March 23

 Yuck.  Just yuck.  Got some gnarly stuff going on.  Not bad enough to do anything about it (like go see a doctor), but hard to ignore.

#1: My face.  On the second day of my Road Scholar trip we took a boat tour, and foolishly I didn't wear sunscreen or a hat, and sat in the front of the boat and gazed out at the water (it's been too long since I've been out on the water).  So I got a bad sun/windburn.  I know that at this age one heals more slowly, but seriously? That was 16 days ago now and I still look and feel like I've been in a blast furnace.  I'm not particularly vain about my looks, but I'm getting pretty self-conscious about this.  And it hurts, especially the skin on my throat (I woke myself up last night when I was scratching at it).  I'm now alternating between cortisone cream and aquaphor just to try to ease the pain.  I tried to take a picture - it's a bit washed out, but there's the red patches and you can see the sores at the corner of my eyes.  As I said - yuck.

The other yuck is likely left over from whatever bug I had last week.  For several days I've been trying to figure out what the heck I ate that left this gross lingering taste in my mouth.  Well, I don't think it's my mouth, but my sinuses.  Likely a bit of inflammation (but no congestion at all).  I used the neti pot - so I spent the next several hours with salt water dripping out of my nose every time I bent over, which just added to the delight.  At least it's good for my diet - it's hard to think of something you want to eat that will go well with that rancid fish smell/taste of my breath.

Did I say "yuck?"

Still did some stuff today.  A bit of easy sewing.  Big Bend TNR (Trap, Neuter, Release program for feral cats) put out a request for help.  When the cats are trapped, you want to throw a cover over the cage to help keep them calm.  The person posting said the problem was they had to be washed, and they just shredded.  Any ideas of how to stop that?  Or did anyone know how to sew a hem?

That confused me for a moment.  Mom always sewed.  In the 50's (the era of my birth) everyone sewed.  Maybe not making their own clothes, but at least doing repairs and basic stuff.  I forget that we live in a world where the majority of people don't own or know how to use a sewing machine, or even how to thread a needle.  So I've been making some cage covers (this is a picture of what she needed - mine are made of whatever fabric I have hanging around so not this fancy.

I cleaned out the chicken coop - not a glamorous job, but one that needs to be done regularly.  And I took my clippers and swing sickle and tackled some of the brush that's starting to grow now that the weather is warming up.

Yardwork, physical labor, is good for thinking.  And this is a thinking day, because it is March 23.  I wrote a lot about March 23 last year:  https://returntotheswamp.blogspot.com/2022/03/plan-c.html

That was the day that Dr. Farhadfar came in to see him.  March 25 was the absolute final day that we had been told there should be some sign of his second transplant taking (after we had been told March 11, 18, and now the 25th).  There had been nothing in that morning's bloodwork.  She said that they would give it until the next Monday (another moving of the goalpost) and then do a biopsy to determine if anything was happening.  I asked what Plan C was if nothing showed up.  She said "we will see what the biopsy shows" and nothing else.

And after she left, that's when I turned to Bob and said "I don't think there is a Plan C."

Looking back - how did I say that?  How could I sit there and basically say "well, you gonna die?"  No tears, no hysterics?  I think we were both a bit stunned and simply didn't react.  Sort of "Welp, that's it.  Gave it our best shot, nothing else to be done."  Except that we were talking about his death.

Of course, by then Bob was extremely sick and the toxins were building up and he was drifting in and out.  And, cutting myself some slack - I was pretty numb by then.  Three months of high stress, constantly interrupted sleep, and cafeteria food will do that to you.  And I couldn't afford weakness, or hysterics.

So things at the time got repressed, because that's how you survive.  And then, from a safe distance, you go back and unpack them, because that's also necessary for  survival.  Face any demons and boop them on the snoot to take away their power.  When a memory comes back - you remember it.  And react any way you like, because it's safe to react now.

One example.  When Diane was visiting, one evening she commented on how dry her skin was.  I gave her the jar of Minerin Cream, a therapeutic moisturizer, with the offhand comment of "that's what they used on Bob when his skin was falling off."

Yeow!  Had to bookmark that  comment and unpack it later.  I had casually said "when his skin was falling off" like that was a normal thing.   OK - what happened.  Chemo kills off fast growing cells - which is why your hair falls out and your mouth tissue starts sloughing (like you've bitten into too-hot cheesy pizza) and a lot of nasty other stuff happens and then your little Roomba neutrophils go running around and cleaning up all that sloughing tissue and you can start healing.  But that never happened with Bob.  Things kept dying off, including his outer layer of skin, so that when we bathed him we would just be rolling off dead skin and then trying to keep things moisturized.  At the time I just blocked it out - it was part of caring for him.  But yeah - pretty gross.  We never mentioned it.  Sort of like I would tell him to close his eyes and not look when we changed the heavy burn packs on his legs.  I really wanted to protect him as much as I could.  

And there's March 23 - survived.