Thursday, January 7, 2010

The last day

My last day here was rather tiring. I ran around and returned some borrowed things, farmed out my plants that were in pots, the ones in the ground are donated to the iguanas I guess. A friend took my pot of cucumbers and dill, I figure with some love and protection from iguanas the cucumber should come back since just the tops were  munched off. I was supposed to teach her how to make pickles, you can't buy pickles here and someone had once given her a jar from the US and she absolutely loved them. I told her I would help her make them but now I am leaving before there is any dill or baby cucumbers. She has e-mail and as soon as she has a crop of dill and little cuks I will send her step by step instructions...any monkey can make a pickle.
Also did a bunch of laundry and packed up my house, tomorrow it all gets put in storage again, my little pile of storage gets bigger every year, this year I am even leaving my pjs behind, and some books I had brought and not read yet. I visited the painter guy and dismantled my painting that isn't really a painting yet, I debated leaving it here but I think I will have time to finish it this time as I am not scheduled back to work until golf season...about mid April. Painter guy and  his wife are very friendly and I ended up chatting for quite some time. As I walk back to my house (on Pony Lane), and dodge horse poo poo I think of how I am going to miss gathering poo each morning, but then again...I won't need poo and more. I also finished the Tiffany neck warmer and it curls on both edges making it look rather ... well, not nice, I was not happy. It was curling while I was knitting but I thought blocking would help but it did not, so now it is not giftable. I had started the second one but I frogged it real quick and cast on for a Baktus ( picture is a few posts ago) Of course it will not be done in time for gifting..oh well, it will be my plane knitting. I have 5 hours so I am carrying on enough yarn to make 2 (I'm always over ambitious) and besides, what if we have delays and I run out of yarn...yikes.
A friend came over and get this! She lent me a set of sheets so that I don't have to pack away my sheets after using them one night (I washed them today) So, when I get here next time my sheets will be perfectly clean, not even used one night. Isn't that awesome...people are so great. Since I had packed up all my dishes and still had a can of tuna left I had tuna, tostadas and a tomato and an avocado for supper, shortly after the tamale lady came by....it is Thursday is it not?...she's not due until Saturday, I had canned tuna for supper when I could have had tamales one last time. Ey yi yi. My land lady came over and we had a good visit, I feel bad for her, she has such a heavy load. She lost her husband 2 years ago and has 4 children, she is the same age as I am and I just can't imagine being in her shoes, all  I can do is just listen to her and pray for her.
I had people popping by all day, I had planned on just laying in my hammock for most of the afternoon but I didn't get a chance....used it to dry some laundry on when I ran out of lineOne lady came by to invite me to supper but I had to decline because another friend was going to come by around that time for tea, so she says "oh, you'll need something to serve with your tea" and she runs home and comes back with a plate of tarts...people are so great. When I get home I am going to try to pay more attention to my neighbors and try to lend and hand....and have tarts on hand. I am always willing to help when someone asks for help but I don't' seem to notice on my own when I could do something for someone, I'm just not a very thoughtful person. I never have a gift on hand or tarts....I'm going to stock up of gifts and tarts when I get home....maybe my Baktus scarf will turn out better than the Tiffany warmer, it would be a nice gift....with some tarts, you think? 
I'm going to leave you today the same way the day left me, with an amazing sunset. 





