Bouncing back

I looked at a bunch of anatomical drawings and still couldn’t figure it out. I even saw one drawing specifically of a woman’s abdomen after a hysterectomy and not even that drawing answered my question.

From the drawings, it’s obvious to me that our internal organs are meant to fit together like a very complex three dimensional puzzle. So what happens when one of those organs is removed? What happens to the empty space? Do the intestines just simply plop down and make themselves at home? Do things ever get mixed up?

It probably doesn’t matter. I was just curious.

I’m down by one uterus, two fallopian tubes, two ovaries, a dermoid tumor, and numerous fibroid tumors. I’m also down by 8 pounds. My doctor said that everything went very well

My surgeon, who is very, very good, by the way, looks like she’s about 22 years old. She has oodles of energy and is passionate about her work. She knows that the new way of doing hysterectomies is far better than the old way. The new way means that I have four small incisions, each about an inch in length. I don’t really want to share the details of how they remove an enlarged organ through those tiny incisions, I’ll just leave it that it makes healing much quicker afterwards. She did explain it to me and I doubt that she even noticed when I turned green and nearly lost my breakfast. Some of the medical details, I’ll happily leave to the experts.

She was confident about the recovery time, however, and sure that I would be up and ready to do anything within a week or so after the surgery. She also told me that there would be another surgeon in with her, that they always had two surgeons work together with this type of surgery. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was convinced that the other surgeon would, of course, be at least somewhat older than my doctor. When I met the other surgeon, however, SHE looked to be all of 22 ½ years old. In fact, out of all the medical people I met right before going in to the operating room, only one of them looked to be older than 25. Then they wheeled me into the OR and put the mask on my face, telling me to breathe deeply. The last thing I remember hearing before I went under the anesthesia was my doctor asking someone, “Do you know how to set up for a laparascopic hysterectomy?”

Sweet dreams.

All went well and my doctor went out to tell my husband how quickly I’d recover. I’m sure my husband started to make plans for me right then and there. The inside of the house needs painting, the floors could use a good mopping, and it sure would be nice to have a walkway from the house to the studio. But, first things first, my doctor said that they would be getting me up to walk already that evening.

They forgot to take my Parkinson’s into account. When I finally woke up after surgery, something that takes longer for me than for most people, and got into my room, it was getting late. I hadn’t had my medication all day. As promised, the nurses got me up to walk – first to the bathroom. It was no go. My dystonia kicked in big time as soon as I began to move and I couldn’t walk at all. I couldn’t make it from the bed to the bathroom, even with the nurse holding on to me. I had to be content with a bedside commode and a CNA to help me transfer. I was given strict instructions to call for help when I needed to go.

Then finally, the nurse brought my Parkinson’s medications. However, the pharmacy had sent the wrong dosage. After much arguing and finally just putting my foot down and being stubborn, the nurse called my doctor and I received permission to take my own medication from home that I had brought along. They don’t like you doing that in a hospital. Once the meds took effect, I had no trouble transferring to the commode, but still got a lecture from the CNA when she caught me in the act. The next morning brought even more trouble when I took my meds on an empty stomach and, twenty minutes later, I suddenly felt very strange and told the nurse that I had to go to bed and had to sleep (I had been sitting in the chair). I lurched over to the bed and was asleep in seconds. I scared the crap out of the poor nurse, who immediately went to her charge nurse to complain about her unruly patient.

Waking up after a lovely little catnap, I felt so much better. The nurse, however, did not. When my husband arrived, she came in and looked at him sternly, “We had an incident this morning.” I looked sheepish and wanted to explain that I hadn’t taken anyone hostage and had only taken my own medications, but one look at the nurse’s face and I didn’t think it would be helpful to say much of anything. I did try to reassure her that my “incident” was a fairly normal and expected side effect of taking my Parkinson’s medication on an empty stomach, while my body was pretty stressed out. She didn’t believe me. Her charge nurse had another explanation and one doesn’t argue with charge nurses.

