A Useful Idiot

 (I originally had something else in mind, but this is what floated to the surface when I finally got to the point of sitting down to immortalize my thoughts - the title is what cranks my motor, after all!)

I got very little accomplished of what I had planned this past weekend: everything from my endurance ride Friday, to canceled plans with Tony Saturday, to not getting the blizzard of paperwork on my desk sorted out Sunday…

At least Wednesday went all right - this was Tony‘s actual birthday, so I spayed his dog & he hung out at the clinic with us. Took him to lunch at the pierogi place, got his ears pierced which was another BD gift from Auntie Val. I also gave him a substantial discount on Marigold’s spay. We went to dinner with Tony & his parents Wednesday night. I hauled up to horse camp Thursday in order to ride Friday & come home Friday night so I could take Tony to the Dallas World Aquarium on Saturday.

My ride was a bust since our weather turned hot as we dragged in OT yet AGAIN. I have a feeling I had a lot of company but I didn’t hang around to hear the ride statistics. Poor Chris’s gelding stepped off the trailer lame so she didn’t get to ride at all! At least she told me Corey was doing great & was so appreciative for him - he’s a great dog so he deserves this chance to be the center of attention, the “perfect farm dog”.

Unfortunately, Tony had to go to urgent care Friday with migraine-like symptoms so we did not go to the aquarium Saturday after all. I filled this gap in my social calendar by taking Lisa out for a slightly belated sushi BD dinner. (Her party was last Sunday afternoon - I showed up late as I was returning from the CT ride in Athens I had been judging)

& once again, time races away from me so I will have to tell you The Rest of the Story later

*****************************************

Boy howdy, did I titled this post appropriately! I was doodling around last night during my TV time fleshing out my story, & yet I lost it all when I navigated away from this page… Silly me - I really thought this ancient iPad had an auto-save feature?!?

ANYWAY - quick recap: I did my best to supervise Zach’s video games, reading materials, & activities growing up. Initially I was horrified by his fascination with Deadpool - a Marvel anti-hero if there ever was one - with his foul mouth & decidedly marginal ethics. Zach painstakingly explained to me that Wade Wilson (who had pre-existing mental health issues) had been driven insane in the process of becoming Deadpool. I came to an understanding of why Zach would admire him in view of his own topsy-turvy custody wars existence - especially during his last horrendous senior year when I lost custody after years of conflict. I took he & his friend Josef to see the Deadpool movie in the spring of 2016 - it was a small humorous light near the end of that awful tunnel.

I try to make the most of my drive time by listening to podcasts - one of my faves is The Cine-Files; their most recent episode was Deadpool. I’m feeling like a useful idiot myself, as the consensus from MD Anderson continues to be watch & wait. Dr Hu wants to see me in 6 mos but let’s face it, I’ll barely have this round of medical bills paid off by then! Methinks they’ll have to wait a year unless my condition precipitously deteriorates… 3 yrs until I’m eligible for Medicare - some nice folks in my thyroid support group offered suggestions, but unfortunately as a self-employed person who does possess the means I don’t think I’m eligible for much help. Here’s my post:

Whelp, it appears to be mostly good news following my recent check-up at MDA: “stable disease” with a calcitonin around 1800 & CEA of 8.3**. See ya in 6 mos!

The kicker is my share of these expenses appears to be $8100 (current insurance carries a $3500 deductible & I’ll have to verify percentages beyond that). Obviously not gonna get any real answers over the weekend so Val can just fret about it…

We won’t mention that it cost me roughly $2000 in travel expenses which of course came straight out of my own shallow pockets.

I’ll set up ye olde payment plan - I’d like to space this out over a year, so the math just ain’t quite mathin’!!!

Looks like Dr Hu won’t get to see me for 12 mos. Life’s too short & I don’t want all my discretionary spending to go towards health care.

Places to go & horses to ride!

** Clarabelle (my metastatic L collarbone tumor) actually measures smaller than she did in 2016 - she just appears more prominent bcz I’ve (deliberately) lost a little weight. It’s funny - I gained about 50 lbs post-thyroidectomy & bemoaned the difficulty in peeling off this avoirdupois… One clinician told me years ago that there’d come a time when I would lose weight unintentionally - the challenge would be preventing that. Maybe I’m at “that age”? I always said I really just wanted to get back to the weight I was when I lost my thyroid, which equals about 10 more lbs. Updates to follow!

Oh, I also find it strange that they advised me not to do any more hyperbaric oxygen treatments - so no answers for my worst issue these days which is exercise intolerance/shortness of breath.

(I’ve been diagnosed w/early COPD, so Nurse R throwing out horseshit about “working w/my PCP is nonsense)

“In general, light/low-intensity exercise is best with plenty of breaks and focused breathing.”

