The fat lady is quietly singing

Hey Howdie,

This poor neglected blog, I have been being nursey and not a writer, and it shows. Actually, I am here to end my blog, at least for this space and time. My Hep C goes on, making tomato sauce out of my liver, my life goes on, MitchMAN is getting better, Doc goes on, she is excelling at doctor school, I have developed a crush on Vincent D'Onofrio and I find new gray hair every day. But this next phase of my life feels fairly solitary, too scary and demanding to commit to blogging. When I start treatment again, my only choice is Infergen and Infergen is triple strength Interferon. Now I believe Interferon is barbaric, devasting and a cure worse than the disease, so you can imagine the bad dreams I am having about Infergen. My commitment to trying to rid myself of the dragon has waned somewhat, directly correlated to how much more I research Infergen. I may not be capable of this. And for a "bitch with bullets.....balls to the wall" girl, to admit I am too weak to try something can be devasting. So, while all is well here in Oz, I am taking a break from my blog, and walk, talk, live and breath with the idea of trying something WORSE than interferon. I do not know this outcome. But then, do any of us know? I am comfortable not knowing right now, it will come to me. Til then, you all take care, and Kris, I think of you often. And then I get a bit sorrowful for what I know you are going thru. You be brave girl. I be not brave...yet. Love.
Jackson

Look at those eyes, there is a whole world there.

"Kittens gone Wild!!" New photo shoot

So it's been a long winter and not even half over yet, we all be getting a bit crazed around here. The kittens are crazed because they are growing up, Alex is just crazy, with his geezer look going on and I am resting up to begin to go crazy. MitchMAN caught pneumonia Christmas week, this is not a good thing for a man recovering from lung surgery or for his nurse either. Raised my anxiety level a bit and got him good and cranky. Not sure what is up yet, we haven't seen the 4 doctors necessary for a true diagnosis yet, but they all make me nervous, they read his tests and then listen to the lungs and look down the throat, all the while my urge to yell at one gets worse and worse. Mitch is better now, this is the first week of January, I would like to go for a month without purchasing a prescription or laying awake at night, counting his respiration and listening for lung type noises. I am overly dramatic today, he will get better, just takes time, but we used the latest new scary antibiotic this last time, if he gets sick again, he be eating green moldy bread. Drug resistant pneumonia is more common than most of us know, but most of us don't hang out with lung doctors either. Other than that, things be cool here.

Everyone liked my soap this holiday, which is great because that was all they got from me! Now I am in the basement, throwing the clay around and making bowls and vases. There is always a learning curve going on and I'm right at the start of the curve, but it keeps me busy and I love that. I get more and more tired walking up the stairs, but the rewards are great so I keep puffing up and down. Wish I could think of someting funny to say today, but I can't. I had to shave one of the kittens tail, she had some skin irritation going on, that was funny! But she is fairly pissed. I guess all I can provide today is my funny photo, which I love very much, but also find disturbing for a moment. Too much cold, not enough sun. One thing about it, this too shall pass. Take care.
Jackson

All I want to say this holiday is "Thank you" to the gods and the earth for my children, Doc and Mat, and for my husband, MitchMAN. All else is just the stuff of every day life and some advertiser convincing me that I have to spend a million bucks to be happy. I don't. I just look at these faces, my family and I know I am the luckiest person alive. Wish you knew my family, they would make you laugh, cry, wonder in amazement and you would understand. Hope you have faces of love and wonder this holiday too.
Jackie

An ice storm hit here last night, about 20 minutes after Doc arrived from Seattle. This is a good thing, she was safe and sound, here at home for the holidays. But sometime in the early morning, a car sideswiped hers, not too bad of a dent, but it could have screwed up her holiday bad. We called the police and the hitter had left insurance info and the insurance company has already called, so all is well, better than well, actually, Doc says she will drive this car til it dies, so she is going to save the money they give her to fix it and use it for school. Small sweetness from bad things, we are all okay now, but it was like a zoo this a.m. Cops here, the poor lady who did the sideswipe was totally devastated, I as so worried about her I think I will stop by and leave her Christmas flowers. It was not her fault, there is an inch of ice on the road and this poor lady was just trying to take her son to school. Ain't life crazy. Talk about crazy, I have been talking milk thistle for my liver function and Hep C and you won't believe my blood work. My liver function is down to normal, now I think I want to have a big party about this fact, but I have to see the doc first, I am so afraid to find anything good about Hep C, I just know he will tell me this is not a good thing as it messes with viral count, disease progression, who knows what. He can be a real asshole. But news flash for anyone, milk thistle brought my liver ALT down from 220 to 40 and how the hell can this not be a good thing? I still have hep c and am a little concerned that as my liver function got better, I got much more fatigued, so we will hold off on the party till the doc tells me what is going on. I think this will be a bittersweet holiday and I can make it much sweeter with just the right attitude. I have a present for all of you, some advice I read somewhere. I liked it.

Her advice: (she is a surgeon) "I was in the middle of a surgery with the most talented surgeon I know, John A Ryan Jr., and he decided I wasn't giving it my best effort. He barked at me, "Hey!" You're doing one thing right now. One.....thing! So do it right". I never forget that advice. You're doing one thing now--living your live. So live it right: Wear sunscreen. Never smoke. Get enough sleep. Exercise four times a week. Always be kind. Never lie. Laugh often. Do not tolerate less than you deserve. Let grudges go. Dream big. Remember that love matters most. Call your mom". Okay, I'm going to call my mom, then walk on the treadmill. And always, always dream big. You dream big today too. Happy Holidays.
Jackie

A winter pecker

This guy lives in my back yard, I asked Santa to bring me a bird feeder for him, but then I realized he eats bugs in trees, so unless Santa can bring a new telephone pole, I ain't going to be able to feed him this winter. I will do a little research and see if he eats suet or whatever the nasty stuff you can buy that has fat and some kind of bug guts in it. My pecker is wonderful to watch, but he made me think of my new cats today, the neighbors cat tried to mix it up with my pecker and the pecker won. I have decided for the sake of the pecker and the cats that my kitties will live inside, always, and their whole world will be like mine, the inside of this house and the world that can be seen thru the windows. Because both kitties and sick old ladies are safer in the house. I am kind of depressed today, I had some family here for early Christmas, did the whole nine yards, food, tree, decorations, it was beautiful, but made me sick for two days afterwards. I slept like 22 hours straight, I did not like this much, my hep C is much more evident in my life than it has been for a long time. But the real bitch was from the other folks here during the celebration, I have a brother in law I have not seen for a while and he would not give me a smooch, you know, the safe, closed lip kind you give male relatives. He would not, kissed me on the cheek, MitchMAN noticed it but tried to play it down. Made me sad. A few weeks ago, we had company too, one of them did not want to use a towel that was hanging on the rack in the bathroom, asked me for a clean towel out of the closet. I explained the towel WAS clean on the rack, but they pressed for one out of the closet. Later, I learned, they had heard me talking about my dry skin (one of the symptoms of early cirhossis) and decided the towel they needed better damn well be clean. Made me sad. So between no kisses and clean towels and scary fatigue setting in, this will be my winter of Hep C, I can tell already. It is my goal to live thru the snow and cold and bad liver, when spring comes, I will plant again and forget this winter and this tiredness and shortness of breath and I will be brave enough to start treatment over. I have made up my mind. There is no treatment so bad that I will not do it, I will let you know what Doctor Death throws at me, I think it will be Infergen, triple strength interferon, triple the fun, triple the depression and nauseau, triple the fatigue, triple the fun? I care not, bring it on. I have this winter of Hep C to prepare and kittens here on the keyboard to teach to type. Plus, fuck, you would be impressed at the pottery these hands are turning out. I will take some pictures of a few pieces and post them, when I get brave enough. There is always such a vulnerability to show art to strangers, but I will anyway. Soon, for the pottery is pouring out of me daily and I am happier with it than I have ever been. Strange gifts from god, feeling sick, but feeling creative, and I can hold the creations in my hands. Take pictures of them too. I will show you soon. Hope your kittens are typing better than mine. Have a wonderful holiday, I love Christmas, I celebrate for two weeks. Celebrate yourself too. Later.
Jackie

Say Hello to Christmas!!

This is Peeps, my Christmas present. Why do I have a picture of my Christmas present so early this year? Well, MitchMAN saved Peeps and her sister from Animal Control and Peeps does not tell time too well. She couldn't help being ready for a home a little early and I was more than ready to have Peeps right now. Her and her sister have discovered they love Christmas, the tree, the lights, the decorations and Mitch and I have discovered they are very intelligent cats! They can read the newspaper and can also type on the computer keyboard, but will take some more time for them to learn to spell correctly. Actually, one of the kittens is for Doc, she is finishing this semester of medical school and is very frazzled, but will come for a week or so to a new kitten. Now, Doc is the ultimate cat person, she is an intelligent, sophisticated young adult, living in Seattle, going to the right clubs and all, but this woman loves cat calenders, cat cards, cat keychains, all the stick-a-spoon down my throat sweet things that people can do with kitties. So she is going to love Peeps or maybe her sister, I do not care, Doc will bond with one and the other will stay here with me thru this long Hep C winter. Peeps sister is a bit more agressive than Peeps, what you cannot see if her sister, terrorizing my big dog. I call her "Painkiller Jane", after a comic book character, but I am most positive that Doc will rename both kitties. It does not matter to me, but I ain't going for "Trixie". Don't ask me why, but cats deserve more dignity.
Hope your day is dignified. I am getting sicker, scaring Mitch a bit, but it was just inevitable to me, re-treatment is coming soon and if you want to have bad dreams, look up the medicine "Infergen", that is what is in my future. I do have some control tho, Infergen will come with the spring, this winter it is me, Peeps and Painkiller Jane. Happy Holidays, I gotta go, just heard a plant crash.
Jackson

Sticks, stones, snow and berries, OH, MY! Why won't this thing print my photo?? Well, imagine snow on a bush full of red berries.

From the photo, you can guess what is going on around here, snow, snow and more snow, but on this first day of the snow, everything is quite beautiful, clean and I'm digging the view from my front window. The swearing about the snow starts as soon as I have to go out in it, gotta dig out the old doc martins, big black boots to tromp in the snow with. I need to get my doggie some snow shoes, he went out and slipped, came back in and slipped, down the stairs actually, which scared the hell out me, he is a grayhound with long skinny legs and I feared for those skinny legs, but he is okay and I do not have to go outside yet, so all is well and I'm watching the entertainment outside as it turns from earth colored to cloud color, fluffy and white and very very cold.

The birds are pretty excited about all the activity too, they are flocking around the bird feeder, fighting over the last of the sunflower seeds. Tomorrow is my birthday, I asked for another bird feeder, so that more birds can eat, I'd like to turn the back yard into a kind of Denny's, you know, lots of food, lots of places to sit. I've been a little scared lately, it has been hard to even walk up and down the stairs to the basement, usually I can make two trips before the smashing fatigue sets in, but maybe my fatigue is from bounding up the stairs lately, instead of just walking. MitchMAN bought me some fine red clay for my birthday, the clay was like the key to a floodgate, pieces of pottery are pouring out of me and the brain is filling up with more ideas. So I work in the basement and when something goes really well, the clay gods smile on me, I bound up the stairs to tell Mitch. Wow, by the time I hit the top stairs, I gotta catch my breath before I can brag, guess Hep C has to have a piece of me, no matter how happy I am. I see the doctor this month, so I am not worrying about it, sure there is something to be done about it, today, I am watching snow and playing in clay. What more could I need? Well, to be healthy again, but hell has not frozen over yet, so I occupy myself with more attainable goals. Hope you are attaining your goals and that all your fallen clouds are just puffs and fluffs of snow. Later.
Jackie

Bitter angels of our nature

Something I heard in the past few days has been hanging around with me, buzzing in my head like the last flies of winter. Do we embrace or fight the "bitter angels of our natures", meaning, I think, our conscience, our internal compass that tries to point true, but is sometimes spinning out of whack from magnetic forces we have no control over? I just talked to Doc, we talked for about two hours, this will play hell with her cell phone minutes, but it was a good talk, intimate and I felt like I was hearing her soul, her truest thoughts, some of them were hard for me to hear, the particularly prickly words were about my reactions this past year to the inevitable turmoil she has experienced, in fact, that we all experience at times. My fear tinged my words to her, she heard words of unnacceptance, but it was one of my "bitter angels", screaming about how frightened I was for her. Today, that particular bitter angel is silent, I have come to trust that Doc is smart and strong enough to not tolerate anything that would harm her, but smaller, less cynical angels are singing to me now, words of concern, words all mothers have felt and heard internally. What a tangy gift motherhood is, to get tangled in a grown humans life so much, to hang like suspended from a web, unable to be free of it, but not wanting too either because of a concrete connection that time, nor wind, nor nature can dissolve. So I am being bitten by this bitter angel that was so frightened and spoke unclearly, it was an angel in disguise, thoughts of love and concern came out of me, but when sent on the wings of the crabby angel, left my daughter feeling dis approved of. Shit. Thank the other angels from today for the chance to tell her it was not dis approval, but fear she heard in my angel's breath, perhaps Doc heard me today and is healed. It is the holidays, the time of more miracles than any other time of the year, I am hoping I deserve an angel bearing miracles, even if the angel is a little cranky. Cranky I can understand. I wish you all angels of sweet disposition. Later.
Jackie

I liked this photo, folks on the shoulders of more folks, all working together for a common goal, reminds me of my family, except for the working together part. With five brothers and sisters, all married with kids and grandkids, our family gatherings are really freakin large, I think of gathering during the holidays like the rain forest, there are levels of activity going on, varying by altitude. Big guys drinking a few beers, talking stuff, middle level is usually my sisters and I, talking food, then another level, sort of under the canopy, consisting of about a thousand kids, some talking, some just learning to toddle, and I think that the short person level is what really keeps the other taller levels alive, the floor at my sister's is teeming with life. I must have 20 grand nieces and nephews, and about 15 nephews and nieces, makes for a grand holiday tho. The pack mentality takes over, everyone becomes a mother to any child within reaching distance that needs food in the mouth or the nose wiped and any teenager has to take crap from all the adults about school or women or whatever. I love the pack mentality, I love the rush of all the kids around, but I gotta tell you, I get really really tired from the holidays. My age shows around all these children, having children is for very young people, even then, I do not think these wonderful parents understand what a monumental job they are attempting. I say "attempting" because we all know raising kids is just a crap shoot, hope for some good luck and do the best you can. So I'm loving all the little ones and admiring their parents and wishing the parents could have my perspective in the middle altitude of this rain forest, plus maybe I will ask god to give them all a little bit more sleep, plus those moments when they can relax and reflect on what a wonderful thing they are doing, raising these little people. Having Hep C has put me in a permanent state of reflection, but I'm loving it, I have heard folks say that this disease or this disability was a strange blessing, this is mostly because you have to develop the ability to "reflect" on the life going on around you, otherwise, I would spend all my time with my head up my own ass, feeling sorry for myself, and the view from that altitude sucks big time. Hope your turkey day is a walk in the rain forest and you remember to bring your reflection muscles with you. Have a good one.

Winter hits some of us very hard!!

In my last post, I talked about my photo safari, MitchMAN and I tried to go today, but work called him with some earth shattering issue and the safari is delayed a few days. I'm feeling fine with this, but still got a photo jones, so I take a walk about and realize I have yellow chrysanthamums, that isn't spelled right, mums, i got mums out the wazzoo in my front yard. There are a few of them in a vase on Mitch's desk/dining room table, but the flowers have been inspired by the cooler weather and there are a billion of them, bright yellow, and this is the kicker, they smell wonderful! Not that kind of woodsy mum smell, but very sweet and I'm liking this a lot, when this butterfly stops by for a portrait. I'm totally jazzed at first, I love to photograph small, unsuspecting bits of beauty like this, but looking at the butterfly closely, I see he is in a state of grayness. All gray and fuzzy on his body, but the wings are still dazzling in yellow and black, I'm kind of scared for the little guy, does he have some sort of virus, have I discovered Butterfly Hep C? I think not, but what I do think is kind of poignant in a way, a bit sadder than even having Hep C. I think this guy is in the last stage of his magnificent life, gray hair and all, stopping by my mums to rest in the sun and give me one last gift of a perfect photo. I'm feeling lucky today for this gift and remembering there is a beginning and an end to everything, just a twinge of sadness that it had to show up on my mums on a sunny day, but then, when I think about it, to experience the inevitable end on a sweet smelling mum, still so vivid and bright, full of color and eye candy, well, who can bitch about an end like that? Later.
Jackie

So it's been six weeks since MitchMAN's surgery, today he's off to work for half a day and the first thing I do is blog. I'm happy about this, but realizing that my photography collection has become woefully thin and for someone who copes with a chronic illness like Hep C with photography, among other things, I'm thinking this is not a good thing. So I'm planning an expedition, a photo safari thru the desert here, along the river, but it has become freezing ass cold since I wrote to you last. So I'm in a flannel sort of mood,even found a few of my flannel shirts from last winter, but couldn't find a flannel kind of photo, this photo is called "silk", it was the closest I could come to fabric. Flannel does not photograph well, which I'm sure is an issue for someone, but not me, I'm going after the bare trees and piles of leaves and the bazillion geese that fly thru here going north this time of year. Perhaps tomorrow will be a good expedition day, so look for some stark, dreary pictures here soon, winter in the desert can be so hard on the eyes. Cept when it snows, but as much as I like to put pleasing photos in my blog, I am not hoping for snow yet, although snow does make for truly beautiful pictures.

