When the lab results came in, they said that the lesion on Dave's leg is a melanoma, as Dr. Darr told them in the first place.
Dr. Darr wanted them to go straight to surgery without taking a biopsy first.
I didn't put this in the December Banner because you'd have to wait a whole month before learning how it turned out.
11:39 PM 1/2/2023.
Al was definitely lying in his cream when I checked his food supply at half-past eleven.
Wow, the fog is thick enough — at half past ten, yet — to fuzz the houses across the street. This is a good day to stay home and iron my best T-shirt, which I washed two or three weeks ago.
I'm hoping also to add a timer pocket to a shabby leaving-the-house shirt to make a short-sleeved dirty-work shirt, and finish my new veil.
Dave's closet-cleaning continues. He took down a nice sturdy closet rod that was mounted too close to a shelf to be of any use. Now we are trying to think of a place that's out of the way, yet will allow us to remember that we've got it. It's the sort of thing that will come in handy sooner or later.
The season never ends: I saw something on the hall carpet, picked it up — a cottonwood stickypod!
But it *was* dried up enough that it didn't stick to the carpet.
I hadn't noticed that it's Twelfth Night.
Got the new old shirt done yesterday. It's a surprising lift to my spirits: my old old shirts are ugly beyond belief when worn with an off-the-shelf bra.
I cleared the ironing board, but did not press the veil today. I did mend my wool jersey and wash a load of clothes.
I also gave thought to the summer jersey I want to cut out as soon as I finish my new briefs. The linen-cotton blend would be more comfortable than the quilting cotton I bought to make a riding shirt, but I'm not sure that I can live with pink, particularly when so many groups that I strongly disagree with insist that all women must wear pink, pink, pinkety-pink pink.
Then there's living with it literally. I don't go out at night or in foggy weather any more, so I could wear international orange, fire-engine red, or shocking pink — but off-white petal pink?
⁂
His doctors want Dave to have a PET scan before his melanoma surgery.
Pet scans are so expensive that I presume that they will get all the information they can out of the results. The description of how it works suggests to me that his smoldering multiple myeloma should also light up, and that the lesion left by his stroke should *not* light up.
They will inject radioactive sugar, and all places where sugar is being rapidly consumed will light up. If I have it straight, when a positron hits an electron, they turn into two gamma rays that go in opposite directions, and if you catch both gamma rays, they define a straight line through the emission point. Catch two more and you know exactly where they came from. How they determine that two rays are a pair I don't grasp.
The latest on the smoldering multiple myeloma is that it's still smoldering well within "don't worry" limits.
11:28 PM 1/6/2023
My balance must be reasonably good. While carrying a saucer of cream from the kitchen into the living room with only the stove-hood light on, I tripped over a box and spilled only two drops of cream.
11:26 PM 1/8/2023
I gave Al half a tub of Abound for his nine o'clock feeding, and it looked like a lot, but it was gone when I gave him his eleven o'clock.
I almost got to church before the service started today. I was in the church, but was still disposing of my hat and shawl.
On Thursday, I have to be at KCH at eight. It helps that I'm not supposed to have any breakfast. I rather expected to get a "you have an appointment" letter by now.
Dave came back from his latest appointment with good news: the lesion is only a millimeter deep, and a general surgeon can take it off.
There's a pretty good chance the work can be done in Warsaw.
Both physicians were right: there's seborrheic keratosis mixed with the melanoma.
I can't understand a lot of the report, but "deep margin negative for both invasive and in situ melanoma" sounds good.
8:45 PM 1/12/2023
Got there in plenty of time. It will be a day or two before the results are sent to Dr. Darr. Dave has an appointment Monday to show his melanoma to a surgeon. If I don't flunk the sonogram, I'm clear until I get my teeth cleaned in April, but I should probably have my skin examined in March.
We picked up the Taco at Global auto, with a brand-new gas tank. At the rate we are going, we are going to have a whole new truck.
Emilee has scanned Claude's printer proofs and put them on the Web at https://www.emileebeeson.com/beeson- collection?fbclid=IwAR0C3Et4h5y6sk3HAXIlOKsuU5wKrh6LiNVjTWWI_itt4E5ejtvqt_RXZUM
4:30 PM 1/14/2023
I came home from my tour of Warsaw to find Al with his tail in the cream, and cream on his flank.
Perhaps I'll start serving cream to him on the box I used when I'd had my nose carved up and was forbidden to bend over.
The health-food store can't get sesame sticks, and Lowery's can't get white cord elastic. I bought ten yards of string elastic, thinking that if I had some in the elastics box, I'd find it was just right for something. And if I run out of cord elastic, I can use thin-cord double.
Yesterday, they called with my sonogram results. There was nothing to account for the blood test that I flunked, so Darr is taking me off Tricor for six weeks to see whether that is doing it.
The sonogram did turn up something in my gall bladder — a stone or a polyp or something. I'm to consult with a general surgeon — I think it's the same one who is to take Dave's melanoma off — to see whether something needs to be done about it. His office should call sometime next week to make the appointment.
11:04 PM 1/14/2023
I distinctly heard lapping after I set a fresh saucer of cream on the box.
