I'm paraphrasing a line from an old Taj Mahal song. At least that is the way I remember it; I may have it wrong. Right now the temp is about zero, with a sharp wind from the northwest. The sun has done what it can do for today and is sliding down to the horizon. Mauve and gray clouds litter the powder blue sky and the tops of the trees across the road blush with the salmon orange of the setting sun; a color a that can only hint at warmth this time of year. This is my favorite time of day; that time when the sun is setting and twilight approaches, carrying a new palette of colors: violet, indigo and sometimes the delicate and ephemeral, if I may use a term that relates to spring, pale green,a subtle flash of color that one must watch for to actually see.
The change in the weather is actual. Friday night we had rain meaning Saturday morning we had fresh ice on top of our snow. Rain at this time of year is just a pain, a nuisance. Nighttime lows were in the 30's and we just stayed home and off the roads. This evening the sun glared on the wind polished ice and snow drifted across the road, writhing like hissing snow snakes. Tonight the lows will be in the minus teens below zero. In the space of a few days the weather has turned itself on its' head. Kind of apropos really; January 26th is traditionally the coldest day of the year.
The change in me is real also. We had our sixth chemo today and it went well. I am speaking for myself but I would bet Karen would echo my sentiments: I feel a sense of relief. This is due to our determination to be treated better and ultimately, by a different oncologist. Yesterday Fargo called to say "Ok, you can have chemo in Bemidji and the doctor will process your orders from here." Well, that was good news, but I wasn't going to Fargo anyway, no matter what. I just wasn't going to take a day off to talk to a doctor I don't like or trust, about symptoms he didn't want to treat in the first place.
Another good change is that I will have a different oncologist for my last two chemo treatments. But I will have to go to Fargo, once, to meet him. He is going to want to talk to me and get to know me, etc., etc. I can deal with this because he will be a different doctor, and it will be for only two visits. I know some may think I should have been able to suck it up and deal with my former oncologist for the last few treatments and maybe you are right. I could not deal with the stress and anger that came with him. I do not like having all that anger in my life anymore, at all.
This is a change in me, and us, that was sorely needed. This cancer thing is stressful enough. Yesterday's news and today's treatment left me with a feeling of relief. In a sense we 'won' but we have no sense of victory. It was not about winning anyway. What we were fighting for was our right to be treated honestly, with the respect and the professionalism one should expect from someone who can put M.D. after their name.
The moon, waxing toward full, is high in the twilight sky. The sun has set and soon, if I am lucky enough, I may catch that flash of green that seals the day and signals the arrival of another cold January night.
Peace and love to you all,
Mike
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
M.D. Stands for Mad Doctor
Our last chemo appointment did not go well. One of the meds wasn't started on time so we had to wait an extra two hours for that to run through. But the main reason we had a miserable time of it has to do with our doctor visit. I had been struggling with various side-effects for some time and when I asked the oncology nurse what could be done to make my life better,she would refer the question to my oncologist. Almost always, he would want to send me to a primary care physician. Anyone tried to get into a primary care physician on short notice, lately?
Karen and I thought it odd that my oncologist, who prescribed my meds and should know the side-effects intimately, couldn't suggest or prescribe some sort of remedy without having to send me to another doctor. When nausea was rearing its' urpy head it was Terri, the oncology nurse, who suggested I try one of the meds I had from my stay in Fairview. And it worked. I started tracking my symptoms and side-effects so I could accurately describe what was happening in my treatment. What we wanted was to be taken seriously and have the oncologist take some positive action in treating the complications that came with the meds he was giving to me.
So on the last visit Karen was determined to have a 'come to Jesus' meeting with the doctor. And we asked him why he was treating my side-effects by trying to pass me off to someone else. And we got rise out of the doctor, who took the whole thing personally and got very defensive, very quickly. He started defending his record by telling us he makes more visits to this clinic than the other oncologists make to other satellite clinics, like that matters. And then he offered to send us to Brainerd or Grand Forks so we could get better treatment elsewhere. We should have taken him up on the offer. In the end, our visit ended with muted hostility and we went to start the actual chemo part.
But really, that wasn't the end. The doctor wanted to set me up with a visit to a dermatologist to look at the skin problem I have had since chemo started. And he decided he wanted to have me come to Fargo for my next visit so he could talk to me about side-effects. My answer: NO FREAKIN WAY! I was not going to take a day off to go to Fargo to talk to him about something he couldn't deal with the first time. And by now I was, (still am) determined to have as little to do with the man as is humanly possible. If I never saw him again, that would be fine. He could treat me from Fargo, as he had for most of my chemo treatment and that would be the best for both of us.
Or, we could get a different oncologist to read my labs and give me the chemo. Or, I could quit the chemo and get on with my life. Really, I don't care which choice is used as long as I don't have to deal with the doctor. Terri wasn't thrilled when I told her my wishes and ever since then we have been in 'negotiation' about my next visit. Last Friday a patient representative faxed the paperwork necessary to request a different doctor with the caveat, that I may not get it approved before my scheduled visit this next Tuesday. I have been consistent with every person I have talked to in expressing my desire to never see the oncologist of record again for any reason, or, have my case transferred to a different oncologist. And I have told them I not coming to Fargo, no way, no how.
So here I am, out on the limb, sawing it off behind me like the coyote on the cliff. All for pride or because I am right? We were not treated well or with respect by a doctor who should be able to not take things personally; who should realize that the treatment and diagnosis are stressful enough, thank you very much, without the added bullshit of a doctor protecting his miserable little ego by peeing on his little tree to prove he is the doctor.
We know he is the doctor but we also know he works for me and I get to decide how my treatment will go and what I will do and what I will not do. I get a choice of physician and when I can no longer work with this particular man I want a different doctor. Can it be more simple?
The upshot of all this has been a week of anger on my part; anger such as I have not had in ... months, maybe longer. Anger I have worked hard to move away from. With Karen's help and support I have made great progress in making my life better and happier and less angry and now, in a few minutes, I was right back in the thick of it all over again and I do not like that one little bit. So this week has been a kind of unanticipated hell and certainly one that was not necessary and one we want to blame on our oncologist. I know that may not be correct, that we may have gotten in our own way in some part of this whole thing, but the fact remains, we were treated like idiots and we cannot have a viable working relationship with this man anymore.
Tomorrow I will return a missed call from one of the nurses to see what's up now and I will tell her, like I did early last week, that I am not coming to Fargo to see this doctor, that he can treat me from Fargo or get me another doctor. And I expect to hear that what I wish just won't work and I still need to see him, and ... What will I do? Get my labs drawn tomorrow morning and then we'll see. As far as I am concerned we could end chemo now. It has either worked by now or it hasn't and with Lynch Syndrome in the mix, I can't see that finishing this chemo is any sort of guarantee that I won't get cancer of some kind again.
Karen has been extremely patient, and worried through this whole anger thing. I have gotten part of it under control but it won't be done till we get this mad doctor dilemna resolved. We are tired of having to fight so hard for what should be, by our lights, something easy and right. Whatever... Today we are having friends over for dinner to celebrate a birthday. We are claiming our life and happiness. We are not going to let the past week intrude on today. Life is too short for that.
