Relapsed High Risk Myeloma - Update June 21 2013

Up to YELPING SCREAMING (yes, that was my voice) spasm cramp in my left calf at 5 AM despite wearing my dorsi-flexion boots all night in bed.. Jani came running to help me get out of bed to stretch it.

Another cold morning with new snow on Mt. McCaleb. WHERE IS MY SUMMER on this first day of summer 2013????

Went to the Post Office for the mail and did my almost "daily" (sometimes, twice daily) shopping at Ivies. Visited with my father for awhile when I delivered his mail. He sits at the kitchen table every morning and reads the Idaho Post Register cover to cover and does the crossword puzzle. Then, he rides his exercise bike for 33 minutes EVERY morning...he has not missed a day since I was diagnosis backed in May 2011.

Jani cleaned the whole house and we picked up for our next visitor - Sare Stoddard from Hawaii via Colorado who was flying in via DIA later this afternoon.

While Jani drove to Idaho Falls Airport (100 miles in 1 1/2 hours), I unloaded and loaded the dishwasher and made copies of the Old Mackay GRADES 1-12 School that served Mackay from 1903-1967 to sell at our museum.

My energy level is pretty good, but I have to walk slowly. My resting heart rate is now in the high 80's, but I'm not really out of breath when I walk. My lunch was too spicy and I suffered all afternoon. If my stomach did hurt, I'd feel FINE!

Jani texted Sare's arrival (her plane was more than an hour late for some reason).

Sare and her husband, Randy and I met on 17 May 1972 when I was a student nurse in Denver, Colorado when I was a student nurse in Denver, Colorado. As a student nurse in my Obstetrics  rotation, I had to follow a couple having a baby and then write a paper about the experience. It was very near the end of the semester and I still had not been assigned a pregnant family, so my instructor had me and 2 other student nurses just go to the hospital and wait for someone to come in to have their baby. Sare and Randy arrived to have their first child and our nursing instructor came to the break room and told us that the father (Randy) was a doctor and which one of us wanted to take "them" for our OB experience. In unison, we all said, "NOT ME". So, our instructor (one of the best of my whole nursing education - Mrs. Marilyn Browne) broke 3 toothpicks and held them in her hand had us "draw straws", telling us the short straw had to take "THE DOCTOR" and his wife.

Well, I drew the short straw and the rest has been a wonderful history! Sare and Randy had a beautiful baby girl that evening, "MY BABY". I had to do a home visit for the paper and Sare and I became fast friends! We took baby Stoddard for her first ice cream in my 1971 yellow VW bug - the cutest baby on the face of this earth!

Sare grew up in Hawaii and she and Randy ended up there for their work lives. I was fortunate to visit several times over the years and in return, they visited  Colorado - our friendship has been LONG and WONDERFUL...and "MY BABY" is married pediatrician with two of her own children and a wonderful brother, sister-in-law, and niece. Life if good for Stoddards and for me, for that part. 

And it is great to have Sare here now for a couple days. Randy is waiting back in Colorado before they return to Hawaii. I MISS Randy too!

Finally, Jani and Sare arrived in Mackay.

Jani went to Amy Lou's to watch the boys next door ride the mechanical bull for rodeo.

 Griffin 

Jackson