Toenail Joy is Essential in Sickness or Pandemic

A few weeks ago, before salons were shut back down again due to COVID-19, I got a pedicure for the first time in months. Because I almost always wear closed-toe shoes, very few people get to see my neatly-trimmed peachy-pink toenails.

But I do.  

And they make me happy.

I learned the importance of toenail joy during my grueling three-year battle with cancer.

At times, I had multiple lines coming out of my body and tubes in my nose and mouth. At one point, my arms were swollen and the color of eggplant. My hands had to be restrained so I wouldn't pull out my tubes. After a brain biopsy, the quarter of my head that was shaved sported a nasty scar. Paralyzed from the waist down, I couldn’t control my feet, even to hold them upright as I lay in bed. Machines massaged my legs to prevent blood clots and my feet were attached to braces to keep them in place and prevent them from flopping to the sides.

But through it all, my toenails looked fabulous.

That made me happy.

My friend Mary came up with the idea, bringing a portable pedicure kit with her from Northern California to my hospital bedside. I remember worrying for a second that the strong nail polish aroma would annoy my roommate. (But it was only for a second, because she had been complicit in smuggling in several kittens into our room, so she had already tested the hospital roommate etiquette limits.)

Months later on a return trip to a different hospital, Mary gave me another pedicure. Because I was in a hospital bed at various facilities for four-and-a-half months unable to walk, my frame of vision was limited. I couldn’t see or do much, but I could see my toes. If they had resembled toenails a la Howard Hughes, it would have depressed me more than I already was. After months in the hospital, I learned health aides will help you with a lot, but pedicures was not on their list of services.

My peachy-pink toenails today

When I was released from the hospital to my home, I had a home nurse who was a godsend. Skilled, trustworthy and kind, she would help me with all sorts of things. When I learned she could transfer me into my wheelchair and help me into the car to take me to my doctor’s appointments, I had another idea.

Sure enough, she was able to take me to my local nail salon for periodic pedicures. I couldn’t get in the spa chairs which are part of the luxury package. I sat in my wheelchair and put my feet in a tub of water. It seemed luxurious to me.

For about a year after being released from that lengthy hospital stay, I had to return one week a month for more intensive chemotherapy. One time, a female doctor came in to check on me. She chatted with me, listened to my heart and lungs and checked my extremities. When she got to my feet, she said, “Nice color.” 

“Thanks,” I said proudly. “I always like a peachy-pink or coral.”

She looked confused.

“I was talking about the color of your feet. It shows that your circulation is good.”

I guess that was good news.

Three years after my non-Hodgkins lymphoma diagnosis, my cancer returned. I needed a bone marrow transplant.

 Ugh.

I could finally walk (with a walker), my hair had grown back and I was getting back to my new normal life when I got this news. I knew nothing about transplants and didn't know anyone who had ever had one. I learned it would entail stronger chemotherapy sessions (seven times the amount I had before), total body irradiation and a month in the hospital feeling the sickest I had ever felt.

I was given a thick booklet to explain the lengthy carefully-orchestrated process.  And I was assigned a transplant coordinator nurse to answer all my questions. 

I dutifully read through all the information. I was nervous about all of it, including the description of the hospital stay, the restricted diet while in and out of the hospital and a no -contact-with-pets rule. But if it meant saving my life (and it did), it was necessary. But there was one requirement that annoyed me.

Nail polish was prohibited. 

When my transplant coordinator called on the phone to answer any questions I might have, I asked her about the nail polish rule. Even on toes? 

Yes, she explained. Doctors could tell a lot about your health by looking at your nails.

What about clear nail polish? I asked.

Well, she said. That would be OK.

So during my transplant, I lost every hair on my body, I had excruciating mouth sores that made it nearly impossible to eat and I had an allergic reaction to an intravenous antibiotic that created itchy red welts all over my swollen face and body (my Jabba the Hutt phase). I was too weak to read or focus on a TV show. I threw up many, many times, and I became crazed and hallucinatory after frantically pushing the button of my self-administered morphine pump. 

But my toenails looked fabulous.

And that made me happy.

Also, the transplant -- almost 12 years ago -- saved my life.

That makes me very happy.

  

In Sickness and in Health, Cancer and Disability, Allie the Cat Was By My Side

We adopted Allie when she was about a year old on rescue day at a PetSmart. She had recently given birth to five kittens, which were snapped up right away. She looked kind of sad, like a mother would look if her babies had been taken from her and she was in a cage being sized up by customers. But she was adorable, a calico cat who needed a home.

