And this is one of the ironies of my life, really. I have a device to help passively stretch my jaws. Using it involves placing it between the frontmost upper and lower teeth. In the past three months, I’ve been through scans, biopsies, surgeries, a week in the hospital, recovery time at home in pain, then getting a bit better, then taking a downturn with massive pain on the left side (not the side on which the surgery was done), then managing to use the device for a couple of days, then having the tooth start to fall apart, which led to so much pain that once again, the device was put aside. So, I need to be able to use the device before the eventuality that all my teeth are pulled so I’ll be able to get fitted for fake teeth. Yet, I cannot use it because my teeth insist on falling apart at a rate that grows faster and faster as time passes. One would think they’d have a way to treat this in a better manner, given everything that is known about trismus and what happens when it isn’t stressed enough to a head and neck cancer patient that keeping the jaw muscles active (even though typically, you’re eating through a tube for a great while) is vital.

In other news, I had a PET scan on Tuesday. I was expecting results by the end of the week, but remarkably enough, the radiation oncologist called the very next day with results: the stuff that needed to come out on the right side was all collected, and it looks clear. What does not look clear is the left lung, which shows fluid. Being the nice guy he is, he called the radiologist to have them pull the previous scans and xray from before surgery, and wouldn’t you know it: fluid in the left lung. It appears that walking pneumonia may very well be a valid side diagnosis to all this cancer business after all.

And that brings me to my personal hell week. Next week, an appointment with the oncologist, to go over the PET scan and to plot a course of action (likely: quarterly scans to keep an eye on me, since they don’t know what else to do with me since I insist on being different). An appointment with the pulmonologist, to talk about this fluid on the left side, and figure out a course of action for that (likely: a base, post-surgery xray, with a followup in a couple of weeks, which leaves me with more time to cough and get short of breath from time to time). A visit with my accountant, to tell me that I need to write a check. And also a possibility, an appointment with a nutrionist, given my weight loss in the hospital that took me down to about 100 pounds, and my inability to get more weight on even though it seems like I am constantly shoving food down my piehole – and, to add to the fun, I seem to be bouncing between 98 and 100. If I lose any more weight, the chances of having to have a feeding tube put back in increases, and quite frankly, remembering that particular experience from last time, this is not something I want to do again.

And so we go, moving from one thing to another, dealing once more with the aftereffects of another cancer diagnosis that should not have happened. The garden is almost entirely a lost cause, but what did I spy the other day when taking a brief foray out? Eggplants! Black, shiny eggplants, hanging on the plants that have managed to survive brutal, incessant heat and brutal, damaging storms that roll through here and there. The okra continues to be a scary, vibrant presence that needs harvesting in the worst way. The second round of peanuts have come up, and the way the weather looks, it will be warm enough into December that they will have maximum growth. I have yet to start any flats for fall because it simply continues to be much too hot to plant those things out by the time they would be ready to graduate. Overall, the season has been lost, again. But another season does approach, albeit slowly, and I’m looking forward to it.

Then the car runs out of gas and you drift to the side of the road. The dinner guests cancel, a family member calls to tell you a sudden mass of locusts have appeared and have eaten half your plants to the stems, the sun goes behind a bank of clouds so huge it blocks out the entire rest of the sky, lightning strikes right next to the front wheel of the car, the music slides into one of those annoying car ads with the screaming announcer until they get to the fine print. And you run over an egret while getting the car safely off the road.

