Chemo Recovery - Week 1

Hello from Colorado! Still no elk or deer sightings.

Yesterday was my grandmother’s 94th birthday. Ninety-fourth!! One of the cards she received was musical and played the birthday song. She must have opened and closed and opened that card 100 times. She was like a little kid with a new toy.  

Yesterday was also the first day my mom actually looked better - the week hadn’t been too good for her. However, when she corrected the way I made the coffee… …I knew she didn’t just look better, she also felt better. Yay!

Right now, the majority of her blood work looks “phenomenal” according to the medical assistant. We’re thrilled about that but the chemo has destroyed a large portion of her immune system. They worry when the results are at .5%. My mother’s are at .9% so they are keeping a watchful eye on her.

This Tuesday she’ll have a 7-hour office visit where she’ll receive immune globulin to help boost her immune system. It’s a risky thing because the possible complications from that include anaphylactic shock and coma. Yeah… you read that right. However, she’s already had this once before (with a benadryl drip and hovering medical team) so we’re not as concerned about it this time. Until then, she has to be extremely careful to avoid infection. With luck, thetreatment should balance things out to a safe level for her. And then it all starts again.

That’s the funny thing about chemo. It kills the cancer cells, which is what we want, but it also kills healthy cells. It can’t distinguish between the two. Chemo is tough but it ain’t that smart. Still, it’s good to have this since without it… well… I won’t even consider that.

Daughter has been a trooper and Hubby is having a blast as a bachelor. :-D The cats, I’m told are doing well, though they tend to sit at the top of the stairs looking down. Waiting for Daughter and me, perhaps? Well, we’ll be home soon enough and we’ll cuddle them until they can’t stand it anymore.

One month down and five to go. Here’s hoping things continue to improve from now until then and beyond.

And here’s hoping some deer or elk come out of hiding so I can catch a glimpse of them before we leave.

I’m sorry I haven’t been a good blog neighbor by stopping by daily. Things have been busy here this week but I will be making my rounds once I’m back home. PROMISE.

Colorado - Week 1

This post will be brief as time seems to be running in fast-forward X16…

So far so good with my mom’s chemo. She has responded precisely as the doctors had hoped. The side-effects, so far, are minimal and we’re hoping, of course, they stay that way. We were told Chemo effects occur the week after chemo so Daughter and I are heading out to Colorado this week. We’re out of here by 4:30 tomorrow morning.

I’m taking my WIP notes and completed chapters. If my mom’s up to it, maybe we’ll brainstorm like we used to.

This is the first time hubby and I will be apart - except for those post C-section days for me in the hospital. My concern is more for my cats than him. Will he remember to feed them? To change their water and play with them? Of course he will. I know this but have to find something to ‘worry’ about.

I’ve cooked a bunch of stuff for him to eat while we’re gone, and I bought plenty of things for him to pick on if he gets the munchies. He works tons of hours so I doubt we’ll be missed THAT much - maybe when he wants a fresh pot of coffee or to know where something is.

I’ve a feeling, though, that when we get back, he’ll be kinda happy to see us.

YARD SALE - Fundraiser and more…

 Today is one of our fundraising events for the shelter. These precious kitties need as much as we can give them since we run solely on private donations and volunteer energy. The group has been working tirelessly for a month to get this together and I think it’s going to be great. All the Yard Sale info for today is on our website - A.C.T. 

In other busy news… Some of you might remember I was fostering an adorable kitten that was dumped at the shelter.

  

She was terrified at first and hid under my sofa for the first two days I had her. After that, she inched her way closer to us and to my other cats. She made our home hers. She traveled from bowl to bowl taking a taste of the other cats’ food, she tried out each and every cat bed, played with all the toys and otherwise took over the house.

Two of my own kitties, Lady and Dobby, wanted nothing to do with her.

   

Fidget was the one who snuggled with her and did the ‘mommy thing’ by grooming her head to toe.

He’s not a mommy but… hey. That’s the animal world for ya.

And then there’s Ansel. The papa of the group. He’s my biggest and eldest baby. He was as terrified of her as she was of us when she’d first arrived. Naturally, when it was time for her to go to her permanent home, he’d finally warmed up to her. (Don’t let the eyes fool you, he IS happy she’s sleeping next to him. Really.)

 

Letting this little one go was brutally painful. As tiny as she is, she filled our home and our hearts. I know she’s with a great family now and she’ll adjust - probably sooner than I will. She needed to learn how to fit in and get along. And she did. I need to learn how to say goodbye without falling apart. And I didn’t.