My husband spotted her as a viable addition to our family. We were looking for a slightly older cat. Our last cat was completely nuts when we got her as a kitten. She lived a short, dangerous life, breaking a tiny hip jumping down from our backyard fence (so much for the "cats always land on their feet safely” myth) and running away one day only to meet her demise at the cruel hands (claws?) of A) coyotes or B) Satan worshippers. The family jury is still out on that one.

So when we adopted Allie, all five members of the family had to meet with the rescue organization reps and promise to take good care of her,  keeping her indoors only, for what we hoped would be a calmer life.  

But living indoors with me turned out to be a wild ride. Little was I or she to know.

A couple of years after we adopted Allie, our family moved from Phoenix to Southern California. Allie rode in my car's passenger seat as we drove nearly seven hours across the desert. She took to our new house well, but seemed to attach herself to me. As I wrote in a previous blog post  she was a one-person cat and I was her person.  

The attachment deepened as we both got older and sicker. She was never a lap cat and she didn’t like to be picked up. But she was loyal. She used to run upstairs and down, napping in various spots. She had to be in my range to be truly happy. If I was working on the computer upstairs, she would curl up in the adjacent daybed. When I was on that bed, recovering from surgery, she settled herself on the computer desk chair. During my months-long-decline in health, she put up with various nurses coming to give me lengthy intravenous injections and other treatments. She avoided strangers if she could and was  super picky about who could pet her and how they did it.

Allie liked to keep her eyes on me

Then when I got sicker and sicker, she was bereft. I entered the hospital one day in  February 2006 and didn’t come home for nearly five months. She gradually warmed up to my husband and some of the many friends and family who arrived at my house to help out. Love (or at least like) the one you’re with became her feline motto. 

When I returned home to a downstairs hospital bed, she was wary. I didn’t look like I did before. I was frail, used a wheelchair and needed help getting in or out of my bed. She stayed nearby but didn’t jump on my bed for a while. When she did, she didn’t like the crinkly noise from my waterproof mattress pads. Or the commode that was often in the center of the family room.  She was wary of the nurse who came every day to care for me. And the physical therapist who helped me learn how to walk again, with mobility aids that frightened her. When the house was clear of activity, she got comfortable sleeping at the foot of my bed or near my head, purring loudly. 

After more than a year of intense chemotherapy and another year of more rehabilitation, I had a relapse, needed more hospitalization and a bone marrow transplant that took me away for a solid month. 

Meanwhile, Allie was showing signs of age. The vet prescribed a senior diet, food that would make her joints feel better and medicine for arthritis. Once described by her first veterinarian as having “a sweet disposition and good looks to boot,” she was too arthritic to groom herself and her fur became severely matted. She was unhappy and in pain from the mats.  The vet shaved her so she could start anew. She didn’t like the look or the feel. And despite regular brushing, her mats returned. 

I could relate. At various points in my treatment, my hair was thin or sparse or shedding or gone.  I didn't like my look either. For months, I struggled to groom myself, too. Just leaning against the sink to brush my teeth or wash my face exhausted me. 

But as I slowly got stronger (and hairier), Allie got worse. It became difficult for her to ascend the stairs. She would stand at the foot and cry before making the painful hike to her litter box.  I could relate: I rarely go upstairs: it is possible for me, but extremely tough.

My living area became the downstairs. Allie’s did, too. We moved the litter box down. Allie wouldn’t even go into another room other than the one I was in. She would perch herself on our couch, and when I moved around the house during the day using my walker, she would quietly turn accordingly, so that her eyes would be on me. When I walked into the kitchen, she would follow me.  When I sat at the kitchen table to read my newspaper or work on the computer, she would sit on the chair beside me, nudging my arm or thigh. When I lay down for a nap, she would join me on my bed for one, too.  At night, she would sleep on the top of the couch so she could see me when I went to sleep and when I awoke.

She would take my place on the bed when I left, under the covers if she could get there or smack in the middle on top. But she wouldn’t sit or lay on top of me. Or anybody.  Like I said, she wasn’t a lap cat.

That changed a few weeks ago. Suddenly, when I would lie in my bed she would jump up and sit on my chest, her purring face inches from mine. If I was reading or holding my phone, she would rub her face on the corners of the phone or book, rendering whatever I was trying to do impossible. When I got up she would grudgingly jump down, but would soon return at the next opportunity. It was weird and annoying and sweet. She also warmed up more to my daughter and husband, climbing on the couch to snuggle next to them when they sat down. Wary and tentative her whole life, she was suddenly needy.