Most of the cream in the previous saucer was still in it.
I was careful to touch the counter or the wall with my free hand to keep the cream from sloshing. I was, of course, clearly aware of the location of the box and didn't trip over it.
I think Dave said that he had an appointment every day this week. Only one per day, though.
12:04 AM 1/17/2023
Got an appointment with Dr. Otoo the Thursday after next. Dave had never heard of her.
Sometimes Al will come back later and eat what he rejects now, so I don't pick up a saucer until the contents are gone or spoiled. (The critter that comes to the compost heap has no objection to crusty pate.)
Right now three of his saucers are on the mat, one is on the box, and the remaining one is in the sink. He showed little interest in his bedtime dish of ocean whitefish and tuna pate, but was almost eager to lap up some cream. He had also eaten all the cream out of the saucer that is in the sink. Except for the ring of thick cream.
He's given up dry food entirely, but I give him an eighth of a cup every Sunday.
I must drive the car to Aldi Real Soon Now. We've been out of Value Bacon for weeks, and we like that so well that I won't buy any other.
Dave has two appointments tomorrow: the PET scan in the morning and his surgeon at one.
We went to Lake City Restorations this morning, and filled out some papers. Then Dave had to call the insurance company. Everything is done except the loose shingles on the barn roof, and that has to wait for warm weather.
It's snowing. I don't think it's going to stick.
13:32
Al wanted some of what I was eating, so I gave him a taste of yogurt. Much to my surprise, he ate it, so I gave him some more, but he didn't eat that. He sniffed a bit at a nip of butter.
He seems to have gotten tired of turkey broth, or perhaps it's been around long enough to develop an off-taste that I can't detect. Also, I'm now dipping from the bottom, where it isn't clear any more.
***
Dave came back from today's appointment with good news and bad news. The good news: the preliminary results of the PET scan say that he won't have to have lymph nodes out. The not-unexpected bad news: the surgeon will have to take some muscle, perhaps enough that he'll have to borrow some to patch it with. But the foot "won't work very well" only "for a while".
The snow didn't stick, but everything out there looks wet.
The last time I checked the ten-day report, it said that there was a good chance I'd be able to ride my bike to my appointment next Thursday. If I haven't been car shopping before then, I may drive anyhow. My Aldi list is running more than one screen on my portrait monitor.
But it includes a list of the seltzer we've already got.
We woke to a blanket of snow so beautiful that the pastor mentioned it in his sermon, but it was looking a bit tattered by evening. The herb bed still had a protective coat when I last saw it.
I went to Work Out Anytime on Saturday, and spent a few minutes on the treadmill. Each time I increased the speed, I could feel a definite shift from walking to nursewalking — longer strides, less effort, and more grace. I tried to describe the shift to Dave and got him all confused.
I call the gait "nursewalking" because Mom learned it when she was a student at Methodist Hospital. In the twenties, nurses were forbidden to run lest patients think some major disaster was happening and have heart attacks, so all the students learned to walk very fast. I was surprised to learn that one could go into the gait at low speed.
I had lunch at Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. The sign said "we cook it slow and serve it fast", but everything was french-fried. The nearest thing they had to slow cooked was red beans and rice, and I suspect that the beans came out of a can.
Red beans and rice were also the only remotely Cajun dish on the menu. Well, the fries were called "Cajun fries" and had been coated with something seasoned before they were fried.
The Acadians who were the ancestors of the Cajuns were thrown out of Canada for speaking French. I wonder whether french frying is in any sense French? "French" often means "fancy, elegant, high-class" with no reference to country of origin.
I had two sides: cajun fries and red beans with rice. A small order of fries turned out to be more than I should eat (and were merely warm when I got them) so I brought the beans home and had them for a bedtime snack. I put them into the un-insulated pannier to chill. Should have ordered chicken; the leftovers would have kept very well.
Weather Underground says today is a good day to ride downtown, drop off some stuff at Our Father's House, and buy Spanish-style tomato sauce. It will be increasingly sunny as the day wears on, and the temperature I dress for will be very close to the temperature I get.
The fresh coat of snow on the driveway says that it's a good day to stay home and sew. (I ride in sandals or slot cleats, neither of which is suitable for wading through snow.)
The wet streets will have frozen, and I can see streaks of slush from the front window, which, as you know, is a long way from the street.
So I took a look at Boy's City Drive, which points at this window, and see that the streaks I saw on Park Avenue must have been highlights on the wet pavement. But at 29F, riding on wet pavement is contraindicated.
8:11 PM 1/25/2023
It was a beautiful day out there — as viewed through double-pane windows from in here. I was going to go to Work Out Anytime with Dave, since I've had very few days when I could ride, but we decided that we didn't want to drive in rapidly-accumulating snow, and have to dig the car out when we were ready to come home.
I made visible progress on my sewing.
And got a trace of exercise doing it. I was cutting on the freezer in the garage, and each time I freed a piece of fabric from the main body, I carried it to the sewing room or the compost plate to save confusion on the cutting mat.
I didn't carry out the garbage today. I think I set foot on the patio a couple of times.
