A Grand View

Living in Fire Season in the Global Warming Years

Our house is surrounded by the Deschutes National Forest. On a map of the forest lands around us, you can see the little cutout that includes our neighborhood. Ten months out of the year this is a good thing. It’s a great thing. It’s the reason we live here. It’s beautiful here.

The Deschutes National Forest is not the kind of forest that you think of when you think “forest.” There are plenty of big, tall, straight green Ponderosa Pine, like in our yard. But there is also plenty of scrubby twisty blue-green juniper and sage - pitchy, aromatic plants. They smell terrific. Oregonians know and look forward to that smell when they head east from the Douglas Firs and deciduous trees of the valley, crest the Cascade Mountains and drive through the Ponderosas. They know the next breath is going to be full of juniper and sage. That distinctive juniper-sage aroma comes from volatile oils in their skins and woody flesh that make them, well, volatile. 

They are also well suited for this climate, where you never know when your next drink of rainwater is going to come. Junipers dig deep under the ground with their roots and suck up water at a rate of up to ten gallons a day. Sage is well built for this climate with tiny leaves so as not to waste water through transpiration. This desert sage can be an ugly plant with lots of dead limbs that it has given up on in exchange for new growth, leaving half the plant looking half spooky and lifeless. It’s all part of its plan to survive through the long, rainless months of summer here.

The blue-green in this impression of Fort Rock a couple hours east of here is sagebrush.

Unfortunately they are built to survive the summers as they used to be. Now the summers are longer and the winters are so much dryer. They just never get a chance to feast after their famine any more. So it takes only one little spark to make them burn. And burn. Of course, all the many microclimates in Oregon have been effected by these new dry winters and all of them are burning. But I turn my attention to our junipers and sages because that is what we are surrounded with. And that is what is burning a few miles from our house. 

The Grandview Fire started on Sunday. I think when I first heard about it it was only a few hundred acres but by Sunday evening it had grown to 2,000 acres. The smoke column coming off of it was impressive for such a modest fire, and the attention it was getting was also impressive for its size. The attention was due to its position close to several housing subdivisions and so close to the town of Sisters. In fact, it was so close to structures that the evacuations began on Sunday. Our neighbors only a mile or so up Indian Ford Road and Wilt Road were being asked to leave. Our neighborhood was put under a Level 1 Evacuation Level, which is call “Be Ready.” Be Ready to skedaddle. 

Get Set to Skedaddle

All of this was disconcerting I suppose. I wasn’t too worried. There seemed to be lots of space between the fire and me. There were firetrucks heading up Indian Ford Road pretty much all the time now and tanker planes full of fire retardant and tanker trucks full of water heading that way too. Those are all good signs, right? It’s fiiiiine. 

The Grandview Fire in all its photographic glory.

Drew thought about staying home from his long-planned moto/fishing excursion with his friends, but he was the only one who knew how to fish and his buddies were counting on him, so on Monday morning as it looked like they were throwing everything they had at this little fire, Drew packed up and headed across the state to bike and fish with his buddies. 

I see sage, I see juniper, I see Ponderosa. Hot.

The fire grew to 4,000 acres on Monday and I started to feel a little uneasy. They also changed our evacuation level to Level 2. There are three levels: Level 1 (Be Ready); Level 2 (Be Set); and Level 3 (Go). I’m not sure what the practical difference between Level 1 and Level 2 are. Do you pack up the valuables in Level 1 and your clothes in Level 2? Do you plan for pet care in Level 1 and decide whether to take the old, obnoxious cat in Level 2? What about house plants? I thought about losing all my artworks and, frankly, I was undisturbed about that and imagined starting from scratch. It felt pretty good. A clean slate. I checked the evacuation map and incident reporting site every hour even though I knew they only updated everything twice a day.

A guy came over to fix our fridge which has been broken since June. He didn’t fix it but he did order some parts. I had to pay for the parts. I wondered whether we would still have a refrigerator when the parts came in.

The fire grew to 5,000 acres on Tuesday. I still didn’t have anything ready or set. Nothing packed, nothing even listed as a must-have. 

Yikes.

They say critters know when the earthly poop is about to hit the earthly fan, such as an earthquake or storm. I found a frog in my kitchen, hiding in my orchid plant. Was he trying to find safety from the impending firestorm? I found an enormous 1 1/2 inch beetle on his back with a pine needle stuck in his mandibles. What does this mean? It made for a bizarre scene on my deck. Is he eating the pine needle like a stiff piece of spaghetti? Did a rival insect stab him with it? He doesn’t look particularly nimble on his back like that. I need more facts. I turned to the Facebook hive mind and found out that (a) it was a Polyphylla decemlineata (ten-lined June beetle), (b) adult June beetles in the wild will feed on needles from conifer trees, taking one long needle into their mouths and nibbling it from end to end, and (c) it’s quite difficult to type a “c” in parentheses without it turning into a copyright symbol. I don’t think the beetle was a harbinger of anything except possibly a beetle larvae infestation in a nearby tree root, but that was a long-term issue, not a fast-growing wildfire of an issue.

Oh, Polyphylla decemlineata (ten-lined June beetle), easy on that needle.

I get a new alert on my phone. There’s a “Fire Weather Warning” in effect. That sounds ominous. After reading all the all-caps warning, it appears there is a pretty hefty wind event expected on Wednesday afternoon with speeds between 10 and 20 miles per hour with gusts up to 25. Bad news for firefighters. Winds will be out of the west. Good news for me. West winds will blow the fire directly away from me. 

The fire command takes this warning seriously and doubles and triples the resources directed to this fire. They really hammer on it all Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday morning before the wind is to pick up. Then the wind picks up.

And it works! The fire lines pretty much hold tight. Drew is back home and the fire has behaved more politely. Today, Friday, the fire has the same footprint it had on Tuesday and the mopping up has begun. Of course the mop-up is hot, backbreaking work and can fail at the slightest blown ember, but let’s just say the worst is behind us. This time. 

It’s only mid-July. Fire season used to start in September. Last year the huge Oregon conflagration, wiping a million acres and several towns off the map, began in August over the Labor Day weekend. This year, our Grandview Fire, the LaPine Darlene Fire, the Umpqua area Jack Fire and the huge 200,000-acre Bootleg Fire are just some of the fires burning in Oregon in July. The worst of this fire season may be ahead of us. 

This is not a weird one-off. This is the new climate we live in. The old climate is not coming back. The only thing we can really do at this point in our ruination of the earth as we know it is slow the damage. And I use the term “the earth as we know it” because the earth does not care. The earth doesn’t need these trees. It doesn’t need ice caps. It doesn’t need rain. We do. And some other animals inhabiting this or that habitat do. But the earth will keep spinning whether humans infest its surface or not. 

So if we humans like living here, we might want to find a new way to do so that doesn’t effect the only human-sustaining atmosphere we know. We know how. It’s just that the work required does not enrich the people who have the power over our lives right now. No, not the politicians, the people with the real power - the ultra-rich corporations and corporate leaders. 

I feel like there are two ways to move toward sound climate goals: either we allow the powerful people to make the money from carbon-free energy so that they will get behind it and push, or we all have to get behind some new, better people who can and will make clean energy and push. Either way, we need to take enough power back to see that the switch is made. That’s all the wisdom I have today. 

Today, my trees are still here. My dogs are still here. My old obnoxious cat is still here. And we are still here. Just do NOT make a spark. 

It Could Have Been More

It was enough

I bought too much food, which is preferable to running out. The room was full to capacity. It was 111 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and with central air plus an additional room air conditioner it was about 80 degrees in the multipurpose room of the Bedford, Mom’s senior residence.  Cousins came. Old family friends came. Mom’s friends from the Bedford came. 

I acted as host. I didn’t have anything planned or written down. I just knew I wanted everyone to get a chance to share memories and I wanted Mom, my sister Teresa and my brother Mark to feel like they got what they were hoping to get out of this event. Mark wanted to share Dad’s biographical writings and show the photo montage he made for Mom and Dad’s 60th wedding anniversary, Teresa wanted to make it through without crying too much, Mom wanted a moment to share with her family and friends, and I wanted everyone to hear the only poem Dad wanted read at his funeral (A Logger’s Last Request by Kala Cota). I wanted to hear someone sing The Logger Song (actual name: The Frozen Logger by James Stevens). It was NOT Dad’s favorite song, but it was the song we needled him to sing to us every time we got bored on a long car trip, and so it is the song we most identify with Dad. (I ended up passing the song lyrics around and leading a sing-along. I don’t know what got into me.) 

I wanted to feel like Dad was remembered in full. I didn’t want any aspect of him to be left out - his face, his music tastes, his lists, his precise way with numbers, his forestry vocation, his aviation avocation, his tallness, his thinness, his “Trees Are America’s Renewal Resource” bumper stickers, his love and care of Velma and his family, and that smile that I felt he saved for me - the one where he crinkled his eyes and grinned like a happy face icon.

