Health Updates and More…

Oy. It has been a busy week. There is one week a month where I am at the fire hall for three continuous nights. Tonight was the last of those three nights. Lily came with us and got the pleasure of meeting lots of folks who are closer to her age than they are to ours. She also got to help wash all the fire trucks. We came home and she beat us both soundly at Settler’s of Catan. Sigh. She went to bed happy. She is working at a local plant nursery and seems to be enjoying her job working with the plants. She works in production and so doesn’t really interact with customers, but helps plant, prune and arrange flowers and plants. She has an awful itchy rash on both of her arms which we are trying to figure out what she is allergic to, but other than that, she is fitting into life here in Montana just fine.

I have a new oncologist! I have been without a local doctor for over 4 months now. I am seeing an ad locum oncologist. He lives in Florida and travels up here for part of the week to see patients here. He is originally from the Ukraine but has lived in the U.S. for quite a while. He is such a nice guy and has been doing a lot of reading to learn about my rare kind of cancer. He can’t believe my treatment regimen is actually working…and has been for over 3 years. He mentioned today that he can’t seem reconcile what he sees on my scans and then when he looks at me. He says my scans show so much tumor load and yet he sees me and would never guess I have cancer. It was an interesting conversation. He also likes photography, so we had something else to talk about today other than cancer, which is always nice. He is going to let me skip bloodwork and seeing him next month. I will still have to come in for my shot, but I won’t have the extra stick for a blood draw, waiting for my labs to clear, and then waiting to see the doctor. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it just takes up a lot of time. If all goes well in August when I see him again, I will go to seeing him every 3 months. That would be nice. I have been doing the whole shebang every month along with my shots for a year now, and now I will only have to get a shot. I have to drive 30 minutes one way to get to the oncology clinic, so this will cut down time at the clinic by about 2 hours. I also had a dentist visit today. All good. Lily is getting her wisdom teeth out in about 5 weeks….just about 3 weeks prior to her leaving to go back to school. She is not looking forward to it, but they are coming in now and bothering her, so her choice was to have them removed.

In other news….many of you know that I have been studying a lot lately. I spent the month of February hot and heavy into getting registered as an Emergency Medical Responder. I took a month off and for the last 10 weeks, have been in EMT school. It has been arduous. I am so thankful I took my EMR first….and that I have a nursing background (even if it was so long ago). There is a HUGE difference between being a labor and delivery nurse in a hospital and taking care of a medical patient where you have to figure out what is wrong with them in their home or trauma patients in motor vehicle accidents. Whole different ball of wax. Anyhow, I finished my class last weekend. I had a 4-hour final exam and then a day and a half of practical testing (running simulated scenarios on live people and on mannequins. The mannequins my school has are pretty high tech…they talk, show signs of cyanosis, weigh about 200 lbs., have lung and heart sounds, pulses where they should, and pupils that can change. They can even cry and sweat. It is kinda freaky, but great practice. Passed the class. Got rewarded with a very cool tour of the rescue helicopter program here in the Flathead valley. That was pretty awesome. On Tuesday, I drove 30 minutes to the local community college and sat for my EMT National Registry exam. It is an exam that starts hard and as you miss questions; it gets easier and works its way up to being hard again. Every person’s test is different. The multiple-choice questions have one wrong answer and usually 3 correct answers. You have to pick the BEST of the three correct answers. Some questions had 7 answers and you had to pick the best 3 answers. Some questions were mix and match and put things in order. It was absolutely awful. You can have anywhere from 70-130 questions, depending on how well you are doing. I am guessing I answered about 75-80 questions. You only see one question at a time, and you can’t go back to any questions. In the upper right-hand corner is a timer, counting down your time from 135 minutes. It also has the number of questions you have answered. When the test decides you have either shown enough proficiency to pass the test, or shown that you cannot pass the test, it shuts off. The screen just goes blank and goes to a screen saying the test is over for you. It is akin to having a door slammed in your face. Anyhow, that happened pretty early for me. The proctor even said, “Well, that was quick!” I took about an hour, I guess. Anyhow, the test is designed to make you feel like you have failed. Which, in my case, definitely worked. I just wanted to throw up after I left. However, I found out about 12 hours later that I had passed. I was so incredibly relieved….I can’t even begin to tell you! I want to keep learning, but at this level. I am happy at this level. I kept thinking about Joe. He was dyslexic and this test was not easy. How hard this must have been for him to learn and pass this….yet he did! I was proud of him then, but so much more proud of him now that I know the stress he was under. I wore his memorial shirt for my class final and for my national registry exam for the EMR and EMT tests. He was with me the whole time. Now I just have to go out there and make him proud. I have to say, I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders. I don’t think I realized how stressed I was about all of this. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone! Going back to school at age 53 isn’t easy. My brain is just not as pliable as the rest of the class (who could have all been my kids, I might add.)

Now for a bit of a teaser….Rich and I have had a trip of a lifetime planned for about a year now. We leave tomorrow afternoon. We will be gone for almost 5 weeks and we are going to be hitting at least 3 new countries for both of us, along with some old standbys. I am taking my good camera, but I will not be processing while I am gone since we have to travel lighter. I will put some phone photos on this blog if I get the chance. Let’s just say it will look like I am at a zoo, but the animals will all be in the wild….I am SOOOOO excited! That is the first half of the trip. The second half involves a boat….