It’s Good To Be Back!

It’s Good To Be Back!

Hello!  It’s good to be back!  I’m going to add this article now as it pertains to why I was away.  So far I have given you articles that I have written throughout the months prior to figuring out how to do my blog.  The article about that adventure will come along soon!

Big Time Life Lemon

One of the worst life lemons to come at anyone is the lemon with the big old C for Cancer written in bold letters on it.  Sitting in a doctor’s office after hearing the big C news…the world stops. Doctor’s lips move but your ears don’t hear what is being said.  Everything freezes while you try to comprehend what is going on.  This must be a dream.  This can’t be happening.  The shock of hearing news like this puts the mind and body in auto pilot mode for survival.  It’s the only way I can explain how we got home…I have no memory of getting home that day.

After having met a wonderful, funny, loving man…just before our 1^st year knowing each other, we found out he has cancer.  The caring man he is, told me it wasn’t my problem to deal with, we had only known each other a year.  He didn’t want to put me through whatever lay ahead for him.

I quickly told him we would get through this together, that I would be there for him.  Luckily we have a world class cancer hospital about an hour away in the city.  The down side is this is the season of snow here and the highway drive would be way too stressful every day.  So with help from the hospital we were able to find an apartment that allowed dogs as I had to bring my old blind four pound Chihuahua…Stella with me.  My cat Snow…was staying home and being looked after by neighbours and a girlfriend.  My life savers!  So off we went on our city adventure!

Sidebar here…My Dude is doing well.  He completed seven weeks of treatment and we are home.  He is doing very well as I write this.

Needless to say I have been stomping a lot of lemons lately and trying to make the best of a bad situation.

It’s how I cope.  And writing, I did a lot of writing while waiting for chemo and radiation sessions to finish.

And I walked a lot, back and forth from hospital to the apartment on long days of treatment.  Stella needed out and thankfully we were a fifteen minute walk away from the hospital.  Groceries needed to be found and I took pics of city life on my way back and forth.

 I have to say, looking back the first few days of hospital life were uncertain and scary…where to go, what floor to be on, what would the doctors and nurses be like.  But it soon got to be routine as we just went with the flow…what else could we do.  After all it was thirty five days of treatment. Five days a week with weekends off…off for good behavior we would joke.  The Doctors and nurses were amazing! I told the nurses if I sewed, I would make them each a cape with super hero on it!

Male “Karen” Be Gone!

Oh I had an odd situation concerned Stella.  She is fourteen years old, blind for the most part.  Always used to doing her business on the grass in the yard at home.  In the city where we were, there was no grass.  What do other dogs do?  Well seems they do their business on the sidewalk.  Good Lawrd!  Stella was not about to make a mess on the sidewalk!  She kept looking up at me as if to say…”Are you kidding me, really?? On the sidewalk??!!”  Finally she gave in and apparently you can teach an old dog new tricks!

Now I had an encounter with a male “Karen” concerning Stella.  He walked past me on his way into a store and said, “I hope you plan on cleaning up after it” (With a very rude, entitled attitude!)

My reply without missing a beat, “I always do.”

His comment back, “Doesn’t look like you are”

Now he’s pissed this old broad off, my reply even quicker, “She’s only having a pee…Asshole!”

And in the store he goes without another word.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the Donkey too!!  Do guys like this enjoy verbally abusing old women and tiny dogs??  Seriously what would he have said to someone with a St. Bernard! “Hope you have a shovel in your back pocket to clean up after it?”  And that was my first experience with anyone in the city.

It’s going to be a long seven weeks! LOL

So again I take my own advice and not let him get into my head.  An asshole is an asshole and not my concern.  Time to turn my mindset toward the positive to cancel out the negative.  I need positive vibes to get through the next seven weeks.  Soon regular walker bys were saying hello to us and saying how cute my little dog was. One morning at 6 am a big burly construction worker with coffee in hand on his way to the job site, stopped to chat about Stella and tell me how cute she looked in her sweater…LOL  Negative cancelled out!