Then one Friday, when she hadn’t eaten for days, we arranged to take her to the vet. That day, she tried to jump on my bed and fell to the floor. She tried again and couldn’t make it. My husband picked her up and laid her on my chest for what would be a final time. I petted the sides of her face the way she liked it and she purred contentedly. 

Suffering from sudden kidney failure and a heart condition, she died in a hospital two days later.

The Arizona rescue organization had saved her from the pound days before she was to be euthanized. A pregnant stray, she was in foster care while she had her kittens. Then we came along, saw her sweet, sad calico face and invited her to join our family. We gave her a home and 14 years of life she would not have had. She hung on during the unexpected ride that my cancer created. And, like us, she adapted to the twists, turns and realities of my long fight. 

Like so many amazing friends and family members, Allie joined me on my horrible journey to hell and back. And like them, she brought love and devotion. 

In sickness and in health.

Cause of My Post-Cancer Dropsies? God Knows

After I got out of bed the other day, I dropped my iPhone on the floor. A little while later, I opened a new carton of milk to pour on my cereal. I dropped the top on the kitchen floor. About 90 minutes later, when I was in my exercise class, I dropped my water bottle. When I got home, I decided to bake banana-strawberry muffins. When the timer went off, I pulled the muffin tin out of the oven, placed it on top of the stove and was going to pierce one of the muffins with a toothpick to test for doneness. The toothpick dropped from my hand, bounced on the stovetop and landed under the burner, which was under the muffin tin.

“Crap!” I said. 

A sugar-free hard toffee dropped from my mouth, bounced on the stove, and hit the floor, rolling underneath the edge of the oven.

It was not yet 11:30 a.m.

It was a typical day for me. Since I recovered from cancer, I seem to have a case of the dropsies. An extreme case. I drop things or knock them to the ground, large and small, easy to pick up and impossible to pick up. All day, every day. Some things are so preposterous that if you wanted to drop them, you couldn’t do it. 

On occasion, I ask myself: Did I always drop this many things? Or does every incident now burn itself into my brain because it’s SO ANNOYING to pick it up now that I am disabled? I believe it’s a relatively new thing. It’s just since I was stricken with cancer almost 10 years ago and rendered disabled that I have been dropping things at home and at stores, in parking lots all over town, sometimes in impossibly aggravating and laughable ways. 

I have three theories on this. One is that it’s somehow related to the tumors that were in my brain, creating nerve damage that cannot be reversed. (Real life examples of this are my neuropathy, screwed up leg veins, balance and walking issues.)

The second is that it’s related to chemo brain, a real side effect of going through toxic doses of chemotherapy (in my case massive). I’m not sure if it can last more than six years after your last dose of chemo, or if it can render you not only fuzzy-brained but clumsy-handed, too. 

My third theory is that God saved my life not once (when I survived a rare, horrible type of lymphoma) but twice (when I made it through a scary bone marrow transplant). So now he’s just screwing with me for his amusement.

It reminds me of beguiling scenes from the 60s movie “Jason and the Argonauts,” when Zeus and Hera were watching and controlling events on Earth from their vantage point on Mount Olympus. It was like a board game, only in Jason’s case it involved ships and multi-headed monsters and the Golden Fleece and in mine it includes an unending number of falling items.

When I came home after more than four months in the hospital and rehabilitation facilities battling cancer, I couldn’t walk. Intensive chemo and rehab therapy had gotten me out of a state of paraplegia, but the recovery was slow. As I slowly got better, it was difficult to carry things. I remember dropping things or knocking them over, but someone was alway there to assist me. As my strength grew and my flexibility and balance increased, I marked my progress. I remember telling my friend triumphantly that I had dropped a grape on the kitchen floor and I was able to pick it up myself. Yay!

Be careful what you celebrate. As if to test my new abilities, I started dropping and knocking stuff over like crazy. Some are easy to pick up. But others -- many others -- are not. At home, I will often have to ask for help. In stores and in parking lots, I politely ask strangers to come to my aid. In the grocery store, when I have my fold-up walker inside the basket and I am pushing the cart like every other shopper, I don’t appear disabled. So I will point this out when I ask someone for help, just so they know I’m not just bossy.

Some dropped items are merely annoying. These include pills, medication bottles, remote controls, phones. Others are more than that.  At home, I sit at the kitchen table on a chair with two pillows on it. One or both of the pillows are frequently falling, sometimes as I get up, sometimes minutes after I’ve left the table. Many

days, when I eat at the table, something will drop between the plate and my mouth, bounce off my lap, and land on the floor dead center beneath the table, just where I can't reach it. Peas, grapes, pieces of popcorn, nuts: it’s like a trail mix in the making on the floor down there.

