Archive February 28, 2014

My little pumpkin Coffee is doing well. She has a little tender tummy and she a little more tired then normal. I would love to take her on a walk but I think it’s too cold and they told me she is susceptible to more things on chemo, it knocks the immune system down. Other then sleeping more. She doesn’t seem sick. She is a genius you know. The puppy book said teach her how to critically think. I did. Now there is nothing she can’t open. Even a ziplock bag can be opened without teeth marks.
I have been buying her treat puzzles. They have flaps and drawers and twirls that she likes getting treats out of. Nothing she can’t solve in 10 minutes or less the first time. She loves her treat puzzles.

So tired after doing puzzles!

Creamy….so tired after watching Voffee solve puzzles!

Thanks Michael J Fox, I found this on Facebook and it fits my life right now. Letting go, getting thru going on….surviving…

Facebook post

Four years ago today I was assaulted. It was a day that changed my life and a day that will always be with me. As a letting go moment this year I wrote a letter to my attacker. I may never be able to forgive her, but I can let it go. I can let it sail in the water out of sight and out of my life. I am choosing to do that today on this four year long long journey I have been on. You can’t let go of something until you are ready, until you have completed the journey in full, until you have road the waves and have come in to shore safely, and you have let the the waves go back to the ocean, and with pride know you’d didn’t die in the water, but completed the ride in one piece.

……TODAY I HAVE FINISHED MY JOURNEY AND I AM I CHOOSING TO LET IT GO.

2/26/2014
Dear Ms. Attacker,

I am writing this letter to you as part of my healing process. It has been four years today that you assaulted me both physically and professionally. It is something that drastically changed my life and my health and was an act that scared for the rest of my life. I have a permanently damaged hand, arm, shoulder from where you beat me with your fists on the afternoon of February 26. I also have post traumatic stress disorder from you accusing me of child abuse and Milwaukee Public Schools putting my through 19 months of hearings, school board meetings, testimony, and finally arbitration. I lost 10 weeks of work with out pay and it left me with no way to pay my bills or my mortgage. It was hell. Nothing but pure hell. Then during that process MPS froze everything about me, my pay, my rights, my life and forced me to work in a building with you for three years. I had to go to special counseling to learn how to face my attacker and if I wanted a job, I had to work in the same building as you….the person who so assaulted me so badly that my had is permanently damaged. This year I had surgery on my hand trying to alleviate the pain and get the feeling back in it but I am still very disabled with it. I had to live with you running after me calling my name like nothing happened and when you did that I would be covered in sweat and look like I just showered. I would drip with sweat fearing for my life. It was a long long three years. Surviving was more then I could stand …..I died a little each day. There was no way I could master the fright or flight response, I tried. I still go to therapy once a month to try and deal with being a victim.

I know you lost your temper and assumed something happened that did not happen, but you are a professional and you were my friend. You know that I would never injure or hurt a child…. ever. How could you accuse of that much less assault me so badly that I lost use of my dominant hand? I also can’t go in crowds or public places without being accompanied by someone. I can’t sleep at night without sleeping pills, I couldn’t eat and lost 50 pounds. My stomach, nerves and intestines will never be the same. I will never be the same. They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, it’s not true. There is very little left of me.

I have lived with a lot of things and many deaths of family and friends, I always took that next step and went on but I can’t get past if there was a moment in time I regret, it was you assaulting me. Do you even understand that Durango was afraid of you and he wouldn’t let go of me? When you kept hitting me over and over I had a 120 pound weight on my arm and my arm was in full extension….and he wouldn’t let go. You picked him up, slung him over your hip with his arms outstretched to me yelling “save me teacher”. It damaged him and it damaged me. Neither of us will ever be the same. I will never know what you were thinking or what happened with you but you changed my life forever. Why would you even consider hitting me over and over? You know me, I would never hurt one of my kids. Why would you think you could just pound on me like that? I will never understand that, never in a million years…..and then expect me to talk to you like it was nothing. Do you understand what you did to me and how badly you injured me? my life? my career and my health? This is my healing letter. I hope after I tell you how badly you hurt me I can let this moment in time go and live with limitations it caused in my life.

victim

Note: it took 19 months of hearing, of listening to how terrible I was ( which was made up) and arbitration but I was found innocent of her charges. Nothing was ever done to the teacher that attacked me.

My hand today and next to the photo of my hand after I was assaulted.

Here we are week four. It is a month. A month of living with cancer. I guess living is the key word there, we are living. So we made the trek to Madison in -25 degree windchill weather today. We can’t sit in the car while waiting for chemo today we have to sit in the waiting room. Creamy is not settled today and she’s barking at everyone in the waiting room. She didn’t take her usual snooze when we got to cruising altitude in the van. (that’s highway speed) and when Creamy barks Coffee barks, so much fun! I do my best keeping them calm but people and dogs come and go all day long….and Coffee makes growls under her breath…oh my gosh! Coffee is a growly face and Creamy is a barky face…. oh my goodness.

