Busy Bee

My to-do list:

1.  Buy a walker now that I'm 90 years old.

By no means do I intend to offend any person advanced in age.  In contrast, I'm quite jealous and applaud your strength.  Congratulations on achieving old age.  Our commonalities are not things most people my age find routine.  Like, for example, walking slowly or riding the elevator.  Eating like a bird and doing so around 4:00.  Going to bed around 8 o'clock.  Or even 7....  alright, alright, OR even earlier sometimes.  The time we arise is probably comparable as well if you're getting up before the sun... and your alarm.  Oh, you don't have to set an alarm since you're retired?  Retirement.  Here is something we do not share, much to my dismay.  How lovely to attend appointments by the thousands, face treatment after treatment, sleep when exhausted, and rest when in pain without the constant anguish of using sick days.  How does one get money without having to work?  

2.  Figure out how to get money without having to work. 

3.  Buy tennis balls for my walker.

4.  Invent a new word for thank you.

At the risk of sounding redundant, I have a lot of people to thank.  However, I lack adequate means to accomplish this task.  "Thank you."  Ack- boring.  It's Marty McFly's fading image in the photograph he carries in Back to the Future.  I'm over it.  I need a shiny, new method of showing my gratitude!

A Turkish proverb states:  thorns and roses grow on the same bush.  This is the most accurate reflection of my current situation.  One of my bright, cheery roses is a slimmer body in a size I haven't been since before middle school!  I'm definitely not bragging.  I'd much rather be my usual shape and healthy...  but it's freaking fantastic to buy jeans in the same size as your girlfriend who you look at thinking, "Dang she's skinny."  Another colorful rose is remaining healthy looking and keeping my hair.  I'm incredibly grateful for this.  I sound shallow and frivolous but having no control over the happenings in your body where cancerous cells are rapidly dividing and obliterating your internal organs will do this to you.  I'm very often in pain or feeling discomfort so at least I can look well on the outside.  Finally, the colossal, exceptionally fragrant rose is the uncommon opportunity to find out how many people in this world love you.  Truly, I don't think people stop to realize how much love surrounds them at all times.  Presently, I know.  And I'm thankful.  __(insert new word here)__ for the cards, love, hugs, prayers, thoughts, care packages, love, chats, presents, prayer quilts, love, blog-reading, flowers, smiles, and love.

5.  Create zillions of cards with my new word for thank you.  

Become a zillionaire.  Cross off #2.

6.  Blunder into a cartoon-like situation where the zany, scientific character creates a way to enhance brain power thereby giving me the capacity to make life-altering decisions with ease.

I'm Gollum-like obsessed with the few remaining brain cells I posses.  My precious lone troopers and I are faced with some pretty harrowing decisions.  It's taken some time, major convincing AND a trip to meet with the "experts in their fields" at the University of Colorado hospital (one of the best hospitals in the nation has apparently just been sitting right under my nose this whole time.) but I'm going to go ahead with surgery.  I had hoped to be referred to Mayo or John's Hopkins.  No, I'll simply drive to Aurora, a Denver suburb not exactly known for its aesthetics and tolerance, a trip typically only reserved for passage to the airport.  During my consolation, the leading expert in all things pancreas Dr. _______ (I forgot his name), several other doctors and my surgeon, Dr. Weinfeld, will form a panel and review my case.  Since I have a wildly rare cancer, it's good to hear what everyone has to say on the matter.  The process will last the entire day so I shall don a tiara and sash reading, "Queen for the Day" and assume everyone is at my whim.

The surgery in discussion will considerably alter my life.  Surprise!  Maybe at this point I should just be used to having life-altering news flashed in my face.  My surgeon doesn't think there will be enough of my pancreas to salvage.  If there is, it won't be much and not enough for it to operate at normal capacity.  I was reverently assured you can live without a pancreas, a large hurdle for me to leap as I was convinced of the opposite.  Following this extraction, I'll be rendered diabetic.  A diabetic is a person with a pancreas that doesn't function or functions poorly.  I'll be a person without a pancreas that doesn't function.  After my pancreas checks out, I'll take over its job of providing the digestive process with insulin and enzymes.  I'm already taking enzymes every time I eat so this won't be new.  I had hoped to discontinue this practice post-cancer but I guess I'll just find new love for my little enzyme friends.  The insulin thing will be all new to me.

7.  Tackle insulin obstacle when I get there.

The surgery is tentatively being placed sometime at the beginning of November.  Dr. Weinfeld, who just recently started sporting a goatee, and I will be in the operating room for 8+ hours.  I assume he'll head home after this to watch football and eat wings on the couch while I hang at the hospital for awhile.  More to come on this as I don't know the all the details of what happens after surgery, for Weinfeld or myself.  Maybe instead of wings he'll have popcorn and watch the Voice.  Perhaps it will be a sandwich and a John Hughes movie.  I just won't know until I can investigate further.

8.  Check into Weinfeld's post-survey routine.

First up is the panel at University hospital, then figuring out time off of work, then surgery.  Baby steps.  Just like Bob.




This post is dedicated to Joseph Davis.  He lost his mother to cancer yesterday.  I write a lot of words about myself and yet I have none to give him.  In the absence of the right words, I offer these.  Jos, I love you.  I haven't stopped thinking about you since you gave me the news earlier today.  And I will not stop thinking of you.  Betsy put it best when she said you have an ability to handle things in a higher way than we do.  You do.



No comments:

Post a Comment