low spot

Yesterday, after being inundated on TV and online with metastatic breast cancer treatment ads, I was feeling hopeless and defeated and angry. I had troubled dreams all night. This morning, I spent a large amount of time listening to Senator Cory Booker's marathon speech. He is amazing and I am glad we have people like him and Raphael Warnock in our government, fighting the good fight.

starting cancer treatment

I spent most of Wednesday at Duke Cancer center. Karen accompanied me there and drove. 

now I am a cancer patient

I had a biopsy done on Fat Tuesday, March 4. I got my test results on the following Friday. I have breast cancer. I have what looks like I have what is probably stage 1 invasive breast cancer. Invasive Ductal Carcinoma 7 - 8mm They started to put me off til the end of April to make an appointment to consult with doctors at Atrium. My friend Karen, who was with me when I got the results, immediately spoke up and said I wanted to go to Duke. She already had the new patient contact information for Duke and she is shepherding me to go straight to Duke with this. I’d have to wait until Monday to hear from Atrium or Duke about sending my records and samples to Duke. Here’s hoping I can get in ASAP to deal with this. The good news today is I got my first trio of appointments at Duke scheduled for Wednesday, March 26, starting at 9:00AM, with the last appointment of the day starting at 1:00PM. Karen is going with me on Wednesday to my appointments in Durham, NC.

Looking for Spring

It is still lonely and boring here in North Carolina. Wondering if I should attempt to arrange any sort of Spring holiday-ish gathering at the house with friends and nearby neighbors. I doubt anyone will come but I still have an urge to try. I wish someone here would invite me to such a nearby event on a day that I don't have to be at the dress shop. Saint Patrick's Day is on a Monday this year. Maybe a potluck Irish-themed brunch on Sunday? What about an all-age alternative to an Easter Egg (without real eggs) hunt to celebrate the beginning of Spring? My calendar tells me that Spring Equinox is Thursday, March 20 and all Spring holidays seem to include eggs in the mix somewhere.

my medical schedule is looking geriatric

I had my first mammogram since 2018 last Tuesday. Late this afternoon, I got a call from Atrium. They want me to have a diagnostic mammogram and an ultrasound as soon as possible. To satisfy work RTO requirements, the soonest I can make an appointment for that is March 4. Hopefully, they will approve that at work so I don't have to lie and call in "sick". I already put in RTO requests in for both days. After everyone refusing to see me even for well-checks without full insurance since I lost my last full-time job during the Covid shut-down, I'm finally getting the tests I should have been having annually for the last four years. My regular doctor still doesn't have time for my Welcome-To-Medicare checkup until May 13. I am still trying to figure out what's going on with my back and side, other than routine sciatica pain. It has been going on since April 13, when I woke up and could not even tie my shoes, and X-ray and MRI tests say there is nothing wrong with me. It is a lot better but it is still bad enough to prevent me from traveling far in a car or being able to sit down too long at my desk; although when it first started, I could not bear to drive or sit upright at all. So, I've gotten much better all by myself but I really need my fully-functioning life back. I have one more orthopedic appointment on March 6 - I think this will be the last one I make for my back.

Saturday

This is a rare Saturday that I'm not working at the dress shop. Rather than sleeping in, I had an anxiety attack that woke me up at 4:30 AM. I tried to stay in bed but I gave up a bit before 6:00 AM and started trying to quietly put things away and clean up the kitchen. MonsterMustDie woke up not much later and made coffee. Around 11:00 AM, we pulled some of the plastic bins down from the attic and began putting away the holiday decorations. Then we had lunch with Karen & Bob at Taste of Troy, a Greek restaurant in Jamestown. I had the vegetarian moussaka and MonsterMustDie had the gyro. After that, we continued working on putting up decorations and breaking down the tree.

