Thursday's Thoughts

Welcome back to edema land. I hope things are less puffy where you are. Here, they are swollen in epic proportion, and not in a porn movie or photo-shopped Facebook picture kind of way.

We rounded out our Tuesday evening with some salsa making. It sounds so simple. We are going to make some salsa. And, actually it is simple, just time consuming. Tomatillos are generally the dictating ingredient. There were enough already for a double batch. Before you get all excited that you can't believe I was up for this, I have to be totally honest and say I didn't do that much. I did go out and pick the green tomatoes. Karissa chopped all the bell peppers. I cut up four cups of green tomatoes and eight cups of onions (sometimes not being able to breathe through your nose comes in handy.) Kelly did everything else except ladling. Filled the canning pot with water and jars and got it started. Got rings and lids in a bowl. All of the other prep work. The only reason I did the ladling is that conservation of mass is apparently my super power. I can eye ball it so it comes out exactly the right amount of pints with none left over almost every time. Not quite so with jam, but a little jam left over to taste test is generally a good thing anyway.

Eight pints of green salsa. I feel better about life just looking at them. As much as no one would want to do all that chopping himself, I'm pretty sure my knife skills make my family cringe. Kelly and Karina have some actual technique and end up with consistent sized pieces. Even Karissa, this being her first time being allowed to help with the cutting, made very even chunks of bell peppers. Not me. I am the mad hacker. If the pieces seem a little large, just chop them in half. It cooks down for half an hour anyway. And, if it is too chunky, it purees wonderfully with the stick blender.

The tomatoes are going gang busters, so there will be pasta sauce in our future. It is also pretty easy as I usually just cut the tomatoes up a little and throw them in the crock pot with the other ingredients to cook down. None of that tedious skinning. Again, if you think it is too chunky, it purees quite nicely. I use lemon juice to bring the acidity up for canning, just to be safe.

Wednesday is MIA DAY! Yay! It seems like it has been forever. I was pretty miserable on the way there and so hopeful she would work her magic. She ended up spending almost the entire hour on the right side of my face. My jaw was jammed up into my TMJ and the pain and swelling are pretty outrageous. The pain level was way down when it was over, and the swelling on the right was much reduced. This unfortunately accentuates how huge the left side is, but that is okay. The relief was wonderful, but sadly didn't last as long as I might have hoped. The swelling started creeping back up in the evening and by bed time I was back to hovering around miserable. A big part of the problem is that the more I hurt, the harder it is to get up and move around and do things, but the less I move around, the more I swell. Also, as I get less and less sleep, the fatigue starts to set in.

It was a very long night. There is no good way for me to lie down that doesn't aggravate something. On either side promotes swelling. On my back makes my right arm scream. I increased my water intake to help flush out the toxins, so there were multiple trips to the bathroom all night long.

Kelly's mom arrived on Wednesday as well. She has been a huge help, as always. I feel terrible because I feel like I should be helping her, not vice versa, but that isn't where we are right now. There have been several trach vacuumings in the last few days and it is always nice to have a hand to hold if Karina isn't around.

Karissa has been better. She would never be as terrible for grandma as she is for us at times. Only one outburst today, but only after she checked to see where grandma was first. She is a very different kid than Karina. Karina was never a big fan of helping around the house/yard and would rather read or watch TV. We got into a bad parenting habit of not asking her to help as often as we should have simply because it wasn't worth the arguing. Also, she is a master of a technique she learned from my father: if you do it badly enough, they will never ask you to do it again. I remember when I was in radiation in 2008 and I was so exhausted. I asked her to plant beans for me. I drew out the rows where they should go and gave her the seed packets. She was 13 and had been planting stuff her whole life. This didn't seem hard. She came in about five minutes later and said all done and handed me the empty seed packets. I anticipated a lot of thinning as I figured she had gotten done so quickly by tossing them in the rows thickly and kicking dirt over them. Um, no. She dug one hole and put ALL the seeds in it. I had about 200 bean plants in a 1 ft x 1 ft area and a huge area of nothingness. She got berated for it, but I rarely ever ask her to plant anything. Which of us learned a lesson?