Yesterday I went to Aldi and bought bread, milk, and eggs. And enough other stuff to add up to $261.48. I don't cross 30 very often, so I'd accumulated a list that spilled into a second column on letter-size paper. (But it did include a half dozen items that I could have bought on this side of 30, and a list of the flavors of seltzer that we already have.)
The final straw that made me make the trek was a lust for Jamestown Brand value bacon.
4:45 PM 1/26/2023
I did carry out the garbage today. Fell on my knees while trying to put the cat-food scraps down. I tried to bury the yellow scraps of cotton jersey in the snow so they wouldn't blow around on the slick crust over the snow.
Driving wasn't at all bad on my way to Dr. Otoo today, but I kept my speed way down anyway.
The verdict was that since I wasn't having any symptoms, I'd have another sonogram in a year's time. If the shadow has gotten bigger, or if I develop symptoms in the meantime, the gall bladder comes out.
Trees are still spectacular; made a pretty drive home, but I didn't often spare the attention to admire it.
Stopped at Kroger on the way home for twin-tubs of cat food, yogurt, fuzzy toothpicks, flatbuns, sourdough bread, and some other stuff. When pickling last summer, I couldn't find dill seed anywhere and had to settle for dill weed. Today, I spotted a can of dill seed on the clearance shelf and grabbed it.
I think I'll try planting some next spring.
Planting grocery mustard seed didn't get me anywhere last spring: the plants were bred for seed and bolted before they had enough leaves to bother picking. I don't think they liked the soil, either, as they were wee dinky and would have produced very little seed per plant.
The trees are still frosted white. We're planning to go to Workout Anytime together; hope it works this time.
We did. I finished first and waited for Dave on the stationary bikes. Aside from having a bottle rack on the downtube, they are a very poor simulation of a bicycle — more like that crank thing to pedal while sitting in an easy chair that Mother had for a while.
Poor Al follows me around begging for food, but whatever I give him, that isn't it. He had a few sips of milk today, and may have touched a tongue to the half-and-half — we had to wash clotted cream off his face after giving him his transdermal anti-thyroid.
Last time we weighed him, he'd lost another half pound. He's so thin I don't see how he can walk.
Dave *still* hasn't got an appointment for surgery that should have been done the moment he was diagnosed. He thinks Medicare is trying to kill him.
Typical that they would try to save money by insisting on multi-thousand-dollar tests.
12:47 PM 1/31/2023
Facebook has a new trick: they still send me e-mails when someone posts something that Facebook thinks I might want to read, but they have stopped providing a link to allow me to read it.
We took Al to the vet for the last time today.
When we left, the southwest corner of the living room was cluttered with five little saucers each holding a spoonful of a different food, a box to put the cream saucer on so he couldn't lie on it, a soup plate of dry food, a bowl of water, a carpet sample, and a half bathmat.
That corner looks very empty now.
Dave has taken down the cedar fence post and put it into the garage. Everybody but George left claw marks on it. We bought it for Claude, who was slim at twelve pounds — no way the dinky scratching posts sold in pet stores would work for him. He left claw marks clear to the top, which is now the bottom. We turned it over when it started wearing thin.
When Dave told me he'd started Roomba in the bedroom, I rushed to clean out the closet — it's my job to see that there's nothing on the floor to tangle Roomba. I was taken aback to find the bedroom door closed to keep Roomba in. For nearly twenty years, it has been very important to keep that door open so that Al can use the litter boxes.
I guess I'll do a triple take when closing the shower-room door now. For a long time, we kept it closed so the nightlight wouldn't keep Dave awake. When Al started pissing in the shower, we put in a dimmer nightlight. So at night, I would very carefully close it, then open it again.
9:00 PM 1/31/2023
The flute just played, and nobody's ear needs to be rubbed with anti-thyroid.
I get a jolt whenever I open the fridge and there's empty shelf where the row of little cans used to be.
I missed my exercise last night. I always do it right after Al's nine o'clock feeding and before my bedtime snack.
My bedtime routine has also been disrupted now that I don't have to check Al's food before undressing.
***
I waited for a sunny day to wash the dishtowels, washrags, and so forth, and today was a perfect day to bleach stuff in the sun: Sunny, and just enough wind to speed the drying.
Unfortunately, it was an impossible day to hang things on the line. The top layer of cloth was frozen, and anything that wasn't frozen froze instantly when removed from the basket.
By not being at all picky about wrinkles and wads, I managed to get the sheet on the line, and most of the sheet straightened out when the ice sublimed, but the rest of the wash went into the dryer to set the stains.
Oddly, none of my terrycloth dishtowels were noticeably stained, but every last barmop towel was stained, all but one conspicuously, and one was spectacular. I put that one on the top of the pile so it would be washed again as soon as possible.
***
My weight held steady all through the holidays, but I gained two pounds in January. I blame the weather that kept me inside and close to the snacks.
And it doesn't help that I eat as though I had to fuel a bike.
***
Surgery at last! We go to KCH on Thursday of next week.
I saved the above paragraph for last so that this issue could close on a cheerful note.
⁂