Winter Holidays 2024

We cleaned up the area around the microwave oven and burned scented candles all day to remove some of the smoke smell in the house. For Winter Solsice at our house, I kept a scented candle in the kitchen, den, and living room. None of the people I invited from work came to Winter Solstice. We had less guests than last year, with only Michael and Marcia, Karen and Bob showing up but the six of us enjoyed great conversation with like-minded people until about 11:00 PM when I had to let everyone know I worked at 7:00 AM in the morning. At the end of the night, we got the gas log fireplace in the living room burning for a few minutes, which was the Yule log for this year. It took three men to figure out how to get it going and I made sure all of it was off before everyone left just so I could be sure we left nothing on. Christmas Eve, I worked until 6:30 PM. Got home before 7:00 PM and we snacked on leftovers from Winter Solstice. Christmas Day was spent with Bob and Karen and Meg in Greensboro. They made a fabulous meal of a huge rib roast, potatoes, brussels sprouts, and carrots. There was, of course, apple pie and ice cream for desert. We were there from around 3:30 til 8:00 PM. We came home and I put up more leftovers and watched TV for a little while after MonsterMustDie went to bed.

Christmas Dinner 

Burnt

I got home just before midnight last night and the entire house smelled like walking into a bag of blackened burned popcorn. Looked in the oven for signs of distress and it was clean. Looked in the trash for the remains of what burned and found nothing.

Then I started worrying that something might actually be just starting to burn in the house and decided to wake MonsterMustDie up. My first question was "Did you burn something in the kitchen?" His reply was "No." When I told him the house smelled like something burning and asked if he smelled it, he said everything was fine. I looked in the attic. I looked in the basement. Nothing. Then he got up wild-eyed and came into the kitchen and finally confessed, matter-of-factly like he hadn't just denied it twice, that he burned something in the microwave. He still has not told me what it was or how he disposed of it. I think I can assume he threw the smouldering remains into the back yard to get it out of the house fast and that's why I didn't find it in the trash. The microwave was coated with a brown film. I unplugged it as a reminder not to use it until I get to check it for damage and try to thoroughly clean it. He then refused to go back to bed and started attempting to clean it with paper towels and scented countertop cleaner, which I unsuccessfully tried to make him stop using. Today the house still smells awful. We're both trying to wipe down every surface and burning scented candles now to mask the odor.

How to you burn something to bits in a microwave when you have to set a timer for everything?

the feeding tube is clogged

I just tried to take some trash to the backroom compactor door and OMFG the back room is completely packed to the doors with merchandise.  It's like everything we should have had all season came in today. If a fire breaks out in front of the store, we're all dying because no one can climb through to the back doors. 

a cold December night.

We had an unexpected light dusting of snow last night.  

It's stunning cold tonight. I came home from work 11:30ish to find MonsterMustDie had cranked the heat up to 75 degrees again before he went to bed. I nudged the thermostat down to a still-cozy 70 before getting ready for bed. 

Halloween Eve

Working tonight at the dress shop. Taking tomorrow off work and looking forward to Halloween, which is my favorite holiday. We haven't done anything very Halloweenie this year other than decorate the front yard with a slimmed down version of the graveyard scene. MonsterMustDie has no energy for anything and doesn't want me to take anything on alone. Between his health problems with cancer, my back issues that might be sciatica or a torn muscle (my doctor has fired me for not having insurance. I can't afford any insurance without a full-time job.) there's not much to do here. The flood damage in Western North Carolina which means we are not visiting friends in Black Mountain or going to any of the festivals in Brevard or Asheville. Nothing happens here in the WASP retirement village that is High Point, NC. My physical pain is a lot better but I still can't sit at my desk long enough to work on art or go through tutorials to stay up-to-date in the remote chance of getting any freelance work. I do a lot of posting and reading standing up at the kitchen counter when he's not home. When he comes home, I try to be quiet while he spends hours scrolling through Facebook or eBay. When he goes to bed, I can stretch out on the love seat with Bluetooth headphones and watch shows or movies he has no interest in and criticizes me for enjoying, saying it's shallow, stupid, or unsophisticated. When he has control of the TV, he just watches fantasy and Japanese animation. Lately, all he watches is Rings of Power... which has made me kinda hate all the things I used to love about the stories of J.R. Tolkein. I am still struggling with my sorry realtor who has control of my condo in Atlanta. Half of the time, I want to move back there. Half of the time, I feel desperate to gain control of it just long enough to have Cindi sell it so I never have to try to manage a place I'm not currently living in. Then again, if anything happens to MonsterMustDie, I suspect I will be homeless if I don't have a way to escape this place and move back to Atlanta.

