Fight Cancer, Win an Ipod Touch

This day has been mostly a waste, but it’s not over yet, so I thought I’d do something that’s been on my mind for a while. Taking a page from Fatty’s book, I’m giving away my brand new, still-in-the-box-with-the-plastic around it 8 GB Ipod Touch to some lucky person who heads over to my Livestrong page and donates any multiple of $5 to the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

If you’re a Fat Cyclist reader, I’m sure you’re probably used to bigger and better prizes. So sorry I don’t have a bike or a fabulous trip to give away. But---fighting cancer is about everyone doing what they can. I’ve got this toy sitting around I don’t need, doing my part to kick cancer in the nuts is more useful than making a few bucks off Ebay.

So, even though I’ve just broken every good rule of blogging by posting to my ghost-town of a blog, on a Friday afternoon, I’m hoping you’ll help make sure my day isn’t a total bust, by going over to my page and dropping a fiver or three or four and telling your friends. Those of you who knew my mom, who we lost to Cancer in 2007, know I come by this procrastination honestly. She was late to her own funeral you know. (I made sure of it—consistency is important).

This contest will last until Midnight PST on Monday Oct 26th. Tuesday, I’ll announce the winner. For the price of a crappy Starbucks latte, you could have yourself a cool new toy. Regardless, you’ll be fighting cancer—and that’s always a good way to spend the day.

For mom. Miss you.

Grief 1, Me 0

OK, so I'm not really fine.

My mom has been dead for five months, two weeks and two days. If there's one constant thread in the things people tell me about this journey, it's that there is no time line for when my brain might successfully process the knowledge that I'll never get to see her again. E.V.E.R. Or when I will stop having the ocassional crushing grief spell, crying so hard my head hurts and I can barely breath. I've been trying to think of a good analogy for what it feels like. I know there's know way I could've understood what it was like before. The nearest I can come is, imagine if someone put your hand to a hot burner--and held it there. And your skin is burning up and turning black and peeling off, and all you want in life is to lift your hand up and get some relief...but someone or something is just holding it down. It's sort of like that, only instead of a burning sensation, I just feel like my heart might break right in half from missing her so much.

I'm not trying to be melodramatic. It really does suck that bad. Only much worse.

They say time heals all wounds and I'm sure I'll feel better eventually. But it's going to take longer than five months, two weeks and two days.

Meme Rant

I got tagged by Dan forever ago for the "5/5" so I'll incorporate it into today's rant:

1. Name your area of expertise/interest


2. How did you become interested in it?

3. How did you learn how to do it?


4. Who has been your biggest influence?


5. What would you teach people about it?

Two biggest risk factors: Family history and smoking. It's not rocket science!

Survival rates for colorectal cancer go from 10% to over 90% when the cancer is found and treated at it's early stage.

No Regrets

Joe Kurmaskie, AKA the Metal Cowboy put up a great post today about his bike trip across Canada with his wife and three kids in tow. I complained about my 40 pounds of panniers in Idaho, but Joe is pulling a tandem bike with tag-along and trailer, "400 pounds of flesh and metal" through hail and high water. My grandmother thinks I'm quite the adventurer, but Joe makes me look like the laziest of couch potatoes.

Still, I do what I can, and this morning I headed out on the roadie, after removing the Bessie seat post rack. Two water bottles and a bottle of Gu and I was off. Though I cut down on the physical weight, emotionally, I had plenty to bog me down. This ride wasn't just a ride but an experiment in alternative therapy.

I gave in and started therapy last month. Amazing how you can have a lifetime of good memories and a few months of horror can over shadow everything. It's getting better, but slowly. There's purgatory between the time I get in bed and the time I fall asleep where my brain has too much time to go down some pretty dark paths. My therapist suggested I could do a version of EMDR on myself while biking. It turns out maybe you really can pedal your pain away. Or something like that. At any rate, biking is cheap and therapy is expensive so I thought I'd give it a try.

