Month: August 2023

19 August 2023

No leakage, 1.5 miles, a clean house, clean laundry and homemade Mac and cheese. It’s been a good day!

Last week I got a craving for Mac and cheese. No idea why. I have on hand, for emergencies, the “add water” dehydrated stuff but I wanted to make the real thing. If it tastes the way I think, I’ll freeze what I don’t eat tonight and have it available for days I don’t feel like cooking.

I didn’t wear a bandage or bandaid last night over the drain incision. It apparently has sealed up nicely and I didn’t get any stains on the sheets. I got plenty of sleep but incision did wake me up around 5 am with an itching/burning sensation. That kept up until midday. I suspect it’s part of the healing process since it is neither red nor inflamed.

I continue to peel away some type of plastic film from the mastectomy incision. I may be shedding that stuff for quite a while. As it comes off, there’s less of that pulling sensation which gives me greater comfort. For the first time since the surgery, I was able to sleep on my left side for a bit.

Another day of high 70’s as I began my walk. Not sure why we are getting these “low” temperatures in August but no complaints. Of course the humidity was 96%. After so long of not walking, it’s interesting to see the changes along the neighborhood streets. There’s one house under new construction along today’s route and its been a slow go. Today I noticed they had installed impact windows. After Andrew, the South Florida building code requires all new construction and any renovations to have impact windows installed. Several years ago, I had them installed for noise abatement and for energy efficiency. They are worth the expense!

Cleaning house is always a challenge but more so since the surgery. I notice when I reach up overhead or reach downward, my left arm feels the strain. I’m sure it’ll get better but I suspect I’ll always have a twinge in that arm now. I certainly do with the right arm where I had the biceps surgery. It’s amazing how physical cleaning can be. You use muscles you don’t think about until there’s a strain.

Wash day is wash day. It’s boring. I think that’s why I decided to do the Mac and cheese today – to give me something to do between loads in the washer and dryer. So far, both washer and dryer seem OK from the flood. I think at one time the washer was putting too much hot water into the mix but I found that when the construction people put it back after renovation of the utility room, they hadn’t opened the cold water valve all the way. Either that or they confused hot water/cold water lines.

At 6 pm, some friends are scheduled for a zoom meeting. We can be like our grandparents and sit around and discuss our various ailments. We certainly have plenty to talk about.

Stay tuned!

18 August 2023

I’m not sure those juicy, delicious mangoes, available for two months, are worth the 10 months of raking. I may have to reassess. Of course, it’s my neighbor’s tree but she’s allergic to them.

I slept the sleep of the dead last night. I never got my afternoon nap yesterday so I turned out the light at 8:30 pm and got out of bed at 6 am. I got up a couple of times to pee but that was it. There was no drain to constantly reach for and reposition.

I know it’s a small thing but having the drain out allowed me to put my phone back in my left pocket. As a creature of habit, when wearing shorts or jeans, my billfold always goes in my left back pocket, handkerchief in might right rear pocket, phone in the left front and keys in the right front. I can now shift the phone back to the left front pocket. I feel completed!

I managed 1.5 miles on the walk this morning. It was a startling 74°F when I started out and it was overcast which made for very nice walking conditions. I’m not sure when the last time we were in the 70’s during the night.

I’ve mentioned one of the houses I walk past on one of my four routes. It looks like a jungle and I took a photo of the perfumed passionflower there. As I walked by it today, a cascading orchid caught my eye.

I believe it to be a dendrobium orchid. I used to be better at orchid identification after I took several orchid classes down at Fairchild Tropical Garden in Miami but I’ve forgotten most of what I know. I do know there are more orchid species in the world than any other species of plants. What used to be a special find of an orchid in Mississippi is a pretty mundane event in South Florida since most everyone has them growing in their yards.

