Too much stuff

The world did not end on May 21, as predicted by apocalyptic Christian broadcaster Harold Camping. I would have been royally pissed if I did all that packing and moving, only to have the world end the day after my big move. Thankfully, it didn't. (Although, as I look around at these stacks boxes and jumbled rooms, the end of the world does hold a certain allure.)

So, the big moving day has come and gone and I have way too much stuff. Despite what felt like a major purge that included a garage sale, much paper shredding,  many, many, many charitable donations, and a huge storage space, downsizing from a 3400-square foot house into a 1500-square-foot townhome has convinced me that 10 pounts of s--- won't fit in a 5-pound bag. Fortunately, one of our first pieces of mail was from another charity seeking donations. As I unpack, I've already started a pile of things I was crazy to move. The purge continues.

Even after an exhausting day, it was amusing to watch five grown men try to squeeze a 34-inch wide refrigerator through a 30-inch wide doorway. From our view on the patio, Amanda and I could clearly see the fridge wouldn't fit without removing the doors. Still, they persisted, each mover offering what he thought would be the magic maneuver to make it fit. Thirty minutes later, they took the doors off and squeezed the fridge in the house.

This move would not have happened without tremendous help from Amanda and Nathan, who each did yeoman's work, most of it without complaint. Off to a slow start, soon-to-be-ex Mark even came through in the end. My Realtor friend Grace put in countless hours hauling me around over the last year as I struggled to picture myself in a different place. My friend Maggie pitched in with numerous packing and hauling tasks. She even had a great idea for arranging furniture in the new place. Other friends who pitched in included my long-time buddy Shari, my bookstore partner Denise, my (long-ago) walking buddy Martha and her husband Bill. Amanda's friend Ashley and Nathan's friend Alex also came to my aid. Even the friends who didn't physically pitch in gave much needed moral support along the way. Nothing like a life crisis (or two) to help you figure out who your friends are. Thank you every one!!!

Back to boxes ...

Moving on, literally and figuratively

My house looks like it's been ransacked, but packing does that to you. The sale of our house of nearly 14 years is proceeding smoothly with closing scheduled for May 20. (We'll have 3 days after that to vacate the premises.) Amanda and I spent lots of time looking at rental options on realtor.com and, with the help of my Realtor friend Grace, we settled on a townhouse in Lake Forest, about 20 minutes from here. Now that we have a new place lined up, everything else seems so much more real.

The owner has been nice enough to allow us patio access before the lease even starts, so we've made several trips over with my multitude of potted plants, plant stands and assorted tables and chairs. After decades of gardening in yards where the work is never done, I'm looking forward to "container" gardening where I might actually get everything looking good and be able to relax and enjoy the outdoor space without thinking: "There's another flower bed that needs weeding or planting."

Nathan's home for three weeks, so I have some muscle at my disposal. Typical Nathan, he called me Thursday afternoon on his way to the airport in Longview, Texas. He was 15 minutes away for a flight that was leaving in 20 minutes. Arrrrrgh. Actually, the Longview airport is so small that he had a slight chance of still making the flight. But, alas, the doors to the plane were closed so he had to bunk in with a friend and fly out Friday. It's good to have him home and if he ever stands still long enough, I want to measure his height. I swear he's taller than 6-foot-3.

Nathan was one of my concerns in rental house hunting. He'll hardly be in California for the coming year (summer in Ohio playing in a wood-bat league and then his final year of college in Texas). Amanda and I could have made due with a two-bedroom, but I wanted him to have "a space to call home." The townhouse has four bedrooms (tiny, tiny, tiny), so even Sparky gets a room!

Mark is "too busy" to find a place, so he's opting to live in a hotel for the coming year. With rents so high in California and his company's corporate discount at this hotel, it makes sense financially. Personally, I think it's strange, but I keep reminding myself I don't (pick your verb) get to / have to / need to manage his life anymore.

Chemo looms tomorrow — my sixth of 12 treatments — so the rest of the week will be wiped out. Hopefully by the weekend when the lease starts, I'll rally and be able to make a few trips over with lamps, pictures and other assorted stuff that's too hard to pack up for movers to handle. I've got some friends lined up to make some car trips and once my "stuff" starts to occupy my new space, a new page will be turned in my life.

