him and you get one word answers. Today, Tim sits down for his draw and it goes like this:
Denise:How long have you been doing this?
Dino: Too long.
Uncomfortable silence thinking he is going to give me the real answer. He doesn't.
Tim:Did you get away anywhere for vacation this summer?
Dino: Not really. My wife gave birth.
Waiting for details that never come. Didn't even smile when he said this about having another child.
Denise: OH that's great, what did you have?
Dino: A boy
Waiting for more details and maybe a smirk or something.
Denise: How nice. One of each now(he has a girl). What did you name him?
Dino: Luca
Denise: Ah yes, very italian(goes with Dino of course).
Dino: Yup
Waiting for more details. Anything. A glimpse of emotion. Nothing.
Tim: When was he born.
Dino: the fourth of July
Tim and Denise: OH How cool!
Dino: grunt
For those non-USA'ers the 4th of July is our Independance day which is when we apparently told England, "You're not the boss of us. We can do a great job of screwing everything up all by ourselves."(and we did)
Then Dino asked Tim the same thing he always does when he realizes he's being asked to partake in conversation.
Dino: How's business?
Tim goes into his medium, short version of this answer and I am always shocked that Dino asks him this 'cause Dino got an estimate from Tim when he bought a house a few years ago
but went with a cheap(what we call hacker) flooring company instead.
By this time we were done and said our good-byes but I swear I have never met a duller, more un-friendly guy. I mean he had a baby for heaven's sake and you have to pull it all out of him like he's not even that impressed or happy about it. I said something joking around one day to
the doc during Tim's appt. and they laughed at the idea I'd met carp with more personality but they agreed. He's one heckuva Eeyore for sure. I feel like shaking him sometimes and reminding him that this ain't no picnic for the folks on the other side of that needle either and
he could perk up just a little. Wonder what his wife is like. I get to feeling mopey just being around him for 5 minutes. He's a disgrace to
us Italians. Heck, I'm only a quarter Italian and I can barely wait on a line without striking up
a conversation with someone. This guy needs some happy pills or something.

Most important lesson learned

I just read something on an MM blog I follow that shocked me a little. This very funny guy got a private e-mail from a woman who was a little miffed that he would joke so much about MM.
She is quite upset about her dad's diagnosis and can't understand the humor so many of
us use to cope with MM invading our lives. I left a pretty long comment on his blog
but I think this subject deserves its own post on mine. Needless to say, and I have blogged about it before, Tim's diagnosis was a horrible blow at a bad time. For some time afterward, I found myself mourning. I was mourning our life as we knew it. It would never be the same and it takes some time to get around to accepting that. I cried a river(mostly in private) for a long time. I cried in the car, the shower, dark movie theaters, you name it. If crying burned calories, I'd surely have gotten back into my skinny jeans. Tim, on the other hand, in a show of courage that I could never have imagined, accepted the hand he was dealt and got on with it. He told me that he was not going to spend what time he had left crying and moping and he certainly hasn't. I feel that it would be selfish of me not to buck up for him then and try to keep my spirits up. I also believe that if the mom goes down, the whole family goes with her so I put on my big girl pants and have been stronger than I have ever been for the sake of Tim and Olivia. I realized during all those tearful breakdowns that I could not function as a wife, parent, or caregiver when I was like that. I also know that it bothers Tim to know how his cancer diagnosis affects his family so I don't want him to feel worse about that. More importantly, I learned one of the biggest lessons I had to learn from this journey and that is this: YOU SHOULD NOT MOURN A PERSON WHO IS ALIVE. I think that was part of what was behind a lot of those tears. I was so worried about what the future held, I was "what iffing" myself into a miserable existance. If you are going to lose a loved one, as one blogger put it, there will be time for weeping and wailing later. It struck me that to mourn someone that was standing right in front of me was the biggest waste of precious time imaginable. I decided instead to make great memories and try my hardest to live in the present. Hence Tim's brandy new pickup for Christmas. Seize the day.
Some of these blogs I follow are written by the wittiest, most hysterical people and so many times, they have made me crack up on a day that I really needed that. The shock of a cancer diagnosis will send anyone reeling and some days it is really hard to be happy. But I do know that I would really regret not making the most of our time together no matter how long that is.
Some time ago, I stumbled onto a blog about a boy in Mass. who has relapsed neuroblastoma which is fatal. He was dx'ed when he was 7 months old and has been on chemo his whole life.
He just turned six. As bad as our situation is, I can't even imagine how hard it is to watch your child suffer and so many of these kids with NB have died. I just read a quote that this boy's dad
posted on his blog and since I was unable to figure out how to cut and paste it, I will just paraphrase it and you can look it up yourself if you desire. It's by Robert Brault and basically, it says not to worry about life expectancies. It says that instead of ticking each day off from some "allotment" you think you may have, you should consider each day of your life as a treasure to add to your
chest and with each day lived, your treasure will grow, not diminish. It is so hard not to obsess about the future, especially when you're in the position we're all in with cancer affecting ourselves or our spouse. But I can see no way to be somewhat OK right now unless you try to live for
today and make the most of it. And laugh whenever possible. Tim's doctor is a riot and we are always busting each other back and forth. We appreciate it and wouldn't have it any other way.
Even during some of the worst of times these last few years, Tim and I have joked with each other to break the tension and some things that have happened have been downright funny.
As I always say, laughing beats crying anyday.

