The walk from my car to my unit at the hospital I where I just started working is a quarter mile long.
The sun is up when I arrive, so I always walk in to work along the sidewalk, saying my morning prayers, preparing for the day. The frequent employee buses pass me by, and I smile as I get my steps in.
My favorite part of the walk is the entrance to the hospital space.
I take a deep breathe as a see the pergola – I exhale as I see the two live oaks on rather side just beyond, with limbs stretching toward each other, yet not touching.
The oaks are festooned with garlands of fern in every dark crevice, and hanging between the trees is a large, metal wind chime.
This is the space where I feel myself surrendering to the call of caring for others.
Most days, a breeze is twisting the tubes of the chime, and I breathe in its sonorous, deep tones.
On days with no breeze, I’ll reach up and brush the circle that hangs lowest, and elicit at least one deep tone to hum into my soul.
I take a deep breathe as I pass under the branches, and lift my face to head into the hospital.
Every month, I go to the infusion center at one of my local hospitals to get a giant shot to suppress estrogen post breast cancer.
Every month. For at least 3 years – maybe 5.
I circle the parking lot for at least 15 minutes every month, stalking those who might be walking to their vehicle.
Then the hospital decided registration must be done with the masses, so that’s another 15-20 minutes of unnecessary time wasted.
Onward to the infusion center waiting room, where inevitably someone or two will have their phones up full blast, watching reels or talking on face time.
Another 30 minutes on average before I am called back.
Then, I wait for the shot. It has to be ordered, and can’t be until I am here.
Cue another 15-20 minutes.
Finally it arrives, and it takes 30 seconds to scan and administer.
An hour and a half for a 30 second shot.
I’m grateful for the medicine.
I’m grateful for the sweet girl at registration.
I’m grateful for dependable transportation, for relatively good health, and for a job that I can schedule around my appointment.
Most of all, I’m grateful that I am one month closer to not having to go through this.
On April 26, my beloved Australian shepherd, Mitzi, passed away in our home, with my husband and I at her side.
I went to the vet a week later and pick up her cremains, and she has stayed on my bedside table ever since. I run my fingertips over the carved wooden box daily, telling her she’s a good girl, and that I miss her.
Her collar is front of the box, and if I touch it or pick it up, my dog Heidi will appear in an instant, anxious to see Mitzi when she hears the tags jingle. She will then smell the collar, and walk away slowly.
She remembers.
Our Christmas tree is up and fully decorated now. Mitzi and I spent many hours in the early hours of the day over the years sitting together in the living room, together, silent.
No one else was up, and the only light was from the tree.
It was always a magical time together for us.
Today I moved Mitzi’s wooden box for the first time since April.
I took it into the living room, setting it on the bookshelf that faces the Christmas tree. Next to the box is her puppy picture, and my favorite picture of her.
She now faces the Christmas tree, and it feels right.
Every morning she will be with me near the Christmas tree again.
Nothing was going on in town, so the pizza take out business was hopping – a full parking lot, with delivery drivers coming and going like ants returning to the hill.
She was going to do drive through pick up, but the line was around the building, so she pulled up, parked, and ducked her way in through the rain.
Each of the handful of booths had a person waiting. She glanced up at the pizza ticker screen, and saw that twenty pies were in the prep or oven.
She found a chair.
There were at least eight young people making pizzas – their pace was steady and quick. They would focus on their pizza, then glance at screens above them to see what ingredients or toppings they needed. There was an underlying camaraderie amongst the young workers, smiling and working hard in the rush.
The door opened, and a thin elderly woman with a steel grey mullet, a tee shirt, and jeans entered. She marched up to the counter and stood, scowling, until a young man approached her and asked her how he could help her.
From her perch by the door, she couldn’t hear her – but she could only imagine what the woman was saying.
The woman’s body language was tense, and her facial expressions moved from anger to scowl and back.
Finally she threw her hands up and said “I’m going out to the truck. The kids are out there” and stomped out the door past her, muttering “it’s been an (expletive) hour.
She remembered her first paying job – at a pizza restaurant. Decades have passed, but a little goes a long way.
In a few minutes her name was called, and she gratefully took her pizza.
She told the workers as she left “thank you so much! Y’all are doing a great job!” And they responded with a hale of thanks.
She left happy, albeit a little rained on as she walked to the car.
They say that you don’t appreciate something until it’s gone.
When it comes to one’s health, they are right.
Up until the age of 44, I was a sedentary, emotional eater. I figured I got my work in during my 12 hour shifts, where I’d walk in excess of 10k steps in a day, lift patients much larger than me, and move my body every which way to accommodate what was happening.
Oh, and I drank water. Lots of icy cold cups of water.
At the age of 44, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I got off the couch and began walking. Then, running. I ate better. I tried to stop going to ice cream and pastry when I was down.
Whoops, at age 50 it turns out I’m really type 1 diabetic. I found an endocrinologist, got an insulin pump and a continuous glucose monitor, and kept running.