My instructions were to find someplace where I wouldn't get run over and then, while pedaling, deliberately bring up the traumatic event for a few minutes, then 'come back' to the present and examine my mental state. Repetitions of this supposedly help to process the traumatic events so you can move past them. Oh how I really want to move past the trauma.

I headed for the Marine Drive path, just 5.3 miles from home. I wasn't anxious to get started, figured I'd wait till crossed Columbia so as not to be interrupted. Just then a biker passed me going the other way and I just made out, "The road's closed!" before the wind whipped her voice away. Sure enough I crossed Marine Dr and a truck was making it's way along the path--part of a repaving project.

Great. But the point was not to wallow in misery for hours after all so I decided the 3/4 mile strip between 33rd and 42nd would do just fine. I re-crossed the road, sank down into my aero bars and descended into hell. Six trips back and forth reliving the ambulance ride, the ER, the doctors asking how much they should do when we shouldn't even have been there in the first place. The last words she said to me, "You are the best care taker." that's when I remembered one really should bring tissues to bike therapy... Turning off the oxygen and waiting and waiting and waiting... Prayers around the bedside, playing Mahalia Jackson and Sweet Honey in the Rock and singing to her. That whiny sound she made every breath that cut through me like nails on a chalk board. Sleeping on the hard bench in the church chapel with the bright lights above. And that last van ride home where she slipped out on us as soon as she had a quiet moment. Just me and her in the van, and me worried I'd get in trouble for showing up with an empty shell instead of a daughter, sister, mother...

At each end of the path, I came up for air, clawed my way back to now, hanging into the hum of tires, the flowers by the side of the road, the feel of the wind, planes soaring over head. In small chunks it still SUCKED, but it was a little less...present.

Coming home, I pedaled extra hard. Pedaled against the wind and pain and anger. Pedaled against the time when I can't pedal anymore. And took some comfort in knowing that I cherished her for all the time we had her.

While we were cleaning out her room, we found a letter I wrote to her that she kept her whole life:

Sunday June 27th, 1999 6:55am:

Dear Mom,

This is the first day in weeks that I've been able to sleep in and here I am up before 7am. I even turned off all the phone ringers in case anyone called...so why am I up?

I had this horrible, completely vivid dream that you were dead. I didn't know it was a dream. I hate when that happens. It was some freak accident (not even a car accident, freakier than that..like you were bitten by some dealy insect or came down with some really fast disease). In my dream I was spending the night somewhere else and people tried to call but I had decided I didn't want to be reached for a day so all the ringers, pagers and cell phones were off. So I found out from a voicemail the next day, when it was too late to say goodbye even.

Then I was running all over the city trying to find the hospital you were at. I stopped by home, looking for Traci and found her and then we were both wandering together. Dad was at the hospital with you but he was no help (some thing snever chance I guess) and we never did find you. I finally woke up just a few minutes ago, feeling terribly sad, terribly relieve and really pissed that I could even have such a horrible dream. And worried. It's early, but perhaps I'll call Liz's place when I'm done with this letter and make sure you're really alright.

There is a good part though and it is this: When I was dreaming and I thought you were dead, I was thinking to myself, "Well, at least I didn't waste any time. We had great times together and we liked each other and I have more good memories than I can count."

Hopefully, you already know how much I love and appreciate you and like spending time with you but, after a dream like that, I figured it wouldn't hurt to say so, and write it down so you won't forget (the mind is the first thing to go... :-) Years ago, I saw a movie once about a little boy who was dying of AIDS and his mother would say, that every time a really special moment came, 'her heart took a picture.' I loved that idea and I've been doing it ever since. And I have so many 'rolls of film' I've lost count. I take them when we're playing around trying to give belated birthday spankings, during the nightly zrrbt, when we're all sitting around playing Taboo, when Traci is trying to stall to avoid going to bed. You guys may have stolen my camera, but I have all the best shots anyway.

I feel so lucky every day. Even though things suck sometimes and we're still getting it together in a lot of ways, there's really too much to be grateful for to complain. I think that most people I know couldn't live with their parents for a week without killing them. But we don't just get along or tolerate each other...we have fun. the more time we spend together, the more I like hanging out with you. I brag about you to all my friends you know, and most of them are jealous that I have such a cool mom. We've got it pretty good.