Howard K. Hopkins giving me that grin in 1982

The last time I saw that grin was over a year ago, as he lay in the hospital while the blood that had leaked into his brain was turning to poison and robbing him of everything. He died on a Friday in March 2020. On the following Monday, Oregon then Washington announced “stay at home” orders and closed schools, gatherings, and nonessential travel and businesses due to the coronavirus pandemic. Willamette National Cemetery where Dad was supposed to be interred closed all ceremonies and burials. We brought Dad’s ashes home with a case number to give the cemetery to restart his burial process after the pandemic recedes. Now one year and three months later we are here: possibly days away from a 70% vaccination rate and a full lifting of all coronavirus related restrictions. Dad’s ashes are still with Mom. She is not ready to let them go. She can keep them. But none of us were content to let his passing during a pandemic rob us of a ritual that dates back to the oldest DNA in our bones. We must gather and remember. So we did. Did I do okay? I suppose. Did I do as well as I wished? No.

I tried to write something to say before the funeral, but I didn’t feel like I could write anything of any use that I hadn’t already written in his obituary. I feel like I put it all there and had nothing left to say. However, now that his memorial is over, I feel all those bits of him bobbing to the surface and I have nowhere to lay them down. So here are a few things I want you to know:

• He loved camping and his trailers were immaculate and perfectly winterized and prepped every year.

• He hated his Parkinson’s Disease. He coped by doing his exercises every morning and pretending it wasn’t affecting him. I wish I could have spoken to him about how frightening it must have been not to be able to trust your own eyes to tell you how to navigate the world, and how it must have felt to become increasingly weak when your whole self worth was based on your strength, but he would admit to none of it.

• He wore tan chinos with something like a 36” inseam all his career as a forester and forest manager. He always looked like a cross between a forest ranger, a logger and a stork.

• He liked the music of the Sons of the Pioneers. Old school country. No, older school. He also liked to watch Hee Haw back in the 70s, even though we pitched a fit about it. He loved a good corny joke.

• He was a quick wit himself and could have claimed the title of Father of All Dad Jokes.

• Even though he was born in 1930, he was pretty adept at using a computer. He kept all kinds of spreadsheets and lists, kept in touch with distant relations, and kept up with forestry innovations and flying clubs.

• He once flew a single-engine plane from Longview, Washington down to Fairfield, California to pick up my 3-year-old son Dean and take him back to Longview for a vacation.

• He could read a tree like a book - family, genus, species, health, age, heck - their inner thoughts as far as I could tell.

• He kept a metal bucket of water beside the barbecue grill and after grilling, he would dunk all the briquets in the water to extinguish them to save them for the next grilling session.

• When I was maybe 8 or 9, I was already having deep existential, theological questions about the clear contradiction between what I learned in church about the origins of the world and what I learned in science class. Dad explained to me how the stories in the Bible were stories told to explain concepts in ways that people of that age with the technology available to them could understand. He didn’t expect me to take them as fact, but more like fables. That may not have been how the church wanted a parent to explain it, but it allowed me to sleep at night, and still allows me to understand and accept the probable origins of both the universe and the Bible.

I’m glad I told you all that. I think if I would have been able to say some of it, it might have left me with fewer regrets, but I don’t think its absence affected the event in a negative way. No one needed to hear it, I just needed to say it. So here it is. Thanks for listening.

I’m Stretchy-Pants Old

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Balm

There was a time, between when my son stopped making school art projects and this last year, when my refrigerator could have fit in a kitchen appliance ad: shiny, clean and devoid of magnetized clutter. Okay, you may have found a chip clip or national park magnet attached way back on the side, but I was aware of it and found it slightly distasteful. Now there is a giant magnetized dry-erase weekly calendar on my fridge, along with some coupons and a Doonesbury comic strip about Prevagen. 

Something has snapped.

Other clues: even when the living room is clean, there is still a tube of hand lotion and a pair of cat claw clippers on the table by my chair. There is another particularly ugly (but very effective) pump dispenser of hand lotion on the dining room sideboard, beside a large bowl of face masks. There are tissue boxes everywhere.

My house is starting to look like your grandma’s house.

The why is simple. I am Grandma Age. Sure, I noticed friends my age with grandchildren, but something in me told me that they were somehow submitting to grandma-hood, rather than the hard rock fact that time moves steadily for us all. It snuck up on me because there was no evidence of grandchildren. Grandchildren can change your household priorities fast. What once was a two-income-no-kids showplace is suddenly a toy-strewn play pen, and grandmas don’t give a rip. Understandably. But my lack of grandchildren is just a fluke of luck - neither bad nor good - that will not change with more age. What has changed with age is my concern about appearances. Just like my grandma friends, I no longer give a rip. Well, my rips are slowly fading. Or more fittingly, they are sagging.

I’m starting to look like your grandma.

My mom’s grandparents, looking like what you see when you think of the word “grandparent.”

It is easy to fool yourself for a while. You don’t NEED to look in that full length mirror every day, especially during a pandemic quarantine. You can blame the ravages of pants shrinkage for a while.  But eventually, you will meet the mirror, or the scale, or those pants, and you will be unable to hide from the truth.

The worst truth comes in the photos: what’s that wrinkly thing on my neck? Where did my chin go? How many chins do I have? So you try new photo angles until that neck thing is stretched taut, and you are holding your phone straight up above your head and pretending you are studying the most fascinating cloud formation.

I’m starting to dress like your grandma. 

I’m having problems finding pants build for women who have completely lost their waistline. Some of it is attributable to my bout with breast cancer two years ago, which resulted in some fat rearrangement and heavy-duty estrogen-removal drugs which drain me of energy and secondary sex characteristics. But most is attributable to the inexorable slowing down of my calorie needs as I age. And my sweet tooth. And my cheese tooth. And my pair of eyeteeth named Chips and Guacamole.

All this has convinced me that my lifelong poo-pooing of stretchy pants, an attitude that was certainly appropriate for a younger woman, is over. Absolutely and enthusiastically over. We have had the textillic technology to abolish buttons and zippers for decades now and yet we keep putting them in trousers. It’s not logical. I’m pulling my pants on from now on. 

Does this mean I have given up? Oh no. I exercise, I try to eat right, I floss. But it does mean that I have given up on caring what YOU think. There’s nothing to prove and no one to impress. Maybe there never was. I can see that from here.

Dipper In Transit

My vacuum lives a carefree life, tucked into its charger most days. My back does not ache from semi-daily dog brushing chores. The house feels large with lots of empty floor space. I can’t stand it anymore. 

Travel-size dog demonstrating his skills at smallness

It has been two and a half years since our last collie died. We thought a small, travel-sized dog would be sufficient to meet our dog needs, and I think it has for Drew. I was the one trolling the Facebook and Reddit Collie pages. Then I saw a dog on Cascade Collie Rescue’s page that looked just like our first Collie, Shelby, and I could not make myself stop filling out the application.

We’ve had Collies for so long, our first one came across in a covered wagon.

And now here we are. Tomorrow our new rescue Collie, Dipper, comes. We know he is two. We know he has spent the last two years training as a service dog, a career in which apparently he did okay, but has not excelled. It is clearly not his life’s work, not something that he is driven to do. He is a typical two-year-old Collie - full of energy and fun, but not particularly ready to join the workforce. So he ends up washed out of his service job and needing a new home. That’s where we come in.

Two Collies demonstrating energy, fun and their ability to make large houses seem small

We have been interviewed and our home has been inspected. We are cleared for takeoff. So tomorrow our lives change. Again. And Rocket gets a new brother. And Kenneth the Cat gets a new annoyance. Here goes nothing.

This is Dipper.

A Coronavirus Christmas

The Christmas That Wasn’t

We could have driven the eight-hour round trip to see my Mom at her retirement community. We could have gone to my sister’s house in Bend, or Dean and Jenny’s house in Vancouver. But we had had enough close calls - relatives and fellow workers who tested positive - to make it easy to decide to stay at home. Coronavirus transmission rates and COVID-19 deaths were soaring and health and government authorities were begging people not to travel in order to slow the spread of the disease. Dean and Jenny had come over the week before. Mom had been over at the same time and she couldn’t wait to get home. 

Even the animals don’t seem particularly enthused.

So it was just us. We could have made an attempt at normalcy and purchased gifts for each other and maybe filled each other’s stockings. But we just didn’t have it in us this year. We had gotten so used to buying the specific things we needed without input from the other, that in November we had just said something like, “You’re getting me this MacBook Air for Christmas,” and “You’re getting me this fishing pole,” and being grateful for the break from buying something adjacent to what they really wanted and risking a big swing and a miss.

So instead we ate Christmas: biscuits and gravy, cinnamon rolls that our neighbor had given us, cookies, fudge, then a prime rib roast, our weird old family jello recipe, and a little salad to make us feel healthy.

