The past couple of days, I have had every intention of hurting myself. No not in one of those cries for help sort of ways, but just in pushing my self more and more to get back to normal. I still haven't tackled the dangling a push mower down the ditch yet. I am really afraid that may undo all the healing I have been doing, so when I do finally get around to attempting it, I will do it as gingerly as one can dangle a push mower down a ditch without simultaneously chopping off body parts. Just the fact that the engine starts to cut out because the mower is at such an extreme angle that it can't get gas, shows that maybe this isn't a recommended use of this particular mower.
However, that wasn't a problem yesterday. I had intended to do it, but secretly hoped something would come up to keep me from having to do it, and luckily plenty of things did. I spent some of the early part of the day helping my good friend with the project we are tackling. After that I waited for a HVAC company that claims "1 hour service" to call me back....that's been about 36 hours ago, and I am still waiting for a call back on the message I left. The reason, our thermostat decided that when the air conditioner kicks on, the house will cool down like it is supposed to, but the temperature reading will go UP! And that keeps the air conditioner on. You notice this when you look at the thermostat and it reads 87, while the other thermometer in the house reads 72 (and that is the real disparity in numbers we had when we first noticed the problem). A little research on the company turned up information that all electronic thermostats from this particular company do this. I won't mention their name because I don't want to embarrass Honeywell. I finally called in to our HVAC company through a different line (not a repair line) and asked them if they could fix this. They said yes they would replace it...in five days. I asked if they carried any other brands than the one they installed and they didn't. Frustrated I decided to runaway from the problem and went out to mow some of the muddy areas of the yard with the riding mower.
Now our mower is an commercial grade mower that we had to buy because someone keeps running into stuff bending the deck on regular mowers. I won't say who that someone is, but it's not me and it's probably my wife. Because of this, the mower weighs 1400 lbs. (about 650Kg) and because of its massive weight it gets stuck if there is any amount of moisture on the ground. While attempting to mow the parts of the yard that were too wet before, I hit a puddle or moss or gnat pee, whatever it was, the mower became hopelessly stuck. Now for reasons that I won't go into right now, I am the only one currently able to run this mower, so there was no one to drive the mower while I attempted to pull it out. So I did one any red blooded American male would do that has a Jeep and at least one ball (which I barely qualify for), I hooked up the Jeep and dropped it in four wheel drive low and jerked the crap out of it. You may have seen in the news where the day was .25 seconds shorter yesterday, that's because the massive torque of my Jeep pulling out this mower actually stopped the Earth's rotation for a brief moment. After these shenanigans were done, it was pretty much too late to attempt the ditch mowing/incision ripping yesterday.
So today I got up and went to a hardware store to find a thermostat that didn't have "Honeywell" stamped on it. I found one and then had to pick up a bag of concrete for another project we are doing. I found the correct type of concrete (for the record, there are approximately 75 different types of concrete and no matter what your project, there will be exactly 1 (one) bag that kinda fits what you are needing to do, and it will be on a very high shelf). I look straight at the bag...literally, because someone at Home Depot decided that this particular type of concrete needed to be about five feet in the air, and it dawned on me as I read "80 lbs." on the side of the bag that: A) I haven't lifted 80 lbs. since my surgery, I am officially supposed to be closer to 30lbs., and B) I can't bring the Jeep in to help me with this one. I briefly thought about asking for help, but two things occurred to me: 1) Guys are not supposed to ask for any sort of help whatsoever in a hardware store unless it is a veiled attempt to prove they know more than the person they are talking to, and 2) I have about as much chance of finding and employee at Home Depot to help me as I do of finding the Loch Ness Monster, Elvis, Jimmy Hoffa, and a regular cast member from Alf. Now Andrea Elson did walk by while I was contemplating the next move, but without Elvis, Jimmy, and Nessie she wouldn't have been much help. So I did what any self respecting guy would do, I picked up the bag anyway, rather than get help, and waited for the "pop" down below. I firmly grabbed the bag and just as gracefully has a Olympic weight lifter clean and jerks 1000 lbs., I put the concrete in the cart...OK, it was less like an Olympic weight lifter and more like a out of shape fat guy struggling to lift more weight than he lifted in eight months (outside of Golden Corral) all the while trying not drag the bag (which they for some reason make out of paper just slightly thicker than tissue paper) over anything that might snag it, causing it to burst open cartoonishly burying my feet in 80 lbs. of concrete, while at the same time trying to keep me from bursting open cartoonishly burying my feet in a large pile of my intestines. Unfortunately for the person watching me on the security camera I was able to load the concrete without any comic mishaps (yes, they actually have a sign in the concrete section pointing to the security camera, maybe that is a sign you are way understaffed if someone can grab an 80 lbs. bag of concrete and no one notices nor is able to catch someone fleeing with 80 lbs. of concrete).
Eventually, I made it home and the first thing I had to do, with the air conditioner running like an out of control Trane, was replace the thermostat. The thermostat contains slightly more wires than the Space Shuttle, except with fewer directions. After approximately 47 hours of cursing, reading, taking a Spanish course, reading the other manual, taking a Hindi course, calling tech support, and some Eeny Meeny Miney Mo, I was able to hook up the thermostat with a minimum amount of smoke and sparks. As I was wrapping up, a large storm hit, effectively ending my mowing/stomach shredding/toe slicing plans for the day.
I don't know if the events keeping me from mowing the ditch are a bit of Divine Intervention or just me being lazy and slow, but I will welcome the postponements no matter what the reasons. I just don't know what I am going to break to get out of it tomorrow...
Showing posts with label Jeep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeep. Show all posts
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Stop Babying Me...In A Few Days!
Lately my post-cancer frustration has been people babying me. I know by the occasional tickle along my waist that I am still not 100% healed, but I feel better than I have since the surgery. I have been using my abdominal brace less and less and been exerting myself more and more.
The lack of a brace wasn't necessarily intentional. I tends to get in the way, especially if you are doing any bending or sitting. Which since my major source of activity lately has been climbing in my boat, sitting down in front of the hydraulics while cussing, crying, and praying that they work, the brace had to go. There is another odd side effect with the brace. The brace, which looks a lot like a back brace, completely takes any pain away from my abdomen, but ironically kills my back. Another reason I have been wearing it less and less.
