Time to Plan for the Holidays..... My Wish List

Santa Baby... these are on my list... and I've been very good!!!!

The Joy....

Little Children on a Bicycle by Ernest Zacharevic

I love this - wish I could buy the painting!!!!!

I Do NOT Miss My Tonsils... 20 Days Post -Op

I am so excited.. it's now 20 days since the Tonsilectomy, and now I am only sporting a little bit of a raw throat.  No more scabs, never had any bleeding issues, just a bit tired still ... But, my throat is no longer swollen with those poisonous tonsils, all the little glands underneath my chin area are gone!!!  I have a throat and chin once again - and my body is starting to realize there's no poison left!  Woo Hoo!  For awhile it felt like the end of the world with the pain and discomfort, but look at me today - at the office, and all I have is a slight irritation of a sore throat and only on one side - the side that was so BADLY infected all the time.  That tonsil must have been absolutely poisonous and sickly and HUGE, it took the longest to heal - the longest to lose scabs, and it's still sore/raw feeling.  BUT I am happy - very happy that I took care of getting rid of the nasties - and I am now looking forward to better health!!!!!

Au Revoir Tonsils!!!!!

So, it's been 7 days since they removed my tonsils.... The surgeon rubbed my arm and soothed me and told me he has had nobody bleed or not wake up from anesthesia, Thank the Lord (His exact words), BUT.. he wasn't going to lie to me, the surgery would take 7-10 minutes, when I'd wake up, I would feel discomfort, but because of the numbing gels and anesthesia and pain medicine, it wouldn't be another day or two after the surgery when I'd experience the pain, and it would be a minimum of ten days before I felt healing or relief...

It's been agony, not pain, agony... No Bleeding and I THANK THE LORD for that and my wonderful surgeon, of course!!!!!!  You would have thought I had major surgery - my body felt like it had been hit with a Mack truck the first few days.  The torture of swallowing.  The first few days because of still being somewhat numbed, I was able to suck down lots and lots of fluids, but once the numbing was gone, and all I was left with was pain meds and numbing gargle... it was like someone was asking me to jump off the George Washington Bridge in order to take a sip and swallow some ice cold water.  By the way, I find Gatorade caustic.... and SOBE Coconut water to die for - it's sweet enough and has that milkiness to it that soothes as it goes down.  Sadly I've drank the entire case I bought, and now I'm left with the gallons of suggested Gatorade.

OH and then I started running the low grade fever... think you are in discomfort and pain already, try feeling aches and pains and miserable from a fever, ON TOP of the broken glass and painful swallowing.  Just swallowing your own spit is a chore... the only positive in bearing the pain to swallow your spit is that it keeps me from drooling and even looking more pathetic.

Talking - is limited... I don't want to move my tongue - hurts too much, so I sound like I have suffered a major stroke or have a terrible speech impediment when I try to speak....  the clamps or instruments used to keep your tongue out of the way in surgery have bruised my tongue or hurt it in some way where I don't think the surgery itself was so bad, but just the damage from the clamps...

My caregiver, my son ... he's been the best nurse.  He's fed me, watered me, consoled me, made things lighter and funnier, he's God Sent.  He loves looking into my mouth at night with a flashlight and telling me how much better the scabs look, if they are colored, if some are gone, etc.  We even watched all of Doc Martin ... and he's very disappointed because we have to wait another year or MORE before more Doc Martin comes out again!

My constant companions, my cats.  The kitten never left my side  and today is the first day she's been off doing her own thing in the house.  She must sense I feel better... I'd wake up with the giant Habibi on one side staring at me, and the kitten stretched out along my other side... Habibi and her have a hard time sharing me - so she usually scares the poor furry chap off... But I don't know why people don't like cats, my cats have given me the feeling of love and caring this whole time.  Having these warm little fuzzy beings that stay with you, almost like guarding me, offering me comfort, purring for me, soft cuddly things... they are like little Mini-Healers...

Well any time now a friend is going to pop in to check on me... lets see what she brings me :)  I am sure it will be ice cream!

Where do I want to be today?

I would like to be sitting on a blanket in Central Park people watching... reading a good book under a blue sky dotted with large cotton ball clouds.... listening to music that makes everything peaceful and dreamlike....

Ode to Spike

My grandmother and great-grandmother used to tell me about Spike, the family pet.  My great grandfather was away during WWII – he was stationed off in the Pacific, leaving his wife and 4 children to move to his mother’s homestead property on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona.  Their new home was a clapboard house with an outhouse in the middle of the desert – no neighbors to be seen, and they shared this desolate home with Spike, the first male Staffordshire terrier in the State of Arizona. 

Spike was well loved, with four kids in a new place that they were not fond of, bored out of their minds, he put up with their hugs, loving, dragging him everywhere with them, he made a great impression on those kids – he was their one and only best friend until school started. 

This dog was trained to kill anything non-human, so because of this, Spike never left any progeny.  The female pit bull was of no interest to him, he only had interest in hunting snakes, lizards and vermin. 

One time a man showed up in a truck with a small poodle.  Spike literally had to be stunned by a smack on the head with a shovel to save the poodle’s life…. It wasn’t Spike’s fault, he was only doing his job… and the man was warned before this incident…not to open his car door and get out – but he refused to listen…

Spike’s other fun activities made him seem very human with a wicked sense of humor, such as escorting the children in the pitch black of night to the outhouse, and then…. Leaving them!  Or, leaving presents, such as a 6 foot dead rattle snake on the floor beside their beds in the morning.

All the stories about Spike, he even became my beloved dog, yet he passed away a long time before I was even a glimmer in my mother’s eye, before my mother was even a glimmer in my grandmother’s eye for that matter. 

R.I.P Spike!!!!!

Summer Vacation Memories

In the 1970s, my parents used to rent a house on Fire Island... we'd pack up and make the couple hours drive in our Volvo to the docks for the ferry, so exciting, and then once we crossed the bay on the ferry, we'd go off to find our new temporary home.... the excitement of which room would be my bedroom ... and being able to throw my bathing suit on and jump into the water and swim and play!!!!!

(this is not the house - but it is the style of homes)

I was about 6 or 7 yrs. old when we stayed at The Pines.  I remember "Tea Time" at the bar where the docks were - and the music would start, and everyone would get out and dance under the disco ball.  Thinking back on it - I remember sunshine, wooden docks, multi-million dollar yachts, sipping on my Shirley Temple, and men without shirts on and nice bodies dancing on the floor around me... sounds pretty fun, doesn't it?  I can even remember the music playing, like "I Shot the Sheriff" by Bob Marley or "Don't Rock the Boat" - Hues Corporation. Sometimes a gentleman would even ask me to come out on the dance floor... I would accept depending on how many sips I got of my parents' Salty Dogs when they weren't paying attention!!!

The house we stayed at was all squares and glass - that beachy modern look - and it sat on the Bayside of the island - where there were impressive views of stars at night or summer storms rolling in from the mainland.

So much to explore, and no worries about boogeymen coming and snatching me up... those were magical days and wonderful memories of times with my family....