“I looked at God, he winked at me, I made this mess myself….”

I love “Full Circle” by Creed almost as much as I love “Crossroads” by Don McLean, they pretty much say it for me, whatever “It” is.

Which only segues into my post today by way of my own tangential approach to everything.

About 5 years ago I changed jobs, against people’s, even friends, recommendations to retire and take disability, I looked for a new way to make lives better.

I decided to complete a triathlon because focusing on what I could achieve with work was better than focusing on pain, shortness of breath and the very real potential of death. Yup, she (Death, I’m a Gaiman fan, get over it) and I are old friends.

My life came together, I was told I was Cancer free, I was doing a job I loved, and then……

So life fell apart completely again this year,

Up until Thursday night I was feeling so completely defeated I cannot even begin to describe it. I wondered why I had even fought my way back to health 5 years ago, I was so tired of being sick and tired and poor that I was trying very hard to talk myself into going against my inside voices and just saying F*** I*. I could become just one more of my generation hanging out taking what the world “owed” us, walk away from my stuff, my responsibilities because I didn’t believe that my last five years had mattered, take disability, or better yet blow off all the medical appointments and just be a nomad again.I haven’t been liking myself much.

Mostly because I kept trying to figure out where I had gone wrong, trying to pull this piece of the tapestry or that one. I wasn’t looking for how I could take the current threads and weave a better picture, I was looking for the one thread to blame. I wanted to angrily rip up the fabric, forgetting that none of them can come away without destroying a pretty amazing picture, ignoring the amazing picture, calling the texture flaws.

Even as my amazing and incredibly unselfish friends swooped in and rescued me yet again, I was honestly feeling very sorry for myself.

Like so many others I was stuck on that third note of the scale again…you know, ME ME ME ME ME ME…..

Then thursday night I was extremely pleasantly knocked from my “why why why whine” and “me me meme” by receiving the Above and Beyond Award at my work inservice. 18 babies, I have helped 18 children and their families as well as a couple adults maximize the quality of their lives and achieve greater quantity in most cases.

This chance to really matter would not have happened if someone I cared for deeply had not totally betrayed and terrified me I would not have left my hospice job (he worked there, above me) And the three most meaningful patient relationships came directly from me moving outside my financial comfort zone to San Tan Valley.

I do not know what my regrowth after the current firestorm will look like, I just was given a much needed retrospective on just how important it was to keep doing my best to be the best me I can be.

Thank you to everyone who has loved, supported and been patient with me; you are the ones who deserve this award. Eighteen plus patients, and their families, and well, me are tremendously better off for your choices.

Love you all, and this week, kind of loving me again.

In other news, NANOWRIMO!!!!!!

So this is just an update. No surgery yesterday. Fluid taken off means I have more breathability again today and in some ways feel much better anyway.

I had more tests to try and determine what a whole bunch of new swollen glands in my lower abdomen mean. I have a meeting with my PCP, my oncologist and my counselor on Tuesday.

Does this mean I will have clear answers and a definite plan then, well no. As anybody who has ever dealt with modern medicine in more than a cursory way knows, nothing is ever simple.

Thanks you all for helping and loving me and supporting me through 2014. I will get back to happier stuff again soon, one way or another.

Namaste.

I have a bad feeling about today, of course no clear cut idea if that means that things get cancelled or I just go belly up, but it is a weird premonitional place to be.

On the other hand I am always up for more adventure.

NOT.

I kind of want some boring, so many scary, challenging, and otherwise not boring things this year.

On the other hand so many amazing and miraculous things have balanced the scale it still tips in a positive direction (and if you have even a modicum of ideas whats on the other tray you get how blessed I really am.)

A couple little things in just the last week, like a friend paying my balance at the apartments, then organizing my other friends to move my stuff into storage and me into a temporary place at her home WITH my big dogs and she is totally a cat person.

I found my prayer beads, lost since my trip to Disney with Stephanie et al.

I was awarded the Above and Beyond recognition at work.

My patient is walking, taking bites and drinks by mouth and does almost 30 signs to communicate and well that is more due to her Mom than me, but its a miracle I got to watch.

One of the poets I admire most of all the living poets featured one of my poems as something she wished she had written. If you are reading this Rosemary please comment with a couple links so my friends so inclined can see it and maybe discover the joy of your writing.

So time to get dressed, feed the dogs and head off.

Namaste friends.

The weather in Arizona in October is equal in beauty only to the beauty of April in Arizona. One of the gifts of pairing out all the non-essentials is coming to the library to use the internet. I sit at the window where I can watch the birds on the water, three swans are making there way across, two long term adults and one just graduating into white and still with a wee bit of adolescent awkwardness. The Blue Heron is fishing by the marshy part, pretty awesome view.

So many things to enjoy and find beautiful, so much love and laughter around me, I am such a lucky woman to be alive today, and here and ready to start my next adventure!

