Past the saga

I had a checkup yesterday. And it went well!

My PFT was practically back to baseline, it's numerically just a smidge lower than it was after I got out of the hospital back in September.

Augh, we are so glad and thankful. I know many were praying hard, and I thank you for that.

The PFT is not the entire picture, mind you. I have had times where I feel fine and my PFT is bad and times where I feel awful but my PFT is decent. The good news is I am feeling better, along with having a better lung test yesterday. But, I still want to keep pushing. And I'll always be like that, hoping for better, even if it might not actually happen.

The bad news, in a way, is we don't really have a good explanation for all this. I mean, it appears the probable key factor that started to turn all this around was switching up my steroid inhaler, as I wrote about on here. That did help, but it still took a couple more weeks for me to really start to feel it. I cautiously told Jarrod last week that I had two days where I didn't notice feeling short of breath as much. I took that as a good sign, but I didn't want to get too ahead of myself. After all, when this entire 'saga' started, it was a huge shock. Sometimes I wonder if I am so hyper-tuned-in to myself and how I feel daily that I miss the bigger picture. Granted, this is why I keep my health journal, but still.

These past two months have been tough. At times, it's tough to keep hoping for better results. At times, it's hard not to feel trapped and helpless about the situation. At times, it's downright frustrating. I finally feel like we can put this behind us, in a way, and move on. Back to normal.

Jarrod made a great dinner last night, my mom brought me flowers, and I had a chocolate milk stout, one of my favorite beers! It was a good day.

Etsy

For years, I've thought about opening an Etsy shop. I've been through a slew of ideas for it—some of them good, some of them silly—but I never actually did anything about it.

Back in September, I decided to finally stop putting it off. My plan was to sell my crochet stuff and some printables (which are quotes and such that I design and people can print at home; they're an easy thing that takes little effort on my part.) I set a goal of having it open by the end of October, so I would be ready for the holiday rush.

Well, that deadline came and went.

On the first Saturday of deer season, 11/11, I worked on it almost all day. It was tiring. I had to redo so many things and by about 4pm I was ready to quit, call the whole thing off. It's hard to explain, but the more I did, the more little things I found I needed to do or decide on.

For example: shipping. You have to list the shipping size and weight of your item. Okay, I guess I need to go to the post office and figure that out. Another example: everyone who sells these printables things has an image of them displayed in a frame to show an example of how it could look. I went all over the house taking photos of empty frames so I could do that too. But as I looked at all of the photos in other Etsy shops, mine looked awful in comparison. Their's were clearly some sort of stock photo, which I then briefly looked into, but I didn't want to pay for a photo for this Etsy shop that I may or may not even make any money on.

I decided I had one good photo of my own, so I used it over and over. I got some listings created, but they were all so random, there was no theme or rhyme or reason to them. I really started losing confidence in the whole thing.

My store is going to be called Laughing Dog Co., and in that vein, I started thinking I should probably sell mostly dog-related items. I love dogs—duh!—and instead of offering random crochet items, how about focus on dog sweaters. I also have ideas for dog-related printables.

Yesterday I was really having a hard time deciding what to do about the whole thing, though. I still had a desire to open my shop for the holiday shopping season, but that felt completely unattainable at this point. I would love to press GO and open my shop... the problem is, I don't have hardly any items to sell right now and I am worried that would not give a good first impression. I have been crocheting as much as possible without driving myself mad, but I only have two dog sweaters.

I haven't even had a chance to work on the printables I mentioned, so basically I'd be opening a shop with a few random quotes to print and two dog sweaters? That doesn't sound like something I'd even want to show off to people. I set high standards for myself (typical of only children) and while I've gotten better about that, I would not be okay with having a barely-stocked Etsy shop as a representation of what I'm capable of.

My crocheting is a hobby and for now I intend to keep it that way. I don't want to worry about taking orders, which would then make this more like a business and no longer a fun hobby. That was not my intent going into this. That being said, I would like to sell some things. I don't want to keep making things, list the items (which cost 20¢ per listing) and never sell anything. That's where my hesitation and my desire to have my ducks all in a row before opening comes into play. There are tons and tons of Etsy shops out there who have tried and failed for myriad reasons. The people who are most successful with this are the ones who:

1. have a plan and a bit of a niche/theme for their shop;
2. are good at SEO on Etsy;
3. have social media components to their shops (I went ahead and claimed social media URLs in case I'd ever want to use them); and
4. make their shop look legit with good branding and good photos of their items. 