Peace and love to you all,
Mike
Karen and I thought it odd that my oncologist, who prescribed my meds and should know the side-effects intimately, couldn't suggest or prescribe some sort of remedy without having to send me to another doctor. When nausea was rearing its' urpy head it was Terri, the oncology nurse, who suggested I try one of the meds I had from my stay in Fairview. And it worked. I started tracking my symptoms and side-effects so I could accurately describe what was happening in my treatment. What we wanted was to be taken seriously and have the oncologist take some positive action in treating the complications that came with the meds he was giving to me.
So on the last visit Karen was determined to have a 'come to Jesus' meeting with the doctor. And we asked him why he was treating my side-effects by trying to pass me off to someone else. And we got rise out of the doctor, who took the whole thing personally and got very defensive, very quickly. He started defending his record by telling us he makes more visits to this clinic than the other oncologists make to other satellite clinics, like that matters. And then he offered to send us to Brainerd or Grand Forks so we could get better treatment elsewhere. We should have taken him up on the offer. In the end, our visit ended with muted hostility and we went to start the actual chemo part.
But really, that wasn't the end. The doctor wanted to set me up with a visit to a dermatologist to look at the skin problem I have had since chemo started. And he decided he wanted to have me come to Fargo for my next visit so he could talk to me about side-effects. My answer: NO FREAKIN WAY! I was not going to take a day off to go to Fargo to talk to him about something he couldn't deal with the first time. And by now I was, (still am) determined to have as little to do with the man as is humanly possible. If I never saw him again, that would be fine. He could treat me from Fargo, as he had for most of my chemo treatment and that would be the best for both of us.
Or, we could get a different oncologist to read my labs and give me the chemo. Or, I could quit the chemo and get on with my life. Really, I don't care which choice is used as long as I don't have to deal with the doctor. Terri wasn't thrilled when I told her my wishes and ever since then we have been in 'negotiation' about my next visit. Last Friday a patient representative faxed the paperwork necessary to request a different doctor with the caveat, that I may not get it approved before my scheduled visit this next Tuesday. I have been consistent with every person I have talked to in expressing my desire to never see the oncologist of record again for any reason, or, have my case transferred to a different oncologist. And I have told them I not coming to Fargo, no way, no how.
So here I am, out on the limb, sawing it off behind me like the coyote on the cliff. All for pride or because I am right? We were not treated well or with respect by a doctor who should be able to not take things personally; who should realize that the treatment and diagnosis are stressful enough, thank you very much, without the added bullshit of a doctor protecting his miserable little ego by peeing on his little tree to prove he is the doctor.
We know he is the doctor but we also know he works for me and I get to decide how my treatment will go and what I will do and what I will not do. I get a choice of physician and when I can no longer work with this particular man I want a different doctor. Can it be more simple?
The upshot of all this has been a week of anger on my part; anger such as I have not had in ... months, maybe longer. Anger I have worked hard to move away from. With Karen's help and support I have made great progress in making my life better and happier and less angry and now, in a few minutes, I was right back in the thick of it all over again and I do not like that one little bit. So this week has been a kind of unanticipated hell and certainly one that was not necessary and one we want to blame on our oncologist. I know that may not be correct, that we may have gotten in our own way in some part of this whole thing, but the fact remains, we were treated like idiots and we cannot have a viable working relationship with this man anymore.
Tomorrow I will return a missed call from one of the nurses to see what's up now and I will tell her, like I did early last week, that I am not coming to Fargo to see this doctor, that he can treat me from Fargo or get me another doctor. And I expect to hear that what I wish just won't work and I still need to see him, and ... What will I do? Get my labs drawn tomorrow morning and then we'll see. As far as I am concerned we could end chemo now. It has either worked by now or it hasn't and with Lynch Syndrome in the mix, I can't see that finishing this chemo is any sort of guarantee that I won't get cancer of some kind again.
Karen has been extremely patient, and worried through this whole anger thing. I have gotten part of it under control but it won't be done till we get this mad doctor dilemna resolved. We are tired of having to fight so hard for what should be, by our lights, something easy and right. Whatever... Today we are having friends over for dinner to celebrate a birthday. We are claiming our life and happiness. We are not going to let the past week intrude on today. Life is too short for that.
Peace and love to you all,
Mike
Monday, January 18, 2010
Rx: Pineapple Upside down Cake - a metaphor
When the door slammed I knew without opening my eyes what that meant. The lack of a sweet good-bye kiss and this note were confirmation. This was my morning note:
I am pissed. I have had enough of this f-ing shit. I am tired of the goddamn bag and all of that bull-shit. I want someone’s head on a plate.
Couldn’t have a nice morning thinking about making beer and trying to wake up. No! F-ing bag had to break – shit everywhere – PJ’s, counter top, floor and I am still angry.
Still hung over from sleep or lack of it. God I am a wreck right now. I hope I am better when I get home. I will work on it but god f-ing dammit I am mad. I don’t want this shit anymore, any of it, none, nada. I just want to be normal again – a normal life back, a normal existence. Why can’t I have that again? I know why.
I had a cup of coffee and made a pineapple upside down cake. Comfort food that I hope will help Mike, though I doubt it. It’s very Northern Minnesotan of me to try to fix emotions with food. What else is there to do? I echo his sentiments though probably without such force.
This is hard. It’s hard on Mike. It’s emotionally draining and I wonder how we bear up to the rest of this. I wonder how anyone does. This is the kind of thing that has been going on in our house since May; this up and down roller coaster of fear, anxiety, frustration and stress. We carve out little moments of fun here and there but in the back of our minds we know we are on the coaster. The end of this run comes when the chemo is done and the port comes out and that is several weeks away.
I’m anxious about Mike coming home. I don’t know what he is going to bring with him, hell I never know. There are things I should be doing like cleaning or finishing up that last pair of mukluks but my mind isn’t here it’s on that note. I’m having great difficulty being present. Today, I want to run. I want a vacation. I want to put down this pack and kick it to pieces except I’m still going to need what’s inside for the rest of this trip.
But there is pineapple upside down cake. A fitting subconscious metaphor I guess.
Peace,
Karen
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Knitting
I am a knitter. It's a gene I suppose. A recessive gene however, because to the best of my knowledge my oldest sister never knitted and I know for a fact that my sister Linda does not knit now, nor does she rage with a burning desire to jump on the pointy sticks and whip up a scarf or hat. That's what I'm for. I'm the knitter.
Lately, I've been knitting a lot. By a lot I mean at least a few hours a day, when I'm stressed and when I am waiting. So, a lot of knitting. The more stress; the more knitting.I relax and get lost in the looping of beautiful yarns of linen, angora, merino and alpaca. Moving them from one needle to the other is down right Zen. I am fascinated by the process of making fabric and the idea of socks, mittens, scarves and soap holders. I find knitting stitches here, purling them there, forming cables and lace to be very satisfying.
