Healing 101

My current day job

My daily schedule is a bit of a mess. I tend to get up around the time Cheryl starts getting ready for work. Even though she tries to let me sleep, I still seem to hear her and wake up about half way. I may not actually get up until after she leaves, but I do start the process of getting moving. Normally, I watch CNN to see what kind of mess the world is in today. Unlike many of my students, I seem to care what is going on in other places. I got in the CNN habit while stationed at SAC Headquarters in Omaha many years ago. I was amazed that many of the SAC command folks had a live CNN feed in their offices. It seems that they got a better sense of world events that way, rather than depending on official military news channels! I watched many of the big events of the day on these sets during staff meetings.

My big problem with CNN these days is that my favorite edition (Headline News) seems to be more of a TV version of People Magazine. I really do not care about most things going on in Hollywood, or what is hot on You-Tube, or the latest trial of some bozo who did in their girl/boy friend! So there!

After my news habit has been fed, I check email and settle in to the really important decisions of the day. Do I watch them restore old cars, build new hot rods, or watch them build a really weird motorcycle I would be afraid to even sit on much less ride?

This goes on pretty much all day, with occasional breaks for food (Ensure). Cheryl comes home in the evening and we share dinner together, then we both go back to work until bed time. I seem to keep at things until around 1AM and the cycle continues. What a life!

What I really do is let those shows run while I work on my laptop, writing software for courses I teach, or just keeping up with what is new in the technology world. The TV is running, and I may be aware of it, but I have never been one to sit and actually do nothing but watch TV. I get a lot of work done doing things this way, and my mind is fully concentrated on that and not my current situation. That helps the healing process a lot!

Do I actually get anything done? That is hard to tell since none of my projects seem to be finished. I feel like I am wasting time doing little, but Cheryl reminds me I am still resting after the train wreck. My body is feeling better, but it is still pretty weak. I find out how true that is if I try to push things much (see below).

Sigh!

Eating

My biggest headache is eating. I cannot do that very well. It seems that the swallowing process got hit pretty hard by the Chemo and the surgery. I can swallow thick fluids, but not normal foods. So, I am on an Ensure/Baby food diet. (The good side of this is I am losing weight! Something I needed to do anyway!)

Fluids need to be thickened with some stuff we got introduced to in the hospital. It is clear, tasteless and you mix a packet in with a drink to make it "thicker". I use it mostly to make swallowing Ensure easier. The baby food seems OK.

Unfortunately, the surgery did a number on the left side of my mouth. I lost most of the feeling on that side since they had to cut a lot of the nerves to get rid of the cancer! If you look at the pictures I posted last time, you see that the left side of my mouth seems to droop. It does, and it does not close tightly so when I put stuff in my mouth, it has a tendency to leak out on that side. I am getting in the habit of taking a bite, then sticking a finger up to my face to try to seal that side up. If I succeed, I get to eat nicely, otherwise I drool and make a mess.

I "dress" for dinner by tucking a towel into my shirt to catch my misses. My measure of things getting better is how messy the towel is after meals. Things are getting better, but we will be talking about all of this with the doctors in September!

Amazing Visions

One of the interesting (and annoying) things I am dealing with are images I see when I close my eye, or when it is dark in the room. According to my Ophthalmologist, this is my brain trying to make sense out of signals it used to get from the missing eye and it will go away eventually. For now it is just weird.

What I see is a pattern of small green lines on a black background. The pattern I see is weird, and it seems different every time I see it. Basically, it looks like a random grid of shapes, each of which has a maze-like pattern of lines inside. At first, I thought I was seeing the after-effects of playing Mah-jong (with tiles each one holding a pattern of some sort), but the grid is not that uniform. It is just random shapes filled with lines.

There are hundreds of them in the field, and if I try to look closely at them, they seem to change as I move my eye around to focus on different parts. Maybe it has something to do with the structure inside my eye. Who knows.

The problem with all of this is it is messing up my low-light vision. Until I get used to the darkness, moving around in the dark is frustrating, because i cannot see anything but the pattern. If there is light on anywhere, my eye picks it up and I do not notice the pattern as much, but it is still there.

I would like to draw a picture of what I see, but it does not stay fixed well enough to do that, so I guess all I could do it draw something similar and see if that is good enough. I may do that before seeing the doctors at M. D. Anderson again.

Weird!

