Well hello

So hello. No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth although I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought I had.

This kind of hiatus strikes me every year around late summer and early fall. Normally I return after a couple of weeks. This time it’s been a couple of months.

During these times, I tend to question why I continue to write blog posts that are rarely read, and almost never commented on.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no ambition to be some wildly popular blogger whose every post generates a ton of comments. But getting next to no comments, even from a couple of family members who tell me they read my blog, yet never comment--well that’s like talking into an empty room with sound deadening properties. What’s the point? Or to paraphrase the cliche, if a blog post generates no interactions, did it even get posted?

Adding to that, Mary’s death was quickly followed by my gym closing for good. This was the gym I had just found and where I felt so comfortable and as though I would be able to achieve my fitness goals. The owners are fairly young and decided to retire early. I can’t blame them for that, not at all. But I was devastated, more than I thought I would be or even possibly should be, so much so that I cried at that loss.

And then all the losses, especially since 2017, just overwhelmed me. 

I am told all the time how strong I am, how they admire me, etc. etc. etc. Well nuts to that. 

I’m tired, I’m sad, I’m mourning what for sure is gone (like my music career from damage to my right thumb that has never resolved even after nearly 30 years), or the sense of where my potential health issues might be (which never not once included melanoma or breast cancer or osteoporosis or this fucking Meniere’s Disease--oh no, I anticipated and who knows may still get a blood cancer given that my mother has leukemia, her sister has multiple myeloma and my aunt’s identical twin sister died of acute leukemia at age 7--THAT’S what I expected).

And yes, I’m doing all the things to regenerate my joy, my contentment, my sense of peace. I write down things I’m grateful for; the journal I’m using has three spots and if I have three things, then great. But if it’s a day where there’s one or maybe even none, I’m not putting something down just to fill the line. I’m keeping it real.

Right at the most bleak time, my parish held a healing mass. I felt like I got thrown a lifeline and reader (if you’re there LOL), I went. I find the liturgy to be so comforting. The words themselves aren’t holy, but the intent is and the relief I felt at being anointed and then prayed for comforted me.

The two areas I continue to struggle with are these:

• Can I successfully train and run just one marathon? Can my body handle the load (because the mental part is not a problem) without more bones breaking?
• Meniere’s Disease. This has been a terrible few months for me, with severe vertigo pretty much every week which means I can’t walk, heck I can’t even stand up, and I throw up violently for hours (no exaggeration). In fact, I write in my gratitude list when I have just minor vertigo or go a full week without throwing up. 

Last week, I saw my regular ENT again, and asked for the referral he’s offered in the past for a more specialized ENT. I will see that doctor on November 8. In the meantime, my regular ENT prescribed Valium and a drug to stop me from throwing up. I am very, very sparing with that Valium as while I stay conscious I’m not at my sharpest. But when the world starts gyrating and spinning, you better believe I’ve taken it. I hope with all my heart this new doctor has a different solution as I really do not want to be on something like Valium. For now, though, it sure beats puking for hours while the world heaves and spins.

I'll leave you with a song that I have always loved, one that's brought me much comfort over the years.

The hardest week of my professional life

Until now, I’ve always said the hardest thing I ever had to do as a manager of people was to tell one of my 1099 employees that I had no more work for him as he’d had a psychotic break at a client site. I had to tell him that until he got help, we couldn’t send him on jobs. But that’s no longer the hardest thing I’ve gone through as a people leader (as we call it at work).

Last Saturday, I got word that a woman who worked for me had died the evening before. She hadn’t been sick, she was in reasonably good health, she just . . . died. 

People talk about work families and normally I roll my eyes hard at that idea. Work is work, family is family, and the two rarely co-exist. If they do, it can often be a highly dysfunctional and toxic work environment.

My team isn’t that way, and I take little to no credit for this. Four of them have known each other for nearly a decade; they take care of each other’s kids or house sit or go out on the weekends. Our birthday celebrations at work are full of fun, love, and affection. Take my word for it, this is an unusually tight team. So, to have Mary die like that was even more traumatic than usual. 