I would teach all day at the college, drive down to Miami for night classes at Fairchild, get back home after 10 pm and start the day anew the next day. I can’t imagine doing that today. I have to admit all the classes down there were very well done and taught by experts with years of experience. I also took some palm classes down there and as a sometime member of Fairchild, I still get notices about their classes and there are always some I would like to take. I would have to get a hotel room down there these days because I don’t like driving at night.

Remember me writing about the Peter Pan diner? It was just voted the best diner in Florida according to Reader’s Digest. It has a nice article on the MSN website and talks about the original owner (still alive) and his son who now owns it and a waitress who has worked there for 25 years. Yea, I know, I’m a trendsetter.

After raking leaves, sweeping the walkway, cleaning the pool filter, washing the iguana poop off the pool deck, cleaning the pool, and washing down the patio, I headed in for my first shower since July 31. It was a little bit of heaven! It’s kinda nice to only have the surgical scar from the mastectomy and a bandaid to cover the insertion of the drain.

One thing I’ve noticed about the surgical scar is there still seems to be a shiny film over the scar. Hopefully, after enough showers this will fall away. At the moment, the film causes a little pull to the area.

I did order some lotion that contains cocoa butter to soften up the skin around the scar. When I was a kid, I fell and hit my head and had a pretty good gash on the front of my face where the hairline is. The doctor told me to rub it every day with cocoa butter. If I remember correctly, cocoa butter is a little gritty. The web pooh poohs the idea of alleviating a scar with cocoa butter, but you’d be hard pressed to see a scar on my forehead. Just don’t look for the hairline as an indicator. I figure a little lotion on the surgical scar couldn’t hurt.

I can’t believe I still have some of the side effects of the very first chemotherapy infusion. I have much less underarm hair and I can’t believe the difference. That area seems to chafe due to the lack of hair. Another thing I am fighting is mouth ulcers. It makes eating a challenge. Who knows what more Monday may bring?

Looks like we might start up a zoom meeting with some friends tomorrow. All of us have our woes and ailments and using zoom allows us all to at least catch up a little, even if we all try to talk at the same time.

Stay tuned!

16 August 2023

I haven’t felt well since August 12 when I was able to do a morning walk. I managed 1.3 miles this morning and feel, for the first time in a while, pretty good. I emptied the drain bulb this morning and it read 10 ml. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll have this damn thing out tomorrow morning.

I got a good night’s sleep last night and I attribute that to the Tramadol and Allegra. No scratching and only a dull pain around the incision for the drain. You take your victories where you can get them.

My memory does weird things. Two years ago, Wade from San Francisco came for Thanksgiving and we always do a trip out to Sawgrass. There’s a Ralph Lauren outlet he likes to shop and if my memory serves me, he didn’t buy anything but I went wild. Apparently, one of the things I purchased was a pair of shorty pj bottoms and a pair of long pj bottoms. I typically sleep au naturel but I purchased them when I’m on trips and visiting friends and family. I promptly put them in a drawer and forgot about them. I mean totally forgot them.

When I walk, I either wear gym shorts or a swimming trunk that can double for regular shorts. One morning I didn’t have anything clean and noticed this gray pair with Ralph Lauren’s polo logo all over them. I put them on and realized they felt pretty good and didn’t chafe in all the right places. I got in the habit of wearing them until one of the neighbors I stopped to talk with on my walk said they looked like pjs. I said “No, just soft gym shorts.” After thinking about it, I checked online and found out indeed, I had been walking the neighborhood for months in pjs. I had totally forgotten I purchased them.

Since that time, I’ve been extra careful not to walk in pjs. In reality, I don’t think anyone would be able to tell unless they were standing next to me.

Of course, since this was my first walk since the 12th, I walked out the door in pjs. I realized it about a block away and decided what the hell and kept walking. Don’t you just know the neighborhood thinks I’m the weirdest person in the hood? Gotta keep them on their toes or they wouldn’t have anything to talk about!