And that dream, which I'm still getting over, must've just been a reminder to let you know. So there it is. Drive safe on the way home and I'll see you when you get here.

Love,
K

Irony and Anger

When Jess and I went to the beach last month, we visited the little bookstore on Nye beach. While I was cruising the self help section, I found a book called, "Death Without Denial, Grief Without Apology."

"Well, isn't that 6 months too late," I said. It sat there on the shelf, mocking me, so I bought it.

It's a really good book, written by the former Governer of Oregon Barbara Roberts, about the things she learned during the illness and death from cancer of her husband Frank. It's basically a primer of everything we could have done, but didn't, thanks to something we like to call "The Bubble."

Here's a few relevant quotes:

We are so afraid of death in this culture, so geared toward "medical miracles," we seem to have lost all sense of perspective. There is nothing wrong wiht a patient wanting a medical miracle. owever we have come to a place where families are demanding miracles when death is imminent and doctors often play the Wizard of Oz trying to orchestrate false hope and deny reality.

Traditionally, doctors are trained to sustain life, not plan for death. However, if the doctor would say "dying" to a patient, the pretense of recovery would be gone. If a spouse of life partner says, "dying" to a loved one they are then free to plan, share, and say goodbye over days or weeks or months. The dying person could then speak the truth to old friends, thank parents, prepare children. Conversations could be real. Expectations would be expressed. Fears could be shared. Memories could be made that would sustain and comfort those left to grieve once death arrives.

What a dying person needs is comfort, closeness, dignity, and in some cases, pain control.

Accepting that he was dying gave Frank more space for creating good times.

Kindess is helping dying patients accept the diagnosis and then give them support and services to live the rest of their lives with as much dignity, as many choices, and as little physical pain as possible.

Denial is not your friend. Truth offers you more freedom and broader options. Denial is also costly. It uses up financial resources your family may need when you're gone. Denial uses up chances to share your feelngs with your closest loved ones. Denial wastes the life ingredient you can least afford to squander--time.

The bubble pretty much robbed us of any of the positive aspects that might have come from our situation. I have a great deal of anger towards specific people who perpetuated the bubble. Everyone who insisted that we just had to "think positively," everyone who convinced mom that pain medicine was the enemy, everyone who said all she needed was more milk thistle, more blueberries, more vitamin c, more oxygen... The list goes on and on, and the crazy making power of the bubble is inexplicable in mere words.

The result of all this is that our (mine and Traci's) time was stolen and we can NEVER. GET. IT. BACK. We can't ask about the gumbo recipe, Traci's future wedding, what to do if ______ happens, reminisce about long drives up and down the I-5 corridor...NOTHING. All because we were forced to pretend that we had the next 20 years to do all these things because no one, including mom, could just deal with reality.

And did I mention the suffering? She was miserable for the last month or more of her life because "pain medicine was too hard on her liver" (it's failing anyway, why not be comfortable?) or "pain medicine causes constipation" (we have ways to deal with that, but you won't follow them).

"Mom, what's your pain at now?"

"Two," she'd say, while the grimace on her face said, "eight" every time she moved. It took a full day to convince her that adjusting pillows every 10 minutes wasn't going to help her, before she finally agreed to one drop of morphine.

Most days I'm able to function with this anger. Some days I go to my old house and chop wood. And other times, when I can't get the horrors of the (totally unneccesary!) trip to the emergency room out of my head, I just wail and scream and wish I could yell at everyone responsible. She was finally sleeping, peacefully, and she just stopped breathing. If only they had let her go, it could have ended like that. I would've been sad that I wasn't there, but it would've been better than the two days of hell that followed. All so that other people could get here, other people could see her, other people could say goodbye. Nobody seemed able to forget about themselves long enough to care about her suffering. We're kinder to animals.

The beginning of the end

We're continuing to work on clearing things out of the house. And I use the words "continuing" and "work" very loosely. As always, just walking in the door is exhausting and I don't usually get very much done. I'm better at jobs that take me away from the house, like Goodwill trips and selling/delivering things.