Here’s to 2021! (Yes, that’s the weird jello salad: cranberries, celery, nuts and little bitty cream cheese bits.)

We took a walk, made a fire, watched a Christmas movie, and called it a day.

Was it the Best Christmas Ever? Not by a long shot. Was it the worst? I don’t think so. There have been several Christmases early on where Drew had to get up early on Christmas day and go to work. I was never much of a fan of going over to the fire station on Christmas. I wasn’t really pals with the other firefighters’ wives, and 9 times out of 10, the crew would get a fire and have to leave in the middle of dinner, then we would be stuck making awkward small talk and keeping toddlers from destroying the station.

The generation has come full circle and Dean spent Christmas Day at work at the fire station. 

I think the oddness of it didn’t particularly hurt, but may cause a snap of the rubber band around Christmas next year: full houses, full stockings, lots of dumb not-quite-right gifts. Then gradually, gradually, we won’t think about the Christmas That Wasn’t when making our holiday plans, and we will do just what we like. 

Snot

Sometimes the opposite is true.

I thought maybe it was dust. I considered mold, except that when I moved to the dry side of the mountains it got worse: stuffy noses, sinus headaches, tissues and nose blows. I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t breathe. I was afraid that I was turning into the kind of boogie man I most feared: a Mouth Breather. It must be some kind of allergy.

I could have gone to the allergist, but this is 2020. If one can put off any sort of medical tweaking that doesn’t have to do with the raging pandemic, now is the time for procrastination. So I took Sudafed or Benadryl at night and blew my nose during the day. 

But coronavirus or no coronavirus, my mom’s glasses were causing her pain and I have insurance to burn so I booked a mother-and-daughter appointment at the local eye-doctor-slash-exploitative-eyeglass-seller. The eyeglass prices were ludicrous but the eye doctor seemed genuine and knowledgable. 

I got the usual news that my eyes were dry and that I should use more eye drops. Yeah, I have occasionally allowed them to get so dry that I damaged my corneas, sure, but just because I have not changed my habits when will that ever happen again? Anyway, my sinuses and nose were always running. How could my eyes be dry? She told me that, as backwards as it may seem, the runny nose is often a symptom of dry eyes, as your body makes more goo to make up for the missing eye goo. Never heard of such a thing and I’ve been going to doctors, eye and otherwise, for half a century. Is she making this up? Turns out she’s not. Eyes can be dry from lack of tears, but also from poor tear quality. If your tears don’t have enough oil in them, they will not do the job well enough and your body will just make more bad tears to make up in volume what they lack in craftsmanship.

What a concept. I really didn’t care that my eyes were dry. I always run them until the needle is past empty because I know that when the needle is on empty there is still a mile or two left in the old lenses if I just give them a good rub. But my stuffy, stuffy nose. I am up to here with my stuffy nose. If artificial tears will help, let's dump some in there and step on the accelerator.

If I could sniff for you via words on paper I would. It’s a deep, unencumbered, windy sniff. It’s been like this since I started using these little one-use (really two or three use) artificial tear vials. I have some in my purse, on my bed side table, on my desk. My headaches are lessened. My tissue use has plummeted. It has been the easiest and most immediate cure of any malady I have ever suffered. It was almost worth the eleven hundred dollar glasses I purchased on the way out of the doctor’s office.

A small badge of achievement for reading a full essay on snot. A Fall view on a Smith Rocks trail.

In Which I Leave a Trail of Closed Galleries In My Wake

My old gallery in Vancouver closed today, another victim of the pandemic. It was a bit wobbly at the best of times, as is often the case with collectives. It was a subleased space in an ancient building with a touchy alarm system, an absolutely hazardous back room toilet, and a nearly nonexistent clientele, but it was ours and we petted it and fed it and called it “Angst.”

Once run by the owner of Niche Wine Bar next door, the Mosaic Arts Alliance leased and ran Angst Gallery for the last year and a half.

It was maybe 20 feet upstream from where the average downtown shopper would turn around and head back to their car, the parking meter ticking ominously in their heads. But those who didn’t turn around at the old theater ticket booth were treated to an eclectic collection, from folk art to intricate pen-and-ink, to masterful watercolors, and sophisticated abstracts. I didn’t mind putting in my time as gallery salesperson. It was often dead quiet on weekdays. I could do some writing and get to know the works up close, something that artists can miss when they are focused on their own work. I learned something from everyone in our collective, either by observing their ways or their work. The fact that I looked forward to working there, not for the sales opportunities but for the quiet moments with the art, says something about both me and the future of the gallery.

The closing of a gallery is not unique news; it happens all the time. But we should always take note of what we are losing and hope that another outpost of heartfelt art soon pops up in its place. “Soon” is probably best contemplated with a longer perspective –not necessarily geological time but with the span of the pandemic in mind. In the meantime, don’t forget to visit your favorite online gallery. Oops, you already have. 

The artists of Mosaic Arts Alliance who ran Angst Gallery over the last year and a half will continue to make art and find imaginative ways to sell it, whether on restaurant walls or through a new online outlet.  I miss them now that I live 162 miles away. I will post news about Mosaic Arts Alliance’s online offerings when they are up and running. You will be amazed.

Now this.

A little sneak peak of a what’s on my easel this summer.

Just Add Music

I think there should be more protest dance parties.

Let me make it clear that my opinion has not been requested, nor is my opinion worth a fly on a cow pie. This is just what went through my mind as I was walking and trying to solve the world’s problems. 

Protests are necessary and welcome right now. If you just dip your toe into any of the literature that has been recently suggested to you (may I recommend watching Netflix offerings such as I Am Not Your Negro  or 13th or this pretty good overview of the Tulsa Massacre on YouTube, or reading anything by Ta-Nehisi Coates or if you want to keep it short, try this overview of the history of lynching by PBS here or just read or listen to the stories of any black man), you will understand that racism has been a part of American culture for 400 years and it continues to hurt, impoverish and endanger people of color. 

But protests occasionally result in destruction. Of course, destruction of property (1) happens when people are happy about their team winning a big game, (2) happens when people are mad that their team failed to win a big game, (3) happens often when 50,000 of your closest friends get together for any purpose ever, but it often accompanies an otherwise peaceful protest. I try not to either condone or explain away property destruction as an outlet for rage and hormones by poor young people, but others have done a pretty good job of it, and for that I thank them. But it would be better if protests did not result in destruction. I’m sure better minds than mine have wrestled with this problem with better outcomes. Or maybe nobody has considered the power of (jazz hands) DANCE.

WHAT IF protests came with a playlist of relevant and rocking music? It would give the kids something to do with their hands and feet other than destruction and give the adults somewhere to direct their thoughts. I’m thinking all those rock and roll songs that got whitewashed and covered in the 50s and 60s, all of Kendrick Lamar, This Is America by Childish Gambino, I don’t know. Help me out. You could make a playlist several days long. 

You could chant along with the song. You could boogie along with the song. 

How could cops clobber somebody while Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti is playing? I suppose you would have to be careful about how much NWA you played. But how much damage has ever been done to someone or something while listening to (Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay? And wouldn’t it be amazing to see 20,000 people coming at you down the street while doing a little hustle to Nowhere to Run by Martha Reeves & The Vandellas? Look, I’m no sound technician but I’m sure somebody could figure out the physics of the speed- and quality-of-sound issue. 

I’m just the idea guy.

Edit: while looking for helpful images, I came across this Pitchfork article that gives several examples of people using music at these protests, so my idea is not entirely new, but I still believe that municipal protest permit applications should include a music and amplifying equipment requirement.

The Coronavirus Scramble

My family’s plans got scrambled this spring – by accident, by death, and by the coronavirus. 

On December 13th, we bought a house! How exciting! It is a big, sprawling 3-level view house, looking over Indian Ford Meadow and the surrounding mountains, three miles from Sisters, Oregon, a tourist town on the edge of the Cascade Range in Central Oregon. Drew is planning to work in Vancouver one more year before retiring here. I planned to move my folks into the lower level where they would have their own apartment, and they could spend their time looking out at the pines, the mountains, and the occasional deer and wild turkey. Now for the less-great news about the house: it was built in 1977 and hadn’t felt a hammer since. We got it for a relative steal, considering the Sisters real estate market, but there was a reason we got it for cheap; it needed major work. All three bathrooms needed to be demolished and rebuilt, all the lighting needed to be replaced, the kitchen needed a complete overhaul, and Drew insisted on removing the popcorn ceilings on the lower level. We budgeted the money from the amount we saved on the house and started calling contractors. We hoped to be done and ready to move in by mid-May, and we hoped to be able to move the folks in soon after. It would be our retirement home and my folks’ new old-folks home. I was looking forward to keeping a closer eye on Dad as his Parkinson’s symptoms were steadily progressing.

Here we are in December, falling in love with this meadow by our house.

