It's been a few weeks

A crazy few weeks.  All sorts of things going on, from work, to getting together with friends, to a rush trip to Sioux Falls to go to the doctor with mom.  Her pacemaker has needed a "tune up" to try to get her heart going stronger, so she had surgery to fix it on Wednesday.  She was supposed to go home this afternoon, but started having deep muscle spasms in her lower back, so onto a bit of morphine to control those.  And that delayed her release.  Dad went back home, and will drive back and forth until she is released--hopefully soon.  I had already sent her flowers (thanks to a snafu in the gift shop, she got double the flowers), but wanted to get her a pick me up.  So I sent her a MONKEY!  No, that is not a typo--I sent her a little stuffed monkey.  Now she can see monkeys in the hospital too.  Wonder if Dr. A can go tell her it isn't a heart transplant monkey?

Anyway, here is a little something for mom.  Thank you for making sure we always knew this.

What a Wonderful World

I LOVE Fall

I love the crisp smell in the air.  I love the sound of the drying leaves rustling as the wind blows through them.  I love the thought of baking an apple pie, or a stuffed squash.  And the fact that I got to eat turkey dinner with all the yummy things that go with it (B&G Produce roasted carrots!) for dinner--before they ran out of food just an hour after starting to serve.  What do I love most about fall?  The cooler temperatures and no humidity.  I just feel better.  And I apparently looked better, since my (she makes me say this--"favorite") aunt stopped by my office while she was in town today and she said I looked much better then the last time she saw me.  Apparently in June I looked "scary."  Hello!  I'd been sedated and had tubes shoved down my throat, stuck in a large scan tube, and had everything from my neck to navel echo tested.  And lost a ton of blood because the idiot nurse didn't know how to draw from an IV tube.  There was blood all over the side table.  Still went shopping both days though!  Some things a girl just has to do.   

And I'm very happy tonight--my Lefse 101 class is officially filled!  The class is November 3 at Faith Lutheran Church. Attendees will take home lefse, coupons for lefse equipment from Hogen's Hardware Hank, and a booklet of authentic Norwegian recipes from my very own family.  YAY!  And now it is time for bed.  Snuggled under a huge pile of blankets.  Ahhhhh.

We need a medic!

I will admit that I am slightly obsessed about my garden.  Even when I haven't felt quite up to par, or had my arm in a sling, everything got watered.  I currently have a good number of inappropriately shaped cucumbers!  Very odd.

I also have 6 tomato plants in 5 varieties. The Roma plants are producing well, and the cherry tomatoes are going crazy.  There are 41 little tomatoes on the cherry tomato plant.  Hopefully they will all start turning red.  A few are getting to be an orange-hued green,  In the wind last weekend, one of the vines (on which a tomato and several blossoms were residing) got bent and nearly broke off.  I didn't want to lose the tomato, so I decided to see if I could save the vine and the tomato.  So I wrapped it with white cotton sports wrap and taped it with white paper tape, then tied it a stake for support.  After several days, it looks fantastic!  See--pretty ingenious, right?

Now if only the frost will hold off until the tomatoes and peppers have produced enough to earn their keep in watering.  Otherwise, it's going to be just cucumbers next year, and herbs in the raised planters.  I had a dream a couple nights ago that it had snowed overnight.  Yet the snow didn't hurt the tomatoes.  And I didn't even eat anything weird before going to bed that night.  Weird!  Normally I just have pretty normal dreams, and don't even really remember them.  But every now and then there is an odd doozie.

Now out to harvest herbs before I go to work for the day.  Hoping that today goes smoothly.  Please . . . .

The Tale (or Tail) of the Monkey

Please could I have regular insomnia instead of having it tied to an event?  A year ago, I was in the immuno-suppression wing at Avera McKennan (after a $3,258 ambulance ride from Pierre under the influence of lovely quantities of morphine).  I’d had a very high fever, and my labs were totally out of whack (my MELD had jumped to 20+), and I was having bad headaches.  They called in a neurologist with the worst bedside manner ever.  I told her I wanted to see my own neurologist since he was also affiliated with Avera.  She just blurted out “oh, he died.”  Umm, thanks.  I didn’t realize that Wal-Mart did the physician training in bedside manner.

 

She sent me down for an MRI.  To the MRI lab which was closed for Labor Day weekend and only had some dim passageway lights on.  Ever seen Flatliners?  They take people to the deserted basement to do experimental medical procedures on them.  So the tech put the head-immobilizing “Jason” mask on me and handed me a thingy to squeeze if I wanted out.  She slid me into the tube.  She never said “keep your eyes closed.”  Squeezed that thingy so hard it almost exploded in my hand.  I made her take me back upstairs.  The neurologist decided to give me some kind of med that she didn’t run past the transplant surgeon first. 

