A Decade Together - Part 2

Part two of looking back on ten years with Abby.

2016

 

By this time, she and Diablo were best friends and always together.

Diablo, Abby, Sultanna, and Snickerdoodle enjoying some early summer pasture.

A selfie in front of the old barn.

Hustling up on a summer's evening for a visit.

Late summer coat - so frosty looking!

2017

Behind some hastily erected temporary fencing to deter Snickerdoodle from escaping (again.) 

Staying cool in the old barn during the summer heat with her BFF.

Corinne visited with her "twin horse" that summer. One of my favorite photos of all.

Falling asleep while getting her feet trimmed. (Usually Tim trims them but he'd hurt his back.)

I was still teaching and the first day of Fall break, I headed to the barn and spent extra time with my girl.

2018

Pony Pal Mila hands out carrots to Diablo, Abby, Sultanna, and Hokey.

Tackmaker and hobbyist Susan Bensema Young came for a visit and enjoyed meeting the mares in the old barn.

Whenever I make an apple pie or crisp, Abby gets the apple spaghetti. 

This last photo from 2018 is from my all-time favorite blog post. Jennifer Buxton challenged her readers to find out if their horses liked candy corn.

 Oh, did Abby ever! 

2019

This was a seminal year for me. I was in my first year of retirement and decided that it was time to finally lose the weight I had gained over the years.

Me, January 2019

Me, 85 pounds lighter

That weight loss was fortuitous - a precancerous mass was found on my pancreas and I had to go to Indianapolis for a very difficult surgery that removed half my pancreas, my spleen, and a lot of lymph nodes.

I cannot imagine trying to recover from that surgery had I had all that weight still on me.

After a week in the hospital, I came home and Craig drove me out to see my girl. He continued to drive me out whenever I wanted to go until I was cleared to drive again.

Enjoying some grooming from Cowpoke Ian and Pony Pal Mila.

She is so good with kids.

Abby was a bit affronted, though, when Cowpoke Lukie began eating the carrot that was intended for her during this visit.

Craig snapped this photo during one of the times he'd driven me out during my recovery.

Part 3 will come soon, as will a write up about the GLC show and some other things. Look for a bonus post later today - a lovely picture I took of Sultanna and Two Socks.

Stay 'tooned!

Pancreatic Cancer - The Loss of Pat Coulter

 The passing of family, friends, and acquaintances never fails to sadden me. But Pat Coulter's passing hit me harder than most.

Pat, a long time hobbyist, passed away from pancreatic cancer. She was diagnosed in June and lived just two months after her diagnosis.  That short rate of survival post-diagnosis is pretty typical as pancreatic cancer is generally asymptomatic until the end stages and has a very low survival rate. 

Like Pat, I had my own brush with pancreatic cancer. The difference was that my tumor was found very early during the precancerous stage. It was removed and I am alive and cancer free.

A year ago, I wrote about getting the post-op report where I received the joyful news that I did not have cancer. The full blog entry can be found here, but the following paragraph made me think of Pat and her pancreatic cancer journey:

It's hard to describe how I feel - relieved, grateful, humbled, blessed, teary, and very, very empathetic to those who have been on this journey or are just beginning it as well as for those whose pathology reports came back with different news than mine.

Sadly, Pat was one whose pathology report had different, much harder, news.

Daughter-in-love Vanessa and me yesterday, at my family birthday gathering.

I am grateful that I am alive and was able to celebrate another birthday yesterday. But as I thank God for my life, I also mourn for Pat and others whose pancreatic cancer journey had a very different outcome.

Rest in peace, Pat.

Here We Go Again!

In January, I had one of those weeks we all have occasionally. One of the things that had happened was that I had discovered a swelling underneath the incision from my pancreatic surgery. After having it checked here in town with my own doctor, I was told that I had developed an incisional hernia and needed to see a surgeon.

It's large enough to see under my clothes. Craig and I call it my baby bump.

I had a choice to see a surgeon here in town or to head down to Indianapolis and have my pancreatic surgeon do the repair. I decided that I felt more comfortable returning to Indy. (As Dr. Schmidt's nurse breezily put it, "After all, he already knows what your innards look like." Alrighty, then!!)

