Pictures and Words

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then are a few words worth thousands of pictures?  Since I live with Miki and get to see her on a daily basis, the snapshots I take of her in my mind each day serves as a source for some of the thousands of words that I feel have come through this blog.  For most of the rest of you, you only have our blogs to give you a peek into what’s going on with us and in particular, with her.  And if you go by her blog, lately it has dwindled down to fewer and fewer words because that is all that she has to offer up right now.  The same Miki, that on steroids way back when, could out peck a woodpecker, can now almost fight her way out of a wet paper bag.  This week or so before her next round of chemo begins, is tough.  It’s tough for her to go through and it is tough to watch her go through it.  But that may give you some perspective on her less that Miki-like postings lately, which I am sure many of you had already figured out.

As much as I think we have identified patterns from the time during and after each chemo round, it’s just not that cookie cutter-able (chalk up another new word for me!).  Any possible patterns seem to have a variation on the theme and that keeps us on our toes.  It seems as though there have been more good times during the good times after chemo and the bad times seem to be more manageable, spoken from the one not actually experiencing anything first hand mind you.  The bad times I am referring to, are acknowledged and dealt with more rapidly, thanks to a steep initial learning curve.  The good times are when she has energy and the gumption to get out and go for short periods.  In other words…SHOPPING.  She loves to get out of the house when she can.  And if that means we are going to Kohls, or Michaels, or Charming Charlies one more blessed time, then I slap a smile on my face and get her loaded in the wheel chair, cause we are going SHOPPING!

In the same vein as pictures and words from the first paragraph, I have something to share…

It’s not what you think, I don’t think.  You know the stories on the news where some construction worker ends up with a piece of rebar through his skull and lives to tell about it to a reporter in the back of the ambulance on the way to the emergency room.  Well, the tree house has afforded me the same opportunity for story telling.  Except the skull in my story is my middle finger and my rebar is a nail from my nail gun.  And the reporter is my conscience trying to decide if I should tell Miki of my construction prowess.  The nail in the photo above is the actual nail in my story and the two puncture wounds on my middle finger are the badges of stupidity I’ll be wearing for some time, if not for(frickin)ever.

It all started innocently enough, as I was getting ready to nail a stud into place.  The little job foreman in the back of my head told me to move my fingers back from where they were holding said boards and I did, because I have started listening to the voices in my head more frequently, with positive outcomes.  This is where chaos ensued.  I pulled the trigger to set the nail and as sometimes happens, the gun bounces and in the process the trigger shoots off another nail.  I still don’t know how the nail became part of my body, but I do know it could have been a lot worse.  Like it could have gone deeper and through the bone or ricocheted off the decking and pinned me to the oak tree, where the squirrels would be waiting to laugh at me.  As it turned out, I looked down at my finger as it didn’t feel right (duh!).  After what seemed like minutes, but must have been a couple of seconds, I made the executive decision to pull it out from it’s perfectly centered position just below the skin, rather than take a picture of it and post it on Facebook or Tweet about it right away.  I applied pressure and then tried to decide if I should bother Miki about this little owie or let her sleep.  I let her sleep.  Since it was a flesh wound and I had a tetanus shot last May, I put some Neosporin on it, a band aide, and went back to framing up my wall.  You would be amazed at everything you need your middle finger for besides flying the bird.

So with my story you not only got a picture, but also what must have seemed like a thousand words.  With Miki, she doesn’t have to say a lot to let me know how she is doing.  Her face, the position of her body is my picture and it speaks volumes.  Imagine that you are almost confined to whatever comfortable position you can find (is that an oxymoron or is it just me?), the comfortable part does not last for long.  You depend on someone else for the majority of your needs, unless you want to get winded while fending for yourself.  You are asleep more than you are awake each day.  You primarily potty in a bucket and whatever goes in your mouth to sustain you is forced more than gladly received.  Your body is borderline emaciated, but you are consciously trying to reverse the process by which you got this way.  Every three weeks you voluntarily let drugs into your body that knowingly cause perfectly good cells to die.  And you occasionally smile and laugh.  How is that for a picture?  My story doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

My Zen from Home:  The tide is changing.  How do you know when the tide is changing?  I am thinking Miki’s tide is changing because there seems to be more better days than other ones.  Her energy level is sustained for longer periods of time.  And I can think what I want!  How do you gauge change in you?