Two incidents have triggered these feelings about feeling babied. Our neighbor was over the other day who still primarily heats with wood. I said I was about to cut down some trees and if he wanted the firewood I would leave the logs for him, otherwise I would hack it all up and haul it away to burn, something we have done many times in the past. He said he would help when he was able. I said I wasn't asking for the help, I just wanted to know if he wanted the wood. He again said he would and he could help. This back and forth went on several times, and I think he finally caught on that all I was asking is if he wanted the wood, I hope.
The second incident, a very good friend of mine who has been super supportive since all this happened, went to the hardware store with me. I needed to pick up a fifty pound (ninety kilogram) jug of sand for some sandblasting I need to do. When the employee brought it out, he snatched it up before I could grab it. I said he didn't need to do that, but he refused to let me carry it. Now me being me, I was tempted to say I needed another one and see if he would carry that one too, and if he did, I would have kept going. But I didn't. This friend has made it a point to check in on me regularly and I can't fault him for that.
So, with that being said, the past few days I have been whining while laying around the house all day wanting to be babied. While driving to meet another friend last week for lunch, I heard an all too familiar sound from the backseat. My Jeep has a known problem where the power windows just decide one day that they give up. The sound I heard was the wind whistling through the window that was sliding down with each bump (of which there are quite a few from the endless assault of salt trucks). When I turned in my Jeep for warranty, they informed me that since it was the second time this has happened to me, the warranty required them to replace all four. Great news! Except that I hadn't planned on sitting around the waiting room quite that long. So, at some point during my four hour stay there, someone decided they would like to share the plague with me (or a nasty cold, one or the other).
The past few days have involved me single-handedly raising Kleenex's stock sales by over 50% (stock prices not verified) and walking around trying to remember when I swallowed a small melon whole, because it was obviously caught in my throat. It has been a while since I have had just a plain old cold, and I don't remember them making me this miserable before. Maybe I was always this puny. All I know, is I guess this will prepare me for whenever we do have a child, since I hear those little germ factories bring you a new malady every week.
So, I hope to be healthy again in the next day or so. I am not feeling too bad right now. I hope to fix those damn hydraulics on my boat soon. And hopefully people will see I am getting stronger after my surgery as well, and go back to treating me like crap. Well, maybe not completely like crap, just not like a baby...unless I have a cold.
The lack of a brace wasn't necessarily intentional. I tends to get in the way, especially if you are doing any bending or sitting. Which since my major source of activity lately has been climbing in my boat, sitting down in front of the hydraulics while cussing, crying, and praying that they work, the brace had to go. There is another odd side effect with the brace. The brace, which looks a lot like a back brace, completely takes any pain away from my abdomen, but ironically kills my back. Another reason I have been wearing it less and less.
Two incidents have triggered these feelings about feeling babied. Our neighbor was over the other day who still primarily heats with wood. I said I was about to cut down some trees and if he wanted the firewood I would leave the logs for him, otherwise I would hack it all up and haul it away to burn, something we have done many times in the past. He said he would help when he was able. I said I wasn't asking for the help, I just wanted to know if he wanted the wood. He again said he would and he could help. This back and forth went on several times, and I think he finally caught on that all I was asking is if he wanted the wood, I hope.
The second incident, a very good friend of mine who has been super supportive since all this happened, went to the hardware store with me. I needed to pick up a fifty pound (ninety kilogram) jug of sand for some sandblasting I need to do. When the employee brought it out, he snatched it up before I could grab it. I said he didn't need to do that, but he refused to let me carry it. Now me being me, I was tempted to say I needed another one and see if he would carry that one too, and if he did, I would have kept going. But I didn't. This friend has made it a point to check in on me regularly and I can't fault him for that.
So, with that being said, the past few days I have been whining while laying around the house all day wanting to be babied. While driving to meet another friend last week for lunch, I heard an all too familiar sound from the backseat. My Jeep has a known problem where the power windows just decide one day that they give up. The sound I heard was the wind whistling through the window that was sliding down with each bump (of which there are quite a few from the endless assault of salt trucks). When I turned in my Jeep for warranty, they informed me that since it was the second time this has happened to me, the warranty required them to replace all four. Great news! Except that I hadn't planned on sitting around the waiting room quite that long. So, at some point during my four hour stay there, someone decided they would like to share the plague with me (or a nasty cold, one or the other).
The past few days have involved me single-handedly raising Kleenex's stock sales by over 50% (stock prices not verified) and walking around trying to remember when I swallowed a small melon whole, because it was obviously caught in my throat. It has been a while since I have had just a plain old cold, and I don't remember them making me this miserable before. Maybe I was always this puny. All I know, is I guess this will prepare me for whenever we do have a child, since I hear those little germ factories bring you a new malady every week.
So, I hope to be healthy again in the next day or so. I am not feeling too bad right now. I hope to fix those damn hydraulics on my boat soon. And hopefully people will see I am getting stronger after my surgery as well, and go back to treating me like crap. Well, maybe not completely like crap, just not like a baby...unless I have a cold.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Limping Through EPCOT
So towards the end of our Florida journey, we head over to EPCOT for my 40th birthday. Yes you read that correctly, I know I don't look a day over 25. We had to transport two basenjis and a shiba inu to Disney's kennels for the day and we decided the best plan is to open up the third row seating on the Highlander where the girls can sit and we'll lay day the second row for a play/rest area for the three pups. The plan worked really well. The best part of the plan was that with the guys in the very front (someone has to drive) and the girls in the very back, we could turn up the radio and pretend we couldn't hear them. I think they caught on to us pretty quickly though and just decided to go to sleep.
Once we arrived at EPCOT, I get out my hiking stick and put everything in my pockets so I didn't have to have anything checked by security, which wasn't such a great plan when everyone else I was with had a bag. Then my wife realized she forgot something in the car, and since I was the only one without a bag, they decided to send the cripple to hike back while they went through bag screening. I hobbled back to meet them just in time and we enter the park.