Then Dad fell in the kitchen of their retirement home on February 8th. Just the day before, his doctor had prescribed a blood thinner to counteract the effects of a bout of atrial fibrillation. Unfortunately, that same blood thinner allowed a subdural hemorrhage from a head injury sustained in the fall to run rampant in his brain. We didn’t know it at the time, but as we waited in the hospital room for all the tests and CT scans, we were talking and joking with Dad in his last fully conscious hours. Hour after hour and then day after day, the damage took hold of more and more of his brain until at the end he lost everything but pain and anger. He died on March 20. On the day we arranged to have his body cremated, Willamette National Cemetery was allowing burial parties no larger than nine people. The next day, the Cemetery had closed to all burials. The virus’s spread and the rules were changing hourly.

Let’s play a game. What’s in this March 5th photo that is not in the April 12th photo below?

Then the CORONAVIRUS SCRAMBLE. 

Drew came home from work at the fire station on March 23rd with a rigid urgency stoked by rumors spreading around the station that Oregon’s governor was going to close down all travel. That rumor was not true. Nonessential businesses were closing, but you can’t close state borders. That’s crazy. (Of course, what sounds crazy today may sound standard tomorrow.) But as the fire station saw more and more instances of untested (and poorly tested) critical breathing issues and looming protective clothing shortages, Drew was intent on getting my 88-year-old mom and me out of the city and now. 

So we bugged out like in M*A*S*H. Drew had us packed and on the road before the day’s end. So three days after her husband passed away, and without any real family or community acknowledgement of that sad fact due to coronavirus restrictions, my mom gamely let my sister and us pack her apartment and move her to a new house in a new town. Although this sounds difficult (and it was and is difficult for her), it was a better choice than staying in the retirement home where she was living, as coronavirus rules there were soon so strict that residents were not allowed out of their apartments and lukewarm meals were being delivered to their doors. Sisters also provides a less-infected population for us to move around in so there is less chance for us to bring a bit of virus home with us along with the bread and toilet paper.

Then things started closing down fast. Art shows, including the Society of Washington Artists Spring Show that I was to help run, were canceled. Galleries closed. Salons closed. My usual pixie is more like a hippie shag. And I had to let the SWA Board know that since I now live in Sisters, Oregon, I would no longer be able to serve as president. In addition, due to the lack of salons and the temporary lack of mirrors in my bathroom, my constant bad hair days would really hamper my ability to be taken seriously as a leader.

What’s missing? Contrails! No air transportation, no contrails. (No chemtrails, am I right, sheeple? Safely smell that clean air!)

All this to say goodbye to Vancouver. I hope to be back for a real, in-person goodbye, but the coronavirus has taken away our ability to even plan that. 

Our hello to Sisters is also on hold – there are no art guilds, churches or community organizations in which we can introduce ourselves during this shutdown, so we live here but it doesn’t yet feel like we LIVE here. 

As we continue to renovate the house, ordering widgets and doodads online or picking them up in masks at Home Depot and bringing them back to whittle away at a never-shrinking to-do list, we wonder what it is like to be quarantined in a house with all its parts, doing puzzles or going through our Netflix lists, or maybe working in a studio (mine is still in bits and pieces).

Not a bad backyard to moon around in after a long day’s work hammering something.

I know that our problems are dinky in relation to medical workers on the hospital front lines, putting their lives on the line to do their jobs, and addition, grocery and other retail workers, forced to touch everybody’s stuff, sometimes with a little plastic between coughers, sometimes not. They keep saying we are in this together, but it seems like everyone is living their own separate, unique COVID-19 story. We will talk about this time the rest of our lives, and everybody’s story will be wildly different. What’s your story?

In Case You Wanted to Know More about Howard K. Hopkins...

You can read this.

In Which 2020 Tells 2019 To Hold Its Beer

March 6th came and went this year without me remembering that it is the anniversary of my mastectomy and transverse rectus abdominus flap reconstruction surgery due to breast cancer. March 6th is also my dad’s birthday. This year was his 90th, so we were planning a fun get-together on Saturday the 7th. 

Ask your doctor how Eliquis can fuck you up.

The get-together was canceled, however, as Dad fainted on Friday, February 7th from an unexpected bout with atrial fibrillation. The ER doctor could not convert the A-Fib with medication alone and after several hours in the ER, had to resort to shocking his heart back to a normal rhythm. He was sent home with a brand new prescription of Eliquis, the miracle drug that you’ve been hearing about incessantly (if you watch any televised news show commercials), that is such a big improvement from that creaky old drug, warfarin (Coumadin) which is way too generic to ever hear about in commercials. The thing they tell you about Eliquis is that you do not have to have weekly blood draws to make sure that you are not taking too much. The thing they do not tell you is that if you need to suddenly NOT have Eliquis in your blood, there is only one expensive way to do it, and that way doesn’t really work, whereas warfarin can be counteracted with vitamin K. Another thing that they DO tell you is that any blood thinner is bad to have in your blood if you are prone to falls (like my Dad) because it will cause you to bleed much worse, but you must weigh the danger of a fall (bad) with another episode of atrial fibrillation or its likely result, a stroke (very bad). 

The next day, Saturday, February 8th, we were to learn what happens when a 6-foot-tall man with Parkinson’s Disease gets dizzy, falls backward and hits a wall and then the floor with his head while on a new fancy blood thinner. 

My Mom and Dad at the airport not that long ago.

He was conscious and patient with the constant standard head-injury questions while in the ER. He knew the date, knew who the president was, knew where he was. But as time went by and the bleeding in his head got worse, his consciousness faded, and his questions got fuzzier and answered with less patience. He was admitted to Trauma ICU and watched closely for several days. He got less conscious and less patient. He slept more and when he wasn’t sleeping, he often tried to get up and go home, which left him with more and more restraints and less and less patience. He was angrier awake and less patient with those trying to help.

Once the CT scans showed that the bleeding in his brain was no longer growing, he was transferred to the medical wing where he continued to sleep and complain. It was quieter here and maybe he could start his recovery.

Now that the bleeding had stopped, all we could do was wait to see if his brain, which was already dealing with Parkinson’s Disease and nearly 90 years on the planet, could heal itself after being damaged by this bloody injury. After seeing the extent of the bleeding on the series of CT scans, my hopes for a complete recovery were near zero, but there was a small chance that with enough time and therapy, he could come through it, maybe in a wheelchair, maybe even in a walker, with some home nursing help. But I knew that chance was slim; that blood had seeped deep into his brain.

Dad at one of my art shows a couple years ago

Anybody stuck in the hospital for days on end with the beeping and the poking and the BP squeezing would get grumpy, but in any other non-brain-injury circumstance, my dad would have handled such an indignity with, well, dignity. Dad is known for his quiet intelligence and humor. He would not dream of acting in a rude or childish manner and if his former self could see him as he became in the hospital, he would be mortified. The worst part is, I think, in his more conscious moments, he is mortified.

The day after Valentine’s Day, he was transferred to a rehabilitation center to get intensive physical, occupational and speech therapy as he convalesced. Unfortunately, For the last three weeks, he has done little but sleep, and the therapy that he has agreed to do has been grudging at best. He has refused most of his meals and has lost a significant amount of weight. He no longer even assisted the nurses in transferring him from bed to wheelchair. In his less lucid moments, he still tries to get up and leave, but only manages to fall in a heap. In his more lucid moments, he must not see a way out of this situation. He seems to have lost interest in trying.

After three weeks, they were unable to recommend that further therapy would improve his condition, and his insurance would no longer pay for his rehab. Mom called me, fearing that the rehab center would no longer allow Dad to stay. I made some calls and found out that he could stay as long as he liked as long as Mom was willing to pay full price. I don’t remember who I asked about hospice first – Mom or the social worker at the rehab center - but after I broached the subject, the social worker felt that hospice was an appropriate next step given Dad’s current prognosis and recent decline. 

I didn’t know much about hospice before a week ago. Now I know that it is a philosophy toward end-of-life care, a foundation, a medical status, and a Medicare program. It turns out, Medicare pays for hospice care directly, even if you have private Medicare Advantage coverage. Medicare Hospice covers all nursing care and medicines related to making a patient comfortable and as pain-free as possible, but does not cover nursing home bed costs (probably because hospice care can be given from home). So we arranged for Dad to be entered into hospice care at the rehab center and wrote them a big check so he would not have to be moved. He has a hospice nurse and better pain medication. He is being given some antipsychotic medications to deal with the visual hallucinations that have been plaguing him (an occasional symptom of Parkinson’s but quite exaggerated by the injury to the occipital lobe of his brain). 

Dad on one of my luckiest days

He was entered into hospice care on Friday, his 90th birthday. And the 1st anniversary of my mastectomy. I totally forgot.  Today I thought about it for the first time. 

