August 5

I have no health updates to report but I think I may be overburdening baby doll with some of my more macabre thoughts. So I want to get back into the practice of using this blog as a therapeutic journaling activity for myself to purge some of my craziness. ;-)

I left a message for Nurse Jo Ann this morning letting her know that I will be running out of Vicodin today. If she doesn't call back by early afternoon then I'm going to have to research other avenues for getting some pain meds. Cue the joke about driving slowly around my neighborhood with my car alarm going off to let the local drug dealer know that I'm interested in a purchase. ;-P Maybe Dr. K would be willing to keep me out of pain until my surgery.

I asked baby doll if he'd be willing to learn ASL with me. He said he had actually been thinking about that a while back. He was concerned that his messed up hand would prevent him from communicating effectively but then he realized he doesn't need to speak it, he just needs to understand it. So, he's in. Have I mentioned lately what an absolute sweetheart he is? I looked up some classes here in Rochester. There's a 10 week fall session starting mid-September. $90/person. That might be a little soon after surgery though. We may need to check back and see if they offer a winter session.

He also mentioned that he did some brief research on the PEG last week. The PEG being the permanent feeding tube that I will have implanted in my stomach. I decided that if he's brave enough to go do some research, then I should put my big girl pants on and do some research too. Unfortunately my big girl pants didn't prevent me from having a good cry last night after I got done researching. I keep telling myself that I thought my arm where they took the flap from, and my neck incisions, and my muffled talking were going to be horribly life altering as well, but I ended up getting used to my 'new norm' fairly quickly so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that the feeding tube goes the same route. Meanwhile, depending on how much 'feed' I need on a daily basis, it looks like I will be saving quite a bit of money on groceries post surgery. I will only need to worry about feeding baby doll on the few nights a week that he's over. I think a fun challenge will be to continue trying new recipes, being the 'foodie' that I am, without being able to taste test them at all. Wouldn't it be awesome if I became a renowned cook who can't eat?! HA!

I took my tribunal out to lunch on Saturday to the Cheesecake Factory. It was a good time, everyone sharing stories, likes/dislikes, cracking jokes. I feel more than good about putting that group in charge of things. Jamie was telling a story about a mom who recently forgot that the tooth fairy was supposed to pay a visit to her kid and she freaked out and jumped on the internet to find out how to handle that situation. Sammy said she actually did that once with Leila too and she told Leila that the tooth fairy probably couldn't find the darned tooth due to how messy Leila's room was and that if she cleaned it, the tooth fairy would probably make a second attempt to claim the tooth. Sam's motto: "Never take responsibility if you can pawn it off on the kid". I can't tell you how hard this made me laugh. Sam is absolutely the best mother I know and she still manages to do it with flair and a sense of humor!

I've noticed that I've been trying hats on fairly often lately. Everywhere I go, if they have a hat section, I'm over in it, playing dress up. It just occurred to me this weekend why I might have a sudden interest in hats. If I lost more than 50% of my hair with 6 weeks of radiation, I can only assume that I can say goodbye to ALL of it when I start getting zapped with both radiation AND chemo. Now that I'm aware of the probable reason behind my hat fixation, I'm going to start looking at head scarves too. :-)

Our HR chickie set up a meeting for this Wednesday for us to have a conference call with the corporate office. I need to find out exactly how things work with me being out of the office for an extended period of time. I know that the FMLA will only protect my job for 12 weeks and then the company can feel free to fire me if I haven't made it back to work. I'd like to know what that means for my insurance benefits. Dr. M said the likely recovery period will be 4-6 months but could actually take up to a full year. If I lose my job, thus lose my insurance, what happens? This is what I should be finding out this week.

More practically speaking, if I lose my job I can see if I can cash out my 401k and pay off my mortgage. Then I can place an ad to find a roommate or two for my 4 bedroom house and their rent could cover the utilities, vet bills, my cell phone, and other sundry life costs. And eventually, I have to imagine that a job placement agency might be able to locate some part time, stay at home work for me.

Sam and I went to the Park Ave Fest on Saturday. I've been to parties during the festival but I don't think I've ever actually gone to the festival itself. It's pretty amazing! It's one and 1/4 miles long, both sides of the street, filled with food vendors, and crafts, and musicians, and not for profit organizations, and artists, and.......I can't believe I've been missing out on this for the past 15 years! Sam and I only made it about halfway down the entire thing before we decided we had better head back. And while there were a lot of the vendors that we see at the Lilac Festival every year, there were TONS of new vendors that I've never seen before! I went a little crazy buying stuff. I usually limit myself to one 'treasure' at the Lilac Festival. I bought myself 3-4 treasures as well as a few treasures for baby doll as well. Sheesh.

Yesterday was golfing with Sandi. It was a gorgeous day out and with all the rain that we've gotten this summer, the golf courses are simply beautiful. To make it even better, I was having a somewhat good day at golf and Sandi was having a somewhat bad day at golf so for once, I didn't feel like a total loser playing with her! Although even on her bad day of golf she had two chips on two different holes that went straight into the cup. The first one we didn't see because the green was on a hill and when we finally got up there, we were looking EVERYwhere for her ball before Sandi finally thought to look in the hole. Too funny! The second one we both got to see and it was a very pretty ball, and it gave her an eagle on that hole too. A total high five/happy dance moment!

And we interrupt my rambling with a surgery update. Nurse Jo Ann just called to let me know that I can pick up my prescription for Vicodin at the info desk in the surgery center around 2:00 today. She also said they have a tentative date for my surgery. She didn't want to give me the exact day because it could still be bumped. I told her that I just made plans to go to Seabreeze with my best friend from high school and her kids on Friday, 8/16. She said that I will potentially need to cancel that because they're definitely looking at a day the week of 8/12. Bummer about Seabreeze but yay for upcoming surgery! I'm going to have to get things wrapped up with my lawyer by the end of this week though. I don't want to go under the knife with any loose ends. Which reminds me, I still need to teach baby doll how to update my blog and pay my bills. That's going on the MUST do list for tomorrow!

So another benefit to the feeding tube is that I would think it's easy to maintain my weight. This means I can finally get rid of the (8) 35 gallon tubs of clothes that I currently have stored in the basement. I think I'm going to post a note on Facebook first to see if any of my girlfriends want to come get some free clothes, then I'll donate the rest to the thrift store for a tax write-off. And thank goodness Elvisa and I are going thrift store shopping on Wednesday. I tried on 3 pairs of pants this morning, all of which were swimming on me. I decided I had better hit the scale and see what the damage has been lately. I'm down to 111 pounds. No wonder I had to buy a size 2 pair of jeans at Eddie Bauer last weekend! 

Okay, I think I'm about rambled out for the day. I'm going to start purging brain stuff more often so that it's not such a book next time. And now I'm off to pick up my Vicodin prescription.....