April 10

Things are moving along over here. I'm trying to heal from my surgery last Wednesday. My neck actually hurts a lot though. I'm not sure if that's a good sign, meaning it really is healing, or a bad sign, that we have now made things worse by cutting the hole to be bigger. I go in on Friday to find out.

Meanwhile, I had a PET scan done like two weeks ago to see if I'm still cancer free after all this surgery/radiation/chemo mess. I thought my doc would let me know the results when I saw him before surgery last Wednesday but he said he hadn't had time to review them yet. Say what? So he damned well better have something to tell me this Friday. I told baby doll that I get the feeling it's going to be bad news and he's putting it off as long as he can. I had told the doc quite bluntly in an e-mail that if the cancer is still there after all the shit I just went through then I'm throwing in the towel. I don't want to cut my body up into any more pieces or fry the shit out of it with the radiation and chemo. And hell, if radiation failed to work twice in a row, you know the third time really isn't going to be the charm. Anyway, that's where things stand with that.

I also get to see the palliative doctor tomorrow to report in to him on how things are going with my anti depressants and to evaluate my pain meds. As far as I'm concerned, we've hit a nice balance. I haven't wanted to throw myself off of a bridge since that one horrible weekend and the morphine mixed with Excedrin does a decent job at keeping the pain away.

Big day tomorrow! I'm hoping to get lots of good info to blog about!

Meanwhile, I was approved for Medicaid so I have insurance. Although I sent an e-mail to the medical supply place that delivers my feeding supplies and they said when they called, Medicaid still has Aetna listed as my primary insurance and Medicaid is the backup. So I've still been unable to get more 'food'. I'm in the process of trying to get that sorted out. It takes ten times longer to get knots like this untangled because I can't make any phone calls myself. The bright side to that is baby doll is much more the 'honey' guy on the phone and gets better results. I would be 'crabby' girl and probably alienate everybody. I just get so irritated about people not doing their jobs! My most recent gripe:

I have over $600 of hospital bills sitting here. When I went to see that Lizzett character at the hospital she told me not to pay them because she thought she could get me some funding to help pay them. I've been sitting on them ever since. I sent her two different e-mails, ten days apart, asking her for an update on what's going on with them. I received no response. I finally e-mailed the social worker to find out if Lizzett had died or something. Lizzett finally contacted me. She then acted like she didn't know what I was talking about and as far as she was concerned I was all set and she felt I was trying to put more work on her plate than she had time for. Are you kidding me with this? I sent a note back last night that was definitely not in the 'honey' vein. I told her that she was the one that had assigned herself this action item, not me, and that I was simply following up on it. I told her that it was MY credit rating being affected by not paying these bills and that since I'm a responsible adult, it was weighing heavily on me. I told her that if she could not secure me funding, then she should put her big girl panties on and just say so, so that I could pay these bills and move on. UGH! People irritate me to no end! Don't play God with my life and then act like you don't know what's going on! If you can't stay organized and remember what promises you've made to people, find a different line of work for crying out loud! You shouldn't be allowed to fuck with people like that! Okay, rant over. Now I got myself all wound up about it for the second day in a row. I need to move on.

As mentioned in my last blog, I also now have income. I was approved for social security disability and get a "paycheck" once a month. Baby doll spoke to the insurance company from work yesterday. I guess they will be sending me some long term disability to supplement the SSD as well. They were approving me for LTD as of yesterday and will backpay me from March 8th when my STD ended. So, I'm definitely feeling secure about staying in my house for a while longer. That's a huge source of stress that's been lifted from my shoulders.

I think that sums up the big, general stuff. Moving on to the nitty gritty.....

I woke up in the wee hours of Thursday morning with another attack of lymphodema. I was SO not happy. But there was pretty much no way that I was going to miss out on the trip to Toronto so I simply sucked it up. I spent Thursday running around, prepping for the trip. Baked some cookies for Jamie and did some last minute spot cleaning. Got myself packed. And then relaxed as much as I could. For some reason the inside of my mouth had been bleeding since I woke up from the surgery on Wednesday. They told me to give it a day and if it didn't stop, to call them. As usual, these instructions were given to me going into a weekend. That's always a PITA and I'm never sure what to do. I did my usual thing and simply ignored it. The bleeding magically stopped Friday night and hasn't been back since.

Going across the border was a joy on Friday. My face was all puffy from the lymphodema, I had a bloody washcloth hanging out of my mouth. The security guy detained us for quite a while, asking a billion questions about my health. He said he was worried that I was going to get worse and then be stuck in a foreign country needing medical aid. I was a little worried about that too but hey, I was going. Period.