After all this, I finally feel like I have a good plan and a good vision; it's taken a bit longer than I'd hoped, but I feel a lot better about everything going forward. I'll still sell doilies or snowflakes too, even though they don't really fit a dog theme, but whatever. I am going to keep working on it, and I WILL open my shop, hopefully by the end of the year. And that excites me! I have put a lot of time in to my shop, but for now it's still not enough and I need to keep working. Once it's ready, I'll let you all know! 

The injured cardinal

I shared this on Facebook, but yesterday I saw a cardinal sitting just a foot from the house on the deck. He wasn't moving, so I grabbed my Nikon and started taking photos.

I think he flew into the glass door, because there were some feathers stuck on the glass. They were still there this morning, even; must have been a hard hit.

He just sat there, sort of dozing off at times, for over 10 minutes while I took photos of him. I think he was kind of out of it and needed the time to recoup before flying off. I inched closer and closer to the glass door and he never moved a muscle. He could not have cared less that I was there.

I started to get a little worried I might have a dead bird on my hands again. On Wednesday, I found a dead junco in the front yard. No idea what happened to it, it was still very intact and clean. I was worried—until I noticed the feathers on the door—the cardinal might be sick or dying too. I think he hit on the right side of his head, too, because a few feathers around his eyes were smashed and ruffled.

Josie came over at one point to investigate, too. I shared the photo of her staring at him on her Instagram account and realized something that should have been obvious: not everyone knows what a cardinal is.

I know I've mentioned her Instagram account before, and since we/she has friends all over the world, I had multiple comments saying they'd never seen a bird like that.

Cardinals are so common here, I never really gave much thought that cardinals weren't like a 'northern hemisphere' kind of bird or something, I figured you might find them in parts of Europe too. But turns out they only live in parts of the US and Mexico. 

They really are beautiful birds, when the sunlight shines on those red feathers it is such a beautiful color. And when I think about it, our area is home to a lot of colorful, beautiful birds. How lucky we are!

Small update

I checked in with my doctor on Monday.

I let her know basically what I had written on here: I wasn't worse, but wasn't sure how much better I was either and I had encouraging signs with my wheezing stopping and having better exercise tolerance.

The game plan is to keep up what I'm doing; keep pushing myself—within reason, obviously—on the treadmill, and I will see them at the end of the month. We'll repeat the usual PFT and see where that is.

So please keep praying. I know I'm not giving up and you shouldn't either! My hope is to get back to baseline, where I was. If I can, I feel like things can get back to normal, we don't have to worry about transplant talks just yet, and things will calm down for now.

Friday Fast 5

Today's is EXTRA random and semi-pointless, but nevertheless, here's what's been plunking around in my brain:

1. This fall weather has been great! Although it was a bit on the cold side last weekend.
2. Monday, I noticed a bunch of juncos—aka snow birds—hopping around on the deck! It's a good sign when the juncos have arrived from Canada. In other bird news, the squirrels continue to be a nuisance no matter how many times I send Josie out on the deck to scare them off. Those buggers just never learn... Anyways, it made me laugh the other day because there was a line of birds on the deck waiting for the squirrel to be done pigging out. They kinda hop around and turn their heads, looking at the squirrel like "Hey, you done yet? This is OUR food ya know!"
3. There is a new majong club at the library here. For half a second I thought that'd be fun—I play majong on my iPad, learning how to play in real life could be cool. Then I looked at our Missourian photo gallery from their first meeting, and it was literally a bunch of people sitting around, instructions out, trying to figure out how the hell you play majong. Maybe they figured it out eventually, but it didn't look encouraging.
4. I just did a small load of Josie laundry. I washed all of her sweaters in preparation for the cooler season. They kinda smelled, all piled up together. I probably should have washed all of them at the end of the season earlier in the year, but oh well.
5. We are getting a new paper shredder, and I could not be more excited. We had a tiny one that bit the dust a few weeks ago. It just stopped, mid-shred. I couldn't get it to back up or advance, nothing, so there is a mostly-eaten Walgreens paper just stuck in the thing. It was never a great shredder anyways and was so annoying because it constantly quit, saying the bin was full when it wasn't. I hated that thing. I have probably 3 boxes worth of stuff that have piled up over the years and I am so ready to get rid of it!

Been in a rough patch

I haven't talked about this on here yet, but I haven't been doing so great.

