Author Archives: Sans Souci

Part 291: Husband Journey: Has Orvieto Been Lost?

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We had lunch and we went. My son, my husband’s dearest friend from second grade, and I. Am I recovered? Enough, I guess to make my way back out into society and to a nursing home, where Robert has been living for almost three years. As long as I swallow hard and make myself numb, I am OK. Until I walk into the room and see a person in a bed who I don’t recognize. We usually visit in the late afternoon between the time the patients are being tended to and served dinner. Perhaps it is not the best … Continue reading →

Part 35: Blogging for Breast Cancer: The Conundrum

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When you have a health issue there is just so much information that can fit in your head. I’ve sat here in front of a screen for hours, over many days trying to put words together, trying to string moments together like beads on a necklace but nothing felt right or fit.   On July 18, I found myself in a small hospital on the North Shore of Long Island, it’s where the plastic surgeon works to revise previous initial reconstruction surgeries. When I tell people that I had another surgery, they are shocked: People think that after a breast … Continue reading →

Part 34: Blogging for Breast Cancer: Facing Another Surgery

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  I have been unable to sit and stare down a blank blog page for quite a while. The healing process wore me out, I suppose. There is usually an idea that hits me, calls to me, but for weeks, nothing. Then Facebook popped up a “memory” and I decided to use it as my sign from the Universe that it would be appropriate to re-visit. The “memory” was from two summers ago, during a heatwave. July, 2021. It was several seasons after a very difficult time of loss: first my mother, then my husband, who remains in a nursing … Continue reading →

Part 290. Husband Journey: 47th Anniversary in a Nursing Home

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      I had not seen Robert in-person in months. Possibly not since last summer? Last fall? There were surgeries. A wedding. Fear of Covid. Life changes. We visited more via FaceTime where I could show him around the house and hope to tweak his memory. And then on March 2, 2023 after months of stress and worry, I had a mastectomy. Another mastectomy; after nineteen years. I am still recovering from complications three months later. I was determined to visit in person on our anniversary. It was forty-seven years ago that we married. We worked. We had a … Continue reading →

The Puzzler: 5/28/23 The New York Times Magazine

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NY Times, Sun May 28, 2023 Vowelless Crossword Author: Evan Kalish Editor: Will Shortz Rows: 15, Columns: 15, Words: 64, Blocks: 34     Evan’s latest puzzle is in The New York Times Magazine, “Vowelless Crossword” Link to article is here SUNDAY VARIETY COLUMN Variety: Vowel-less Crossword All consonants are welcome in this outrageous challenge by Evan Kalish. By Caitlin Lovinger May 25, 2023 VOWEL-LESS CROSSWORD — This puzzle is the latest installment of a variety grid that comes around roughly once a year. It’s also Evan Kalish’s third such construction and a ton of fun. I am definitely not getting better as … Continue reading →

Part 33: Blogging For Breast Cancer: While Waiting for The Visiting Nurse: Vulnerability

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  Monday, May 8, 2023 12:25 PM I have a wonderful visiting nurse who used to make me her first stop; she’d be here close to 9:00 am and then I could finally shower after she’d remove my bandages, and then put me back together. She was so wonderful that she received a promotion and is now working in an “office” doing training. Though she was kind enough to keep me on as a patient in the field, I have to wait much longer for her to arrive. Hours longer. And, after weekends, when she has bandaged me up on … Continue reading →

Part 32. Blogging For Breast Cancer: What I Thought I Knew

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What I thought I knew was that the surgery for the benign condition, the removal of another papilloma, where a tiny, invasive, lobular carcinoma was found, was the end of it. It wasn’t. I had a mastectomy. There were complications. The issues were corrected while I was still out. I had a transfusion. I stayed in the hospital for five days. I came home on March 7th and have had a 24/7 aide with me since. The TUG flap, back of thigh incision to harvest fat for a breast reconstruction, split open. The wound was the size of a baseball. … Continue reading →

Part 31: Ported From Angel Network Posts: Blogging for Breast Cancer: Tired

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Just posting now, as I have been busy with taxes and thinking I could actually make a holiday dinner. Well I made a small one with one of the aides. Written and posted on Lostsa Helping Hands network April 2, 2023 at 2:43 PM Just to let you know, the wound vac is helping. Tired. Just Plain Tired. Excuse my absence. I am now walking around attached to a “wound vac” which is supposed to cut healing time in half. Whatever that means. I am pushing it today: all I feel like doing is sleeping. Spring holidays are coming. No plans for … Continue reading →

Part 30: Ported From Angel Network Posts: Blogging for Breast Cancer, Second Round