I have a vicious headache that I can’t shake. I would take something I have left over from that mastectomy, but I will soon need to drive over to the rehab center, so I am powering through. Whatever my pain is, it pales in comparison to what my dad is experiencing today. He is in a nursing home, in a bed 18 inches from the floor with a mattress next to the bed to lessen the fall if he tries to get up again, with bruises on his hips, back pain, shoulder pain and a constant headache, with contracted muscles from the persistent sleep. Most of the time he is angry. Sometimes he is wistful and apologetic about the trouble he is causing. Never hungry. Always sleepy. Mom and I have spent a lot of time watching him sleep. It might matter to him that we are there. It might not. But we can’t do anything else. 

Occasionally we try to plan for the inevitable but even though we have acknowledged it simply by placing him under hospice care, it still feels a little like a betrayal, a little like we have given up too soon. We were all supposed to move to Sisters, Oregon in April. The house is being renovated right now with a walk-in shower with grab bars and easy-turn doorknobs. We were going to help Dad through this next phase of his progressive disease in a house with views of mountains and trees. But now we can not move Dad, so Mom and I will stay here in Vancouver until he passes. Even saying that seems like we are planning for our lives after we have turned our backs on his. But our Vancouver house has been rented, and our lives must move on. We just don’t know when. He is still in there, and we are pleased to see it every time his brain wakes and clears for a moment.

I don’t know if he is prepared to go. I don’t know how I can help him prepare. I think he believes in God in a rather abstract way. I’m not sure if he believes in Heaven and Hell. Certainly not a white-bearded fellow on a throne. But I hope he believes that he has lived a righteous life and that he has done more good than evil, and that if there is any sort of afterlife that it will be a blessing and not a curse. Because he has been good and done good and he deserves more than this painful last chapter. I hope he gets it.

My Right Boob - A Body Part Story in Parts. Part 11

I Survived Cancer and All I Got Was This Lousy Tummy Tuck

I had a kind of “exit interview” with a Nurse Navigator today, releasing me back into the wild after the main treatments of my breast cancer are complete. I am a Breast Cancer Survivor today, a much livelier club than the alternative one, so I am happy to join. I will be on hormone-zapping medication for at least five years, and that medication and its side effects will be monitored, but those effects are all preferable to cancer. I will also eventually have one more surgery to fix some deficiencies in the first boob-building attempt, but the insurance company is pushing back on that one, so don’t hold your breath.

I am officially a Breast Cancer Survivor. Says so right here. (Is that my hair? Falling out right on the cancer report? A. Pro. Po.)

Do I still feel sorry for myself, so much so that I went straight to the store after my appointment and bought a big bag of Peanut Butter M&Ms? Yes. My breast is unsightly. My stomach hurts upon standing, stretching, touching, and lying down. I have no energy (a common effect of both the surgery and the new medication). I can’t muster any dangs to give when someone complains about something that doesn’t or shouldn’t matter. 

Do I feel incredibly lucky, knowing that my cancer was caught early and was a sort that (after surgery) was easily treatable with hormone therapy rather than chemotherapy or radiation? Oh yes. My hair is certainly falling out, but I have another 20 years before I start to look like a dandelion seed puff blowing in the wind. I am gaining weight (see above M&Ms purchase) not losing weight from chemo tummy. My skin is not burnt from radiation (just dry and pasty from being me). 

Do I feel guilty about feeling delicate and whiny when others have a much more difficult and painful path? Yep. It messes with your head to have a sort of survivor’s guilt after beating cancer.

I try to remind myself that the pain of my experience is unequal and incomparable to that of any other. I know some people who are bedridden by what would seem to me to be the mildest of challenges and some who keep chugging uphill with a list of diagnoses, any one of which would flatten me.

Apparently, “survivorship” is a word.

I’m glad I have had friends and family to help me through this, and my son and daughter-in-law to keep me laughing, and my puppy to hug, and last and most, my husband, who has demonstrated the true meaning of unconditional and selfless love. Drew, those times when you bathed my ugly, swollen, opened, rearranged and sewn-up body, full of glued-together scars and open drains, I was so thankful for you and aware of my good fortune. I am actually and truly blessed.

Thanks for reading my therapeutic rants during this cancer eradication battle. Looks like we won this one.

My Right Boob - A Body Part Story in Parts. Part 10

Nature Doesn’t Care About My Awesome Willpower

Now you see them on Facebook. Before it was the last segment of the news that they save for the uplifting stories: a grandma running her first marathon or a kid sending a truckload of supplies to Sudan or something: stories of mind over matter. I have always been able to marshal my meager forces to accomplish my mediocre stunts, whether it be deciding my cold/flu is over and just going about my business or reaching mostly reasonable fitness goals I have set for myself. This time, my mind is pushing up against the matter of my reconstructed body and utterly failing to make a difference. 

At first, I allowed myself time to heal. I had the obvious signs of extreme unwellness: drains sticking out of my sides, big gauze pads taped to me, and a walker prescribed by a doctor because I was required to stay bent at the waist while my abdominal incision, which looked like I had been sliced open from hip to hip, bent back like a weird tummy Pez and emptied of candy, healed and grew new skin. It made it pretty easy and obvious that my best play in this situation is nothing.

Now, three and four weeks out, my drains are gone. My abdominal incision, although wildly unattractive, looks less like it could pop and spill guts if I sneezed. My new tummy-breast, although still frozen in place by inflammation so extreme my skin felt like wood, is beginning to thaw. This is all good news; however, the thaw is causing the most pain yet. The nerves, which at first had been shocked into shutting down, are beginning to wake up and freak out. The breast as it swelled on the operating table, made a lump under my arm, which is constantly brushing against the skin of my arm, whose nerves, nicked during the removal of lymph notes, caused a typical reaction (in mastectomy patients) of painfully sensitive skin. The newly transplanted breast flesh, as it is released from the immobility of inflammation, is beginning to react to gravity as I move, which jostles the newly wakened nerves, which (as noted) freak out. Now, as I am feeling better, I am feeling the most pain. It’s beyond frustrating. I just want to walk freely and the pain has me grounded.  

It has caused some bouts of ugly crying, which lead to some great pep talks by those unfortunate enough to get hit by tears, and I try to remember it won’t always be like this, that I am not alone, that whatever I am feeling is legitimate and right. But I want to be done feeling it and move on. Weeks and weeks of this is more than I was prepared for, because although I have had illnesses and surgeries before, I have never had this much surgery which did intentionally this much damage before. My body was literally carved up, pieces that had turned evil were removed, other pieces were removed to be placed elsewhere and those pieces had to be stitched back in, one blood vessel at a time, then covered back up with parts of skin from here and there. And I keep having to remind myself that this didn’t happen because I had the urge to rearrange my body one day. It happened to save my life from cancer. Without it, I would have died. Better alive and rearranged than an exquisite corpse. 

Cinderella looked good scrubbing floors. A perfectly good and healthy beauty role model.

I have fought against being perceived as vain my whole life: I don’t wear makeup, I keep short, uncolored hair, I don’t get manicures or pedicures, I don’t wear Spanx. I always felt that the appearance of the attempts to beautify oneself were just proof that one needed outside help to achieve beauty. Is this a reasonable approach to beauty or femininity? Of course not, but I was shaped by my pioneer stock family and Disney at a young age to believe that no amount of frippery is going to change who you are.  That doesn’t mean that I’m not vain. I would just rather you think I’m not vain.

Frippery can’t save ugly. We learned that from Disney.

The most unvain way to have a mastectomy would be to tell them to take it off. Unreconstructed. I am what I am. This is the new, cancer-free me. I think I would have gone that route if I would have had to have a double mastectomy. But I felt strongly against waking up off balance with just one headlight. I just couldn’t imagine walking, dancing, looking in the mirror the rest of my life with a left breast and a right emptiness. Many women do and are happy with their decision. I was not ready. Why am I rearguing my choice? Because it hurts. 

But it won’t hurt forever. And it won’t hurt after the proper amount of healing time has passed. It just hurts now and it will hurt longer than I had imagined. 

My Right Boob - A Body Part Story in Parts. Part 9

I Used to Be An Overachiever

Lately, as a “self-employed” artist, I feel that I have napped away my former title of Overachiever. Whereas Our Oncology Lab has consistently been underachieving by being late and unhelpful. Friday, mere moments away from my surgery (okay, five days away), The Lab finally released my Oncotype DX, which is not a new phone, but a crucial score that predicts cancer recurrence by grading all of one’s genetic information into a neat crystal-ball-style package.

Now, I can at least temporarily reclaim my title of overachiever by getting the clean, low score of 11. Like in golf, the low score wins. It means I have very few markers in my DNA that would lead one to think that breast cancer may crop up its crabby head again.