Ok…back to ways I cope.  My go to for coping is gratitude.  As we walked to the hospital in the mornings, the birds would sing.  One day I heard Robins singing!  We don’t hear Robins during the winter just an hour away.  It became my zen moment to start my day, my first gratitude moment of the day.  It was just so peaceful even with all the traffic and sirens of the city. Something so simple made all the difference to my day.  Other gratitude moments included having a short walk to the hospital, a world class hospital to go to, and most important…my Dude doing so well.

Humour For Coping

My other go to for coping is humour.  It is for both of us.  It’s one of my Dudes best qualities…he can make me laugh.  And laugh we do!  One instance comes to mind.  As we were sitting in the radiation nurses clinic, my Dude was guzzling a bag of fluid intravenously before a chemo treatment, he was watching some comedy routine on his tablet, while I wrote in my journal.  He started to giggle…trying to be quiet but not doing a very good job of it.  Then I started to giggle too just watching him. Believe me…you do not want me near you in a serious situation if I get a case of the giggles.!  Now you have to realize the space we are in…small cubicles separated only by curtains.  What sounds are made are heard by the whole large room. All sounds…if you get my drift. The other sounds coming from other patients are not helping our situation.   We try our best to contain our giggles, but it’s not happening, we both have tears running down our cheeks, still trying to be quiet.  We finally get ourselves under control at the same time the nurse comes in to unplug the intravenous.

This just makes for another round of giggles, the nurse included, as removing the tape from a hairy arm and watching my Dude jump and wiggle around is way too comical!!  Through the tears I say, “Come in for a bag of hydration and you get a free waxing! That’s a bonus!”  He ended up with a great big bare spot on his arm…lol

Well the nurse finally got her task of removal done and all three of us were wiping away giggle tears.

As we were getting our things together to leave, the elderly man in the next cubicle was getting ready to leave as well.  We said hello as we met and he stopped us to say, “I just want to say thank you for your humour.”  We were both dumb founded.  I think we stood there for a second with our mouths hanging open. 

I said, “I hope we weren’t too loud?”  He replied, “No not at all, it was good to hear laughter, especially in this place.”  Standing there looking at this elderly man, doing treatment all alone, I was brought to tears.  Something as simple as hearing someone laugh had made his day.  We wished him well, said our good byes to all the nurses and left.  Laughter and a positive attitude really is medicine for the body, mind and soul in my books…and we proved it that day.

Can I Be Of Assistance?

One last way of coping for me during our hospital adventure as we call it, was to help others when I saw the need.  I couldn’t get over all the seniors doing cancer treatments on their own.  From the man I helped as he had a ticket for the blood collection while waiting in the pharmacy pick up…I got that straightened out for him.  Explaining he needed a separate ticket to pick up his meds. To the woman with a walker that when her number was called she needed to go to the cubicle around the corner, I directed her where to go as it killed me watching her wander around looking.  My Dude asked me if I wanted to apply to work in the hospital? I replied, “If we lived closer I would!!”  The hospital volunteers were wonderful, just not enough of them.

Life Experience Wisdom

*Humor and lots of it.  If you can’t come up with your own funnies, then find some on t.v., youtube etc.    Anything, anywhere that makes you laugh.

*Gratitude and even more of that.  Find even the smallest things to be grateful for to take your mind off the bad stuff.  (I was even grateful for the pigeons in the streets.  They gave me something to watch at the stop lights to keep my mind off the cold winter wind trying to blow me over.)

*Helping Others.  If you see someone in need of assistance…assist!  The littlest things in life you do for others, can make a huge difference to them.

Well that’s it for this article, a few key moments for me to share while we were on our hospital adventure. The best way to cope is to keep stomping on those life lemons and make the best of a bad situation!  I will be back to posting articles on a regular basis.  Generally toward the end of the week.

It’s good to be back…

As always cheers til next time!

Grace

My Motto

When life throws baseball size lemons at you, that smack you upside the head, stomp on those damn things and make yourself a cocktail!