I have pretty much decided that Krav Maga is the type of Martial Art I want to learn this year, another step towards feeling ready for my long. long hike, aka my next great adventure. S(low)O(ld)F(at)T(ry) athletes Ho!

Anyway, here is the update on all things health related, finally got test results and my blood work looks good, kidneys and liver more than ready for what I need to throw at them next. Other news is there will still be some throwing going on, but thats OK. Emotionally I am still really reeling from the cummulative year of everything leading up to and including the recent drama at the apartment buildings. On a new anxiety med and anti-depressant because I have the same inability to properly secrete serotonin that a diabetic has secreting insulin. That last is really repeated for my own benefit, because well, I am old school; it is hard for me to see my PTSD as an illness and not a moral weakness, but the meditation and yoga stopped being enough, and my kids deserve better than the other parent to commit suicide, so got help. And it is helping. My bed has been made for five days in a row. I am again LOL’ing at random stuff, and stopping to just feel the beauty of the moment.

I think it is hard for people to reconcile my positive outlook with chronic depression, but just like a type 1 diabetic can eat healthy and still need insulin, I sometimes need medical intervention when events outside my own control increase the stress in my life. Actually I was wondering what I would actually be like if I wasn’t so generally grateful and incredibly lucky and usually happy?

Definitely prefer my own four walls to being anywhere else and my two dogs company over crowds, but still getting out a couple times a week to non-work related ventures. Still smiling, still getting up in the morning, cuz well, I am grateful to still be breathing.

And life rewards me when I stretch myself, push myself to be more, do the frightening, the uncomfortable. I meet incredible new people (In fact got my hand kissed by a real Silver-haired Hottie today) or I maintain the friendships and relationships that got me this far. I have so many, many friends. Gratitude is my overwhelming attitude. Life really rocks.

Not that those rocks don’t have some sharp points. I am still truly struggling with finances and I have surgery coming up on October 31. I am finally back to full time work though which is something.Between awesome donations by generous friends and selling stuff and working hard my current financial status is thus: No longer overdrawn!!!!!! Yup, I am currently in the black. Not much but still, positive is positive! I am however still 700$ short of paying my October rent (with beaucoup late fees) so will be trying to find homes for lots of stuff as I leave this beautiful apartment. But that is what it is. I have not given up hope of a miracle, I believe in them, shoot, I live them, see them and care for them almost every day of my life. But if the miracle of money doesn’t happen then the miracle of acceptance will.

Can’t control too much in my life, but I always get to choose how I respond. And that choice will always be love, integrity and gratitude. Nothing I really am can be taken from me. Fearless is my goal this year, truly fearless. If to get there I need to shed everything, I am ready.

But I will admit to preferring to keep this roof, a car and the job I love. If you can donate anything I appreciate it, any money donated here usually goes to medical bills but with the missed work it will go to rent this month. Just a full disclosure bit. Anyway, thanks for reading, now off to read and write some more poems!

Welcome to yet another morning of me writing about me and my life as I know it.

This has been a profound autumn for me. The miracles coming in twice as thick as the storms, which is good because underneath the “Fine” I have been letting my foundation get shaky. Fear of Homelessness, Anger, Assault and Abandonment are my triggers and the cancers that eat at my soul and all have been tripped in the period from July through October

I had a moment this Friday when an accumulation of small thing got huge, and my fear was anything but a docile beast and the pain was consuming and I almost gave away a piece of my soul.

So this week, I apologize to all my doctors everywhere, but I gotta swim and run again.

This sitting still and resting is killing me.

Update is this:

I don’t know anything more yet than I did, and my doctor is out for the week. Yeah!

I have right now the gift of food in my fridge and gas in my car and even a donation to go dance this week, yes, I was specifically instructed to dance by the donor! Tomorrow I volunteer for the day and today I clean and play and write. Yesterday I worked, some place I was truly needed. Wednesday I take care of business at the VA hospital. And hopefully Thursday and Friday I work.

Still overdrawn, still need rent. Thank you to all those who have donated. I am so humbled and incredibly grateful for all the financial generosity and also incredibly aware that there are other people in my social circles whose needs are as big and bigger than mine.

I am equally humbled and grateful for the prayers and well wishes and time given to me over the past few months. I am so very lucky to have all of you.

I am, as I said, still working the job of my dreams, fewer hours but grateful that I have the physical and mental ability to still do this awesome job.

I have my friends and sons and grandchildren to remind me I would be missed.

and finally I have again a handful of concrete goal oriented bucket list items I am working towards

Cuz that’s the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it! Uh Huh Uh Huh.

We all heal differently, and healing means a million different things, sometimes it even means knowing enough to say good-bye, but for me, right this minute it means that I am going to get back to swimming a mile or more and running 5K easily, I am preparing to hike the Apalachian Trail, complete a certain Biography/Memoir as ghost writer and update my passport.

And it means that this past week-end I declared a clean slate, all, everywhere is forgiven.

Yup, even him.

