Déjà vu; nothing new under the sun; what goes around, comes around; the more things change, the more they stay the same…Joe is back…A couple of weeks ago he had a seizure…strange first time event for a man his age. Anyway, it seemed the right thing to do to let him come here. He was already looking for a different place to live, other than with our oldest son and his family. He was coming from looking at a place when he had the seizure, seemingly at a red light. A bicyclist came by and called 911. Susan took care of everything. It was quite the timing for my life because it was my last night of summer school after teaching daily back-to-back classes for five weeks following working all day as an assistant principal. He had all the necessary medical tests and was released from the hospital on a Friday. I guess we will work at getting along. (Teresa, note I didn’t say try to get along, or I’m just saying). Since he’s on seizure medication, he can’t drink; and so far he hasn’t. Of course, he’s not supposed to drive either, but that’s another story. He hasn’t yet been to a neurologist, so it will be interesting to see what an expert says about the results of all the tests. Since I started this, he’s been to the neurologist who had nothing of value to add to the puzzle. He said Joe might have had a trans something or other instead of a seizure. The doctor told him to taper off the seizure medication so now he’s back to normal with CB. Anyway, he’s with me; and things are okay. What to do with the only man you ever loved, and you met him when you were 18 years old. It seems right that we should be together. So far, he’s been very helpful. He is his normal self, with the same short-term memory. I’m assuming that’s allowed when you’re 73. I told him if he had wanted to come back, he could have just asked instead of going to all that trouble with EMTs, hospital stay, myriad of tests, and doctor visits. Maybe I would have responded in the affirmative anyway.

Teresa has inspired me! In her latest blog entry she has promised to blog once a week. So, I’m inspired and here goes…I’m boring! Thanks be to God! I love being boring. Nothing broken, no treatments for anything…Boring! If only this could continue. By the way, I loved Teresa’s next-to-last blog entry with that scary baby. I’ve heard about Twitter, too. I’m not going there. I recently tried Face Book; and once I signed up, there were so many questions to set up a profile I gave up. J.J.’s been spending time with me, and there are always a couple of great stories to tell about him…reminds me of his Uncle John…now there are the stories! Along with J.J.’s other talents (reading, math, sports), he’s also into chess. Two Saturday nights when he was spending the night with me, he wanted to go to Chess Club. Both nights he got a first place trophy. I said Saturday must be his lucky night, because he often plays on Friday night; but he gave the credit to me. He said it must be that Grandma’s good luck. I’ll happily take the credit. His latest interest at my house is playing Yahtzee. I taught him to play, and the first Yahtzee he ever got was with ones. So every time he rolls a couple of ones, he goes for ones. I know he thinks he’s going to get another Yahtzee. Actually, a Yahtzee strategy is to never go for ones and hold it open if you have to take a zero. His other favorite thing to do is roll for an inside straight. He’ll look at a two, two, four, four, and five roll and decide to roll for a three for a small straight. I don’t even bother to tell him anymore that that’s not a great strategy, because without fail, he rolls the three. If I have four of a kind and go for a Yahtzee, right before I dump the dice out, he says, “Yahtzee!” I know that’s his version of what his father would call a hex. J.J. knows it, and I know it. He’s a real riot! Being a grandmother is a great thing. He just gets undivided attention with me. I don’t have to do laundry, clean the house, Heaven forbid cook anything so I can basically play Yahtzee all day. I had a successful, no problems mammogram; that was good. I originally started this blog because of cancer. Right now, being boring and all, I don’t have a lot to say about cancer; and that’s why I don’t blog that often. I do go to the Cancer Institute every few weeks and have my port flushed, which by the way, I’m going to change that terminology to port irrigated. That sounds much better. I am so disappointed though. In March when I went, Mona (you know who was once my least favorite oncology nurse and became my favorite) wasn’t there; they said she took the day off for her birthday. This week when I went, Mona was gone…like resigned and gone. I can’t believe it. The next day I went to have my taxes done, and the lady who’s been doing them for years had died. At least when I called for my appointment, and they said Pam wasn’t there anymore, they could have explained that Pam really wasn’t there anymore. I feel as if I lost two friends. O.K., a little about cancer…well, really about the port. Some people can’t wait to have the port removed. I believe some people think of it as a celebration…cancer’s gone, check; port’s gone; check, check; cancer must really be gone. Then there are people who don’t want to have the port removed. That would be me. I don’t believe elective surgery is a phrase I want in my vocabulary. I don’t want another surgical procedure. Do you think that deeply and darkly I really think that I might again need the port someday and I don’t want to have one removed only to have another implanted. That’s a question I ask myself probably every time I drive the 20 miles for the port irrigation. I don’t know the answer. I do remember that at my last visit with Dr. Manno, he said if you make it through two years, the likelihood of cancer returning goes down. What I hope to clarify with him the next time I see him is…two years from when…the surgery? the first chemo? the last chemo? We’ll see what his answer is. Oh, I forgot the most important thing. Today I went blonde! Ever since my hair started growing back in a year and a half ago, I’ve been grey/white, whatever; but today I’m blonde again. I hope my hair doesn’t fall out, but what the heck, been there, done that! I still have wigs and a great collection of hats!

