Wheelchairs and Fresh Air

Doug's birthday cake

After the first surgery my little nursemaids were really pushing the pain meds on me.  To be fair, I talk a lot and it was probably the easiest way to keep my quiet while we watched movies and previously recorded TV shows.  So, for about three or four days I just sat on the couch, half in, half out of it.  On day three Dr. President came to visit and I asked him if I could quit the pain meds.  "Of course," he said somewhat surprised by me asking.  You see I didn't realize I didn't have to take them.  I could have been off them the first day home and on to ibuprofen but when Doug and the nursemaids (and I) read the bottle -Take every four hours- we thought it was a mandate not a suggestion.  That shows you how little we know about pain medication!  Anyhow, after I stopped the pain medication I felt like a whole new person!  On day four I was up and about. I started baking like it was Christmas. I made bread, cakes, cookies, custards.  I just couldn't stop myself.  Doug's birthday rolled around and I made him a giant Boston Cream Pie.  I sent pictures of it to my brothers because growing up this cake was always their favorite. I organized cabinets and drawers.  I read my scriptures and other good books. Friends dropped by often.  I watched the Food Network.  (Okay. I watched A LOT of  Food Network.) I called old friends and had lunch with others. I worked tirelessly on a now close to four hundred page family history/cookbook. I ate Cafe Rio with Dee. I went to church every week that I was able. I went to the temple. I made our family Christmas card and did crafts. Millie and Bret came to visit. We went out for sushi. Millie and I got our nails done.  Nothing extravagant, but these little things brought me so much joy.

My kids sending love from Salt Lake

I realized something during this time.  I love my little life.  I mean I have always known that I have a great life, but again, a cancer diagnosis makes you really reflect. Simple things, I discovered, bring me a lot of happiness. I am so grateful for this.   Being in my home, cooking, cleaning, organizing, doing projects,talking with friends,  reading and writing all bring me immense joy.  On top of the things I love to do, I have the greatest little brood.  I mean really, who gets as lucky as Doug and I did when they blend families?  Our kids are happy.  They are productive and are living good honest lives that we hoped they would live.  While I have been sick they look for opportunities to get together and then knowing it will make me happy, they send me photos of their gatherings.  We also have extended family members that care and are engaged in our lives. We have friends, wonderful friends, that are more like family.  I have girlfriends that are my surrogate sisters, making up for the biological sisters I never had. We have a ward that is closely bonded, having raised up our kids together, and a new stake full of old and new friends who love the Lord as we do.   I have a job I love and friends at work that are kind and good.  We have a neighborhood filled with friends who look out for each other and I even have my brother's family living right across the street.  So although that surgery was tough,  in the weeks that followed I definitely considered that I might be the luckiest girl alive!

The skin graft donor site.  OUCH!

Surgery two came and this time, healing took a bit longer.  I think my body was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hang on a minute.  I'm not quite done healing from number one and now this?"  The second surgery involved a bit more pain.  Not the mastectomy, really, it was the skin graft.  Skin grafts hurt folks.  Years ago when our friend's daughter was almost killed in a head on collision I got my first look at skin grafts.  This tough as nails little gal endured many of them during her months in the hospital. Her little body had been devastated with broken bones, injured organs and many other wounds some of which required grafts. So when Dr. President first told me I would need a graft, I remembered those Wednesdays that I would sit by her bed in the hospital reading her books to pass the time.  I remembered the sound of her wound vac and the excruciating pain she felt each time she moved if her donor site was disturbed.  Dr. President told me it was going to hurt.  He said it would feel like I fell of my bike and skinned my knee really bad..  He was right it felt like I fell of my bike, several times... landing on the same spot...over and over again. That first week I struggled to move around, I had a hard time getting comfortable on the big couch so watching the Food network and reading were a little bit more difficult for me.  The wound vac pumping making it's annoying noises on one side of me and a drain sewn into my chest on the other side kept me pretty sedentary.  Like and angel, Doug emptied that disgusting drain each morning and night measuring what was there to report to Dr. President.  My nursemaids were back taking care of me each day and yet still, I felt lousy.  Those first few days were hard. Being unable to enjoy the simple things that make me happy was very difficult.  I  made an effort to reflect  more on  all that I have been blessed with in my life.  Isn't it curious that we sometimes need a dire event to help us appreciate the  lives that we are blessed to live? Sitting on my bed one night I poured my heart out in prayer to my Father in Heaven thanking Him for all I have been given and begging His forgiveness for the times I have been less than grateful for my many blessings.   Years ago my sweet friend Gloria  shared with me about a night during which she could not sleep.  At the time she and her husband were caring for some of their grandchildren and life was hectic and unpredictable for them.  She told me that during this sleepless night she knelt and prayed, but instead of asking Father in Heaven for his help she thanked him for all the blessings in her life.  She prayed all night long and as the familiar hymn suggests, "...counting her blessings naming them one by one."  I got out of bed, adjusting my tubes and vacs, and knelt.  I tried to do the same as Gloria had done and realized I would need weeks, no months to name all the things with which I have been blessed. I could take an entire twenty four hour period and barely scratch the surface of all that Doug does to bless my life.  I prayed most of the night crawling back into bed not because I had run out of things to be grateful for, but because I was falling asleep.
I found a talk given by President Monson in the October 2010 conference.  In it he recounts the story of a Canadian boy named Gordon who learned much about gratitude..

