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