None of us will beat death, it will get us in the end. I’ve become much more at peace with that truth over the last few years. I’ve lost so many folks who are close to me, maybe that’s why I have such a strong desire to see a grandchild. Or maybe it’s just that I love babies.
Category: Family
Hope
The quarantine has been easier for me than most folks I know. I can’t really get out and do much, I’m relegated to my bed, or my recliner, for all of the time each day that I’m not moving from room to room. With so many folks in a similar situation (stuck at home) I feel less alone in my recovery, it’s as if the whole world is recovering with me.
Grateful Every Day
We’re buckling down because a ‘once-in-a-decade’ storm is supposed to be coming, although at this point it’s six hours late (and it will probably be angrier for waiting…) One friend is writing, his wife is making Swedish pancakes and the kids are organizing a board game for later in the day.
Pushing Myself To Exhaustion
As seldom as I seem to be blogging these days, you may not hear from me again until after Thanksgiving, so I hope you all have an exceptional holiday with loving friends and/or family and snugly animals to pet and love! And thank you all for sticking with me during this really rough year. It’s been hard, and I’ve had a good amount of loss, but I have SO MUCH to be thankful for – and I am!
Missing In Action
It’s been a very emotional week for me, not least because my doc has had me cut back on my Oxycontin to half of my previous dose, although I also have 5mg Oxycondone I can take for breakthrough pain. I’ve done this step-down twice already since ending chemo, and I agree that it’s necessary to…
Game Of Alones
It’s a good season of GOT, Gerry would have loved it. I’m loving it. It seems a lovely farewell to a beloved TV series; I wish I had had time to give Gerry the same kind of farewell. I still wake up in a cold sweat from dreams about Gerry dying with no one around him but medical staff, no family, no me. I was functionally immobile from my reaction to strong chemo, but that doesn’t lessen my guilt at not being WITH him at the end. Just because you know something’s out of your control doesn’t necessarily lessen the guilt.
Mourning Ritual
I miss him like crazy. I joke with him (or my memory of him) many times a day, and Andy and I share stories, it seems, with every picture frame or cup or old medicine bottle we sort through. I lack the strength to do much of the sorting, so that’s fallen to Andy, which is fine.
Anything of Gerry’s that I need to keep I already have within me; his laughter, his sense of fun, his intelligence, his love.
[caption id="attachment_5215" align="alignleft" width="300"] Gerry discoveres Nutella Nirvana[/caption]Friends + Andy
So although I am still light years from where I want to be, I do feel myself getting better every day, and that is almost ENTIRELY due to the hard work of Andy and our friends. (Of course, the doctors and nurses had something to do with it, I’m speaking pretty much about at-home help…)
I still can’t walk easily, my legs are numb and I almost fall all the time. Almost. That’s a very important word. I don’t get downstairs as often as I’d like due to balance and exhaustion issues, but I do what I can and I walk around upstairs quite a bit each day. The more I walk, the better my legs feel! I cannot WAIT for warmer weather so I can walk outside!!
Back In The Hospital
I have no idea, when this whole “cancer” thing is done, whether my body will be as it was before. I’m getting a growing sense that, like Gerry, I will ALWAYS carry the pain of the tumor in my back and the damage done by it’s growth into two vertebrae. Will I always be on pain meds to deal with the constant bone & spine pain? I guess these are things that will be revealed I I continue with my recovery. Which is a lovely word.
Saddest Day of My Life
I’m overwhelmed right now, so I’m going to keep this brief. The dearest man I ever knew, my husband of 25 years, Gerry Landy, died on Sunday. It wasn’t entirely unexpected; he had been suffering from heart complications since March. Friday and Saturday he was at the Mayo Clinic for his heart, he was admitted…