Although its unhelpful and unwise to try to lay blame for illness, Drew and I have mused about why I, with little genetic help, developed this cancer. There are a lot of risk factors for breast cancer, including ones that I am guilty of, such as alcohol use, being overweight, and getting old, there are also studies that show exposure to a wide range of chemicals can increase your risk of breast cancer. What sort of chemicals might I have been exposed to that might have switched a cell toward nefarious purposes? If I were a firefighter, this cancer would be considered eligible for full compensation as a work-related illness. As I am a firefighter’s wife, even though for years I was exposed to second-hand outgassing of my husband’s clothes, skin, hair and even his “turnouts,” brought home to be washed after fires, I do not have the same protections. Now, firefighters’ partners do not come into contact with such chemicals, as uniforms and turnouts are no longer even allowed in the fire station common areas after fires – they are removed and professionally cleaned – but our firefighting career started many years before the link between the chemicals coming off the smoke of a house filled with plastic and polyesters was understood. The smell of smoke was proof of accomplishment – not the proof of carcinogenic exposure that it is today. 

Still, such thoughts are unhelpful and hurtful towards the unblameable. Today, we fix it. Tomorrow, we live a life balanced as best we know how between fun and safety.

What I remember.

Pre-op “rooms” are the worst part about surgery at Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland. I remember this from my last surgery there in 2012. They are crowded and the curtains between patients are inadequate. But I suppose it’s convenient for the pre-op staff having everyone within arm’s reach. Then they gave me drugs.

What I don’t remember.

We were notified that the surgery would last eight long hours, but that the doctors would check in with Drew every two hours. Knowing now how attentive and awesome he has been as a post-surgery nurse does it bother me that he took some of that time to sneak out to the spring RV show at the Portland Expo? Maybe a little. I mean. CANCER. SURGERY. It just doesn’t fit in with how totally fantastic and helpful he has been every other moment of the ordeal. I mean. But he did bring me some awesome brochures.

Mic’ed Up.

I woke up in the Critical Care Center (the words “Intensive Care Unit” are so last week). People always tell you that you seem loopy after surgery but when I woke up in the CCC, I wouldn’t call myself so much loopy as sleepy. If you’re sleepy enough, you can sleep through the white noise that is actually the sound of venous flow through the teeny tiny microphone implanted in your own reconstructed breast. You can almost but not quite sleep through the nurse coming in every hour, spreading gel on tiny ultrasound wands, and listening to your own heart beat through the former abdominal arteries in your own new breast.

This is a prayer shawl my friend brought me from her church. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Mostly that night I watched the clock. As sleepy as I was, it was hard to continually go back to sleep after the hourly boob checks, while listening to your own venous flow which sounds like something between a baby ultrasound and a white noise machine turned up to eleven. It’s amazing how slow time goes by when you are waiting for morning. Drew will be coming back in the morning.

There’s not really any hospital food in the CCC. Most critical patients are too sick to think of something as prosaic as eating, but I was hungry by the next morning. I’m pretty sure the toast that my nurse brought me was from the toaster in the nurses’ station. It tasted good and buttery. If you meet a critical care nurse, shake their hand. They are a one-in-a-million kind of angel person.

I stayed in the CCC for about 24 hours. I was able to move to a regular oncology post-surgery room Thursday night, but I was not able to leave the hourly boob ultrasound checks behind. My new night nurse got frustrated by not being able to sneak in and perform her checks without waking me up. I don’t know what sort of patients she has had in the past who can sleep through someone poking them in the boob while they listen to a staticky noise machine.

New Normal

My new boob looks like a hard, quilted flesh brick. My nurses explain to each other at shift change that this is how it’s supposed to look. My tummy looks rather scooped out with a scar across the top of my pubic hair from hip to hip, and a scar around my belly button. It is apparent that the flesh has been cut in a football shape, some of which was used to cover skin loss from the mastectomy and the fluff of which has been borrowed to fashion into a boob, and the ends have been stretched together to cover the missing yardage. Since the skin over the belly button is now a different stretch of skin, a hole has been made and my belly button is peeking out through the new hole.

It is all very surreal, and I prefer not to gaze too long at any of it. It will all look better in time. Apparently, quite a bit of time. I am required to lie on my back only, with my bed raised at a 35 to 45-degree angle. For now, yes, but also for the next six weeks at least. When I am able to walk, I must walk with a stooped back like an old lady with a hump until my stomach skin grows back enough to allow me to stand upright without pulling out stitches. This will get old. I know because I am writing this from the future.

Pooping as A Spectator Sport

Friday, my nurse is one of those highly experienced, no-nonsense late-career nurses with which you feel instantly comfortable. Let’s call her Ann. Her CNA today is Kevin (let’s call him that). Within minutes of meeting him, I learn that he is training for an ultramarathon run which will take him to each Legacy hospital within the Portland Metro area, he has already run an ultramarathon of his own design in which he ran 140 laps around this hospital to celebrate its 140thanniversary, he moved here from Ohio with nothing and no plans, and started at the hospital as a janitor and worked his way up to CNA. The Legacy Health organization is his family, mentor, and lifeline. You couldn’t find a more dedicated, enthusiastic worker. He goes about his job as he was trained, one step at a time, exactly as he was taught. 

Opiate pain relievers have one fantastic upside – they relieve pain. The downsides are worrisome, but there is only one downside that doctors and nurses have some power over: constipation. And they tackle that one like they Really Need A Win. In the first 48 hours, I was prescribed two separate laxatives AND a suppository for good measure. Luckily, my nurses allowed me to forego the suppository IF I could prove capable of producing a poo before they started to worry.

Today it is my duty to poop. Groggy from surgery and pain medication, with a Foley catheter in place, three drains emerging from my surgical wounds and unable to use my stomach muscles or right arm, I am in no shape to have a comfortable, private poo. I feel stirrings. With the warring opiates and laxatives on board, I am worried about missing an opportunity and allowing the poo to stay and bake too long, but also worried about missing a more urgent opportunity and allowing the poo to escape when I am not ready. This requires, um, surgical precision, timing-wise. I request a chance to make an attempt. That means mobilizing Ann and Kevin, lowering the bed, helping me turn on my side and flail my legs toward the ground, then propping me up, letting the initial wooziness run its course, then helping me to walk, NOT to the bathroom (too far) but the two or three steps to a commode plopped into the middle of the room. After the mobilization of the whole team, the effort fails and I am brought back to the bed in dishonor. Don’t worry, they say, we will try again later.

A few hours later, it becomes abundantly clear what urgency really feels like, and I assemble the team for one more try. Roll over, legs over, heft my upper body up, walk one, two steps, lower the bum, and wait. The ungodly smell of pooping into a bucket makes it obvious that I have succeeded and that everyone in the room with a nose has made an enormous error career-wise. I have never felt so relieved and undignified in my entire life. Pooping into a bucket in front of two other humans who are not so hygienically challenged as yourself is an experience I wish on no one, but when you need to poop, you must play the cards you are dealt.

The flashbacks of the humiliating moment of Nurse Ann cleaning my bottom like some kind of saint while she breathes in the fumes I just produced has me occasionally wiping tears off my face for the remainder of my stay. For days afterward, every single moment that hangs with the smallest amount of pathos makes me cry. This public poop has broken my emotional reserve like nothing ever has before and I don’t know if I will ever have trouble crying at a sad movie again. The experience may have permanently moved my tear ducts closer to my eyes.

Saturday, the Occupational Therapist showed me how to use a walker to lead my nursing crew carrying IV drips and Foley bags to the bathroom and back in order to be able to poop in water. Later, she thinks I am crying because she snapped at me for bringing a washcloth I used to wipe my arm too close to my chest (arm germs too close to chest surgical site!). No, although her snappy bark was a little unprofessional, I was just trying to recover from the most recent bathroom indignity. I don’t know how much of this I have left before I spontaneously combust from embarrassment. 

I have a new set of colored pencils that turn into watercolors when you add a little water. Easy to play with in a small 5” x 8” sketch pad while lounging in a recliner, which is my job for the next few weeks.

Planning My Escape

By Saturday I am campaigning hard to be released. I have already quit taking any narcotics and have switched to Tylenol only. I have for two days insisted on spending most of the day in a chair rather than in a bed. I am doing laps in the room and asking nurses to hold my IV while I tool around the unit with my walker. I just need to convince my doctor that I can go home without undoing all his handiwork by lifting a teakettle or pulling up my own pants. Saturday goes by without any promises, but I have hope that if my chart continues to show my active, pooping, non-opiate-taking lifestyle, I can get rid of these IV lines in my hand and slip the surly bonds of this hospital ID bracelet.  

Sunday is the day. Doctor Cruise is skeptical of my choice to go fully non-opiate, worrying that the pain will raise my blood pressure, which will put an undue burden on his beautiful stitches. He gave us one last lesson (with charts and diagrams on the white board) about the (a) the lengths he went to in order to provide me with the best ab-breast, and (b) where I currently am on the risk curve that starts very high in the hours after surgery and curves down to out-of-the-woods in the weeks after (hint: I’m somewhere in the middle). He also reiterated his requirement that I must bend at the waist whenever I walk to keep the strain off my abdominal stitches – hence the walker. But in the end, he gave me his blessing and soon after the tubes started to disappear. First the Foley (good riddance), then the IV lines in my hand (what a relief). Then all that was left was to pack up our old stuff and our new stuff (my brand-new walker and tub full of wound and drain dressings) and vamoose. 

