Scattered Thoughts . . .

We've missed most of Lukey's hockey season due to Sheila's health issues over the past seven months but we did manage to get to a couple of games this season. Actually, we've missed most of everything over the past seven months but we were fortunate enough to be able to make a day of Lukey's last hockey game of the season a week ago... Lukey is number 10... Lukey has become a fairly quick skater since we've last seen him play... For Mallory and Kenzie, this was more of a snack and socializing day...  Unfortunately, I was stuck shooting photos through puck-marked glass. This made for less-than-sharp photos, at best. Some of the photos have reflections and some are slightly obscured by puck-marks on the glass. I still managed to capture some decent photos though... These next four photos are a great series...  in the first photo, Lukey is blocking a shot with his skate... the puck is hard to see because it is blen

Our primary impulse buy yesterday... As many of you already know, Sheila and I are worn out, exhausted and quite often we find ourselves walking around in a bit of a daze. I think we're kind of numb.  We've spent far too much time at hospitals since last summer and we are simply worn down and exhausted. No offense to our doctors and our respective medical teams, but we are also sick of doctors and hospitals at this point.  In addition to all these medical appointment and our illnesses, we are also not sleeping too well which is adding to our exhaustion. My extensive spinal injuries, bone pain and joint pain are keeping me up at night not to mention that the past seven months have been a bit stressful and that is contributing to sleep issues as well. Sheila is into a whole slew of new side effects due to her new cancer treatment which includes pain, hot flashes and drenching night-sweats while attempting to get some much needed rest. Difficulty sleeping has been compoun

Sue's ICU room reflected in the windows overlooking Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains. It has been a couple of days of serious reflection and I even captured a photo of this in a literal sense. We just can't seem to break away from the hospital! We certainly are on a consistent roll between me, Sheila and now Sheila's mom, Sue. The past couple of days have been spent at the hospital with Sue and we expect to do the same through the long weekend ahead.  Sue certainly has had a rough couple of days and she really had all of us worried yesterday! (And there are a lot of "us" in Sue's life!) The next few weeks promise to be quite rough for her as she continues to slowly heal. On the positive side, Sue is now stable and, hopefully, steadily healing.  Sue slipped on the ice right outside their garage yesterday morning... slammed to the ground... left with visible bruising, a bloodied head and a relatively small bleed on the brain. She doesn

I think I mentioned in a previous blog entry that Sheila will be starting physical therapy but I could be wrong. Neither one of us is thinking all that clearly because our heads are spinning again due to being immersed in hospital visits and thoughts of new problems with Sheila's health  (relatively small problems, however) . In case I haven't written about it before, I suppose I'll write about it now. When we saw Sheila's Oncology Radiologist in early January, the doctor noticed that Sheila still has some significant swelling in the area of her affected breast and her side where they removed the cancer. She then asked Sheila about any pain. Sheila sort of shrugged her shoulders and said something like, "well... nothing that is unexpected after surgery and radiation."  The doctor gave her a questioning look and asked, "what are you referring to as nothing that is unexpected?" She also added that the swelling she is seeing in Sheila is not norma

Back in August, when Sheila was first diagnosed with this latest cancer, she received a lot of love and attention from all her friends, family and co-workers. Visitors and telephone calls were very common during this period and it was all very much appreciated not only by Sheila but by me as well. Besides, we needed some social interaction and, actually, still do very much. The social interaction is a nice break from the seriousness of cancer and we don't get much social interaction since the cancer has returned. Although Sheila had changed jobs a year ago, her old co-workers all got together to provide a card and some much needed cash to help with any of our expenses. That was definitely appreciated by both of us. Thank you, everyone, for that! Around the same time, Sheila's old boss from her old job called to ask what she could do for us. Wilhelmina has always been very thoughtful and a supervisor anyone would want to have on their side so her question came as no surprise

As I wait on a phone call from my doctor's office, I figured I would write about something more lighthearted than all this depressing health nonsense.  In early January, I shot some photos of the grandkids while we were playing "Life Junior". We bought this game for the kids for Christmas and we erroneously expected it to be exactly the same as the original game of "Life" but perhaps simplified and shorter (which sounded good to us!) . It actually is quite a different game than the Life game we played all those decades ago when we were kids.  The game board in the Junior version is physically smaller. Money is always in the single digits and transactions are rather rare (we'll save those constant transactions for Monopoly) . That being said, it still hurts when you need to pay for something and you only have a dollar sitting on your side of the board. Instead of money being the focus of the game, there are stars to collect by accomplishing productive tas