Secure the Call

How many cell phones have you had since cell phones became the rage? I’ve had two. My first was a “Tandy” from Radio Shack and was the size of a Korean War era walkie. Huge by today’s standards. I owned it about 15 years ago. Not really THAT long.

I now have my first real cell phone, while hubby is on his fourth.  What have we done with all of the old phones? Piled them in a box that’s stored in the garage. How silly is that? Will we ever use them again? Will I ever take out my old Tandy and stroll around with it in public? Not likely. We could simply toss them all but that wouldn’t be wise since another option is so much more logical.

We can donate them. And so can you.

Who couldn’t benefit from a phone these days? I think of my 94 year old grandmother at home alone during the hours my mom endures chemotherapy. I think of the latchkey kid walking home from school during the winter months when darkness comes so early. I think of all the people who did without before who could truly benefit from a phone now. But I hadn’t thought of a specific group of people who could use a phone the most.

Domestic abuse victims.

Secure the Call is a national non-profit organization that takes used and unwanted cell phones and distributes them to those most in need - like those victims of domestic abuse.

You don’t have to worry about data on your phone. You can wipe it clean of contacts before you donate it. But… Secure the Call reprograms every phone they receive and then they convert it into a free 911 phone. Those free 911 phones will then be sent to local communities around the country. Women’s shelters receive them. Senior Citizen centers. Police offices. Secure the Call will even pay for you to ship your phone to them so you don’t have to lay out a dime. OR… you could help save them some much-needed funds and pay for the shipping yourself.

We’ll be sending all of our old phones to them. We’ll also be placing a phone collection box in our office so people who stop in will be made aware of Secure the Call’s program and, hopefully, drop-off their old phones for this very worth while cause.

Chemo - Week 1

The closest I’ve been to someone enduring chemotherapy was when a new neighbor went through it for breast cancer. She was an amazing example of strength during those months. She lived only with pets, worked full time, cared for them, shopped and cooked for herself - and often for me - and more than five years on is cancer-free.

Now I’ll experience chemo with a closer eye as my mom begins treatment for CLL - Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. Since she was first diagnosed, science has made remarkable advances toward treating this disease. There is still no cure but remission is possible and that is what we’re all looking for. A four or five year remission would give the scientific world a nice chunk of time to develop new and improved medications, treatments and possible cures. That, too, is what we’re all looking for.

I have to admit, I still don’t have a complete grasp on this disease, though I have been doing the research. The best part is that since my parents moved to Colorado, they’ve discovered doctors who are not only interested in treating the disease but in treating the patient. These doctors and assistants have been more than generous with their time as we come up with lists of questions, and they’ve offered information when we’ve been too naive about the disease to know what to ask.

They originally suggested four months of treatment but have since suggested six. “Like weeding the yard,” the doctor’s assistant said. “You can treat until the weeds die down to the root or you can treat until the root has died as well.”

We want to get to the root of this and so, six months it is.

This is week one. Only five ‘weeks’ to go - one a month for the next five months - and all with our eye on the prize. Remission.

The problem with my story

Way back when I was first toying with this story, I was sitting on a blanket under a huge tree near the bank of the Hudson River. We’d spent the day touring the magnificent homes in Hyde Park, New York - the Vanderbilt and Mills Mansions - and took a few moments to soak up the beautiful and serene landscape. I whipped out my writer’s notebook and scribbled some thoughts as they came to me.

I had my heroine’s name and face clear. I knew her angst and her mission. And I felt her need to have her story told. My hero made an appearance that day, too. He told me his name but not much more since he was in a hurry. He was rushing to rescue a loved one from danger and on the way had bumped into my heroine.

I went to sleep that night with story ideas swirling in my head. I saw scenes play out, I heard my characters’ voices. I saw them struggle and I saw them sneak glances when each thought the other wasn’t looking. They were so real and excited - and in such a hurry - that I got right down to writing their story.

But first… I developed W’s for them from my W-Plot class. I soared from there, putting these two into terrible danger, pushing them ever closer to the edge, forcing them to push back.

And then I dropped them.

Why? What happened? All the forward motion and then BAM! A massive brick wall knocked us all down to the ground. Why?

Because I didn’t plan my W’s the way I should have. I cheated. Along the lines of the capital letter W are the various plot points each character must reach. Low points, high points, black moments and happily ever after. They have to travel, struggle from one to the other. They cannot simply step over one and onto the next. My mistake? The plot points were too connected, too close. There has to be time and space between them or the story ends before it gets going.

And so I’m forced to step back and review all I’ve done. I’ve already gone back one chapter and come up with a new plan, a new level of tension for my hero to work through. Now I need to go back to my W’s and see if I can shift a few plot points, sneak in a couple more and up the angst, torture these charactes just a tad more, make them earn their happily ever after without feeling guilty for putting them through such horror. 