More color for the sake of color. I feel like a kid with a brand-new box of crayons.

We vamoose. Drew is thrilled. I am thrilled. I am also scared that the thing on my chest will never really look like a breast. It certainly doesn’t right now. I also don’t really trust my cat to not jump on my chest while I’m asleep, nor do I trust my pup not to do something reckless and stupid. (So far, with a few threats, they have obeyed).

Now, one week later, the drains have been removed from both wounds, but my chest is still swollen and lumpy. My doctors have all checked it this week and assured me that it is healing correctly, but I must take their word for it. Days are filled with ambitious intentions disintegrating into naps and backaches from walking around stooped.

Time stretches into space for the impatient.

Someday soon I will frolic like a greyhound again. Soon.

My Right Boob - A Body Part Story in Parts. Part 8

I’m a Variant, Not a Mutant

When the lab guys were good and ready, they released my genetic test results. Although I haven’t seen them for myself (maybe they are too blindingly scientific for the layman’s naked eye), my oncologist called me to assure me that there are no heavy-duty bad news mutations in them. There is one Variant of Unknown Significance in the ATM gene (that’s VUS, not RUS), which is less bad than a mutation in that gene. She considers it not necessarily a misspelling of the gene, but just an alternate spelling. Like Olde English or something. I am a little skeptical about just how alternate, as my wiki-reading tells me that (a) a properly functioning ATM gene is important in regulating the growth rate of cells and (b) certain mutations in the ATM gene are clinically significant in both breast (got it) and melanoma (had it) cancers. Still, the doctor says not to worry, so that’s what I’m not doing.

The Sick Room is Coming Together

Drew is adamant that my post-surgical right arm shall not be used for lifting of even the featheriest things as he is already envisioning those half-a-hair-width sutures snapping in the muscular wind caused by my flailing right arm. I didn’t quite hear the doctor say that my right arm must stay so straight-jackety, but I do what my nurse says (mostly), so we are switching sides of the bed to put me and my bedside table on the left where my good arm will be. We have also purchased a big U-shaped bolster pillow, a lap desk, and a new fluffy mattress topper. Sure, I will be in pain, but it will be really comfortable pain. 

For the next week, I will be cleaning, tidying and shopping. Today I bought $65 worth of trash cans with lids to replace the open trash cans in the bedroom, studio and laundry room as the puppy has learned what treasures they contained and could not leave them alone. Even as a youngster, our old collie would have never stuck his nose in a trash can looking for chewables. This one is a handful. Luckily for him, he looks like a teddy bear with floppy ears, so we just work around his faults. Tonight we go to puppy class to continue sanding down those edges. Drew has promised to continue the classes with him after my surgery. It will be good for them both.

Hospital check-in is 5:30am on Wednesday, March 6th. See you on the other side of the fire swamp.

My Right Boob - A Body Part Story in Parts. Part 7

Where’s My Damn DNA?

My oncologist visit on Monday was scheduled to discuss the results of my genetic testing. We thought we gave them plenty of time to swish it around, stain it colors, scan it with lasers, play it music, whatever it is they do to it to make it talk. But apparently we did not. Faced with the choice of either going ahead with our plan with the knowledge that there is a chance that the genetic test results might derail them or waiting longer for all the tests to come through, we decided to go full steam ahead with our plan of mastectomy of the right breast and simultaneous reconstruction using autologous (tummy) tissue. I am aware that if my genes reveal one of several mutations, that best practices (and thus our plan) would instead require a double mastectomy and the reconstruction could not be attempted as planned due to a lack of enough tummy fat with which to fashion two new boobs. I am banking on the relatively few incidences of breast cancer in my family, which make me think that the likelihood of genetic doom is small. Like my tummy fat.

Whatever it takes - just finish my damn DNA.

After synchronizing our plans, we spent the rest of the visit asking and answering questions. (In case you were unclear, I was asking, she was answering.) Questions like: 

Q:        Is Dr. Cruise really that way?

A:        Oh for sure, but he’s really that good.

Q:        I’ve seen a lot of post-mastectomy equipment and special jammies advertised online. Which of those things do I need? 

A:        None except a recliner, which you will need because with a crescent-moon shape of skin, fat and muscle cut from hip to hip, you will be unable to stand up or lie down straight for a while. You will have drains in your chest and belly, but you can pin them to a lanyard or shoelace. (Confession: I bought a pretty pink drain-holding apron anyway.)

Q:        Why do the MRI results use the word “enhancement” to mean “cancer”? Seems odd.

A:        Because on the MRI, the cancer cells light up like Christmas tree lights. They are “enhanced” by the contrast fluid given via IV during the procedure. She brought up my MRI scan and there were the Christmas lights. A big white glob of them.

She says she will call as soon as she hears from the genetics lab. I’m writing this on Thursday and so far, no word. 

Dr. Cruise puts on a show

So far during this journey, I have resisted allowing Drew to accompany me into doctor’s offices because (a) it’s my body and it’s a rather intimate part of it, and (b) I don’t want to have to feel the need to “act brave” or act in any other way than what is natural for me while I process the news that comes from each one of these visits. And what if I have to ask a particularly embarrassing question? Ugh. I’ve explained all this to Drew and although he would rather not only (a) be there beside me every single moment, but (b) if he could, crawl inside me and take it all on in my place, he has understood and accepted this limitation cheerfully. However, now we have a male doctor (part of the patriarchy!) and he wants to make sure the marital unit is all on the same page, so I invited Drew in to this appointment.

If you have ever wondered whether the autism spectrum is a positive rather than a negative human adaptation, may I present our Dr. Cruise. He is a walking talking poster boy of surgical success despite or perhaps because of a complete lack of human connection. He explained the specific procedure with visual aids, letting us know that the microsurgery he will be performing involves stitching blood vessels that at most are two millimeters in diameter with surgical threads one half the width of a human hair using microscopes only 10 times the power of normal sight. He reiterated the risks of failure of the procedure (failure meaning the failure of the implanted tissue to regain blood flow and thus its eventual death and removal). He likes to explain that although the failure rate is between 1 and 5%, if you are one of that 1 to 5% then it is a 100% failure rate. He answered every question by beginning the explanation in layman’s terms and finishing in medical terminology. It was as if he was trying to communicate in a foreign language but could not complete the sentence without reverting to his native tongue. 

When he had to leave the room momentarily, Drew and I would give each other “see what I mean?!” faces. He was just as I described, or maybe more.

As he continued his medical soliloquy, he mentioned in passing that the surgery was scheduled for March 6. 

Oh.

News to me, but welcome news, I guess. If it has to happen, let’s get this thing behind us. The next two weeks, I will try to wrap things up that I can do ahead of time, and trust Drew with the rest. Drew will be taking time off to nurse me back to health. 

It’s On.

It’s quite an involved operation with two operative sites. My oncology surgeon will be performing the mastectomy while Dr. Cruise performs the harvesting of my belly fat, small amount of muscle, and important blood supply from my belly. Once my oncologist completes the mastectomy and removal of a few leading lymph nodes for biopsy, Dr. Cruise will complete the breast reconstruction. The entire procedure will take up to eight hours. After the operation, I will spend the night in the post-op intensive care ward where nurses will monitor the blood flow in my FrankenBreast every hour to make sure it stays alive. The next day I will be transferred to a regular post-up room and remain for up to four more days. In these days of cycling people out of hospitals as fast as possible, that’s a heck of a long time, so you can imagine the shape that I will be in those first few days. 

After that I will be remanded to the care of Nurse Drew, who is taking his job very seriously. He is planning to take off work for a full month following my operation and will stay by my side as long as I need him. What a guy.

I didn’t sleep much last night, but soon this will be my new normal. Time to be brave. 

My Right Boob - A Body Part Story in Parts. Part 6

Dr. Male Becomes Dr. Cruise

You know that kind of surgeon that is somehow like 90% talent and 90% ego? The kind that you totally want to be doing your surgery but maybe don’t want to invite to join your bowling league? That’s our Dr. Male. And I hate pigeonholing him by gender stereotypes, but (a) I didn’t think about that before fictionally naming my last plastic surgeon “Dr. Female,” and (b) Dr. Female was so caring and willing to explain things and Dr. Male may be caring but doesn’t show it, or also may have just scheduled emotions for a two-week window in August.

Dr. Male wants me to tell him how much research I have done. He wants me to tell him if I know the degree of difficulty in this procedure and if I am prepared for the recovery period. He wants me to know that this surgery involves removing not only the fat but that fat’s blood supply from my belly and reattaching the blood supply to the vessels in my chest via microsurgery. He wants to see what he’s working with, to make sure I have enough belly fat to spare (apparently, at my weight I’m on the bottom of the bell curve). Also, he wants me to know that lately he has been doing less of these procedures because they are so time intensive and he is so busy, but that he will make an exception for me, but ONLY if I’m super-duper sure that this is what I super-duper want.