Back to Karissa. She loves to help. She would rather help than read or watch TV. The key is she wants to HELP, not do it by herself. She was thrilled to cut up bell peppers. It was the greatest job ever. She helped grandma with laundry this morning without a peep of complaint. But we have been trained not to ask her to help. We need to overcome this training.

When Kelly brought in the mail and paper at Angie and Ed's, he checked the Damson plums. Not quite ready. Hopefully I'll be up for making at least one batch of plum jam.  Not like two summers ago when the trees set an obscene amount of plums. I brought home five gallon bucket after five gallon bucket. Plum jam. Plum wine. Plum vodka. Plum gin. More plum jam. Plum sauce. Plum sauce with extra ginger. Plum sauce with extra cayenne.

That was the same fall we pressed cider. All lot of sticky work, but what a fun day. Well, my idea of a fun day is spending all day pressing cider, or making jam, or a lot of other things that I'm guessing not everyone thinks of as fun, and more as chores. I hoping to be a helpful member of the cidering crew this year. We shall see.

After a long night of pain, swelling, peeing, and very little actual sleep, I dragged myself out of bed this morning. My face is enormous, especially on the left. The edema is pressing or pulling on just about everything from the chest up. I am pretty darn miserable.

Thankfully I am back at acupuncture today. He has a dentist recommendation for me, which is enormously helpful as our dentist left. He has worked with this dentist in the past, so he already spoke to him about me and the fact that I can only open my mouth about a centimeter. This is a good start.

I had needles all over me today, and two electrified. The pain level drops so dramatically when the needles are in, I swear it is like magic. Everything is still clogged up, so he is trying, as is the rest of the pit crew, to get things flowing. Getting all that fluid to drain out of my face is the key, but it is easier said than done. 56 removed nodes and 56 radiation treatments do not facilitate good lymph drainage. I have Karen tomorrow and Zachary again on Monday. I will beg/borrow/steal whatever appointment I can get with Mia next week.

I tried to take a nap this afternoon, but it was a definite no go. There is no way for me to lie that I can be comfortable. Some body part or other objects. I am so tired but cannot sleep. I finally gave up and went outside. I got the mail. I picked another cucumber, bringing the two day total to nine. I picked a handful of raspberries. I picked some cherry tomatoes and some lovely large tomatoes. A few tomatillos showed themselves, but I am sure there are more out there. There are so many cherry tomatoes that I am frankly sick of picking them. I will pick them though, because letting them go to waste is even more annoying.

The chickens have been hiding eggs from us again. Allie has found at least one hidden nest as we have caught her with unbroken eggs in her mouth. There are egg shells in one corner, but the chickens usually eat the eggs and shells too, which leads me to believe Allie is the culprit. Kelly found another auxiliary nest, but since we have no idea how long they have been out in the heat, they go straight to compost. The coop needs a cleaning. If I can get the pain to back off a skosh, I think I could handle a rake to rake it out. Some one else will have to put the clean straw in, though, as sucking wheat chaff into the trach seems unwise.

Kelly did a full trach pull and clean early today which seemed to help a lot. The huge open hole that used to be under my chin has finally closed. It had some crumbly, grainy crust on it, which the trach was grinding on. A lot of my facial pain seems to originate here, so this should improve as it continues to heal and those nerves stop swearing at me.

I am exhausted and hopeful for some sleep tonight. I am not above coming out and sleeping upright on the couch, although that would entail hauling out the humidifier and the suction and risk waking up Karissa every time I suction. I think I am going to try the Ativan tonight just to try and get some sleep. I can't heal on no sleep.

Tomorrow there is some gift shop tasks to take care with Lesley before PT. We also had planned on getting some back to school shopping done while grandma was here to help. Kelly does not particularly enjoy shopping, to say the least. There are also exercises and stretches to do, mouthwash to use (from Zachary), squares to crochet, and the never ending cherry tomatoes to pick. There is plenty to do, but I need to be functional enough to do it. If we can back the pain off, I can get there.

I'm hoping your face isn't all inflated and you are sleeping. I hope you have enough to keep you busy, but not so much to make you crazy. And I hope you laughed today, because laughter really is the best medicine.

Until tomorrow...

Love,
Kiara