I have entered the world of herbals, which way off the subject of flannel, I know, but still noteworthy. Having already used my thistle picture, I wish I could repost it anyway to underline how I feel about herbals, milk thistle to be exact. Milk thistle has been used by the Chinese for a thousand years for liver health and I figure, who am I to argue with a lot of Chinese, so I'm taking milk thistle and son of a bitch, after a month, I do not have any liver pain any more. My fatigue is about the same, but to take a deep breath and not feel the constant ache in my upper right quandrant is quite stunning to me. I go next week to pick up lab orders for blood work, I have a renewed interest in what my AST/ALT will be, it has been rising faster than the price of gasoline, so if it has stabalized, well, call me astonished, because I always poopooed herbals, except for a little chronic weed now and then. From what I can read, it takes about three months for the full benefits of milk thistle to show up, so I will let you know. Believe me, I will be watching those numbers like a hawk. Now milk thistle is not cheap and it caused me some mighty prickly belly aches for the first three days, but now my gastro seems to have become accustomed to it, except for the great desire to consume popsicles in the middle of the night. Cheap price to pay for a healthier liver, I guess. There is another herbal I will add to the milk thistle as soon as I get over the sticker shock, something called Astrlgrass or some variation of that name, good also for the liver. I need to research it more before I start swallowing it, at least learn how to say it, but I hear from good sources that I should also be consuming it. So here I am, dabbling in herbals, trying to be cool in the health food store, which really is very hard to do. The health food store always has the most colorful folks in it, just call me colorful now and watch me consume the herbals. I'll let you know how this all works out, I'm liking that idea, that is what I love about blogging, it is a connection to the future. Even if there is only three of us reading it. Which reminds me, someone I love very much sent me wishes of love in response to my whining about trying to get my meds straight so I could start tx again. She has gone back on tx again herself, Kris, someone smart once told me that those of us who battle the dragon more than once truly learn the nature of the beast and I have always remembered that thought. The dragon is like the fire that makes steel strong, and we're the hammered piece of metal, it is a fight every day. Soon, fighting it is all you know, but the warrior mentality really puts a spin on life, at least for me it has. I can whine when I want to and be silent when I need too, and am thankful every day for the smallest stuff that used to slip under my radar. Strange gifts, but I think I look better as a fighter. Victim is such a fucked up term. And Sue, anything you want from me or my blog is yours. Please post a link and I will put it in my next blog, but remember, I use bad words sometimes. Just call me rascal and then put in a disclaimer, because I do love to swear. I'm going to go make plans for my safari, along with doing the dishes and laundry, the life of a housebound blogging gray haired swearing warrior is busting full of excitement today. Hope you all got excitement, if not, try swearing.
Jackie

Hey, I found this image floating around and had to put it here, all the words I usually put in my blog are hanging around somewhere near the top of my head and I can't seem to catch them in any righteous order to put down here. I have been doing my meds just like my shrink wants me too, massive doses of anti-dees, the resulting brain fog, on top of my already hammered memory has interrupted my ability to compose anything. Interrupted my ability to find my keys, to remember the bathtub is running, you know, the basics of life. Mitch started driving after white knuckling with me for the last three weeks, even driving is a little more dangerous for me, but my shrink promises a clearer mind as soon as I grow accustomed to the meds. Well, I have heard that one before, but I am taking a leap of faith here, which for me is unusual, being a very comfortable cynic, so I am here, words floating around my head, not being put down in this blog, I have lost my cup of tea and forgot what chores I was going to do this evening, but I can remember to tell all of you to take care. Especially you, Kris, hope you are doing okay starting tx again, it makes me feel so bad for you I can't even find the words to say, except Hep C is a mutha and won't we all be leaping and jumping for joy when the miracle cure comes out. I will. I live for that time. In the meantime, I am doing my meds and forgetting my name becausse that is the only way I can start tx again. Wow, what a trade. Oops, there's that cynic again...but I love it...unless it becomes unattractive. I will search for my words. Talk to you all then. Hey Bruce, I'm still eating the licorice, but have switched to red!! Later.

Pink Cadillac and power

Puleeze, that is what someone will say when I say, I like Springsteen. But that is okay with me, I don't like all his music, I never knew I liked this song until today, I was cruzin to Starbucks and this song popped on the radio, filling up the front of the truck. Now, I'm liking it because at first, you think of a pink cadillac, crushed velvet seats and, how girly can you get? Which evokes a lot of thoughts about lipstick and struggling with changing a tire, sort of feminine softness that some people confuse with weakness. But I'm listening to Sprinsteen and he's singing this from a viewpoint of mystery, he has less power than this chick in the pink cadillac. She's got the power to make him curious, probably drive him nuts, all the while she's driving this pink cadillac, velvet crushed seats and mysteries in the back. I'm liking this and the song is still running thru my head, 12 hours later. Ain't love grand. Hope you all have had a mystery or two in the back seat, makes life worth while.
Jackie

They say eve tempted adam with an apple
Man I ain’t going for that
I know it was her pink cadillac
Crushed velvet seats
Riding in the back,
oozing down the street
Waving to the girls
Feeling out of sight
Spending all my money
on a saturday night
Honey, I just wonder what you do there in back
of your pink cadillac

Licorice and blogging

There must be a billion blogs going on right now, populating the Web with words, thoughts and insights, ranting, raving and secret thoughts and desires from a million people. My friend Bruce, from Israel, says a blog is a living thing, I'm believing him, and my blog is going thru a kind of hazy time right now. I have much less time to think profoundly about my life and your life and humanity in general, what with being the perfect nurse for Mitch and the perfect secretary and the perfect chauffer and the imperfect non-smoker, but I know that the time will come back, to think ponderously about my upper right quandrant liver pain and Hep C, doing retreatment and the horrific panic accompanying the drugs, giving myself shots in the belly and not being able to wear jeans anymore and all the other shit that Interferon brings with it. But for now, I have just enough time to eat some licorice and twizzle it like it was a cigarette.

So this one of the billion blogs is full of licorice, but fairly empty of any meanful words. But then, my life is like that sometimes, so I'm feeling fine with it. Just wanted to say hello in between the licorice and the liver pain. Hope all you got going on is licorice. Take care.
Jackie

Cowboys and Indians

My son got shot in the ass last night by a cowboy.
I just heard about it, when I got the call, do you have any idea how sick, frightened, shook-to-the-bone I was? I dropped everything, rushed to his house, only to find it empty and dark. By this time, I was frantic and I don't do frantic too well. I was ready to stop at all three hospitals, one at a time when I got a call from my son, finally.

Seems he was at a Halloween party, dressed as an Indian, in a loincloth, he has Indian blood and is muscular, he could wear a loin cloth and look cool. Someone there had a little derringer in her garter, anyway, it went off, I don't want to know how, and grazed my son on the ass. So I lost about 8 million liver cells this evening from stress and Hep C, while my son cavorts with a woman and her garters and gets shot in the ass by a tiny bullet. Talk about going from hell to heaven in about 5 minutes. He was quite surprised at my screaming about how was he, did he still have a bullet in him, etc. And I was immensely surprised at how calm I got when I found out he was trying to hit on a woman and she shot him in the ass. I know the cowboys fucked the Indians a long time ago, took their land, went to war with them, but this time, it was quite alright with me that the cowgirl shot the Indian. Perhaps he will keep his butt covered up from now on. Ain't this some shit, just when my life gets quiet, bam, some cowgirl shoots an ass and my whole life goes topsy turvy. I'm going to eat some ice cream and soon, this will all make me laugh. Hope you all got something to make you laugh, preferably without bullets, even small ones.
Jackie

Pray for Effective Convergence

Convergence, it happened to me yesterday, so today my brain is full of all this connected stuff around me and I'm trying to sort it out so I know exactly what I should be praying for. It all sort of went like this............ I get an e-mail from Doc about a summer research program she is trying to get into, a study on the proteins that make up the Hep C virus and she is really excited about it, both because she is a biochemist whiz and beautiful to boot, plus there is a little money in the research so we are both happy about this chance for her. Then, later in the evening, I am checking the market, so see how Vertex is doing, Vertex being a small pharma that is working on protease inhibitors for Hep C and I gotta tell you, this drug sounds like the miracle cure that I hope to live long enough to benefit from.
A link on my stock page takes me to some info in a Hepatitis forum, full of good info, stuff like in trials in Europe, researching Vertex's VX950 (sounds like a rocket title in a bad B movie, doesn't it, VX950 from Mars) but it is a pill and in like, 7 days it is reducing viral load to zero. With none of the horrific effects of the current treatments, they take months for that kind of reduction and you gotta give up your hair, sanity and appetite in return. Forums all have different flavors, there are a million out there about Hep C, but this one in particular is full of excellent clinical info about protease inhibitors and the various studies being done. So I am excited about VX950 and have watched the stock for a while. It is feeling a little mystical to me, reading this forums' posts, talking about studying the proteins in the Hep C virus, right after Doc tells me she's going to participate in the same thing. Things get REAL mystical as I'm reading the posts, there is one from a woman who is a non-responder like myself and she's describing her life now, only it is really my life. She talks about becoming more isolated, stay-at-home, uncomfortable outside of the space she calls home. And the reactions of her family, plus the physical issues, fatigue and liver pain. Well, this is my life and I'm totally freaked to be reading it in this forum, but I'm okay with it. I like it here, don't want to change. My shrink wants me to go back to therapy, he does not want me to feel trapped in my own home. This makes me laugh, I love this place, except for the stairs to downstairs, they always kick my butt, but home is where I feel the best. My shrink, how can I tell him, I do not feel trapped at home, I feel trapped in this body. Trapped with little bugs, wrapped in protein, that I can't cure, and sometimes, I get scared I will not be in good enough shape when VX950 is finally approved. But that is for another day, today, I am praying to the gods, for Doc and for Vertex and for Elsa, that is her in my picture for today, she is my oldest grandchild, I used to be more of a rock and roll gramma, now I do not see her too much. The down side of staying home alot is missing her and hating the stairs, I hate those stairs. But today, I am getting off to the mystical convergence of proteins and Doc and perhaps that miracle cure is coming soon. I will enjoy it while it lasts. You also enjoy whatever is making you smile today.
Jackie

So, I'm reading this post from last night, what the hell was I thinking? The concept of addiction and meditation is difficult enough for me and I have been reading about it for months now, so I go and try to cram it all into one post, along with a horrific picture, because it is Halloween and because I am trying like a son of a bitch to quit smoking. But for anyone of the three people that read my blog, well, last night's blog must be just darn weird. Sorry, honestly.

I am trying to meditate thru the urges to smoke, but I'm laughing about it because the urges are coming about every 7 minutes, so I spend 5 minutes meditating and then have two minutes in between to try and do the dishes. Mitch freaked out to find me with my hands in the dish water, eyes closed, breating kind of slowly and deeply, he sort of wrapped his big arms aroung me real quick, he thought I was a bout ready to pass out. So I had to tell him about the meditation method of not smoking, instead of his method, which was major sugery and mainlined opiates for two weeks, and he's kind of laughing, but wants me to give it a try, mostly because the better he gets, I think he is starting to have urges now himself. So, oh, dear, an urge is coming on, and the lotus position is not possible in this computer chair....see you....
jackie

Hungry Ghosts

This scary little photo is from a book written by the physician of Mao, that fat guy that tried to waste China in the 1950's. These are "hungry ghosts" and there are a lot of explanations for what and who they are, but I am writing about them in the context of addiction and what is addiction, anyway? I am addicted to cigarettes and cannot stop smoking. I am addicted to denying my Hep C and am addicted to the numbness that comes from denial. "Hungry ghosts" are an explanation I happen to like, the description of a desire or a "want" that cannot be filled, the manifestation of a brain wave that is made real to me, real enough to cause me discomfort and to fight the hungry ghosts is so very hard.

Buddhism, where Hungry Ghosts (pretas) have their own realm in the Wheel of Life and are depicted as teardrop shaped with bloated stomachs and necks too thin to pass food such that attempting to eat is also incredibly painful. This is a metaphor for people futilely attempting to fulfill their illusory physical desires.

"We think that we are human beings, not hungry ghosts. First let us acknowledge that the one who performs [the practice of offering] is the one who needs it the most." There is a day the Hindus celebrate by cooking feasts for the hungy ghosts. The offering being talked about, the food being cooked......the food is not for the ghosts, but for those of us who need to rid ourselves of those same ghosts. The Jewish faith has a day that a hungry ghost visits and tastes their wine. Somehow, I cannot see myself making scones so my ghosts will go away, and yet, I understand I am the one who needs the help the most.

"All of us, to some degree, resemble these sectioned things. With one, the heart has its reasons....that reason doesn't know, the head is hungry when the belly is full; with another, the intellect wears itself out in vicious circles while the decapitated body attends to daily needs. And each one in his own way, a way he is often proud of, lives his life in pieces, barely held together by the loose threads of social function. Lucky people, Tibetan though it may be, if it considers these creatures exceptional and legendary! For us, on the contrary, it is the coherent man, made of a solid block, who would clash, crash and amaze. Take a good look, and you will see only hordes of dismembered phantoms who suffer, yet who are our brothers."

Now this sounds scary, but after reading and examining it all, it isn't scary to me, I want to think I am a coherent man (woman), and I clash, crash and amaze and when I look with engaged eyes, I do see so many brothers (and sisters) who live lives in pieces, in circles, round and round, when the phrase "dismembered" is used, I think it is to describe any of us that lives an unexamined life. The brain (intellect) goes round and round, while the body goes about it's daily routine........that is where I have been with my addictions, and I have resolved to put my head back on straight and make sure it is connected to my body. I will challenge my hungry ghost thru meditation ( imagine me, dropping into the correct position and chanting every time I want a smoke?), yes, I can do that, and also strenghthen the loose threads of my social functions enough to see the hungry ghost for what it is.

My desire to be rid of Hep C, my denial of Hep C, that nearly invisible construct is also a hungry ghost, my great fear of facing what I have to do to try to beat the virus, hidden behind insatiable desire to be normal, trying to embrace that life is so beautiful and finding every nugget that makes it worth living, all the while, feeling deep in my heart of hearts that it was inevitable that I will die from Hep C, living like a ghost, here at home, never leaving. Incongrous. My hungry ghosts, I am addicted to them and meditation may show me the face of my ghost that makes me smoke, and I may kick that ghost's ass, but the ghost I carry of who I was before Hep C and the ghost of my fear are harder to rid myself of. I do not know how to exorcise those ghosts. I am trying to learn how. This is stuff for another day. Hope your ghosts are all Caspers on Halloween just wanting a little chocolate.
Jackie

The PERFECT Nurse

The perfect nurse, for a sick person, is NOT a wife. Trying to be the perfect nurse, while being a wife (or husband) can make one prickly, perhaps pointed, peevish, pissed and pathetic. I know this, am learning this pointy point, as I try to nurse MitchMAN back to health after someone took a scalpel and cut a 10 inch incisision into his back, thru the muscle and into his lung, all of which has left him with a recovery time of about 8 weeks. For him, this is about 6 weeks too long, so today, he made me take him to work for a staff meeting and I found myself being pathetic, you know, "don't walk too far, don't let anyone pat you on the back, take some yogurt, take your medicine, take your cell phone, jeezus", these words were coming out of my mouth as I'm driving him to the job and I alone know he still has about 15 stitches in his back and I'm not happy about his choices.

So I'm trying to be the perfect nurse, I have soup cooking in the crock pot and homemade bread rising on the stove, and the imperfect patient is at work, with stitches inside him, next to the lung we just paid $30,000 to have this fairly rare, large balloon removed from, while I slept on a plastic chair and took showers in a strange hospital using a large plastic container to pour the freezing ass cold water over me, this hospital was big on energy efficiency, which is cool, but let me know next time, BEFORE I try to shower. And I am slowly giving up the notion of the perfect nurse, but am a little puzzled about what role to play next, MitchMAN will start working at home for a few weeks, so I guess the perfect secretary is next. I wish I didn't have this liver on fire in my ribs, I think I would find a job. And rent the perfect secretary.

But I'm still laughing, it feels better than being frustrated and when it gets down to the last little point of it all, I am really fucking glad that MitchMAN is okay, we got lucky, there was some chance, of well, this whole experience not going so well and those chances gave me nightmares for weeks. I am just coming to terms with how scared I was, more than having to start tx again, and that is saying a mouthfull. I am so vunerable, we all are, aren't we, when we choose to love. This is okay, because I can still laugh. I am the prickly imperfect nurse, changing gears, becoming something new for another day. Hope you can laugh today.
Jackie

Lemon mouse in house

There's a mouse in the house, saw him scampering (good word) across the hallway last night, which does not bother me, I am not one to be afraid of mouses, but when I got in the pan drawer for a frying pan, I found he had turned it into his bedroom and bathroom and well, the mouse has to go, because I like clean pans. So now, I'm remembering this phrase I heard in a movie, don't even remember the movie, but it went something like "what a load of lemons you got dumped on you. Now, you can lay under those lemons for eternity, lamenting the load, or you can squeeze them and drink up." The mouse made me think of this saying for a good reason, even tho it might seem incongruous.

Right now, I am not feeling like I am under a load of lemons, but I have felt this way in the past, and more than once, the feeling was related to my Hep C and man, I wanted to lay under those lemons forever. All of us get in that place, where issues come tumbling down like lemons and we want to just lay there. I was comparing those "issues" to my mouse. Issues do not have physical form, usually, usually, they are constructs we create in our brain, our brain gets unhappy with the weight and we experience stress, all from creations of our brains. "My car isn't running right, my kids aren't running right, the washer isn't running right, or my favorite, "the bank account isn't running right" as if our brain time expended on those issues will make one bit of difference. I believe this is one of the definitions of "futility" or perhaps it is insanity, I can't remember. Brain fog.

Now, the mouse has physical form, he has fur, cute little black button eyes and is just trying to make it thru the winter. He has no idea what stress is, otherwise he would find a pile of lemons and stay here, for eternity, because I am going to buy a mousetrap, live catch, I hope, and move him back outside. This is futile, I know, because ask any mouse expert and they will tell you that the chances are that mouse will come right back to your pan drawer, just give him a day or so. So this mouse, with his physical presence, should be totally stressed, because I am going to trap him and ruin his day, but I just saw him a minute ago and he looked just fine, kind of industrious, cute and energetic. I want to be like this mouse, and now I'm laughin my ass off, because I probably am this mouse, if I knew what the gods really had in mind for me or for all of us, I would probably give up my bullshit "issues", even those related to my Hep C, and just start scampering. Hope you have a scampering kind of day.
Jackie

This is so wrong

I love this photo, I guess you had to be there, but the sign is posted at an entrance to the hospital on a very straight street, yet the arrows go around and around. What the sign does not say, is that the circular loop it is depicting goes all the way around this towering, skyscraper (skyscraper, think about that word, how cool) of a building, and you do not realize you are stuck in a loop until long after you have passed this sign. It is kind of a cruel joke, this sign, especially when a majority of the people walking out of this building are fairly stoned, the pharmacy is right near this exit and pain meds is the majority of the drugs they dispense. I'm sure this does not reflect on the quality of work done at this hospital, but to be wheeled out the door, stoned to the max, see this sign on a perfectly straight road, and then to end up in this never ending loop, blocks away, is a kind of hellish end to a stay in the hospital. With this sign, I end my venting about the hospital. The experience is out of my system, I no longer wake at 4:00 a.m. expecting the x-ray machine to be rolled in my room, which necessitated my leaving the room, in my jammies and sleep in my eyes, while they xrayed Mitch. This machine was like a giant forklift, like the loader Sigourney Weaver walked in when she kicked the queen aliens ass, big, looming machine, grinding wheels, they rolled it over Mitch and the bed, all the while, I just knew xrays were leaking all over my plastic chair/bed and had been leaked on the chair for years, I probably absorbed enough xrays to set off detectors in the airport. Waking up this way for a week made an impression on me, as you can see, so to end the experience with this sign, I'm liking this. I'd like to make some comparision to my life and this sign, going round and round, but it is Sunday and we all deserve one day off without me examining every aspect of my life, from my navel to the trees in the yard. So have a good one and when you see one of these signs, just know that there really is a great giant circle coming up in your life somewhere, even if you can't see it right away. Later.