Oh, now I have shoulder pain from lifting the legs of pushing, epiduralized, 300 lb labor patients. Now I have a torn rotator cuff due to a bone spur – and add an impinged deltoid. After some PT and steroids, that’s on hold.
Next comes breast cancer – not in my gene pool at all. I’m the one in eight who will get it anyway. Lumpectomy, sentinel node biopsy, radiation, recovery. Cancer free for 19 months.
But wait, there’s more. Monthly shots and meds that slammed me into instant menopause, which is not an enjoyable way to start that. It keeps my hormone positive cancer at bay, so they tell me.
So today when I went to a routine appointment and got more potentially bad news, I went straight for the ice cream.
Two double shedding canines are more than one poor house can bear.
One dog is 80 lbs, the other 45lbs, and I’m convinced that the total weight of the dogs is 50 pounds when you subtract the hair.
I haven’t been able to brush them recently, and my house shows it.
I will sit in my living room, relaxing and reading a book, when a movement will brush just past my peripheral vision.
Glancing up, I’ll see a ball of fur rolling past on the vinyl plank flooring.
Tumbleweed is a plant that breaks free from a living organism and then rolls through the west/southwest United States, spreading seeds.
Double shedding dog hair produces gathering blobs of movement that get caught under furniture. Collects in corners.
There is no positive, life giving potential to these tumbleweeds.
It takes daily sweeping and or vacuuming to keep it at bay.
It will never be vanquished.
I can decrease it slightly by brushing the dogs.
The first dog, picked by proximity, will reluctantly cooperate with the brushing, undercoat piling up to half the height of the dog. Then I’ll grab the next dog and brush them thoroughly.
It’s not a job for the weak of heart, or the allergy prone.
The dogs happily enjoy being unburdened, and I’ll have a day or two of smaller hair piles.
The only solution is living canine free, which is untenable.
I’ll continue to coexist with the thin grey ghosts sliding across my floor. Hiding under my couch. Floating past me feet after I’ve cleaned.
Ten years ago, I was a foster for dogs that needed homes. They were saved from unsafe conditions, or pulled from the pound.
A friend of mine got me started – I was told it was going to be three six week old puppies.
I went to the pound and found out the mother of the pups had died during birth.
The puppies were six days old!!
How could I say now when they handed them to me?
I spent the next seven weeks bottle feeding them around the clock. My Aussie Mitzi immediately took to mothering them, even though she had never had a litter, she was a natural. She taught them how to be dogs, and by eight weeks they were all potty trained.
At their eight week adoption event, they all were adopted quickly.
I fostered several dogs after this – usually dogs that would stay with us from a few days to a few weeks until they were adopted.
Then came Penny.
She was an adorable eight week old pup that was taken from a crack house.
She was a wild one.
She food guarded, savagely protecting her bowl from our other dogs.
She resisted any attempt to train her.
She was at turns affectionate, and obstinate.
I just couldn’t get through to her.
Finally I called the rescue and asked for help. Another experienced volunteer came and picked her up.
I felt like such a failure.
I gave it my best shot, but she was the puppy that broke me.
I was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer in December of 2023 after my annual mammogram.
I had no family history of breast cancer.
By the end of February, I had gone through my lumpectomy, had 2 lymph nodes removed, recovered from surgery, and had twenty sessions of radiation.
End of story, right?
Wrong. Now comes the aromatase inhibitor, a tiny pill that suppresses my estrogen in my estrogen positive cancer, slamming me right into menopause.
Hot flashes. Brain fog. Joint pain – intense, life altering joint pain.
For the next five years.
Then there are the mammograms. One every three months, then six months. A new term is learned – “Scanxiety”. It is a rager after you had cancer you weren’t supposed to have.
Monthly shots add to the party – painful but necessary for five years to help suppress the hormones that the cancer cells feed on.
Don’t forget appointments! Monthly to quarterly. I love my oncologist, but it brings up the memories that I’d rather pack away. For good.
I’m blessed it was found early. So grateful that they got it with a lumpectomy.
It is not over, though. Not by a long shot.
I also have type one diabetes – diagnosed at age 50. I have asthma – well controlled, but present.
To add icing to the cake, I had to have a knee replacement for end stage arthritis and a ruptured meniscus.
So now I’m hobbling to all these appointments- physical therapy twice a week. Monthly shots. Post op appointments. Quarterly endocrinologist. My own doctor.
Ad infinitum.
I know it’s a lot. I feel that it’s a lot.
My word for the year is, interestingly enough, “focus”.
At first, I didn’t understand why that was the word for me.
Now I get it.
I’ve enumerated the vast number of issues in front of me – and these are just the medical ones.
Every day, I must set my focus.
I am becoming more of a noticer – and I’m not talking about “of symptoms”.
I’m noticing the glow coming into the windows at dusk, and I get up and go outside to see the gold and pink sunset painting the sky as darkness waits.
I stop my walk to the car to focus on the swallowtail butterfly slowly bobbling around me, landing on a nearby bush, wings open in all their exquisite beauty.
I focus on gratitude – intentionally being grateful everyday for something. Someone.
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