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Text of the page (random words):
d days which are most of them this is important to know we recognize that we are all humans going through something hard but on our bad days we are angry and we are angry at the world and betrayed by the concept of fairness in the universe it s very hard for me to say the anger has a place in our world it does have a place though if you can t ever stand up and say that this is unfair then you are shoving that feeling away and in our case at least it always gets out the longer it is stuffed away the meaner it is you need to be able to acknowledge anger i know i am sunshine and roses a lot of the time and i work very hard to mentally stay at peace with things but you really can t help but be angry sometimes and not acknowledging it is hardly positive the only takeaway here is that for us what it means to be a couple to be a family has evolved to contain room for something else that something else is the right to be angry with the world and to be forgiven for it that it is ok to not be strong enough some days to deal with it all that extending patience to someone who needs the same can be hard but also that letting go of the idea that life is fair can be kind of empowering even if it takes a lot of crap to get there leave a comment two to go june 29 2018 filed under uncategorized mintlatte 7 36 am hubby has only two chemo sessions left two 2 to too yeah i go a little incoherent here the thing is it has worked his psa is at 1 8 and given that we started at 6800 this is something to be very happy about right now it seems like life might return to somewhat normal we actually went on vacation this year a crazy road trip of over 3 000 miles 5 national parks 5 states and a new appreciation for each other and home cooked food yet it looms in the back of your head he did it he made it through this round of treatment how long are we good for how much time did this buy us but that is the problem some questions just don t have answers so when we walk out after the last session its like we are walking into a dark hallway we know its a hallway we just can t tell what is at the end or where it ends still it is summer summer has always been my happy place and although it is harder for me with the heat ms and heat do not play nice the longer days the more relaxed feeling that seems to settle in with late dinners and later night strolls its where i am happy to be right now i read a lot about dealing with the things life throws you and have learned from a variety of sources that resiliency can be cultivated the ability to go through life s bumps with grace can be cultivated practicing gratitude which for me is a kind of meditation on the good things is a key to being resilient i have to sometimes work very very hard much harder than i like to admit to find the bright spots and i am not convinced that internally i am as resilient as i am externally but despair and fear are part of the chronic illness journey as present as they can be in my life they are not the face i want to wear around the world as far as knit still knitting dishcloths can t seem to help myself they are meditative knitting the kind where you don t think you just knit and the ability to focus on something that is not cancer or ms or work or any of life s other stresses to just mechanically do something where you can live in the moment or just be in the moment or not even acknowledge the moment that s a whole different kind of thing leave a comment long day may 29 2018 filed under uncategorized mintlatte 11 41 am tomorrow is shaping up to be an incredibly long day while recently i have been pretty focused on hubby s health tomorrow i have to spend some time focusing on my own my rituxan infusion is tomorrow rituxan being the drug that keeps the ms at bay and while it isn t horrible it s not a day at the park either anyway in an effort to not take too much time off of work hubby is also doing chemo tomorrow and while i am appreciative they could squeeze us in on the same day we are not at the same time but more back to back i will be relinquishing my chair about the time he will be needing one so its going to be a really really long day i am not sure why anyone would care about this at all except i can say there are real challenges both financial and logistical to managing a family and chronic illness had we been scheduled on separate days we both would have needed two days off which really is counterproductive having to take time off to remain well enough to work well yeah you see my point leave a comment been a bit may 25 2018 filed under uncategorized mintlatte 9 30 am i know it has been a bit so here is the quick update chemo is doing the trick or maybe lupron is but hubby s psa is now down to 13 which is a totally reasonable number given what we started with at any rate since he is tolerating chemo pretty well we are playing the how low can you go game and signed him up for four more sessions he is entirely thrilled about this development or not and i find myself wandering around in a brand new forest with totally different trees as we went through this whole chemo bit the end game was clear it was to get my hubby better only now that we are at the end i realize we are better but we are also standing at the edge of a moving precipice he is better for now for some unanticipated length of time until he is not so i keep thinking i am getting this i am learning how to live with this hanging over my head and then it throws a brand new thing at me and is all surprise look what i found right around the next corner and it always requires me to rethink everything i tell everyone that it s all ok that you can t really dwell in fear and what not life won t let you like it or not you find yourself just living grocery shopping paying the bills walking together like you always do and laughing together while you go about it all still sometimes we walk around the elephant in the room sometimes we laugh about it and sometimes we rage at it privately i am melancholy about its presence privately i sense that hubby is still raging and may never stop i rationalize that this is what resilience is really like resilience is simply doing what you always do despite what the world does to you it makes me happy and sad at the same time i mean its so simple keep calm and carry on but its also like the duck calm on top and paddling furiously underneath on another note we finally dined at white fence farms last night for all in denver i think this is a required thing hubby and son were less than enthusiastic but i found it charming and the food was a ok although really it was like eating at a kansas funeral fried chicken and mayo based salads so if you ever had a really good kansas funeral meal cooked by the ladies auxiliary then you get it if you have a hankering for that type of food but are not fond of church basements and funerals then white fence farms is your place and if you are still here for the knitting i have been playing zelda and that has consumed all my knitting time but i have been ravelry lurking and dreaming of new shawls and cardigans so something is bound to hit the fan soon either i will find out what size needles are not in use and start something new with them or i will actually pick up something and finish it but i figure why not surprise myself everyone else surprises me leave a comment two down four to go february 14 2018 filed under cancer mintlatte 10 12 am hubby did round