My Thanksgiving, as per Don Henley and Miles Keaton Andrew

My friend, Miles, has a blog so cool, it should be required reading for anyone posing as a human being and claiming compassion and intelligence, and anyone reading my blog will already know who Miles is, there is a link from this blog to his, way down on the bottom of this blog. He is an author, wrote an incredibly funny book and has taken treatment for his Hep C into his own hands, turned the time of treatment into words and put them in his blog, he got a million hits on his blog last year, which makes me think that since there are about 4 million folks infected in the US right now with Hep C and only about 2.5 million know they have it, there are a few million folks who could spend some quality time reading Miles blog and then go out and get tested. Could be the best laugh they ever had and the most useful. Anyway, the photo I've posted is one Miles took on a trip to Europe with his son this summer, he was foolish enough to let me whack at it with my photo sadistic software and turn it into a watercolor. I like to think the folks living inside the houseboat you are looking at are smoking a fat one and not thinking about Hep C, but we will never know, will we?

Anyway, I'm blogging today for Miles, because he has started maintenence tx for his Hep C, which is small doses of interferon every week instead of the big whammy, and while it will not cure the virus, a person's liver loves it and takes a rest, heals up some and maintenence can stave off liver cancer for a while, but maintenence is "off label", meaning that doctors can't prescribe IFN for it, because some asshole at the FDA won't get the help he needs with his reading disorders or otherwise he would know that the most currrent thinking by the talking medical heads is that maintenence is so very good for a liver, and costs so much less than a transplant, but with the FDA's learning disorders governing whether sick folks like me can get IFN for maintenence, my liver is disintigrating, which, as you might imagine, pisses me off terribly. But I have devised a clever scheme to get around all this bullshit, just as Miles as done, and I am leaving some words in this blog for Miles, for his courage to go to the bad place that interferon will put you in and some words for myself, to help me stay brave while I perpetuate a tiny hoax on the medical establishment, just to get the meds I need to keep the cancer away and hopefully, keep my own liver. I like my own liver, hate the feeling I get every day, the tired, sort of ache that is my liver language for "get me some fucking help" soon, so while Miles has started the mindfuck that is tx, I know I will be there soon. And what he wrote in his blog a few days ago, something like "the person you are when you are on tx, is not the person you are, really", well, take my word for it, that is so true, so true, too bad I can't have an extended out of body experience while this body goes thru tx, but I can't. My family will be wishing they could have the out of body experience, and I got a little break in my heart, knowing they gotta watch, but when I am done, and the labs come back and the liver is better, for a year or so, it is total joy. So Don Henly wrote some words about Thanksgiving, these words are for Miles and my family and for me, let's hope I can remember them in a year from now.

I don't mind saying that I love it all
I wallowed in the springtime
now I'm welcoming the fall
for every moment of joy
for every hour of fear
for every winding road that got me here
for every breath, for every day of living
this is my Thanksgiving.
for everyone who helped me start
and for everything that broke my heart
for every breath, for every day of living
this is my Thanksgiving.
Later.
Jackie

Even the ivy is trying to get out of here!

This photo is of a wall aroung the "healing garden" at the hospital, while I was strolling by, the ivy caught my eye, the long, spindly trails climbing the walls began to look as if they were trying to spell out words....get me the hell out of here...seemed to be what they were trying to spell. This hospital is such a strange place, so beautiful on the outside, right on Lake Union, the beautiful greenness of Seattle all around, but lots of serious medicine going on inside, plus some real dickhead docs residing there. The experience is slowly leaving me, today was the first day that my home felt like home again, I kept looking for the tubes and beeping instruments and honestly, I was surprised at how out of place I felt here at home when we first arrived. Exhaustion is the culprit that comes to mind, but I have slept fairly well for three days now, inspected all my own plants, and was a little piqued that not one of my ivys spelled....we missed you, Jackie....but it is good to know that all I have tended and nutured has also adapted and adopted some of my independence, everything here was fine, the neighbor watered a little for me and her kids cared for the dog, so home is home again and feeling really good. Well, except for the falling oak leaves that are rustlin in the roses, whispering about the winter coming, but my tomatoes are still singing beautiful red notes, so I have a few weeks of sun left. I'm going outside to apply some water, hope the sun is shining where you are and the tomatoes are still singing a little to you. Later.

I am the camera, it is me

So, who is this woman, and why can we see her twice in this photo? The haircut ought to give it away, when we were getting ready to go to the hospital, I went into this kind of "war" mode, cut off my hair, cut off all my nails, packed two pairs of jeans and 5 t-shirts, one pair of shoes and no make-up, it was like I was expecting combat of some sort. Which, when I think about it, was exactly what I got at the hospital, and with my short hair and no nails to worry about, the whole seven days became about Mitch, I was in warrior mode and believe me, I needed warrior mode or I never would have lasted those long seven days.

For one thing, for anyone with advanced liver disease, fatigue is a big time issue, and everywhere I went in this mini-city of medicine, there were stairs, fuck, I hate stairs, altitude and the scaling of it can kick my ass quick. So for every meal I needed, every cup of tea, every phone call I had to make, it was up and down stairs. The nurses and I got along great, they liked that I bathed him and chased down ice water, fluffed pillows, cajoled him to walk and breath, stuff that was necessary, but took a lot of work, so we got along just fine. But the docs, wow, tried to tell me some shit and I had to call them on it, just about every day. Mitch had issues with low oxygen saturation in his blood for about 4 days, this can be dangerous, 6 foot 4 inch men need lots of O2 to keep the brain cells a live. So this lung doc says, when Mitch's 02 sats were at about 85, that "he probably always ran a little low", at which time I called bullshit and pulled out pulmonary tests from two weeks before his surgery and the numbers were at 96%, this is about what they should be for anyone. At first the doc decided I was too stupid to be able to interpret what the numbers meant, wow, he should not have done that, I requested another doc, shared the early results of normal o2 sats and behold, we had a therapist there every day with aggresive breathing exercises for three days until Mitch could hold a 94% which is fine for anyone. The first doc was going to send Mitch home with a level of oxygen that could possibly have killed brain cells or caused overwork on the heart constantly, man, this guy was a dick. I think he decided I was a neurotic wife, but the wonderful thing is, I never have to see this man again, I do not care what he thought and I got what Mitch needed out of this tiny dick doctor.

So, if my earlier post sounded preachy, forgive me, I HATE people who preach, but, and I did not think this was possible, I hate doctors more now than I did before we left. For a while, I just hated liver doctors, I figured the sucess rate on tx for Hep C was so low that when the docs saw me coming, a non-responder, they were just extra frustrated and took it out on me. Now, i have come to believe that most all docs are dics. Blessings to all of you who have doctors you love, cherish those folks, bring them candy and tell them often how good they are, because a good doc is the exception in my short life and when I finally find a good one, I will worship him.

The photo is a strange one, I noticed a strange reflection in the glass of one of the doors of the hospital, it made me think, I am nurse now, staying calm in the face of this horrific surgery, but inside, is a mini-me, still feeling tired, sad about non-responding, having Hep C in general, but the big me, that is the nurse and she stayed strong and fought for what was right. Guess it worked so far, Mitch is walking a block or so every day and soon, all this will be a memory and he will have one bitchin scar and two lungs that work like magic. Why did it all have to be such a fight? Doc was there with me, she wrote a letter to the head doc of the hospital, she said to him "as a student at this hospital, she was appalled at some of the decisions made, especially since she was being taught so differently at this same hospital about being a good doc." I had to laugh, she might get a good answer from someone, at least her teachers best beware, she may be tiny, but man, do not piss her off. She said she takes after mom and she was proud of me, challenging the docs. Dangerous stuff to do, if you ask me, why did it have to be such a fight? I am saddened by this, what have we done to our medical establishment? Oh, well, Long Live the fighters, especially those who cut their hair and nails and come prepared with cameras and attitude. Now, I am just tired and damn, damn, damn, do I wish I had a cigarette. Is this quitting smoking by the "blogging" method? Hope it works. Hope you all are fine. Later.

Even upside down, hospitals still suck

In this photo, you can see a wing of the hospital, MitchMAN is up about four floors and over about five windows, I am taking the photo from what they call the "Healing Garden" at the University of Washington, and I'm wondering as I'm taking it if there is healing going on for me, sittin in that garden, snapping photos. I know Mitch is too damn sick to be down in this garden, soaking up the healing garden vibes, so for just a moment, I watch his window, experience a moment of quiet and sad for how sick he is, and then a moment to let the garden vibes soak into me, maybe my Hep C is a little better for this whole experience.

Is the hospital any easier to take when it is just a reflection in a healing pond? Not really, gets worse actually, instead of just the inside of one room to look at, I saw windows and windows of rooms, folks there for a lot of different reasons, but it was a bit comforting to know that at least some of them were getting better, even if I was going crazy, sleeping on a plastic chair and listen to doctors who, in my opinion, really are aliens. I mean, I can get waaay out there, I know this, I compensate, I examine my thoughts and my life often to make sure I stay balanced, but some of these mf are just plain crazy. How and why did we let our Medical Establishment get into this state? I get a little frightened by the thought, but you know what, I have come to terms with my own personal responsibilities, especially when it comes to my health, quit smoking ( how's that going, Jackie? Just fucking fine, excuse me, I have to go scream for just a minute), started walking a lot more, am listening to my shrink about taking my meds, and will start maintenance tx to help my liver stay in decent shape for another year or so.

I guess what I am trying to say is that so much medicine dispensed these days is dispensed because of our bad life style choices and we are empowered to really live our whole lives without a lot of interference from the medical establishment. Hep C kind of fucks that up for me in some ways, but Hep C was the catalyst for making me see the rightness in better choices, not smoking, eating better, etc. so I guess it was a fair trade. Not really, Hep C sucks, but it sounds good and supports my rambling theory right now, so what the hell. I just know I intent to stay as far as fuckin possible away from the inside of another hospital room for as long as I possibly can. You all take care of yourself and do the same. Later.

WARNING!! Graphic picture, not for the faint of heart

So, you might ask, Jackie, where have you been for the past week? Well, there are not enough keys on this keyboard to type the words it would take to explain where I have been, but this picture is one hell of a good start. This is the MitchMAN, and his big owie, this beauty cost us about $30,000 and one week of hell, not that he is in any pain, the small tube in his spine is delivering pain meds, so man, he is having a good time, but I am sleeping on a plastic chair and not having a good time, which will all go away when he heals up. I keep telling him he will have one bitchin manly scar when this is all done, my scars are all internal, little owies from watching the one you love struggle with the physical body, plus, I do believe the medical profession has been taken over by aliens, I mean this in all sincerity, I have never met more weird doctors in my life, and with Hep C, I thought I had met them all! But we are home now, the tubes are gone, and my sweet love is starting to take short walks and coming to terms with the quality of daytime tv which I think is hitting him harder than the eight weeks recovery he has ahead of him. This will be such a looooong eight weeks, he wants to call work already and see how it goes, jeez, I still have to get him to the doc to get the stitches out, I told him today, I can see the big one coming, the patient says he is okay and ready to hit the office and the nurse says no, time to take another short walk. This man is 6'5" tall, who will win this one? I will let you know. I have some funny pictures of my time in the great medical establishment, I will share them tomorrow, but tonight, I get to sleep in a real bed and I even got to take a long bath and did not have to eat hospital food, so life is better and I am very happy. Even with this big owie hanging around, this big owie will go away and I can help. Not like Hep C, but then, that is food for another day. Sorry about the graphic picture, but it is a part of my life these days and will influence my blogging for awhile. I think all the rest of the blogging about this adventure will be funny tho, I worked hard at finding the humor in the medical establishment and my, it was so much easier than I thought!! Take care.
Jackie

Background noise

In an earlier post, I showed the birdie house, in the snow, this one is in the bright leaves of fall and I'm putting it here because the wind is blowing about 30 miles an hour outside and all these pretty leaves are dancing around my window to remind me that the snow is on it's way. Today, I do not need the wind, truthfully, I do not need to be blogging, I am starting to climb the walls from the waiting for Mitch's surgery, there will be cameras and little silver snaky tubes with lasers next door to my husbands heart and the surgery is fairly complicated, he has three TEAMS of doctors that will occupy the room where the snaky tubes will go inside him, next to his heart, which I always figured the only next to his heart should be love and I have lived every day since I have met him making sure that love was all there was living there, next the beating organ we all talk about so much. You gotta have heart. My heart breaks. Cross my heart. So, I'm putting up this picture, because the colors are beautiful, I can't find any words, I am scared, but when this is all done, and he is well and life goes back to its wobbly balance, I will feel better because I was strong and I blogged today and left you this picture. Later.

The truest thing a man ever said.

"But love don’t make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. Snowflakes are perfect. Stars are perfect. Not us. Not us. We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and to love the wrong people and..and die…I mean the storybooks are bullshit!"

Anonymous,

There is no picture in the universe that I could add to this quote, I would not want to. Doc lives with two perspectives, the fault of me and Bobby. She spent the first part of her life, thinking love was perfect and this part of her life, now, she is angry to learn it is not. How does that bode for you, I do not know, because she grew up with the illusion that her father and I loved each other perfectly, we were "cool" people, and then she learned the truth, he drank and died and left her with guilt and a wound that changed her and always will be with her, Jack. And me, well, she should be very angry at me for enabling the myth she was shaped around.

But is it within your ability or do you even have permission from the gods to make her see otherwise? I think not, none of us do, it is hers to learn at her pace, to receive and dole out her own pain and punishments. None of us can "teach" the lessons of life and love, no more than I could go back and relive my life with her as a child, to make it right. Isn't that a bit scary to you, it is to me.... that I would imagine I could possibly know what is right for a child, another human being, to impose my ways on them? Yet, I would give up all I am to do this, and accepting I could not..........changed who I am, accepting my mistakes is not easy and still causes me much sorrow. But I also came to embrace the gift of being just a human, thank god for that. You are not right or wrong, you and her just "are", whatever that is. But ain't nobody perfect.........thank you jeesus. Let me go make a few more mistakes today, as it is early in this day and I have much to do. Take care.

The ability to wear a hat, and be cool, is not genetic.

Doc can wear a hat and make it look cool. I cannot. This has always made me wonder about genetics, nature vs. nuture, perhaps her ability came from the intense emotional connections her and I nutured for so many years, all the while, me neglecting my fashion sense in favor of spending billions of dollars on her clothes. I did not mind, but damn, I wish I could wear a hat.

Sometimes, the smallest things catch our eye and trigger floods of feelings, like the river, so it takes awhile to figure if we are swimmin upstream or being pulled downstream. Either way is cool, depending on your frame of mind, in my frame, i got both currents going on, which for me is nothing new, having lots of time to ponder, PONDER, I find the exercise keeps my brain muscles strong, and well, to tell you the truth, keeps me from going totally mental. So this is a picture of Doc and boyfriend, someone she loves very much, and in that loving, she swims upstream and then thrashes around in the current and floats downstream a while. Who and how she loves is a mystery to me, which I have finally come to realize that parents and children can know a lot about each other, her generation, for the most part, enjoyed much more emotional connections that I did with my parents, but to love as an adult, both my love and hers, somewhere it must be written by the hand of god, these things are not in the domain of parenthood.
Okay, I am finally cool with this, accepting it as one accepts dark matter, quantum physics, how do all these damn geese know which way to fly and why can't I make pie dough. It just is what it is. This is the acceptance phase of grief, I saw it's name tag before it hit me upside the head a few weeks ago, when I had to throw out some more of Doc's baggage out of the nest when she entered medical school. But, give me a break here, when Doc was 18, she left me and went to live with her dad, a long ways away, to go to UCLA, which was a dream for her. So I lost a child and a husband (he was easily given up at the time, later, I paid for it), but to compensate, I met the MitchMAN, my soul mate, and eventually, Doc's dad and I came to the place where we could forgive each other and bond together in the task of finishing raising Doc. Doc's dad died while she was in college, so I did not give him up so easily, there was a fountain of grief, flowing into the river of grief for losing Doc, because when she moved away, so much of my life, the part I considered worthwhile, went with the two of them, but I knew their journey was not meant for me too.
I will live always with the burden of knowing that if I would have went with them, Doc's dad might still be alive, but that knowing is balanced by the unshakeable sureness that I would have died, perhaps not the physical, but the spirit would have. So I made a trade, and the payoff was an Amazon of grief that I am just now coming to terms with. All this happening while I fell in love, and this is the amazing part, I am still in love, at ease, every day happy with the MitchMAN, a rare peace, and I will say this although it will seem unbelievable....he and I have never spoke any words of meanness to each other, not one in five years. We have both expressed frustration or anger or sorrow, sometimes in fiery ways, and I have been razor sharp to him during tx, and lamented what the person I was on tx pushed him to do, or not do. But still, he is all I need in a companion for the rest of my life. This is much to say in these days of complicated relationships and changing expectations, but I do feel empowered in knowing this part of my life is complete. I still mourn, I still rage, my life is full of messes and complications, yet I stand on solid ground, because his feet walk it too.
Now I just read something very interesting, about the counselor or the shrink, in the mirror, trying to heal themselves, what an intricate thought, one would first have to be sure about the notion of being healed, if the counselor was human, like the rest of us, could they accomplish such a thing? What would a person have to accept, or give up, to become well? And, again, there is the notion of what "well" was, myself, "well" is waking up every day, being glad of taking another breath, no pain in the liver, enough energy to wash the dishes and still smile at my husband when he came home. The notion about the counselor came from a post, a very insightful post, sometimes insight can be so elusive and sometimes, when it hits you, it feels so GOOD, until you realize that insight is really a bunch of new ideas and new places and some of them seem dark, only because they are unknown and insight can require forgiveness and stretching the brain muscles til they scream, so I bet a lot of us avoid insight like telemarketers during dinner, personally, I drop to my knees and thank god for every insight I ever had, even if I had to dash my brains on some rock to integrate those insights. Something always attached to the revelations, like my burden of Doc's dads passing, or acceptance of the mysteries of Doc and love, but I would not give those burdens up, if it meant losing the impression of experiencing life, my life, ebbs and flows, life is the greatest insight of all, as soon as a person comes to terms with the fact that it is not perfect, and in fact, can hurt like hell.
So many ways to go with life then. Wow, ain't that the cool part of it, the choice to change, the fear of chosing the direction to change and then just fuckin going for it. Balls to the wall. Nirvana's first of four gifts or rules, whatever you like, immutability. Immutability. We are all alive together and as long as we stay alive, life is immutable, all the rest is change. Anonymous, you write well, I understood it all. But did I understand what you were trying to say? I think so.
jackie

Educating doctors

No photo today, I am gathering all my lab tests and biopsy results, etc. to take to my new shrink, see, my liver doc decided I had to prove three months of no depression or panic before he would put me back on tx. Hmmmm, so I have these hoops to jump thru, all for the pleasure of peg-interferon and it's friends, loss of hair, fever, aches and pains. If you've been thru treatment, this is all boring, because you've been there already. Being a non-responder, I live every day knowing that the tx, the shots and million pills are waiting for me again and I gotta tell you, I am not happy about this.