Knitting is therapy. Even the act of "unknitting" (ripping out for you less civilized folk) is therapeutic. Pulling a needle out of all the stitches, grabbing the leading end and giving it a tug is thrilling in an "oh my god" sort of way. You need to trust yourself explicitly to "unkint". You have to give yourself over to self-confidence, something you may be unaccustomed to in your non-knitting life. After all it's just a couple of sticks and yarn. How bad could it be? You always have the option of unknitting the whole thing, winding it back on your ball and starting over.
Oh that all of life was like this.
So, I'm knitting a sweater right now. Not just any sweater but an Aran knit sweater. Think, Irish Fisherman's sweater. It's full of cables going this way and that, leaving this twisted side and going over to that twisted side and forming honeycombs and braids. I'm test driving a pattern for a local designer. Helping her work out the kinks. How this happened was simple. She burst into the store where I work (saying burst is showing restraint because Allison has more energy than ANYONE I have ever met including a two year old on a sugar high) she asks, "Karen? Do you like doing cables?" Well of course I do. "Great, I'm going to bring you my new pattern to edit. All you have to do is knit it and look for things that need correction in the pattern." I'm thinking swell and anticipating a scarf when she shows up several days later with a sweater pattern.
I'm almost done with the right hand side. I have a sample here as a visual aid. Mike was looking at the sample tonight and said, "I was wondering what kind of person would look at that sweater and have the courage to try and knit it?" I quit scribbling out a mistake on the pattern and just stared at him because, well I don't know. I don't think it takes courage. It's a challenge. A challenge where I have some smidgen of control and always a do over. It seems reasonable. I mean if the whole thing doesn't work out everyone gets mittens!
So, there you have it. Even though I think my genes play a big part in the initial knitting part, the reason I am knitting so much is that it's a place I can go to have a little control and a do over if I don't get it right the first time and if all else fails I can make something else work out and everyone is happy. It makes my hands and my mind busy and the multi-tasking of it all keeps me present and that is exactly where I need to be right now.
Peace
Kareyarn
Friday, January 15, 2010
Tired of tired
To the bone tired. If one solid night of sleep in the same bed as Mike could be had things might look different. Today, everything is a struggle. Emotions are thin, eyes are bleary, the brain can't even shift into first gear and combing the hair seems like a chore.
This is Mike's steroid week. He has way too much energy and his sleep comes in fits and starts. He was up plenty last night, seemed like every fifteen minutes, though I'm sure it wasn't like that at all. I don't know if him being up and down made the dogs restless but they bumped and banged in the hallway a good portion of the night. Sleep was interrupted and today feels like a hang-over.
It's 27 degrees out and that is where I should be but I can't even bring myself to put on socks (too much work). There was the brief trip outside in my PJ's to feed the birds and that felt like enough. I should go snowshoeing. My old friend Neal got me out snowshoeing on Monday. It was beautiful. We saw three grouse, had tea and laughs after and on the way home I saw an otter periscoping up and down in an open hole near the bridge. I know it would be nice and I would get some reward for getting out but....I'm tired.
This whole gig is getting old and I'm tired of that too.
So, I'm considering a little nap before Mike comes home. He's supposed to be home at noon and we are going to ride up to Jan's for massages. Maybe curling up on the couch with the dogs is the therapy needed to snap some of this ho-hum out of the bones. Get rid of some of this tired because it's bad enough to be tired - worse still to be tired of being tired....it's all so...tiring.
Peace
Karen
This is Mike's steroid week. He has way too much energy and his sleep comes in fits and starts. He was up plenty last night, seemed like every fifteen minutes, though I'm sure it wasn't like that at all. I don't know if him being up and down made the dogs restless but they bumped and banged in the hallway a good portion of the night. Sleep was interrupted and today feels like a hang-over.
It's 27 degrees out and that is where I should be but I can't even bring myself to put on socks (too much work). There was the brief trip outside in my PJ's to feed the birds and that felt like enough. I should go snowshoeing. My old friend Neal got me out snowshoeing on Monday. It was beautiful. We saw three grouse, had tea and laughs after and on the way home I saw an otter periscoping up and down in an open hole near the bridge. I know it would be nice and I would get some reward for getting out but....I'm tired.
This whole gig is getting old and I'm tired of that too.
So, I'm considering a little nap before Mike comes home. He's supposed to be home at noon and we are going to ride up to Jan's for massages. Maybe curling up on the couch with the dogs is the therapy needed to snap some of this ho-hum out of the bones. Get rid of some of this tired because it's bad enough to be tired - worse still to be tired of being tired....it's all so...tiring.
Peace
Karen
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Oooooh That Smell - Side B
There are some records where the B side is better than the A side. Mike seems to think this is the case with my perspective on Ooooh That Smell. We'll see.
Another trip to another doctor wasn't really what I had wanted to do with my day but there was breakfast at Mr Ed's to look forward to and a good Italian roast beef sandwich at Uncle Frankie's in my future.
Breakfast at Ed's was, as we say on our canoe trips, sporks up! I had some breakfast skillet with hash browns, hunks of ham, sausage and bacon topped with over easy eggs covered in a luscious layer of hollandaise sauce - you got it - the mamma of all eggs Benedict! I ate most of it and Mike buzzarded up what I didn't eat. I was feeling pretty good and offered to drive with the caveat that I would not be interested in driving through the Lowery tunnel when we got to Minneapolis. We gassed up and were off to see the Wizard.
Ten miles down the road I thought I smelled something. An old car had just passed and I thought, "maybe?" I looked over and Mike had his nose down his shirt but didn't say anything. Again I caught a wiff of something. Mike sniffed down his shirt. One more time I sniffed and when Mike stuck his nose down the neck of his shirt I asked, "What are you doing?" (here's my sign)
Well his bag blew out. "What do you want me to do?" (again here's my sign) There was a gas station a mile back and I turned us around and pulled in. Mike grabbed his emergency bag and headed in. I pulled out my knitting, turned up MPR and waited. Knitting has been my best friend when it comes to waiting and this was no exception. Mike returned to the van visibly frustrated and borderline pissed off. I offered to listen if he wanted to vent - which he did but only for a short while.
As we drove I tried to ask a few questions to help problem solve but mostly listened to his frustration and paranoia at only having one bag left. I tried not to absorb any of his nervousness but I wasn't having any better luck than him. We made it to St Cloud, then Clearwater and onto I-94. I forgot about the blow-out and relaxed onto the Interstate. It was great to be on open road going fast. My only regret was that we were going east and not west and that we had a cooler and emergency blow-out kit not cooler and packs and we were heading for tall buildings instead of tall buttes. Still the driving was nice.
We found a radio station where we knew most of the words to most of the songs and started to sing. I made the decision to pull up my big girl panties and drive the Lowery tunnel. I began working on my head. This is where I was, deep in my head, when I thought I smelled something. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mike with his nose down his shirt collar and then it all broke loose.
