Circle of Life. Angels abound...

oh my friends. am typing through tears, our Dear friend Deb crossed over to the other side of Love herself Wds night . we are not priviledged to get many people who are our friends for over 45 years, I'm so grateful that mine (Nancy, Deb, & Robin & husbands) were all at Jenni's weddin last summer. roger is going to push me over a cliff if I don't get my hole-in-the-head back to bed to start recovery meself, so TTFN, lots of love spread amongst you ALL.

we'll be in touch, we promise. XXOOO annie wt the hole-in-head.

home again...

bak home yesteroday after overnigght at Roanoke Memorial; everythng went very well with procedure yesterady. Hole in Brain all set & prepped & ready to have stitches out & chemo in back in at my usual clinic tomorrow afternoon. today is "remember you had minor./major surgery and heal up easily" day. tomorrow is Oh Hell, Here Comes the Chemo again day ;-(( Yesteray gail ws the only on tall enough to tell me what the "stent/port/cath" looks like...she was giggling because it looked like a gadget we wer supposed to touch the switch on every 5 min, lol. NOT.

can't say Thannk You enough for all the love and letters alreay cming my way in high volume; can't say nough haw frustratd i am that i have haf yur birthday cards finished but on th way?? not bloody likely.

loveloveluv all around,
Annabella with the hole in the head-a

Around the corner again...

Grab yer hats folks here comes the next giant loop on the Blob Ride. The last chemos we tried just didn't do the job completely. They tried, but led to some even nastier side effects than the cancer caused! I have now had breast cancer that has pretended to be all sorts of things...as of right now, it is trying to be several forms of meningitis working on my spinal lymph fluids. We 've knocked that away but the next step is to have a small "shunt" or valve put into my skull and twice a week I will have chemo "shot" by injection into the shunt. So tomorrow morning, Roger will deliver me to the hospital in Roanoke (about 1 hour away) where noon-ish a surgeon will do one of these fairly routine stent insertions. They'll keep me overnight (to watch as I'm high risk for infection) and send me home the next day. Handily, sister Gail lives just a few blocks from the hospital, so she and Roger will trade off lookn after me as much as needs be....then after i get settled in back home, the "routine" will be to go to the same clinic I've been going to and twice weekly have th chemo shot in.

Hope this is clear as mudd to you all as it is to me. We'll keep you posted on any changes, but for now, I'm going to assume No News Is Good News!

back on the Roller Coaster

my dear angel friends...sorry, I took a week off from the world and spent it at the local hospital. Not a bad place to be when you can't stop barfing & are totally open to "Better Living with Modern Chemicals"..plenty of great pain meds, lol. Am glad to report i got better in time to come home in time for the weekend. Jenni has been here so I'm being looked after by a wondrful father/daughtr team :-) Max & Chelsea are off to NYC for a much needed "get out of town" trip, hope they have a blast in the big city ;-))) Tests this afternoon show the cancer is still moving around my spinal fluid a bit so I've got loads of pain meds & ster0oids for the weekend and plenty of firewo0rks to help our NewlyWeds celebrate their FIRST anniversary! Next week we'll start again with a whole new procdure & set of drugs...but for now , please rest with me and I'll keep you posted next week PLEASE imagine that yo9u are gettting wondrful hand lettered thank yu cards for all my amazing mail that has been entertaining my family, neighbors, and hopsital staff!

doodles of big hugs ((((*)))))

good afternoon,

can you say very loudly Cancer Sucks! for all of you who have been so kind as t0 say i'm some sort of inspiration, it's a darn good thing you aren't around me today. The new treatment in my spine is time consuming but doesn't hurt until later...and then crapola, i've barely made it out of bed today..when you are hurting in every bone too much to get out of bed f0r chocolate, well, you know that means i'm a mess. can't read or hold a book or type for very l0ong, s0 sweet roger raised the tv in my room so it is high enough for me to see. mowstly i've been listening to old movies on it, NOW we kn0ow why we pay for all those movie chanels! and Sister Gail & Dreamboat Dakota the Wo0nder Lab came by for a nice visit today. so here's a toast to a pretty good, coould be worse day all things considered ;-) flowers from a month or so ago

Its about That Time Again

Oh my friends & family ,

so sorry I haven't been in touch much these last few month. I was very sick from some chemo & then when we went off that chemo & I got even sicker, go figure. The WORST has been that lack of feeling in my fingers has kept me from typing or lettering , not to mention dropping plates of food when I do attempt to eat...lost 30 lbs but trust me, this is NOT the way to go. It is also very hard to hold the phone for long!

This week, tests confirmed that I now have something called "Carcinatomous (Cancerous) Meningitis" on my spine & in the lining of my brain. There are several treatments but my docs and I have decided that surgically putting a "port" into my brain for chemo or getting radiation to my brain could leave me pretty disfunctional for long time (as if i haven't felt disfunctional for a long time now!) so I am going to start a treatment that means i'll have a Lumbar Puncture (or "Spinal tap") twice a week for about 3 weeks to receive chemo and then we'll re-evaluate. I had the Lumbar puncture yesterday & while it was briefly painful, it truly wasn't as bad as I'd anticipated.