For those who have never been to Disney, or haven't been in a while, they have a new "What are you celebrating?" campaign, where you can say you are celebrating anything and they will write it on buttons and give them to you for free. While everyone else used the restrooms, I went to get us buttons. I told them I was celebrating my first cancer free birthday. The "Cast Member's" eyes lit up (remember, Disney doesn't have employees, they have "Cast Members") and he said he had something special for me. After several minutes of searching through his little kiosk, turns out the "special" thing was writing "cancer free" on a button. Now I am dying to know what I missed out on. Of course I didn't know I was missing out on anything until he started searching forever for it. While he was writing on buttons for our group, the gentleman behind me, who apparently randomly lines up anytime he sees a queue, asks why we were waiting in line (a question normally asked before you wait long enough to be the next person up). I tell him, and he immediately tells one of his children to lie and say it's their birthday. You could tell them you are celebrating the first Friday in December and they would write it down. You just paid $80 to get in the place, what is a ten cent button to them? The Cast Member looks at my stick, and can tell I am already limping. He asks if I would like anything, and as much as I would love to tool around in a scooter the rest of the day or have people push me around in a wheelchair, I stick by my vow to walk the whole day. To illustrate my point from yesterday about how ridiculous people get there with lying about needing a wheelchair just to cut in line, I saw someone on their rented scooters in those "shape-ups" shoes that give you a workout while you walk. Either she wasted money on buying workout shoes that would never see pavement, or she is the worst liar ever (aside from everyone in the Senate, the House, and every other nationally elected official, and state elected official, and local elected official, and school board member, and treasurer for my junior class, and the people that sell the Shake Weight).
We started riding the rides at EPCOT, which are for the most part pretty tame. However, that didn't keep one member of our group from being scared to death on every one. It's not like a Disney ride ever killed anyone...well, at least not a ride at EPCOT....well, at least none of the rides we were riding at EPCOT. And then I got to do something so geeky and lame, but I had been wanting to do it forever. I took the Behind the Seeds tour! Yes, for an hour I wobbled through a giant version of my Aerogardens while I listened to a Cast Member/Botanist talk about plants growing. I admit I am a nerd, and that is why I didn't force anyone to go with me. I found it really interesting, but I am sure no one else will, so I will keep my mouth shut (or my fingers still in this case). Also on the tour was a couple who were both neurologists from Massachusetts. They saw my pin and before the tour we had a great time talking about my recovery and the medical system in general. They were definitely doctors, because as we walked along the tour, I tended to lag behind so I could wobble with my stick at my own pace, looking like some pre-polio vaccine Disney character. They were constantly watching me and looking out for me, and at one point asked if I was OK. When I said I was, they said they are used to patients like me and they could tell I was in pain even though I said I wasn't, and to just say something if I wanted their help. I laughed out loud, because they were right!
The tour ended and I met back with the others. The whole day, I was awash with emotions. On one hand I was extremely happy, because I was at the happiest place on Earth. Well, I guess they mean the Magic Kingdom is the happiest place on Earth, but I was still pretty happy being next door to the happiest place on Earth, which is still pretty happy, unless the place next door happens to be SeaWorld, and then you are trying to figure out why you paid $300 a person for a smelly old whale. Anyway, I was happy, and was also on the verge of tears because when all of this started on August 31st, I didn't know what this day would end up being for me. I was depressed too. I didn't want cancer to still have as much a grip on me as it did. I mean, I was cancer free, but I was still trying to shake the pain and the effects of the treatment. And most of all, I was in excruciating pain. So, my loving wife, after 10 years of being around each other, sees the look on my face. She sees the whirlwind of emotions, the happiness, the depression, the joy of being alive, and intense pain all written on my face and asks, "Why are you pissed off?" The one emotion I don't have and that is the one she reads on my face! We ended the day, and I managed to keep the pain of my incision steady all day, which was surprising. Of course my arm felt like rubber from supporting my weight with my stick all day, but it did the trick.
The next day we ran a few last errands, buying oranges and coconut elephant windchimes, and on that last day, the two of us finally went to the beach. This trip was nothing like I had planned. The car broke down, my triumphant return from cancer ended in re-injury, only made it to the beach twice, and we had to change Disney parks. But still, just like the old fisherman's phrase goes, a bad day in Florida is still better than a good winter day in Ohio. I did enjoy myself. I knew when I first got diagnosed this whole cancer ordeal was going to leave some emotional scars. I just didn't realize how deep they were and how little things can trigger a flood of feelings. I also didn't realize how much this constant pushing to be done with all of this cancer crap was just making it last longer. I hope I am finally starting to be done with all of this, but I think I will throw my stick in the back of my Jeep just in case...
Once we arrived at EPCOT, I get out my hiking stick and put everything in my pockets so I didn't have to have anything checked by security, which wasn't such a great plan when everyone else I was with had a bag. Then my wife realized she forgot something in the car, and since I was the only one without a bag, they decided to send the cripple to hike back while they went through bag screening. I hobbled back to meet them just in time and we enter the park.
For those who have never been to Disney, or haven't been in a while, they have a new "What are you celebrating?" campaign, where you can say you are celebrating anything and they will write it on buttons and give them to you for free. While everyone else used the restrooms, I went to get us buttons. I told them I was celebrating my first cancer free birthday. The "Cast Member's" eyes lit up (remember, Disney doesn't have employees, they have "Cast Members") and he said he had something special for me. After several minutes of searching through his little kiosk, turns out the "special" thing was writing "cancer free" on a button. Now I am dying to know what I missed out on. Of course I didn't know I was missing out on anything until he started searching forever for it. While he was writing on buttons for our group, the gentleman behind me, who apparently randomly lines up anytime he sees a queue, asks why we were waiting in line (a question normally asked before you wait long enough to be the next person up). I tell him, and he immediately tells one of his children to lie and say it's their birthday. You could tell them you are celebrating the first Friday in December and they would write it down. You just paid $80 to get in the place, what is a ten cent button to them? The Cast Member looks at my stick, and can tell I am already limping. He asks if I would like anything, and as much as I would love to tool around in a scooter the rest of the day or have people push me around in a wheelchair, I stick by my vow to walk the whole day. To illustrate my point from yesterday about how ridiculous people get there with lying about needing a wheelchair just to cut in line, I saw someone on their rented scooters in those "shape-ups" shoes that give you a workout while you walk. Either she wasted money on buying workout shoes that would never see pavement, or she is the worst liar ever (aside from everyone in the Senate, the House, and every other nationally elected official, and state elected official, and local elected official, and school board member, and treasurer for my junior class, and the people that sell the Shake Weight).