It was the blow out of all blow outs. First Mike said, "We got a blow out!" I'm thinking the car is handling fine and look to find him with his shirt up under his chin and poo bulging at the edge of the very last sticky molecules of his ostomy bag's wafer. "Get me off this road!" he says and I take the very next exit. I don't even freaking know where we are but there is a gas station to the left. We wait for like a million years at the light. Long enough for Mike to string together every curse word he knows into a grammatically correct sentence. He's grabbing for paper towels to staunch the flow and I am asking what he wants me to do. (gimme that sign again please).
The light changes and we end up behind a Sub-Way in a strip mall. Mike piles out of the van and starts raping down right there. I don't say anything but I hope he doesn't take his pants off because we will be an arrest waiting to happen. He begins to issue orders: here warm up my paste (he tosses that at me) and this too (his new bag ends up in my lap) find more napkins or paper towels and tear them up into smaller squares (I think we are delivering a baby) I put the tube between my legs and stuff the wafer of the new bag into the front of my jeans.
I begin to tear the paper up when I notice...."Hey! It's pooping on you!" It...I call it IT and act like is some sort of new critter that isn't named and certainly isn't potty trained. Too late, Mike has poop on his cloths and now come more sentence enhancers. "God #$*&^ this @#&$& is a #($&"(# #(*%&) (#*$*# pain in the #(*U%*$). I wish to %(^* that this )*)* would )**%&&&**!!!!!!! the @(&(()# up." He has come a long way. Nothing gets hit, kicked, punched or thrown and he's not yelling at the top of his lungs either. He is freezing however and he is now out of paper to clean up with. I look over and see the hospital suction canister liner, which we keep for emergency barfing since an episode with my girlfriend ended with puke in the speakers of our old car and this new van because the smell never did go away. I tell Mike to put that over his stoma and we will drive to the convenience store for supplies. He gets in and we drive to the store.
I park as far from the entrance as possible so as not to embarrass Mike or gross out the other customers. I head into the store. We are in Brooklyn Park, Mn which I now see by the other customers in the store is a primarily African American neighbor hood. I am the only white girl in the store and I am getting looks. I'm stressed. I can't find what I need and I am getting stared at. I want to yell, "Put YO f&*(ing eyes back in YO heads. What you never seen a white girl in YO hood before!" But I don't because I want to live.
I find the paper towels and some baby wipes and head to the counter. I'm still getting looked at by everyone except for the two black chicks at the counter who are up in each others faces wagging fingers and doing the, "Oh no you don't! Oh no you don't!" thing. I want to say take it to the street but again...I wanna live. I pay for the stuff and head to the door. A tall good looking black guy checks me out. Good for me on any other day than this (though I did look pretty good that day). When I push the door open with my body a hear a rustle and freeze. I have half of Mike's ostomy bag hanging out my pants. If I push it the rest of the way in right now I'm gonna get nabbed for shop lifting, if I leave it out it will be too cold for Mike to put on. I risk it and push it in. I don't give a rats rear end I'd love to take the nice officer over to the van to explain!
Back at the van I slide into my seat and look over at Mike who has found a new use for my "emergency stir sticks." Side note here: I have a habit of keeping stir sticks from my coffee in the little cubbie below the radio. This is for when the kid at the drive through at Dunn Bros forgets to stir my cream and sugar into my coffee. Mike finds this most amusing in a very quirky sort of way and has spent a good deal of time teasing me about them......till now. Mike is using one of my stir sticks to try to scrape the last of his ostomy cement weld off his belly. I bite my lip. It will be funny later.
We drive back to the alley behind Sub-Way and Mike gets himself back in order. Now he's freaked out about not having any other bags and no clothes. I try to drop the sarcasm from my voice but I say anyway, "Forbes, we are in shopping central. I couldn't throw my credit card without hitting a clothing store! Clothes are not a big deal!" He smiles a little takes out the last of his frustration by bunching up his icky clothes and flinging them to the back of the van and jumps in. Well we don't have to worry about what to do with all the free time before Mike's appointment with Dr Madoff. We've just solved that.
I continue to drive. The Lowery tunnel doesn't seem like a big deal anymore and we drive right to the University without hesitation. Justine meets us in the lobby, we get in pretty much on time and leave with three extra ostomy bags thanks to LaTonya. Uncle Frankie's is closed so no Italian beef but Tony's Diner was open and we head there for $10 steaks and beer. We drop Justine off at her car, stop at Starbucks for coffee and are on our way home again around 6 pm. My coffee is hot and I don't pick it up to try it until we are past Brooklyn Park. I pull the stir stick, bring it back to my mouth to lick the coffee off, hesitate and throw it in the garbage. It's good to be going home.
Peace
Karen
The Sex Talk
Let's have the talk. By the talk I mean, you know, THE TALK. Sex. The sex talk. Or in this case the non-sex talk.
I have this weird sense of humor and as most of us do from time to time I use that humor to cover up or gloss over painful subjects or situations in my life. I did that just the other night. I flippantly said in response to a "what have you been doing lately?" question, "Oh we've been busy having old people sex." And we all laughed. A good thing too because the reality of it is; it's no laughing matter. Not here at Whiskey Jack Flats. We aren't laughing. It's the 1000 lb gorilla in the room.
With chemo/radiation, surgery, healing, more chemo plus steroids and new body image for Mike, sex is not something that happens very often here. Mike's desire has diminished to the point of nil. When we do make love ( I think something like 4 times since surgery) it's a wonder we can get it done in between managing his bag, my sore back and fibromyalgia, both of us with leg cramps and ways we don't bend anymore. It's like we are old people. A couple of 75 yr old people.
Personally, I have no problem with how Mike looks with his ostomy. I like the days I can be around him when he's changing the bag so I can see his stoma. I like to help him and feel part of the process. I like when we can take a shower together and I can press my belly up against his belly for a few moments without the bag. I miss that. I miss having nothing between us but skin and it's these moments I relish and hold on to. We'll never be able to make love without the bag and I have given up on that. It's just something else we have to work around, like leg cramps and back pain and coughing fits and sore wrists and all the other things the aging process brings to us.
We saw Dr Madoff the other day. Mike talked about his sexual concerns. Time...that's what he said. That's what Dr Mangiamele said and that's what Dr Harmon said.Time.Well time is something we have. I have Mike and it's looking like we have time. I'm thankful he is here. Thankful everyday. We are both tiring from this fighting cancer though and will be glad when it's over. Mike has been a trouper but this sexual function thing bothers us both. Maybe him more. It's like one more thing we've been robbed of and it's a reminder that we are not back to normal and may never be. It's one more thing to figure out how to live with.
We understand it's a healing process both physically and mentally. And yes it takes time. I get that. I also get that some days we have unlimited patience with it; other days all we got is ....sick and twisted humor.
Peace,
Karen
Friday, January 8, 2010
Oooh! That Smell!
