Denine is my hero. Leanne, too, ditto for Maude. One of a kind, all of them.

One day, Denine woke up one day to find out she had stage four cancer. She has fought with everything she has, and, by her words, with the faith of the many friends who stand behind her, she has faith and she still stands strong against the odds. Denine posts her progress openly and honestly. I can't speak or describe enough, the admiration I feel for her.  We spoke at length after my news, and when asked when does the terror stop, her reply was, "Never." Not what I wanted to hear, but as always, only the truth.

Leanne woke up one day to a spider bite and ended up as a quadruple amputee. She is young, a mother, beautiful, but even more beautiful inside because of the way she was fought to regain a life, and she has done extremely well. All I have to do is think of Leanne and there's is nothing wrong with me! But, again, it's individual, it's all relative and it's all ever so personal. 

I am feeling like the new kid on the block, this journey has just begun. I have questions, many questions. I have fears that defy paper and pen. I expect the process will be a great deal like grieving, it has stages, expected and predicted emotions, turning points, and hopefully, some stage of relief and acceptance. 

That was written early this month, July of 2018. It is now the 27th and it feels like ages since that doctor appointment on the 6th that shoved my world into a nightmare. I found my self immediately reluctant to share the news with others after the first few people reacted like I had said I was going to die tomorrow, the sympathy pouring out of them was too much to bear, far too emotional for me while I am trying my best not to collapse into a pity party of unfathomable depths. 

Over a short period of time, I observed different reactions to my news, comments and opinions all over the board. I also found one thing to be true, that unless something similar has happened to you, you cannot relate. Losing a child is horrific, I pray I never have to experience that horror. But it simply is not the same as having your own life threatened. Close, oh, ever so close, your world is equally destroyed, but you will keep on living. Those with a death sentence will not. 

Yeah, yeah, we are all dying, Your are not alone, there are so many others with the same illness. It will be ok. It will work out. You are not dead yet, None of these are helpful in any way, shape or form. No one but you are standing in your shoes. You just have to let the sorrow unfold. You have to adjust. The only constant thing is life is change, believed and preached this all my life, but I am not as accepting of change, especially of this proportion, as I thought I was! 

So, down into the rabbit hole of depression. Classic symptoms. Nothing moves you, nothing is important. Pacing, starting to cry, completely and totally unproductive. Totally ungrounded. You see all sorts of Facebook posts about how to prevent a panic attack, or recover from one. They are great, and work, at least for me, as long as you participate in the five steps, finding something to look at, see, hear, touch, smell, etc. The minute I was done with the exercise, I was back to freaking out. I tried as hard as I could to hide it from my family as to not worry them, but I am assured I was not successful. 

We have a second home in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and try to spend every other weekend there, That first weekend did not improve my mood. The trees, the beauty, the birds, and most of all, the deer we see often enough to name them did little to help, which was rather surprising. However, on the way home I again had a great deal of time to think. I tried to come up with a undeniable, completely reliable happy thought. Something that, without fail, brought me joy. Instantly. Yes, I love my family beyond description, but they are not always right there to look and make me smile. I have magnets on my frig whose purpose is to bring me back to current time and appreciate the moment, but they just aggravated me now. What finally did strike me is my love, my extremely deep love, for music! My ipod with my eclectic collection of over four thousand songs is usually with me, and I know the words to each and every song. Find my earphones and I can have music anytime I need it, I just need to remember! 

31 July 2018 Tuesday: just finished another session with Shauna, a therapist I met through my daughter. You know when you first meet someone and some thing just clicks? We share a spooky level of similarities, even down to identical thoughts or words at the same time.  I have seen her twice now, and both times I have felt like getting back to 'me' is truly possible, despite the new changes, the new life style, the new sigma I have placed on myself. She tells me I am not gentle with myself, that others come first, and I disagree on both points to no avail.

I had a reading with a Reiki Master who explained how your self, at the top of your head, moves aside to absorb new input, you arrange the new information, categorize it, label it, process it, and so on and the self settles back in, dead center again. Well, I have not done that. I am fragmented. I am shattered, I am broken. Logically, I am good with that. Yup. Emotionally? Not so much. 

One of the first reactions I had to being placed on oxygen (furthermore to be referred to as just 'oxygen') was "Oh no! Get up, get going, you time is limited, you have to do whatever you are supposed to do, and now!! Today!"  Well, besides being frozen in despair and depression, non-functioning, I found myself completely unable to do anything, let alone think about what I should be doing. Totally lost little girl in a big, bad, dark, ugly forest with no cracker crumbs. And why do the doctors stare at me so hard and emphasize the word "severe" so much?