This past week has been a blur of emotions, tasks you just never think you’ll need to do like figuring out how to reach her mother so Benefits could talk with her, notifying everyone she’d worked with over the years, being there for my team, and also dealing with my own emotions. 

Her funeral was Thursday. She’d already been cremated so there was no casket, which was hard for some of my team as they’d hoped to actually see her to help them accept that yes, she was gone, and this wasn’t some insane prank. I think we all secretly hoped it was but of course that wasn’t the case.

On Friday my new director, Ro (who herself has only been my director for a couple of months), planned a virtual celebration of Mary as we haven’t yet returned to working in the office. We invited everyone we could think of who might want to come and share a memory of her with all of us. As part of getting to know us, Ro had asked us all to fill out a little “getting to know you” survey, and she shared what Mary had written. That virtual celebration was a good way to end an awful week. I miss Mary, I can hardly believe she’s gone.

Where I've been the last month

Two days after my mother-in-law died, I fell while on a hike with my younger son. You see, we’d had a second family trip planned this summer; this time we were going to the LA area to spend time with Ben and his family. 

Kent obviously couldn’t go as his mom was declining rapidly. As with the Memorial weekend trip, I offered (and offered a lot) to also cancel the trip to LA and be with him that week. He was clear he wanted me to go, so again I listened to what he said would be best for him and I went. 

The day I fell was the day before I was supposed to fly home. Ben and I had gone to Malibu Canyon to hike Sandstone Peak. This photo is at the start of the trail.

We took a shorter route than the one mentioned in the link, because our hike was about three miles total. It was a gorgeous day, I loved spending some time with Ben and had no problems up or down the steeper bits near the top. Nope, I fell later on the way down—hit some small loose rocks that might have well been ball bearings and down I went. This injury is called a FOOSH (falling onto outstretched hand) and can break the scaphoid or other bones. I’m lucky because my scaphoid did not break; instead I broke my wrist. I’ve got a distal radius fracture of my left wrist.

Let me tell you, it’s amazing how much you need both thumbs, even the one on your non-dominant hand. Typing, for example, was super hard especially with the first cast I had as it immobilized my thumb. I’ve been learning to do things mostly one-handed and I will be very, very glad when my wrist is healed. I go back on August 20 for the next round of x-rays, which will be about six weeks after I fell. Here’s hoping I will be cleared to get back to normal activities. 

Ardis Martin Johnson, October 3, 1936--July 2, 2021

My mother-in-law has died. 

You might recall she was diagnosed with glioblastoma (GBM), which is a very aggressive brain cancer. That was true for her as she died barely a month after her diagnosis. I'm glad it was quick and as far as we could tell, relatively painless. But I will miss her.

Two quick stories about her:

After it was clear Kent and I were a thing and headed for a long-term relationship, we were visiting her in the Tulsa area. I was going on and on about Kent, how wonderful he was, etc. etc. most likely to an obnoxious degree. She looked at me and said, “You do know he’s not perfect, right?” I cracked up and assured her that yes, I most definitely did know that but that he was darn near perfect for me.

I graduated from college at 43; Kent and I were engaged but not yet married. She hopped in her car with Kent’s aunt Judy, and they drove four hours to sit in the hot sun at Memorial Stadium in Lawrence, KS to watch me and everyone else walk across that stage to graduate. She gave me a big sweaty hug, a card and then got back in her car to drive back home. She never understood why that was such a big deal to me and was honestly puzzled when I tried to thank her.

She also loved to cook and entertain—food was part of her love language and she enjoyed having us there so she could cook for us. One of her signature dishes was crawfish étouffée and a dessert she called raspberry swirl. 

I wanted to honor that part of her so last night, I made a vegan version of the étouffée. I hunted for something that would be a good stand-in for her dessert, and found a recipe for  Raspberry Chocolate Ganache Tart which was beyond good. We toasted her memory with some champagne and enjoyed the heck out of our dinner. 

Rest in peace, Ardis Martin Johnson, you were the best mother-in-law I could have ever asked for and I’m a better woman for having known you.