We started riding the rides at EPCOT, which are for the most part pretty tame. However, that didn't keep one member of our group from being scared to death on every one. It's not like a Disney ride ever killed anyone...well, at least not a ride at EPCOT....well, at least none of the rides we were riding at EPCOT. And then I got to do something so geeky and lame, but I had been wanting to do it forever. I took the Behind the Seeds tour! Yes, for an hour I wobbled through a giant version of my Aerogardens while I listened to a Cast Member/Botanist talk about plants growing. I admit I am a nerd, and that is why I didn't force anyone to go with me. I found it really interesting, but I am sure no one else will, so I will keep my mouth shut (or my fingers still in this case). Also on the tour was a couple who were both neurologists from Massachusetts. They saw my pin and before the tour we had a great time talking about my recovery and the medical system in general. They were definitely doctors, because as we walked along the tour, I tended to lag behind so I could wobble with my stick at my own pace, looking like some pre-polio vaccine Disney character. They were constantly watching me and looking out for me, and at one point asked if I was OK. When I said I was, they said they are used to patients like me and they could tell I was in pain even though I said I wasn't, and to just say something if I wanted their help. I laughed out loud, because they were right!
The tour ended and I met back with the others. The whole day, I was awash with emotions. On one hand I was extremely happy, because I was at the happiest place on Earth. Well, I guess they mean the Magic Kingdom is the happiest place on Earth, but I was still pretty happy being next door to the happiest place on Earth, which is still pretty happy, unless the place next door happens to be SeaWorld, and then you are trying to figure out why you paid $300 a person for a smelly old whale. Anyway, I was happy, and was also on the verge of tears because when all of this started on August 31st, I didn't know what this day would end up being for me. I was depressed too. I didn't want cancer to still have as much a grip on me as it did. I mean, I was cancer free, but I was still trying to shake the pain and the effects of the treatment. And most of all, I was in excruciating pain. So, my loving wife, after 10 years of being around each other, sees the look on my face. She sees the whirlwind of emotions, the happiness, the depression, the joy of being alive, and intense pain all written on my face and asks, "Why are you pissed off?" The one emotion I don't have and that is the one she reads on my face! We ended the day, and I managed to keep the pain of my incision steady all day, which was surprising. Of course my arm felt like rubber from supporting my weight with my stick all day, but it did the trick.
The next day we ran a few last errands, buying oranges and coconut elephant windchimes, and on that last day, the two of us finally went to the beach. This trip was nothing like I had planned. The car broke down, my triumphant return from cancer ended in re-injury, only made it to the beach twice, and we had to change Disney parks. But still, just like the old fisherman's phrase goes, a bad day in Florida is still better than a good winter day in Ohio. I did enjoy myself. I knew when I first got diagnosed this whole cancer ordeal was going to leave some emotional scars. I just didn't realize how deep they were and how little things can trigger a flood of feelings. I also didn't realize how much this constant pushing to be done with all of this cancer crap was just making it last longer. I hope I am finally starting to be done with all of this, but I think I will throw my stick in the back of my Jeep just in case...
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Still Hurting But Still Going...
The day after tearing my incision point for the umpteenth time in Florida, I could barely move. We decided to hook up with our friends and head over to the Drive-In Church. This was originally a drive-in movie theater that they converted to a church and broadcast over your radio. We saw it on TV and it looked cool, plus you can take your dogs to church with you! We pulled into the lot and they had taken down the screen and put up a regular church, nothing like we saw on TV. We drove around the lot until we saw a small section labeled for the "drive-in" congregation and it told us what station to tune to. We could barely hear it in our Highlander, it was coming in, but hard to hear over the static. Our friends heard it fine in their Jeep and they were farther away. So, we moved to the closest spot, they moved in again next to us. We still had trouble hearing, but our friends heard it just fine, confirming my theory that God loves Jeeps and doesn't pay attention to Toyotas. I will be releasing a research paper on that subject in a few months. After straining to hear God through the Jeep next to us, we realized we were the only ones a part of the drive-in part of the congregation and decided to leave. My wife wanted to take the basenjis to see the person that had originally rescued them, and I wanted to do anything but talk about nothing but basenjis for the next four hours, so the men went back to town while the women headed up for some "pup chat".
After I got home, I realized we still hadn't gone grocery shopping and I was carless, so I ate pizza for the third day in a row. I decided to slide into the pool and do a little rehab on my recent injury. The pool hadn't had time to heat up yet and this is when I realized, whether you have two nuts or one, you still scream like a little girl when your nether region hits cold pool water. I was able to walk around a bit without pain. Luckily, from my sedentary lifestyle from months of cancer recovery, I was much more buoyant than I usually am, taking more weight off of my hips/incision as I exercised.
After my wife returned with the car, she asked if I would like to do the grocery shopping since I have been cooped up so much with working on the car and being injured. At this point I had been in Florida for 96 hours and still not made it to the beach, so I decided to just drive by the beach on the way to get groceries. I start to go across the causeway over to the island beaches when a fire truck flew by, then another, then another, and a host of cops and as I got close to finally seeing the ocean...they all blocked off the road. Just my luck this trip! I make it inside Wal-Mart and grab a cart, half for groceries and half to lean on as I walk. The place is empty and I am able to walk slowly without hurting too much and not worry about impeding any crazed bargain hunters. Towards the end, I can tell if I do much more I will be hurting myself worse, so I head back to the house.