When I got out my labs today, I tried to compute my liver function increases and figure out long I have until the numbers rise into that dangerous zone where the choice becomes not really a choice, because for all my bitching, I do want to clear the virus, but I will not go calmly or quietly into that long dark night, to me, it feels like tx is a long dark night. My liver doc wrote a letter to my new shrink, said "Jackie suffers from more depression and panic and anxiety than the usual Hep C patient". Now, this is making me laugh, how the hell does someone objectify something like that? If my reaction to tx is subjective, then his opinion is subjective, subject to my laughin, all the while, I really am trying to work with this new shrink and get the "mentals" under control. When I first read about getting the mentals right first, from MK Andrew's exceedingly accurate, blindingly funny, real world Hep C blog, I didn't quite understand "mentals". I understand now, I have to find a way to fight Hep C again, but no one, no one deserves to go thru the sadness and fear that I went thru on tx last time. So, I'm gathering papers for the new shrink and will try hard to accomplish what may be un-accomplishable for me. But I won't know until I try. So I'm trying.
I am also getting ready to make the long trip to the University of Washington Surgical Center for the MitchMAN to have his surgery. We leave this weekend, so I will not be blogging for the duration of his recovery, unless this fine hospital might have wireless access? Interesting concept. I will bring my camera, of course, so there will be pictures too, of this strange new time for Mitch (he is fifty years old and never spent one day in the hospital) and pictures for me, I am scared for him, sad he has to go thru this, lung surgery is very painful and takes about 8 weeks to recover from. I will see thru my eyes, in his face, what he saw thru his eyes, on my face, while I was on tx, the marks and memories that too much pain can leave.
And this transition of the long winding life path requires pictures. Want to know something funny? I have a few ideas of pictures, right now round and round in my head, of this hospital journey, and they are all in black and white. Don't know why black and white, but it is a style of photography that I am not familiar with, but realizing I will have 10 days or so in this sterile environment makes me think this is my time to learn. We'll see. We'll see, when I say that in a paragraph about photography, what does it really mean? We'll see. Take care.
Jackie

art vs. science in a Raymond Chandler quote?

Actuallly, the Raymond Chandler quote is about truth and you gotta hang with me as I write this, because the words have all squished up in my throat/fingers, and are spilling out,so pray to god that i can put them down in an order that will convey my idea and you will understand, and in understanding, well, who the hell knows. It's Sunday and this quote got me good for some reason, perhaps my own encounters lately with the mystical, which is explained in a minute. Why the waterfall? Because it is art as expressed by nature, but also science, as there are electrical generators at the top of this falls, so beauty and purpose seemed to be embodied in the photo.

So Raymond Chandler, famous for detectives that I would love to meet, right after I got over the fear of them, wrote this little bit of wisdom, I read it in the Sunday paper and now it is ending up here for you to digest. "There are two kinds of truth-the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these truths is science and the second is art." This we can probably all agree on. Good job, Ray. What I'm reading in the paper goes on to say, these words from a "earth scientist" from PNNL, which is a mega-world famous Lab that is in this little sleepy town I live in, we hide it here like treasure in a mountain and i'm loving "earth scientist", my hope for our future on this planet is renewed a bit to know that men can become earth scientists and still write about art. The human male is saved for another day, I envision an "earth scientist" to be a right hand man to "Mother Nature" and since we ARE squatting on her property, I'm feeling real good that she is training apprentices.

This earth guy goes on to speak of astronomy vs. music, sub-directories of art vs. science and its making sense to me like finally finding a signpost after wandering for weeks on a deserted highway. Raymond would like that little descriptive phrase. "Astronomy is the study of our universe...it's language is built on the fabric of length, mass and time and only sometimes understood, sometimes hidden within the dark matter and energy. Astronomy is an externally spoken language, one that describes what is SEEN. Music, on the other hand, is organized upon sound and time, and like poetry, is internally spoken, reflecting personally the artist's skill. We FEEL music." "In science, we ask questions to find answers. In the arts, the questions raised are as important, or more so, than the answers found."

So i'm marveling at these words, they make sense to me, and my intense reaction to music is a little clearer to me, my Hepatitis C has blunted a lot of my energy for life, drawn me into myself, very natural, by the way, conserve the energy to care for a smaller area of influence, but in that shrinking, I blunted some emotions, not intentionally, but it has still happened. I have to meter out how much I worry for my children or my aging parents, to have the energy to care for my husband and myself and to not obsess on my own health or death or pills or the headache and fatigue I carry around. So music I FEEL, and I feel so keenly. And this last quote, I think I understand more of the mystical aspects of, well, breathing in and breathing out. "Some of life's greatest mysteries, mystical, are faced at the interface between opposites - heart and mind, art and science, fear and joy, certainty and the unknown".

This is a fucking revelation to me, I am hanging between certainty, I am alive today and so glad of it, with love around me, the seasons changing, my illness has impacted and changed me....then the unknown, I do not know how long I have to live, my liver is falling into bits every day, my family reflects in their faces their concern with me and my illness, will the next round of tx rid me of the virus, will New Orleans ever be the home of jazz again and the biggest unknown I have right now, who will I be and who will Mitch be after his surgery, this eight weeks of pain for him, him who never spent one day in fifty years in the hospital, looking at me with eyes that have never experienced the helplessness of being at the mercy of medicine and a physical body that will fail to respond to the mind, even for eight weeks, this will imprint him, leave that tatto I talk about on his insides.

For me, I can take care of him, repay him for the care he gave me during my last round of tx, be good/be kind to him. My virus/his surgery, they are equal on the slide rule of life, my tx was sooo long but his pain will be so intense, slide the rule any way you want, we will both come out of this, having replayed each other's roles for a while. I have been the sick, weak, blubbery one, I want to rage at someone that he has to experience this now, but I am calm and still, for it will all be over in eight weeks, in a year, we WILL be on that bald eagle hike, the easy one, for old folks, back packs and bottled water and camera in hand. True happiness is also good medicine, "something to look forward to" and perhaps help me look over and past and a little around the next 10 weeks. Talk to you later, hope you like the words as much as I did.
Jackie

When the levee breaks......

This is a photo/watercolor I did for a series of photos to chronicle the farm before we sold it, I am posting it because I am reminded today that I live high in the desert, no worries from hurricanes, all this because Rita is slamming into the Gulf Coast and soon, if you listen real carefully, we will hear the sound of a thousand homes, disappearing from the lives of people just like us. I am so sad.To try to capture the essence of a home is difficult, I learned by shutting down my brain and letting my eyes really see what was all around me in my daily life on the farm, for weeks before we decided to sell it. At the time, I wanted to capture it for Mitch's family, as they had owned the farm for three generations, but the task became a personal one for me, in fact, it became difficult to share all the photos with anyone except Mitch, he says I have a book now, of images of American farm life, but it was my home, it had breath and heart and could be so hard or mean to me sometimes, freezing cold, breaking ice for the horses to have water, fixing broken sprinklers in the 100 degree heat but somewhere, tattooed on the inside of me is the map of the farm's vitality. I am glad I have those photos. and today is dedicated to the homes lost from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, for me to treasure my Hep C in a twisted way again, because it was the fear of dying from Hep C that made me pick up my camera and realize what the camera was, a magic mirror that could transcend time and space, and Hep C taking away my strength to do the hard work I used to do at work....caused me to channel energy into the camera and the energy flowed back into my brain, always looking for an image, something that would set of a chime, a marker for me, a picture to take to remember all the parts of my own home sweet home, now it is here inside this computer, all electrons and pixels, for me to call up anytime I want. I wish you could have been there, I wish for everyone to have the epiphany of generations and time and roots, a place that you don't just call home, it calls you and stays, a good friend, there to browse thru when life gets twisted or wonky. Heart-breaking here for all the folks on the Gulf Coast and a little spark of hope for the strength and ability to find home again, wherever they may be cast. So much destruction, from the sea, but out of the sea we all came, in the beginning, right? So, pray for toughness for us all, pray for those folks at the mercy, as we all are, of the planet we spin on, and pray for the time they can all remember home sweet home again. I am. Later.

There's an alien in my yard!

There is an alien in my yard, wonder if he knows this is a dangerous place to be, if you read my ealier post about my magnolia tree and giving the tree my Hep C, well, you'd understand my concern, but this guy is out there in the Russian Mint, eating and is unconcerned about the status of my health. And I am in here, very concerned about the status of my health, just came back from the Hep C doc, always a strange experience, he is Chinese and it took me the longest time to explain to him what a grow light was, as in, too tired to hang one for the geraniums, but we finally broke the language barrier, except he kept saying "glow light", which made me want to laugh and I think his nurse did, it must be a myth that the Chinese have trouble with the english letter "l", because I got "glow lights" now in the basement, he understands the concept, but I still am feeling guilty that I wanted to laugh so bad, but then the sob says no new tx for me, because last time I got real real depressed and had panic attacks about the snow falling thru the roof and whether my sox matched, so I gotta find a new shrink and then the new shrink has to convince my Chinese doctor that I am stable enough. Okay, maybe the new shrink can teach my doc how to say "grow lights" while he is at it. What a long strange day this is. Gotta go. You all take care.

My own mortality, hanging on a branch, somewhere in the mountains.

We had to travel cross the mountains to get Mitch to the doc,it is soo green, I was just loving all the calmness of it all, when, wham, there was this burst of color and I got kind of sad for a bit. Aren't we all a little like these leaves, a beginning and an end, beautifully red, but what it really is, they are changing from the coolness coming in at night, after glowing green all summer, it is time for the last party, bright red, then to softly float down off the tree and land, wait for the snow and sleep. So I'm finding my own mortality in the sights on the mountains and I'm not getting morbid about it, after my children's father died, I guess because I was with him when it happened, I have not been frightened by death anymore. I have a peace about it all, this mantra I hear when folks talk about dying, I am finished with what I am here to do. Now, I still have some scones to learn to make and I think I get to go on a hike next spring to see the bald eagles up north, it is one of those hikes for old folks, you know, oxygen refills posted every 2 miles, but that hike is still out there, waiting to be realized and I will do it, so I have a long time until I turn my party colors and sweetly float from my earth, my tree, to wait for the snow to put me to sleep. But the flash of color, smack dab in all the misty green of the mountains made me remember, I am not done yet, but getting there. Getting there is all the fun, isn't it. Hope you have fun today. My Hep C has me in my jammies, long trip, I'm tired, so the camera and the computer are all I can do, but to me, it is so much. Today, it is the whole tree and the summer. Take care.
Jackie

Caged birdfood

I planted sunflowers to feed the finches, but they got so tall, (the flowers, not the birds) that I put them in cages.Now that the birds are eating all the sunflowers, there is just this one flower left, like it is in prison, waiting for the cold and the perfectly hungry bird to come along for the flower to give up it's heart and all its children to that hungry bird. I liked the flower in the cage, safe and waiting for something magic to happen, just the right time in the grand scheme of things, this flower will perform a miracle that nothing else could imitate. Save a birdie in the snow and maybe, just maybe, leave one or two copies of itself behind, to come back next year, swaying in the breeze like the tail of a peacock and leave me more prisoners to love. I am leaving you all with a poem I love. By Richard Brautigan, lived a long time in my state, wrote a lot about fishing, about love, about people but this poem is about Karma. Why not?

KARMA REPAIR KIT

1. Get enough food to eat, and eat it.

2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet and sleep there.

3. Reduce intellectual and emotional noise until you arrive at the silence of yourself, and listen to it.

4.

Later. My karma repair kit is growing in a cage ouside, going to feed a bird this winter and then leave me bits of memories of itself for next year. But I have been living with the silence also, once I reduced the emotional noise especially, and I am listening to it. Hard to do.

Whadda mean, the world does not revolve around me?

Smells like geraniums outside today, I have a lot and they know I have been thinking about them, where they will live this winter, how much I will cut them back, and mostly, am I going to get the squeak fixed in the dryer they will residen next to, last winter, there was a lot of discord betwixt the plants and the dryer, part of it due to the sharing of electricity between said dryer and the grow lights. I have three down there, from a satellite, my house probably looks like a pot growing mecca, but the light is really just to keep the geraniums alive til spring comes. My Hep C is a forked tongue dragon, on one hand it is important to me to keep the plants year to year and on the other hand, it is a real bitch to walk up and down the steps to the basement, I get short of breath and these fits of rapid heartbeat when I go up and down too much. My husband hates it, the short breath from the up and down, I mean. Moving on, speaking of my husband, we are leaving to take him to the doc out of town. He has a lung hole and needs it spackled up, and with us having the connections we have with the medical field, we get to see this incredibly good, fucking ridiculously expensive talking medical head to microscopically fix the lung hole. It is more like a lung Grand Canyon, which I have tried to tell the MitchMAN about, but I think he liked carrying around this Natural Wonder, except now he gets tired from going up and down too, just like a man, don't worry about it until it infringes on the horizontal tango. So this amazing doc is doing micro surgery on Mitch and tomorrow we find out exactly what day and how long recovery will be, which I am interested in, because I get to be the nurse and exact revenge for any bad nursing MitchMAN ever did while I was on tx. Actually, if you read my blog for very long, you would think the world did revolve around me and my Hepatitis C, but MitchMAN has been swimming in the river DeNile about this Grand Canyon in his chest, so we never talked much about it. Now, we are acting like grown ups and getting it fixed, I will pace and bit my nails and really be frightenend out of my mind while the surgery is going on, perhaps I have a bit of Denile on me too, but the Canyon is too big now, so we are going to see this famous, yes, famous, doctor to get it fixed. Famous for being a good lung doc and I heard he has the bedside manner of a gargoyle, well, anyone with Hep C can identify with that issue, I am sure, so I'm packing and wanted to tell you all what my friend Miles said before he went off to Europe and stopped blogging, (Miles, jeezus, they have internet connections in England, Al Gore did NOT invent the internet, you could at least drop us a line, I miss you), what he said was...be good/be kind. Be back on Tuesday. Christ, I hope we all get well someday.
jackie

The moon is full tonight, tried to get a photo of it when a few clouds rolled in to join the photo. My neighbors are probably freaked out, me outside with the camera on the tripod, in the dark, running around in my jammies, but it is such a beautiful moon, I had to get a picture of it to remember, having Hep C has given me strange gifts, along with the burdens, and sometimes I get fanatical about capturing all I see on digital whatever, film, matrix, the remembering part of the camera. Like this is the last moon ever, but that is not why it is so beautiful, it is huge and silver and it won't be the last moon I see, but I try to live every day like it is. Thank you, Hep C. Now go away.

Weather man says it will get down to 45 degrees tonight, when the sky is clear like this in the desert, the autumn colds sets in and my bones know winter is coming, which around here really impacts our books. Why our books? After living in California for about 15 years and then moving back home to the desert, I have an unhealthy attachment to the color of autumn leaves and when I find them, yellow or red or orange, I slip them in any book that happens to be handy. At first, I tried to use the name of the book to help me remember where I put the leaves, you know, like in my Tolkien books, I would put oak leaves, as remembrance of the Ents, put the maple trees in my mystery books written by an author from Vermont, but soon, the leaves spilled over into the phone books and my Jimmy Buffet books, which are all about Florida and I will never find any leaves here that also grow in Florida, but the leaves are exciting for anyone wanting to use the phone book, open it up to my doctor's phone number and the big, green sycamore leaves fall out, my least favorite. Wonder what that means.

Something I learned last year from the oak tree next to my sidewalk, acorns don't grow every year on an oak tree, the squirrels in our back yard knew this and were cranky all last winter, but this year, we will have like a zillion acorns because the oak tree grows this lacy, trailing kind of pre-seed thingy that the acorns will grow out of and we had a million this spring, like every branch had a wind chime in it, only they just swayed and I had to make up my own chime noise to the swaying. These pre things were so beautiful, each one trailing about 10 or fifteen 3 inch cascades of greenery from a little bundle of tender baby leaves, but I could never get a picture of them because the wind always blows here in the spring. The tree was so Oriental looking, it was beautiful and here is where my lack of skills in descriptive words gets me, because I want you to know how beautiful it was and it will all hinge on waiting all winter for one tree to decide to grow acorns or not. The squirrels don't care, they are hanging around with gunny sacks, waiting for the acorns to get just a tad bigger, and wondering why I haven't put corn out for them yet. Hey, I just watched the weather channel and found out about 10 minutes ago that it was going to get down to 45 degrees tonight. Corn hits the back yard at about 32 degrees, so now I got the moon, cold feet and the squirrels outside, with their gunny sacks, looking threatning. Hell, if the oak tree can do this fine thing, I guess I can come up with the corn a little early. Hope it is not 45 degrees where you are yet and if it is, cherish the sunshine in the day and watch how the whole outside changes as the days get cooler. I find it mystical. Except for the squirrels, I gotta find some corn. Later.

Spikey end of a toothbrush, oh, crumbs

Two posts in one morning? Yes, so many words this morning, took two posts to get it all out of me. First, the post below was a bit of ranting, I get kind of passion ate about politics, if I offended any one, I am really sorry. I don't like folks who rant, today I am guilty of it. The balance came to me when I heard some new music, Marc Broussard, wow, I'm dancing like a fool, music went in thru my ears, flooded my brain and my limbs started moving, my heart too, this guy owned me for the three minutes the song was playing, had to download it. Called "home", bluesy, hey Doc, sounds like Jonny Lang, but better!! No shit. While I was dancing, I realized i never told anyone what happened with my haircut yesterday, which why would it matter about what the hell happened with my haircut yesterday, except the haircut was personal reward for myself for finding some peace, hey Doc, that part is in the post with your picture in it, so the haircut is important to me. Why would I bring this up? Just imagine the spikey end of a toothbrush, you know, after the dog has chewed it up? Yep. That's me. Mitch still can't look at me, was wondering if I had any hats!! Life is so cool, just when I think I got it all figured out, something comes along and fucks with me, I laugh and laugh and then I get to hear some fantastic fine new music. I don't believe MitchMAN thinks the new song will make up for the haircut tho. Ain't life a bitch. Later.

What are these frogs doing?

These frogs been with me for a long time, year to year in a different part of my garden, I'm sure where I place them every year must have some deep meaning because their placement is always very deliberate, this year they are on the front porch, right next to the door. What the deep meaning is this year, well, you got me. I couldn't tell you except for how I feel about what the froggies are saying, the ole saying..."hear not evil, see no evil, speak no evil", which all comes to my mind this morning as I'm watching Mr. Bush shove platitudes up the American consciousness about "The nation cares" and "we have to address the poverty in the hurricane ravaged part of the world", hello, Mr. Bush, Louisiana is a part of your world, or at least the last I remember, the president is the Commander in Chief of the USA and Louisiana is still a part of this nation. So why the hell do we have his talking head giving a self-serving speech about his compassion, four weeks after about 3 thousand too many Americans died? This man was going to make us ready for a terriorist attack, he was the champion of what democracy means. Speak no evil, so I'm breaking my own rule and bad-mouthing this guy, See no evil, I'm having a hard time not seeing a bit of something evil in the behavior of these important people the last four weeks, all these words because I'm having a hard time with what I heard out of his mouth this morning on CNN, hear no evil? I'm freaking out, what have we done to ourselves? I heard this great plan come from his mouth, but not one way to pay for it, not with Iraq going on and remember the tiny little country called Afganistan, we went to search for the evil that perpetuated 9/11, where is the money to rebuild what we blew the shit out of there? Women and children, still not being educated, being treated as possessions and not experiencing one bit of our fine democracy, all the while, living in the rubble that we created when we lashed out, appropriately in response to 9/11. We lost our path after that war tho, tell you what I think, I think our Constitution is a document that the hand of God guided, and that within that document, there is a provision for an office called the President. I respect and revere the perfection of that document, but the man, any man, is not where the power lies, the power lies within the document. It's rules are to be administered and treasured by the man who at any time holds that office, hence the words "holds the office", because he does not own it, he is merely carrying out the "duties" described in the Constititution, and I believe that Mr. Bush has misused, abused, trashed and thrashed the heart of the document. We are a great nation, we will recover, but jeezus, why do we have to "recover"? We have all been devastated by a natural disaster, mine is called "George". Hep C and my aches and headaches and yellow tinge and fatigue, they ain't nuthin compared to the recovery I need to go thru from disaster "Bush". I'm just cranky, worked for 30 years, can't work now, but the needs are so great. Makes me cranky, spinning my wheels, all the while being forced to watch self-serving folks try to gain political ground out of a region's misery. Today, I will remember that we are better people than that, frog lovers and soap makers, scone bakers and bridge builders, readers and bloggers, great thinkers and fine lovers. Hope the day brings you some fine love and good thoughts. Ain't these frogs funny?