OK, so it wasn’t that bad. Still, five years to the month from the original cancer diagnosis, here we are again. Those of you who have read the travails of recovery here know pretty much how this came about, but here’s the shorter, mini version for those who don’t: five years again, I was diagnosed with oral cancer despite having no risk factors at all. Surgery, radiation, and chemo later, plus scans over several years, and in July 2009, the date of my last PET scan before all this, I finally got the all clear. Then I started having teeth pulled due to the damage to the jaw and teeth from the radiation, which for me involves hyperbaric dives to promote healing and help prevent necrosis of the jaw bones, to which I am now susceptible due to the aforementioned treatments. As part of those dives, back in October they took a chest xray in addition to an EKG, and saw a slight shadow on the upper right lung, but nothing defined and nothing significant (i.e., it could have just been something on the film, and given my previous scans and all clear, nothing anyone thought was anything).  In May, after another tooth extraction, it was time for another xray because it had been six months. This time, whatever unknown radiologist reviewed it noticed a difference between the old and new (a “new nodularity” as they call it) and thank you to whoever that radiologist was! From there we went to a CAT scan, a PET scan, and a biopsy, which turned out to be inconclusive, probably due to the sample size. Upshot: surgery to remove a wedge of the upper right lung, along with a lymph node against the trachea that looked suspicious.

Why, one might ask, go through the pain of lung surgery for an inconclusive biopsy? As my oncologist pointed out, the way things light up on a PET scan like this dime-sized lesion did are often not anything else. Beyond that, we have my terribly strange history as far as weirdo cancers that I should not have. So, surgery it was, on the 6th, and on Friday the pathology report came back: the lesion was cancerous after all. The lymph node, thankfully on the report, was “unremarkable”, so it appears to have been confined to just that one area. The oncologist said the report indicted the margins were clear, but small – and to my mind, that looks like another round of radiation treatment coming to follow up on the surgery, something we will discuss with him on Monday when we see him. I am guessing that for precautionary reasons, that’s what will be happening. I’m not particularly looking forward to it, because I now have such firsthand, closeup knowledge of how it goes, and because it will delay my fuller recovery process (garden!), but we will follow their recommendation, since that’s what needs to be done.

I’ve been home since Monday, and this week has seen some remarkable work outside by an all-female crew, doing the things I normally would be doing: mowing, weeding, harvesting, cleaning the chicken coop, and so forth. Thanks Gabs, Angie, and StacyP for your sweat equity around the homestead! I owe you.

And now, back to plotting for the fall season, as the universe has once again not been cooperative in giving me a full season with which to work, and the rest of the summer is now a wash. August is garlic time, although I’ll probably store it for a bit before planting as it’s simply too hot down here even in late August for fall garlic planting. Other items can be started in flats, like brussels and whatnot, so they’ll be ready to  put out into the frames in fall. By then, we’ll also be ready to put in the next round of carrots and peas, amongst other things.

I’m not much on bonbons. At least for myself, not these days.

No, dear readers, yours truly has actually been doing things like whipping up batches of pizza dough for the freezer, babying plants along and harvesting goodies (six pounds of cukes the other day!), making bread and butter pickles and foisting them off on anyone within arm’s reach, cooking up some homemade french onion soup (delicious!), and pulling weeds (a losing battle).

But I’ve also been undergoing yet another round of tests, from an x-ray to a CAT scan to a PET scan to a biopsy, and on the 6th your intermittent blogger will be back in the hospital, this time to remove a wedge of lung that has a suspicious lesion on it, along with a lymph node hanging out near the trachea that also looks suspicious. None of this is good news other than the fact that a) it’s very small, and b) it’s very early, so given my overall good health, my total lack of smoking, ever (which makes it all the more ironic this second time around, having some crap I absolutely should not have),  and my relatively young age, should be not as big a deal as it would be were I a two pack a day puffer with cardiac issues and high blood pressure.

Still, it’s no fun, and I’ve had enough of medical stuff these past five years to last me a lifetime – in fact, it seems like I’m making up for a lifetime of not a whole lot of medical anything, doesn’t it? And still, the same people ask the same question over and over again: smoker? The only thing I smoke is bbq on my Bradley, thanks. They’re always surprised, and I suppose given their professions, they should be, since it still surprises the hell out of us here that me, of all the people in this family, should be receiving these diagnoses. On the plus side, I’m probably the healthiest person in the family, so my odds are a lot better for recovery than most everyone else’s.