two of chemo on monday he is tolerating it pretty darn well this time that said the hair is starting to go i guess it is fortunate that it just looks like it is thinning so it doesn t look too patchy yet he hasn t been a hat wearer for some time so trying to find hats that he can wear at work and that will be comfortable is a bit tough mainly he tends to run warm anyway so most knit stocking caps are out i did find some made of t shirt material but they are slouchy and score a no go on the wear at work front i was actually thinking it wouldn t bug him to be bald i mean a lot of guys are bald and he wears his hair really short anyway but when you start to think of it it is really one of the first really outside visible signs that he has cancer in fact the sudden hair loss is kind of like waving a flag and shouting it from the rooftops for him this is worse than any vanity about hair it is inviting people to question and that is very much not his style honestly this blog is not his style but he realizes it is mine and that we are mutually coping so he puts up with it there is still some minor swelling in his lower abdomen but it is shrinking by the day and for that we are thankful but i still wish beyond wishing there was someone out there who could tell me this would all be ok i had counted on them running his psa levels again this week before chemo but the dr didn t want to run them again until he has another chemo session under his belt i am so torn about this in terms of husband s anxiety i see the point we have physical signs this is all working and his number was so high to begin with i think that it may still be higher than he will be comfortable with me i just want to see the number but to a large extent while this affects both of us in huge unforeseeable ways that we discover every day this is his he owns it in a way that i don t so i find myself needing to defer and think more deeply about respecting his choices and not pushing my will onto him in the long run i fear i will really need this skill and it terrifies me i beg the universe every single day to not let that time come ever in the mean time i am going to try sewing a couple of hats this weekend and maybe look for a light weight cotton to knit something out of at the same time i don t want to make these things only because making them signifies something to me in a way i am only starting to accept this and i don t want to accept this leave a comment rolling like a ring ding february 9 2018 filed under uncategorized mintlatte 6 45 pm so on we go if not mindlessly at least obediently hubby has started chemotherapy round one down round two next week four to go after that i have started a more unique game of torture for myself one where i sort through medical stuff that varies from i get that to this is so far over my head it has an orbit the goal of this game is to know what our outcome will be to know the answer to the big question will my husband be ok the torture part is that there just isn t an answer you can t know there is no medical miracle that can give you the answer there is no belief system that can give you an answer it is just a question hanging over life as you know it oddly enough life keeps on pretty much just as you know with with a little more chemo and a little darker humor it just keeps on so here is what i think i know this whole stage iv metastatic prostate cancer is scary no matter how you slice it the fact that it is his lymph nodes seems to indicate that it may be kept in check over a longer term of time we are treating it aggressively and i think i have to be satisfied with that he tolerated his first dose of chemo pretty darn well the second is next week i am hoping very much that we keep just rolling along for any who still give a rat s rear end about what i am making currently about 1 2 done with a chunky long cardigan something that looked ridiculously comfortable since my stress levels shoot through the roof at random moments i find that i have been gravitating towards comfortable things comfortable clothes comfortable foods and comfortable people leave a comment updates january 15 2018 filed under uncategorized mintlatte 2 21 pm less than a month ago what i knew about prostate cancer fit in a thimble cancer was a statistical long shot to me until it wasn t i am still unsure of many things but it has been a relief to find that some men live many years with prostate cancer even stage iv prostate cancer our case is decidedly odd i can t find others whose diagnostic path followed my husbands but diagnosed he is he has started one treatment and will start a 2nd treatment soon adt and chemotherapy i am pretty sure we can t live every day in a fog wondering how long he has so we haven t really focused on that right now we are focusing on the hope that this works we know there is no cure at this point in time and that medical science is smart enough to buy us a lifetime and there is is life just goes on at any rate i have read a book the pillars of the earth by ken follett and it was highly satisfying to have actually finished something and i actually crafted a little i am doing a silly embroidery from mollie makes magazine it appealed to me because everything you need was in the little kit thread needled cloth hoop and pattern and it was small nothing too crazy just enough to be satisfied that you have made something in the same fit of optimism i ordered a bit of chunky yarn hoping that the knitting is fast i guess that remains to be seen no photos now that would require a level of organization beyond where my spirit is at the moment but hey maybe one day leave a comment what s new january 5 2018 filed under cancer life mintlatte 2 08 pm so what s new right i am sorely lacking in craft content i could go back over all the stuff i have done started and not finished or maybe even the things i have though of doing but things have been turned upside down in the world here my husband has been diagnosed with stage iv prostate cancer which is about as out of the blue as it can be in your worst nightmares honestly if you looked at him you wouldn t know he was sick other than some water retention in his lower extremities he is fine he feels fine he looks fine but medical tests tell otherwise they show he has a prostate cancer that has spread to the lymph system this is all we know right now it is a tiny scary crumb that has me thrown for a loop i am writing not because anyone follows this but because i am at a loss and maybe someone else has been here in this very spot we will hopefully know more next week the docs want to discuss among themselves a fact that is both comforting and terrifying until later keep mr mintlatte in your thoughts as i go through this i may decide to post more but i am new at the whole caregiver thing my husband is my person but this will be a whole new level and i am only now beginning to work through it all in my head leave a comment 5 years later february 16 2016 filed under uncategorized mintlatte 7 50 am holy cow decided to check my url as i couldn t remember if i renewed this year apparently i did or should soon or something like that when i logged into wordpress i remembered my login it kindly tells me it has been 5 years since my last post 5 years i feel the need to say that again 5 years and i am writing here even though no one reads it because reading it myself well it was nice to get a refresher course on my life some things to note teenage daughter is no longer teenage daughter accor...