I decided right then and there to believe my lovely, young, energetic surgeon. I decided I was recovering very quickly and was ready to go home. At least my family would understand all my wonderful quirkiness with my Parkinson’s.

I am feeling much better now. It’s been 5 days since my surgery and I am definitely getting my energy back. Today, I sat in my chair, worked a little on a book project, sipped my hot cocoa, and watched the snow fall. I also watched my husband and kids do dishes, cook, wash clothes, clean house...

Ah yes, it’s nice to be home!

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On a side note, I plan to talk with my neurologist about my hospital experience. None of the medical professionals on the floor knew anything about Parkinson’s. And I’ve since heard similar stories from people who have MS or Lupus. How can we provide information to the hospital staff in a simple, direct way, so that patients with disorders like these can get the care they need? I’m even willing to help with this. I wouldn’t want this left just to the doctors. Not even a good neurologist who specializes in Parkinson’s will know just what the patients go through. We need our voices heard, too.

Homestead

I had a rare opportunity yesterday to travel to the northeastern plains with two amazing artists. We had been invited to stop at the farm house that my grandparents had homesteaded in the early 1900’s. Their purpose in going was to take photographs. My purpose in going was to see the farm again after more than thirty years.

If you look through the websites of these two men: Kit Hedman (www.kithedman.com) and Ron Zito, (www.ronzito.com), you would get the impression that these are two very serious minded artists. And it was fascinating to see the Colorado plains through their eyes. They are both originally from New Jersey. I guess they don’t have an overabundance of tumbleweeds in New Jersey because the tumbleweed population of northeastern Colorado provided endless entertainment on our journey. In fact, when one particularly large one rolled across the road in front of our car, Ron exclaimed, “Look at that one. It’s huge! And look at all those points. Must be a buck.” I knew then, that these were not just serious minded artists, they were also totally and completely nuts. And I was trusting myself to them for the entire day? It would be interesting.

It’s a long way from Denver to Fleming, Colorado. It takes a little over two hours to drive out to Fleming, then another ten minutes or so, and we were at the farm. I recognized the house right away. Our family spent every holiday visiting our Grandma Kohnen in Sterling and our Uncle Jack and Aunt Maribelle out on the farm. It was on this farm that Grandma and Grampa raised their ten children. They also raised winter wheat, cattle, pigs, and chickens. They had a large kitchen garden, numerous cats, and horses.

When Jack and Maribelle took over the farm, they also raised winter wheat. They had some cows for meat and milk, and a large chicken house. I know that Uncle Jack tried pigs for awhile and even had sheep for a brief time. He wasn’t impressed with the intelligence of the sheep so they didn’t last long. They didn’t have horses but they had plenty of cats. Every time we went there, the first thing we did was to find our cousin, Karen. She would know where the kittens were. And there were always kittens. My sister and I would try to talk our parents into letting us stay at the farm for at least one night. They always replied the same way, “But you can’t stay, we didn’t bring your pajamas.” Then we would whip out our pajamas that we had hidden under our coats before we left Grandma’s house in Sterling. They knew the game already and no one was surprised.

The farm was busy. Aunt Maribelle was always cooking or baking or cleaning or, if we were very lucky, making hot chocolate for us with fresh farm milk, including the cream. Uncle Jack was out working in the fields or bringing in the milk cow or driving one of the big tractors or trucks. Even when we visited, we were put to work. We helped to gather eggs, feed the cats and dog, feed the chickens, and occasionally even scrub the kitchen floor on our hands and knees. The farm house was always clean, meticulously clean.

When the farm was sold, after my Uncle Jack developed emphysema and couldn’t work in the fields anymore, the majority of land was sold to other farmers in the area, and the house was sold to another family, who worked in town and didn’t farm.