My hair may have blown back a little from the pure adrenalized yet focused Tom Cruise-level energy coming off him. If we could bottle this, we could put Red Bull out of business. A big NO for the book club, but a big YES for my surgeon. If he is willing to do this last belly-to-boob miracle, I will sign up. Especially if this is the last doctor I have to stand in front of while naked to the waist.

Dr. Cruise requires two office visits before he will book a patient for surgery. This must be a pretty standard rule for plastic surgery since buyer’s remorse is a tough thing to wear on your face. Or body. Forever. I book my second visit for next Wednesday. If I pass that one, my doctors will finally consent to synchronize their calendars and get me a surgery date.

Next Monday I meet with my oncologist to talk DNA. Stay tuned.

My Right Boob - A Body Part Story in Parts. Part 5

What Kind of Breasts Do You Want?

My oncology surgeon just does the breast deconstruction. I need another surgeon to do the breast reconstruction. She gave me two referrals: one who is (1) male, (2) in Portland, (3) very experienced, and (4) busy, or one who is (1) female, (2) in Vancouver, (3) is not as experienced but fresh out of a fellowship back east and knows all the hip new tricks, and (4) probably more easily booked. I chose to start with the Vancouver female. 

January 31, 2019.  Dr. Female started by saying, “So you’ve chosen to have an implant reconstruction.” I didn’t know I had chosen that. I knew that there were two basic reconstruction options. One was getting the mastectomy, waiting for some healing to take place, then pushing the newly sewn-up skin to grow enough to fit an implant by slowly inflating a balloon-type insert under the skin for a few weeks, then having a final surgery where the implant is, well, implanted. A second reconstruction method involved harvesting fat and skin from one’s belly and moving them into the chest area and fashioning it into a breast of sorts. It is known as “flap” surgery because they consider it a “flap” of skin and tissue. Gross. Let’s not even go into nipple reconstruction. That’s a whole other thing. This is making me exhausted and a little woozy. 

It turns out that implant surgery is the only thing Dr. Female does. She did give me some good advice on the pros and cons of each type. Even though she does not perform the “flap” type of surgery, she told me that although it is considered a much longer and more complicated surgery and requires a longer hospital stay, the final results can appear and feel more natural, as they are your own tissue. And as the “flap” is autologous tissue, you do not have the risk of your body reacting badly to the alien implant and producing the hard scar tissue that sometimes happens in implant surgery. Of course the ideal candidate will have some belly fat to spare, but that just means you end up with a little tummy tuck in the bargain. The advantages to implant surgery are that the surgeries are less complicated and you can choose your new “look.” If you are interested in coming out of this business with more or less headlight wattage than when you started (or, if you just don’t have the belly or butt fat to spare), implants are the way to go. She can give you a nice big implant and make the other boob match. She made some measurements and took some photos of my chest (still quite rainbow colored).

Smile.

If I had had my choice of boob styles twenty years ago, I might have gone for some real head-turners, but now, on the downhill side of my 50s, I didn’t need more. I might even be happier with less. I like the idea of less belly and no implants. That means I would have to say goodbye to Dr. Female and start over with the Portland guy. This is hard and uncomfortable, but it would be ridiculous to get a second-choice surgery just because it was easier not to go to more doctor’s appointments. Although I admit that I did consider it.

This Is Not Dignified

Later That Same Day.  Next stop: the MRI machine. If you are wondering how to get good images of boobs in an MRI machine – after all, aren’t boobs going to nestle squishily on top of one’s chest as one lies on the table? Then you’re not thinking outside the box, er, tube. What if we have the ladies lay on their stomach and let their boobs hang down in, like, boob holes? You’re a genius, Steve!

The Venus of Willendorf - what we think about hasn’t changed in 50,000 years. Nice look, but I’ll stick with something more practical.

The MRI experience was unremarkable save for the part where I had to mount the rack on my hands and knees and lower my boobs down into the square holes on either side of a one-inch bar on which I was to rest my sternum. There was no dignified way to make that move. My lame jokes fell flat (so to speak) in the room. Check that off my list.

The next day I arranged to meet a new doctor. This is the busy one so I have to make an appointment a week and a half away. Ah, well. I’m in no hurry to lose a body part and have a facsimile made out of spare parts. I just don’t want friends to keep seeing me around and finally say, “Weren’t you supposed to have breast cancer?...”

More to come after tomorrow’s doctor visit…

My Right Boob - A Body Part Story in Parts. Part 4

Hurry Up and Wait.

January 28, 2019.  On my second visit to my new favorite oncologist, we talk about how DNA can snap one day and start duplicating malformed versions of itself (i.e. cancer cells), and how some of our genetic codes have little flaws that make it easier for such mistakes to happen. She listed a bunch of known gene mutations such as BRCA1 and BRCA2 and the implications for me if my tests come back positive. In some cases, such as the BRCA gene mutations, it means that the incidence for subsequent cancers go up high enough that it makes sense to change my surgery to a full bilateral mastectomy. That is why it is important to get the genetic testing done before I’m wheeled in to surgery. Such DNA doom is a long shot for me, but worth doing the work and waiting the three weeks it takes to get the test results back to rule it out. So they give me a test tube with a “fill to this line” marker about ½ inch up. Sounds easy enough until you start trying to make like 50 ccs of spit on cue (well it seemed like 50). I spit into the test tube for like 20 minutes. Luckily, the nurse leaves me to spit alone, as this is the weirdest thing I have done all day. 

While I’m there they get the test results of the hormone markers in my biopsy sample. Ninety percent of the cells had estrogen receptors and thirty percent had progesterone receptors. This is good news for post-surgery care. In the absence of any evidence of the cancer spreading to lymph nodes, or some scary genetic findings, I will be able to skip chemo. 

Later this day, I decide to take my oncologist’s advice and get the news out there about my cancer in one big announcement. She suggested this method as opposed to telling people one-on-one and having to weather each shocked and saddened sentiment and each long, heartfelt hug, as this can be exhausting and much more damaging than one Band-Aid rip. I make the following announcement on Facebook:

FRIENDS: After some agonizingly long waits between each test result reveal, I can confirm that I have breast cancer. I’m definitely going to lose a boob but it could be worse. Although further testing and/or post-surgical biopsies may change the outlook, it appears that I may be able to skip the chemo part of the festivities and just take hormone blocking medication instead. I don’t share this with you to gather sympathy or prayers but rather to keep you, my most treasured friends and family, in the know if I need extra time or lack my usual panache in the next month or two. My doctor suggested that I tell my friends and family in large, impersonal ways to save myself the trauma of each face-to-face reveal and each subsequent emotional reaction, which can be draining rather than strengthening for certain types of people (me). This darn thing will slow me but not stop me so don’t stop needing me and asking for my help and I won’t stop needing you and asking for yours. HUGS - Janice

I get lots of heartfelt cyber hugs and pledges of help. That’s really nice and I feel like people sure are nice. And there’s nothing like the word “cancer” to put the fear of, well, death into people. But I feel like I should hurry up and get on with my surgery or something – start looking sick now that I’ve made such a big announcement out of it. But with the slow speed of genetic testing and consulting with reconstructive surgeons, the looking-sick part of this cancer will have to wait.

Stay tuned for more exciting surgical visits and tests to come! On the next episode of My Right Boob!

My Right Boob - A Body Part Story in Parts. Part 3

In the system

January 23, 2019.  My new oncology surgeon is a pro at making her patients feel safe and calm and at explaining the basics of breast cancer types. For instance, I learned that although the word “invasive” sounds bad in the diagnosis Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, it just means the cancer cells that have probably been living happily in my milk ducts for some time have now “invaded” the tissue outside the ducts, producing this lump. I learned that how we treat the cancer depends on the genetic markers found in the biopsy sample. Unfortunately, at the time of my appointment, the genetic marker testing of my sample had not been completed. Her hunch, though, is that my tumor (My Tumor) is one of a couple hormone-receptor types that feed on estrogen or progesterone, which means that chemo can be replaced with a simple hormone blocking drug that I will take for the rest of my life. The bad news is that the breast has to go. The calcifications that I saw on the mammogram are markers of cancer in the ducts and they are all over a good quarter of my breast. My nipple is a goner too, owing to the fact that the main cancerous mass is located directly behind it. I have an appointment with a plastic surgeon the following week to talk about reconstruction options. Hoo boy.

I also got a visit with someone with the professional title of Nurse Navigator. My nurse navigator can help me find resources that may be helpful to me such as insurance assistance, classes, mentoring, what-have-you. That’s really nice. I’ll bet some patients really need a resource like this. I don’t feel like I do. I kind of wish they would use some of the nurse navigator money to hire more lab techs in oncology.