(With apologies to Lynrd Skynrd)
Karen and I went to the Cities on Wednesday to have my official post-op visit with Dr. Madoff, my surgeon. The idea of going down now, two and a half months after my surgery, seemed a bit unnecessary but we went anyway. Dr. Madoff was in good spirits and encouraging in regards to some lingering side effects of the surgery; things that are probably complicated by the chemo. From that perspective the trip was good. It was getting there, that proved to be ...problematic.
Tuesday evening I changed my ostomy bag in preparation for the journey down to the Cities the next day. I had a nice shower with minimal pooping in the shower and put a new bag on a clean belly and life was good. Right. During the night I got up to walk off some cramps in my calves and noticed a nasty odor and I knew where that was coming from. Damn, I just changed the bag 8 hours ago. It shouldn't blow out now. It really shouldn't blow out at all. So, instead of walking my cramps out I was standing in the bathroom at 2:30 in the morning, removing my blown bag, cleaning myself up and applying a new ostomy bag. This is not good. It is not unusual to have to get up during the night to do something with my bag, but getting up to do a complete replacement is just not that fun.
In the morning we packed our cooler with lunch and snacks and headed out. I had my little ostomy kit bag with 2 spare ostomy bags and the other necessary supplies. At the last minute I put a pair of fleece sweat pants, an extra shirt and the other ostomy belt in a bag, just in case.
We stopped along the way for breakfast, at Mr. Ed's in Motley; (5 stars out of 5 for the Mr. Ed skillet) and gassed up the van. A few minutes after we pulled out Karen and I both noticed a bad smell coming from... you guessed it. Another blow out! Damn! Damn! Damn! Karen was driving which proved to be very good because I sat in the passenger seat trying to keep my shirt and sweater tucked up under my chin while i peeked at the mess inside the belt around my belly. That would have been a bit difficult to do while driving. She turned around and pulled into a gas station. I grabbed my bag of clothes and my ostomy kit bag and headed for the men's room. The sign on the door said it was not a public restroom, but there for the convenience of paying customers. Too bad.
For a service station john, this one wasn't too bad. I've seen worse. What was nice was the baby changing table that folded down from the wall. In short order I had my sweater and shirt off and slid the poopy ostomy belt down over my jeans and shoes without getting any on me or my clothes. Ah! The whole thing was disgusting. My poop is usually fairly thick but this was thick with a capital T. It looked the heavy stomach contents you see in road-killed deer; all yellow-brown and full of fibery stuff. We are still not sure why the bag blew. Maybe the belt just held the bag too tightly and the pressure made it blow. After all, it has to go somewhere.
Normally I do the bag changing at my convenience, without the added pressure of 'paying customers' trying to get in to help. No pressure there. I ripped off the smelly bag and pitched it in the trash and started cleaning myself up. Thankfully, my ostomy was done pooping for a while. Life is always interesting when you are trying to clean yourself up and your ostomy is still pooping. Kind of like changing diapers on a baby. They can't wait to mess up the bum you just cleaned. The worst part was removing the adhesive paste. Ostomates use a paste adhesive around the opening in the ostomy bag to help create a odor and poop proof seal. Often the paste peels right off, but that is after the bag has been on for a few days. This paste is just hours old and sticks to my belly like gooey rubber cement. I pick and and pick and try to rub it off and finally, after several minutes, manage to get my belly clean enough to apply the new bag. While all this was happening I had one of the spare bags tucked down in the seat of my jeans, to warm up. The adhesive flange sticks better when it is warm. Sometimes Karen helps me at home and she usually sticks the bag up under her shirt or down her pants, to warm it up but Karen was out in the van, knitting peacefully.
I apply paste to the new bag and stick it to my belly, trying to force it down snug all the way around and create a tight seal. Just for good measure I apply srtips of surgical tape all around the perimeter, 'just in case'. Because I am worried about another blowout I put on my sweat pants. My jeans are still clean but if I have an accident, I don't want them wrecked with poop. We are only halfway to the Cities and not even halfway through our day and I am more than a little nervous. I put the poopy belt in a bag, finish dressing, gather my plunder and return the van and we head out again.
I want to be mad and I am, a bit. Mostly I am disgusted. Ths is just such a mess, an uncontrolled mess and I resent the whole ostomy for a few miles, like that is going to be helpful. Karen offers to listen if I want to vent but I really don't have anything useful to say. What can I say?
Now I am paranoid and give myself the sniff test every so often. But it isn't till we are on 694 by Brooklyn Center that we realize something foul is in the air, again. Oooh, Oooh, that smell! Damn, not again! Karen takes the first exit and steers us off the interstate. Once again I am trying to hold my clothes out of the way but this blowout is larger. Thick gnarly poop is leaking out of both sides, poop the consistency of adobe is trying to swarm down into my jeans and beginning to succeed. Of course we have to wait at a light and I am trying not to be frantic. I know I need to be somewhere where I can have a bit of privacy but don't relish the idea of walking into another service station john with my clothes held up in one hand while cowpies fall from my belly, ploppity plop onto the floor. Instead we pull into an alley behind a small strip mall.
I don't know what to do but I am pretty sure I don't want to do it in our van. I have this poopy bundle trying to be part of my lap so I open the door and step outside and my lap disappears. The poopy problem persists. RIght away I try to get my sweater off and then my shirt without wearing my own shit. The sweater makes it but the shirt takes a hit and gets thrown into the far back of the van. Now I am standing shirtless, outside, in an alley behind this mall, trying to figure out what to do next. Karen is trying to figure out what to do but she is just as lost as I am. I feel a bit like a triage doctor because I stick my hands out and ask Karen to put on the disposable gloves that I routinely use in dealing with my bag. And then I ask for the baggie full of paper towels so I can start wiping up the mess. I get some of the worst of the poop off and then I pull the bag off and pitch it to the ground. We find an empty plastic bag and I put the soiled paper towels and the blown-out bag into this, because we are No Trace campers. After all, who want to find a mess like that in an alley and besides, I am trying not step in my own filth. God, what an image.
My ostomy decides to be active again and start hemorraging black green runny poop from my belly. Karen spies it first and warms me but it is too late. A runny goober lands on the waistband of my sweats. I try to dab it off with a paper towel but have to move my feet first, before they get hit too. This is getting out of hand. We are out of paper towels, the poop shows no signs of letting up. A strategic retreat is in order.
Karen tells me to grab the barf bag we have in the door compartment, a vestige of an earlier trip with a friend, who managed to fill the speakers in our Saturn when she got sick in the car. This barf bag has a plastic ring around the mouth and I hold the ring just below the ostomy and slide back into the seat while Karen drives us to the nearby SuperAmerica station for paper towels and baby wipes. We pull up in front of the store and Karen goes in while I wait, shirtless, in the front seat with a barf bag of poop. I am OK for now and the wait doesn't seem too long from my perspective. Karen tells me later what happened. She walks in and realizes she is the only white person in the store and stands at the counter while the clerk and a woman she knows have a finger waving in yo' face discussion. Finally Karen pays for the stuff and heads out. On the way she notices a guy looking at her strangely and realizes that part of the last remaining ostomy bag is hanging out the front of her pants. She waits for the cry of "Stop! Shoplifter!" but nothing happens.