And the third reason I was distracted

 First, I remain gainfully employed.

Having said that, 89 people at my company do not, and we've been reorganized like crazy. We've flattened the organization, which is corporate speak for saying people leaders have more direct reports, and there are fewer of us.

A week ago Thursday, I had to tell a couple of my direct reports that while they, too, remained gainfully employed, they were being demoted back one level and were no longer going to be people leaders. Their pay and bonus structure remains the same, but make no mistake. This wasn't a great day for them (or for me).

In my larger group, our reductions made up close to 10% of those layoffs. That's a lot.

I've been through this so many times before; I worked for Sprint from 1997 to 2006, and beginning in 2001 after the dot com bust, Sprint laid off thousands and thousands. In early 2001, we had over 100k employees and when I left, we were about half that size.

So that's the last reason I have been too distracted to post here.

A second reason for being distracted

As I mentioned in my previous post, I did go to Nashville alone. That was pretty weird; not traveling alone (I’ve done a ton of that) but visiting family without Kent. Jordan and Amanda were disappointed but also knew that Kent made the right decision.

This was intended to be a little bit longer of a visit—I left Thursday and came home fairly early Tuesday. We didn’t have anything planned for Thursday, so we spent the day catching up and letting Grace come to me in her own time. Grace remains a ridiculously happy child, very good natured and affectionate so it took no time at all before she was chattering away, calling me Nana and generally being a sweetheart. The scotch in the photo is a really nice one we gave Jordan for his 40th birthday this year and he kindly shared with me.

We did get to the zoo on Saturday but it was pretty cold so the monkeys didn’t come out (apparently Grace loves the monkeys). But the kids petting zoo had baby goats and she enjoyed that a lot.

It finally got warm on Sunday so we spent some time at a nearby park, running around and swinging. On Memorial Day, we hung out with Amanda’s dad and stepmother—her dad is known for his hospitality and had invited a bunch of people over. We enjoyed the pool, the company, the food, just all of it.

I also got in a couple of runs, which was nice. Up until then, Kansas City had just been pummeled by endless thunderstorms. Even though it was chilly in Nashville (about 50 when I ran), it was dry. 

One reason I've been so distracted

My mother-in-law lives in Tulsa, in a pretty good nursing home, University Village. She's been there about four and a half years; originally she started in an assisted living apartment but kept falling and passing out. The facility had warned us that when people finally move into a facility like this, even if they'd been living in their own home (as she had) and driving (which she did), a lot of times all the hidden health issues they've got become obvious because someone is there to see them and notice.

So long story short, she ended up crashing and never really recovered from that. She moved into Skilled nursing but didn't make progress with the physical therapy. So that was no longer an option, as her insurance wouldn't pay for the sessions without some forward progress.

But she's been if not happy, then content. She's watched her shows, sometimes a little football, she's had friends and family visiting, also her former co-workers and we'd gone done periodically (Kent more than me). 

Then the pandemic hit, and we thought "well this will be it, she'll catch the coronavirus and since she stays mostly in bed, it will make short work of her." But she didn't get it, and in fact her facility did really well staying on top of the positive cases they did get.

Last fall, she had what ended up being a stage 2 melanoma removed from her arm. She was too frail for a PET scan, the gold standard to determine if cancer is elsewhere but had an MRI. That MRI came back clear.

On May 25, Kent's birthday, University Village called and said they thought she was having a stroke and they'd sent her to the ER by ambulance. The ER doctors said she wasn't having a stroke but something was clearly going on so they ran other tests.

She has a couple of malignant brain tumors. Turns out they are glioblastoma (GBM). GBM is a grade 4 fast-growing and aggressive brain tumor. She's been rated a health risk of 6 (the highest/worst rating) and her life expectancy is probably about six months-ish.

Kent ended up going to Tulsa the day after his birthday, and did not come with me to Nashville to see our family there. He made the right choice for sure, and I would have gone with him if he needed me. But he told me to go to Nashville, that it would be OK, he would be able to see our family again. I felt guilty but I went alone.