Now, this IS the desert!!

Now, here is where I live, I mean, really live, breath, and belong. This is a bridge, but more than a bridge, it is a magic mark, a transition point from the eastern desert to the cool, misty green giant trees of western Washington. I love this point, this mystical valley, because either side I choose, I have roots and am happy. But sunshine seems to be a kind of food for me, not "California, everyday the sun shines and there are no red leaves in the fall" sunshine, but summer sunshine, hot and blazing, fall sunshine, gold, with a smack of coolness. Because soon, for all my bragging, it will be butt cold here, snow up the wazoo, but I remember the summer and it renews something I live by...."True happiness is as simple as having something to look forward to." So, while I get bonky in the winter, I have this gold sunshine to look forward to. And, as you can see, while there is this beautiful blue sky and abundant sunshine, I soak it all up. I am most happy when the MitchMAN and I are alone, taking pictures, finding something to tweak a thought or an emotion with the camera. The bridge here tweaked us bigtime on our way back from Seattle. For lots of good reasons, which I will try to explain.

I went to Seattle with every electron, every transmitter firing in my brain had Doc's name on it, all the hormonal bonding screaming at me about her and school, I was truly scared for Doc. I could not explain what happened to me at her school, but I can explain the outcome. In my gut, the people I met there, I trusted, trusted enough to accept their answers as what I needed to hear, to calm the hormonal raging, to recalibrate the electrons back to center again. Her school, her career is being guided and she is being looked after, her heart and soul, by folks that have a vested interest in her having a healthy balance as a human and secondly, as a doctor. And these are smart people with a capital fucking A smart. There are Nobel laureates there, five of them, more than any other school in the country, and her program has more time and money dedicated to teaching her to be a good person than I could have ever dreamt or hoped for.

Because the mission of their program acknowledges that you can teach medical stuff, but you have to nuture people stuff, or all you get is a talking medical head that cannot heal. So, when I left Seattle and left Doc there, as we passed over this bridge and back into the desert, I realized that Doc had left the nest a long time ago, but as her mom, I had not thrown out the rest of her baggage, from what I perceived as my empty nest. I was afraid for Doc and it gave me a purpose, although an unbalanced purpose. So when Mitch and I stopped to rest and view the desert, the sun was setting, but it was not the end of the day, it was the beginning of this exciting time for the MitchMAN and I. It is he and I now, and believe me, I couldn't have found a better person to travel with on this next part of our journey. I'm thinking we took one fine fuckin picture of the bridge too. It is a special bridge, longest concrete span bridge in the country, some engineer somewhere went to college, learned to do this and his mom struggled with him going, but I bet she's proud of him now. Hope she found the journey after he "became" as exciting for herself as I am thinking I will be. There are good looking men to ogle, my husband to kiss, scones to learn to bake, art to try to create and family to love and care for. Today is a good day. I am marking this good day in my usual way, by doing something brave. I'm going to get a haircut. Not a big deal for a lot of folks, but it is for me, ultimate personal choice, always get it cut way short, MitchMan is driving me, because I made a personal choice not to drive anymore much. Don't make too much out of the contradiction of me reveling in my clarity and new, cherished path, while still being afraid to go out much, life hands us all some strange shit, this is my strange shit. Balanced, but I think you just gotta be here to see it. Later.

This one's for you, Bobby!!!

Morning all. This is Doc Sweetie with her new stethoscope, looks damn good on her, made me cry but she took it all in stride. I learned a lot from the trip to see her, I could never put it all here in this blog, suffice to say that there is much educated of the family of a doctor, as much as the education of the doctor herself. But what they stuffed in my brain, it was like they knew what I needed to hear, imagine that, someone else understanding my concerns over my child and will they take care of her brain while they stuff it with stuff, they showed me all the ways they will take care of her brain and her heart and her soul. Every answer I needed I got from those folks I met, plus a few answers from a sunset I shared with Mitch, I will post about that another day. Just a snapshot of visible peace, peace of mind, peace of heart, calm for the soul. Hell, I learned a lot in one 28 hour trip!!

Anyway, I am finally rested from it all, and now can laugh about two things from yesterday. One, I went with Mitch to the store, I don't like to go out much, now I remember why. I had put my shirt on backwards, a tee shirt with an emblem on it and the MitchMAN just kind of figured that the emblem was supposed to be on the back. But i realized my shirt was on backwards in the middle of the store and freaked out. When I have brain fog ( a term well-known to anyone with Hep C), my first reaction is to panic, and then I get very angry with myself. Which can make for a bad time for Mitch, but after I floundered around emotionally for about 10 minutes, I got past it, he got me in the truck and bought me some ice tea. Took me back home, it doesn't matter here if I wear my shirt backwards. Today, I can laugh about it, but just a little. Fuck, anybody wondering why I don't go back to work, well, imagine any dream you ever had where you were naked in front of people and that is what happened to me yesterday in the store. Only I was awake and it happens frequently. So i'm just one happy camper here at home.

The second very very funny thing is a blog on Captain Xanax's web site. You gotta read it, I can't repeat it here because it makes me start laughing again and I've got to brush my teeth and other normal things that rolling on the floor laughing makes impossible. Captain Xanax's blog is a link at the bottom of this blog, way down there, read the one about the hokey pokey. Man, if you don't laugh, you got virus of the laughing organ and need some chemical help. Bruce, you made my day with that blog. Thank you sir, and hope you are fine, half way round the world. HOpe all you in this part of the world are fine too.

Bobby, whatever world you're in, here's Doc. This pics for you. We love you.
Jackie

Somebody wants to read about the tomatoes again!

Afternoon to you, I'm trying to juggle the repair guy for the washer, dealing with insurance companies and an old dog that has decided to quit eating. "It isn't what happens to you, it is how you deal with it that determines the quality of your life", i'm repeating this thru my head like a mantra, trying to stay cool, and getting homicidial with the flies that are coming in from outside, as it cools here in the desert, the flies look for safer ground. Which is fucking fine with me, lots of aggression spent on smushing the critters, because I keep the house pretty clean, hate flies and they seem to want to bother me the most when I am the most occupied. So I'm here, killing flies, mind-boggled by the $200 electronic control board the repair guys wants to put in my environmentally friendly washer, and wondering what the hell to feed the dog. The post below is a repeat, from about a month ago, but I guess it must be funny, especially if you have liver issues, not the eating kind, the Hep C kind. I have liver issues, but they pale in comparison to the washing machine, old dog and flies today.

Someone ask me to repost my post about the tomatoes, I'm not sure why, they said it made them laugh,but they have Hep C too, so it could be funny only to Hep C folks, I don't know. I will try to repost it right now. If not, I will find another fly to smash and maybe feel better!! Take care.

The sun is baking my tomatoes BEFORE I can pick them.
It's real hot here in the desert this week, so I've been spendin a lot of time inside. For an outside, in the grass and sweet-peas kind of person like me, it's a bitch. The MitchMAN put up a bamboo fence all around my back yard so I can be out there and it feels like an extension of the house and I feel safe. Looking thru the tomatoes, I find a bunch that are totally ripe on the bottom and green on top, which I then envision my liver must look a lot like that right now, but somehow, I still pick the tomatoes and serve them for dinner. Right in the middle of the livery tomatoes, Doc says she needs to eat some more steak as she is skinny and needs more iron, okay, but then Mitch says we need to try some liver and onions. Whoa, I almost choked on my salad, these words grab me, do I laugh, right after me working so hard to get the vision of the tomato/liver out of my head, but I did say I knew how to cook liver and onions.... and I kept thinkin to myself, because I'm cooking my own liver right now. Hep C is like having a fever in your liver and as you can imagine, the liver gets tired of having a temperature and kind of begins to fall apart. Now Doc wants me to see if they still sell liver at the grocery store, now that's funny.....I tried treatment and work every day at staying healthy just to stay away from needing someone else's liver.
A sidenote for you folks needing to live dangerously while laughing non-stop. There is a link on the lower side of my page, way down there, to a truly amazing blog from an amazing guy. If you need your perspective about Hep C tweaked a little and like me, love twisted humor, give Mile's blog a click. His blog has been ongoing for about 3 years now, but I believe it will make me laugh for about three more years. Thanks, Miles, your ten rules for growing apricot trees really worked. Everyone else, take care, the sun is going down and I have some livers, tomatoes to rescue. Later.

Trashcans from Seattle

Went to Seattle, watched the ceremony, cried a lot, got some great answers, and came back with some amazing pics. This is a trashcan from Snoqualmie Falls, right now it is my favorite picture. There are more from the desert, which you drive out of when you drive into the cool green of Seattle, but that is for a blog tomorrow. Lots more for the blog tomorrow. Today, my liver hurts and I am tired. Enjoy the trashcan, and I will tell you one thing I learned this weekend, answers and peace can come from places you least expect it, from lectures, from pictures of trashcans and from sunsets in the desert. Take care.

Honoring Doc Sweetie

Hello all
This is the MitchMAN just sitting in as we get ready to go to Seattle to watch our daughter be welcomed into the medical profession. The love of my life will be away for her computer for a couple of days and just wanted to let ya'll know that all was right with her. As we hustled around trying to get ready to go, she made me go out and take a few photos of some of her flowers in the back yard.
Enjoy your weekend, be safe and be kind!

This is so complicated!

This symbol is the the Chinese symbol for love, I have a whole folder of these, but this one....love...is the most detailed, the most complex in it's markings that I have collected so far. Not surprising, what is more complicated than love? Mystical to me that in any sort of language, any sort of alphabet that the word would be intricate, but I'm posting it today because we all need a little more love today. I can't watch one more image of the hurricane, I am still ashamed of our government and getting more so by the day, now little old ladies are being tackled by big men to remove them from their homes. That one hit me hard, I am a little old lady who lives all my life in this house, worked and paid taxes for so many years, to pay the salary of some big police man to tackle me and remove me? The constitution allows me to be stupid if I like, and to even live on bottled water if I chose. I understand the threat of cholera, typhoid, etc., but does it come from one feisty old lady wanting to stay with her possessions? It is called geriatric reminiscing, it is a healthy sign of aging, an integral part of aging in a healthy way. She is reacting in a healthy way, but I cannot find the love for those people who are being elected and paid to take care of her, not by tackling and forcibly removing her. Aren't we the smartest, richest nation in the world? I have heard from folks that I blog to, from all over the world, they are also ashamed of us and our strength and standing as mighty innovators just fell about a million points in the world. What you see on CNN, this is the democracy in action that our soldiers are dying for, because George Bush wants them to enjoy this democracy. We can't walk the walk, how arrogant of us to talk the talk, while 100's of Iraqi's die, while soldiers homes are being washed away, what has this administration brought down on us? Makes my Hepatitis C and my fatigue and depression seem so minor, yet I am tired today, have a headache and can't eat. So I post a symbol of love, love in another language, because it seems to carry more weight than love in America. Later.

old machines, makes you think, doesn't it.

Black and white photography is a skill that has eluded me so far, I understand the need for contrast in the photo, finding subjects with a lot of light and dark, my eyes look a lot, believe me, but the right photos for black and white elude me. This one I kind of like, mostly because I can remember using a pop machine like this when I was little, always a mystery, put in the dime, and clank the bottle along the rows, until the machine magically let the bottle go, ice cold, sweet to my lips and a treasure for a little girl.

Black and white, like words on this page, these words, they elude me sometimes too. I have discovered that I am out there, on the net, but not for my words, but as a link to "object to my questionable content?" Probably some kind of auto response from this site I use, whenever any of us bloggers use the f word, or the p word, or the s word, I bet the response is generated, but why the hell is internet space and resources taken up by notifiying someone that my blog may be questionable? I state in my header, in the title box, that if swearing bothers you, don't read. This all made me laugh so much, tho, this blog is not really for public consumption....and most of us who have hep c and have failed treatment have spoke with a lot of folks and a lot of those folks use the f word. The f word is black and white, a gathering of symbols in a line on a page. I wish like hell that those pc folks who have issues with my language would spend some time, somehow, investing in ways to cure the disease. The only thing about all this that does not make me laugh is if the "questionable content" is writing about Hep C, and well, that would also rile up those pc folks. Sorry, I cannot change the pandemic nature of Hep C, talk to the Red Cross, they knew it was in the blood supply for about three years while they argued about whether they would test for it. Perhaps you are one who was infected at that time? Hey, pc, have you been tested for Hep C? Invest in the time, do it, and stay out of my blog. Kind of makes my swearing seem a little trivial.

I cannot change that by 2010, there will be about 10 million people in the US with this disease and I cannot change the perception that we all deserve this disease, somehow, because it is one common to IV drug users and probably folks who do not wash their hands enough. Well, the biggest population of Hep C infected folks is our own soldiers, you know, all those guys we placate ourselves about by slapping those yellow ribbons on our cars and all of a sudden, we feel better, better about them dying, better about them following orders to occupy a country that had NOTHING to do with 9/11, better about taking them away from family and home to fulfil a vendetta by Mr. Bush. So you think our soldiers deserve this? I don't. I am someones gramma and mother and wife, there is a saying amonst some Hep C sufferers, "Price Paid", price paid for whatever the hell you think I deserve for having a miscarriage and then receiving two blood transfusions. Or, price paid for loving a man who was in the service? I get disgusted with medical professionals who ask me, "how did you contract Hep C?". Well, you know, I don't know, do you ask cancer patients that same question? Do I look fucking psychic?

The picture? This is why I am grieving the end of summer!!!

The photo is a birdie house is the oak tree outside my window, takin in the middle of last winter in a relatively mild snow for this area, I found the pic while I was working on some photos of Doc while she was at UCLA, I am taking the photos to her this weekend when we go to Seattle to watch her become a doctor. I have written the secretary of the Dean of Medicine to find out if bringing her roses is appropriate too, the secretary thought it was a wonderful idea, but I am not sure Doc will, this stethoscope is just the beginning of her dream but it is also the realization of her deceased father's dream, I think he would want me to bring her roses.

I have not finished grieving his death, I was married to the prick for 17 years, even a prick is missed after that long. Doc hasn't finished grieving him either, we talk about it alot, I want to find a professional to help us do it together, but she, in the vanity of youth, thinks no one could possible feel as she does and that her grief is a never-ending black hole, if she begins to investigate it, she will fall in and disappear. I am gentle with her, I will not give up tho, I started a new dialog about the healthy reasons why getting help with our grief would be good, mostly for her, I think it will make her a better doctor. seems as tho she is beginning to see the sense in my reasoning. This thread will become a blog later, I'll let you know how we do.

By the way, we lost her dad from Hep C, anyone wonders why I suffer depression and anxiety over my untreatable Hep C...those people were not at his bedside when he died. I was, I was his ex at the time, but no one else in the family could seem to make it off their fat asses to come to California to be with him, so my new husband bought me a ticket at 2:00 a.m. in the morning, got me on the plane at 5:oo a.m., rented me a car to take me from Santa Barbara to Santa Maria, to where Doc's dad was in intensive care. He had gone into hepatic failure, complicated by pneumonia and sepsis, I sent Doc home to shower and nap....and I held his hand, told him if he could come back to us, (he was slipping into a coma), that I would stay as long as it took for him to get better, but if he could not stay with us, I would always take care of the kids. I promised him that over and over, I saw two tears, slide out of the corner of his eyes, he squeezed my hand and then his O2 sats got lower and lower, until he passed quietly. Now I will not destroy any credibility I might have by talking about a white light, but I tell you now, I put my forehead to his forehead and I was filled with this incredible bright light and I could see him walking into that light. He turned around, looked at me, and then walked into the light and away. The look back at me, I know it was to make sure I meant what I said about taking care of the girls, he would have worded it more colorfully, probably included something like "you hard headed bitch", but we were pretty cool with each other and devoted to remaining good parents, so I stayed and closed down the house, gave his clothes to the goodwill, divided his possessions amongst the kids, found an attorney, set up his cremation, sent the ashes to his mother and to his Aunt.

That is a funny story, should I tell it in another blog? Naw, suffice to say that his mom wanted him interred in Texas, but my ex always wanted to be buried in Missouri, next to his grampa and his dad. So, I pacified his mom and sent the big urn to Texas, and sent my own small urn of ashes to Missouri, where his aunt had a service to spred the ashes over a small marker, next to his dad and grampa. His body may be buried in Texas, but I made sure his heart was in missouri. Don't the living do the craziest things when it comes to death? He's still smiling aobut that somewhere and hopefully, has forgiven me for some of the shit I caused him. We were mutually ingnorant with each other and both of us being colorful people, well, let's just say that the flowing of forgiveness was the best thing we did for each other and the rest of the human race.

So my eyes are getting an eyefull of photos and I run upon this photo of the silent, still snow on the birdie house, I realize I better get in gear and get the grow lights up for the plants I want to save from freezing, I have a couple of geraniums that I consider friends, have had them for years now, each with a story and each needed a warm home for the winter. So it's time for me to move the clay projects in the basement, rehook up the grow lights and get my buddies inside, to keep me company this long long winter, this winter will be long for me, doing tx again and with the inevitable snow, perhaps more pictures like this one to share with you. I have another of the birdie house, you will love it, I took it during the fall, same birdie house, but the oak leaves are brilliant red, yellow and the sky is a smear of brilliant blue, I will find it and post it soon. Here, in the great high desert of the Columbia River Gorge, the trees are just turning yellow, so it is a bit soon for the autumn gift of red leaves, but soon, believe me, soon. I will find it and post it tomorrow.