I took off from work the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I had planned to take Monday as well but offered to trade it for the Monday after Thanksgiving because the principal was going to be out of the building. On Tuesday, I got going early and while in the car decided to take my car to a dealership to have a service done. On the phone a few days earlier the girl had said there was no appointment necessary, and it would take about 45 minutes. That was so beyond the truth. She said to just say I wanted “maintenance,” and they would know that I meant a routine service for a reasonable price. Several times that morning, I asked myself why I did this today, what was I thinking, nothing is ever as easy it sounds. It’s a long story about the rep trying to talk me into a six hundred dollar service, spending so long there I finally walked to a Wendy’s for lunch, and ending with needing a 500 dollar brake job. From there, I went to the grocery store to get stuff Teresa and Elliott like. Then I went home and finished preparations for my 7:00 university class. After class I got home just in time to grab something to eat and then go to the airport to pick up the Goodwins. When we got home, we just sat and talked for awhile and eventually went to bed. I read for awhile, getting into the Twilight series. When I decided to go to sleep, I remember feeling a cramp coming on in one leg, and, worse yet, a Charlie Horse in the other. I thought, I have to stand up; that’s the only way to make this go away. I don’t know what happened after that. A couple of hours later I was standing in my bedroom in horrible pain and going to get Teresa up. The horrifying pain was between my right shoulder and neck. We both eventually fell asleep on couches in the living room. The next morning I called the Cancer Institute, and they granted me an appointment. I could get in the car, but I couldn’t do the seatbelt; and there’s no way I could have driven. In hindsight, always easy, I should have gone to my primary provider or at least an Emergency Room. The PA at the Institute decided there was something wrong with my port, which is in my right arm and probably runs through the area that was in pain and quite bruised by that point. She sent us to Summerlin Hospital Radiology department to get an ultrasound to make sure I didn’t have a blot clot, scary stuff. They said there was no blood clot and made an appointment to remove the port. At first, it was going to be the day after Thanksgiving, but then they moved it to the following Wednesday. I didn’t know how I was going to survive with the pain for seven more days, but I was glad I didn’t have a blood clot. For the next few nights, Teresa slept on one couch, while I slept on the other. I couldn’t have found a pain-free position in bed. The only way I could sleep at all was in the recliner on my couch. I couldn’t lie on either side due to the pain. I got through Thanksgiving by taking the pain pills I’d been prescribed for Shingles. Mostly, I dozed off and on. On Friday, I called the Institute again. They were closed but gave me the doctor on call. I was so completely bruised by then, it wasn’t funny. I kept showing Teresa, look there’s more blue, therefore, new blood around the outline of all the bruising, which completely covered from my collarbone and down and across my whole breast. The Institute doctor said it didn’t sound right, I should go back to Summerlin E.R., it sounded like something needed repairing on the port and then followed up by taking it out. Now, it sounded like I was looking at two separate procedures. We went back to the hospital. Teresa went in with me. Poor Elliott. Too bad this wasn’t the year for them to spend Thanksgiving in Reno, instead of Las Vegas. Anyway, I made a bet with Teresa as to the gender, looks, and age of the doctor I would get. We bet on male, good-looking and young. We got Dr. P., male, good-looking, and somewhere in between age-wise. Two out of three. He wasn’t overjoyed with me because I had nothing to divulge. I hadn’t been in a fight, I don’t walk in my sleep, and I had no memory of what happened to me. The girl came with the portable x-ray machine. Krista came. Susan came. I know how to throw a party. During this time, I kept coming up with the word “clavicle.” Don’t know where it came from, but I said that was what hurt. I even mentioned that I thought if I had a sling for my arm, I would feel better. Dr. P. liked me even less when he came back to say I had a broken clavicle and was I absolutely sure that I had the port implanted at that hospital. My first question was, “Can I go home, now?” Instinctively, I seemed to know that there was no treatment for a broken clavicle. He said I would be going home, but he wanted to take another x-ray to see if there had been a previous injury. My next question was, “Is it cancer?” He said he thought of that and that in his 20 years of practicing medicine, he’d never seen cancer cause a broken collarbone. He said the radiologist had concurred, and there were no signs of whatever they look for in the x-rays that indicate cancer. Right before receiving the results of the next x-ray, I was moved out into the main area to make my room available for someone who needed it more. Dr. P. came by, not happy, saying, “You are completely uninteresting, completely unexciting. Only you will know how you broke your collarbone.” I had asked him earlier, with his frustration, if he thought I was lying, like why would I lie about not knowing what happened. At that point, I