Man. This has been a LONG week. L. O. N. G. week.
I’ve had two calls from Carle regarding yesterday’s blog post (a friend had forwarded it to someone and I had sent it to patient relations as well. THANK you to all the folks that made suggestions or commented on this). One call was from the head of nursing for the floor Ernie was on and one from the Cancer Center. I truly appreciated them calling and the woman from the Cancer Center was particularly helpful and able to give me answers to a few of my questions.
Evidently, they don’t have case managers, they have nurse navigators. The nurse navigators are assigned to their specific specialty and unfortunately….no navigating for prostate cancer or bladder cancer. However she gave me some advice on who to contact when I had issues or questions and also gave me her direct line. I really appreciated the kind, thoughtful responses.
Today I am mostly tired. I feel hungover from the week, or the month, or the year or whatever. Not hungover from alcohol, but rather emotion. I’m doing ok though. Doing ok.
Ok. A few other random notes:
This week I realized that I had been so worried about Tal being here during that crazy week and that I wasn’t able to do as much for her as I would have liked that I really missed something. I think her being here on that crazy week ended up being such a blessing, because it gave us some high points we wouldn’t have had otherwise. So, thank you, Tal. Can’t wait to have you back. Just look at these four beautiful creatures. We got so lucky with Trinity that I wondered if we could be again, but we are indeed.
As we all know, I seem to have misplaced my cooking mojo (It’s probably flapping its wings along with my missing appointments. Oh, and side note: nobody admired my poof/flying calendar item graphic from yesterday’s post. It really amused me which I suppose is all it really needs to do). With some of Farmer Greg’s beautiful asparagus, I returned to a favorite recipe from the New York Times, Turmeric-Black Pepper Chicken. Incredibly simple and quick and so good. I’m sure it would be equally as good with pork or shrimp or tofu.
The next night we ordered out because I am WEAK. Then I was so upset about my flying appointment that I wolfed it down without enjoying it. Ugh. However, last night we remembered we had a whole chicken in the refrigerator. Plopped it upside down in a pan, coated it with lots of salt and pepper, added some sliced sweet potatoes, a little drizzle of olive oil and roasted it all at 475 for about 50 minutes. Then we wilted some spinach in a bit of the pan juices. So simple, so good.
My girl Hattie. I just love her so damn much. I don’t know how long she’s going to be around. Managing her eating and constipation and anal gland issues sometimes wears me out but I’m just not there yet. She is an inspiringly tough little creature, and she’s my girl.
Thanks to friends for the beautiful tulips. Thanks for all the kindnesses you have shown us.
Onward.