Coffee is a growly face

Creamy barked face

Ok I have figured this out. When the vet assistants come and tell you the vet needs to talk to you…that’s bad. When the vet doesn’t talk to you and just technicians come to get Coffee and take her, then everything is good. Today we had round three of chemo and all blood work was good.
Coffee is in full clinical remission…..
One of my friends sent Coffee and Creamy personalized cancer awareness t shirts. Coffee’s is white and says “fight like a girl, pink ribbon”” Coffee the fighter”. Creamy’s is pink and it says “I wear pink to support a cure” “Creamy the supporter”……they are so cute. It was -25 degrees today so maybe we can wear them next week to treatment.

Creamy

Coffee

Our first grade writing center with a spring theme!

I hate being the center of attention and I have to decided whether to have a party to celebrate my retirement. My retirement wasn’t exactly planned, it was duty disability retirement and it was along hard road to get it approved and my school district took every advantage of me to postpone it, refuse it or just tell me what a leaker I would become to ask for my pension three years early. A brain injury makes it very hard to function with any stimulation around you. So should I celebrate having to leave a job I loved? Decisions decisions. What should I do?

Our sunflower garden in the hallway. Then I found a book called Sunflower House. I love that ok. We would read it, take our sunflowers to the gym and make a sunflower house and sit in the middle.

I have the greatest friends. A true friend is there no matter what happens to you, no matter what people say about you, no matter what …period……..they support you through it all no matter the life event…..good or bad… and they believe in you.

My friends have seen me through thick and thin, through bad and good. My friends are my family and they are always there for me.

THANK YOU FRIENDS. I believe everyone is in your life for the moment you need them and my friends have been their for my lifetime!

Have you ever though about happiness. I have not been truly happy for a long time. I am one of those people that have to have everything in place to be happy. Something is always out of place……but most people see me as a cheerful happy bubbly person. Really I am not. I am afraid of crowds, afraid to speak in public, and I am incredibly shy. Most people don’t even know I am shy. In high school they just thought I was stuck up or someone to be picked on. In college, it was just so big that you were never with the same people often. I am old now and I think I need to aim at content. I need to find content(ness).

One of the things I do is collect little magazine articles on subjects and store them. I have to stop doing that. Anyway I found one on HAPPINESS IS…..Good Housekeeping 1994. See I told you I have been thinking about this awhile….it’s for an author who wrote a book called Real Moments….moments are what makes your life matter. It is about experiencing fulfillment and meaning in your life now. Not waiting for the perfect circumstance, or relationship or weight….but in this moment and every moment.
She says:
Look honestly at yourself
Look deeply I to your own heart
Look closely at the values of your spirit
Pay attention to moments of your life as they unfold

Real moments means you are fully experiencing life as it unfolds feeling fully present, fully feeling and fully alive.
Happy moments, sad moments, scared moments..but always when you are paying attention to where you are and what is going on, right now you will experience a real moment. Mindfulness. I talked about that before in another blog I wrote. Mindfulness. Allow your mind to be full of the experience. Real moments are consciousness, connection, and surrender.

Happiness is not an acquisition it’s a skill.

Here’s the problem I like being in control. I was an inner city school teacher with tough tough kids and you have to be in control 110% of the time. You even have to be in control when your are sick and when a substitute is there. Control is all encompassing. I really hated that but I was good at it and in a classroom if people see you in control they think your a good teacher.

My other problem is I am an escapist. I can escape in my head whenever I want to. I am good at it. I grew up in a violent situation and escaping in your head is something your can do anywhere and anytime. Leave your body here and go anywhere, become anyone, have any life you want, except it not real it’s in your head. But small children use this as a form of protection, just like if they are in grave situation of stress or harm, their mind will go blank and they won’t remember the trauma. It a their mind’s way of protecting them from emotional and psychological harm. My mind protected me a lot growing up on the farm.

Control and escapism totally stand in my way of mindfulness.

I love the yellow mini chair from the top, looking down

Well week three did not go as we had planned. Coffee is doing good, because she still doesn’t know she’s sick except for drinking water and peeing and the vet says that’s the predisone. We didn’t get chemo today. First of all we had to change the days from Thursday to Wednesday because Wiscsonsin is expecting bad weather tomorrow the 20th of February. We could always outdrive weather in one part of the state, but the bad weather is going to cover the whole state tomorrow. So what we did was called, and begged, and the clinic gave us a waiting appointment. They get us in and see us when they can. Sort of like stand by on an airplane. Anyway they took Coffee but she had low white blood cells count and a one degree of fever, 103. So no chemo treatment this week. This week she gets antibiotics, fluids and we hope the cells go back up and the fever down. She normally has a 102 temp, so the fever is not high high. They said prednisone and chemo can lower defenses, so we wait a week. Her glands are or al1 normal size though. A very good sign. We won’t leave her at the medical center. She would be too far away and she’s never been away from us before for the night, so that’s not an option to get her better. (I had an african water frog get sick last year and the aquarium specialist said don’t isolate him, taking an animals that is sick out of its home environment is the worst thing for it. Isolating is not a good idea) so no leaving her so far from home.(Frito the 25 year African water frog healed very well) so the advice is good advice for anyone……even humans.

The doctor said Coffee is in clinical remition!

Coffee sound asleep on the way home. Lots of pokes today!

Creamy being a supporter. Not east when your friend has cancer.