I got a surprise phone call from Jim this morning. He needed some info on the location of a particular office. I got invited to lunch with him, Holley, and Holley’s Mom, Marilyn. I thought since I felt so good today, I better take advantage of the feeling and agreed to meet them at Greek Isles Taverna. It’s an outstanding restaurant and I’ve eaten there several times over the last 37 years.

Holley was coming from the semester beginning faculty meeting on North Campus, Jim and Marilyn from a doctor’s appointment and me from being bored at home.

Three of us chose the shrimp dish. One chose the ribs. Guess who? It wasn’t me.

This was my first try of this dish and I’d definitely do it again. If you go, try the octopus, the calamari and be sure to try the lamb chops. You won’t go wrong.

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Today’s plant is the Golden Shower tree (Cassia fistula) and apparently confused with the Golden Rain Tree (Koelreuteria paniculata) made famous by the movie Raintree County starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Cliff. Even Fort Lauderdale gets it confused.

The above segment deals with what they call a Golden Rain Tree which is considered to be over 100 years old that was moved from one location to another to allow a developer to build at its old location. From the video, when they showed the close up of the leaves; it looked to me like the Golden Shower Tree to me.

The leaf type is hard to confuse with the Golden Shower tree.

The Golden Shower tree is native to the Indian subcontinent and adjacent regions of Southeast Asia, according to Wikipedia. It’s a member of the legume family of plants (Fabaceae or Leguminosae) but unlike many members of this family, it’s not known to fix nitrogen with nodules on the roots of the tree.

My first exposure to this tree was on a walk with Rocky by the neighborhood Boys and Girls Club. It was in perfect bloom. I can see why some people confuse the tree with the Golden Rain tree because it looks as though it is raining flowers.

The flowers are arranged on a raceme. They fall from the plant individually and can create a carpet of yellow. The one at the Boys and Girls Club stays in bloom for about 4-5 weeks, it seems. I also can’t resist taking a photo of it every year it blooms. Some years are better than others for the bloom.

Hopefully, the transplanted tree will live in its new location.

Stay tuned!

15 August 2023

Apparently, last night was a biggie in Atlanta. Notwithstanding my political leanings, 2024 looks to be an interesting year. Maybe that’s why I had trouble getting to sleep. I tossed and turned for a while, very uncomfortable with my new bandage over the bulb insertion. I finally had enough and reached for a Xanax. It didn’t help with the irritation but it certainly allowed me to sleep.

Of course, I woke up with a fuzzy brain which stayed fuzzy for most of the day. I’ve just gotten up from a two hour nap, so I’ll also lay the blame for that on the Xanax.

Hurricane season taught me long ago (think Andrew, August 1992) that it’s a good idea to have duplicates, triplicates, and quadruplicates of certain items in the house. The list keeps getting larger: toilet paper, paper towels, Kleenex, various filters needed, batteries, light bulbs, you name it and I keep extra to the point that I’m running out of storage. I also have a habit of when something runs low (that I’m not stockpiling for the Armageddon) I reorder it. Hence the very busy UPS driver on my route. It also means there was a lot of recyclable cardboard in the recycling bin this morning.

This week he’s delivered dishwasher tabs, Kleenex (a lot of it) 3 air filter replacements, and will be delivering several other things before the week’s end. You learn that when the power goes out that gas stations don’t work, grocery stores throw away all their frozen and chilled food, the ATM’s don’t work and you shouldn’t be out on the road any way because none of the stop lights function and no one knows what to do at an intersection with no traffic light and no stop signs. Certain gas stations and grocery stores now have emergency generators but you take your life in your hands by going out to them – long lines, irate shoppers, etc.

As you might guess with the narrative above, there are two systems which bear watching in the Atlantic at the moment and the waters around Florida are more like a hot tub than an ocean. At least one good thing has come from the extreme temperatures this summer and that is more and more people recognize there might be something to this climate change thingy.