Gordon tells how he grew up on a farm in Canada, where he and his siblings had to hurry home from school while the other children played ball and went swimming. Their father, however, had the capacity to help them understand that their work amounted to something. This was especially true after harvesttime when the family celebrated Thanksgiving, for on that day their father gave them a great gift. He took an inventory of everything they had.On Thanksgiving morning he would take them to the cellar with its barrels of apples, bins of beets, carrots packed in sand, and mountains of sacked potatoes as well as peas, corn, string beans, jellies, strawberries, and other preserves which filled their shelves. He had the children count everything carefully. Then they went out to the barn and figured how many tons of hay there were and how many bushels of grain in the granary. They counted the cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and geese. Their father said he wanted to see how they stood, but they knew he really wanted them to realize on that feast day how richly God had blessed them and had smiled upon all their hours of work. Finally, when they sat down to the feast their mother had prepared, the blessings were something they felt.Gordon indicated, however, that the Thanksgiving he remembered most thankfully was the year they seemed to have nothing for which to be grateful.The year started off well: they had leftover hay, lots of seed, four litters of pigs, and their father had a little money set aside so that someday he could afford to buy a hay loader—a wonderful machine most farmers just dreamed of owning. It was also the year that electricity came to their town—although not to them because they couldn’t afford it.One night when Gordon’s mother was doing her big wash, his father stepped in and took his turn over the washboard and asked his wife to rest and do her knitting. He said, “You spend more time doing the wash than sleeping. Do you think we should break down and get electricity?” Although elated at the prospect, she shed a tear or two as she thought of the hay loader that wouldn’t be bought.So the electrical line went up their lane that year. Although it was nothing fancy, they acquired a washing machine that worked all day by itself and brilliant lightbulbs that dangled from each ceiling. There were no more lamps to fill with oil, no more wicks to cut, no more sooty chimneys to wash. The lamps went quietly off to the attic.The coming of electricity to their farm was almost the last good thing that happened to them that year. Just as their crops were starting to come through the ground, the rains started. When the water finally receded, there wasn’t a plant left anywhere. They planted again, but more rains beat the crops into the earth. Their potatoes rotted in the mud. They sold a couple of cows and all the pigs and other livestock they had intended to keep, getting very low prices for them because everybody else had to do the same thing. All they harvested that year was a patch of turnips which had somehow weathered the storms.Then it was Thanksgiving again. Their mother said, “Maybe we’d better forget it this year. We haven’t even got a goose left.”On Thanksgiving morning, however, Gordon’s father showed up with a jackrabbit and asked his wife to cook it. Grudgingly she started the job, indicating it would take a long time to cook that tough old thing. When it was finally on the table with some of the turnips that had survived, the children refused to eat. Gordon’s mother cried, and then his father did a strange thing. He went up to the attic, got an oil lamp, took it back to the table, and lighted it. He told the children to turn out the electric lights. When there was only the lamp again, they could hardly believe that it had been that dark before. They wondered how they had ever seen anything without the bright lights made possible by electricity.The food was blessed, and everyone ate. When dinner was over, they all sat quietly. Wrote Gordon:“In the humble dimness of the old lamp we were beginning to see clearly again. …“It was a lovely meal. The jack rabbit tasted like turkey and the turnips were the mildest we could recall. …“… Our home …, for all its want, was so rich to us.”

A few days after surgery two Dee showed up at the house.  Well, wait, let me clarify. Dee came over every day, but on this day she said, Let's go for a walk.  When I think of all of the simple blessings in my life I count nightly walks with Dee as one of the choicest.  We have been doing laps together in our little neighborhood  for so long.  Our girls used to accompany us on these long walks.  Now all but Emilee, her youngest have grown and gone. When the girls come home to visit they join us as we amble around the neighborhood, meeting up at Narnia (our designated lamp post). Sometimes Todd and Doug join us, but mostly it's a girl thing.  Basically we solve all the world's problems and unravel the secrets of the universe.  For instance, did you know if you drink cold water you will get cold?(Only the Moody girls and the Mecham girls are laughing at that inside joke, I know.  Sorry, I couldn't resist) Anyhow, on this day, I was thinking how I would love to walk with her but figured with all my tubes and drains I would have to walk at a snail's pace. Not so.  Dee had dug an old wheelchair out of her attic and cleaned it up, fashioning straps for my feet where the foot rests were missing.
Since I was already grateful for Dee and her friendship  I added old wheelchairs and fresh air to the growing list of things for which I am grateful.

Wheelchairs and Fresh Air