thought, “Well, no one will ever know, because I don’t know.” Even in spite of everything, there were some funny moments. When I said my eyes were bothering me (You’d think that would have been a clue he would have jumped on, maybe looked in my eyes, ordered more tests, I don’t know, I’m not a doctor), he asked, “Are you seeing double?” Cute, since he knew Teresa and Krista are twins. At one point when all three daughters were in the room, he asked, “So, what are the relationships, here, daughters, granddaughters?” and off he went. This, I believe was very insulting to Susan, who actually was almost 17 when they were born. She pretty much turned on her heels and left. He made a comment that he knew he riled her. I think, by then, Susan was out in the waiting room, grilling Elliott as to whether she looked old enough to be their mother. Someone outfitted me with a sling, and we were on our way. Elliott returned home on Monday morning, as planned, but Teresa changed her flight and stayed with me two more nights. I really didn’t want to be alone, and accomplishing anything by myself was difficult. I stayed home on sick leave for the next week. When I called my primary physician and explained what had happened the guy on the phone, who was not the doctor, agreed maybe I had had a concussion, but as long as I had no other symptoms besides the collarbone pain, I should be fine and no need to come in. I felt great after talking to him. I forgot to mention that over Thanksgiving we had wondered why I didn’t seem to have any secondary injury. How could I have fallen, broken my collarbone, probably passed out, and not have anything else wrong. I found the bump on my head on Friday. It was on the same side as the broken clavicle and quite large. Then the Cancer Institute called and said I needed to have a bone scan and a brain MRI, just in case; I didn’t want to know just in case what. I said I would need serious drugs to undergo those tests. They prescribed two pills, one to take the night before and one to take one hour before. My son-in-law, Kevin, took on the duty of accompanying me on Friday for those tests. There’s always confusion. We had to be there early to prep and then come back later. We went there and then left for lunch and went back. The confusion was over why didn’t they have me go upstairs to the Infusion Room to access my port for administering the needed drugs. They finally agreed on that. I went upstairs. Mona accessed my port, and we came back later for the test. I took the pill one hour before the bone scan. I was feeling mighty fine when I went in for that. The girl said it would take 25 minutes. I got on the table, closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew she was telling me we were done. Next was the MRI. I went in, and I went out. The pill had pretty much dissipated in its effect. The technician showed me the tunnel, the table on which I would have to lie down, and the helmet thing he would put over my head attached to the sides of the equipment. I said I’d need much more serious drugs to go through that. I couldn’t do it. He said I was among 20% of the population who cannot go through with it. Kevin was a good sport to put up with his ailing mother-in-law on his day off. Surely, he had better things to do. I tried wearing the sling, but it didn’t really help all that much. Let me tell you about a broken collarbone. There are a zillion things you can’t do because there’s little or no range of motion with the involved arm. I had pain from the collarbone all the way down the right side of my chest, moving toward the back; and my right hand and arm were of little use. I couldn’t move anything, carry anything, wash or fix my hair right-handed. Try pouring water into a coffee pot with the affected arm, turning off or on the water in the shower, grocery shopping, or typing on a keyboard. I slept on the couch in the reclining position for the whole next week. Finally, the night before I was going back to work, I told myself I’d better try sleeping in bed, or I was going to end up just dying on my couch. I had to prop up pillows to lie on and have pillows along my left side in case I turned that way in my sleep. When I went back to work, I wore the sling for one day. It just seemed to make matters worse. I learned to shower, get dressed, and drive the car relying on my left side. For weeks I was mostly discombobulated because everything was switched around. I couldn’t put my purse over my right arm, my keys were somewhere else because of carrying everything on my left side. But, here I am to tell about it. I’m mostly off Tylenol, which was the only way I could make it through any day. I don’t have to put the mouse on my lap and type left-handed anymore. It’s been about ten weeks now, and I’m getting there. I can carry groceries in, as long as I still don’t buy too much at a time; and I can take the trash out and throw it up into the dumpster. The last day of school before the holiday break I had to dress up in a Mrs. Claus dress, apron, and hat and walk the whole school with the principal, handing out candy canes. Terry had to help me in and out of the stupid dress; and I actually made it in better shape than the principal, who kept losing the stuffing that made him look like a roly-poly Santa. I believe the estimate for recovery is somewhere around twelve weeks. I know there will be recurring pain in the collarbone area, neck, shoulder, arm, etc., but I’m almost normal again, well, as normal as anyone can be who’s lived the last two years of my life.