Knowing Debra is a priceless gift. Among hundreds of other things, she taught me you can't dig yourself out of a hole until you acknowledge you are in a hole. Logically, I know I am on oxygen. Emotionally, I block it, I don't cry, I don't share a great deal, and as Shaula put it today, I am standing in front of this ginormous wall called "shattered" and I won't emotionally accept it. There will be two results from confronting this issue, by letting go emotionally, I will either mend, or I won't. There is no guarantee I will become 'me' again after one good cry, maybe two, maybe three, but I do know I am not the type to remain shattered. I just have to figure out how to fix myself. One day, one thought, one thing at a time. 

Panic attacks. Odd little creatures. They sneak up on you like a creepy little shadow and strike out of the blue, without warning. You might not even know why, or see it coming. It just happens. Your pulse starts to race a bit, dizzy, light headed, a bit of shake in the hands, and my biggest sign, besides borderline tears, is that I pace and cannot function or focus. My thoughts don't necessarily turn to my disease, or the repercussions thereof, but those concepts are lingering behind my brain, always there, always waiting to leap out. Once again, I find myself fighting this, not wanting my life to be like this anymore. No more panic attacks!! I want my life back again! Once again, I am not accepting the fact that I AM in a hole. But logic has faded like a cloud, and dark emotion is the only presence during a panic attack. Two dear people, Debra and Shaula, gave me two precious tools to halt a panic attack. 

Your body does not know the difference between real danger and a panic attack, and reacts the same way. Debra repeatedly and insistently asks me, "Are you in danger?" Of course, the answer is, "No." That can bring me clearly to present time, no matter where I am. Sitting at the kitchen table, in the backyard, where ever. Current time. Look around you. I am not in danger. Bring back your logic. Everything, no, is ok. Proceed. Whew. 

Shaula offered me, "Breathe. Feel your strength." Priceless. I am John Stevens' daughter. 

I have journaled all my life. I have a standard daily diary, "Went to Columbia for tea, dinner with Bill and Nancy" stuff. I have journals for my son and daughter, starting with all the entries I wrote about them since they were born. I need to keep those up more often! Then there's the open-it-up-and-let-the-feelings-rip journals. Haven't really done that in years, this seems to be exactly that. Just a bit more painful that what I have written before. 

02 Aug 2018 Thurs - Today was a good day. My daughter flew out to her brother's in Virginia to retrieve her son who's been visiting family for the month. Her plans to get the airport went awry, my husband took her while a dear friend took me to my doctor appointment in Fresno, an hour away. I don't drive long distances well, so I thank my lucky stars for her help. We are both quilters and enjoy each other's company. Her sense of humor, lunch, a shopping trip at the local Joann's and just laughing the day away kept me from sad thoughts. I am thankful for good days. 

06 Aug 2018 Mon - Dave heads up to the cabin as he always does on weeks we aren't there. I can't go, the smoke is horrendous. Even here in Merced the smoke can be too much for me to be outside. The fires make me cry. Today we learned Dardanelle Resort from the twenties is gone. I literally sobbed. Flame has no mercy, no prejudice, and an unlimited appetite, devastating. I have been through two and pray I never have to go through another. I was planning on having a serious cry day with David gone, but I did not, all the crying I have done over the fires seems to help.

Friday I was putting together a list of things to ask my MD about, from hand tremors to outrageous diarrhea no matter my diet. Headaches, and I am contending with the worst back ache I have had in I can't remember how long. Add to this I can't eat, no idea why, I want to toss up whatever I eat after two bites. Down to 130 pounds, that doesn't hurt my feelings, tee hee. Amidst compiling this list, David and I look at each other, I scramble to the computer and look up the side affects of Daliresp (anti-inflammatory for the lungs), which I started about nine days ago. Tremors, headaches, backache, no sleep, no appetite, AND diarrhea!! By Monday everything but the back ache had subsided to a decent level. Whew. 

Just realized I haven't done that half sob, half hiccupped breaths you take after a good cry today!! Hope springs eternal. Then, the next day, I do it, at what could be construed as an emotional moment, so, it's not trying to intake air due to COPD after all. I wonder how long it will be before I stop doing it? 

I am a list maker. Deep within a catacombs of my computer you will find a list of lists, I kid you not. Anniversary gift ideas, embroidery floss colors, new house gift ideas, on and on. When I can't focus, which is definitely this day, this month, this journey, I make a list of things I need to do. Today is call Dr Patel, Shilo's flea drops, fix grey pants, find razors, buy cat food at target, go to my chiropractor, make Reiki appt, make pink oxygen cozies, etc, etc. I've even been known to do something, add it to the list and cross it off. Feels great! 

I am also a creature of habit. No matter we go to eat, David could probably order for me without consulting me. Maybe it's our 'old' age or just the routine we have settled into after twenty years, but it's a comfy routine. Relaxed. David had showered and left on errands and I took a shower, did my breathing exercises, took my time and pampered myself a bit, extra hot water on my back and so on. I found comfort and centering in that focus, and realized since July 6th, I have broken my routine. Well, doggone it, no wonder I am so scattered and disjointed. Like so many other aspects of this new journey, I  don't know how long something will last, I tend to float in and out of chaos, but maybe a new refrigerator note is appropriate. Something like, "Where's your routine?"  I will ponder that one. Meanwhile, off to my day!

