Some quick bits and pieces:
Val’s feeling much better than this past weekend. She still has aches, especially in her joints, but they aren’t as bad and can be muffled by regular application of Tylenol or other pain meds.
We went to the cancer support group yesterday and probably won’t go back for a while. Everyone was very welcoming but the particular batch of people who showed up yesterday were having some tough times and it didn’t do much for our optimism. I’m looking around for an irreverent-younger-women-recently-diagnosed-and-their-partners support group. If I ever have the energy perhaps I’ll start one. It would help if all members played bluegrass instruments.
We’ve also had a couple visits with the small stable of cancer counselors on Kaiser staff, and those have proved more useful.
We are succumbing from time to time to tired grumpiness. The dog helps extract us.
This weekend we’re off for a whirlwind visit to Billings, and next week I start my new job coordinating a family literacy grant for the library. Val will do some video work tomorrow while I tell stories to tots on the last day of my current job. Now that treatments have begun and we’ve met most of the medical team, I think the pace of things may be slowing down and stretching out a bit, which I hope will allow us to follow folks’ good advice that we find some time just to relax and do things we enjoy.
Right now Val is off at an exploratory shiatsu/reiki/energy treatment, the dog is napping under my feet, the sun is shining and a talkative pair of house finches are trying earnestly to build a nest on our porch light. There is not much purchase there, but they’ve been at it off and on for at least a week, singing all the while. Or at least, to me it sounds like singing. In Finch it’s probably something like, “Fetch me some more of those tufty weeds, will you? No, the other kind – you know, by the big prickly thing. Oops, it’s slipping again! Listen, are you sure the location’s worth it?”
Deborah
Yer just bout the sweetest darn story-teller on the planet. So much love to you, and those songbird finches. From our hearts to yours, lizzy + nikki
Location, location, location. Are they called house finches because they want to live in/on your house or because they want to fill the world with silly finch houses?
Silly Finch Houses is definitely my new band name.
OK, I couldn’t resist googling “young women recently diganosed with cancer support group portland oregon” and came up with this:
http://www.planetcancer.org/html/connect.php?sec_Id=4&cat_Id=26
scroll down to find the group that meets in Portland!
what did we do before google? oh, i know, we spent less time on the computer and more time just hanging out with real people!
Sweet! Thanks, Rachel! I hadn’t found that. So far I’ve got messages out to the Hambleton Project (their web site is only displaying in Chinese for some reason) and Quest. Also looked at the LGBT Cancer Project (which is national). I’ll check these folks out.
Oh, I just realized that forgot to include bluegrass in my query! 🙂
Hi Val,Just managed to get on your web site ,I will save it .It was great to see at least your dad in the video blowing cazoo’s at the billings airport.So glad everyone had such a good time,your Mom said all 5 kids were there.
Deb is a great writer and I’ll keep posted on your road to being better.We are all praying for a speedy recovery for you,enjoy life. Hope to see you soon. Sandy