Hattie's Web

Update

This is Alice, Marianna's daughter.  The cancer has progressed and is no longer treatable and Marianna is starting hospice care at home.  She says she is thinking of all of you.  She is comfortable at home with her family, visiting close friends and her kitty.  I will keep you all updated.

Hi. I am very unwell. Hope to be able to visit your blogs when I feel better and do a real posting but struggling right now. Thinking about all of you.

This and that

I am starting to retreat from the weird world of social media.  Cancelling Facebook was a very good idea. I have figured out a way of using Twitter so that it remains useful to me. It's loaded with garbage, but it's the best place to get up to the minute news. A fun diversion is blocking bots and Trumpsters when they show up on threads. Links to opinion pieces and articles on various topics , art works, etc. etc. keep me entertained.

But blogging is what I like best. And as I have (so often) said, this may not be the best blog, but I have the best commenters!

These past few days have been challenging. It's clear that I would not be able to live and manage on my own at this point; I would have to be in a care facility. Terry  is a saint, and he gets better all the time at caregiving  I will be able to stay at home. Our little guy,Blackie, is a source of joy. A new life is delightful to have with us, and it takes our minds off the sicko stuff to watch him gambol about, happy as only young things can be.

 

Trying to catch up

My energy level has been zilch, and for the first time in months I'm feeling mentally weary.  Maybe a bit mentally unbalanced, too.

Terry and I now have to face what's coming.  I am thinking of my life as a novel. How do I want it to end?  

But what I want to do is link to Ronni Bennett's blog, Time Goes By.  What she writes here is important.

And all of you: Thanks for being such good friends, and so understanding! I hope to offer up more cat pix and orchids in the future, but it is voggy today, and I have to stay in my air conditioned office.

A lovely day today is re-activating me. Terry and I were in a slump, and Mary came over and rescued us. She and Terry fixed steak and potatoes and green beans  and a salad. In the evening we watched Rachel Maddow and a couple of Star Trek episodes and then slept well.

We are at one of those nodal points where I have to make adjustments. I am sicker than I was, and that is visible to others and affects how they react to me. I did work things out with the dentist and got my teeth cleaned,etc. so that's good. The oncology nurse, Anne, helped with that, also seeing to it that I was able to refill my hydrocodone prescription. I never increase the amount I take and am in a stable relationship with it.

What I have to work out with the oncologist, whom I will be seeing on Monday, is how well the maintenance chemo is working and what alternative options there may be. My whole attitude would be different if I were younger and had more of a chance of a cure, so any big efforts would have to be weighed against leaving my support system here.

The other night we  went to an amusing local theater production of "Shout," a retro look at the 60s and 70s in swinging London. In the theater lobby an acquaintance grabbed me by the arm and said, WHY are you in Hilo? Why aren't you in Seattle?

She told me, as I knew, that the University of Washington has a well known cancer center. I'm not trying to block her out, but I am wondering if what was good for her, the treatment she got there that enabled her to survive a breast cancer, diagnosed in the early 90s, when she would have been in her 50s, would be of use to me, a 78 year old woman with lung cancer and heart trouble. I would  be well set up in Seattle. We own a comfortable and convenient condo in  Seattle, and both of our daughters live there, too.

So I am bringing these matters to my oncologist. He is a pessimist, and really, so am I. I am doing way better than he thought I would, but my condition bears no resemblance at all to being  well. That is never a status I will regain. So whatever life prolonging or curative measures available have got to be damn good for me to want to umdergo them.

Blackie the cat is a regular outdoor boy now. What a relief. He was tearing up the curtains, jumping all over the counter, knocking over and breaking things; now he comes in exhausted and snoozes on his platform. He has not caught any vermin yet, but we just had our house and the house next door tented, so there may be nothing to catch right now. The neighbor cat, Sayeed, got trapped in the house next door and was missing for two days. He had gone into the house right after the tent was removed, and was locked in. No damage to him, luckily.

Update: I wrote the above two days ago and have now seen the oncologist. He's taking me off the "maintenance" chemo drug, which I am not tolerating well. In particular it knocks my appetite, and I am losing weight, which is something I can't afford.  After a rest from therapy of about a month he will put me on low doses of the platinum based chemo, which has worked so effectively against the tumors. I'm also getting a CT scan to see how things are going. I won't have to travel for that.

We finally found  a good yard service! Halleluya!

And the bad guys are starting the feel the pain. That is a real moral booster!

I hope all is going well with you, my readers!

 

I've been on three different blogs where my comment doesn't post. Wonder what's going on.

