A new grey kitty

No, not ours

A few years ago, we had a neighborhood cat who liked to loll around on our patio, our front porch, our AC dealie which is right outside our office window. He was gorgeous, a lovely dark grey with a black nose and he had cattitude for days. One time he was lying on the AC thing, and I guess he got really curious because he reached over and banged on the office window. Wally and Eddie were NOT amused.

Today I saw this grey kitty clearly hunting something at the base of the smoke tree. It’s not the same cat, this one isn’t as long and doesn’t have the black nose. But he’s sure a hunter. 

More loss, more tears, some anger

Sara works for me; she’s a really neat woman, amazing at her job, smart etc. etc. A single mom, she’s also had her mother living with her for nearly two years because her mom was diagnosed with a form of fatty liver disease that’s genetic. So Sara may have to face this for herself someday.

Anyway, Sara’s mother went downhill slowly at first, and then as often happens with organ failure, that sped up. She originally needed a liver transplant but then her kidneys also started failing (which apparently is not at all unusual to happen). In early October, she crashed hard and honestly I didn’t think she’d make it--she was in ICU for two weeks, on a vent and on dialysis.

But she rallied enough to move to rehab and then we got great news that the VA had a donor for her for both organs. So Sara and her mom were flown to Madison WI for the surgeries.

On Thursday, October 21 she had the liver transplant. That surgery was rough, so her surgeons waited until Saturday, October 23 to transplant the kidney. And she did GREAT. The next day she was off the vent, talking with her family, making urine etc.

And then she died that afternoon. The preliminary autopsy ruled out a blood clot, which is what her medical team suspected killed her. But no. She just died.

What feels so cruel is that she came through both surgeries, she was alert etc. Sara and her sister were so excited, heck all of us who work with her were too.

Rhonda’s funeral is Wednesday at Fort Leavenworth. She was an Air Force veteran and wanted a military service. I will be there.

When the answer is not clear

I have what may be competing goals:

• Run one (just one) marathon successfully
• Break no more bones

And I’m not sure how to decide. Normally I’d run off and ask my medical care team only here’s something I’ve noticed. I’m not sure if this is age or gender bias or a lack of common ground (because 99% of my medical care team clearly aren’t as into fitness as I am), but what I’ve heard since fracturing my pelvis in 2018, then struggling with side effects from radiation that affected my fitness and then breaking my foot goes something like this:

• Why don’t you just take a long walk?
• You just run to stay fit, right? So find another workout.
• How about some yoga?

To which the answers are:

• A long walk is beyond boring. Seriously boring. I would rather put that energy into mastering riding my bike.
• I run to compete, not just to stay fit. So screw that noise.
• I already do yoga. And Crossfit. And biking. 

I do have one doctor who’s as into fitness as I am: my endocrinologist. He's an avid mountain biker, totally loves it. And that he's my endocrinologist is also good because he’s the one who keeps an eye on my bone health. So I’ve thought about emailing him through the patient portal and asking his take on this. 

Because I really, really would like to run just one marathon.

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.