Today, I have to find a way to talk to the Doc's dad, tell him what an amazing thing she has done, that his life meant something, that a dream he had has been realized. Talking to the dead, the body is gone, spread to the wind and probably dust now that has settled and nutured flowers and is making clay in some southern river, but the dead still need to hear from us.......those important things, we are all so connected, aren't we all one soul and I need to be clear to this soul what is happening, what one child can do, joy within sorrow.. within hope... within our future. Hey, Bobby, all that work you did, all the money, the kid did it. She is in the BEST medical school in the nation, no shit, and she gets the stethoscope on Sunday. That device of men which allows her to listen inside us all, so you listen, I am talking to you in joy, do a bird swoop, a dolphin dive, rustle your tree leaves, boom out a big ole clap of thunder, because you are here and you are validated. Doc has perservered, she is becoming, and she carries what you meant to her and will always carry it, the very essence of who she is...shaped partially by you. You will live forever, Bobby and I will keep your eyes in my eyes and watch her for both of us. We love you, Bobby.

Seattle trees on Hep C

This weekend is the weekend the MitchMAN and I go to Seattle to watch the Dean of Medicine give Doc (my daughter) her stethoscope, kind of a symbolic ceremony, marking her as someone who is becoming a doctor. I am excited about it,and like a mom, am wondering what does a doc's mom wear? This photo was one I took last year, not yet recovered from treatment, my virus "brokethru" and the counting of each little virus went up by a million, it is something that happens to about 10 percent of people who try the treatment for Hep C. Doc Sweetie was around then, she said she didn't think I could do any more treatment anyway, even if it was working, I lost about 50 lbs and was constantly depressed and got very weak.

It is hideously ironic tho, my youngest child, seeking to become a doc, me with so many docs in my life and not wanting any of them, not a whit of respect for any of them. There has been an unseen question between Doc Sweetie and I, I will ask it now....will I live long enough for her to become my doctor? It is an unthinkable question, she carries it around while she studies, works, and has never ask me it out loud, but she already dispenses covert advice to Mom, like a Doc. "You should get out of the house more, Mom. You should drink more water, Mom. You look tired, Mom". What sucks more than having hep c? Knowing your children know you have it and seeing what the knowledge of the disease does to their faces. Fuck. So I will dress like a proper mom of a Doc and go to the ceremony, take pictures, probably cry....and wonder if I will live long enough to have her be my doctor. Ain't that some shit.

some color for the holiday!

Wanted to post this pic of some of the color from my back porch, seemed like a good antidote to the leaves turning yellow and the coolness of the evening, I already have started making plans on which plants to bring in the for the winter, I keep a lot of them under grow lights in the basement. With the hurricane having ravished the country and demolished my pride in our own country a bit, I needed a bit of color this long holiday weekend.

I read somewhere that Mr. Bush got lucky, the hurricane has distracted us all from the cold fact that what we are trying to do in Iraq has already failed, 100 Iraqis died yesterday from bombs, so it might be fair to say that civil war has already started. I write a lot about Mr. Bush and Iraq, he keeps trying to link it to 9/11 and there is no link!!! With 9/11/05 around the corner, i gotta wonder how long will it take all of us to get this fact thru our heads. Now, tho, we are all totally screwed, because we can't leave the country without total chaos erupting, but we cannot stay either, we are occupying Iraq, in the name of bringing it democracy? I just can't wrap my noodle around any sort of solution. I have my own solutions to seek, my liver functions are rising pretty quick, got an ominious call from the doc about coming in to see him early, I know what is next. He is going to suggest, strongly, that I start treatment again. For those of you without Hep C, treatment is a self administered shot of interferon, IFN, once a week, until you go crazy. IFN causes chemical depression and anxiety, man, puts you way out there and you know you have to keep doing the shot, once a week, for 48 weeks. IFN is chemo, low dose, but even cancer victims get weeks off in between their treatments. The treatment for Hep C is every week, no break, no reprieve, for a year. Unless the virus comes back, and then you have failed, what a fucking word, failed treatment and you get to quit. So which is worse? I couldn't tell you, I am so fatigued, side effect from bad liver function and I think every day about the damage to my liver that is going on as I type and as you read so it is one hell of a trade off. Losing the liver or losing the mind? Hell, I don't know right now. But I know I like the color on my porch, hope you enjoy it too. Later.

naked flowers

Hey, I found one good shot of the morning glories and unlike my usual meddling, I left this one alone and just posted it. Still here, scared of the lab results I am waiting on, sad summer is going away, got a headache and I am so tired, for no damn reason, I can't even think straight. No laundry done, nothing, I thought I was doing good getting the dishes picked up and my bed made, I mean, after all, my husband works pretty damn hard, he takes good care of me, deserves at least a made bed and no dirty dishes in the sink. I found a perfect red tomato on our tomato vines, think we will make an omelet for dinner, so I can end this day with the one positive thought that I at least fed the man. For some reason, guilt is running thru this house like the Amazon today, makes for a boring post, and my hep c is making me tired and cranky, giving me a headache. So I will post the photo of the morning glory with the hopes it makes your day a little better. Take care.

Got a picture of the morning glories!!!!

In an earlier post, I talked about the morning glories growing 25 feet in the air, amongst my cedar trees and how the beautiful flowers were facing the sun, so no photo for me, but something sweet for the birds and God to look at. Well, this morning, I'm outside with the dogs, who are home now, also explained in an earlier post, and I'm a little scared, my Hepatitis Doctor called and has some tests he wants to run, when I look up, mostly to see if I can see any godfinches, and there they are, three brilliant purple glories, straight on, face to face with me. So I'm dragging the tripod and the camera outside at 7:00 a.m. to get a picture of them and my feet are freezin from the dew on the grass, this is strange, because it has been so damn hot here that it takes me a minute to remember what cold feet are, but it's okay because I'm taking pictures, which is a hell of a lot better than being scared about some tests my doc wants to run.

So why didn't I post the picture of the morning glories? I will soon, I am savoring them, but while I was taking them, I noticed the sun on my bamboo fence, my privacy wall, to keep the world out, the sun was creating shadows on the bamboo and the shadows look like a chinese symbol, so I had to take a photo of that too and after running it thru some software to edit photos I made a watercolor out of it and wanted to post it instead of the morning glories. I know after the cup moved across the table.....in an earlier post.....this symbol must mean something, so I am going to study it for a while to see what I can see. Anybody know Chinese lettering? Let me know, I will post the whole shadow, but for now, my feet are wet and cold, the sun is shining on my bamboo fence in Chinese and the morning glories are smiling at me. So why don't I feel better? I guess I feel okay, I just hate having unanswered riddles running around in my brain, and today there is a whole preschool of running riddles. Hope your day is clearer.

Corkscrew willow, I LOVE that name, please call me CORKSCREW today

Now why would I want to be called corkscrew today? Well this is a picture of old branches of my corkscrew willow, I save them in the garden shed and in my perverse way, I took the photo and ran it thru some photo editing software and it ended up like this. This is one of the reasons I love blogging, I can act out and then chronicle the childish behaviors in this blog, talk to myself about what it all means. Like dreaming out loud, yesterday I had a waking, electric out-loud dream, hopefully, clarity will come to me soon.

I will not get all new age with you in my explanation, but yesterday I saw something unexplainable, yet I know what I saw truly happened. Nothing like the face of the Madonna in a bowl of soup, but a simple Starbucks cup moved across my dining room table. Freakin out, I checked the cup for moisture on the bottom or strong breezes in the house to explain this cup moving, but nada. So today, i'm becoming convinced it was one of my loved ones, one of those who have "passed on" trying to talk to me, at least fuck with me in a big way. No way was this a brain thing I did, but I am frustrated that I can't interpret the message. Now, hallucinations are a symptom of ammonia build up from Hep C liver damage, but I am not ammonia overdosed, thankfully, but I am overdosing on the "KNOWING" that I saw this cup move and totally overdosing on trying to figure out WHY. Some tiny part of my brain wants me to forget about it, dismiss it, but another tiny part is saying "no way", so the "no way" part is winning and I'm still trying to figure out the message, perhaps it is as simple as the fact that the people we love and then lose never really leave us and they really miss Starbucks coffee. So call me corkscrew and let me figure this out. Later.

My dogs are back!! No picture tho, just happy!!

So my dogs are back, I'm very happy, as you might imagine, but I keep taking showers, because I have been going to Animal Control every day and leaving every day crying because the doggies weren't there, but the vibes from the animals that were caged there....it was this blast of feelings, like a hot oven on my face and I had to make myself walk up and down each aisle, looking in each cage for the two familar faces of my dogs. I saw about 30 dogs I wish I owned, and I can still see them when I close my eyes, plus, I can't get over this feeling of needing to take a shower. The place was pretty clean, I'm confused, perhaps I am suffering from doggie despair and is seeping out my skin. Anyway, I put signs up all over my part of town, with the faces to my two doggies plastered all over the signs and made them personal, you know, "Can you please help get us home to our Mommy?"

Well, it worked, all this pain I have gone thru for 5 days now, the dogs were five blocks away, just five blocks, the folks who had them saw my sign and called this morning. So I got the doggies back, took a shower and have decided that perhaps I will take some dog food to Animal Control the next time my husband takes me to the store. All the sadness I went thru, like my earlier post about the book, it was my perceptions, because the reality of the situation was my doggies were only five blocks away in someones back yard. I'm glad they are home, I have put a lock on the gate. I would post a picture of the dogs, but I am just elistist enough to not allow myself to do that. They are home, I am better, but lost a few days with my mind somewhere else, trying to find these dogs. Only five blocks away. Hope all your doggies are home and safe.

Rocks, you know...... what we all stand on.

So what the hell is a picture of a rock doing here? I'm reading this book, scifi, and in this book, the folks stand on rocks, like we do, grow trees, have children and go to church, in fact, they are a lot like us. But the book is about perception, these folks have perception, but it is less "dimensional" than human perception, trees would be looked at as green and that is about it.

So when a human arrives, all the folks on this planet go mad, for a little while anyway, because they can also look thru our eyes, and when they do, they see this tree from so many different perspectives, when you think about it, humans are graced with incredible gifts, a tree is green, but it has fragrance, the bark has texture, we can percieve the passage of time from the size of the tree, we fret if the tree gets disease, we tend the tree to keep it well, although it does not ask us too. The center of the story is about how we are all connected, even to this far away planet and how lucky humans are to have such complexity of perspective, no wonder we are all so stressed, to be able to see so much in a simple tree, to try to live among a world full of other humans, each with their own complexities, well, a person like me with a lot of time on her hands could go kind of crazy trying to comprehend it all.

Somehow, I feel luckier, having read the story and having a beautiful tree outside to watch, to try and count all the ways I "perceive" the tree. I have run out of fingers and toes, counting all the ways I know this tree, next, I start on my children, as the story also portrays the giving birth of children as "putting down roots", which is to also imply we lose our freedom. Like a tree, we have children, put down roots and become stationary, in the physical sense, and this demands mobility of the mind.

So I travel, in my head, around the tree outside my door and this is cool. Especially since I made the decision that having hep c was a darn good reason to stay home and away from folks. But that is fodder for another blog. Right now, I will use my complex perceptions and check out the trees, and then, perhaps my children's impact on my life and then I will tackle what one simple flower means. Besides color, scent, food for bees, compost for the future, homes to the ants, etc. Think about it, that one flower, all the names I could give it. Home, fragrance, eye candy, fertilizer, etc. I am boggled. Hope you are all fine.

Someone left the damn gate open and my dogs are lost. So no picture today could make me or you feel better.

The city comes once a month and reads my electrical meter, it is in the backyard and I have two dogs that live out there. I know the regular guy who reads the meter and he is cool, gives the dogs bisquits and loves them so they won't bark or bite him. Today, we had a different meter reader and he didn't latch the gate, so my big black grayhound and my daughter's tiny whatever doggie got out and ran away. I was so freaked, it was about 90 degrees today and since I don't drive anymore, I had to be brave and get out and walk out thru the neighborhood, yelling my lungs out, looking for the dogs. For about 10 blocks in each direction, I yelled for an hour for the dogs, now the whole neighborhood knows my dogs are gone, but it is getting dark and I still haven't found them. Hepatitis C makes it hard for me to walk a lot, but I ignored how tired I was and kept walking, now I got rubber legs and arms. And no dogs. Those two doggies don't have a whole lot of sense between the two of them and they are out, in the city, in the dark. Hope they found a party or at least some nice folks with a cool drink of water. Tomorrow I will go to Animal Control and see if the two of them had to spend the night in jail. This is going to make me cry, too many dogs, not enough people to love them, all of those doggies in jail and they didn't even do anything wrong. Sometimes, I'm in jail, Hep C jail, and I don't feel like I did anything wrong. So it will be extra hard to go to doggie jail, but I got my fingers crossed that the two of them will be there. Cross your fingers for me.
Jackie

Facing the sunshine, the only way to be.

This is one of my sunflowers, nice photo, but not the photo I wanted to post today, the photo I wanted to post does not exist yet, and may not, unless I can find a way to take a picture from 30 feet in the air. My garden has a row of cedar bushes lining one side of it and I planted deep purple morning glories along the edge of the cedars and when I say deep purple, I mean rock and roll deep purple, these flowers glow in the sunshine. So this morning, I'm outside and I'm watering and I'm thinking about how summer is going away, kind of sad, but I'm enjoying the flowers when I realize that I finally feel kind of good, not tired or cross, like I have felt, tired and cross, for the last four days since we went to the concert and I walked about a mile in the gravel along the river to see DMB. I'm happy that I'm finally feeling better, but then it hits me, after going to the Gorge to see DMB for like, five years now, this year kicked my Hepatitis C infected ass so good and next year, I may not go, because these past four days have been such a bummer, both physically and mentally. No amount of meds could have convinced me to pull my head out of my ass and feel okay about one damn thing.

So I'm out watering and realizing summer is diminishing, this is okay and I'm diminishing, this is okay too, but I see these deep purple morning glories, the vine has grown about 25 feet up the cedars and the trumpet flowers are facing the blue sky. They are glowing purple and I want a picture so damn bad of them, but I realize those flowers up there are only for the birds to enjoy and maybe, as George Carlin says, the big invisible guy in the sky. I'm kind of bummed that I can't get a picture of the morning glories, and then it kind of hits me, I'm a lot like those flowers, I bloom sometimes here in this house, but no one sees me or my bloom. Only the dogs and the flowers and maybe, the big invisible guy in the sky. I'm okay with this, my fear of leaving the ole homestead has become a part of what I do, or maybe who I am, but, after wanting a picture of the unreachable flowers, I gotta wonder, what would it be like if I went back into the rest of the world, all the time, not just little forays to the doctor or to the store? To bloom where everyone can see me?

No way in hell will I bloom in front of other "unknown" people, okay, I am whacked, I know, because some damn part of my Hepatitis C would intrude on the bloom (fatigue, depression, panic, blood,) and I would be left scared, crying and on the floor in the middle of some Wal-Mart, a grown woman, wantin her husband to come save her. No body is gonna save me, so I will stay here and wish I could get that photo, but it is okay I can't, the birds and the big guy are enjoying them, and besides, who says I get to take every photo I ever wanted?

I love the "fenceflower" I posted, the sunflowers are wonderful, the goldfinches are eating the seeds already, one too many will land on a branch and the whole branch breaks. So much for being greedy, I won't be greedy, I have taken lots of photos and there are more to take, I will continue to take the ones I can and accept there are some images out there not for me to capture. Hope you are all captured by an image today and it is a good image. Later.
Jackie

What a weird and wonderful world we live in!

Now this is the young man popping out of the trunk that I have talked about for two days here on my blog, yet I still cannot wrap my noodle around why this guy was riding in the trunk, to leave the Dave Matthews concert. The picture is streaked because I took it thru the windshield of the truck, and the picture I missed was of the OTHER guy that is still inside the trunk. From their t-shirts, they are students at Central Washington State College and perhaps these young men are wanting to join some strange fraternity, but from the wrist band this guy has on, he is over 21 and can drink, the wrist band was mandatory if you were drinking, but I guess the wristband didn't guarantee good sense because it was about 90 degrees and we are leaving, leaving the concert in this row of cars and there is no charge per person anyway. Camping is charged by the car, so there was no monetary gain from the hour spent in the trunk, perhaps there was an angry young woman somewhere he is hiding from? I would appreciate any other ideas anyone might have, I got too tired from the concert, today is Tuesday and I am just about back to my normal speed, but I have such a liver ache, sounds funny, sometimes now it is really a presence, so I think it is time to take another picture of the liver. Hepatitis C is a kind of inflammation, so the liver is inflamed and you can imagine how mad it must get, having a fever all the time. Anyway, I am getting better and would go to the Gorge Amphitheatre again in a heartbeat, because Hepatitis C can take my job away and snow skiing and hiking, but nothin's going to take away my Dave Matthews!!! Hope you all have a better day than this guy must have had.

What? No picture today?

No picture today, like I said in an earlier post, I am still trying to figure out why the guy rode to the concert in the trunk of the volvo, boy, does it have me confused. The photo I took of him popping out of the trunk is not very clear, so I am trying to darken and sharpen it up. I will post it later. But I did want to put an address here, to one perfect 21st century discussion board - "Captian Xanax has nothing to add". It is a delphi forum, perfectly written by a gentlemen who lives halfway across the world, and he is perfectly correct in his philosophy about "all already have been said". So it is fun to read and to visit, Captian Xanax had hepatitis c, like me, but went thru treatment and chronicled some of it on his blog. But like me, I think he gets tired of hearing the same stuff about hep c, none of the news gets any better or no new news, just waiting for the rest of the world to figure out what a heinous virus it is and what an impact, KABOOM, the hep c virus can have on a life. Anyway, check out Captian Xanax and be sure to spell it CAPTIAN. Later.

http://forums.delphiforums.com/zanax/start

The Columbia River Gorge and a lot of folks getting ready to party!!

This is just one of the campsites randomly set up along the Columbia River, these folks getting ready to see Dave Matthews, but takin a dip first. The weather for the concert was incredible, about 85 degrees, but as you can see in the foreground of this picture, the Gorge Ampitheatre is truly smack dab in the middle of the desert. If you aren't into drinking river water, they will sell you water at the concert for $5.00 a pop. And it is hot, the weather, not the water, but somebody is making a lot of money off this water. So before the concert, a lot of people stay outside of the Gorge and party on the river.

The most amazing part is how accepting everyone is as you cruise thru this campground or any of the other 10 of them, set along the river. I mean, I am old, but most of these folks are college kids, I guess they must get a giggle out of the old folks, because we all got along just great. Sharing hammers and matches and sometimes, there was a lot of smoke coming out of the windows of these tents. The river and the camping has become a part of the music experience for me, since the actual amphitheatre is about 30 miles from nowhere, and "nowhere only has three motels and they have all been booked for about a year. So you gotta camp, pitch the tent, break out the ice chest and the frisbee, if you want to truly "relax" and enjoy the music that evening. I will not even try to say much about the music, just plop in your favorite DMB cd and what I heard last night was as good as that and sometimes better. Boyd plays a violin, but I believe he is an angel who traded the harp for a fiddle and I watched him play for about three minutes in a song last night that made me glad there was a God who gave us angels, dreadlocks and all and the free will to pick up a violin and make it become a fiddle. A miracle. The whole band is amazing.