It started over a month ago, I guess. I started to have more shortness of breath and I was getting breathless just doing normal tasks around the house.  I kind of did a 'wait and see' with it, because a few days after it started I had my hospital follow-up appointment anyways.

At my appointment, my PFT was not good. My lung functions are right back to where they were before the hospital, which is not encouraging. I called Jarrod over lunch that day, crying, because it's just so frustrating. You do everything you're supposed to do, but sometimes it's just not enough. It's just so hard...

We tried a short stint of steroids, and those seemed to help, but not for the long term. I had another follow-up last week and my PFTs were the same. So any progress I may have had while I was on the steroids was short-lived.

We decided to do another stint of prednisone and switch the steroid inhaler I'm on to see if that could help. After a week or so on the new one, I think I'm a little better, but I'm not sure if it's helping enough. I was starting to wheeze quite often, which is not normal for me, and that has pretty much ceased. So that's good. But yesterday was a bit of a weird day; it started out rough, and I wasn't breathing too well, then I cleared out some gunk and felt better, and was able to manage 3.0 mph on the treadmill last night! I don't even know the last time I was able to do that, comfortably. So that's encouraging, maybe I really am starting to make some headway.

The plan is for me to call and check in with my doctors next Monday. I hope I can continue to improve my exercise tolerance through the weekend and that, in turn, will help improve everything else.

You know, this whole "rough patch" has been difficult on me and Jarrod. I feel like our lives are sort of on hold. We're trying things to see if I can improve, and if I can then that's great and we can get back to normal, and if I can't... well... that's not great news. My lung function is around 25%, which is extremely low. It may not sound like a lot, but trust me there is a huge difference in how I felt at 30% versus 25%. If it stays that way, that also means we need to start talking about transplant again because I'm just that much closer to needing one. I mostly keep those thoughts at bay and am not worrying about them until I need to, but it's a truth that needs to be aired. If we can't turn this train around and this is just where I'm at now, it will have a broad effect on many aspects of our lives.

But for now, I'm hopeful. We haven't exhausted every option available. If we have to, I might need another hospital stay. It would suck to have to go in again so soon, but it's happened before. Most recently, when I was out of the hospital, I was nearly back to baseline. So I have a hard time believing that in 4 weeks after, something happened that was so drastic to cause me to lose 5 percentage points and make it so I'll never gain that back. Maybe my steroid inhaler, which I've been on for 4+ years now, stopped having much effect on me anymore. Maybe just switching that up is all it will take, who knows.

Hamilton

I am excited to say: I scored us some tickets to see Hamilton!

Single tickets went on sale this morning at 9am. I almost forgot about it, but I checked in around 9:30. 

For those unaware, Hamilton has been the hottest show on Broadway since last year. Everyone says it is a really great show, and the music is great. It's finally going on tour, and tickets sell quick. The Fox (of which I am on their email list) excitedly announced—what feels like a year ago—they were one of the US cities chosen for the tour. 

This morning was just nuts. I heard there was a line at the box office with well over 400 people that went on for blocks. Trying to buy them online was a chore in and of itself too. 

I was immediately placed in a "virtual waiting room" due to the high demand. It said DO NOT refresh your browser, it would automatically refresh as I moved up. I had no idea where I was at in the queue, I could have been #30 or #800 for all I know. Eventually, I was shown the calendar with the performance times to choose from. The Saturday shows were already sold out (mind you, this was less than an hour after tickets started.) Oh boy...

I picked a show, and picked the cheapest seats available, and then got an error screen of sorts saying "Unable to reserve your seats at this time. Please try again." blah blah blah. I tried, and tried, and tried, with that message coming up every time. The system was just that bogged down. It said to try calling Metrotix too, which I gave a shot, and got a busy signal. No surprise there. While I tried, 3 more shows sold out.

Finally, over an hour and a half later, after trying different dates and different sections, after receiving that message I don't know how many times, I got a screen with two seats on them. I had no idea where they were, but I didn't care at that point. At first, I honestly didn't even know what date I ended up with because I had tried so many different combinations. I clicked to Proceed. Then the countdown began, the god-awful "you must complete your entire order in 8:00 minutes flat or you lose your seats" countdown. I had my wallet next to me, prepared for this. Except, turned out, the password I thought was correct was not working. Aaahh! So, still while the 8:00 minutes is counting down, I had to do a Forgot Password thing. Log into my email I used for this. Get the new password. Sign in. Type in my credit card number. And press send, lest I end up back in the perpetual "unable to reserve your seats at this time" mess. I feel stressed out just remembering it! 