The doctor says a 4-7 day stay in the hospital (let’s aim for four here), and then six weeks for recovery (too long for me), which will put us at the beginning of planning stages for the fall garden. Once again, it seems another prime season has been lost in some fashion, this year from a late start due to an extended illness and death in the family a few months ago, and now an interruption in the height of the season due to surgery and recovery. One of these days, we will have all the pieces together for an actual, planned, well-begun, well-managed season.

The tomatoes are soldiering along as well as they can, although the heirloom Cherokee Purples went down to blight due to an extraordinary run of rain we had. The paprikas, the stars of last year’s garden, and the bell peppers are both a major source of disappointment this year, as neither are producing. The latter is especially discouraging, as I wanted to stash plenty of roasted red peppers in the freezer for those times when I want to make soup. On the plus side, as we’ve been going through all this testing/scanning nonsense, I did get some more flats started, and put in (I think) about 36 starts of a bell pepper called Fat N Sassy. If there is a more appropriate name for a pepper that should be perfect for roasting, I don’t know what it is. On the downside, these will be ready to go out into the garden proper in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll be directing traffic instead of participating fully, what with all the mother hens hovering.

The peanuts are going gangbusters, and we’ve already enjoyed zucchini, green beans, filet beans, and okra from the garden, along with the aforementioned cukes. I have kidney beans, another round of green beans, and limas popping up out of the soil – once again, score one for getting these things in before surgery time!

This coming week I”ll be working like an over-caffeinated squirrel trying to get things in order before I go down for the count. The upside is that I’ll have time, sitting around on my ass, to post some of the pictures that I’ve been taking here and there. One thing I will say is that french onion soup, delicious though it is when homemade, is not very photogenic. It surely was tasty, though.

Most of the time, this does not bother me overly much. After all, I have a great deal many more hours at my disposal than most people, meaning I can come up with grandiose plans about various things, and also cement the reputation I have garnered of being a robot rather than a human being. Since the radiation from the cancer treatments still has not brought me any real superpowers, I suppose it’s as close as I will ever get, although I won’t be doing this anytime soon.

Some days, though, the lack of sleep brings out the cranky, especially if I am also not feeling well. Like today. This makes me want to kick someone’s ass right off the planet for tossing a nonsensical legal threat our way about information in a domain registration that she provided, even though we have pointed out what she is saying means nothing and she readily admits she doesn’t understand the “jargon” – and by “jargon”, I mean English. Apparently, she is simply terrified that one of her “fans” (she is an actress, apparently) will find out her address from a years-old cached pieced of information on google, something that we do not control, last time I checked, and do some stalker-like thing, or kill her, or both. Or something. This is the time when I want to state it flat out for people: you are just not that important. You are not fodder for the next American Justice where some crazed, obsessed person hunts you down and kills you. You may tell yourself, actress aspiring to be famous, that someone would care that much, but let’s face it here: you provided your own biographical information to IMDB which is quite handily on your own web site, and it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist or some weirdo even slightly off their meds to find you. I know: I tracked down someone, including their name, date of birth, current residence, current hobbies, other web sites they visit, and the fact that they coached little league from a single piece of information (an IP address attached to a comment they left on a blog we host). With all the information you have provided on your own, deranged psychos could track you down if they wanted. They haven’t. This should tell you something about your place in the greater universe.

A day where you think it would be nice to be able to eat and drink the way you used to. That an icy cold beer and a pile of wings would be great after sweating off a couple of pounds working on the ranch, except that you can no longer drink alcohol due to the radiation burning off the lining of your mouth and you really can’t eat wings any more because the chewing issues make it virtually impossible. That it would be great to settle in with a margarita and a blackened chicken burrito with extra sweet and hot chile sauce, but the spicy foods are offlimit now for the same reason alcohol is, and you know even as you sow the seeds in the garden that you’re unlikely to ever be able to eat habaneros or even jalapenos again any time soon, if ever.