One wrinkle: A few weeks ago, I rolled over to sleep on my stomach and felt a lumpy thing in my abdomen. Lumpy things are scary when you already have cancer. I mentioned it to my oncologist, who felt it and decided to order an ultrasound. (The ultrasound experience may be a blog entry of its own titled: "What's wrong with medicine today.") Anyway, best thinking is it's a seroma, which is "a pocket of clear serous fluid that sometimes develops in the body after surgery. When small blood vessels are ruptured, blood plasma can seep out; inflammation caused by dying injured cells also contributes to the fluid." (Thank you, Wikipedia.) This apparently has been developing since my January colon resection surgery. In the short term, it means a trip to my surgeon, Dr. Shaver, for a look-see on Thursday. In the long term, it could mean needle aspiration of the fluid or surgery to place a drain in my gut. Neither one sounds like fun, but at least no one is thinking it's a new tumor. Just one more hurdle on my road back to health.

Progress on the home front

Finally have some solid news to report on the house-for-sale front. We are 'in escrow" ... as in, someone made an offer, we accepted and now we're working on things like termite and home inspections. Sadly, or ironically, this offer is lower than one we received before the home went into the multiple listing service last October. Our realtor and a couple agents showed the house a few times while we were finishing our "spruce up" tweaks. We had a verbal offer that was $25K higher than where we ended up, but considerably lower than what we were asking. We turned it down, thinking "Geez, we're getting offers and the house isn't even listed yet." Fools, we. We also had a low-ball offer — more of an insult — on Christmas Eve, which we rejected. It's not the greatest offer, but it is time to move on with my life.

I have another chemo under my belt — my fourth, making me one third of the way done. This week's chemo went as quickly the previous one, so it looks like my port fix is permanent. The bad news is the chemo weeks wipe me out. It's incredible that I can awake from a night's sleep, be somewhat active for an hour or two, and then need a nap. This is going to complicate packing! Thankfully, some very dear friends have offered to help — and I'll be taking them up on it.

Baby Girl got a new car this week — a Honda Insight (hybrid)! They are rare and hard to come by because they are built in Japan and we all know what's happening there recently. Our local dealer got one in with a navigation system and bluetooth, which Amanda wanted. She test drove it on a Friday. After Tuesday's chemo, we took a couple written offers from other dealers (out of our area), but the local dealer wouldn't budge on pricing. Looked like we were going to have to make a drive to Temecula to get her the car. Surprise, the next morning our local dealer called was willing to negotiate. We met nearly in the middle, so it was worth it to "shop local" and get the purchase made without having to drive all over SoCal.

Today we took a load of Christmas stuff — we have ALOT of Christmas stuff — and stored it temporarily in Mark's boss's unused second floor office space. Mark's boss, a former neighbor of ours, is allowing us to use the space to store the stuff we don't need to deal with immediately, which should make divvying up the household and moving into two places somewhat easier. We'll be storing other stuff there that we can't sort quickly, as well as stuff we probably will try to sell once we get settled in new places. Going from a 3500-square foot five-bedroom house with a loft into two condos or apartments isn't going to be easy.

Had some sad news this week. Fred Turner, the sports editor of the Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, passed away on Monday. Fred was the one who hired Mark in Fort Lauderdale, where I had been working for five years. Because Mark and I happened to be from NE Ohio, we hit it off and the rest, as they say, is history. Even though Mark and I won't be riding off into the sunset together, we did manage to create and raise two wonderful kids during our 22+ year marriage. Without Fred, I wouldn't have the two best things in my life. So, thanks friend. Rest in peace.

So much for an "off week"

This was supposed to be my good week, the week between chemo treatments when cancer moved to the back burner and I felt human again. I did feel human, but cancer still had a starring role.

On Monday, I had to go in for a dye test to see what was happening with my recalcitrant chemo port. The port disc is the size of a quarter and sits below the skin in my upper left chest. A tube running off to the side of the disc is supposed to feed directly into large vein. In my case, the tube makes a complete loop around the port, before feeding into the vein. This is probably what's making the chemo treatments so sluggish and time consuming.