Tuesday Craig and I spent four hours at Simon Cancer Center meeting with my surgeon, various nurses, doctors, and case workers, and having blood drawn, x-rays,  an EKG, and other things done. I was a bit dismayed to find that the surgery would not be simple. Not only will Dr. Schmidt have to reopen the incision, but he will need to make two other cuts, one on either side of my abdomen. The reason? The opening inside is too big to just pull closed; the sutures would tear the tissue if he did. Cuts on either side give leeway for pulling things together. (And then those must be sutured, too.)

Me with my hospital carry bag of supplies, a prescription needed for prep, and my purse waiting to be called back in x-ray.

Surgery is scheduled for later this month, and I have to do the same prep regimen of exercise, vitamins, spirometer, Immunonutrition drinks, and so on. I will be in the hospital for three days, and was warned that this surgery would actually be more painful than the pancreatectomy/splenectomy done last August. That was something else I did not expect - I didn't think anything could be worse than that.

Here we go again!

Rough Times

It's been a rough, hard ten days since my surgery. Surgeons removed a mass the size of a baseball on my pancreas along with half my pancreas, my spleen, and some lymph nodes. The pathology report is not back yet, but my surgeon took clear margins, just in case, and thinks I will not be dealing with cancer treatments. Good news!

It's the hardest surgery I have ever had, and even though I did a lot of prep work ahead of time, it has still knocked me flat. (I can't help but wonder what I would feel like had I not prepared my body so well.)

I've  had so many ports and IVs that it seemed like everywhere I looked, there was some sort of tube. I lost track of how many I actually had.

 And there has been heavy bruising everywhere.

My sugar spiked at almost 400 and then bounced up and down for several days which meant I was getting finger sticks every two hours and insulin shots in my belly.

Fortunately my blood sugar has normalized as my pancreas has healed.

Tough as it was, I had excellent care during my six days in the hospital - everyone from the nurses, techs, food service, and custodians were kind and caring. If I rang the bell for a nurse, someone was there almost immediately.

One nurse even drew me a cute elephant to cheer me up. I had them leave it there my entire stay.

I'm home now and continuing to heal. I'm eight days post-op as I write, and I am moving around the house and even sitting out on our patio. Taking lots of naps throughout the day, but I am needing fewer as the days go by.  I haven't made it upstairs to my horse room yet as those stairs are too much for me at the moment, but I hope to do so in a day or two.

Crunch Time!

I've only got a few more days until my surgery and am in full-on crunch time mode. I sat down and made a list of things that I needed to get done before I head to Indianapolis as well as a packing list of things to take. I'm trying to accomplish several things a day so that if I have any last minute hiccups, it won't be cause for panic.

 I continue to do the body prep that the surgeon asked me to do. 

That includes drinking three of these prescription immunonutrition drinks every day. I really like them! (A good thing that I do; I have to drink them post-op, too!)

They have the coolest straw that comes attached to each box. It extends after you open it.

Lightsaber, anyone?  What a great prop for a performance set up! I am actually saving a couple. Not that I show performance anymore, but you never know!

 I am swallowing the vitamins that the surgeon asked me to add into my diet.

And have added in the daily Kefir drink, too. (Luckily, I like it, too.) 

There are daily breathing exercises that I must do in order to prepare my lungs and strengthen my chest wall muscles. I've used a spirometer many times while in the hospital, but never as a part of getting ready for surgery.

I'm walking daily for thirty minutes to build muscles and stamina.

There's a lot of pretty scenery in Indiana - I've enjoyed getting out of hibernation to see it.

   Retail therapy is always fun, but in this case, it was a necessity, too.

I have had enough surgeries to know that, if you don't bring a robe to the hospital, then they will use a second hospital gown to cover your backside while the nurses walk you around in the hallway as part of your recovery. One hospital gown is enough for me, and so now I have a new robe.

One of my sisters did a little retail therapy, too, and bought sister bracelets for me, her, our other sister, and our sister-in-love. It says, "Always my sister, forever my friend." Sisters strong!!

I am a huge reader and always have a book going. (I'm currently reading Book 3, The Hero of Ages, from the Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson) Now I am loading my Kindle up with some new titles.

 I even washed Millie and Molly's dishes! (They are our daughter's dogs, but are here several times a week.) That didn't really need to be done as a part of surgery prep, but I'd just steam mopped all the floors and decided to clean them, too while I was in a cleaning mood.

