Dima – Page 4 – In the Woods

fatigue

2.2.18 ~ Fota Wildlife Park, Carrigtwohill, Cork, Ireland ~ Lar gibbon (?)

My goodness I am so very tired. A side effect of the radiation that might last up to three months. So I am trying to go with the flow… Radiation seems to have lowered my immunity and I came down with yet another cold while in Ireland. All the same, I’m so happy we went!

One amazing positive thing has happened since my ovaries were removed: I haven’t had a migraine since the surgery. It may be too soon to jump for joy but I’m keeping my fingers crossed and keeping a small supply of Zomig on hand, just in case.

After my second dose of radiation on a Wednesday we hopped on the plane to Ireland. I slept most of the trip over, the first time I ever fell asleep on a jet. We arrived first thing Thursday morning, Ireland time, and after the hellos we both took a nap. When we came downstairs we had lunch and then Larisa and I walked Katherine to her afternoon Montessori school. It felt so good to stretch my legs and breathe in the fresh air.

2.2.18 ~ Fota Wildlife Park
Carrigtwohill, Cork, Ireland
bundled up Katherine

On Friday Katherine skipped school and Tim, Larisa and I took her to Fota Wildlife Park in Carrigtwohill, County Cork. I think I will save most of the animal pictures to pair with quotes but will share a few here.

2.2.18 ~ Fota Wildlife Park, Carrigtwohill, Cork, Ireland
a rook introduces itself

Ubiquitous in Ireland: brown sugar for your tea; greenery; unheated bathrooms; sinks with two faucets, one for cold and one for hot; sheep; and rooks. A rook is “a gregarious Eurasian crow with black plumage and a bare face, nesting in colonies in treetops.” Of course one found me and insisted on telling me its story. 🙂

in the gift shop I bought a book on Irish birds identifying
the rooks we saw every day and everywhere

the rook seemed to be wondering if I understood now…

2.2.18 ~ Fota Wildlife Park, Carrigtwohill, Cork, Ireland
Katherine excited to see penguins!

As many of you know, Katherine adores penguins!

2.2.18 ~ Fota Wildlife Park, Carrigtwohill, Cork, Ireland ~ Humboldt penguin

A wonderful time was had by all!

persistently, abundantly, miraculously

1.22.18 ~ Cork, Ireland
Katherine has been taking good care of her beloved Purple Penguin ♡
photo by Larisa

One morning you might wake up
to realize that the knot in your stomach
had loosened itself and slipped away,
and that the pit of unfilled longing in your heart
had gradually, and without your really noticing,
been filled in — patched like a pothole, not quite
the same as it was, but good enough.

And in that moment it might occur to you
that your life, though not the way
you planned it, and maybe not even entirely
the way you wanted it, is nonetheless —
persistently, abundantly, miraculously —
exactly what it is.

~ Lynn Ungar
(The Way It Is)

After recovering from surgery and the bad cold I then had about a week of feeling good. I couldn’t wait to get back to my chores and even happily spent a morning giving the bathroom a thorough cleaning. It was fun to go food shopping with Tim, run errands together, cook a few meals, do some laundry, and enjoy a lovely long walk on the beach.

Then Wednesday I had my first radiation treatment and it went very well. But the predicted side effect of fatigue hit the next morning and I wound up sleeping most of the day. If that is the only side effect, though, I am grateful. I still feel sapped. Being a morning person usually full of vim, vigor and vitality, I woke up this morning wondering why on earth I felt so sluggish and it took me an hour or so to figure out that it must be lingering fatigue from the treatment. (And why was I looking for the eggs in the dishwasher?)

So Tim volunteered to do some food shopping today. And I am going to make a packing list!

Tim and the kids planned visits to fill the two week period between my 2nd and 3rd treatments! I will be getting my 2nd treatment (at Smilow Cancer Hospital in New Haven) on Wednesday and then going straight to Providence to catch a flight to Ireland to see Larisa & Dima and Katherine!!! And then the next week we will go to Georgia to see Nate & Shea!!! We will arrive home the night before my 3rd and final treatment.

I may be a tired blob but at least these trips will help pass the time and my radiation oncologist thinks they are a great idea. I do hope I get to see Blarney Castle and more of Cumberland Island National Seashore. But whatever happens it will be wonderful seeing the kids again. ♡

endometrial cancer ~ workforce reduction

12.16.17 ~ Katherine and Dima in Ireland ~ photo by Larisa

So, we’ve had a couple of nasty surprises in the past few weeks.