Another thought that keeps me on my path. At the end of the day, last night, I asked myself, "Did you waste the day?" Sadly, the answer was yes. So, today, I made up for it and got a lot done. A quiet but happy hurrah for me.

Routine is priceless, but you have to be in a mental position to care first. I am keeping myself as busy as I can the last two days, and actually got some real work done.  I even killed the first list of ToDos.  So it's thirty three days since they put me on oxygen. Thirty two days before I could feel some resemblance of normal. I am still aggravated by leaving all the yard work and errands to my husband, but air quality warnings because of the fires are perpetual. I went outside to grab a plant three feet from the house and returned inside to find myself immediately dealing with phlegm. Auuuughhh!

20 Aug 2018 Mon - Time has flown, I am almost back on track. I attend 'pulmonary rehab" Mondays and Wednesday, which sounds like a drug program, but it's simply a pulmonary exercise and learning class.  It had helped in many ways; I have learned how to breath, not just he pursed breathing but to exhale BEFORE I bend over and little treasures like that. What a difference it makes. We do then minutes on the bike, then on the cross-country and then on the treadmill. I admit it can be boring so the treadmill at the end provides me with some playing ability, dancing, changing your strides, etc.  A little weight lifting (I am up three pounds, whooooeee!) and then classroom where today we went through an entire catalog of tools available if you have had a stroke. Not applicable, depressing, boring, but, heck, maybe someday I will might them. What is amusing is that half the tools he brought up I already own.

So the routine is helping. And to my surprise, so is exercise! I mean I knew it would, but really, who WANTS to exercise? After this class, I might!  I have a Reiki session coming up, and another appointment with Shaula. We've moved to two week appointments, a good sign. So what are we going to discuss? I want to know how a perfectly normal looking and normal acting person (daughter's beau) can instantly fill with rage, but that's not about me.

After my first Reiki session, the oddest physical experience I can remember, I did have an odd thought I would not mind sharing. Just not sure how to word it. It has to do with re-uniting the young idiot I once was with the mother of John and Jena from another life to this old woman, rolling all of these people into one being and finally, at age sixty-six, being me, and proud of it. Thanks to my Reiki teacher, my life line is straight and together again. It's an phenomenal feeling!

More later: It's a real blow to not be able to do what you have done all your life. 

27 Aug 2018 - Mon - life has settled back to a normal. Of sorts.  David is off to the cabin to chop more of the wood waiting there for the past year. We lost sixteen trees to the pine bark beetle, some of them were too large to hug. Lots of work. Meanwhile, I get to write undisturbed. I should be doing other things, clearing one of the hundred items off my ToDo list, but like dust bunnies, they aren't going anywhere.

What's new is a new path, or perhaps more of an additional path. I became involved in crystals a while back, sometime last year, and started quite a collection, now divided down to crystals for protection in  baskets in both homes, crystals for communication in covered wooden boxes, again in both homes, and those for meditation and healing in bags or on my dresser or around my neck. Thinking back now, I remember this started because of an unfriendly entity in the mountain home. I wanted to rid the house of negativity once and for all. Strangely, ironically, the lady who helped me clear the house is now a non-friend. All contact between us has been cut off due her tendency to make untrue statements. Stoopid. None-the-less, that's how it started.

Where am I going with this?  We have met an incredible man who started producing cannabis for his wife who had cancer, and because of his product, she is now cancer free. We use it for pain, and we do not hesitate to share it with friends who are suffering from either; pain, or cancer. We have many of both, sadly enough. I got to thinking (danger, danger, Will Robinson!) that it might help my lungs, so, I started using it daily on my chest and high back area. The jury is still out. Meanwhile, with my collection of crystals for every purpose under the sun, those from healing stood out in my mind. Add a Reiki experience that qualifies as nothing short of miraculous, and I am on my way to a new path.

Religion vs spirituality has always been a sore spot for me. I wrote a large article called Beliefs, and my conclusions have not changed since then. Reiki teaches Life Force Energy, which makes perfect sense to me. It explains my love of plants and critters, my conviction that everything in our universe has energy we can't see, but if trained to, can feel. I had stopped going outside to celebrate under a full moon for quite some time. Last night, two of my friends joined me in our first Full Moon Celebration. It was spectacular, the energy was amazing, all three of us were a bit stunned, and extremely pleased with the results. I am so looking forward to future full moons, more Reiki, crystal energy, and learning so much more!

Bottom line? Knowing that you are approaching the end of your life, regardless of how far away that might be, makes you look towards your creator in a way you might not have ever tried before. Magic IS possible.