I have to admit, it was hard to see the farm yesterday. The outbuildings, no longer used for animals, are mostly falling down. Because the family works in town, there is no one at home during the day and the busy place that I remember, seems awfully still and quiet. I think this affected me more than seeing the run-down buildings. I don’t think I ever experienced the farm when I wasn’t surrounded with life and its doings, abundant life and practical work. I know those experiences that I had growing up and spending time on this farm, had a huge impact on my adult life and my teaching. At home, we always managed to find a way to have animals, usually in more abundance than we had time or energy for, but it was good for our children nonetheless! In my kindergarten teaching, I tried to focus on the practical work that was needed. We baked bread together every week and if our classroom needed a rug, we made a rug together. We didn’t do all the little artsy-fartsy projects, we worked.

Kit and Ron explored the property and took photos of a wonderful old truck, among other things. I sort of ignored them, sorry to say. I hope they did get some good photos out of the trip!

Time does pass and things do change. One cannot maintain a large farm lifestyle when you work in the city all day. And it’s an amazing gift to be able to live in the country where you can look all around you and see nothing but the plains – and maybe five neighbors within sight! I am glad that Peg and John were able to raise their family on the old farm. It is obvious that the farm means a lot to them.

And, well, I’ve changed, too. The trip was extremely humbling for me as I realized that my stamina was very low. By the time we finished our lunch in Sterling and started back towards Denver, I was feeling quite ill. I’d overdone it again. Was it because of my Parkinson’s or because of the effects of carrying around the tumors, or a combination of the two? All I could do was to lie down in the back of the car and try not to move. Ron’s car was beautifully clean. I didn’t want to throw up. At one point, I considered asking Ron to just pull over, open the door, and roll me out. I could just curl up by the side of the road. I don’t think I could have felt worse, even if the coyotes were hungry.

I am glad I went, though. Somewhere in my imagination, I can still see my aunt in the farm kitchen and my uncle coming in after a hard day’s work. And in my imagination, I can pull a pair of pajamas out from under my coat and let them know that it’s alright for me to stay the night. I’m prepared!

I’ll even gather the eggs.

In Gratitude

We’ve been together for a lifetime and now it’s time to say goodbye.

I was not pleased when I found out the other day that I need to have a hysterectomy. Another body part bites the dust. I mean, come on! So far, my whole neuromuscular system has slowed down to a crawl, my eyes are giving me problems at night, and my teeth are definitely acting rotten. And one of my goals this year was to stay away from doctors for awhile.

It’s a hassle to have to deal with this. Now I have to spend a few days in the hospital and a number of weeks recovering. Not only that, but the surgery is scheduled for the day after Easter. This means that while everyone else is eating and drinking nice holiday food, I will be drinking “bowel prep” and entertaining myself for the rest of the evening. What a way to spend Easter?! The good news is that the reason I look a little larger around the middle, is NOT because I’ve been eating too many chocolate chip cookies!

I’m tempted to yell down at my body and ask if there are any other organs that are ready to stop working. Best get it all over with one surgery. Uh, wait a minute. I’m just kidding. Please body, don’t listen to me. I’m not feeling quite myself today. I really and truly don’t want any more of my parts to defect. They’re not exactly replaceable and most of them are pretty important.

In fact, I’m having a few odd feelings about saying goodbye to my uterus and ovaries. True, they never did work very well. If they had been kitchen appliances, I would have replaced them years ago. But they, like the other organs, are not replaceable, so I put up with all the challenges, especially as I wanted to have children. Now, however, my children are mostly grown and I don’t necessarily need a uterus anymore. I wasn’t given a choice this time. There are too many questionable things inside and around these organs that really don’t belong there. Better safe than sorry. When I told a few of my friends that I was going in for this surgery, the reaction was...interesting. One friend told me she was jealous. Another one said that she felt that all women should have hysterectomies just as soon as they are finished having babies. After that, she said, a uterus is more trouble than it’s worth.

I don’t know.