"Never seen that before," said Dr. K, who did the dye test. From there, it was a series of phone calls to convey the test results and schedule to surgery to fix the port. So, Monday I'll be going under the knife again to, most likely, get a new port. Because chemo's supposed to start the next day, the surgeon will place the chemo needle during surgery so it's in place for Tuesday's third round of chemo.

Not a major complication, by any means, but enough aggravation to be depressing. How depressing? I spent 45 minutes wandering a department store's super sale with a 30 percent off coupon in my pocket and couldn't find a thing to buy. That's just not like me.

Nothing's ever easy!

My chemo port is misbehaving. Today, it would give no blood (so I had to have a stick in the arm), and unless I was flat on my back, the chemo drip slowed to a random drop every few seconds. Normally, being told to lie down would be music to my ears. However, even good things like recliners have their limits and two hours flat on my back is mine.

Phyllis pointed out that a gentleman who was getting the exact same chemo as me started a half hour after I did and finished  a half hour ago. I still have 800 ml to go, plus another smaller bag of something else after that. I've already been here four hours!

So the next adventure in my treatment will be next week (my "off" week) to get some dye injected into the port so that any problems in my line will be visible. Phyllis says I may need a new chemo port, which probably means another surgery. But if it speeds things along, it will be worth it.

Chemo: 1 down, 25 to go; er, make that 1 down, 12 to go; oops, 1 down, 11 to go!

I always have been math challenged. Somehow, when they said six month's of chemo, I divided the 52 weeks in a year in half, and figured I had 26 treatments. Amanda was driving me home after my first treatment and I was filling in a friend via phone: "So, I've got 1 down and 25 more to go." Amanda said: "WHAT?" and pointed out the fallacy in my calculations. I had totally overlooked the fact that my treatments would be every other week, thereby cutting 26 in half. What a relief! I'd gone from mentally preparing for 26 treatments and, in the blink of an eye, it had been cut to 13! Two days later, when I related that story to my chemo nurse Phyllis as she disconnected me from my pump, she gave me even more good news. "Actually, six months of chemo is only 12 sessions. You've just got 11 left!"

So, I've survived my first chemo experience. It began with nurses complaining about my chemo port placement. Seems instead of surgically placing it in a "pocket" with the incision above the device, mine had been placed so that the tender five-day old incision ran directly over the membrane nurses need to access to get the poison flowing. There was much hemming and hawing as two nurses tried to determine exactly where to stick the needle. (Have I mentioned how much I love getting stuck with needles?) In fact, when the port was first described to me, I envisioned it as more of an IV hookup that permanently hung outside my body for easy, needle-poke free access. I think I was confusing a chemo port with a PICC Line.

Anyway, lucky for me, it was a one-stick wonder and the only remaining concern seemed to be positioning me to maximize the flow. Amanda was my chemo buddy and kept me company for the nearly four-hour process. There were at least a dozen chemo patients in the room; some younger, some older; some with buddies, some alone; some sleeping, some chatting. Not everyone's chemo is the same length, so some came and went while I was there; others were there when I arrived and still there when I left. (Note to self: Pick a better chair next time. My recliner partially blocked the doorway to the nurses station so I was constantly pulling up my legs trying to get out of the way of passing nurses.)

I expected some "momentous occasion" feelings, but none came so I passed the time reading magazines, snoozing, people-watching, eaves-dropping and chatting with Amanda. The side effects kicked in later that day. They warned me about hyper sensitivity to cold and that happened with my first drink of water. The sensation was akin to dipping your foot in a too-cold pool. Only it was happening inside my mouth and throat. It wasn't painful, like a ice-cream brain freeze, just jarring. The next side effect happened at home when I carried a Diet Coke in from the garage fridge to my dresser. Halfway there, it felt like pins and needles were shooting into my finger tips. Sort of like accidentally shocking yourself. Or like having a hand or foot fall asleep.  Thankfully, the sensation stopped as soon as I put the can down.