My appetite is so strange. Food that I like doesn’t taste good and I really don’t have the energy or desire to do a lot of cooking just for me. I like cooking for others but certainly don’t feel up to company, particularly with a bloody tube and bulb hanging from my shorts. The pizza lasted for 4 meals and it did taste good.

Tonight I’m doing Sassanos New York Style Pizza without the pizza. My usual go to at this place is their Steak Super which is basically a Philly cheese steak sandwich with peppers, onions and mushrooms. As a nod to proper diet, I also ordered a small house salad. Their food (yes, I’ve tried other things on the menu) is spot on and the price is competitive with other pizzerias in the area. They also have a pretty consistent delivery person who I tip pretty well so my food is piping hot when it arrives to the point I have to let it cool a little for taking a bite. It beats my cooking.

So far my drain is producing very low levels of fluid. This morning it was 15 ml and this afternoon it was 7.5 ml. Hopefully, fingers crossed, eyes crossed and anything else I can cross, Dr. Burgers will remove the drain on Thursday. The diarrhea is back but manageable (or I can live with it for now). The last thing I need to do is take so much antidiarrheal medicine I become constipated.

I think for the first time in a very long time we haven’t had a heat advisory today. Part of the reason may be due to low humidity. The heat index is only 98°F at 4:45 pm today so that’s a break of epic proportions.

Another night of binging Vera, Tootsie Roll miniatures, and bed by 10 pm. Never a dull moment.

Stay tuned!

13 August 2023

It was one of those “I’m awake at 4:30 am” mornings. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I pulled out my iPad and finished one of my Kindle books from BookBub. As you might guess, it was an early breakfast and I’m running on coffee fumes.

Part of not going back to sleep is the pull and tug of the mastectomy scar and the bandage over the drain insertion point. There’s no good way to get completely comfortable and I end up tossing and turning.

Tomorrow I see if Dr. Burgers will take out the drain. I feel it’s akin to water torture – drop by drop.

I managed to get my walk in this morning, somewhat. I walked Riverland Road for 1.4 miles. By the time I got home I was dizzy and out of breath. It doesn’t take long to get out of shape, does it? I meant to do 2 miles this morning but it wasn’t gonna happen.

I started the walk around 8 am and it was already “feels like” 86°F with 83% humidity. Another day under a heat warning. As of July 24th, South Florida has had 42 days of a heat index of three figures. Who knows what August will bring.

Normally, I grocery shop on Sundays but the refrigerator is a little overstocked at the moment. Last night I couldn’t decide what to eat and ended up ordering a pepperoni and onion pizza from PizzaHut. I was a little reluctant because the last pizza I had didn’t taste right. Thankfully, this one tasted pretty good. I managed two slices and refrigerated the rest. Maybe, just maybe my taste buds have regenerated. Just in time for more chemotherapy (August 21). Two more slices will either be lunch or dinner.

I ordered the hand tossed medium pizza. I swear it looked like an individual pizza in size. The size of products seems to be shrinking while the costs seem to increase. Add in the delivery charge and any tip you might wish to award and it gets to be a pretty expensive meal at $26.

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There were a couple of interesting plants along my walk this morning. One that really stood out is the Chenille plant (Acalypha hispida).

This native of Asia quickly gets your attention. It’s a member of the euphorb family (think pencil cactus) and has a poisonous latex associated with the sap. It generally tends to be a small shrub in our environment.

The plant is dioecious which means it has separate male and female flowers. It’s the catkin of female flowers that attracts all the attention. A catkin is a spike of flowers that fall off as one unit. Although it has nothing to do with the cloth known as chenille, the effect of the catkin brinks to mind the fibers of chenille cloth.

Another plant that caught my eye was Ramgoat Dashalong (Turnera ulmifolia). What a terrible common name! The specific epithet ulmifolia is in reference to the elm-like leaves on the plant.