Maybe my whole female reproductive system never worked that well, but these organs did do their part. Without them, we wouldn’t have our three children. My uterus provided each of my children with their first home. It was a safe place, a warm sanctuary. As they grew larger and the room accommodations grew a bit crowded, it was my uterus that still held them and gave them their first embrace, before we were able to hold them ourselves. It was also their first bedroom, their first cradle, and their first exercise gym.

Each of my children developed their own exercise routine; however, they all included the use of my bladder as a mini trampoline. My first child decided that kickboxing was his preferred sport. He tended to go for my ribs. My second child liked to turn somersaults. This made me feel as if all my internal organs had decided to suddenly rearrange themselves. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling but it was fun to watch! My third child would just get excited whenever one of her brothers or her papa came into the room. Even before she was born, she learned to recognize their voices and she would become very animated whenever they were around. One way or another, all of my babies were very, very active!

Perhaps this was why my uterus eventually said, “Enough”, and sent each of my children into the world a little earlier than the one before. By the time our third child was on her way, I figured I’d be on pins and needles for the last two months. But that didn’t happen. We didn’t make it that far! She was born three months early. I can’t, however, simply blame my faulty system for that one. There are things that are beyond anyone’s control, and when I had an abruption with internal bleeding, which led to toxemia, it was time for my body to say, “This isn’t a safe place anymore. Time to develop quickly and get the hell out of here!” And somehow, it worked. I wasn’t in great shape, but my body did everything it could to protect our baby. And it did a good job! When our daughter was born at 28 weeks gestation, her lungs were developed just enough that she never required a respirator, a 1 in 10,000 chance at that gestational age.

One thing we learned very quickly with our tiny preemie baby is that, though the incubators are amazing, there is no good substitute for the mother’s womb. The best, most ideal place for a child to grow is in the uterus. Nothing else can really, adequately, take its place. In the incubator, everything has to be done consciously. The temperature has to be monitored carefully, getting adequate nutrition into the baby is NOT automatic and is, in fact, quite complicated, and in the incubator, the baby has to deal with gravity, something that you don’t have to worry about when you are floating in amniotic fluid. The whole reproductive system is pretty amazing, when you think about it! And that’s just looking at the woman’s part in all this.

It will be a bittersweet parting. I will not miss the challenges and discomfort of fibroid tumors and ovarian cysts. But I cannot go through this lightly, either. I cannot help feeling just a little sad. But, in the end, I need to have this done and so, it is with immense gratitude and respect that I will let go of that part of my body and my life that has given us the gift of our children.

Just make sure to save a few jelly beans for me.

Make It Beautiful

Make It Beautiful 06/09/2008

If one were to look through the work of our first graders, they might wonder at a few things they saw. Every now and then, in the middle of their words or sentences, there would be drawn a lovely flower or heart, or maybe even a cat. Why was this drawing in the middle of their sentence? It’s because they made a mistake. When you are writing with a crayon, there isn’t a way to erase a mistake. At first, many of the children become frustrated every time they “mess up” and want to tear up their paper and start over. But this is not allowed. The teacher gently instructs the children that when they make a mistake, they must turn it into something beautiful.

Sometimes I think that this is the most important lesson they learn at our school. Wouldn’t it be nice if that were a rule for all of us? What might happen if, every time we made a mistake, we turned it into something beautiful? Just think. When we say something we shouldn’t or hurt someone in any way, we would begin, out of habit, to find a way to fix it. Not by tearing it up and starting over, ignoring the fact that we blew it, but by seeing what we have done and finding a way to fix it. We’re not allowed to tear up our life and start over. Turn it into something beautiful.

I guess that is what I hope to do with my writings. I want to take all my blunders, my failings, the moments when I stumble the most, and make them beautiful. Or at the very least see the humor in my own stumbling and, if I am really lucky, make someone else laugh.

That would be beautiful!