The next few days are spent walking with my hiking stick (I refuse to call it a cane!) around the local nature park with the dogs. I could feel it slowly getting better, but I knew I was walking that thin line (pun not intended) of getting stronger and making things worse. By Wednesday morning, I decided to head out to the local flea market (with a real farmer's market) and look around. The place seems a lot bigger when you are having trouble walking. The hiking stick my wife got me has a removable disc that you use for soft terrain like sand, which I left on for the time being, that makes it look more like a ski pole. While wobbling and dragging myself through the place one of the booth owners decided he would be funny and asked if I was going skiing. Hurting, depressed, and tired, I just said, "No, it's cancer."
The guy's face went blank and he said, "Sorry, sir."
I know it wasn't the nicest thing to do, but I wasn't in the mood for jokes at this point. Then I hear the same guy say another comment in the same smart tone to the gentleman behind me. I can't make out what the booth owner asked him, I just heard the other guy say, "No, my wife just passed away."
"Sorry, sir."
I am hoping the booth owner quit trying to joke with his patrons, because I don't want to hear what the next guy would say.
By Thursday I have built up a little stamina on my injury and my wife really wanted me to hit Disney in some form. Now before you say, "Aw, that's sweet." It's because she said I would complain until I was 50 if I didn't get to go for my 40th birthday. She may be right. She also made the point that since we were fixing to make the eighteen hour drive back home, I might as well tear the heck out of my incision doing something I love, because I would be just sitting around the next few days anyway. We ran through our options. First I was NOT going to be one of those jerks in the wheelchairs. I am not talking about people who need wheelchairs or scooters, I am talking about the people that have never been in a wheelchair in their life until they get to Walt Disney World, but as soon as they get there, their ingrown toenail becomes unbearable and they need a wheelchair so they can get on all of the rides quicker. After being around my father-in-law that frequently used a wheelchair, I know how much people who really are in wheelchairs prefer their wheelchair. His was set up, adjusted, and padded just for him. So, when I see someone in a wheelchair that was rented from Disney for the day, I immediately give them the old stink eye and try to fart as they and their party of 17 other people they brought with them, cut past me in line. I didn't want to be one of "those people" or get farted on by people like me.
Our other decision was, as much as I love the Magic Kingdom, I knew I couldn't handle the hills there (as small as they are). I wouldn't be able to get in and out of a lot of the rides. And there are a lot of rides I simply wouldn't be able to do because they would jostle me around too much. After thinking about all four parks, their rides and their terrain, we settle on EPCOT. It may be the most walking, but it is fairly flat, the rides are easy to get in and out of, there are only a couple I won't be able to handle, and there is a special tour I would like to do there. We run it by our friends and they decide they would like to join us, and we make plans to tear my body up the next day!
After I got home, I realized we still hadn't gone grocery shopping and I was carless, so I ate pizza for the third day in a row. I decided to slide into the pool and do a little rehab on my recent injury. The pool hadn't had time to heat up yet and this is when I realized, whether you have two nuts or one, you still scream like a little girl when your nether region hits cold pool water. I was able to walk around a bit without pain. Luckily, from my sedentary lifestyle from months of cancer recovery, I was much more buoyant than I usually am, taking more weight off of my hips/incision as I exercised.
After my wife returned with the car, she asked if I would like to do the grocery shopping since I have been cooped up so much with working on the car and being injured. At this point I had been in Florida for 96 hours and still not made it to the beach, so I decided to just drive by the beach on the way to get groceries. I start to go across the causeway over to the island beaches when a fire truck flew by, then another, then another, and a host of cops and as I got close to finally seeing the ocean...they all blocked off the road. Just my luck this trip! I make it inside Wal-Mart and grab a cart, half for groceries and half to lean on as I walk. The place is empty and I am able to walk slowly without hurting too much and not worry about impeding any crazed bargain hunters. Towards the end, I can tell if I do much more I will be hurting myself worse, so I head back to the house.
The next few days are spent walking with my hiking stick (I refuse to call it a cane!) around the local nature park with the dogs. I could feel it slowly getting better, but I knew I was walking that thin line (pun not intended) of getting stronger and making things worse. By Wednesday morning, I decided to head out to the local flea market (with a real farmer's market) and look around. The place seems a lot bigger when you are having trouble walking. The hiking stick my wife got me has a removable disc that you use for soft terrain like sand, which I left on for the time being, that makes it look more like a ski pole. While wobbling and dragging myself through the place one of the booth owners decided he would be funny and asked if I was going skiing. Hurting, depressed, and tired, I just said, "No, it's cancer."
The guy's face went blank and he said, "Sorry, sir."
I know it wasn't the nicest thing to do, but I wasn't in the mood for jokes at this point. Then I hear the same guy say another comment in the same smart tone to the gentleman behind me. I can't make out what the booth owner asked him, I just heard the other guy say, "No, my wife just passed away."
"Sorry, sir."
I am hoping the booth owner quit trying to joke with his patrons, because I don't want to hear what the next guy would say.
By Thursday I have built up a little stamina on my injury and my wife really wanted me to hit Disney in some form. Now before you say, "Aw, that's sweet." It's because she said I would complain until I was 50 if I didn't get to go for my 40th birthday. She may be right. She also made the point that since we were fixing to make the eighteen hour drive back home, I might as well tear the heck out of my incision doing something I love, because I would be just sitting around the next few days anyway. We ran through our options. First I was NOT going to be one of those jerks in the wheelchairs. I am not talking about people who need wheelchairs or scooters, I am talking about the people that have never been in a wheelchair in their life until they get to Walt Disney World, but as soon as they get there, their ingrown toenail becomes unbearable and they need a wheelchair so they can get on all of the rides quicker. After being around my father-in-law that frequently used a wheelchair, I know how much people who really are in wheelchairs prefer their wheelchair. His was set up, adjusted, and padded just for him. So, when I see someone in a wheelchair that was rented from Disney for the day, I immediately give them the old stink eye and try to fart as they and their party of 17 other people they brought with them, cut past me in line. I didn't want to be one of "those people" or get farted on by people like me.
