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Sunday, September 10, 2006

Cool Mornings are a blessing

I love cool mornings. Maybe if we had a longer winter or a shorter summer it wouldn't be so exciting to move into the time of year when we have cool mornings but as it is, I rejoice in the slightly chilly air. It's nice to have the option of going on a walk a little later in the morning too. In the heat of the summer here the only decent time to walk is before 8:00 am and I'm not an early riser anymore. I used to be. I went years where sleeping until 6:00 am was good and I was often up by 5:00 am or earlier. Now I frequently sleep until 7:00 am and it often takes me several hours to feel like doing anything. I hope we have a long stretch of time where I can open the windows and not use heat of air conditioning. That's my favorite time of year. It's more than one time and generally falls between seasons. I really ought to plant lettuce in my garden boxes. They won't take much prep work. I could dig out a little compost from my untended heap, mix it in and I'd be set to go. Although I'm not actively composting any more, underneath a big pile I throw leaves and the occasionaly clippings on, I am please when I run a shovel underneath that there is rich black broken down compost to add to my boxes. At least that was the case this spring when I did plant a few things. Even something small like planting lettuce is a sign of hope for new things yet to come. I was pleased to note, when I walked up to my garden boxes yesterday, that I had some volunteer broccoli and kale plants. I generally let a few plants bolt and voila, they set seeds and I have a volunteer garden. I should have some volunteer lettuce also but I want to plants at least one box with mixed types of lettuce and another with spinash. Now that I think of it carrots, radishes, cauliflower and a few more broccoli and kale plants would be good. I love thinking about something besides melanoma. In many way melanoma has replaced gardening for me. Weird as it sounds it's true. The time I used to spend gardening as well as with physical activities (running, swimming, etc.) is now spent researching melanoma. It's almost become an addiction. I don't feel like I obsess that badly about my own situation but I do tend to keep gathering information, and to what end? I already have a pretty good idea of what my options would be if I have a recurrence. I keep thinking that in time I'll move on to other things but that doesn't seem to be happening. The hardest part for me is that my situation keeps changing. I don't think every little thing that happens to me signals a melanoma recurrence but I am having trouble turning off the voice which is screaming inside of me, this isn't right. I have always had good instincts. I have always known when something big was going on that couldn't be ignored. Even with my nodular melanoma which was on my hip for decades, I knew something wasn't right with it. I had such a bad experience going to a dermatologist when I was pregnant who dismissed it as nothing because it was symmetrical and made me feel dumb that I swore off dermatologists but even so I knew something wasn't right. When I had an ovarian cyst, I knew I didn't have the flu and I got the tests I needed to end up having surgery to remove a fast growing cyst in the early 1980s. Fortunately that was benign but it was huge and would have been a problem has it not been taken care of. I knew when I had endometriosis that I wasn't just PMS ing more than most people and when I had laporoscopy laser treatments it turned out the out of control endometrial tissue had bent my falopian tubes into v shapes which was why I wasn't getting pregnant. Fortunately, that time they could be lasered off and I conceived my daughter. I have that same kind of feeling now. I know something is seriously wrong with me and it's different and changing. I don't know what it is. Hopefully it's not melanoma but it's SOMETHING and as long as I can, I will keep pushing for answers. As long as I do that I won't become depressed and hopefully I will be thinking more and more about gardening and less and less about melanoma as time goes on.

1 comment:

Friske The Comedian said...

I gotta agree, I love cool mornings. It's the best time of year when it's around 60-70 degrees, no AC needed, I love it.

BTW, I haven't forgotten about your picture, just procrastinating, there's a difference, but it IS COMING!!

Bobby