“We do not recommend hyperbaric oxygen treatments with our cancer patients. She can work with her pcp to find other causes of her shortness of breath but exercises as much as she can tolerate is a good start.”

The Edge of Forever

 Decompressing with my evening dose of Star Trek: in many’s estimation, their best episode - “The City on the Edge of Forever”… Now, if you must know - Val’s favorite episode (which is an extremely difficult choice, kind of like asking a mother to pick her favorite child!) would be “The Naked Time”, in which the crew is infected with a virulent “space virus” that strips one of all inhibitions. Star Trek remains my trusted “companion”, so to speak, echoing little nuggets of wisdom as I forge on in my day-to-day struggles.

There’s rarely enough time with my morning coffee & social media surfing to finish the story - but I also credit Cousin Joe & his wife Margie with giving me priceless sanctuary as a young adult. I made multiple “visits to the farm” over undergraduate college breaks - getting my head back on straight as I broke free from an abusive HS boyfriend. Side benefit was forging close relationships with their 2 young sons: half big sister, half auntie! The farm always needed subsidization - while Joe was always a tireless, competent steward, Margie completed her nursing degree to provide a steady underlying support system. This meant she missed out on a lot of her boys’ childhood, kind of a “same but different” version of my motherhood experience…

I’m feeling a little stressed as I’ve piled a little too much recreation/duty on my plate, between last month’s Louisiana ride & Shanghai, last weekend’s Mt Pleasant ride, the competitive trail ride I have to judge this weekend, & the Decatur ride weekend-after-next - I’m ready for a little downtime! Or as my husband wearily asks: “Where are you off to this weekend?!?”

Also struggling with a little existential dissatisfaction - Army Guy responded to me after a 12-d absence this time in such an unsatisfactory way that I plugged his text into an AI detector, it really makes me wonder sometimes? (There was no evidence of AI influence) Maybe it’s time to pull the plug on this ill-fated relationship? 

My Cup Runneth Over

 (I really do try to cultivate that “attitude of gratitude”, believe it or not! & not just complain all the damn time!)

This is easy when I am sitting in my recliner with a lap full of warm little dogs - a little harder when I look for the silver lining in my personal sacrifices… Last weekend for my long-anticipated Priefert Ranch ride, Catie’s mare came up lame so I wound up handing my reins over to Christina so she could ride Twoie while Catie piloted Baraq (I had brought Baraq for Christina to ride) & they could have a(nother) mommy/daughter ride… This seemed to be the best logical plan: my back has not been feeling too great & my lower right ribs have been giving me these painful spasmic “catches”, I suppose as they are in the final stages of knitting back together! At any rate, they had a good ride & then I loaded up Saturday evening to drive 40 miles NE to visit my cousins in Clarksville.

I grew up in a strange, kind of awkward spot in the family - my paternal aunts had gotten a big head start on my parents fertility-wise, so I was considerably younger than my first cousins. But I’ve always had a special fondness for my Cousin Joe - he took over the dairy farm when he was a young man; both he & his wife busted their tails for almost 30 yrs until they were bought out by eminent domain for one of our newest lakes in NE Texas, Bois D’Arc. Similar to the highway project that steamrolled my old clinic, this was a public works project that had been hanging over their heads for decades. I know I have posted about it in the past, here we go:

https://endurovetssparkjourney.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-buzzards-roost.html

But any rate it’s always great to spend time with family. Joe was fascinated by Tina Fea - I don’t think he had ever met a “purse dog” as I was toting her around in her little baby sling! (Of course I have taken small dogs in the past to the farm, but not one as fragile & ephemeral as Tina Fea) Margie had smoked a pork shoulder in their latest big auction find: a big commercial-style smoker. I slipped Tina Fea a few bites & Joe had to participate too as I regaled them with the saga of TF’s gallbladder. (Joe is also amazed by the investments people will make in their pets - lucky for me! - but he’s a hardscrabble farmer so the dollars & cents always have to add up)

Memento Mori

 Many memories were stirred up during my return to MD Anderson last week for my long overdue “10-point inspection”…

[Not-so-quick recap: over the winter of 1987 (age 23), I suffered through a case of the flu. Coincidentally, a lymph node on the mid-left side of my neck remained swollen. It was painless but mobile so I ignored it until the following winter when I went for my ob/gyn appointment - my doctor was alarmed. She referred me to an ENT who immediately wanted to schedule major surgery (L neck dissection w/muscle resection(s) but I respectfully declined, I needed to get myself through my final semester of vet school! Again - asymptomatic! No weight loss, no difficulty swallowing, no voice changes. I returned to College Station & saw another clinician at the Baylor Scott & White clinic. We proceeded with what I thought was much more reasonable: a stepwise plan. I underwent a series of scans (as I recall, chest radiographs followed by whole-body CT scans). These were non-diagnostic so biopsy of that troublesome but painless lymph node was scheduled…