Our other decision was, as much as I love the Magic Kingdom, I knew I couldn't handle the hills there (as small as they are). I wouldn't be able to get in and out of a lot of the rides. And there are a lot of rides I simply wouldn't be able to do because they would jostle me around too much. After thinking about all four parks, their rides and their terrain, we settle on EPCOT. It may be the most walking, but it is fairly flat, the rides are easy to get in and out of, there are only a couple I won't be able to handle, and there is a special tour I would like to do there. We run it by our friends and they decide they would like to join us, and we make plans to tear my body up the next day!
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
I'M BACK AND STILL MANAGING TO HURT MYSELF!!!
I took a little sabbatical to take a trip down south. A good friend has a nice home in Florida that he routinely let's me borrow, and he said it would be a good place to recuperate from all that has happened the past few months, a good place to get my mind on other things. He said a lot more too, but I quit listening after "Do you wanna go to Florida?". OK, that's not true, this friend has truly been a rock over the past few months, and our weekly harassing of Cracker Barrel waitresses followed by wrestling over the check (figuratively, not literally, I am still not healed enough for that) is something I look forward to every week.
So, the day after my last blog, I had a million things to do, like remember to pack the computer so I could blog while I was gone (and we see how well that worked). I had to finish my packing while my wife was at work, gather everything up, and being my overthinking, contingency plan making self, I had to prepare for every eventuality that may befall the house and my mother-in-law (mainly the house) in our absence. From fire to flood to volcano I thought of everything....but snow, heck we were going to be in Florida, what did I care? Luckily, she was able to find where I stashed the snow shovels. So anyway, while I was preparing for our trip, I was getting out the fishing poles, bikes, bike rack, etc. which required me to open up my shop. I have been staying out of my shop, mainly because I have managed to hurt myself about every time that I have been in there since my surgery, and I am really not cleared yet to resume hurting myself again (not hurting my incision but my normal hurting myself where I come down bruised or bleeding or missing a limb and can't remember exactly when or what happened). As soon as my mother-in-law saw the doors to my shop opened, she assumed this meant I was well enough to be in there, and therefore brought out the Chicago-phonebook-sized list that she had been waiting to give me. Besides putting me way behind schedule, somewhere around the "T"s of the honey-do list, I felt my incision starting to...well, the best way to explain it is it's like opening a Ziploc bag, except Ziploc bags don't normally result in excruciating pain. As I started to feel the unzipping, I tried to take it as easy as I could and still get through the rest of the alphabet on the to do list. After all, the next day would be seventeen hours of driving, hopefully that would help me to heal.
Our plan was to go to bed really early and start out really early on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, neither of those things happened. We did eventually get on the road and our great adventure began. Walking the dogs on the road was a lot more interesting when one basenji wants to be both Lewis and Clark with a little bit of Sir Edmund Hillary at every pitstop and the other dog is afraid of everything from semis with their engine brakes, to cars with squeaky wheels, to wind blowing through the grass, to bee flatulence (although to be fair, I am afraid of that too, nothing reeks like a stale honey fart). The result is one dog is dislocating my shoulder while the other one is scared shitless, literally, as in too scared to go, which is a problem when the main point of walking the dogs is to for that very act to occur.
This trip was originally supposed to be my 40th Birthday Spectacular, a week long celebration of Tom at Walt Disney World. When I was laid off, those plans were in jeopardy. When I got cancer, those plans were questionable. When we got the hospital and chemo bills, those plans went out the window. And that is why I am so thankful to my friend for offering up the house. We certainly weren't planning on affording a Florida trip right now. But ever since he made the offer, I decided this would be my triumphant return! I am as cancer free as a cancer patient gets, because it's hard to really feel cancer free when the oncologists keep asking you to come back every three months to see if you have any cancer. I had planned to run a 5K, ride on a group ride, go to the beach everyday, swim in the pool everyday, feel better, lose weight, and definitely enjoy one day at the Magic Kingdom. So, that is when I found myself in the dark of night, driving through southern Georgia with my wife and the basenjis asleep in the back seat, when I started to tear up. For all intents and purposes it was over. Yeah, I still have years of tests, and don't know if I have any "swimmers" after chemo (that test is this week, I hope they have new magazines or videos), but the hard part is done, and I won the fight, I won the battle, and I am on the way to winning the war. This was the first time I had let myself even entertain the thought that I was done with this cancer stuff, and the emotions were overwhelming me. I felt like I was finally able to let go of some all of the uncertainty and stress of the past few months, while I was all alone in the dark with my thoughts...and those deer. That's when I snapped back to reality, that although a lot of stress in my life is gone, I am still traveling down the road at night at 75 miles per hour.
The trip all in all wasn't too bad, we even made it through Atlanta fine. Atlanta to Macon is a different story, about extra hour long story to be exact, but we made it to the Florida home just fine, albeit about eight hours from our original target time. We hastily unpacked the car and I walked the dogs and started settling in while my wife got groceries. We had a quick 2am supper and collapsed into bed, ready to meet some friends that live down there now the next day for Thanksgiving.
My wife picked up the last of the items we need for Thanksgiving dinner that morning and headed out to the garage to drive over to our friends' house to help them with cooking the turkey. She comes back in saying there was a small puddle under the car. I had just done an oil change before our trip, perhaps I hadn't tightened something all the way. I walked into the garage and froze. The puddle was not under anything I worked on during the oil change. And the puddle was not the color of anything I worked on. It was blood red. I was thinking, "Please let it be a dead animal, please let it be a dead animal, please let it be a dead animal...", yeah, I know that is not a nice thought to think, but even pulling a half-dead gator out from under the car would be cheaper and easier than what that problem really was...transmission fluid.
I have been in this position before. I travel with enough tools to get myself through most minor emergency repairs. Of course nothing transmission related is minor, but unlike losing a fuel pump on Key West, this time I had a garage, access to a lot more tools, eleven days to solve my problem, and friends willing to cart us around (heck they loaned us their Jeep!). I tracked it down to a transmission cooler, and started reading up on what I would have to do to replace it. The problem, it's Thanksgiving, I will have to wait 24 very long hours before I will find out how much this part is going to cost me and how far away that part is. And I think I will make you wait 24 hours as well, as I will pick up the story from here tomorrow.
