My November Post

It's been nearly a month since my last post. Maybe this is becoming a once-a-month blog.

These pictures are from a hike I took with a Meetup group last weekend. The hike was a 9.5 mile meander along 3 trails in Raven Rock park, near Lillington NC.

The last month has seen a few changes in my life.

My mother succumbed to lung cancer after a 2+ year encounter with the disease. She was diagnosed 23 months ago with a fairly advanced tumor in her left lung. Fist sized, they said, and gave her a couple of months to live.

She stayed nearly pain free for almost the entire two years. It was a very slow growing tumor and really fooled the doctors. The last 2 weeks were bad though---the cancer, relatively mild for most of its span, showed its fangs at the end.

That happened a month ago.

During the two bad weeks and the month since I managed to gain some serious weight. I don't know how that happened. (okay, I ate a lot) And now I'm up to 193 and am supposed to see my doctor on Monday. Uh-oh. She's going to cuss me out. :-(

I'm now going out with someone after a 6 month sabbatical from dating. She's got far too many pets so my allergies are all over the place. Two dogs, 4 birds, 3 cats, and some chickens outside. But so far I'm surviving.

Other than that things are pretty much the same: same house, same job, same car, same bad habits. See you in December!

Comments

kenju said…
Dave, I'm so sorry to hear about your mom. It's so hard to lose a parent. I am glad to know that she was pain-free until the last.
4:24 PM
srp said…
I'm so sorry to hear about your mom. There is NEVER time enough to adjust to being without a mother. I know you now will worry more about your dad as well. I've missed you here. Do take care of yourself.
7:17 PM
Thumper said…
Oh man, I am truly sorry about your mother's passing. It's only been 3 months since my dad died, and every once in a while I still have to remember that...it's an odd, odd feeling.

Beautiful hiking picture...beats the heck out of the walking around my little town that I do...
8:13 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nitroflex at home

Image
I mentioned a few days ago that I'd purchased off of Craig's List an exercise machine. A Nitroflex, to be more specific, for the grand sum of $75. The boxes you see to the left were bought by the seller as discontinued merchandise over a year ago and stored in his back yard storage shed. You might be able to see some of the bugs and such that had made their homes on these boxes. I left them out on my deck for a few days before opening them to allow the insects to leave gracefully or die in the sun. The picture to the left is the pieces from the box, unboxed, and up in one of my upstairs bedrooms. For the most part it wasn't difficult to move it around though two pieces were heavy and a number of them were kinda long and bulky to be wandering about the house with. Surprisingly, this kit didn't require any extra tools. There were two allen keys and one combo wrench included in the boxes and that was all it took to put it together. The whole thing only took about half an h...
Read more

ankle update

S ince a few people object to seeing my feet --poor misdirected souls--I have the two pictures below hidden behind links. Behold them at your own risk! *evil laugh* Actually they're not scary though the first one is a little colorful. T he first picture shows my ankle and foot from the side, as labeled. You can see a lot of general edema of the entire foot. There's also a good bit of discoloration of the ankle area and to a lesser degree the top of the foot all the way down to the toes. The side view is a lot worse in this regard than the top view. T he second picture shows the two feet from the top so you can compare the somewhat normal looking right foot to the injured left foot. There's not much abnormal color on this view but you can see the "sausage like" swelling of the left foot. It's this swelling that is causing my main problem--I can't get the foot into my boots and I need the boots to support the ankle. Damn Catch-22. Side view, looking inward ...
Read more

Ostrich poop found here

Image
I took these pictures last Fall while visiting the NC Zoo. On the left you can see what appears to be a nice polite ostrich just wandering around. This impression soon turns out to be false when her dowdy tail feathers raise up and reveal a puckered anus. Ewwww! If you look carefully, you can see that she's made a deposit on the ground. More ewwww! Feel free to click on the image to make them bigger. Details can make all the difference in these shots. In other matters, aren't those really bony legs they have? And couldn't they have a little more color?
Read more