halt stop forget relax

I might be spending  time with my boys:   This is Romy and Raj. Romy is a pit/husky/lab mix; a bi-eyed handsome devil who has the sweetest temperament ever. DH found him on Craig's list right after Beulah died. I thought it was too soon as I hadn't had time to grieve her death yet, but DH wanted a dog in the house for when we were out. He was originally named Romeo by his previous owner, and he grew up with a Blue Heeler named Juliet (go figure). We didn't take her because she didn't play well with cats, so she went to a no-kill shelter to find a new home from there. When we got him home, we decided to not call him Romeo, so we renamed him Romy. I wanted to all him Romer (not Roamer), but I didn't win that one. So, he came to live with us and our three cats. We have been a happy family for I think five years now. that would make him 6+ years old, and Raj about 10 or 11 or, uh, maybe even 12. Raj is often a needy cat who wants out when he...

Well, I sit around a lot, or lay in bed. My bedroom window to the world looks out to a fenced in yard across the street. We have new neighbors there whom I have yet to meet, but DH has, when their dogs  got out one night. Their names  are Vince and Tiffany.  I see her empty the garbage or recycling from time to time. Often, though, my blinds are closed during the day, at least until my care worker arrives at around noon. In a serIes of posts I will tell you how I spend my time. EXIT (Pursued by a bear) The Winter's Tale  Act 3, Sc. iii

Every Spring my Dad would start his tomato plants from seed. He would put them in the small starter pots on the window shelf in the back room. When it was time he would plant them in the raised planter boxes he built and put on the South side of the house; It was right behind the bedroom he had built for me downstairs after I got MS. He would put tomato cages around the little  plantlets so they would be supported as they grew up. One year, I think it was 1983 - two years after my diagnosis, I put some marijuana seeds between his cages -- then I forgot about them not really thinking they would grow. Under my Dad's care, with frequent watering and a healthy dose of Miracle-Gro, topped off  with a hot Summer, grow they did. One day Dad was showing off his boxes to my cousin Mike who recognized what I had done --- he started banging on my wall as I was taking a shower!  It turns out that by then my plants were as tall as the tomatoes -- as tall as the cages. I'm sure my...

haiku having friends like the two of you just fills my heart  with much love and joy Good Night,  TTYL , and Be Well,  

Sometime last April, I got an e-mail from an old friend whom I hadn't heard from in years. We arranged to go to brunch along with another friend whom we each hadn't heard from in a very long time. They drove down together from Bellevue/Mercer Island and we met at at Elmer's for brunch, a nearby (to me) restaurant and it was close to the freeway exit for them. Terry and I were the two best piano players when we were at Holy Names Academy together. In high school we each played a two-part Mozart concerto together. We would come out to the stage and take our bows, then either she or I would sit at the grand piano on stage, and the other would go to the other at the foot of the stage to accompany. Then we would go up for our bows, and switch pianos, then play the second concerto. Somehow the three of us ran into each other at the UW, and we stayed together for at least two years, until our coursework started to interfere. There were others who joined our little clique as t...

My Credit Manager came down and asked me what happened and what did I want to do. So I told her about tripping, and asked her to call 911 so I could go to  the hospital. When the 911 hosp. van came they loaded me up and who was the EMT? One of the sales clerks from the Southcenter store who called me for credit OK's on a regular basis - LOL. What a way to put a face to a voice on the phone. He asked me what hospital I wanted to go to and I drew a blank!! I'd only lived in Seattle my whole life ... but all I could think of was Harborview - so that's what I told him. FWIW You Grey's Anatomy fans might like to know that Seattle Grace hospital is based on Harborview, and that 60 Minutes once did a feature back in the day, that if you were going to have a heart attack, Seattle was the best place to be because of its 911 system being in place... but as is my wont, I have digressed. During my ten days in I had many, many tests given or recommended by a team comprised of...