Road Trip

Cheryl and I did a big road trip to Kansas City for the Fourth of July, to visit kids, grandkids, and even great-grandkids. (YIKES! Am I that old?) We spent a week visiting and working on our restoration project house up there.

This was the first time I tried to sit in a vehicle for more than the few hours it takes to get to Houston and M. D. Anderson! We took my new truck (which Cheryl loves to drive!) and broke the trip up into two parts. We stopped in Oklahoma City and spend the night with my good friends Jim and Patty Petty.

We had a great (but short) visit with them and found out them Oklahoma is now one of the top earthquake centers of the country. They have been having shakes pretty regularly, but nothing enough to cause any real damage. We missed feeling one, but Patty did let us know that they had another shake after we left the next morning. All of this is due to the "fracking" they are doing to extract oil from the old fields all over the state. I suppose that as we get closer to actually running out of oil, more of this kind of thing will be happening.

What is that? You do not believe we will run out of oil? You need to look at the production and consumption numbers and see how fast we have been using up all those old dinosaurs! We may not run out in my lifetime (!), but I am betting this will become a serious issue for some of those kids alive today!

Working on the house

Cheryl and I bought the house in KC so we could spend more time with the grandkid! Colin is now pushing seven, so we need to get this place done soon. (Let's see, grandparents are supposed to wind the kids up, then leave them to their parents when they are done. The KC house is where we will hide!)

Fortunately, most of the hard part of the restoration is done, and we managed to check a number of things off of our list while up there this time! In the end, we got much more done than we expected!

We took an air mattress with us, and set it up so I could rest if things got too tiring. I was not expecting to need that, but it turned out I really did.

Son Scott, our resident architect, came to the house several times to work on putting up the trim around all the windows and doors in the place, and got most of that done! The truck servedus well, going to Lowes multiple times to but lumber. The short bed was no problem, and our checkbook is a bit lighter due to all the wood we bought! Cheryl's job was to paint the ceilings in the entire place.

I tried to help with all of this, and did for a while. But, I discovered that standing up all day was more tiring than I expected, so I ended up taking a few naps while Cheryl worked to get the painting done. I actually slept through a lot of power hammer work while Scott put up the trim! We got most of all this done, but ran out of paint with just a bit of the front hallway left to do, and the place is looking really great! (This is a pay-as-you-go project, and we have been at this for over three years now!)

We also ordered the kitchen cabinets so we can start finishing the kitchen off, and met with tile installers who will be working on all the bathrooms shortly. We really need bathrooms! So far, we have been going to Burger King when needed, and I suppose that has to stop eventually!

The trip back home we did in one long shot. I managed it well enough, but did nap more than I should have, I did a couple of turns driving, but Cheryl ended up doing more than her fair share!

One more vacation trip

The KC trip did tell me one thing. I am not up to a long drive alone. Next week, I am going to Dayton, Ohio, them to Muncie, Indiana for the model airplane Nationals with my friend from back in D.C, Jim Coffin. I had thought of doing another road trip, but as tired as sitting in the truck made me on that last trip, I decided to fly to Dayton and rent a car so I can revisit Dayton, then scoot over to Muncie which is only about 80 miles away.

One Eye?

I am still getting used to the one eye life. I still feel like I am in a box, especially when I am outside. I keep remembering how big the world seemed when I lived in New Mexico and had 100 mile horizons in all directions. The world feels so much smaller now, but I am told that feeling will go away eventually.

Driving is no big deal. The only time I have problems is pulling into parking spaces, or the drive through the ATM lane. I cannot tell exactly where the right bumper is, so I do things very slowly, just in case. So far, I have not bumped into anything, and feel pretty good driving!

I did add two wide angle blind spot mirrors to the truck rear view mirrors. Those are great! Especially on my blind side, I have little problem keeping track of the traffic around me.

Wrapping up

Cheryl and I are still getting a ton of support from family and friends, and we both seem to be holding up well. The KC trip was a big help. We managed to get out of the routine and do something fun for a change. I have not been thinking much about the cancer thing at all, and that helps mentally. I am hoping to enjoy the Dayton/Muncie trip as well.

I still get email from folks who actually read this blog of mine, and it always makes me feel good knowing it helps others as much as it helps me in writing it all. I hope it is not too boring!

We both want everyone to know how much we appreciate your support, and prayers! They are working! Thank you!

Oh, wait, another motorcycle rebuild show is coming on, I need to go! Bye!