So far the books netted us $42. The four garbage bags of clothes and 40 or so boxes of nice dress shoes yielded just over $30. And that was Buffalo Exchange and Redlight *combined.* I hate those places. I don't know where they get all the crap they sell because I have yet to meet anyone who's had a successful time trying to sell them stuff. Whatever. We Goodwilled all the clothes and the shoes will go to a consignment shop. They're nice shoes. Traci continues to weep that her feet are not size 9. Ironically mine are, but the majority are not things I would willingly put on my feet. I did take a few of the less tortuous shoes for dress up emergencies, such as my upcoming interview.

Today we got a storage space which means that Traci will be putting everything she wants to take to D.C. into it. It's the beginning of the end, because without most of the furniture, beds, art, pictures etc, it really won't be mom's house anymore.

Every time she comes over, Jess asks if I want to take home the canvas print of the three of us that I got mom for Xmas a few years ago. And every time I say, "No, not yet." I think it's become the last signal of "home' in that house for me. I'll probably wait till the last minute.

Today we took the big change jar to the bank which was much more lucrative than the clothes selling. And I took a bike jacket mom bought and never used back to the Bike Gallery and had them order me a Showers Pass rain jacket that I've needed for months now.

I can't get past the irony that I now have money to get all this stuff I've been 'needing' but every time I hand over my credit card, I just think how much I'd rather be broke and have my mom back.

To top it all off, Traci found a mug in the cupboards today that says, "Mom- without you, I go all to pieces!" Yeah, I don't think we'll be keeping that one.

Barely functional

Things I managed to do today:

1. Go to math
2. eat breakfast at 1pm
3. clean cat litter
4. take out garbage

Other than that it's pretty much been crying and legos.

I tried to watch my Battlestar Galactica DVD but it broke in half when I put it in the dvd player.

Jess went back to work today, but she came home and made dinner and emergency brownies, of which I only ate some of the batter.

And then we watched another episode of Oz on DVD and one of the character's mom died--proving once and for all that there's no escape in fiction. You'd think I would just give up watching Grey's Anatomy...

I'm continually amazed at how much this sucks.

Hidden disability

I've decided that grieving is like having a hidden disability. Except it's not just hidden from the public, it's hidden from the person grieving too. I can go hours (not yet days, not even close) without any 'symptoms' and then without warning it'll just strike.

Today was a really good day. We got up early because Roxanne came over at 8am with baked treats. Jess made coffee and we dished about real estate clients and stuff.

After she left, we eventually got ourselves together and headed out on our bikes for a bunch of errands. It was a gorgeous sunny day, a little chilly but we had a great time biking about 20 miles around town for errands. Since I got my financial aid money today, I indulged in a rare bit of retail therapy at REI. Got a new helmet (long overdue), some socks, and a couple of bras, also long overdue.

Then over to see Traci and visit with my cousin and lastly to the grocery store and home with our loaded bags.

After all the driving I've been doing the last several months, it was great to work my muscles again. And work, they did. Although I'm usually the stronger biker, Jess was feeling good and she made me work. When she knew she had me on the ropes, we turned the corner from Skidmore to Grand and she cut to the inside and powered up the hill. I had to put my foot down on that though--I do have a reputation to maintain. :)

When we got home, I took my new helmet to the table to make some final adjustments and put the new light I bought on the back of it. (And yes, it's the same helmet that Jess has and the same light and we already have the same bikes, making us officially the biggest dorks of all time).

The last thing I did was fill out the sticker that goes inside the helmet with my personal information, blood type and emergency contact.

I paused. Mom was always my emergency contact. Now I've got an emergency all right--my mom is dead and I can't call her to tell her about it. "Honey, you're my new emergency contact." I said, right before I totally lost it. Probably jinxed myself putting the box of tissues back in the bathroom.

When the wave comes, there's nothing to do but ride it out. After a while Jess distracted me with embarrassing pictures from her childhood and the wave passed. Till the next one.

Grief sucks.