At the time, I worked for a Klopfensteins in downtown Seattle starting in 1979. I was a bill collector. I wore button down oxford cloth shirts with wool plaid skirts and often was unseemly well dressed. In March of that year I and a sales clerk decided to take a long weekend trip to San Francisco. I don't remember much about that trip except that we stayed at the Drake hotel and we saw Tina Turner at the Fairmont hotel;  this was at the start of her becoming a good solo artist. No Ike in sight. I do remember she sang Proud Mary, but I'm pretty sure it was before her Private Dancer come back tour. While back at work I started to notice my leg jumping up and down (which I would later learn was called clonus), but I could stop it by pressing down on my knee. Then the day came when I   couldn't stop it by doing that, and this was a distressing turn of events, so I went to my credit manager to see if we had any doctors who practised in the Medical-Dental Building behind ...

It is commonly presumed that people with MS are motility deficient, e.g. constipated; that any bowel incontinence is necessarily caused by the back up of constipation and is the leakage of the stool behind the dam. I can only believe that this is not the case. Many years ago when I was working at the NMSS, I led a group called 'Exploring Wellness' where we studied alternative ways to living well without the focus being on MS. At this group I met a woman who had an "accident" at Frederick and Nelson's department store. She had a BM while shopping. I know! Mortifying, right? The clerks were very helpful, shuffling her to a private bathroom where she could clean up and change her clothes (they shopped for her and replaced what was soiled), and they brought her everything she needed at the time. She was forever grateful to them for their kindness, but she assured me that she would never step into that store again!!! LOL This was a young woman in her 20's wh...

another post is in the works. it seems to want to segue beyond its preferred ending point. needs much editing.

i should have titled this entry "my lost summer of 2015." I talked about my first pressure sore in the entry called Forewarned is Forearmed last June. What I didn't say was what the aftermath of it was: 14 months of NO WEIGHT BEARING AT ALL, orders from Dr. R. Sadiq, my wound care Doc. The result of this was that I lost all muscle mass in my legs. And a year later, especially after I had the Summer from Hell (2015) during which I entered the hospital on July 17 because DH noticed that I was sounding confused. Off to the ER we went; after a complete workup I was admitted and sent to ICU on the 2nd floor. I was delusional for several days. (BTW, I still don't remember any of this.) Apparently it was touch and go for a few days before the IV antibiotics kicked in. The diagnosis at that time was "sepsis of unknown origin." They discovered the cause -- necrotic tissue of my baby toe and my fifth phalange bones. On July 24, I went to the OR where Dr. R....

the summer before last was a warm one so i spent most days inside sitting in my wheelchair wearing my new canvas gatas that i bought from land's end, and i just googled up a picture to show you but it wouldn't download but i can assure you that i didn't pay $49 for them, more like $9. (how's that for a runalong sentence?) sitting for so long with my feet down caused them to swell, so much that when i took them off at night it left an imprint of the shoe on my foot. i did this for days on end. and by the end of summer i had an edema related pressure sore on my baby toe. when i went to see my pcp dr. g. saw the sore on my foot and referred me to the wound clinic. where dr. s. told me NO WEIGHT BEARING. at. all. turns out that one sore led to another and another and that led to loss of muscle mass. which leaves me to where i am today - either bedridden or in a wheelchair. good night, ttyl, and be well,

Here is a link to my favorite Peeps site. Whether you love or hate the little buggers,you have to admit that Peeps are ubiquitous this time of year. Little did we know how resilient they are. View this, read as much as yoou can (preferably aloud, to yourself or an audience,) and enjoy.

Like, how easy swollen feet can cause a pressure sore. Like, how easy it is to become bedridden. Like, how not all bowel incontinence is caused by constipation. Like, how Medicare is reactive and never, ever, proactive. ??? I mean ... WTF??? Doesn't anyone tell the truth about the variety and possibility of MS, or are they all afraid to scare the newly diagnosed? Let's fill our magazines with articles about supercrips who run marathons and climb mountains. It has bothered me for a lo-o-ong time, but it seems to have reached a tipping point with my patience. I can write a paragraph, or an entry, about each of those statements above. Perhaps I will. Good Night, TTYL, and Be Well,

I lived on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle from the time I was born until I was about 22. I then got my first apartment on lower Q.A.; it was a studio which I converted into a 1 bedroom just by closing the closet doors. They were glass paned french doors which I decorated each month accordingly with paper designs: snowflakes, hearts, shamrocks, etc. I was given a 9x12' wool rug by a friend who always found the best deals at the Goodwill. I got a vintage couch for $50 from a friend at work. I brought my dresser, a bookcase, and my breakfast nook table from home. And I bought two chairs from an antique dealer in Pioneer Square where I had worked for $90. I was all set up. My rent was $300/mo then. Now it is called The Seaview, "one of Seattle's premier Art Deco condo buildings" and the unit next to mine, #310 is up for sale for $215,444, and they want more than I paid in rent for condo fees! On Elliot Bay there is a grain terminal, just down and to the right of my ap...