Now, tomorrow, I will post the picture of the man that rode all the way from Ellensburg to the Gorge in the trunk of an old Volvo, I am not kidding, I have the pic to prove it. The car was in front of us in line and as I watched in jaw-dropping amazement, the trunk popped open and this young man leaped out. Since you are charged by the car to park, there was no reason for him to be in the trunk, unless it was some strange frat ritual, I can only speculate, but that is for tomorrow. Today is Sunday, a good day to rest, my fatigue made it hard for me to do all the walking, to and fro at the concert, but the real bitch is the time it takes to recover. And I didn't even have a hangover, well, it feels like a "too much exercise, too much Hep C virus" hangover, so's I'm keeping the jammies on today and staying near the couch. I'll bbque for the MitchMan for dinner, but the rest of this day is to recover. Hope you are all recovering too

September 11, 2002

That's me, September 11, 2002, camped at the Dave Matthews concert at the Gorge in beautiful, bustling George, Washington. There was an excess of flags at the concert that year, so I draped one across my chest for a while, just to feel a little less guilt about rockin at the concert on such a tragic anniversary. The date itself now has taken a scary life of it's own, so many times, I have heard folks use 9/11 along with Iraq, but I remember, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but our cultural consciousness has forgotten and blended the two issues into one. Must make Bush happy, but sometimes, I still see the face of the little girl from Afghanistan, the one from National Geographic, and I remember we are confused as a nation about 9/11.

This year, I'm returning to the concert, but leaving today, so no spectre of 9/11 goes with me, save what I bring along in memories. My child was flying on 9/11, going to LA, Ca and the nightmare of that day will live here inside me for a long long time. Right next to the nightmare of new dead soldiers every day in Iraq, but always I remember, the two are not related. Not even if you are Republican, Christian or a mom.

The other remarkable thing about the picture I've put here....it is so pure, I did not know I carried Hepatitis C, just knew it was hard to take the long walk to the amphitheatre from the campgrounds. I wrote it off to old age, too much excitement, etc. Looking back, so much fatigue and pain in my liver, for the longest time, I figured I was passing the world's slowest gall stone. This year, I go, fully armed, knowing the difference between 9/11 and Iraq and understanding my difficulties with the long walk to listen to the sweet music on the river, while the sun sets. Mostly, my best 9/11 tribute, I can still walk on the music, breathe sweet air and love the experience. Somehow, I believe it is a fine rememberance for it all. Be gone for three days, you all take care.

Can't sit on it, but it cast a great shadow

Old sticks, this chair is made of old sticks, and remarkably, was created by a 72 year old woman who lives at the edge of the forest here in Washington. Now, I know it sounds like a story from some new-age, back to the earth magazine, but she really does make furniture with sticks and a cordless Black and Decker drill and deck screws. Usually, the chair lives in my garden with sweet peas growing around it, but this is where it lives in the winter, safe behind the glass wall of the garden shed. I feel like this chair today, looking substantial, but more shadow than useful. Hepatitis C has turned things sideways for me, so it feels like I'm behing the glass wall for the winter. I did a good thing yesterday tho, for one of my grandkids, and it's funny, I am too tired today to even feel grandiose about what I did. Old sticks, casting shadows, not good for much, but I love this picture. Sometimes, I think that is why I blog, because I can put pictures up here and then talk to them or talk to myself about why I love these pictures. Some of them, I did not even know I loved, until I started talking about them, especially from "A View from Hepatitis C"........because I stay home so much, I have time to reflect on these photographed reflections.

Probably the funniest thing I am doing today is research for the MitchMAN on Idenix and Vertex, both pharm companies with new approaches to therapy for Hepatitis C, we have decided to buy a little stock in each one. You know what they say, write what you know, buy what you got the most info on. Gekko, that was Michael Douglas's name in "Wall Street" and he followed the information, well, around here there is a well spring of info about Hep C, buying some stock in these two companies is almost mandatory. Besides, they are both pretty cheap right now. So, old sticks, shadows and pharm stocks today. And all the while, me wishing I was hiking in the Olympic Rain Forest. You see the dilemma here. Perhaps I will Google rain forest and steal someone else's photos. Almost as good. Later.

Old buildings make me sad

Today I am so tired and when I was lookin thru some new pictures, I found this pic of an old building I took in Seattle last year. This was done out of the window of a speeding car, it seems every car in Seattle is being driven by someone on a mission from God, so when I say speeding, I mean these people drive fast!! But the picture struck me, because I am pretty tired today, made birthday cake for my granddaughter, walked thru Staples for printer cartridges and had the dog clipped. That is a lot for me to do in one day, I love the feeling of accomplishing things, but for some reason today, it all seems insignificant and then I am even more tired. The dog's hair will grow out, the kids at my granddaughter's party are not going to gasp in awe at this masterpiece of a cake I've made and the printer cartridges were for some work the MitchMan is doing.
A few days ago, I acquired the word "insignificant" and have been applying it liberally to my life. Partially in self pity which I fucking will not give up because it is so good to feel something other than scared and partially, insignificant because I used to work at jobs that created things, that mattered to people, I could bounce myself off these people and see tangible proof that I existed, created and was worthwhile. Now my shrink would say I need to get a better perspective, because every day I wake up and am breathing, I am worthwhile. But the bitch has a job and she's getting paid $90 an hour to tell me this, so it's pretty easy to wallow around in being so tired and wishing I wasn't. This old building, once it was significant, had energy and life, commerce was carried on inside it, folks fell in love, argued, made money, shared secrets and now, it is just a quiet picture taken from a window of the speeding car I was in. I love the picture for the words it holds for me and I really do know that someday, I will look at it and just see an old building, with no reflection of myself in every window and every shadow. As tired as I am now, I will wait quietly for that day. Hope your day is quiet too.

Hey Miles, you gave me a new friend today.

If the man is in the moon, then women must fuel the sun and I'm fueling my part today, for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I'm happy, I made a small connection with another intelligent person, a blogger, someone who walks upright and can still laugh despite the "Curse of Hepatitis C". Amazing to me especially, in my earlier posts, I have confessed I have agoraphobia and love to stay home. Doesn't make for a lot of thought-provoking conversations, I just look at it as another bit of me Hep C took away, my shrink keeps getting radical with me and says I need to fix this. But I read this colorful blog this morning and so much of it made wonderful, poetic, twisted sense. Alice in Wonderland viewed from the top of my apricot tree kind of sense.

Anyway, I always say the "Curse of Hepatitis C" because to so many folks, the disease is still a yuky one, visions of unkempt iv drug users and in general, strange and unhealthy life choices made resulting in this virus. Part of the reason I love to use "Curse" is I then allow myself to curse and say things like.."what bullshit" and "people have their heads up their butts" and then I get to paint this picture of myself, innocent gramma, gray haired, unsuspecting victim, blah blah blah. But in reality....well, it is all horseshit.

I am a gramma, not too innocent, but there is no curse from Hep C, in fact today, I have made a new friend, connected for just a moment with an intelligent person from half a world away. I met my new friend from an old friend, in a round-about way, so I'm thanking Miles for Captain Xanax and putting Captain Xanax's link to his blog right below Miles link on my page, way down at the bottom of my posts....why they are way down there I still can't decipher, but my HTML gets better ever day, so soon my profile will be up here and the links to these two blogs will be with it. The blogs are way more interesting than my profile, because we all know people lie in those profiles. Like I'm really going to tell you that I hate to fart or stuff like that. I digress.
What I'm trying to stress in solor-flare intensity is these are two guys that got a grip on words that are astonishing to me at times and this is cool, since at my age, I figured the astonishing organ was about used up.

So, Miles, Captain Xanax had a little ditty in his blog about not needing the physical to make connections and as commentary, I'm feeling these words turn on about 26 lightbulbs over my head and answers popped in and I stopped burning inscense to keep the ghosts away, because now I have words for the connections and I am calm. Here's hoping we are all calm and the ghosts are at bay. With women powering the sun, the ghosts don't have a chance. We just need men in the moon to give us the inspiration.

This one's for you, Captain X. What happens to the curls after post-treatment haircuts? Well, I gave mine to a small human.

Bruce - this picture kept rolling around in my head when I read your blog question about what the hair on the floor said about a new haircut and being so visual, girls can be visual too, I had to post it for you. Call it truth in connections, Hep C took my curly hair, guys used to to tell me my curls were so fine, but then, guys have told me that they loved my name too, or my dog, or my car. So, this pic is post-tx the first time, took my curls but thank god the pic is so dark, you can't see all the gray!! Strangely perverse of me, but I do not care if it is a bad pic, bet Miles would call it Anhedonia. I live in Anhedonia and I know it and I'm not even looking for a road map out of here, Anhedonia is a-okay with me, I get a thrill out of finding the energy to vacuum the house, so kissing and all related activities have kind of taken a back seat to the rest of my life.

Now anyone who does not have Hepatitis C will not understand one word of this post, but basically, Hepatitis C and the hellish treatment for it kind of dulls one's senses and makes intimacy not so important, and that is just one of the fine gifts bestowed by the virus and laughingly, the treatment.

But, then, we all know intimacy is important, it is important like breathing is important, but for some Hepatitis C sufferer's, breathing takes so much energy and this thing called brain fog sets in and you can literally forget the basics of life, where I am right now, why did I walk in this store, what does kissing feel like, etc., and as you might imagine, this memory problem can cause a fair amount of panic. So I concentrate on remembering my husband's name and remembering how he likes his eggs cooked and we just kind of wing it when it comes to the intimacy department.

Wow, wonder if the MitchMAN will mind madly while I meander thru his manly life? Mitch is one of the only noble men I have ever met and I have told him so, but the words came out kind of like...if you found a girlfriend, well, I sure would understand. Would I really understand? Actually, if I could snap my fingers, he and I would be going at it like little bunnies right now, but the first snap of the fingers or the click of the heels of the red magic shoes would be to remove the virus from my liver, then the bunnies. Hep C took a lot from me, and gave me so much......guilt, sorrow, etc. It gave Mitch a ghost of a wife that has a hard time walking up the stairs, so call me silly, but I find it noble that he stays and still can say he loves me. And he does it every day by choice.

So, Bruce, I can only answer your blog question with this pic. My haircuts say alot about me now, but I do not pay attention to what is left on the floor. Now I know what you are doing, because I still do it when I look at this pic, you are turning your head just a little sideways to see if that baby is as cute as she looks upside down. She does. Have a cute one today, like I said before, maybe I will go get a haircut.

Got run over by the Wheel of Life, but caught a bitchin picture of it before it got me!!!

While this may look like an innocent, aged wagon wheel, I discovered this weekend it is really the wheel of life and caught this photo right before it ran over me. Now this subversive wheel, hanging next to a tree near a lake in Idaho looks so innocent, but then, this wheel can be anywhere, just waiting to take out naive folks like me and you all. When I got my tattoo at age 22, in about 1974, a sweet one, butterfly on the shoulder, sexy then, I thought I was quite the rebel. But this freakin wheel could have been in the back room of the tatt shop and probably ran over me, me not noticing the pain because I was gritting my teeth from the tatt, chuggin one of those small bottles of coke they used to make. I have never been a drinker, this is a good thing for my Hep C infested liver, but perhaps if I had gotten drunk like a skunk, I might have skipped the tatt and the wheel and perhaps not contracted Hep C. Old tattoos are one way of infection. My point is, this wheel could be anywhere, but I just happened find it this weekend and got run over again. Trouble with Doc, in earlier posts I explain who she is, but Doc has boyfriend troubles. Big troubles and I'm here wishing the wheel would run over the boyfriend and maybe even take off his head at the neck. Why should I be the only one to experience the wheel with such clarity?

Anyway, Doc is all tore up and this is bad, because med school starts up in about three weeks and besides going out of my mind because my child is in crisis, I keep thinking about her $30,000 investment for this year and is one man worth blowing that much money? For that matter, have I ever blown any man worth that much? All my motherly concerns aside, Doc freaked out, I was in Idaho, couldn't help and all the stress caused my Hep C to kick my ass big time, while this wheel is running over me. Now, I feel a little better today, I took the photo of the wheel and ran it thru some software I have for photo processing to make it look like a water color, somehow, watering down the wheel of life makes me feel more in control, but I still can't get a grip on starting treatment again. I sure as hell am checking out the corners and the porch and the closets for the wheel tho. I will not be caught off guard again. Take care today, by the way, if it makes your day better, all the blues in the photo of the wheel are pretty naturally occuring, it even surprised me how blue it was. I guess being the wheel of life and crushing the shit out of unsuspecting people can cause even the wheel to be a little blue. Hope your day ain't so blue.
Jackie

What? No Picture today?

So I'm posting today with no picture, which is okay, because I got a head full of pictures and I'm not liking any of them. Doc wants me to re-treat my Hepatitis C and the idea is rolling around in my head like marbles, because the decision is similar to deciding to watch the grossest, scariest, most pointless movie you have ever seen. Every day for about a year. So, as you can imagine, I am having a hard time putting my head around this idea, all the while, the notion that the quicker I start, the better shape I am in to try and clear the virus. So I'm trying to make myself think reasonably about this torture that is dispensed in little vials and the final blow, I gotta pay someone for all this crap and I'm knowing ahead of time that there is about a 40% it will work. 40% is such a fucked up percentage, if it was like 60 or 70%, my bones might be telling me I'm a lucky person, but 50 some weeks at 40%? No poker player would take those odds. So no picture today, just me, trying to focus. Later.

Seattle is so FINE this time of year

This is a pic I took at the Pike Street Market, which is you have never been to Seattle, you may have missed it. It is the place where big men throw big silver salmon across the aisles to each other, yelling and fish guts flying, which is way cooler than it sounds. There are miles of flowers, my nose goes into overdrive and every old hippie in the world must have moved to Seattle and has tie-dyed anything created out of fabric. It is like an LSD flashback, only the bakeries are sending out these smells that are to die for, right next to more fruits and vegetables than could possibly be grown in this hemisphere. I put this photo up because the Mitchman and I are going back to Seattle for parent's day at the Doc's orientation week for med school. We go everyyear, just because I happen to feel that for $30,ooo a year, the whole thing should become a parent's temple or perhaps a shrine, but they parade the talking doctor heads and then feed us lunch, probably with stuff from the Pike Street Market, while the students all stand around and look totally exhausted, except for the new ones, and they are all scared shitless.
So I'm getting ready to go to Seattle, which is a hard trip for my liver and my fatigue, but my brain is loving it. I'm also making some spearmint soap, which my sister loves and the whole freaking house smells like Doublemint. The soap is shades of blue, because Doublemint is go, well, gum-colored, a kind of....tan. Boring. I also made some coffee soap, Starbucks coffee works the best, coffee soap removes any kind of scent you might get on your hands, like me when I fill the weedeater or when I cut onions or cook seafood, but it has coffee grounds in it, so if Iuse it in the bathtub, when all the water drains out, there are coffee grounds in my bathtub, making it look like some huge, distorted drip coffee pot. I'm gonna go take a bath with coffee soap to get rid of the Doublemint smell. Hope you all got good smells today and no coffee in the bathtub. Later.

Look what I found!

In an earlier post, I talked about those of us with Hep C being considered a "growing revenue base" for the pharm companies and how one HUGE pharm company was going to start a campaign to spread the joy and healing of treatment, one that I will not name for fear of the winged horse stopping by and kicking the shit out of me. Well, I was on my favorite Delphi board this a.m., speaking with some cool people, smart people and one of them had found this ad and posted it. I HAD to steal it and put it here, makes my photos seem so trivial. And I just can't wrap my brain around what this kind of advertising will do, but I know if this ad gets one person to test for Hep C and then clear the virus, I guess my confusion and totally fucking amazment is worth it. Just call me stunned today. Not sure why either. Perhaps this picture? Or the thought of trying to promote something as incredibly difficult as tx in an ad, making money off the virus and off of us. Then, I realize how naive I am, tried tx once, failed, but somebody made out like a bandit from my failure, my depresson, my baldness, my tears, my riba-rage. (I explain all those cool terms in an earlier post. For whatever that is worth.) This ad really puts another knot in my bonnet. I gotta get my head on straight and rethink tx, doc says liver getting worse, but this ad is causing chaos in the ole brain fog, will take me some time to process. Here's hoping you all have a better day than this guy is. I know I will sure try too.

The photo is the most useful thing I have done today

It's a Hep C Sunday, it was about 101 degrees today and this butterfly picture was the most useful thing I have done all day. Well, it was my Mom's and my son's birthday and I organized a birthday breakfast for them, it went well, someone else cooked and my mommy was happy. Now, my mommy is not a wealthy woman, my father started as a carpenter and eventually became a contractor on his own and was tight with his money, so they are doing okay.

Why do I say this? Because he bought a yacht this week, an abandoned yacht, owned by the bank, sitting for two years yacht that needs cleaning and every hose and pipe replaced, but a yacht still. Since we all live a mile from the mighty Columbia river, boats are a big part of living around here. Yachts are not such a common sight, but I'm still diggin the idea of this big boat and my dad is digging the fact that he got it for like $20,000 and he has 6 kids with husbands and wives, between all of us we have any skill he might need to make this boat sea-worthy. So we went to breakfast this morning and mom got to say, when asked what she got for her birthday..." I got a yacht"....we should all live so long! The boat is a project that will keep my dad out of her hair for a long time and then we will all dig on having it for a couple of years and then he will sell it, probably for more than he paid. He's like that, sounds like a smart guy, but it was a bitch growing up, hauling lumber and pounding nails after school with this guy.

Anyway, the breakfast was early and then it was hot and while I was trying to water the tomatoes and flowers, this monarch stopped by and said hello. I was actually lucky enough to be able to run inside, find the camera and prop it in the bedroom window before this guy took off for Mexico or whereever it is they go for the summer. Perhaps next year, I will yacht to the ocean for the summer, but I can only wonder how much cleaning and painting it will take me to gather those priviledges, my dad is a real hard ass. Anyway, I caught the butterfly on digital and made sure my mommy had a birthday. I'm working real hard to make these things outweigh how tired I am, while my liver barks at me. The butterfly and yacht win hands down, so I guess it was a damn fine day. Hope your Sunday went well too!

This is the link, I hope, to the article I'm talking about in the post below.

SELF PORTRAIT OF ME ATER READING THE ARTICLE ENCLOSED

Okay, so my hair isn't this cool looking and the snakes are just a added visual effect, but I'm attaching an article from my Google alert about Hep C, and after reading the article, finding the perfect picture of how it made me feel led me to this one picture. I can not claim the creation of the photo, but i did add elements and change colors, mostly to keep the real owner of the photo from wanting lots of money from me for using their work. Since it is just you and I reading this, I am not too worried about big guys showing up at the front door to rough me up. The article is attached in a pdf format, which, I don't know about you, but I hate pdf's. You download them and they just sit there, requiring that you read them without any side bars or articles or dancing advertisements, stark words, crawling in my head and then I gotta process them all. So this article, it is about a radio/author/internet personality, Lloyd Wright, I do not know him personally and have only heard him once or twice on the radio here in Washington state. But here, he is known as a dedicated crusader for Hepatitis C and an advocate for the many folks out here getting fucked by employers, insurance companies, etc., for simply contracting an illness. He makes the statement that this phase of public non-awareness surrounding Hepatitis C is like the beginning phases of the education of America and HIV and AIDS, which I can totally agree with, but have Hepatitis C myself, this is one time I wish I was not so progressive, it would have been a lot hipper to get sick at a time when Oprah and Ellen deGeneres and Sanjay Guptah were talking a lot more about my disease and wearing the hec c ribbon and there were millions of bucks rolling in to help develop drugs to stop my liver from becoming gravel in my gut. A concert would be very cool, too.