In a few minutes we are back in our alley and I am outside the van, shivering in the cold, trying to scrape off the gooey adhesive. I am not getting anywhere. I even resort to using one of Karen's coffee stir-sticks like a scraper but that stuff just does not want to budge. I clean up the area around the ostomy and Karen removes the last bag from her pants and I apply adhesive around the opening and slap the mother on my belly and hope for the best.
But I am still half-naked, with some very smelly clothes on. I can tell you it has been a while since I took my pants off in a vehicle but that's what happened next. Off with the sweats, off with the underwear. Out with the baby wipes and I cleaned up as well as I could and put on my spare shirt and jeans. This is where I got a bit nervous. On canoe trips I never put on my last dry clothes if it is still raining and I had the feeling I would be in deep smelly do-do if this last bag blew and my last clean clothes became soiled, too. Karen reminded me where we were; that there were plenty of places to buy clothes if it came to that. One last trip to the service station so I could wash my hands and we were off.
In a little while we met with Justine and waited together for my appointment. We were able to score a few bags from their ostomy department, in case another emergency developed but apparently the crisis had passed; literally and figuratively. The rest of the day and the late night trip home went fine and this morning I changed the bag I put on in the alley in Brooklyn Center.
This is a long tale and if it has a moral, it is to be prepared. And we were, sort of. Luckily we both found the humor in the situation right away. Well, Karen found the humor first but she had a different perspective. I knew before we were back on the interstate that I had to find this episode funny or my day would be wrecked. So I did. I am proud of the fact that no one got yelled at, nothing got thrown or broken and the swearing was minimal and completely in context. And, we left no trace.
Take only pictures. Leave only tracks.
Peace and love to all.
Mike
Karen and I went to the Cities on Wednesday to have my official post-op visit with Dr. Madoff, my surgeon. The idea of going down now, two and a half months after my surgery, seemed a bit unnecessary but we went anyway. Dr. Madoff was in good spirits and encouraging in regards to some lingering side effects of the surgery; things that are probably complicated by the chemo. From that perspective the trip was good. It was getting there, that proved to be ...problematic.
Tuesday evening I changed my ostomy bag in preparation for the journey down to the Cities the next day. I had a nice shower with minimal pooping in the shower and put a new bag on a clean belly and life was good. Right. During the night I got up to walk off some cramps in my calves and noticed a nasty odor and I knew where that was coming from. Damn, I just changed the bag 8 hours ago. It shouldn't blow out now. It really shouldn't blow out at all. So, instead of walking my cramps out I was standing in the bathroom at 2:30 in the morning, removing my blown bag, cleaning myself up and applying a new ostomy bag. This is not good. It is not unusual to have to get up during the night to do something with my bag, but getting up to do a complete replacement is just not that fun.
In the morning we packed our cooler with lunch and snacks and headed out. I had my little ostomy kit bag with 2 spare ostomy bags and the other necessary supplies. At the last minute I put a pair of fleece sweat pants, an extra shirt and the other ostomy belt in a bag, just in case.
We stopped along the way for breakfast, at Mr. Ed's in Motley; (5 stars out of 5 for the Mr. Ed skillet) and gassed up the van. A few minutes after we pulled out Karen and I both noticed a bad smell coming from... you guessed it. Another blow out! Damn! Damn! Damn! Karen was driving which proved to be very good because I sat in the passenger seat trying to keep my shirt and sweater tucked up under my chin while i peeked at the mess inside the belt around my belly. That would have been a bit difficult to do while driving. She turned around and pulled into a gas station. I grabbed my bag of clothes and my ostomy kit bag and headed for the men's room. The sign on the door said it was not a public restroom, but there for the convenience of paying customers. Too bad.
For a service station john, this one wasn't too bad. I've seen worse. What was nice was the baby changing table that folded down from the wall. In short order I had my sweater and shirt off and slid the poopy ostomy belt down over my jeans and shoes without getting any on me or my clothes. Ah! The whole thing was disgusting. My poop is usually fairly thick but this was thick with a capital T. It looked the heavy stomach contents you see in road-killed deer; all yellow-brown and full of fibery stuff. We are still not sure why the bag blew. Maybe the belt just held the bag too tightly and the pressure made it blow. After all, it has to go somewhere.
Normally I do the bag changing at my convenience, without the added pressure of 'paying customers' trying to get in to help. No pressure there. I ripped off the smelly bag and pitched it in the trash and started cleaning myself up. Thankfully, my ostomy was done pooping for a while. Life is always interesting when you are trying to clean yourself up and your ostomy is still pooping. Kind of like changing diapers on a baby. They can't wait to mess up the bum you just cleaned. The worst part was removing the adhesive paste. Ostomates use a paste adhesive around the opening in the ostomy bag to help create a odor and poop proof seal. Often the paste peels right off, but that is after the bag has been on for a few days. This paste is just hours old and sticks to my belly like gooey rubber cement. I pick and and pick and try to rub it off and finally, after several minutes, manage to get my belly clean enough to apply the new bag. While all this was happening I had one of the spare bags tucked down in the seat of my jeans, to warm up. The adhesive flange sticks better when it is warm. Sometimes Karen helps me at home and she usually sticks the bag up under her shirt or down her pants, to warm it up but Karen was out in the van, knitting peacefully.
I apply paste to the new bag and stick it to my belly, trying to force it down snug all the way around and create a tight seal. Just for good measure I apply srtips of surgical tape all around the perimeter, 'just in case'. Because I am worried about another blowout I put on my sweat pants. My jeans are still clean but if I have an accident, I don't want them wrecked with poop. We are only halfway to the Cities and not even halfway through our day and I am more than a little nervous. I put the poopy belt in a bag, finish dressing, gather my plunder and return the van and we head out again.
I want to be mad and I am, a bit. Mostly I am disgusted. Ths is just such a mess, an uncontrolled mess and I resent the whole ostomy for a few miles, like that is going to be helpful. Karen offers to listen if I want to vent but I really don't have anything useful to say. What can I say?
Now I am paranoid and give myself the sniff test every so often. But it isn't till we are on 694 by Brooklyn Center that we realize something foul is in the air, again. Oooh, Oooh, that smell! Damn, not again! Karen takes the first exit and steers us off the interstate. Once again I am trying to hold my clothes out of the way but this blowout is larger. Thick gnarly poop is leaking out of both sides, poop the consistency of adobe is trying to swarm down into my jeans and beginning to succeed. Of course we have to wait at a light and I am trying not to be frantic. I know I need to be somewhere where I can have a bit of privacy but don't relish the idea of walking into another service station john with my clothes held up in one hand while cowpies fall from my belly, ploppity plop onto the floor. Instead we pull into an alley behind a small strip mall.