Yes, ibb stands for I'll Be Back - shortly. I have one new post in editing mode, and several ideas are percolating in my hole addled brain. Along with my mad keyboarding skills, they will be up soon and in the near future you will be getting used to reading me again. If you build it, they will come. Good night, TTYL, and Be Well,

After I came in, sat down and caught my breath, I explained what had happened. He was kind enough to walk me the rest of the way home - one more block. When I got inside, I simply apologised for being late and said that time just slipped away from me as I browsed the magazines, and let it go at that. It would have freaked my parents out! Years later I was reading Ann Rule's book The Stranger Beside Me , her story of Ted Bundy - the serial killer. She wrote of the year/s she worked/volunteered next to him at a crisis call center, where they fielded calls, often from women who had been assaulted. I was thinking that he was getting more out of this job than just the good feeling that he was helping. He was answering calls from women who had been assaulted. I imagine him prodding for details... suggesting that catharsis would help them to get beyond the experience of having been raped. Hell, he was probably telling the suicidal callers to 'swallow the whole jar of sleepi...

Let me interject here that this was the time that the city was doing an 'Urban Renewal' project on the QA rec center and playfield. The playfield at that time was nothing more than a city block of dirt; even the young football players called their playoff games the Dirt Bowl (lol)(j/k). It was surrounded by a cyclone fence with several openings placed at two of the corners and two others at odd places. I was familiar with this field; I grew up playing softball there as a child. In the Summer I would to the rec center often. Also, the houses on the block between 2nd and 3rd West, Blaine and Howe streets were due to be razed, and most were uninhabited. And because the new Worth McClure Jr. High was built just north of the rec. center, there were several streets that didn't go straight through. Okay, let's get back to my story. The kids' voices I heard were the last few to leave the center when it closed and by the time I got to the field they were nearing the f...

It was 1969 and I was in ninth grade. One afternoon I walked up to the neighborhood pharmacy to browse through the magazines: Seventeen, Glamour, the usual sstuff that appeals to a 14 year old girl. When I glanced at my watch I thought, "I am going to get it. Now it's dark out and I will be late for dinner." So I hurried out of the store saying a quick Goodbye over my shoulder to Mrs. Dalton and started to walk home. My first block was on Queen Anne Avenue in front of the upper QA Safeway, I where near the far end of the block (and parking lot) when a guy said from his parked car, "Hey, do you want a ride?" I glanced up and politely replied, "No, thanks," and continued on my way. One block further, I was in front of the QA Thriftway, when again, at the end of the block ( and the end of the parking lot) the same guy was parked and yelled out of his window, "Are you sure you don't want a ride?" I stopped, looked up at him and said ...

pardon the absence of most caps, but mt typing sucks more than usual lately so i'm going to go all e.e.cummings on you. I was nearing the end of my two week stay at st.joe's last July when the night nurse came by and woke me up (naturally) to take my vitals. my stay started out in the ER, and from there I went to the second floor, then the fourth, the fifth and finally the tenth. oddly enough, this was the oncology unit, but it was there that a bed was available. lucky me; and i mean that leterally. it turns out to have been a quite fortuitous room change. now, I have never been much of a sunrise lover, for two reasons I think. 1. I'm a night owl by nature and am never awake that early, and 2. I've never lived in a place that had a good viewpoint facing east. my room on the tenth floor faced due east, and on that morning I was treated to sight I can remember vividly even today -- the most magnificent sight I have ever set eyes upon. last summer was a s...

Rabbit rabbit. More later. I have to compose a post. I am goinng to try to ppost once a week. Let's see if I can make that happen. Good Night, TTYL, and Be Well,