Ah but that feeling of power can be all consuming at times.  

I might even storyboard the scenes from this point on, shifting them until they flow just the way I want them to.

When you hit the proverbial brick wall in your writing, what do you do to get things moving again?

There’s a kitten in the house

I am an animal lover through and through. Taking in this abandoned kitten was inevitable from the moment I ripped open the box in which she’d been dumped at the shelter. I was going to foster her, socialize her so she could easy go into a loving home. There was no question.

Yes. My intention was to foster the last three kittens I took home from the shelter, and now, more than a year later, they are as much a part of my family as I am. It was no wonder, then, that everyone I spoke to about fostering this one laughed at me.

“It’s true,” I said. “I’m not keeping her, I’m just fostering her.”

“Uh-huh” was the standard chuckling reply.

In truth, I have considered keeping her. But that would mean FIVE cats in my house. One for each room.

Uh… no.

Put aside the fact that she fits inside every nook and cranny there is in my little house. Forget the fact we keep repeating one line all day and night, “Where’s the baby?” Forget the messy kitten coolie and baby-fine talons… um… nails… that slice through skin like a hot knife through butta (hey, I’m a New Yorker). Forget the endless heart-wrenching cries at 4am when baby is hungry… and forget the hissing and attitudes of the ‘elder’ cats in the house.

Forget all that because this kitten is precious. And yes, she’s already cozied up into my heart.

But I can’t keep her. I have four already and we have a neat little routine going. Besides, she’s here for one reason - to be taught what it means to be part of a family so that she can be part of one herself. And guess what? She has a home. Sight-unseen, someone has eagerly agreed to take her and so, come Monday, I’ll say goodbye to my fragile little calico and know, somewhere in my sad little heart, that she’ll be happy and very well cared for.

I’ll also know that I was the one lucky enough to receive her first ever head-butt. And I taught her to feel safe enough to love.

Shelter News

It’s tough enough to find homes for the cats we already have at the shelter but when kitten season comes around, we’re inundated with more of these babies. We do what we can to socialize the new ones as they come in so they’re ready to interact with other cats and with people. It’s good for us as animal lovers to bring a skittish kitten around but it’s even better for them because a happy cat is usually a cat who will be adopted.

Thing is, as a shelter, we can’t always control how the cats come to us. Some are from various neighborhoods and we’re called in to help trap, neuter and release. Sometimes, the ones we trap and neuter are so friendly or docile we simply can’t release them again and try to find adoptive parents for them. It’s a great feeling to know you’ve rescued a cat off the street and have found it a safe and loving home.

What’s not such a great feeling is finding animals dumped at our door.

Sure, people mean well. They think the cats they dump will be better off with us - and maybe they will. But it costs money to house and care for these cats. If someone wants to rescue a cat and decides to leave it with us, I wish they’d mail us a donation check, too. Instead, we’re left with the tab. As a shelter that gets it funds solely from donations, paying surprise bills like this is not the easiest thing to do.

Take this past Monday night… I’m driving to the shelter and I get a call from my co-volunteer. She’s scared. There’s a cardboard box precariously placed mid-way down the stairs to the shelter. It’s wrapped and wrapped with black electrical tape and the only ‘air holes’ are handle cutouts in the cardboard. There’s no sound from the box and no movement. There’s no indication of how long that box has been there. Hours, perhaps, in 78 degree weather? Imagine being alone and sealed in a box for hours.

I get there moments later, tear the tape from the box and peer inside. Two wide and frightened eyes stared up at me from way in the corner behind a small mound of ‘bedding’ (towels). It’s a kitten. A tiny calico, silent as can be.

That tiny seven-week-old calico, who we’ve named Lady and I call Lady Di, cost us an easy $100.00 right out of the box. Literally. She needed a flea bath, flea treatments, a fecal to test for worms, blood work to test for fatal and contagious diseases, and an overall exam. We want our kitties healthy. Now we have to house and feed her until she’s adopted and if that doesn’t happen before she’s 6 months old, we’re dolling out dough to pay for her to be spayed.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s what a shelter is for. But please, if you think a cat will be better off at a shelter and decide to leave that animal at the shelter door, be sure the animal is safe AND include a note stating your intention to send a donation… and then follow through.

Meanwhile, Lady Di is at my house being socialized. She’s still scared and hiding and my cats are not giving her an easy time of it, either. She’ll learn to hold her own and she’ll learn to play and trust. My job is to teach her while keeping her safe, fed, clean and secure.