We were so amused

Trump. Well, who's laughing now? I think the libertine left have a lot to answer for here. The New York mass media just loved him. He was a local joke, the son of a couple of immigrant rubes who made their money stiffing minority groups and who hung out with Russian gangsters. Patricians like Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, (who called him the short fingered vulgarian)  are furious at him, but didn't they have a lot to do with amplifying his message?  They were in media central: They normalized the kind of stuff  Trump goes in for, which sneers at and undercuts the concerns of ordinary people, most of whom, I believe,  are simple enough just to  want a nice job, a family and a home.

All the elements that go into stabilizing life for families are now under a full-on attack by this swamp creature and his enablers. Women are being vilified, submerged, impoverished and driven crazy by all the insecurity.  Holding families together has never been harder, and there is little glory in the attempt. Still, the carnival goes on. I predict a backlash, when people really understand how they have been robbed of a full life.

I was struck by this NYT article about a family under siege and how they were set up to fail. The reporting is intrusive, but this is a story that needs to be told. Everyone has let them down,

The homeless situation is getting so bad here that the tourists are starting to ask residents what is going on. Where are all the good Christian people who will take care of them? . I want to pay taxes and have trained social workers, etc. dealing with these calamitous people. But that would mean good government. I did a lot of work in my younger years in shelters, but now I have my own canoe to paddle.

What we get around here are fund raisers like the pink ribbon events for breast cancer patients.  I see a river of money flowing along, with the people at the source taking most of it. By the time it reaches the ostensible beneficiaries, it has become a trickle. But hey, people want to feel good about themselves.They get a t-shirt, some exercise,  and the chance to learn a few facts about the afflicted, such as that young people can get breast cancer. Buildings will be built. Researchers will do research. It will feel like a grand enterprise to be involved in, And in the words of several breast cancer patients I follow  on Twitter, "Where's the cure?" (Confession: I can't quite give up on Twitter yet. It is too useful for instant news.)

This is Barbara Ehrenreich on her breast cancer diagnosis.

There have been some advances in treatment since she wrote this, with targeted gene therapy, etc.

I am getting annoyed  at the reaction to cancer I see in some people and am now understanding why many with cancer choose not to talk about it. After all, I remember back to the time when there was a supposed "cancer smell"  that it was contagious and that people got cancer because they did not have the right mental attitude. There was said  to be something called the "cancer personality." (Now it's "lifestyle." You didn't eat the right things, etc.) And the treatments were horrible.. But I think it's a mistake not to talk about cancer, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Their discomfort is not nearly as bad as mine! Luckily I have familly and  close friends who know the drill having had cancer themselves or having helped with friends and family.

Oh,my cousin and aunt, who live in Napa,  are fine. I got a call from my cousin, and she said the houses across the street were evacuated, but they did not have to go. Her whole house smells like smoke.

Leaving Twitter and Facebook. No regrets. Both services have deteriorated to the point where they are useless or even pernicious. Just keeping     my blog, where I control the content.

Tough day

Chemo is whacking me with side effects;  very glad to be home with Terry being so good to me now. I'm not in pain but having to fight for bodily equilibrium. I'm on  a maintenance drug, stuff that is not supposed to be so hard on patients, and really  isn't as bad as the full on chemo, but it's hell on my digestion. And there is the coughing and shortness of breath to deal with. Well, but here I am, still reasonably functional, when I never expected to be. Plenty of things to do and look forward to, as well. I've been considering my Halloween costume  I was thinking of  putting a raisin  in my navel and going as a cookie. It really is too warm and humid in Hilo for costumery.

Everything seems to be falling apart in tandem with my own struggles. And I'm a lucky one who does not have to worry about getting treatment and can pay for it.Terry and I had to clean up our act just to cope, get rid of our illusions, and there is no guarantee that what we are doing now will carry us much farther as I c0ntinue to get sicker.

What I think is that everyone needs to revise their lives, right now! Throw out the old scripts! They don't work. Thus the sense of disintegration. This gets harder as one gets older and is wed to life stories and old habits, etc. Time to read Masha Gessin's points again.  Every one of them applies. 

I haz a sad

We have truly entered the Twilight Zone. Sister in Milpitas is OK, but they are stuck indoors due to bad air quality. Worried about my aunt and cousin who live in Napa. Not a word since 2 days ago. Calistoga totally evacuated. At first I thought it had all burned up. One of my favorite places in the world. No news I can find.

It's all so overwhelming I think I'll just post this photo of Blackie and a neighborhood cat, Sayeed, hanging out.