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  This should catch you up…I didn’t feel it was prudent to post while I was away in the hospital, so I posted on a private page. Thank you to all the people who joined that network, who commented and cheered me on.   February 19, 2023 at 3:47 PM A Note Of Thanks Not my regular blog as you can see, but I have included you in a group of people who are very dear to me, Some live near, some live far, but everyone is close. As you know, the most unexpected of events will be taking place: … Continue reading →

Part 289. Husband Journey & (Part 29. Cancer) I Heard it Through The Grapevine

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  The confluence of events continues: It is the countdown to a big surgery. I am not going to announce the date but it is coming up and my head just keeps spinning. In fact, I even had two lousy days of bed-ridden vertigo; it’s been a long time since I was on that ride and I was glad to get off. But stress, ahhh, good old stress will get you any which way it can. So let’s catch-up. My appointments are in order, I’ve had pre-surgery testing by the hospital. I’ve booked an agency for a 24/7 aide for … Continue reading →

Part 288. Husband Journey: I am a Cartoon Living in a Pixelated World

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1/24/23 I began my day, as many of my days are started with acute anxiety. I know all of the tricks to help it dissipate–to an extent– but the thought of a big surgery coming up in about a month, becomes overwhelming. Meditation and visualization pick at the mountain of fear. People tell me to call them and I want to but as it turns out most times, I can’t move or if I do call,  they are not home. Deep breaths. I try to reconstruct myself, like I am made of Legos, snapping the pieces together, so that I … Continue reading →

(Part 28. Cancer), (Part 287. →Husband Journey) A Mastectomy? Carry On

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David Crosby has passed Two blog series collide… Hey, come on, you know me by now; you know how I need to weave a swatch of cloth from my life’s events and then make it into a garment. And you know that it takes me a while, sometimes weeks to do so. And you know how I flee to the past when the present gets tough and the future looks iffy. Stick this patch in the middle of the fabric: The I hate January patch. I detest watching the month crawl along in winter’s darkness, but I love when it … Continue reading →

(Part 27. Cancer), (Part 286. →Husband Journey) A Confluence: Who Knows Where The Time Goes?

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  As we enter a New Year and look back, the passage of time is inconceivable. I hope we all get through the new year  content and ununscathed, or as content and unscathed as possible. As for happy, what does that mean? Here it is: I am stuck at the crossroads of words and life. Of Robert’s  (The “Husband Journey” which began with The Mother-Daughter Journey) and my own health (Blogging for Breast Cancer). Let me try to sort it all out here. I recently had the wonderful distraction of having family stay over for a couple of days. It … Continue reading →

Part 26. Cancer: The Grinch That Stole Christmas

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“It came without ribbons, it came without tags. It came without packages, boxes, or bags.” — The Grinch   Well, folks, it has been a strange week of angst and, probably, over-thinking. Here it is Christmas Day, 2022. A new year is coming, There is a movie playing of me in my multi-plex. In Theater One we have, “How The Grinch Stole Christmas.” In Theater Two there is a movie about my Christmases while growing up in Stuyvesant Town, in New York City. Technically, we didn’t celebrate Christmas but my mother played into the Santa Claus phenomenon. We had no chimney, … Continue reading →

Part 25. The Return of Cancer: What’s Old Is New Again: Serenity Now!

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Written Monday, 12/20/22 To be continued As many of you readers who have been following my blog series “Blogging for Breast Cancer,” know, I am a breast cancer survivor, I had a mastectomy in 2004; each year I tell my story, I raise money, I try my best to help others. So in 2021, years after 2004, things I have never heard of began to erupt: I had the removal of a papilloma (a benign growth that has the tendency to change) as well as the removal of a LCIS (lobular carcinoma in situ which “isn’t really carcinoma.”) I was … Continue reading →

286→Husband Journey: I Wish I Had a River

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The Levin Farm; Cambridge, New York 1972 oil on canvas Art for a typical holiday card was usually a winter photograph taken by one of us. This painting served well as our annual winter scene one year ~ The muse gets lost in the shuffle of life. It took a friend’s email to jolt me awake. Thank you, Phyllis. I wrote back: Merry Christmas to you and yours. Every year, Robert would toil over putting together a printed tome and winter photo to wish an incredibly long list of people the best for the holidays. It was his annual tradition … Continue reading →

285→Husband Journey: Time Passages

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  November 18, 2022   Robert looks at the ipad.  I say, “can you see? One eye is closed.” He opens it. Years ago he was seeing double; perhaps that was a sign of things to come. We had a special prescription made to correct that. A prism was embedded into his lenses. I have no idea where those glasses are: in one of the many places he was in over the last couple of years: the hospital, the nursing home, the hospital again, triaged in the Bronx with Covid, back to the nursing home. In one of the many … Continue reading →