This was done 3 days before my vet school graduation - therefore I was somewhat hollow-eyed in my pictures with stitches in my neck. BS&W misread those initial slides as “adenocarcinoma of unknown primary origin” - I’ll never forget the poor clinician lugging a stack of textbooks into the exam room to break this bad news to me! Initial prognostications gave me 6 - 12 months to live; kind of startling when you consider yourself a basically healthy 25-yr-old. I came home & kicked a hole in the sheetrock of our rental house out of pure anger & frustration (I did have enough good sense not to risk my hands by punching the wall) One thing for which I can always be grateful to my ex-husband is the fact that he uncomplainably fixed the sheet rock & then we sat down to figure out our own plan - he’s the one who suggested we seek a 2nd opinion at MD Anderson.

Their pathologists successfully identified my tumor as medullary thyroid carcinoma - I returned to MDA for surgery as well as my follow-up tests & care for the next 27 yrs. When the tumor in my left clavicle appeared (2016), I was prepared to take a sabbatical to have my radiation treatments back at MD Anderson - to this day I don’t know how the ball got dropped there? After I had already undergone the modeling/staging procedures, making my mask & everything - BCBS declined coverage, calling further radiation therapy “unproven & unnecessary”. Unbelievable that a $&#@%€ insurance company overruled MD-fucking-ANDERSON, the top cancer treatment center in the USA!!! Riddle me this, Batman - why did they approve my treatment at the Texas Center for Proton Therapy a few months later?

Anyway, in this case, life worked as it should - I was able to keep on working through my 5 wks of proton therapy, Clarabelle flattened out & everything‘s been good until quite recently, when I noticed a (thankfully painless) bulge…

So I decided back in January to try, try again to return to MD Anderson. The previous times they could not get my scheduling right (with appointments Thurs & Fri) - I had been told several times that Dr Hu didn’t consult w/patients on those days.

Luckily times have changed so I was able to schedule my consultation with her last Thursday morning - they went ahead & booked up my bloodwork & a full series of scans for Thursday, Friday & Saturday morning.
Dr Hu was terrific! I really liked her & it was a whole different “vibe” than all my years of butting heads with Dr Sherman (my previous MDA endocrinologist). And astonishing enough, she was really apologetic about the 10-yr gap in my care from MDA - even though, of course she had absolutely nothing to do with BCBS declining my radiation treatment or anything else!
She thanked me at least three times over the course of our conversation for returning to MDA… she filled me in on some of the latest research with some of the newer drugs, so I may not be completely opposed to these?**
I know I said I would never take any of these “latest & greatest” chemotherapy  drugs, BUUUUT…

 My calcitonin has crept up to 1700, but surprisingly Doctor Hu didn’t have a problem with my slightly high T4 or suppressed TSH. We shall see when they read out all my CT & MRI scans whether my spine, liver or that weird thing Dr Mangona (my TX Proton Ctr radiologist in Irving, the guy who managed my local radiation treatments in 2017) panicked about in my brain is anything to worry about? Dr Hu queried me closely about neurologic signs, which I have not had.
I was hoping to explain all this & talk things over with Zach, but Victoria came down with food poisoning so I only saw him for a few minutes on Easter Sunday to drop off their goodies. 
And it’s impossible to know if Peran has any interest or cares, quite frankly, but he kept the animals fed & alive while I was gone so there’s that. Obviously I still need his help if I want to stay here on the farm.

** obviously the restriction will ultimately turn out to be my goddamned insurance company since it’s 3 more years until I qualify for Medicare

Flesh & Spirit

 (I just submitted my entry for our ride weekend-after-next so Val can try, try again to finish a 25-miler within the allotted time limit of 6 hrs. Just another case of the spirit being willing but the flesh being weak)

And as I did a quick review of My Latest News, I see that I failed to complete "the rest of the story" for my 3/16 entry: it was a damned shame as well as a disappointment to haul all the way to SE Louisiana, only to come in overtime on mine & Catie's ride. We had missed trail several times - those piney woods are a warren of interconnected paths & in the end, I could not "keep up the pace" so we trudged in 20 min overtime.