I Don’t Have a Memory Problem – I just forget things - sometimes

Okay, I have to concede, knitting is not really as effective as bicycling when it comes to physical exercise. I did eventually find an article that mentioned knitting and other craft work in the same exercise category as bicycling, running, playing football, and wrestling alligators (I did NOT make that up), but alas, it was an article promoting a particular type of muscle strengthening exercise program*. They didn’t really mean that craft work would be adequate as physical exercise.

My friend, Kate Kelsall, sent me another article, however, that did talk about the value of knitting and other hobbies, such as reading, crossword puzzles, and quilting**. These activities, it seems, help exercise us in a very different way. They help prevent memory loss. In fact, the research showed that elderly people who engaged in activities such as these were approximately 40% less likely to have memory issues. Television doesn’t count and the research indicates that watching a lot of television can actually speed the memory loss process for some people.

I am not elderly yet, but I am still concerned with keeping physically and mentally active. Parkinson’s can definitely speed up the deterioration in both those areas. So far, I am doing very well at keeping mentally active. If there were a knitting marathon, I’d sign up in a heartbeat. I could even go for the triathlon, the big three: Knitting, sewing, and finishing all the puzzles in the comics section. If the championship puzzle happened to be a cryptogram, I’d be the sure winner. I don’t even need to look at the clues. Place your bets now!

My family and friends sometimes think I’m a little deranged. How many women ask for 50 lbs of broomcorn for their birthday? My husband wonders when he sees me come home with yet another small stack of good quality paper. Did I really need it? Maybe not, technically, but it was on sale. And what would I do if they sold out of this particular paper?

I have stacks of paper for making books and bins of wool fleece that, years ago, I dyed myself and hung out on the garden fence to dry. The wool is used for felting projects and for my occasional felting workshop. The workshops are always free and there is a basket for the odd donation for materials used. This means, of course, that when I get a $10.00 donation, I know I can go out and purchase $10.00 worth of paper, or cloth, or wool, or yarn... or I forget that I already spent the money on one type of craft supplies and spend it again on something else. What was that about craft activities and memory?

I figure I have the mental exercising down. This does leave the question of staying physically fit. I already know WHY I need to do this. I already know the consequences of not staying physically fit. I just need to figure out what works for me. In this regard, I am being challenged everywhere I look. The Unity Walk is coming up in New York City. Though I would love to attend and do the two mile walk around the park to raise money for research, we simply cannot afford the plane tickets at this time.  This gives me a perfect excuse to not walk two miles.

Davis Phinney has all sorts of bicycling events for people with Parkinson’s. They also raise money for research. Davis lives in Colorado so I guess I don’t have as much of an excuse to not participate in some of his events. He always has something going on right here in my home state. Bicycling in a Davis Phinney event would be humbling, though. I mean, gosh, Davis raced in the “Tour de France”! Me? I’d have to get out the old Schwinn with the fat tires and clean it up a bit.

The last time I bicycled, I had a hard time riding around the neighborhood. It was work! Our neighborhood is perfect for cycling, walking dogs, jogging, and pushing baby strollers. I didn’t have to worry about dodging cars; I was more concerned with getting around the streams of people, dogs, babies, and tricycles. After about three blocks, I was exhausted and ready to go home, pour myself a glass of wine, sit, and knit for the rest of the evening. I might not be doing well on the physical exercise meter, but the mental/memory exercise meter is off the charts.

This made me wonder. I know that Davis Phinney has no problem keeping up with the physical exercise. But can he knit? Aha! Now, if he sees this and writes back, including a photo of the latest sweater he’s made, I’ll just have to concede defeat altogether. Time to get out the bike. But if he doesn’t, perhaps a challenge is in order. I’ll clean up the Schwinn if he gets out the knitting needles. I’d even supply some for him.

If I can remember where I put them.

*franchise.superslowzone.com/articles/exercise-vs-recreation.php

**http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7896441.stm