Strangely, this is in the Passion flower family of plants but it doesn’t show any of the characteristics you think of with maypops or Passion flowers. It’s native to Mexico and the West Indies. The flowers are ephemeral. They open up around 6 am (not sure if standard or daylight savings) and they wilt around 11:30 am. Fortunately, in South Florida it’s pretty much constantly in bloom.

In teaching about flower parts at Broward College, you ran into the trouble of showing students a “typical” flower. The most common and convenient flower on campus was the hibiscus but it is very atypical in its construction. We did have one shrub of Ramgoat Dashalong and when it was in flower, it was probably the closest to a “typical” flower we could find.

I intend on a long nap this afternoon.

Stay tuned!

12 August 2023

I’ll take it! The last two nights I haven’t had to break out the hydrogen peroxide for my tee shirts nor sheets. It’s kind of nice to have a normal wash day for a change.

Even better, my new sheets from LL Bean came in today. They were not to arrive until Monday afternoon but apparently the UPS driver was motivated. I bought two queen sets: Sunrise and Vapor Gray. I’m not big on thread count but these are 280 thread count, Pima cotton, Percale sheets. It’s gotten to be a habit of buying my sheets from LL Bean. I can always tell when it is time for new sheets because little tiny holes start appearing in the pillow cases or the fitted sheets. I purchased the old sheets in 2019 so I think they stood up well to 4 years of washing. The new sheets are in the wash now and ready to go on the bed next weekend.

The day started well. I felt decent enough that I decided to do my morning walk. I walk in hiking boots because I have weak ankles and after putting on socks and boots and getting ready to put my hat on, grab my walking stick and head out, my stomach began a gurgling sound. Discretion is the better part of valor. I hiked to the bathroom instead.

It’s funny but some days I don’t mind cleaning house and other days I’d rather you beat me to death. Today was a doesn’t mind day. I took my time, taking breaks, working on a couple of computer projects and reading some of my favorite online sites. My weekly cleanings include dusting surfaces, emptying trash cans, shaking out rugs, vacuuming, spot mopping floors and mopping the kitchen floor and cleaning the tub, basin and toilet. I didn’t clean the tub because why bother – I haven’t had a bath since the new drain.

I want to be able to thank some of the nurses and staff at the cancer center and I decided flowers were a no-no (particularly those people at the infusion center) and chocolates were too tempting for some. Instead, I decided to do sets of note cards. I spent part of the morning designing the note cards and then working through Mimeo photos to get them printed and mailed to me. Mimeo was nice enough to give me 15% off each order to help save some money. The note cards should be arriving in a few weeks. I decided on using some of my favorite old photos I previously put on cards and mixed them with some new photos to give me a packet of 10 different cards with envelopes.

Saturday wouldn’t be Saturday unless you clean poop off the pool deck. The iguanas don’t want to disappoint me. Lately, there have been both the black scaled iguana and the common (these days) green iguana. One of the greens is a massive male. I feel somewhat badly that the Bismarck Palm is gone because I had a family of iguanas living in the trunk. Not.

Some of the Medicare bills are coming in. Holy Cross charged $281 dollars to access my port and $15,150 for a drug injection. Then there were four more charges for drugs during the infusion from $624-$792.

For my emergency room visit (caused by the infusion) HC charged Medicare $1820 and then for the tests they did while in the hospital, it was another $13, 480. To be observed in the hospital was $2139. They actually had someone check on me every few hours.

Dr. Burgers was a bargain at $2361 for the breast removal although she charged extra for the lymph nodes at $1565.

For both Medicare bills, I may be billed $1284 but I suspect my supplemental insurance will cover that. Getting cancer is not cheap! Actually, getting sick is not cheap.

Tonight, I need to figure out what I’ll have for dinner. I just can’t seem to finish any meal. For lunch I cooked a hamburger and ate about 3/4 of it. Then its binge watching Vera on Acorn and then a little reading before bed.

Stay tuned!