It took me two tries to swing my saddle up onto Twoie last Sunday… I’m glad no one saw me fail on the first attempt! I can kid myself all I want to that I was a little fatigued from a full day’s work on Saturday, but let’s face it, my physical condition is deteriorating. I contemplated not riding at all, which tells you all you need to know about my mental state - but finally compromised on a single-loop Intro (11 miles) since I had a long haul home. At least She Who Shall Not Be Named was not there - nor was she at the Louisiana ride, thank God! Hopefully she’s getting fatigued by long hauls also…

I started out with the 3 other Intro riders, but Twoie decided he needed to tank up at the first water stop, so we were alone for the rest of the ride. This was good & also not-so-good: as Twoie has gotten more fit, he has also gotten better at spotting boogers, so it would seem! There was a large mud patch beyond the second water tank caused by a leaking water line - Twoie did not want to get his dainty little hooves muddy, but I selected a stick & after a brief discussion, I persuaded him to cross it. When we got down to the most scenic portion of the ride (in the woods by the Colorado River), he saw a deer a couple of hundred yards up the trail - he froze to study her for a few minutes, but then when two more deer walked out of the woods, he almost lost his mind. I managed to hold him steady & when they had moved on, we did too. Then, when we turned the corner to hit that final long straight stretch back to the ranch house, there was a shirtless jogger churning toward us: somebody’s boyfriend had come out to visit & decided to check out the trails on foot. Twoie just needed a good long look at him before he decided Kenny wasn’t that big of a threat. 

But then we came upon last, but not least, some white plastic culvert pipes that were upended by the side of the road - we had to make a detour out into the field to give these scary things a wide berth! So at the end of our a little 11 mi,  2.25 hr excursion I was tired & Twoie had worked up a good sweat. We both had a little rest period before I loaded up to head on back home…

I returned Cicero the rat snake to his native lands - I gave show n' tell talks to horse camp folks Friday night, & a 2nd presentation to the Boy Scouts on Saturday night

Cindy turned over ride management duties to Leslie so she could "ride her own ride". This was Cindy's first completion of a 25-mi ride since the motorcycle accident that crushed her L foot 4 yrs ago. A car pulled out in front of her & she had to lay her bike down to avoid a broadside collision, a gruesome injury!

               Cindy posted blow-by-blow photos on FB so I feel free to share them here

Unworthy

 My mother crammed my baby book to overflowing with every single bit of minutiae concerning my growth & development - however one part that made an impression on me was the meaning of my name: “Worthy”. I think it’s been an ongoing battle ever since, although in recent years it’s been more of a battle for simple survival than any real “tests” as far as proving myself…

“All My Husbands”: Peran continues in what I would call his long-term adoption of benign neglect - mostly ignoring me as he does his own things. He acted surprised when he announced he was going into town yesterday afternoon & I said I’d go with him - we then drove in complete silence, even though I joked with him a bit about my music selections (Oscar D'Leon if anyone's interested ;-). He dropped me off at Walmart while he went to the auto parts store…

My “trail husband” Sam was reclusive & withdrawn during our ride yesterday, even though he hugged me & greeted me effusively as he always does… He strode off ahead on long-legged Thunder & was obviously not interested in carrying on a conversation. Any ride is a good ride although I was stiff & sore as I fought an intermittent headache yesterday. (I came home to crash in the recliner for an hour & a half to take a brief nap, which is why I think Peran was surprised when I said I’d go to town with him)

And my Army Guy is lost in the ether - while we routinely have been going three or four days between Telegram messages, it’s been 10 days now & I have to admit I have no idea what’s going on…Is he dead,  is he injured, or has he just gotten tired of our little pen-pal relationship?? Let’s face it, it was pretty one-sided because I seemed to be giving him a lot more insight into what makes Val tick then vice-versa. He claimed to be a 56-year-old widower whose wife died of leukemia, but I heard few details as to who’s raising his kids, for instance? He sent me a few scattered pictures of them at various ages…

And in other news, Andy has extended an olive branch (apparently) with a Facebook video which I have not watched yet. I’m gonna let it sit. Overall I’m convinced text messaging is a horrible way to communicate!

Robert has sent me several photos of him & his kids at various points in their lives - this is the most recent, but when I asked where they were, he did not answer. He says he's from NC

Three Dog "Morning & Night"

 86° yesterday afternoon, yet 37° this morning - welcome to Texas, in other words!

I called up Aphrodite for her first feeding of the season just before I took Catie back to the clinic to collect her bunnies & hand her off to her mom. Couldn’t convince Christina to slow down for a few minutes to grab a bite, but I had made us a family brunch yesterday which was nothing fancy - bacon & eggs! I had given some thought to making biscuits, but we had bagels & French bread that needed to be consumed. Peran seems to appreciate our little slice of pseudo-family time so there’s that…

As hard as it is to disentangle myself from these three precious little dogs, I must get back to Real Life.

Gingerly rubbing my L eye - I have a nice shiner where Twoie ran me under a branch! But it honestly looked like purple eyeshadow, tempting me to smack my R eye ;-)

This is Twoie bravely leading across the scary metal bridge from 2 wks ago on my trail ride

                                           The piney woods of SW Louisiana (Sat morning's start)

 

Oh, remembrance of things past! (you can see from the ride times that these were technically difficult trails; a fast, race-paced 50 miler might finish in less than half that time)