But I did it! Whew. It's weird because it feels like an accomplishment, haha. I bought the tickets, and we are going, and I'm stoked! I told my friend I bet they would be sold out by the afternoon, and I was right on that one. By 2:00 pm, they were gone. 

5 hours to sell out 23 performances. Wow.

Proud dog mom/nerd

I am quite the proud dog mom!

Last Friday... I groomed Josie. And I am so stinkin' proud of myself.

I don't know if I've ever really talked about Josie and her grooming needs on here before. In efforts to make a blog post out of this, I'll share, but I'll try not to bore you to death.

So when we got our little cairn terrier, I was oblivious to the special grooming needs of a cairn. I did a lot of research and learned she is supposed to be "hand stripped" which is a term for pulling (aka, stripping) out dead coat. It sounds weird and painful, but it's not. The old hair will come right out with a gentle tug. With the proper tools, the old dead hair comes out while any new, good hair stays in place.

Now, I should make a note here: most cairns are not groomed this way. Unless they are show dogs most cairns get taken to the groomer to be trimmed or clipped just like any other small dog. For 97% of people, this is fine (and certainly MUCH easier), but there is a consequence to doing it this way. The hair follicle grows differently than ours and over time, trimming it off—instead of pulling it out and allowing a new one to grow in—will soften and damage the coat. Cairns are supposed to have a harsh, weatherproof coat, and cutting the hair almost surely gets rid of that texture and rain-resistant benefit.

I've searched far and wide, and there are virtually no groomers around here who will hand strip a dog. It is extremely labor intensive, and I determined that if I wanted her to have a natural, proper, hand stripped coat, I would have to do it myself. I actually enjoy it too. It's kind of calming and a bit like creating a sculpture. If my allergies and lungs could tolerate it, I might have switched careers to groom dogs, but that's just not a good idea.

I cannot tell you how many hours I've spent thinking about and agonizing over what to do about Josie's coat. I want to keep it rough and how it's "supposed" to be because I do like that look. It looks more natural, there's better color variety, and I like the harsh feel of it. Plus, it's much better for her skin to get rid of the dead hair.

Over the years, I've taken her to two different groomers in town. I became frustrated with the first one, then tried a second one. I started to groom Josie a little more myself, then would take her to my second groomer for her to tidy her up. She did a good job, but I started to worry way too much of Josie's coat was getting clipped.

Back in May, at the cairn terrier event at Purina Farms, I met one of Josie's Instagram friends from California. She was the sweetest lady and gave me a crash course in grooming Josie the right way. It was amazing, getting a hands on lesson, and I started to think I might actually be able to do this!

Since May, I've worked on Josie here and there, small areas at a time. I finally bought a grooming table, which was pretty much the final 'tool' I needed to fully commit to this.

Last Friday was the day! After about five or so smalls sessions, about 30-45 minutes each, on and off the table, we finally finished! And I think she looks really good! It's not perfect, but I'm still learning.

I'm just so darn proud I can do it! There are still some areas I trim with a scissors, because battling with her to tug out her hairs just isn't worth it. Most of it comes out easily, but some of it does not. Some areas, like her belly, are very very sensitive and simply don't need to be stripped, they can be trimmed up.

I've been smiling at her every time I see her, knowing this is the product of my hard work. She looks very cute, and she also looks like she lost a few pounds with so much of her hair gone haha.

Here's the before and after:

Done with meds

I've reached the end of my latest hospital stay/doing home meds. I had a PFT today and it was the same as last week. Which... is a tad disappointing, that another week's worth of medicines didn't really move the needle. However, I do feel better this week, as far as getting around easier. So at least there's that.

I'm not quite back to where I'd like to be, and in looking at my numbers, I see the last time I reached over 0.90 was a year ago. For all of this year, my baseline has been comfortably parked at 0.88. I realize, that's only 0.02 less, but that's still a big deal to me. Every little bit counts, and I'm gonna keep trying for over 0.9 as long as I can.

But, I know that keeping up with my exercise will give me the best shot I have of reaching those kinds of numbers, and even if they're unattainable, my quality of life will remain greatly improved because of it.

The problem with exercise is that the progress is so gradual it's barely noticeable, you know? Ugh, it sucks. I think, by nature, we like to see results in the things that we do. And I think this explains why it's just so damn hard to stick to an exercise routine or even get started in the first place. I've realized it's also a challenge for me since I go through this virtual reset every six months when I have to drop everything and go in the hospital, or even when I end up sick it becomes hard to exercise; it's hard to form true, lasting habits when that happens.