It turned out that my uterus was not only full of pre-cancerous cells, but also was harboring endometrial cancer that had spread more than 50% into the myometrium layer. So while I was still under anesthesia the surgeon took some lymph nodes to be examined to determine if the cancer had spread any farther. We had to wait two weeks for the lab results. Thankfully the lymph nodes were negative. Good news. Hopefully all the cancer has been safely removed but I will have to have two weeks of radiation in January out of an abundance of caution. Meanwhile I have three and a half more weeks to heal from the surgery. I’m not allowed to lift anything over 5 lbs. but have begun puttering around the house between long naps.

My sister-in-law came for the first two weeks and took very good care of me and cooked all of our meals. Tim’s brother came after the first week ~ it was fun having both of them around and helped the waiting-for-lab-results time to pass more quickly. Thank you, Dan & Fran!!!

They say when it rains, it pours. Well, Friday was Tim’s last day of work. “Workforce reduction” to use corporate-speak. What a “thoughtful” Christmas gift…

Time for another nap. I understand fatigue is par for the course, all energy going to healing. But I wanted to let my readers know how I am doing. Hope to be back visiting blogs soon. Steady as we go.

new adventures

10.20.17 ~ Katherine loves reading her books

Katherine and her parents have moved to Cork, Ireland!!! For a year or two. It’s been an exciting summer and autumn as Dima & Larisa have been preparing for this grand adventure. Happily all of Katherine’s living ancestors, four grandparents and two great-grandmothers were on hand in North Carolina to celebrate her 3rd birthday in September. Grandpa Tim has discovered that flights from New England to Ireland are cheaper than flights to North Carolina so we surely will be visiting them soon. 🙂

miso soup

I still enjoy getting cell phone pictures of my granddaughter, from my daughter and son-in-law, giving me little glimpses into what she’s been up to lately. 🙂 Do I ever miss my little sweetheart!

new adventures

Katherine still loves music. So, after dropping off her papa at the airport for a 2-week business trip to Ireland, her mama and I took her to a cool place in Durham called Notasium, a music-based indoor play space. The heat and humidity outside was unbearable the first week of my visit.

Katherine ran and danced with joy. She loved pressing the buttons to hear music from different cultures (Mexico was her favorite) and then running over to the bouncy house to jump with her mom and look out the screen window. Then back to the Touch Notes and repeat.

Katherine had agreed to the rule to wear socks in the play space, but after a while, since she prefers going barefoot, she decided to remove her socks. Her mother gently reminded her of the rule.

6.18.17 ~ Durham, North Carolina ~ waiting for mom to come out of the bouncy house

Then on to a giant slide. One is supposed to climb a giant guitar fret-board to get to the top of the slide!

Later, when we were looking over these pictures Katherine exclaimed, “My beautiful dress!” It is her favorite and she wore it quite often while I was visiting. 🙂 These were the only pictures I got during my two week stay. On the days when I had Katherine, while Larisa was at work, there was no way to pause and take pictures.

But they were delightfully happy hours. My heart melted when Katherine finally started calling me Grammy. And when she loved my (grass-fed beef, gluten-free) meatloaf and roasted baby potatoes and roasted Brussels sprouts. (So I made it again the second week!) Most days we sported matching pony tails. 🙂

I also had a chance to visit with friends from high school living in the area, and family. Tim’s brother and his wife recently moved back from Germany to a place about an hour and a half away from Larisa & Dima. Fran and I had a good day taking Katherine to the Museum of Life & Science. It was a very busy, exhausting, but super lovely visit!

into the mist

Last weekend we flew down to North Carolina to see the little one, and her parents, of course. 😉 A visit to the Museum of Life & Science in Durham proved to be a great adventure. The museum’s tag line is “know wonder.” We spent most of our visit at the “Into the Mist” outdoor exhibit because that’s where Katherine’s curiosity led her.

time to investigate the intermittent mist at closer range…

Activate push-button mist fields and watch as droplets of water suspended in air form clouds that hover over small valleys. How does humidity and wind impact your misty landscape? Take a one-of-a-kind stroll through this cooling landscape and watch as rainbows appear then disappear. Climb through tunnels, make sand sculptures, or just sit, cool off, and observe the beauty of mist, landforms, and rock.
~ Museum of Life & Science website

Katherine is an observer. This little amphitheater/mist pit captured her attention. For a good while she studied carefully how the other children played until the mist stopped coming up from the ground and then how one of them would run up the stairs to push a button on top of a pole to make the mist appear again.

watching another child press the button…

a new friend to play with on the sidelines…

When she finally decided to take the plunge she had a wonderful time and got thoroughly soaked in the mist.

