Inventory: Emotional and medical

I am reading a very wonderful, very powerful book at the moment called "My grandfather's blessings" by Rachel Naomi Remen. She is a wonderful writer, also famous for her "Kitchen table Wisdom" book. She is a psychiatrist who has been through many career changes, currently working in hospice, in California. I am receiving so many blessings from this book, it's helping me with my mourning. Rachel Remen says that if it was up to her, grief would be taught in kindergarten right up there with sharing toys.

I wish I had her as my shrink!

We have no guidance in our regular lives to navigate grief. It comes upon us by surprise, and we are as if left in a deep, dark, cold forest with no tools how to get back home. That's where I've been the past two months. In deep, dark grief. And it is up there with the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life. For the past few days, though, I have been feeling the fog lifting at times. I have had some times of feeling... a little better. A far cry from "well", but I can see times that the grief can lift, temporarily. If I only talk about it with a friend, though, the tears are as close to the surface as they have been over these few months.

I thought grieving for losing my health, careers, personal body image because of the tremendous wound damage from NF, losing lots of control over what happens in the house because I am sick so much, was a lot to grieve in the past nine years. While that's all true, since my mother passed away in June, and Sabrina in December, and especially because of all the details involved in Sabrina's passing, it knocked me down HARD. One of those "details" is the loss of not adopting Sabrina's daughter, Tessa. I'm talking about monumental details of that level. It's all SO. MUCH. I have been overloaded with sadness. I am still there, and I hope and pray the right kind of support will come soon.

Medically:

I need a secretary. It is so hard for me to follow-up on all the paperwork and appointment making and calling. If I want my throat problem fixed, I have to do two tests; one is a swallow test where you swallow liquids (Barium) from thin to thick, and the swallowing is recorded by a special type of x-ray. I also need a neck CT scan. Haven't scheduled either of those yet. Oh, and also voice coaching from the hospital speech pathologist because the upper part of my voice is shot since this whole throat fiasco started.

Then yesterday I was in Tel Aviv at the orthopedist. He looked at my last scan, but it isn't the type he needs, so I have to schedule an MRA for my right leg. Looking at the scan I had he commented that my left hip looks terrible, filled with fluid. He asked me what the oncologist says about that, I told him they said it was fine. No other comments. Didn't boost my security, though, that we are only looking at the possibility of one hip replacement... could be TWO. But I can't go there. I can't deal with that information any time soon. All I can do is try to make phone calls in morning times to make appointments and send faxes. These days, that's a lot for me.

But I did play horn the other day. Felt awful, sounded even worse I'm sure, but I did it. May do a shared recital with a friend in a year's time for my 50th birthday... we'll see...
And I bought myself a new (2nd hand) bike, and went riding with Dovie.

It's not all gloom and doom. But it certainly ain't paradise. I'd even settle for normal.