 Thanks to the pharmacy not listening to me about one of my prescriptions, I had begun slipping into another encephalopathic bout.  Add freaky med.  Result equals delusions.  Dobbie (from Harry Potter) was hiding under the bed and only popped out when I got up to go to the bathroom then disappeared back under the bed.  I became agitated.  The Estonian nurse thought it might help to calm me if she spoke to me soothingly in her language.  Wrong!  She instantly became the German version of Tokyo Rose, there in the VA hospital to hurt the other veterans.  I am not a veteran, nor was I at the VA hospital of course.  I knew I had to go for help.

 

Earlier in the day, they had disconnected all the tubes and such, although the IV line was still in my arm.  So I put on my traction socks, and my robe, and stealthily (or so I thought) left my room and made a break for it.  I went down the hallway I thought the ambulance gurney had come in through.  Guessed wrong.  Nurse Ashley saw me and tried to stop me and have me sit in a chair in the hall.  “No, the bad peoples will see me!”  I kept walking.  She guided me into a conference room and tried to get me to sit at the table.  “No, they can still see me!”  So I sat on a chair in the corner, by the coat rack, huddled behind some kind of projector thing (I think).  She called the doctor to find out what he wanted to do.  The Estonian nurse came in with a pill.  “No!  She’s one of the bad peoples!”  They assured me she was not and got me to take the pill.  I would not go back to my room because Dobbie was still in there.

 

So I got to go sit at the nurses’ station in a comfy chair, looking at magazines (because reading didn’t make sense at that point), and eating cubes of red jello.  Drat Wal-Mart for discontinuing carrying the Winky sugar-free black cherry gel bites!  After a while I was tired and went back to my room.  This is the part that is still a bit fuzzy.  Somehow I became convinced that the reason they had taken me to the MRI lab (a/k/a experimental medical procedures area) was to give me a monkey liver.  I could not be talked out of this.  Even the next day, I was still convinced.  I argued with Dr. A that if they used pig valves for heart replacements, they could easily use monkey livers.  He assured me they didn’t use pig valves, and couldn’t use monkey parts, but if they could, there would be an endless supply and therefore no need for waiting lists.  I guess I finally believed that.

 

After returning home several weeks later, I was greeted by my staff giving me monkey bandanas, texting me monkey pictures (I told you I would get even James), and eating bananas at their desks.  So much love and support!  To this day, I detest monkeys.  Their looks, sounds, nasty bug-infested fur.  I have, however, decided that the classic old sock monkeys are cute.

 

A good portion of last summer has returned to my memory, although not all.  And it possibly never will.  I’m just grateful that memories from prior to that seem to have almost fully returned.  There are still occasional blank sectors on the hard drive of my brain, but I hope that’s just because it was something that I should have deleted anyway.

 

So now you have it.  The full story of the monkeys, or at least as much of it as I can recall.  Or have been told.  For now, I’m just trying to stay healthy so I can put off the transplant as long as possible.

Perfectly Peachy

Today was Bountiful Baskets pick up day.  While I did not purchase a basket, five of us did chip in on a box of peaches on a co-worker's basket ordeer.  Freestone peaches from Utah!  After dividing them up, here was my portion:

 

A little less than half a box.  A few days to ripen, and they will be delish!

The Colors of Healthy

Have you ever found yourself in the produce aisle of the supermarket, just fascinated by all the beautiful colors, shapes, and smells of fresh produce?  The overhead mister keeping everything fresh and crisp with it's fine droplets of water, which drip then off the leaves of kale or lettuce or the fronds of fresh fennel.  When everything is freshly stocked and looks like nature's rainbow of food.  Ok, not so much at Wal-Mart where it's picked over and you've never heard of some of the countries from which they purchased.  But at your local grocery store--where you're more likely to get USA-grown or local produce.  Or being the first in line to buy at the farmers' market.

I did the farmers'market this morning.  I missed last week due to the break in of my car.  But I was there today for "free large zucchini day.'  And, I may even try it, armed with inspiration from my brother's zucchini boat concept.  I figure if my ultra picky nephews eat it, there must be some merit.  But I will not bake today, as it is supposed to be 110 degrees.  Instead, I will get organized, rotate my canned good that I've started stocking up on for fall and winter cooking.  I'm a FIFO kind of gal (first in, first out) for stock rotation.  Weird, I know.  But I have to have my canned goods organized.  I attack my mom's every time I'm there since she has soup in the same row as fruit.  Horrors!

So I arranged some of the produce on Farmer Ralph's table to make a pretty picture of just how yummy produce is.  You can't see the onions, potatoes, okra, and all the squashes--but you can see a couple.  And his watermelons were on the ground.  The world's heaviest, juiciest watermelons!