I don't know what to do but I am pretty sure I don't want to do it in our van. I have this poopy bundle trying to be part of my lap so I open the door and step outside and my lap disappears. The poopy problem persists. RIght away I try to get my sweater off and then my shirt without wearing my own shit. The sweater makes it but the shirt takes a hit and gets thrown into the far back of the van. Now I am standing shirtless, outside, in an alley behind this mall, trying to figure out what to do next. Karen is trying to figure out what to do but she is just as lost as I am. I feel a bit like a triage doctor because I stick my hands out and ask Karen to put on the disposable gloves that I routinely use in dealing with my bag. And then I ask for the baggie full of paper towels so I can start wiping up the mess. I get some of the worst of the poop off and then I pull the bag off and pitch it to the ground. We find an empty plastic bag and I put the soiled paper towels and the blown-out bag into this, because we are No Trace campers. After all, who want to find a mess like that in an alley and besides, I am trying not step in my own filth. God, what an image.
My ostomy decides to be active again and start hemorraging black green runny poop from my belly. Karen spies it first and warms me but it is too late. A runny goober lands on the waistband of my sweats. I try to dab it off with a paper towel but have to move my feet first, before they get hit too. This is getting out of hand. We are out of paper towels, the poop shows no signs of letting up. A strategic retreat is in order.
Karen tells me to grab the barf bag we have in the door compartment, a vestige of an earlier trip with a friend, who managed to fill the speakers in our Saturn when she got sick in the car. This barf bag has a plastic ring around the mouth and I hold the ring just below the ostomy and slide back into the seat while Karen drives us to the nearby SuperAmerica station for paper towels and baby wipes. We pull up in front of the store and Karen goes in while I wait, shirtless, in the front seat with a barf bag of poop. I am OK for now and the wait doesn't seem too long from my perspective. Karen tells me later what happened. She walks in and realizes she is the only white person in the store and stands at the counter while the clerk and a woman she knows have a finger waving in yo' face discussion. Finally Karen pays for the stuff and heads out. On the way she notices a guy looking at her strangely and realizes that part of the last remaining ostomy bag is hanging out the front of her pants. She waits for the cry of "Stop! Shoplifter!" but nothing happens.
In a few minutes we are back in our alley and I am outside the van, shivering in the cold, trying to scrape off the gooey adhesive. I am not getting anywhere. I even resort to using one of Karen's coffee stir-sticks like a scraper but that stuff just does not want to budge. I clean up the area around the ostomy and Karen removes the last bag from her pants and I apply adhesive around the opening and slap the mother on my belly and hope for the best.
But I am still half-naked, with some very smelly clothes on. I can tell you it has been a while since I took my pants off in a vehicle but that's what happened next. Off with the sweats, off with the underwear. Out with the baby wipes and I cleaned up as well as I could and put on my spare shirt and jeans. This is where I got a bit nervous. On canoe trips I never put on my last dry clothes if it is still raining and I had the feeling I would be in deep smelly do-do if this last bag blew and my last clean clothes became soiled, too. Karen reminded me where we were; that there were plenty of places to buy clothes if it came to that. One last trip to the service station so I could wash my hands and we were off.
In a little while we met with Justine and waited together for my appointment. We were able to score a few bags from their ostomy department, in case another emergency developed but apparently the crisis had passed; literally and figuratively. The rest of the day and the late night trip home went fine and this morning I changed the bag I put on in the alley in Brooklyn Center.
This is a long tale and if it has a moral, it is to be prepared. And we were, sort of. Luckily we both found the humor in the situation right away. Well, Karen found the humor first but she had a different perspective. I knew before we were back on the interstate that I had to find this episode funny or my day would be wrecked. So I did. I am proud of the fact that no one got yelled at, nothing got thrown or broken and the swearing was minimal and completely in context. And, we left no trace.
Take only pictures. Leave only tracks.
Peace and love to all.
Mike
Friday, January 1, 2010
Blue Moon
Another journal entry-
(Friday, January 1st, 2010- 5:10 am, WJF)
The full moon- the blue moon of December, the rare occurrence of a blue moon on New Year's Eve- is hanging very high in the southwestern sky. I have to bend low to see it from the bedroom window because a cornice of snow, a gift from the Christmas snowstorm, takes up so much of the available window. The effort however, is small and the reward is large. A shiny disk is what I see. A two-dimensional or is it a one-dimensional object high in the sky-suffusing the whole night with reflected sunlight-with light reflected from earth. Only the brightest planets remain visible under the intensity of the light. Shadows are distinct; knife-cut edges define the branches of the trees, the pockmarked paw prints in the backyard snow. I know, from continued experiments that the moonlight is generous enough to allow one to read words printed on a page. I have proven it to myself more than once just because I can.
The blue moon rose yesterday afternoon as the sun set. Does one pull or push the other around-help them up or under the horizon? The sunset revealed small compact sundogs crouching low on the horizon; mere suggestions of sundogs- the worn heads of old sundogs too tired and cold to give a full display. The sun itself tried to do better, aiming to produce a ray, (there is a specific name for this phenomenom, but I can't recall it now), a salmon colored beam that rises vertically about the point where the sun slips away for the night. A sort of ethereal headstone- a combination of atmospheric and climatological forces in combination that produce a rising beacon marking the last known location of our sun. What an act of faith we are to maintain through the night, especially now in winter when the nights are long and cold and the only light comes from a rough pockmarked stone a quarter million miles away.
But Karen and I watched that stone rise as we gathered snowshoes and mukluks and anoraks so we could go out and observe the blue moon firsthand- naked- well, with nothing between us but space. We futzed in the living room, adjusting our bindings in comfort because I had recently varnished the snowshoes and removed the bindings in the process. We were trying to avoid major adjustments outside in the cold snow with only moonlight as our aid. In these efforts we were only partially successful. Once suited up and outside we still had to make some minor adjustments. The cold did not help but the small headlamp I smuggled along, was helpful. My hands stung with cold, a side effect of my chemo, when I had my mittens off. Numbness came quickly, reducing my ability to work the straps and buckles even though my hands weren't really all that cold. The tingling and numbness are just that quick and intense.
Same for my face- my cheeks and nose. I wore a neckgaiter to minimize the tingling below my cheekbones but my nose kept reacting by stinging. When I touched my nose with a now warm bare hand, my nose wasn't cold, it was just reacting to the cold. I couldn't cover it without fogging my glasses and my goggles were in the jeep in the garage and they have amber tinted lens anyway. So I just kept checking my face for numbness as I followed Karen's footprints through the moonlight.
At a distance, if she was not moving, Karen was nearly invisible in her white canvas anorak. Only as I got closer could I make out the black hood of the woolen anoraks we wear underneath. Kind of a like a reverse of the black tail spot on the ermine. Maybe more like the black rimmed ears or amber eyes of the snowshoe hare: once you get a bit of a clue the rest of the animal becomes whole before your eyes-drawn out of invisibility by the one clue. So it was with Karen.
We started in the yard after talking about driving somewhere 'wilder' to observe the moonrise but gave up the notion as too much effort. We knew if we waited till after we ate our traditional New Year's Eve seafood boil, we would not go out at all so our choice came down to staying at home. The choice worked perfectly. First time out on snowshoes for the season and at night to boot with bindings that still needed attention. Better home than out in the woods. There will be other moonlight nights ahead.