Toronto was fun! Friday evening baby doll took me to Eaton Center. I had never been there before. That place is HUGE! Although I did not realize that Toronto is VERY expensive. You'd think I would have had some inkling because I've seen a number of House Hunter shows on HGTV where people are looking to buy in Toronto and the house prices are kind of crazy. Anyway, right at the beginning of our shopping expedition I found a goofy prezzie for my pet sitter. I always feel the need to bring Jamie something to make him laugh. I miss the easy going joie de vie he used to have, I'm always trying to bring it back. Then I didn't find anything else in my price range until the very end of our shopping trip. There was a store that had a big rack of cheap shoes out front that said 2 for $20. Now that's more my speed! Bought myself a couple of pairs of cheap shoes. They're definitely not something I will be wearing if I'm going to spend the day walking around but they're super cute for simply scuffing around the house or running to the store this summer. I was very excited.

Saturday we stayed in bed forever. I can't believe how comfy the pillows and mattress were in this place! I wanted to take them home with me! We finally got our butts up and according to my surgery release notes, I was allowed to finally shower on this day. So I did. I was a little worried about showering someplace other than home but it went fine. Then we walked over to the stadium to watch the Yankees play. Man, what a sucky game. The score was zip to zip for more than half the game which was really boring if you ask me and then suddenly the Blue Jays started hitting home runs like there was no tomorrow! So yeah, we lost.

Baby doll and I went back and took a very long nap. We then decided we were hungry and wanted to go out to eat. We did some research to find a place that served milkshakes so that I could order something too and not just sit there. You would think a milkshake would be easily had at most restaurants but surprisingly, it's not. Anyway, we decided it was a nice night so we walked to a place called The Pickle Barrel. It was located on Yonge Street. Turns out, it was past the Eaton Center. Here we thought the Eaton Center was too far to walk to so we drove over there and paid $20 for parking when we went shopping and now on a Saturday night at 9:00 PM we decided to walk even further than that for a bite to eat! Sometimes we just don't think things through. It ended up being okay. Baby doll said we could take a cab back home if needed but I held up surprisingly well so we did a midnight stroll down Yonge St. Good stuff! I feel like that's something you SHOULD do if you're in Toronto. :-)

Sunday we went to the zoo. That was a mistake. First of all, it was $56 for the two of us. Doesn't that seem kind of steep for a zoo? Granted, they tout themselves to be one of the largest zoos in the world at 710 acres so I sucked it up. But then it just ended up being lame. The enclosures for the animals were so big that if an animal was out, it was pretty much just a speck, and they were all just dozing in the sun so they looked kind of dead just laying around. The whole place had an air of being a little downtrodden. The icing on the cake was when we stopped at the restaurant on the way out. Baby doll wanted a quick snack before hitting the road for home. He ordered a panini. They were out of panini's. So he ordered a hot dog with chili. They were out of chili. At that point I grabbed his arm and shook my head. I really didn't want to give this place any more of our money than they had already gotten. So, we left. Kind of sad that the zoo in Cleveland, Ohio totally kicks ass over the zoo in Toronto, Canada.

I said the walk up Yonge St was no biggie but halfway through the zoo I asked baby doll if we could sit on a bench in the sun for a bit. I ended up falling asleep on his shoulder and took myself a little power nap in the middle of the zoo. Think I got more exercise than I realized!

So Sunday we were back home again around 7:00 PM. Back to the grind on Monday. 

By the time I left my HBO on Monday, I was running a fever. I felt like crap the rest of the day. When I woke up Tuesday I felt like I had been run over by a truck. I called in to my HBO and went back to bed. I didn't wake up until 1:15. Felt pretty crappy all that day too. Then I couldn't sleep that night. Baby doll and I went to bed at 11:30 and at 12:30 I was still lying there wide awake. So, I got up and puttered until 3:30 when I finally started feeling tired and went back to bed. You'd think I would be dead when my alarm went off at 8:00 but I pretty much bounced out of bed and had all sorts of energy yesterday. I ended up raking ~11 bags of leaves from my big flower bed. I also did a ton of research and marked off exactly where I'm going to build my raised garden bed. I wrote down what wood I need and how much of each piece I need. All I have to do is go shopping for it and start building! I was so excited that I had baby doll take me to Lowe's last night to start looking around. I bought a bag of weed and feed which I'm going to apply to my yard this weekend. The dandelions were awful last year. I want to stay on top of them this year. And I bought a roll of landscape fabric that I'm going to need when I start building my beds. Spring might actually be here! My yard needs a ton of work though. The plows were especially brutal to the front yard this year. My topsoil is rucked up all over the place. I need to take a stiff rake and go smooth things back out and plant some grass seed in all the bald spots. Let's just hope I continue having some high energy days to get this stuff done!

Today, unfortunately, is not feeling like a high energy day. I'm up, but I'm kind of dragging. It might be a curl up and watch movies type of day after my HBO. I'll have to see.

And on that note, I'm out of here. I have half an hour before my alarm goes off so I'm going to crawl back into bed an snooze a bit. Then it's off to my stupid HBO. I told Janice that I love her but I can't wait to be done with these things. It's two and a half hours out of every day where I'm locked in a damn glass capsule. I'm so done with it at this point. I only have 8 sessions to go. I'm marking my calendar. And if Dr. M tells me on Friday that he thinks we should extend the sessions, the answer is no, no, and more no. I'm really done with these things. :-)