After changing Katherine into dry clothes we all had lunch and then Grammy & Grandpa Tim got to take our little darling on the Ellerbe Creek Railway. She’s very interested in trains these days and there are a few more in the area we hope to ride on during our next visit. While on the train we passed the Hideaway Woods outdoor exhibit and will definitely have to check out the huge tree house playground. But we had all had enough excitement for one day and it was getting hotter as the day wore on. Hard to believe it was still February.

weekend in the mountains

12.10.16 ~ cougar, Western North Carolina Nature Center

Last weekend we flew to a different part of North Carolina, where Tim’s brother had rented a vacation house in the southern Appalachians. So we had a little family reunion and an early Christmas there. We spent the better part of Saturday at the Western North Carolina Nature Center in Asheville. It was very cold there in spite of the welcome bright sunshine!

Katherine was very much interested in understanding and using the map

We bundled up and enjoyed seeing many animals native to the Southern Appalachians. All of the animals there are rescues and could not survive in the wild. Katherine especially loved watching the river otters gliding in and out of the water, but I couldn’t get a good picture of them. They were moving too fast!

12.10.16 ~ Katherine studying the brochure

12.10.16 ~ sunshine made the bitter cold easier to bear

12.10.16 ~ Western North Carolina Nature Center

12.10.16 ~ let’s see, where should we go next?

12.10.16 ~ taking in a bit of rock climbing

we didn’t take this trail but I thought the sign was beautiful

12.10.16 ~ deserted picnic area – too cold for a picnic

12.10.16 ~ coyote, Western North Carolina Nature Center

screech owl, Western North Carolina Nature Center

This little screech owl is blind in one eye and is being used to educate the public about rescuing wildlife. Katherine was paying close attention.

Katherine in Mama’s arms, watching the screech owl and listening attentively to its handler

We stayed in Asheville for dinner out at the Tupelo Honey Cafe, “a southern restaurant with mountain south roots.” Tim enjoyed the food so much he bought their cookbook! And after dinner we took in the Christmas light and music extravaganza at Shadrack’s Christmas Wonderland. There were so many light displays it took us a full hour to drive through the two-mile maze, synchronized holiday music playing on our car radio! It was a pretty dazzling experience.

Sunday we stayed in the cabin, enjoying each other’s company by the fire. Dima, Larisa and Fran whipped up some scrumptious dishes for us. A perfect weekend!

two years old

9-30-16-0397 — 9.30.16 ~ Katherine painting with water

We had a wonderful vacation week visiting our granddaughter and her parents in North Carolina. Katherine just turned two years old and what a busy little girl she is! So many interests.

One morning Katherine and I took a walk and sat for a little while and shared an apple. A squirrel started digging a hole for his nut very close to us. Then we watched him race up a tree and come back down with another nut which he buried in another spot. Katherine asked me to pick her up so she could follow him with her eyes, up and down the tree, burying one nut after another in the ground under the leaves. After a while Grandpa Tim found us to tell us breakfast was ready and he took the picture below.

9-30-16-0420 — 9.30.16 ~ Katherine got a lot of practice saying “squirrel”

9-30-16-0426 — 9.30.16 ~ back home for breakfast, purse and cell phone in hand

One day we went to the Museum of Life & Science in Durham…

10-1-16-0463 — 10.1.16 ~ contemplating mirror images

10-1-16-0501 — 10.1.16 ~ Katherine loves making friends with animals

10-1-16-0502 — 10.1.16 ~ Katherine and friend

10-1-16-0503 — 10.1.16 ~ not sure what kind of animal this one is

Back at home Katherine decided that PB the Penguin needed a walk in her stroller. 🙂

10-1-16-0569 — 10.1.16 ~ Katherine has PB strapped in well

10-1-16-0588 — 10.1.16 ~ Katherine and her chicken friends

10-1-16-0649 — 10.1.16 ~ cute as a button

10-1-16-0727 — 10.1.16 ~ time to take PB the Penguin back home

10-1-16-0740 — 10.1.16 ~ consulting with Mom about readjusting PB’s safety straps

Needless to say we had a great time on our visit!!!