We wandered out back, more or less, to the far property corner and trespassed onto our neighbors land, through the jackpines, through the norways and small openings in his plantation. We came across Narda's ski tracks and followed her route. We did not have a plan in mind other than Karen's wish to have a loop to snowshoe and Narda's trail provided that. Narda maintains her ski loop for just the same purpose, a place to go when time and desire come together, outside, on the snow.
After I caught up to Karen she put me in the lead, breaking trail. The snow is over a foot deep-not bad for depth but deep enough to make one's heart work and mine hasn't been worked hard enough lately. The cold and my work schedule have cut my Nordic walking down quite a bit. So we stopped, we paused, several times in our brief sojourn.
"I am glad we are doing this" I told Karen. "This is who we are- this is where we are supposed to be."
"I am glad you are here at the end of this year, and at the beginning of the New Year."
"Yes, I'm glad too."
And we were glad. We were out in our natural element. WE WERE US- snowshoes and mukluks, wool, leather and canvas, nothing but space between us and the moon. "THIS IS WHO WE ARE." And that is the truth. At one stop I turned to face the moon. Lifting my arms I offered a prayer of thanks to the Creator- asked for blessings on family and friends and selfishly asked for an easier time in this new year. We could use some good things in our recovery. We are thankful for the blessings and friends and support we have received. We would just like to move in a positive direction away from the portage we are on now. I didn't feel that was too much to ask. When we finally came back to our yard I circled our prayer tipi four times-pausing to ring the wind chime, to call one's attention to the present moment.
Then we went inside, bringing with us the perfection we experienced under the blue moon-bringing in with us our reclaimed selves, the sole and true inhabitants of Whiskey Jack Flats.
Happy New Year to all of our friends and family.
Peace and love,
Mike
(Friday, January 1st, 2010- 5:10 am, WJF)
The full moon- the blue moon of December, the rare occurrence of a blue moon on New Year's Eve- is hanging very high in the southwestern sky. I have to bend low to see it from the bedroom window because a cornice of snow, a gift from the Christmas snowstorm, takes up so much of the available window. The effort however, is small and the reward is large. A shiny disk is what I see. A two-dimensional or is it a one-dimensional object high in the sky-suffusing the whole night with reflected sunlight-with light reflected from earth. Only the brightest planets remain visible under the intensity of the light. Shadows are distinct; knife-cut edges define the branches of the trees, the pockmarked paw prints in the backyard snow. I know, from continued experiments that the moonlight is generous enough to allow one to read words printed on a page. I have proven it to myself more than once just because I can.
The blue moon rose yesterday afternoon as the sun set. Does one pull or push the other around-help them up or under the horizon? The sunset revealed small compact sundogs crouching low on the horizon; mere suggestions of sundogs- the worn heads of old sundogs too tired and cold to give a full display. The sun itself tried to do better, aiming to produce a ray, (there is a specific name for this phenomenom, but I can't recall it now), a salmon colored beam that rises vertically about the point where the sun slips away for the night. A sort of ethereal headstone- a combination of atmospheric and climatological forces in combination that produce a rising beacon marking the last known location of our sun. What an act of faith we are to maintain through the night, especially now in winter when the nights are long and cold and the only light comes from a rough pockmarked stone a quarter million miles away.
But Karen and I watched that stone rise as we gathered snowshoes and mukluks and anoraks so we could go out and observe the blue moon firsthand- naked- well, with nothing between us but space. We futzed in the living room, adjusting our bindings in comfort because I had recently varnished the snowshoes and removed the bindings in the process. We were trying to avoid major adjustments outside in the cold snow with only moonlight as our aid. In these efforts we were only partially successful. Once suited up and outside we still had to make some minor adjustments. The cold did not help but the small headlamp I smuggled along, was helpful. My hands stung with cold, a side effect of my chemo, when I had my mittens off. Numbness came quickly, reducing my ability to work the straps and buckles even though my hands weren't really all that cold. The tingling and numbness are just that quick and intense.
Same for my face- my cheeks and nose. I wore a neckgaiter to minimize the tingling below my cheekbones but my nose kept reacting by stinging. When I touched my nose with a now warm bare hand, my nose wasn't cold, it was just reacting to the cold. I couldn't cover it without fogging my glasses and my goggles were in the jeep in the garage and they have amber tinted lens anyway. So I just kept checking my face for numbness as I followed Karen's footprints through the moonlight.
At a distance, if she was not moving, Karen was nearly invisible in her white canvas anorak. Only as I got closer could I make out the black hood of the woolen anoraks we wear underneath. Kind of a like a reverse of the black tail spot on the ermine. Maybe more like the black rimmed ears or amber eyes of the snowshoe hare: once you get a bit of a clue the rest of the animal becomes whole before your eyes-drawn out of invisibility by the one clue. So it was with Karen.
We started in the yard after talking about driving somewhere 'wilder' to observe the moonrise but gave up the notion as too much effort. We knew if we waited till after we ate our traditional New Year's Eve seafood boil, we would not go out at all so our choice came down to staying at home. The choice worked perfectly. First time out on snowshoes for the season and at night to boot with bindings that still needed attention. Better home than out in the woods. There will be other moonlight nights ahead.
We wandered out back, more or less, to the far property corner and trespassed onto our neighbors land, through the jackpines, through the norways and small openings in his plantation. We came across Narda's ski tracks and followed her route. We did not have a plan in mind other than Karen's wish to have a loop to snowshoe and Narda's trail provided that. Narda maintains her ski loop for just the same purpose, a place to go when time and desire come together, outside, on the snow.
After I caught up to Karen she put me in the lead, breaking trail. The snow is over a foot deep-not bad for depth but deep enough to make one's heart work and mine hasn't been worked hard enough lately. The cold and my work schedule have cut my Nordic walking down quite a bit. So we stopped, we paused, several times in our brief sojourn.
"I am glad we are doing this" I told Karen. "This is who we are- this is where we are supposed to be."
"I am glad you are here at the end of this year, and at the beginning of the New Year."
"Yes, I'm glad too."
And we were glad. We were out in our natural element. WE WERE US- snowshoes and mukluks, wool, leather and canvas, nothing but space between us and the moon. "THIS IS WHO WE ARE." And that is the truth. At one stop I turned to face the moon. Lifting my arms I offered a prayer of thanks to the Creator- asked for blessings on family and friends and selfishly asked for an easier time in this new year. We could use some good things in our recovery. We are thankful for the blessings and friends and support we have received. We would just like to move in a positive direction away from the portage we are on now. I didn't feel that was too much to ask. When we finally came back to our yard I circled our prayer tipi four times-pausing to ring the wind chime, to call one's attention to the present moment.
Then we went inside, bringing with us the perfection we experienced under the blue moon-bringing in with us our reclaimed selves, the sole and true inhabitants of Whiskey Jack Flats.
Happy New Year to all of our friends and family.
Peace and love,
Mike
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