Lloyd Wright is an author of a children's book he wrote for his grandchildren, and the article talks about him interviewing Melody Beattie, she has hep c and is another author who wrote a couple of books about co dependency and how to get a grip on your own fucking life. Now these two sound subversive to me.....Ya think?

I'm trying to be acid-strength sarcastic here, and failing, but the part of the article causing me to morph into this attached picture is a quote he includes about 20 million Americans being infected with the Hep C virus. This man is a lot smarter than I and I can believe this number, as in my own family, I have lost an ex to Hep C, he was such a hard case, but I was married to him for 17 years and losing him was tough on me and the kids.... fountains of sorrow and grief. Especially when trying to raise the kids, but I have remarried and my pain gets less every day. We lost Bobby about three years ago, now, about two months ago, I buried my cousin from liver cancer, caused by Hepatitis C. This may have you scratchin your head about genetics or dangerous behaviors being shared in a family, but believe me, all three of us could trace our contagions to seperate sources. So 20 million Americans is a number that has me freaked out and I got to blog about it or the snakes really will appear on my shoulder and this whole day is screwed.

Hep C was not discovered for the truly heinous virus that it is until about 1992 and it was in our blood supply and blood products because up til then, the Red Cross figured that "nonA, nonB" Hepatitis, which is now known as Hepatitis C was no big deal and they did not test our blood supply for that particular virus. They were testing for HIV like crazy, good for them, but when I read a stat that says last year more people died from Hep C and related illness...liver failure...cancer, etc., than died from HIV and AIDS, well I get a little, no, alot.... pissed off with the Red Cross. They discussed, for about two years, whether they would test for this illness. All the while, good folks were getting a live saving transfusion, along with a dose of un-necessary sorrow and virus. So, I'm wishing I could put a big bug in everyone's ear about getting tested for Hepatitis C, if you have a tattoo, any extensive dental work, shared razors with old boyfriends (or girlfriends), had a transfusion before 1990 and the big one, if you were in the service and got any of those air-gun shots that sevice men get 10 thousand of, you ought to do yourself a favor and get a hep c test. Because the military didn't always clean the gun after each shot, we have a high percentage of 40 to 50 ish folks who served America well, and are now teaching and building and directing all around us, living normal lives, who carry the virus and do not know it. Takes the virus, like a dragon sleeping under the mountain, about 20 to 30 years to eat up enough liver for symptoms to become evident. Or the loss of someone you love, whoa, caught my attention. That's when I fell into this universe that is secret to so many people, but sounds like it won't be secret for too much longer. Here's hoping no dragons find their way into your life today.

A P.S. Now, any of you reading my posts, all three of us, know that I have this real respect/reverence for another author/bloggist. The link I have posted below, way down on the bottom of my page, next to Google, takes you there, the amazing blog is probably the place anyone with questions should start reading, it is the perfect 21st century intro to Hep C. Although Miles uses more bad expletives than I do and wrote a very funny book having nothing to do with children or dependency or Hep C, he creates his blog populated with words like they were sweet tarts, tastes so good, takes a while before you realize that you are puckering up, that what you are reading is the truth, as fucked up as it exists right now, at this moment, for perhaps 20 million Americans. Reading Miles blog gave me room to breathe and good or bad, helped spawn this blog, which makes me feel a little better every day. Taking some power from the dragon is one damn good way to spend a day, took me reading Miles to figure it out, so stop by and give him a read. Practice patience while reading him, the funny parts are so funny, they are hidden in some good medical information, but will reach out, grab you and make you laugh!!

Ant killer saves my life this morning

It's Friday, which is cool for Doc and Mitch, they are waiting for the weekend because they work all week.... the weekend to me always means a lot more fatigue, seems I'm running to keep up with them, while they just stroll thru the days. But Hep C is like that, changes the "meter" of a person's life, if a person with Hep C is lucky, the "meter" is okay and becomes a part of a routine. Run on the weekends and then crash and burn on Monday, resting all day. So I do okay. But this weekend is starting out with ants in my kitchen, which ticks me off, because I keep it pretty clean, but the ants don't care, they have just sent in more platoons to search out whatever it is they think is here. The picture above is the last one I took of the barn and pasture before we moved, the sun setting over the pasture, you'll notice the horses are gone. In a post before, I explained the horses were pretty mad all the time so selling them brought me just a little sorrow. But when I left the country, I thought I left behind the ants, spiders, skunks and wasps. Still, I got ants in the kitchen, but, wait, there is this ant killer. Bad ass stuff, called "Terro", just the name must cause an ant's ass to pucker. "Terro, ant killer for sweet eating ants". Man this stuff works, a few drops in the marching line and they all disappear in about 8 hours. There are a million ants now and as I drop the stuff in their way, I'm thinking they look like a million viruses, and it makes me laugh a little and I'm wishing for "Terro, the sweet eating virus killer." When they invent it, I'm first in line and if Hep C cases keep growing like I read they are, there will be platoons of us in line, hoping for the same thing. Morning all, hope it is a good one, unless you are a fuckin ant.

This is what can happen the to grandchildren of bloggers!!

While trying to make sure I was laying a good foundation for any reader who might stop by, I have attempted to put pictures to names, makes reading so much easier for me anyway. It's kind of sad, tho, Doc was worried about me putting her name on the blog, as one of her professors might be reading this as I speak, and the great tragedy of it all, is that me having Hep C could really jack her around in medical school. What she tells me is one of the big things that keeps getting pounded into her head is that now docs and nurses are more worried about contracting Hep C than they are HIV. She also tells me that there is about a 30% better chance of contracting Hep C from a needle stick than HIV. So I understand she does not want Hep C associated with her schooling, in any way. Once she is a doc, then all bets are off. But it made me kind of crazy/sad that she should have to experience my issues in such a personal way.

Blogging is making me feel better, right now, I am in this kind of dusty limbo, waiting for some lab tests to ruin my day. And I have a couple of favorite folks to write to, but they are all doing some kind of "one way" thing, so blogging is being good medicine for me this evening. I found a funny picture of one more of the players around here, let's call her the Mad Bee. I understand the Mad Bee, Grammy Jackie was too tired to play, so the Bee copped an attitude. I also have a son, but I am mad at him right now, so he will have to wait for me to post his story. But his children are such a big part of hanging with the dragon, in ways you can't imagine. When my son was divorced, his soon to be ex wanted a letter from my doc saying that my grandchildren were at no risk from catching Hep C from me. Talk about puttin a knot in my fuckin bonnet. The ex got nowhere with her request and I still see the Mad Bee, I think sometimes of how I will explain Hep C to her. Perhaps by the time she is grown, it will be a non issue. A gramma can hope. Later.

The sun is baking my tomatoes BEFORE I can pick them.

It's real hot here in the desert this week, so I've been spendin a lot of time inside. For an outside, in the grass and sweet-peas kind of person like me, it's a bitch. The MitchMAN put up a bamboo fence all around my back yard so I can be out there and it feels like an extension of the house and I feel safe. Looking thru the tomatoes, I find a bunch that are totally ripe on the bottom and green on top, which I then envision my liver must look a lot like that right now, but somehow, I still pick the tomatoes and serve them for dinner. Right in the middle of the livery tomatoes, Doc says she needs to eat some more steak as she is skinny and needs more iron, okay, but then Mitch says we need to try some liver and onions. Whoa, I almost choked on my salad, these words grab me, do I laugh, right after me working so hard to get the vision of the tomato/liver out of my head, but I did say I knew how to cook liver and onions.... and I kept thinkin to myself, because I'm cooking my own liver right now. Hep C is like having a fever in your liver and as you can imagine, the liver gets tired of having a temperature and kind of begins to fall apart. Now Doc wants me to see if they still sell liver at the grocery store, now that's funny.....I tried treatment and work every day at staying healthy just to stay away from needing someone else's liver.

I'm posting a link to an article that I recieved from a Google alert, about pharmaceutical companies doing more direct-into-your-home advertising for their new drugs. You've all seen them...."try cleeeratine, will clear your face. Some side effects include loss of body parts, flushing, chocolate addiction, etc." The article is about the pharm companies telling important people who make laws that the companies will police themselves about the ads they put out to us all. But then, stuck down at the bottom of the page, is a quote from a BIG pharm company that wants to start an ad campaign that says "If Hep C was attacking your face, you would do something about it. Are you ready to fight back? Please read on for further info on treatment available, etc, etc." Now I'm finding this funny and I believe I have the right to find this funny, because hep c did sort of attack my face, when I started treatment, I looked like I was very young. Now, I look like I am getting older, but in decades instead of years. Actually, the pharm company is only interested in the "growing revenue base" which is another name for the 2.5 million Americans that have Hep C and don't know it yet, but if the ads get one person to choose to be tested and that one person can clear the virus, then I will watch all the silly ads they want. Hope the cut and paste of the link works for you all.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid={6d03e41c-85d8-4ca6-ae6c-438d19b711ef}&siteid=google&dist=SignInArchive&archive=true&param=archive&garden=&minisite

A sidenote for you folks needing to live dangerously while laughing non-stop. There is a link on the lower side of my page, way down there, to a truly amazing blog from an amazing guy. If you need your perspective about Hep C tweaked a little and like me, love twisted humor, give Mile's blog a click. His blog has been ongoing for about 3 years now, but I believe it will make me laugh for about three more years. Thanks, Miles, your ten rules for growing apricot trees really worked. Everyone else, take care, the sun is going down and I have some livers, tomatoes to rescue. Later.

More information about the major stars of this little drama.

Why is this woman laughing like this? This is Doc, my daughter, and she's laughin because we're camping at the Gorge, waiting to see Dave Matthews play that night and we both are a little high, mostly on the thought of seeing Dave Matthews, but she's laughing too at a comment about the MitchMAN and I being the oldest people at this concert. No shit, the oldest people, I''m looking around and I don't see anybody older, but we're not caring, because we're waiting to see Dave Matthews, the one issue my daughter and I can totally agree on, DMB rocks and makes poetry and we love the whole day, waiting for the sun to start setting over the beautiful Columbia River Gorge. The concert was everything we had hoped for, but I have to start walking back to camp a little early because I walk so slow and get tired and Doc struggled a little with the ole "should she go or should she stay" for mom. We are going again this year, I think the issue has been cleared up, it is every woman for herself!

We call her Doc because she is in med school and going to be a doc, which is not my idea, but who the hell am I? She got accepted to one damn fine school, had the grades, does the homework and borrowed her own money to go, so I just sit back and love her all the more for what she is becoming, although sometimes I get a little sad, because I do not think she knows exactly how amazing it is, all that she has accomplished. The MitchMan is her stepdad, her dad died in her senior year of college and my sorrow for losing her dad is only exceeded by my respect for her strength, but, again, she does not see that strength. She will find her eyes, I have faith and I can only kick back and let her rock on. It is fun to take her to the doc with me, my doctor is hard to talk to and Doc loves to question him, about everything! I finally quit letting her come with me, give the guy a break, I mean, she's 5 foot 1 inch tall, weighs about 105, would you believe this person was a doctor and more important, could you ask her for a script for Viagra? The MitchMAN just rolls his eyes, Doc and Mitch are close now, she loves him, he keeps telling me that she is growing backbone like she was 6 feet tall and will be a good doctor and will not want to hear any crap about her size or being so cute when she has finished school. One can only hope. Hope you all got hope today. Later.

Gotta have the right ingredients for a good meat loaf, right?

So I'm spending a lot of time, trying to figure out how to make this blog a good read, relevant and some eye candy at the same time. You folks are taking your time to read it, I best do a good job. Introducing all the players in my story seems to be a good foundation, when I throw names about, now you will have the faces to go with the names. This picture is the MitchMAN, man being in big letters, both because he is about 6'4" tall and because he saved my life while I dabbled in trying to cure myself of Hep C the first time. The cure for hep c, for those of you not in the know, is a combination of low dose chemo and one million anti-viral pills a day that I am sure was some kind of chemical torture from a Nazi in Brazil, a science geek somewhere just happened to figure out the combo has some success against hep c virus. I say some success, the figures are dismal, about 40% of us that try are successful and the rest, like me, lost the hair, the mind and then figure out the treatment doesn't work. The MitchMan stuck with me while I was injecting myself once a week, crying constantly, severe depression is called a side, meaning a side effect, but it never hit me from the side, always right upside the head. The anti-virals can cause a side called, fondly, riba-rage, I learned these words after I found myself kicking in a real nice oak closet door one day because I could not close it. The closet door never forgave me, but the MitchMAN always kept his cool, for a big guy, he is the most gentle man I have ever met. well, except for the stories I have heard about him mixing it up in the Navy being overseas in Cambodia/Guam/Japan during Vietnam, but being war stories, hell, I just can't imagine this guy involved in brawls. I have decided the gentleness comes from years of unintentionally intimidating people with his height, although I know from first hand experience that he also learned to use it to his advantage. Let me tell you ladies something, there is nothing as provocative as a tall guy, leaning down, his face in yours and whispering something like "you have dirt on your nose". Wow, the first time he did that to me, well, I started chasing him and always made sure my hair was combed in the top of my head.

So this big guy put up with my insanity while I was on tx, he still gets a bad reaction on Sunday mornings, I know, because Sunday was the day i took my shot, so Sunday was the craziness out of the gate and off and running. He went to work and came home to psychosis, kissed psychosis and made sure all was well. Sometimes I hated him for not ranting and raving back at me, the guilt/beast biting me back, now, I will never know how much it cost him to live with me those six months because he also has too much grace to tell me. My doc is talking to me again about trying treatment again, I'm looking at the doc like I'm gonna take a contract out on him so he tells me to think about it for awhile. Ya think? Here's a pic of the MitchMan, one of my favorites, he's fixin a car for one of our kids. What is it about kids that even when they are like, 25, they still call home about broken vehicles? As parents, we worry about terrorists and murderers, but the kid's broken car? Forget about it!!! I'll let you know if the car attachment/anxiety ever lets up.

Oh, man, I've given the magnolia tree hep c now!

The Mitchman and I used to live in the country, in a converted barn on three acres with horses, the horses were always mad that we took over the barn and they would kick the sprinklers and break them. Now, living in the desert like we do and only getting irrigation water twice a week, a broken sprinkler is a big deal. Before I found out I had Hep C, it used to make me feel like a farming goddess to fix the sprinklers all by myself, never mind that once I glued one at a 45 degree angle (bad thing for sprinklers). It got harder and harder for me to keep up the farming goddess persona which kind of pissed me off, now I know it was the chronic fatigue from my liver screaming at me that it was tired of carrying this virus for 20 some years and my organ decided it was due some attention.

The same time I started treatment, Mitch and I decided we wanted to move to town, well, gas prices rising like a busted balloon helped with the decision, our gas card was becoming a bigger bill than groceries, anyway we decided we wanted to eat better and gas less. So we moved into town, I love this house, but chronic fatigue, this constant kind of ribcage/liver ache, plus the fear of someone I know seeing me now with almost no hair (treatment for hep c makes your hair either fall out or look like the trees on the side of Mt. Saint Helen after the blast)and having lost 30 lbs, I suffer panic attacks in public so I stay home a lot. A LOT. But I can putter, puttering for 20 minutes at a time with no stairs or heavy objects involved makes me feel like a goddess too, so I water the lawn and the garden.

Now the magnolia tree is blooming for the second time this season and my neighbor, the fireman stops by and is looking at the tree, scratching his head. So I go out for a little chat and he tells me that in all the years he's lived on this block, the magnolia tree has never bloomed twice in a year like it is now. My first reaction was, jeezus, he knows I've got some disease and I've given it to the tree..... After I calm down, I figure out it is blooming because I water it a lot better than it is used too and am being graced with an extra set of blooms, which is very cool, but when the flowers fall off, they get all brown and squishy and really can jack up the lawn mover, so I'm not so sure any more about the being graced with the extra round of blossoms. But they do make nice pictures.

A few days ago, I got an e-mail from one of the hep c people I talk with every once in a while, she's talkin about a whole family experiencing hep c when just one person in that family had hep c, kind of a viral cluster fuck, so I'm thinking she's gonna try to get me into some 12 step program for coping with "The Curse of Hep C". But there is painful truth to what she says, my family has been radically impacted, my disease changed us all, even my dog.....which is another story for another day, but today, it is the magnolia tree and I am feeling really bad for anything I might have done to whack out the tree. I'll get over it, in fact, it is hotter than hell here, I best go water everything. Later.

I'm hanging up my posting shoes for the day, giving birth to this blog has kicked my ass. Tomorrow I will try to put something interesting here, Google alerts on Hep C have sent some amazing newstories my way and I'd love to share them with you. I have been so extremely fortunate, the people I have met in chat rooms and on other blogs can dish up whatever help or info about hep c you might need, seasoned with just enough salt and pepper to make the dumplings taste great. I've included a few of those fine folks in the links shakily stuck on the side of my site.

If I can believe what I read online from the CDC, between 8,000 and 10,000 people die in our country EVERY DAY from Hepatitis C related conditions. Hep C can cause liver failure and also liver cancer, which, if I can believe what I read....is the number one reason for liver transplants in our country. Plus, stats online will tell you that liver cancer is growing enough to give breast, lung and prostrate cancer a run for the big numbers.

Now that I have scared the crap out of myself, I need to explain that there are a lot of sick people out there and I mean no disrespect by posting a big ole picture of myself and the cute picture of the dragon fly. You all need to be patient with me as I learn how to work this thing called blogging. I promise it will become more worthwhile as time goes on, or at least you will read and see things that are pretty amazing. I will always quote exactly where my info comes from and post links......as soon as I learn how.

Hangin with the dragon, waiting for a miracle cure!! 

Let me explain this. Being 50'ish, I found out about 3 years ago that I have Hepatitis C and do not respond to the current treatment. Hepatitis C is pandemic in America, but there is so little info available and even the doctors I have seen are woefully short on information. It can be so scary and at times, make me mad enough to spit, that's usually when I use bad words, I guess if bad words offend you, this is not the place to pause and read. Mainly, I created this blog to share what info I have found, what new information I learn every day, and mostly, to try and make people looking to connect about Hep C laugh. The dragon here is flying, someone gave me a digital camera, catching what I see around me gives me great pleasure. Sometimes, I learn things that are not so much fun, but I will wait a bit before I put down the heavy stuff here.....I am still learning how to blog. Blog, what a fine word.

Building a blog.

This blog thing is not as easy as I thought. I'm giving birth here, give me a break.

Jackie