Namaste.

Prompt Day 5: Here is more a composite picture. I wrote from a patients personna but then rewrote till all identifying info was removed. Almost all of my patients have some degree of vision issue, hearing problems, and trachs. Some are completely dependent to even be moved. But ALL have personality, likes, dislikes, fears and favorites. I hope I did them justice.

Occupational Therapy

Music is playing as I lay on my back and respond with my body to the
Colors and lights and sounds.
Footsteps, I feel them as much as hear them grow closer,
Even though the new hard plastic things are already shoved in my ear.
Two people, one grandma, one a stranger.
I hear those sounds again as Grandma’s voice rumbles
My name, I know my name in all its versions,
Elizabeth, Lizbeth, L’il Lizzie, Hush Lizzie, Poor baby,
But she says my favorite “Pretty Betty Butterfly”
Only Grandma calls me her “Pretty Betty Butterfly.”
I turn my head trying to catch a glimpse of the other, new voice,
it is soft and full of small sounds. It’s mostly Grandma talking.

“Cortical Blindness”
“Anoxic Brain Injury”
“Difficult delivery, lucky they both lived”
It is grandma’s voice, but those sounds make it sad.
I know the sounds but not what they mean.
I know sad,
I know happy,
I even know mad.
I know Grandma
And mother
And hungry
And full
And light and smells and warmth of arms.
I know I like Elmo, and Daniel the Tiger.
I start to chirp my tracheal Grandma song.

But now there is a new voice.
I am cautious, and close my eyes, pretend sleep.
Because I also know pain.

But there are no bright lights or biting smells
Just the press of the thing against my chest and my belly.
I am uncertain, afraid
But then there are arms holding me and the voice knows how to lean into the parts I can see.
Her hand puts my one hand on Grandma
And moves her other hand by her chin, her mouth.
Then I am sitting propped in her lap,
She takes my hand and touches Kitty,
my other hand touches my face, just below the nose
(I know nose)
and my hand moves sideways in the air,
I think she wants something from me
So I try to raise my own hand to my face.
Over and over we touch things and move our hands.

I like her smile, and her singing
And I want to tell her that
But mostly I want to close my eyes and smell her shirt
And dream.

The Universe or God or Physics or Karma or the Grand Design, pick your word, they are to me just different ways to say the same thing, the magic that keeps my life ticking and keeps me smiling. I have so much of it. So many miracles in my life, most recently a friend who really gets what its like in that period between scans and results. This is one of those periods, and she and I are both there at the same time this time, so if you have any prayers or love or a spare dime to give and you want to be inspired, click here, http://razzzberries.blogspot.com/

If you have two prayers, to dimes, or two “GAF’s” I would also appreciate your help.

I may have more Freedom soon than I have dreamed of in a long time. I am going to start selling my stuff off again and reducing as much as I can while trying to acquire some income. It’s the third of the month and I am $1000.00 overdrawn, no rent paid, minimal groceries, less than half a tank of gas in my car and with one more whole month (at minimum) of tests and missed work. Last night I was soooooo tired, and thought, yet again, about just giving up and letting the PTSD, the Cancer, the negative and naysayers win; but I joined this poetry thing.

So I looked for the prompt.

While I was doing that my Golden Retriever and Yellow Lab decided I looked like I needed a nuzzle and a lick and I remembered my second suicide attempt (my first I was 7, so yea Internet Doctors, I get it, I am followed for this and my depressions are like Type 1 diabetes is to Type 2; my depression is as physiological as it is psychosocial, and yes, I am taking my meds, LOL) and I wrote the poem about when that particular wound healed, and once again I gut-level got it. No permanent solutions for temporary problems for this Leo.

I know to most people this won’t make sense. That is really OK, you don’t actually make sense to me either. I do not now, nor have I ever really understood so much of the human condition. I take stuff to heart that others blow off, and completely miss cues that others take for granted. The last day I peed in the ocean (another story, if you haven’t heard it yet, you will someday; I am old, I retell stories) was the day I realized my goal in life was not to change me to fit in or to change the world so it fit me; but to just keep warming my own little circle.

This has been one hell of a summer. I have lived and loved and laughed. I have broken personal rules and forgotten tried and true routines. I have also discovered again just how amazing people are and how much love I am capable of sharing, if even just for a moment. And I have been useful.

My circle is warm.

(Which reminds me, not only was my EKG fine, my blood work looked awesome. Go liver, Go kidneys!)

And this summer I faced (again) the same merry-go-round of issues of chronic life altering illness. I have learned that my way of dealing with it for the last few decades isn’t working. I don’t know what is next for me.

I still have a job I love. I am still surrounded by amazing and loving friends and family.

And even if I were to lose these, I would still have me.

Gonna be a tough week-end trying to decide what goes; pretty much already down to my favorite dolls and books and music.

But these are things. I am so much more than things; and so I am fine, and I am happy, and everything is going to be OK.