“You look really good.”
“Thank you. I make an effort never to leave the house looking like a potential “people of Walmart meme.”
It’s important to me to put my best face forward these days. Besides, not working in an office, I have no real reason to dress up on weekdays. And, I do love funky clothes. I do feel good these days.
Gardening seems to agree with me. Since my diagnosis in 2023, the few months I spend in the garden each year are the healthiest and happiest. That being
In the words of the Stark family from the Game of Thrones, “Winter is coming.”
We shouldn’t be surprised as we approach certain birthdays in our lives significant of the changing of the four seasons of life. And, yet, I wasn’t ready for it.
Here I am. About a year ago I was recovering from cancer treatment and getting stronger every day.
I felt so much like myself I did a weekly farmers market. My gardens were all planted and producing and I was baking bread like crazy. My grand
I think I can, I think I can — I can do anything for 15 minutes.
Nothing could have prepared me for the hijacking of my body the way cancer did. How long had those mutating cells been slowly taking over my lung? Had I been feeling healthy for a year, or two, or three, on the outside while inside my chest a mass began to build and then spread.
It has taken me weeks to absorb the diagnosis. It could have been better. What could I have done to find this sooner? Why did I think it was poss
Two weeks. That's 14 days x 24 hours before my next doctor’s appointment. Actually, not with Dr. Rocket, but once again with “Irrational” radiology. In case you haven’t figured it out, the words in quote markets in the middle of a sentence could be something I made up. Just saying.
Waiting to see what’s happening to your body isn’t easy when you can’t see inside. I was anxious to begin treatment and get it over with, but I was gently reminded that treatment plans take time and preparation.
Well, this was it — the beginning of what would be several months of “dis-ease.” It began with that phone call from Dr. Russell.
I never met Dr. Russell. He was the doctor that my primary care physician called right after the first suspicious x-ray. He called Feb. 23 and said there was nothing he could do for me. It was cancer.
“Call an oncologist.”
“I don’t know any oncologists,” I said.
“I will ask my nurse to schedule an appointment for you.
“Thanks,” I think.
Ne
PET scan day. Another day, entering the unknown. The weather was awful, so we left for Bismarck early. My desire to get these exams over and done outweighed my impatience at sitting in hospital and clinic chairs for hours at a time, staring at the walls, watching solemn faces entering and exiting. Although arriving early to appointments, we never had to wait long to enter the inner sanctum of the hospital, those closed doors to the great unknown led by people much younger than myself who always
We will soon know what’s inside my chest.
My friend Shelley met us at the hospital at 7 a.m. on a bitter below-zero Wednesday, Feb. 22. The sun had not yet met the horizon, and the city was beginning to wake up. The hospital light looked dim in the surrounding dark, one of the only fully lit buildings downtown. Today’s patients and staff were trickling in by ones and by twos.
There were three of us. It was biopsy day.
After checking in, I stared at the woman behind the counter for
Without opening my eyes, my first conscious thought was, “I have lung cancer.”
Somehow, my life began to blur and my mind moved to going over every detail of the past two months.
At this point the word cancer didn’t seem etched in stone, but I knew something was not right. I didn’t have any idea of what, or how much, or what happens next. I did feel the numbness of shock at the news.
During the warm weeks of December, before I caught my husband’s cold, I walked two miles everyday
As Peter Marshall said, “God will not permit any troubles to come upon us, unless he has a specific plan by which great blessing can come out of the difficulty.”
January’s weather was temperate, and the trip from Huron to Mandan was uneventful. It’s becoming a shorter drive every time I travel the same road to Jamestown, then down Highway 281 to Aberdeen, SD, and onward to Redfield, and then Huron, SD.
Of course, it’s way more fun with my granddaughter riding shotgun, but I hoped to m
The year began like every other year. Winter in North Dakota. A few nice days providing a taste of spring. A new found love of exercise, memories of my mom and the upcoming birth of a grand daughter. The end of December became the beginning of an unexpected journey. As with most stories it begins with a single step.
My mother walked everywhere. Living in a small town about a block from Main Street meant we could walk to work, to school and to the grocery store. The exception, of course, was
The year I became my mother
This post is the beginning of the year 2023 with roots in 2022. Some of you may have read this post as I planned on using it for my Christmas letter. Be warned, it's rather long.
Christmas 2022, I became my mother. It wasn’t planned. I’m not sure it was supposed to happen, but it did. It’s the way of the world. Eventually, one generation replaces the other.
It’s begins slowly. You go about your day with confidence forgetting to check the mirror before y