So, the day after my last blog, I had a million things to do, like remember to pack the computer so I could blog while I was gone (and we see how well that worked). I had to finish my packing while my wife was at work, gather everything up, and being my overthinking, contingency plan making self, I had to prepare for every eventuality that may befall the house and my mother-in-law (mainly the house) in our absence. From fire to flood to volcano I thought of everything....but snow, heck we were going to be in Florida, what did I care? Luckily, she was able to find where I stashed the snow shovels. So anyway, while I was preparing for our trip, I was getting out the fishing poles, bikes, bike rack, etc. which required me to open up my shop. I have been staying out of my shop, mainly because I have managed to hurt myself about every time that I have been in there since my surgery, and I am really not cleared yet to resume hurting myself again (not hurting my incision but my normal hurting myself where I come down bruised or bleeding or missing a limb and can't remember exactly when or what happened). As soon as my mother-in-law saw the doors to my shop opened, she assumed this meant I was well enough to be in there, and therefore brought out the Chicago-phonebook-sized list that she had been waiting to give me. Besides putting me way behind schedule, somewhere around the "T"s of the honey-do list, I felt my incision starting to...well, the best way to explain it is it's like opening a Ziploc bag, except Ziploc bags don't normally result in excruciating pain. As I started to feel the unzipping, I tried to take it as easy as I could and still get through the rest of the alphabet on the to do list. After all, the next day would be seventeen hours of driving, hopefully that would help me to heal.
Our plan was to go to bed really early and start out really early on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, neither of those things happened. We did eventually get on the road and our great adventure began. Walking the dogs on the road was a lot more interesting when one basenji wants to be both Lewis and Clark with a little bit of Sir Edmund Hillary at every pitstop and the other dog is afraid of everything from semis with their engine brakes, to cars with squeaky wheels, to wind blowing through the grass, to bee flatulence (although to be fair, I am afraid of that too, nothing reeks like a stale honey fart). The result is one dog is dislocating my shoulder while the other one is scared shitless, literally, as in too scared to go, which is a problem when the main point of walking the dogs is to for that very act to occur.
This trip was originally supposed to be my 40th Birthday Spectacular, a week long celebration of Tom at Walt Disney World. When I was laid off, those plans were in jeopardy. When I got cancer, those plans were questionable. When we got the hospital and chemo bills, those plans went out the window. And that is why I am so thankful to my friend for offering up the house. We certainly weren't planning on affording a Florida trip right now. But ever since he made the offer, I decided this would be my triumphant return! I am as cancer free as a cancer patient gets, because it's hard to really feel cancer free when the oncologists keep asking you to come back every three months to see if you have any cancer. I had planned to run a 5K, ride on a group ride, go to the beach everyday, swim in the pool everyday, feel better, lose weight, and definitely enjoy one day at the Magic Kingdom. So, that is when I found myself in the dark of night, driving through southern Georgia with my wife and the basenjis asleep in the back seat, when I started to tear up. For all intents and purposes it was over. Yeah, I still have years of tests, and don't know if I have any "swimmers" after chemo (that test is this week, I hope they have new magazines or videos), but the hard part is done, and I won the fight, I won the battle, and I am on the way to winning the war. This was the first time I had let myself even entertain the thought that I was done with this cancer stuff, and the emotions were overwhelming me. I felt like I was finally able to let go of some all of the uncertainty and stress of the past few months, while I was all alone in the dark with my thoughts...and those deer. That's when I snapped back to reality, that although a lot of stress in my life is gone, I am still traveling down the road at night at 75 miles per hour.
The trip all in all wasn't too bad, we even made it through Atlanta fine. Atlanta to Macon is a different story, about extra hour long story to be exact, but we made it to the Florida home just fine, albeit about eight hours from our original target time. We hastily unpacked the car and I walked the dogs and started settling in while my wife got groceries. We had a quick 2am supper and collapsed into bed, ready to meet some friends that live down there now the next day for Thanksgiving.
My wife picked up the last of the items we need for Thanksgiving dinner that morning and headed out to the garage to drive over to our friends' house to help them with cooking the turkey. She comes back in saying there was a small puddle under the car. I had just done an oil change before our trip, perhaps I hadn't tightened something all the way. I walked into the garage and froze. The puddle was not under anything I worked on during the oil change. And the puddle was not the color of anything I worked on. It was blood red. I was thinking, "Please let it be a dead animal, please let it be a dead animal, please let it be a dead animal...", yeah, I know that is not a nice thought to think, but even pulling a half-dead gator out from under the car would be cheaper and easier than what that problem really was...transmission fluid.
I have been in this position before. I travel with enough tools to get myself through most minor emergency repairs. Of course nothing transmission related is minor, but unlike losing a fuel pump on Key West, this time I had a garage, access to a lot more tools, eleven days to solve my problem, and friends willing to cart us around (heck they loaned us their Jeep!). I tracked it down to a transmission cooler, and started reading up on what I would have to do to replace it. The problem, it's Thanksgiving, I will have to wait 24 very long hours before I will find out how much this part is going to cost me and how far away that part is. And I think I will make you wait 24 hours as well, as I will pick up the story from here tomorrow.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Healing In Jeep Country
Today I tried to push myself a little further. Still coming out of the chemo funk, I started the day off again by taking the basenjis on a long walk around the yard. Benny wasn't quite chasing as many invisible rabbits as he had yesterday, so he was only bouncing around at the speed of sound rather than the speed of light.