 

I think those are some of the most beautiful eggplants I've ever seen.  Don't you feel healthier just looking at it?  Or at least like you should go eat some fruits and veggies?  I've got cantaloupe, pineapple (yeah, thanks Curtis for renewing my pineapple fetish), and super crisp red grapes in the refrigerator.  Later today I'll pick up a 24 pound box of Utah-grown freestone peaches we chipped in on at work.  We LOVE Bountiful Baskets!  www.bountifulbaskets.org brings a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables to communities through the power of buying cooperatives.  Everything so far has been yummy!

Finally . . . Tomatoes!

I finally have a few ripening tomatoes on the Babycakes Cherry Tomato plant.  It has zillions of green baby tomatoes on it, but until this morning I hadn't noticed any ripening.  Now they are starting to turn:

The one in the upper corner is starting to turn, and the left one if already fully orange!

All 9 of these are on one vine, like a cluster of grapes!

Little baby green bell peppers.  19 of them between the two plants.  Don't stuffed peppers sound good?  I will have to post a recipe for sodium-free stuffed peppers that were good enough to fool my office into eating them without adding unneccesary salt.

Thought I'd post some positive photos tonight, since yesterday's post was kind of a bummer one.  I'm thinking 'Salsa' sounds good.  I even have a sodium-free seasoning packet I found at Lynn's DakotaMart.  I love my DM and especially their pharmacy.  They still deliver for free!

It can only get better from here

What is on my mind? That the world's stupidest car thieves hit our parking lot last night. My car was locked but I'd left the front windows down a smidgen. Someone chose last night to go looking for what Officer Cole said was likely "money, electronics, that king of thing." HELLO! It's a 1988 Ford Taurus with more than a bit of road rust. The only things in it were scrapbooking stuff since I had planned to go to a crop last night but wasn't feeling up to it. Wound up with a very high fever, a little head haziness, and stomach spasms. Fine this morning, but was about to go ballistic on my neighbor Mary when she woke me up this morning to tell me what happened. Her can got hit, too.

So if you know of anyone whose car was broken into recently, make sure they notify the police. Officer Cole Martin was very nice (and cute).  If you park outside, make sure that your cars are locked with the windows all the way up.

This was not how I wanted to start my day after being miserable all night.  I slept for 12 hours.  100.6 fever finally broke at 2:40 this morning.  The fever wasn't the worst part--it was  the stomach spasms.  My stomach gets tight and I start arching.  Haven't done that for over a year. Not fun, but I knew they would stop if I got warm enough.  Went to bed at 7 PM and realized I had a fever.  Came out and took it and knew why I was burning up if I touched my skin.  I knew if I went to the hospital they would just shove an IV in my arm and send me  home after so I decided to skip that.  Felt totally fine when I got up about 7:30 this morning.  No traces of anything.  Temp is back at my normal 98.4.

Conrad's Clan Update

A week or so ago, I posted about Conrad's Clan, a community support group for cancer suffer Conrad Adam who will be a junior at Riggs High this year.  Here are a couple of pictures of his friends showing their support and solidarity for Conrad:

 The guys before their haircuts.

Notice anything other than the number of bald heads?  The guys all stod in the same places as the "before" shot.  Great job guys--everyone should be so lucky as to have friends like you!

Conrad's Clan

With my own health problems, I feel strongly about doing what I can to help others experiencing major health problems.  Especially if I "know" that person.  While I may not know Conrad Adam well, I do have a connection in that I once rented an apartment to Conrad's father Karl, and I now rent from Karl.  Recently Conrad was diagnosed with a form of cancer for which he must undergo 29 weeks of chemotherapy.  After 10 weeks, the tumor will be removed.  He has a long road to travel, but his wonderful friends have created Conrad's Clan.  They are selling t-shirts and wristbands.  Shirts are $15, and the wristbands are only $2.  ALL of the proceeds are being donated to the family.  Our office ordered the wristbands,  which are white with green lettering.  One side says "No One Fights  Alone" and the other says "Conrad's Clan."  They can be purchased by sending a Private Message (not a comment) to them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/#!/ConradsClan.  If you do not have Facebook, you can still order at conradsclan(at)gmail.com.  This is not a link, and the (at) should be replaced with the usual @ used in email addresses, but is not being shown that way to prevent web viruses from spamming their mailbox.

These are some seriously motivated kids helping to raise money for their friend's fight (they will be juniors this year at Riggs High).  They went so far to organize as an official non-profit agency 501(c)3.  If you are reading this, please spend the $2 to help support Conrad--a great kid from a good family who has quite a fight ahead of him.  Thanks!  And it you are interested in knowing how the organization of "Cupcakes for Conrad" is going, please leave a comment and we will update you as soon as we have approval from the family.