Many dropped things require outside assistance. Like when I drop shampoo, conditioner, razors and soap in the shower. Or when any number of lip balms and lipsticks hit the pavement as I exit my car and hang my purse from my walker. Or when I miss the mail slot at the drive-though box and the wind blows my letter away. Or when I drop my keys outside my car door on a rainy day and they bounce directly under my vehicle.

A few are costly, such as when I dropped a nearly full bottle of my favorite perfume on the tile floor on my bathroom. Or the time I dropped a nice bottle of white wine as I was putting it away in the lowest shelf of our refrigerator door. I had just poured a glass, so the bottle was nearly full and I hadn’t even sipped the wine, so I wasn’t tipsy. It fell about four inches to the ground and shattered to pieces. 

Some are just puzzling. Once, my husband found my debit card behind the passenger seat of my car, on the floor. I didn't know my card was missing.

I’m a dropping maniac in the grocery store. I often leave fresh fruit or veggies on the floor as I shop in the produce department.  I’ve unleashed avalanches of tomatoes and apples. When I grabbed for some asparagus once, two bunches tumbled to the floor. I’ve dropped yogurt trying to toss it into my basket. Once, I dropped just the envelope of a greeting card. The definition of impossible is

picking up a single envelope on the floor while my walker is inside my shopping cart and I am balancing myself by holding onto the basket handles. I left the envelope there.

For two days, I kept a record of everything I dropped just to quantify things.  Each day, I totaled 10 or 11 items in a 12 to 14 hour period. Three were pill bottles, two were containers that held hairspray and mouthwash, one was a container of cantaloupe, breaking open upside down, spreading little wet chunks of fruit all over the floor. One incident occurred when I draped a belt on a towel rack and the rod broke off and fell to the floor, spilling two towels, the rod and a belt. The final episode one day happened when I removed a casserole from the oven, dropping it just a few inches from the stovetop, sloshing hot sauce inside the oven door, on the stove, onto the floor and on my ankles.

There are days when I think my third theory (divine intervention) is definitely in the lead, when clumsiness alone cannot explain these mishaps.

A fateful visit to Walmart was one of those days. I was going there specifically to return something and because I had old eyeglasses to put in the Lions Club box so they could be reused by people in need. To understand the context for this bizarre combination of mishaps, you first need to understand my shopping routine. I exit the car after dragging my portable, lightweight walker across my lap. I walk to an empty cart and balance myself while I fold the walker up so it fits in the basket, handles up. I put my purse in the front of the shopping cart and I am ready to shop (and drop). My first stop that day was the return desk. While in line there, both of my handles on my walker -- which I wasn’t touching -- fell off simultaneously on the floor. Then they bounced and landed in front of me, beneath some empty carts. These are five-inch handles that had NEVER fallen off. I can’t yank them off if I want to.

After I enlisted help to retrieve the handles and attach them to my walker, I proceeded to the return desk. Then I realized I had left my pack of eyeglasses in the car. So I walked back to my car and placed the cart leaning against my vehicle while I reached in and retrieved the glasses, then shut and locked the door. Just then, my shopping cart, with my walker and purse in it, started to roll down the inclined parking lot, coming to a stop against a car about 25 feet away.

No one was around. I stood, holding on to the side of my hot car for balance while I waited for a non-criminal-looking type to come to my rescue. My purse, phone, wallet and car keys were across the parking lot, ripe for stealing. 

I spotted a man who looked like he wasn’t a serial killer exiting the store quickly with a bag in his hand. I had to holler at him to get his attention, then yell to explain that the shopping cart far away from me was mine. I asked if he would please bring it to me. Which he did. 

I went into the store and delivered my bag of used eyeglasses. A charitable act, for God’s sake.

I think I may have heard snickers coming from Mount Olympus.

Hospital Roommate Etiquette: Rule Number Six

Here’s the latest in my list of etiquette rules all hospital roommates should abide by. The  first five were:
 No whining or screaming;
 Be considerate;

 Don’t bring live animals into your hospital bed;
 Control your visitors;
 and No criminal acts or threats. 

The sixth involves reacting to a situation. You are in close proximity to your roommate. You may not have seen her (in my case, I was confined to my bed for months and couldn’t walk around the room. And unless the curtain between us was pulled, I never laid eyes on several of my roomies.) But you’ve heard her, you’ve heard her visitors, her doctors and nurses and you know more than you want to know about her. You’ve overheard her most intimate, embarrassing moments and she, yours. 