During the last storm, one of our apple trees split in two. Yesterday my mother in law discussed taking it up to the burning pile. Her idea was to cut it up into pieces, pick the pieces up, throw the pieces into the lawn tractor's trailer (which means the pieces would be only slightly larger than a loaf of french bread), take the trailer loads up to the burning pile (which since the trailer has the capacity of a five gallon bucket would be approximately 134.5 trips), pick up the pieces out of the trailer, and throw them all the burning pile. This would involve me running the chainsaw, which I am still afraid of. As I have said before, motions that require me to move in one direction haven't seemed to bother my surgery. Motions that require multiple directions, such as holding back a ricocheting basenji, do tend to put stress on my stitches. Holding a chainsaw up in the air, moving it back and forth, and fighting the kickbacks and dodging the tree as the weight shifts as it twists and turns on the ground, would probably not be the wisest thing for me to do just yet. So, my solution was hook the Jeep to the tree, drag the whole darn thing up to the burning pile where it's out of sight, wait until we get enough rain to actually be able to burn the burning pile (which will be a long time) at which point I will be able to hold the chainsaw, make a few cuts and just lean large pieces against the pile. She wasn't on board with my idea, because she didn't think of it. So as we discuss which is easier, otherwise known as why we should do it her way, she happens to mention that we can't do it today because she has a doctor's appointment. BINGO!
So, while my mother in law is at her doctor's appointment, I hook my tow strap up to the tree. There is one limb buried in the ground from the fall that I will have to do something with before I hook up to it. I carefully put my weight into the tow strap, and after rocking the tree a couple of times the limb snaps and the tree lays flat on the ground, and more importantly, I don't feel any sharp pains in my side or groinal area from pulling on a tree. I then get the Jeep and pull into position. I go to put it into the very powerful Four Wheel Low. Jeep must deem this way too powerful to actually use, because first you have to put your transmission in neutral, then you have to let the Jeep roll very slowly, then grab the transfer case handle and move it down, sideways, diagonally, and down again before you actually engage Four Wheel Low (I am not making that up). I imagine corn mazes are easier to negotiate than shifting in to Four Wheel Low. I then start to back up, when the transfer case pops out of Four Wheel Low. I guess I didn't correctly navigate the maze. I again, shift, push, twist, angle, curse, shove, and pop, and now Four Wheel Low is engaged. I back down the hill to the tree, which I swear was moving, because no matter how many times I backed up, I was always about four inches from hooking up to it. I finally hook up (pray) and start up the hill. The Jeep chugs on like it's not a problem at all.
Now there is a reason Jeep makes it so hard to get into Four Wheel Low. The top speed is around twenty miles an hour in low, which isn't that fast, but you could run over the cast and audience of the View and not even notice, or pull half an apple tree without a problem. I get the tree to the burning pile and unhook. I feel good that I finally did something! I decided I will put all my gear back together later on today when I wash the Jeep. I go back to the house to cook lunch. My mother in law comes home, glad to see the tree is gone and still wonders why we didn't do the multiple cuts, multiple trips, and multiple handling of each chunk of tree that she suggested.
During the last storm, one of our apple trees split in two. Yesterday my mother in law discussed taking it up to the burning pile. Her idea was to cut it up into pieces, pick the pieces up, throw the pieces into the lawn tractor's trailer (which means the pieces would be only slightly larger than a loaf of french bread), take the trailer loads up to the burning pile (which since the trailer has the capacity of a five gallon bucket would be approximately 134.5 trips), pick up the pieces out of the trailer, and throw them all the burning pile. This would involve me running the chainsaw, which I am still afraid of. As I have said before, motions that require me to move in one direction haven't seemed to bother my surgery. Motions that require multiple directions, such as holding back a ricocheting basenji, do tend to put stress on my stitches. Holding a chainsaw up in the air, moving it back and forth, and fighting the kickbacks and dodging the tree as the weight shifts as it twists and turns on the ground, would probably not be the wisest thing for me to do just yet. So, my solution was hook the Jeep to the tree, drag the whole darn thing up to the burning pile where it's out of sight, wait until we get enough rain to actually be able to burn the burning pile (which will be a long time) at which point I will be able to hold the chainsaw, make a few cuts and just lean large pieces against the pile. She wasn't on board with my idea, because she didn't think of it. So as we discuss which is easier, otherwise known as why we should do it her way, she happens to mention that we can't do it today because she has a doctor's appointment. BINGO!
So, while my mother in law is at her doctor's appointment, I hook my tow strap up to the tree. There is one limb buried in the ground from the fall that I will have to do something with before I hook up to it. I carefully put my weight into the tow strap, and after rocking the tree a couple of times the limb snaps and the tree lays flat on the ground, and more importantly, I don't feel any sharp pains in my side or groinal area from pulling on a tree. I then get the Jeep and pull into position. I go to put it into the very powerful Four Wheel Low. Jeep must deem this way too powerful to actually use, because first you have to put your transmission in neutral, then you have to let the Jeep roll very slowly, then grab the transfer case handle and move it down, sideways, diagonally, and down again before you actually engage Four Wheel Low (I am not making that up). I imagine corn mazes are easier to negotiate than shifting in to Four Wheel Low. I then start to back up, when the transfer case pops out of Four Wheel Low. I guess I didn't correctly navigate the maze. I again, shift, push, twist, angle, curse, shove, and pop, and now Four Wheel Low is engaged. I back down the hill to the tree, which I swear was moving, because no matter how many times I backed up, I was always about four inches from hooking up to it. I finally hook up (pray) and start up the hill. The Jeep chugs on like it's not a problem at all.
Now there is a reason Jeep makes it so hard to get into Four Wheel Low. The top speed is around twenty miles an hour in low, which isn't that fast, but you could run over the cast and audience of the View and not even notice, or pull half an apple tree without a problem. I get the tree to the burning pile and unhook. I feel good that I finally did something! I decided I will put all my gear back together later on today when I wash the Jeep. I go back to the house to cook lunch. My mother in law comes home, glad to see the tree is gone and still wonders why we didn't do the multiple cuts, multiple trips, and multiple handling of each chunk of tree that she suggested.
Feeling good that I have done so much already today, I decide to take a break before I wash the car...until it's dark. BUT, I managed to stay awake all day, and that is an improvement. And I did do some physical activity today which is also an improvement. I am getting back to myself slowly but surely. I am sure I will get the car washed tomorrow, provided the U.S. Forest Service doesn't call me asking me to pull some Sequoia's out of the ground.
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