Fishy got a partial water change, a new filter, and a wipe down of the walls of her aquarium, both inside and out. Isn't she pretty? (She was about an inch and a half when I bought her as a pet for my classroom. Four years later, she's eight inches long and still growing!)

It's a little too early to make up some extra sugar water for the hummingbirds, but I did clean the feeders really well before refilling them.

And finally, a big part of my prep is going out to the barn and spending some time with my girl.

Derailment

My pancreatic surgery was scheduled for today but it has been delayed. I became ill with an upper respiratory infection that was bad enough to need an antibiotic, and the surgeon wants me as healthy as possible going into surgery. So I have to reschedule.

I understand his reasoning and agree with it. But that doesn't mean that I am not disappointed. I've had a rigorous prep of vitamins, probiotics, exercise, breathing exercises, and other things all intended to make my body as ready to go as possible, and that simple upper respiratory infection derailed the entire process.

The good news is that the surgeon feels that the possibly cancerous nodule that's inside the mass on my pancreas is not a threat that needs immediate action. That is very reassuring. But still, I cried when they gave me the news that the surgery would be postponed.

So now I become a hermit - I am staying out of public places in order to avoid catching something else. No church, no grocery, no running to Target or Meijer - just staying home and away from people so that I remain healthy and can have the surgery done. (I can go to the barn - yes!)

On a happier note, I got my BreyerFest Banner. It's a wonderful story about a hobbyist's generosity, and I will share it tomorrow.

A Major Curve Ball

Sometimes life throws a curve ball at you, and I had a pretty major one lobbed my way in June. I now know more about the pancreas than I ever wanted to know.

Right before Happy Trails in June, doctors discovered that a mass on my pancreas had begun growing. We found it by accident three years ago and it's been checked annually from then on. The tumor had been unchanged until this year's CT scan in June when it was discovered that it was now 4 CM in diameter. 

A few days after Happy Trails was over I went down to Indianapolis and had it biopsied, and the mass was even larger, having grown another centimeter in just three weeks. It was determined to be precancerous and had high cancer markers within the fluid. (It's called a Mucinous Cystic Neoplasm.) 

I have discovered that when your pancreas starts going awry, you get a lot of attention from people in the medical field and things happen fast. We got home from our trip to BreyerFest and Tennessee Monday night and then turned around on Tuesday at 6 AM to head south to Indianapolis to meet with my surgeon at 8:00 and then do my preops. We thought we'd be at the hospital two hours; I was with the surgical team for six hours! 

Because the tumor continues to grow, it is now too big for laparoscopic removal so I will need the open incision surgery to remove it. Within the mass is a smaller nodule with hard walls, and Dr. Schmidt, the surgeon, said that there was a 10% chance that the nodule was cancer. (Overall, those are good odds.) 

He discussed cancer protocols with me, just in case, and what he would do to remove any cancer that might be found. Along with half of my pancreas, he is also removing my spleen and lymph nodes, which means I will have lowered immunity for the rest of my life and need to be careful when I am ill. 

 After meeting with the surgeon, I had to have three vaccinations to boost my immunity going into surgery, blood work done, an EKG, and X-rays. I met with the team social worker who will coordinate home health care for me after I go home, and the team nutritionist who spent an hour going over what I need to be eating to build my body for surgery and recovery. I have exercises to do, a new vitamin regimen, and daily breathing practice to build up my lungs. I even have to brush my teeth four times a day to make sure my mouth is as bacteria-free as possible.  

The nifty case on wheels I was given to carry all my surgery prep items in. Won't it work well for model horse shows when this is all over?

The surgery will be done in Indianapolis and I will be in the hospital for 5-7 days, possibly more. Recovery at home will be 2-3 months. I had to cancel my entry to the August GLC show as I won't be able to drive that far or carry tubs of model horses. But I will be able to help out at The FAMulous Collectibility Show I am holding with Allison Pareis on September 14. 

I am more than a little overwhelmed by what is ahead but I LOVE the team that is in place to care for me - in fact, I got a call from one of them yesterday and was called "honey" twice and "sweetheart" three times. I also have the surgeon's and head nurse's cell phone numbers and been told to call any time and to not worry about bothering them. Clearly, pancreatic surgery is a big deal, bigger than I ever imagined.

 But I think I am almost ready to go. Wish me luck.