We also aren't very good at remembering things, like the day to day stuff. Hardly anyone, with probably the exception of some individuals on the spectrum, could tell you what they had for dinner two weeks ago. Likewise, it's hard to always remember where we started, versus how far we've come when it comes to things like exercise or whatever life improvement you might be pursuing. It's hard to see the benefit of working out for ten minutes more, versus calling it quits a little early and skimping here and there. But in order to gain ground, one must stay diligent.

Eclipse Day Has Arrived!

Wow, that was incredible!

It's 2:20 as I write this right now, and the eclipse is still happening. It's almost over (23 minutes left), but the moon is still passing over the sun.

At 11:48 this morning is when it got started. I went outside, and sure enough, you could see a tiny blip over the sun where the moon was!

As we neared totality, the temperature dropped a few degrees as they said it would, and it was noticeably more comfortable outside. Today was hot and humid, but it was amazing that the clouds stayed away for the most part. Initially the forecast wasn't looking good, there was a good chance it would be cloudy. But pretty much the whole time it was clear, and though there were clouds in the sky, they weren't blocking the view.

So initially, as stated in a previous blog, I wasn't planning to take a photo during totality. Or any photos, really, since I would need a special filter the rest of the time. That all changed on Friday...

On Friday, my supervisor sent out an email to myself and other photogs in the company saying if we hadn't gotten filter material from him, he still had some. I didn't realize he had any! I ran by work and picked some up, in case I changed my mind.

I cut it out and got it in place yesterday, set my camera up to the specific settings I wanted it at, and was ready to test it out. I wasn't sure if I'd get any images or not, but as the moon was moving over the sun I figured I'd give it a try.

So this morning, I got it set up on a tripod, out on the deck, and started testing things out. Amazingly, it worked! Not only was I getting images to show up, they were actually GOOD. You can even see some sun spots.

As the morning progressed, and my photos were turning out far better than I expected, Jarrod pointed out that maybe I should rethink things. Ahead of totality, we could remove the filter, prep my camera, and get it all in place so once it happened, all I needed to do was press a button. So that's what we did, and it was nice having Jarrod here to help me with it, otherwise it surely would have taken longer.

In the final 5 minutes of the partial, it was noticeably dark, in the middle of the day! I had Pink Floyd playing in the background (because I'm a nerd haha) and as the final song on Dark Side of the Moon, "Eclipse," played, we were watching and watching as the moon seemed to speed up to cover the sun. Then the glasses went black, and when I took them off, it was incredible.

Almost there!

The sky was a beautiful dark blue, like at dusk. I was trying to take it all in, looking at the horizon to see the colors of the sunrise, and also keeping my eyes to the sky. I snapped my pictures, checked the viewfinder to see they were in the frame and all was good, and stared in awe. I almost cried, my eyes were tearing up I was so moved. The feeling this provokes in indescribable, and it's different for everyone. And there are some that aren't really impressed, too.

It still went by quick. I wish I could have stared at it longer, but time is fleeting, right? If nothing else, witnessing this proves just that: 2 minutes and 28 seconds flies by way faster than you think. As I tried to revel in the last moments, it became clear the moon was moving away, the diamond ring was about to appear, and it was time to put our glasses back on, and to recover the camera.

I took a few more photos as the moon continued on, but soon decided to take my camera down. I was excited to download my photos to my computer. Though they looked good on the viewfinder, sometimes it's another story once you look at them in larger scale.

But they all turned out amazing!

I am so glad I did get those photos. Taking a photo is a very technical thing. There is planning and there are so many settings you can change and tweek to get the perfect photos, essentially: it takes hard work to get it all right. It's hard to explain that to the average person when you just say "Hey I got this photo!" but that's part of the excitement and, I don't know, accomplishment behind it. These images were taken by ME, not someone else, and that is very special to me.

Today is something I will never forget. I might even try to travel for the next one in 2024, to experience it again. It will pass through southern Missouri, and that's a fairly short drive compared to most. The Missourian got a photo of some people here from France, from Spain, and my doctor had a couple staying with her from Holland to see this. I was skeptical about the crowds they kept claiming would come, but I guess it's true. And I guess you could count me in that club too, if we do travel to Cape in 7 years.

What an amazing day!

My photo!