They start you off with anti-nausea medication — and it worked for me. The in-office portion of the chemo cocktail took four hours. Then they hooked me up to a pump that would give me an hourly dose of one of the drugs over the next two days. I was invisioning a tiny little pump, but this thing was like a first-generation cell phone. Fortunately, it came in a case that I could carry over the shoulder, in a purse or wear as a fanny pack. At night, it rested on the pillow next to me — softly whirring once an hour. I had to remember to carry it with me for middle-of-the-night pit stops. Only once did I forget and start waltzing into the bathroom, only to be yanked back by my tubing. No harm done.

On Thursday, I went to be disconnected from my pump. I told Phyllis about a dull-but-definite headache I'd had for 30 or so hours post-chemo. No amount of Tylenol or Motrin knocked it back. "That's the steroids," she said. STEROIDS???? (There goes my chance of making it into the Baseball Hall of Fame.) Turns out steroids are part of the anti-nausea medication included in the chemo cocktail. Next time, they'll cut the steroids in half and I'll get to figure out whether I'd rather be more queasy or take my chances with the headache.

Thursday afternoon, the fatigue side-effect kicked in with a vengeance; I could have slept 24-7. By Saturday, I was perking back up.

My "week off" has been good (aside from a lingering side effect that has made Imodium my new best friend). I've heard conflicting reports: One, that chemo gets worse as it goes along; two, that your first experience is pretty typical of how you'll tolerate it. Personally, I'm hoping for the latter.

Thanks to all of you who've inquired how it's going. Didn't mean to keep you in the dark for so long, but I've spent the better part of my "week off" rounding up tax papers. To paraphrase Ben Franklin: "Nothing is certain except chemo and taxes."

Just another complication

'Twas the night before chemo and all through the house ...
All the creatures were stirring, and so was the house.

Just to complicate life further, we may have a nibble on the house. OK, so it's not an official offer. Just a report from our listing agent. A couple who came to see our house on Friday apparently liked it enough to inquire if we would consider a 30-day closing. Apparently, they are cash buyers (not too many of those floating around these days) with an ill family member and they want to get settled quickly. They wanted to come back and see the house again tomorrow afternoon — chemo day — but I had to beg off because I just don't know how I'll be feeling. They are considering another house near us, but supposedly ours is the leading contender. They are scheduled to come again Wednesday.

Many people probably think I'm crazy to even consider selling/moving amid chemo. Secretly, I think my sister is one of them! And she may be right. She has pointed out that I'm right in the middle of three of life's major stresses: divorce, cancer and moving. The first two were out of my control, and I've turned control of the third over to the Real Estate Gods.

After my surgery, when it became apparent that chemo was in my future, my soon-to-be-ex generously offered to put everything on hold until I'm done with chemo — no more divorce negotiations, take the house off the market, focus on getting better. It was a kind and tempting offer, but I turned it down. I'm afraid that if everything goes on hiatus, it will feel like starting divorce proceedings and house selling from square one when chemo's done. Right now, I'm mentally prepared for divorce and leaving my "forever home": Not happy about it, but ready to deal with both and get on with my "next" life.

So, I've turned my future living arrangements over to the Real Estate Gods. If a good enough offer comes in during chemo, a move is in my future. If not, I've lost nothing and can muddle through chemo in my cozy little downstairs bedroom. The fact that Mark and I are still amiably living under the same roof is an interesting ("Awkward," says Amanda) twist to our divorce. But, hey, the house is plenty big and he works long hours anyway.

Got my chemo port put in last Thursday. Surgery was easy, but I seem to have developed an intolerance to anything taped to my body. The 4-by-5-inch adhesive bandaging covering the port has been itching like crazy. I've gently loosen much of the adhesive and tried to soothe my reddened skin with lotion and antibiotic ointment, to no avail.

Another "fringe benefit" to the chemo port is that it apparently sets off sensors. Amanda and I were popping into Kohl's Sunday night when the alarms started beeping. I'm looking around to see who's sneaking out with unpaid goods. Amanda says, "Mom, that's you!" Then she reminded me that I left the surgical center with a "Medical Alert Identification Card" that I'm supposed to carry in my wallet. I can't wait to see what I do at airports these days!