Wednesday, January 6, 2010

A little scary, a little ironic and a little epic

So there is another little bit of ugly news and I was debating about sharing this one as well, at first I decided not too and just posted this story without it but now have decided that I will share it. It may help someone else. It's a long story that starts with my uterus and ends with whip cream so grab a cup of tea or cast on for the Tiffany neck warmer (it's mindless knitting) I went to the the doctors here to see if I have arthritis or osteoporosis, my phsio therapists at home mentioned that it is possible that that could be why I have so many back, joint and muscle problems that just don't seem to go away. So I see a dcotor here that came highly recommenced by some of my local snow bird friends here, he is Mexican and he speaks English. I walk in his office without an appointment and see him within the hour, I tell him all my woes and troubles and he sends me around the corner to a lab for some blood and urine tests. From there I go for a pedicure and when I come back I have my results, (and I now have pretty toes)  I head back to the doctor and he sees me right away and we go over my results. I do not have arthritis or osteoporosis but my urine tests show that I am bleeding from the inside, we are both rather surprised about this, so now he asked me when I last had my periods and I tell him 10 years ago....now he is surprised. So I have to fill him in on my little saga that happened 10 years ago. I had some cancer cells removed from my cervical canal which was not to be a big deal, there were at stage 2 which is not too serious and could just be scraped away from the canal. 8 weeks later the doctor wanted to do a check to make sure he got it all and discovered that the canal had healed itself shut, it was now just one ball of tissue, no longer and canal and so no blood could get through, he tried a few different things to open it up but nothing worked. There were 2 options now for me, take the uterus out or take a drug called Depo provera which would just stop my periods completely. It is a drug commonly used for birth control. The doctor advised me not to have my uterus taken out unless I experienced problems with this drug, taking the uterus was to be a last resort. I must admit I was rather pleased at the thought of never having my periods again. And so 10 years have passed with me never experiencing any problems .... or so I thought. The doctor here listen to my story and his eyes kept getting bigger and bigger, he could not believe that a doctor would put me on this for 10 years. They do not use this drug here (that he was aware of) because of all the side effects. He says it is not a drug meant to be used longer than 3 months. In the last 10 years I had read about some new studies that had been done on this drug and had voiced some concerns to my doctors a few times but each time was told not to worry. The biggest thing was loss of bone density and back spasms (hello!) The last fews years my back has a spaz if I sneeze the wrong way or if I don't give it enough warning that I am going to bend over to put my shoe on. So he send me to another clinic for bone density tests right away and in 1/2 hour my results were ready.....I was not, I was having lunch with a friend up the street. So back to his office to go over my results and we find that I have Osteopenia in my spine which is just a step below Osteoporosis, my hips and pelvis were just borderline, this was better news than we thought we would get. If this bloody inflamed uterus comes out and I stop taking this poison (what he calls it) and stay active and eat healthy (teeheee) my bone density should catch up to my age without any supplements or drugs. Right now my bones are a bit older than I am ..... I didn't really need a test to tell me that. For now he gave me some Calcium and some anti-inflammatory pills to take until I can make arrangements to have the uterus out. The reason I am sharing all this is because I am a bit scared, I know it is a standard operation but I like all my body parts and especially the women parts, I didn't mind giving up my gallbladder years ago because it's just an ordinary body part that everyone has, but the women parts are what sets us part and makes us who we are and has always made me feel a bit special I guess, so it does worry me a little. I like my uterus, it worked very well for me when I was pregnant and even thought I don't have much use for it now I hate to see it go...weird I am. I went on line and tried to find some information but could only find medical information, all about the procedure and what to expect but it would have been nice if I could have found a place where women that had this done talked about their experiences...I'm sure this site exists, I just didn't find it yet. So I will share my experience here in very blatant terms that we all can understand. I do not want this blog to become the uterus blog site but I will keep you all posted as things progress. If I had it done here I would already be telling you how it went, doctor was ready to do it yesterday, that's how fast things work here in the medical industry but since I am getting it done in Canada it will drag out for months I'm sure.....no, I will not bore you all about it for months, I will skip all the red tape blah blah and just report on the actual procedure and anything noteworthy afterwards,(all the blah blah is saved for facebook) I am using this bone density thing as an excuse to add just a wee bit more cream to my cappuccino and maybe eat more ice-cream and find something to put whip cream on, I don't like cake (I know wierdo) but I love whip cream but what to put it on?

By the way;

The iguanas ate a whole row of dill that was only and inch high and ate a row of melon that had just poked out of the ground...grazed it right down to the dirt. I were to stay here I would have to build cages out of fish netting but at this point I am just giving it up.

To blog it or not to blog it



 I'm heading home on Friday the 8th. I've been debating about how I would blog about this or if I should at all but it seems that I really need to otherwise I would just take you from my hammock to the icy cold chilly north within 5 hours and you would all wonder how we got there and why. I won't go into too much detail because that would mean getting really personal with some else's life, someone that hasn't agreed to share her life on line. I have a dear dear friend that just lost her husband yesterday after a short tough fight with cancer and I am heading home to be with her during this hard time. I don't plan on coming back until next year, possible November or December someone time.....that's actually not even next year, that is this year. And so I am spending my last days here getting together with friends one last time. Went into Mazatlan yesterday and had lunch with a friend and now it seems the whole Island wants me to come to their house for supper before I leave.....I don't have that many suppers left. I figured I would have to eat out every night because I already gave back my borrowed pan and pot so now I can't cook anything.....seems I need not worry about supper. I did boil a potato and carrot in 2 little metal cups last night....I love my favorite potato dinner. I am frantically knitting a Tiffany neck warmer for a friend here....was hoping to make 2 but that might not happen.