silence in the storm

We have the tail of the hurricane blowing through North Carolina today. There were several power outages overnight here. MonsterMustDie went to work as usual this morning. Two days ago, my Samsung 9+ cell phone died. It would start up and then the screen would go completely black except for a thin bar of green at the top. It was off and on the first night so I hoped it was fixable. Then it went black with the green bar permanently. I think I even heard a faint crackle from inside the phone when I held down the buttons trying to restart or shut down. So I went to the Verizon location near me with my non-functioning phone. Of course, they said I needed a new phone. Of course, they tried to up-sale me on services and even wrote up a bundle for me including streaming services, which I never use on cell phones and, even if I wanted to do that, John Stephens already has paid subscriptions to Netflix, etc. and I made the woman serving me strike streaming paid services off the contract. They did not take my old phone in a trade-in and didn't want me turning it in there because they said there was no way they could securely dispose of it or erase/reset the device. So I decided to try a Pixel this time. The new phone does not work. I got home and tried to go through the login procedure for Verizon and it put me in an endless cycle of requiring an SMS text for an access number to plug into my new Pixel phone. Since I don't have a functioning phone yet, I can't read or recieve a text or make a call out to customer service. I tried to use the chat bot and it told me service was down and to try again later. So, I still have no phone for now even though I'm now paying a lot more for no service.

Looking forward to Autumn

I still have problems with my back and side that I've had since mid-April. It's gotten better but really has not improved as quickly as it should have. My doctor, who seems to have fired me or at least refuses to see me, simply labeled it as sciatica and told me it would probably be better in a few weeks. Months later, it's still a problem but I can at least sit in a car more than 10 minutes now. Brian and Laura sent me a lumbar pillow like the one that he depended on and it does seem to help on longer journeys. Only my doctor's PA and one physical therapist have seen me. After several weeks of reporting on my pain via MyChart, I had an x-ray to make sure it wasn't a bad disk or pinched nerve and one appointment with a therapist, who gave me a list of exercises to do daily.

Meanwhile, like I said, there has been some improvement. Maybe I'll be well enough to travel again by next year. Meanwhile, I've been stuck at home most of the time.

We were able to make the longest road trip since my injury to Raleigh, which is an hour drive away, to see a friend who lives in California performing at The Reeves Theatre last Saturday. It was great to see and hear live music and to visit with a pal I haven't seen in a long time.

I'm still well enough to look forward to Halloween. We're (I'm) already planning to start decorating the yard soon with our Spooky Lady graveyard and pumpkins. I've already bought a few bags of candy. I found popcorn balls in the shelf at Target yesterday and I couldn't resist picking some up to stash away for Trick-or-Treaters.

I hope I'm in even better shape by December. I've got no solid Christmas plans, as usual, but Karen and Bob will probably be around to spend Christmas day with this year. Christmas eve, I will no doubt be working at the dress shop. I already put in RTO for the Scandinavian Christmas Market, a one-day event at the fairgrounds, and Winter Solstice.

As a retail worker, I can't expect any other time off between the beginning of November and the middle of January. I wish I had some good side-gigs that I could do at home. Mostly, I just stay knotted into a ball of anxiety here due to my isolation and ignorance of what to do about stressers like my realtor in Atlanta who doesn't want to pay me, what to do about getting on Medicare but not yet on Social Securty — so I have extra costs for that — and the fact that I pay too much to Adobe every month to keep my software for Creative Suite apps that I can't yet bear to let go of even though they are not paying for themselves but giving me any work here.

The Crown is gone. Long live the new crown.

This just happened. We went to the cinema to see Deadpool and the entire top of my back molar came off while I was eating popcorn, five minutes into watching the movie. I must have swallowed it because I didn't notice it until I felt the void with my tongue. The popcorn wasn't that hard. I suppose it was already about to break off anyway. Fortunately, my dentist was able to see me today and I already have a new crown 3-D printed and installed. I hope this crown lasts a lot longer than the first one which, I think, was put in 2017. That does not seem long enough for it to need to be replaced. Still, I am very grateful that they were able to fix this in one day.