Losing friends

Yesterday, we got some terrible news. A man we know very well was killed in a car accident
Sunday at the age of 58. His brother was driving and survived with injuries but Billy did not
make it. We are stunned. Tim has known him for over 30 years and he owns a delicatessen
in our town that we go to often. Tim and I get in arguments often when he is driving. I
do not like long car trips and am a worry wart through and through and Tim does not drive
as carefully as I would like. Despite his MM diagnosis, he still goes through his life thinking
bad things won't happen to him. I, unfortunately, have had so many cruddy things happen to me, that I expect the worst all the time. NJ has such busy roads with scads of obnoxious drivers
and the cell phone issue just makes it more dangerous these days. I am paranoid of the time when Olivia is old enough to drive and told Tim yesterday that I think we should move to a more rural area when that time comes. About 5 or 6 years ago, we were going to so many wakes
that our neighbors couldn't believe it. We live 2 blocks from the most popular funeral parlor in our area and it seemed like Tim and I were always walking down the street in our black clothes with our neighbors seeing us and saying, "not another one?!" As we saw a lot of our friends losing their parents, we feared losing our own. Many of the deaths we saw were very sudden and sadly, some of these people were in their 50's or early 60's. I told Tim at one point that I felt like we had moved into a period of our life that would be marked by
losses. He was pretty upset yesterday after we got this news and told his mother on the phone that it just felt like we are all dropping like flies. Tim's ex-boss, who is someone I've known since I was a child because I grew up being friends with his daughter, died quite suddenly from
an aneurism about 4 years ago. My father has an aneurism in his head that was found just a few years earlier when he was CT scanned after he was rear-ended by a truck while driving. At that point, I really started to worry about my own parents and I can remember very vividly thinking that the wind would surely be knocked out of my sails to lose them but that as long as I had Tim and Olivia, somehow I could muddle through. They are my world and I literally build my life around theirs.
Needless to say, Tim's cancer diagnosis brought the mortality thoughts even closer to home than I expected. Events don't always happen in the so-called "natural order" of things. The older generation doesn't always go first. I hate going to wakes. I hate when Tim is going to wakes. I hate that life is so damn fragile that a split second on the highway wipes out a life and destroys
countless others in the process. I hate that kids get sick and parents see their children suffer.
There should be a natural order of things. You're born, you live, you get old, you die, you go to heaven and see all your loved ones that went before you. PERIOD. Anything other than that makes no damn sense to me at all.

Puppies and puberty

Well, it's been an eye-opening few days with our new pup. She is a total love but housebreaking is going to be tricky. She does know what she is supposed to do outside but because this poor thing had been stuck in a cage, she is not even crate-trained because all her life, she had no choice but to go potty in her crate where she was sleeping and eating. I think I will go buy some
stock in the company that makes our brand of paper towels. She is teething like crazy too and bites everything and nibbles on us too. The scary thing is Olivia had an allergic reaction the other day all over her face and I had to give her allergy meds. She has never been allergic to dogs but I have to assume that having scratches on her face made her react to the saliva(this dog is a big kisser). Liv has a doctor's appt. today so this is one thing I will be talking to her doc about. Liv has been having stomach issues. I swear that this is all about her hormones kicking in. I've had IBS and food intolerances forever and it always seemed linked to my hormones. She
started getting headaches too. I just got out a little care package the girls were given in school.
Being the always prepared type, I am going to give her a little pouch of necessities to carry in her bag in school just in case "the curse" shows up. So I just read the pamphlets that were included in this kit. I had to laugh. I know we need to look at this as a happy time(though it never was for me thanks to severe cramps and endometriosis) but this stuff was too funny.
They included a "HAPPY KIT" which contained small pads. Honestly, opening that gives me
no feelings of joy whatsoever. They have questions and answers about puberty and periods and all the changes your body makes. One question is "When will my breasts stop growing?" While
I can't see a girl wanting to know that, unfortunately, if Liv takes after me the answer will be
"about 20 minutes after they start growing." The book says, "you will start thinking and behaving more like an adult." Yeah, I'm not holding my breath on that one. Has the author of this booklet actually been around 12 and 13 year-olds lately?!!! It says that wearing a bra will provide support and coverage and make you feel more comfortable. It's been 95 degrees here this week. Any woman who lives where it's hot and thinks having that slingshot on makes them more comfortable, raise your hand.......anybody?....I thought so. You can paint a rosy picture all you want but sometimes these things us women have to deal with just stink. The booklet shows a calendar with 3 days marked "I have PMS" and then 5 days marked, "MY PERIOD'S HERE!!!" Somehow, I don't think most of us have that kind of enthusiasm though after skipping a few cycles myself and one pregnancy test later, I must admit, I almost wrote that on the calendar myself this month. 'Cept I had PMS for 2 and 1/2 months. I warn Tim that these next few years may be interesting. Olivia's hormones are ramping up just when mine are giving up. I guess delaying motherhood until the 30's has this backlash of putting you in a hormonal
flux just when your kid(s) are too. Bad planning. Hopefully, our daughter does not have the terrible pain issues I had. There is a question that says, "what should I do if I have cramps?"
I am an old pro at this. My advice: Take pain meds around the clock and score a few days off
of school. If necessary, book a flight to the UK and give Bernard a little shot to the shins. ;o)
"What to do if the cramps are REALLY bad?" Kick Bernard's car.

Just kidding B!

Ugh, the puppy just peed the floor again. I gotta figure out how to strap those darn pads to
that little whizzer.