I just hope I’m able to give her up when our ‘training’ period is over. She’s a precious little thing and easily wormed her way into our hearts. Take a look at her and tell me if she doesn’t do the same for you.
  

A day at the farm

What wonderful weekend weather we had. Mid-70’s both days and just perfect for a fall harvest festival… and birthday party.

It’s Daughter’s annual plan - and her friends wait for it, asking every August if “we’re still on for the party”. There’s a corn maze - that took the girls an hour and 14 minutes to get through, lol - hay rides, colonial cooking demonstrations, arcade games, carnival rides, live music, cotton candy, funnel cakes, greasy bratwurst, sausages and hamburgers, butter-drenched roasted corn, face painting, scarecrow-making and empty pockets by day’s end. But… it was such fun and we’ll do it again next year as every year.

During the colonial cooking demonstration, they churned butter, made bread, corn chowder soup, and cinnamon water.  For $2.00 you could have a taste of everything and everything was delicious.

The corn maze is different every year and, honestly, even if it were the same I doubt the girls would find their way out. They have way too much fun getting lost inside of it.

After rides galore and lots of laughs, we closed up the festival and trekked over to the boulevard for a Hibachi dinner. What a fun way to end the day. The girls loved the show the chef put on for them and, surprisingly, tried a little bit of everything he made - including scallops! How’s that for adventurous young ladies?

Of course, afterward, we headed to my house and I took out the cake. I was a little upset with it because, for some reason, it seemed to tilt left. Ah well. I’m not an expert cake-maker. Still… the best part for me was when I took it out and all the girls whipped out their cameras to take pictures of it. lol. What fun.

All in all it was a wonderful day and I know all of those blossoming young ladies will remember the simple fun at the fair each year for Daughter’s birthday.

Here’s just a short taste of our day with photos of the cake at the end.

(I don’t know how to embed video without first uploading it to youtube. Any ideas?)

“

And because I must be getting older along with my daughter, I now realize, I’ve already posted the recipe for this cake. And here, I thought I was going to share it with y’all for the first time. Well… this cake is so good, it’s worth sharing again, so check it out - Chocolate Decadence.

Birthdays and Adoptathons!

Every September, the Queens Farm Museum holds their annual Harvest Festival. I have taken Daughter to this festival every year since she was able to walk. For the past four years, she’s invited friends along. Since her birthday is around the same time this is her party. :-) Her friends look forward to it almost as much as she does. And to be honest, I look forward to it, too.

This year, the festival will have a double meaning for us. Not only will it be a celebration for Deanna’s birthday with friends she adores, but it will also be a special day for some of our precious shelter cats.

Today, at the Queens Farm Museum, volunteers from A.C.T. (animals can’t talk) animal shelter will be there hosting an adoptathon. (Daughter designed and set up the shelter’s website, btw) It’s a wonderful idea one of our dedicated volunteers came up with and a whole crew of volunteers have offered to help. I cannot wait to see people gravitate toward the adoption table. Our kittens and older cats are so adorable and loving, I don’t know how anyone will be able to resist them.

Of course, there’s a tight screening process potential adoptive parents must endure, but that’s to ensure the safety of our cats. No one will carry a cat away from the farm except the volunteers - back to the shelter. Hopefully, we’ll have names and references and before the week is out, some of these furry babies will pack their belongings and arrive in a happy and loving new home.

What a wonderful birthday gift that would be for Daughter.

That… and a cell phone.

I see it this way… Daughter is now a full fledged teen. A TEEN!!!! She’s been asking for a cell phone for about two years. She’s homeschooled. Hmm. That means she’s around me much of the time. Why on earth would she need a phone? I’m still not clear on the answer to that, but this is a big leap of a birthday and so I relented. It’s time. My little girl is growing up.

She wanted an iPod and a phone, so I got her the Juke phone - music and phone in one.

She’s going to love it. LOVE. It.

Talk about growing up… her cake is no longer shaped like a teddy bear, a princess or a powerpuff girl. Nope. Instead, this year, her cake will be the same as her gift - a cell phone. I shape and decorate a cake each year according to her interests. Harry Potter was one year, a pirate another. It’s fun to look back on her birthdays, see the cake and be reminded of what occupied her mind during those years. I suppose soon she’ll outgrow the need for a ‘theme’ cake but I’ve a feeling I never will.

When this cake is ready, I’ll post a photo - it’s baking as I type. And if you all behave… I might even post the recipe, which I must say is terribly rich and decadent.

Happy birthday my little one who is not so little anymore.  May you dream without limits and may your every dream come true. (just remember your mother when they do. )