And so the next rule of etiquette relates to your involvement in your roommate’s life.

Rule No. 6. Only butt in when necessary.

There are plenty of opportunities, believe me. But unless it involves a serious health or comfort situation, you should keep your comments to yourself.

Once, I listened while a woman had many visits during the night from the nurse. Why she couldn’t sleep, I don’t know. But because I was a few feet away from her, I couldn’t either. She was in her 90s, she kept coming back to the hospital, she couldn’t eat solid foods anymore and I had heard her doctor tell her family that there was really nothing else he could do for her.

She was dying and her days were numbered.

Her caregiver showed up one day and was concerned that she was so sleepy. She yelled at the patient (she was hard of hearing) to ask if she had a good night sleep. And she kept expressing puzzlement at why the woman kept nodding off.

I knew the woman had had a rough night, but in the scheme of things, it really didn’t matter. So I kept my mouth shut.

But on another day, when that same lady was hooked up to a machine for a breathing treatment, a visiting minister came in and offered her Communion, a bread host that was exactly the type of thing she couldn’t swallow. The respiratory therapist had stepped out of the room momentarily and the minister asked her daughter if the woman would like to receive Communion.

Now I knew the daughter hadn’t been there much and wasn’t up on her mom’s condition. (The caregiver knew more than she did. That’s another story.)

“Sure!” she told the minister. “We’ll just stop the treatment.”

I imagined the poor old woman choking to death on the host and quickly considered injecting myself into the scene. Just then the therapist came back into the room,  became instantly alarmed and put an immediate stop to the dangerous plan.

Another day in the rehabilitation ward of another hospital, I did have reason to intervene in a roommate’s case. Twice. The patient was a lady who only spoke Korean. I mean she did not speak or understand a word of English. The nurses would try to explain things to her as best they could. The patient’s husband would show up and stay with her for about 10 hours of the day, and he would translate as needed.

But that left many hours in which she was at a loss for what was happening and the nurses were at a loss on how to get through to her.

She was a screamer. She was afraid of anyone in scrubs and anything they wanted to do to her, and she would let them know. Loudly.

She also used two words over and over. When her husband was there,I learned they meant “pain” and “cold.”

I can’t remember what the word for cold sounded like, but the word for pain sounded to me like “ahpo.”

The poor thing was apparently always cold and in a lot of pain.

I listened as a nurse came in to see what she was hollering about. “AHPO! AHPO!” she said sternly. 

“OK,” said the nurse. She left the room. Awhile later, she came back with a banana.

“We didn’t have any apples,” she told the woman. “Hope this is all right.”

Shortly thereafter a new nurse came on duty. The husband still had not arrived. I called her over to my side of the room. It was a spacious room and our beds were facing each other, behind curtains.

I told the nurse if she happened to hear a word that sounded like “ahpo”, it meant pain.

Another night, I also butted into my roommate’s business. She was recovering from brain surgery. The staff was concerned about her getting up and falling down while she was by herself. So they pushed her bed against one wall so she could only exit from one side. And they stationed an attendant outside in the hallway for a couple of nights, just watching her to make sure she didn’t try to get up.

They would always explain how she could summon help by pushing the button. If she needed to get up to use the bedside commode, they told her, PLEASE push the button. I don’t think she understood at all. She never pushed the button in several days I was with her.

In the middle of one night, after the guard no longer stayed outside our door, I heard some telltale sounds. She didn’t mutter a thing. But I heard the trademark “rrrrrip” of tape from her adult diaper. I heard her rustling around and I heard her sit on the bedside commode.

I pushed the button and called the nurse. “My roommate is not supposed to get up and she’s up!” I announced when the nurse wanted to know, via speaker, what I needed.  One good thing about having a roommate who doesn’t speak English, she didn’t know I was ratting her out.

The nurse raced in and chastised the patient, helped her back to bed and told her not to EVER get up alone and to PLEASE push the button if she needed something.

Again, she didn’t understand.

One time I was on the receiving end of someone butting in to my business.

When I was alone on my side of the crowded room in the nursing home from hell,

 my call button fell to the floor.

I uttered a mild expletive.

Immediately, my ancient, nonverbal roommate pulled back the curtain between us. She looked at me quizzically and made a sound. Yeah, I said, I dropped my call button. And because I was disabled and bedridden, there was no way I could retrieve it.

And, bless her heart, she understood. She pushed her button and the nurse came in our room and solved the problem.

When you are seriously ill and hospitalized, it’s all you can do to worry about your own health. You don’t want to be nosy or intrusive. But sometimes it’s OK to butt in. Kind, even.