So that's the latest on the Cancer Path for me. Lots of diagnosis could be worse, so I am trying to be positive that this might take away the nausea & back pain & give me back some finger feeling.

I can't tell you how much your wonderfully supportive e-mails, CARDS (all works of ART!), and messages have lifted me up...not to mention the prayers & love sent from around the world! Please understand if I don't get back to you right away!

doodles of Love and Gratitude to you all.

Praise Song for Today

Oh, what a day. I love Inaugurations and this one was one of the best ever. I'm so proud of everyone involved, what class, finesse, style, courage and endurance was demonstrated, and most of that was before breakfast ;-) I do hope Elizabeth Alexander's poem "Praise Song for The Day" does get wide attention, every word in it was so carefully crafted, as were all the speeches. Despite another person's opinion expressed forcefully that almost half the country is not feeling like celebrating today, I say, too bad, be gracious. I have been gracious about recent inaugurations, it is more about America than it is about any particular person, even the president.

And oh, did you hear? CNN tells us that the gift Mrs. Obama gave to Mrs. Bush this morning was a handmade leather journal and "special" pen to begin her chronicles of Life before/during/after being First Lady. Hurray for Michelle and her style and consideration!

So tonight, at least in cyberspace, let's dance together at all the Balls. Lets celebrate the Arts, a Hope for Peace, a Wish for Cancer Cure...I'll be the one in purple paint splashed satin with alphabet shaped diamonds dangling all over...see you there!

Inaugural Remembrances

Good morning friends! TV is front and center today as we ALL give praise and Thanks for the "Miracle on the Hudson" yesterday. To distract myself from my news obsessions, I've been paying close attention to as much Inaugural hoopla as I can :-)

When we first moved to suburban MD outside of DC in 1964, we lived in-between Bethesda and the Town of Rockville. Rockville was considered so rural that despite our actual mailing address being "Rockville" my mother from Texas told *everyone* that we lived in "North Bethesda". It was considered swank by comparison to anything further north or east of DC, wry grin. Most of my friends' fathers worked at NIH (no Metro...) and the Shrivers (of Kennedy relation) had a farm hidden in some woods adjacent to our high school where their cows would sometimes get out onto our football field. I believe White Flint Mall is now near what used to be that farm!

I will be *glued* to the TV all day on the 20th; one of the things I adore about Washington is the Pomp and Circumstance of an Inauguration! Back in the 60's, we could drive downtown to my father's office and stand on the curb out front to see an Inaugural Parade :-) Once, my mom heard on the Inauguration TV coverage that Lyndon Johnson &Co. were quietly leaving the White House for the last time and going for lunch to Averil Harrimon's house in Bethesda, and we rushed over there, just about beating the press, to watch them get out of limos and go inside. I think that was one of the only times I saw LBJ in person. I was young enough to fit under the arm of a LaRGe TV cameraman (and boy, were TV cameras huge back then) to get a good look at the then "Former" President :-) Mom always prided herself on figuring out where politicians lived (especially in Bethesda, lol) (no CNN, no People Magazine, maybe even no National Enquirer back then!) and was extremely proud of the fact that she had figured out where Camp David actually was because we used to camp at a Nat'l Park Service camp in the mountains of northern Maryland near there regularly. It's location was considered Top Secret back then...no GPS or Google Earth either, just my mom's keen observations and deductions :-))

OK, confession time too....I can't WAIT to see what Michelle Obama is going to wear to all the events, sigh, just call me a First Lady Fashionista? We were even lucky enough to see the 60's version of the First Ladies Dresses display at the fairly new Museum of American History at the Smithsonian back when they had a dress from every First Lady on display...they were in sad need of repair and conservation even then, but no matter how they "improved" the exhibit, I sure did love that original one.

Doodles of Remembrances and Hope

We would drive down the mountain (through those beautiful colors) and cross the New River (actually one of the oldest rivers in the world), it was great to look through the old railroad/trestle bridge but not have to drive over it anymore. I hope this gives a sense of the tranquility and beauty of our "old" mountains.

Scenery on trips to the Radiation place in October

Here are some of the places we passed every day on my trips through the next county. Some of you asked what "Kudzu" looks like, and here is a hillside with what looks like a flying dove that is really an old tree covered with the crazy vine we love/hate that covers our countrysides.


More pics to follow! The radiation itself was no big deal, especially with this beautiful countryside to enjoy, but the after effects were pretty nasty. I was so glad to have gotten all this beauty taken in before I got "confined" for the rest of the fall.

Derailed

Well my friends, the "blob" got derailed this fall along with my body & brain, lol. Sorry to have dropped the conversation! I still have some wonderful pics of the trips to the next county which I will try to remember how to post later today. Body & brain seem to be coming out of the fog slowly but surely, amen.

We had such lovely holidays and I promise to share more about them soon too.

Right now, I'm looking FORWARD to 2009 and especially the Inauguration with great Joy and Anticipation!