On the other hand, on a day like today, where I’m having some trouble catching my breath and generally feeling like crap – oh, not to mention having a slight bout of anxiety over the fact that the doctor wants me to have a chest CT because of something they saw on the chest x-ray they wanted before I started hyperbaric dives after having yet another tooth pulled – it’s nice to Get Shit Done. Like sow the cukes from seed that I’ve wanted to do for several days now, for a total of about 140 seeds planted, with a little overflow from my nephew helper, who put half a dozen seeds in several holes while I tried to convince him that really, one was all that was required. I also directly sowed some more tomatoes and peppers, because let’s face it: there are rarely enough, and we intend to do a lot of preserving this year. If we have the space, I want to fill it with something. That includes the newest 8 x 4 frame I polished off today in the herb garden, with a little assist by my sister, who hauled a load of dirt and poop for me amongst the five others that I brought over and mixed in. Tomorrow, while we wrangle a scheduled CT from the hospital people and I stay out of the hyperbaric chamber until we determine what the hell is going on – and if I have walking pneumonia, I will, as I have told several people, be pissed – I will begin work on the final 8 x 4 frame for the herb garden. Tonight, I may just go ahead and sow some things in flats that really want the much hotter weather we will no doubt be heading into very soon, and set them up on the heat mats in the garage, turning on the lights for them in the morning.

It’s a day where you also get nice, chatty mails from certain clients, about their newest projects, and about being a test case who found a bad link on our site. Or from someone who understands the information (some of it erroneous) at some random, invisible data mining company is not the end of the world as we know it, which then leads in a roundabout sort of way to a discussion about critters and gardening/sustainability. Or from someone who congratulates us on ten years of putting up with all of this. Or where a pooped out puppy sleeps on the back of the couch while you work from home on a laptop, ass planted on the couch yourself, his tail slapping against the cushion now and then, his nose crinkling as he sniffs out a rabbit or turtle or whatever populates puppy dreams, every now and again his paws wiggling manically, chasing down a bird he will never catch, growling and then squeaking out what would be a bark were he awake. Or where you watch as your nephew, having discarded his swimming diaper at some point, stands on the patio in the shade, fresh from the pool, with only his water wings on, downing saltines with a slab of cheese between them, crumbs falling from his mouth and sticking to his wet chest. Or where you decide, apropos of nothing, that Saturday would be a great  time for a spaghetti dinner night, and that homemade pork/beef/veal meatballs in homemade sauce, with homemade Italian bread as a vehicle for carrying butter and garlic, would be a rather fine thing indeed, even as you muse about the possibility of making homemade pasta, just to top it all off.

Or where, in general, despite never having as much time as you think even though you don’t sleep, berating yourself for not writing nearly as much as you would want to (or anything at all, for that matter), and having a list of todo items that is constantly expanding, you think this is a pretty damned good life, overall, and that you wouldn’t trade a minute of it for anything.

She was ever vigilant, although not much of a hunter in her later years.

She was also a great help when I was working.

For some reason, she loved to be vacuumed.

She knew the value of a nap in the sunlight.

And mostly, she was my solid and constant companion for 18 years. Sleep well, Princess.

OK, maybe not all the time. Mostly, it’s been work, work, work. But it seems to be about that time to pick up the blogging reins once more, especially as we start our real push at Lazy Dogs Ranch now that the growing season is once again upon us. This season is all about experimentation and planning, to see what grows well, what people actually like to eat, and how to manage crops, rotation, and so forth. It will be an adventure, and of course there will be food.

Beyond listening to the whining of some asshat who is going to “recommend to his client” that she change to another host – after that client has been with us for seven years, I might add – because we don’t provide the phone support he has decided is necessary, when we can read the ticket, find the account, determine the issue, report it to the actual client for their directions on proceeding, and resolve the immediate issue in the meantime in under 20 minutes while this douche would rather be on hold for that same length of time before getting to a live person….well, I’ve been working, inside and outside. And there was this 30-year birthday bash for my sister, who insists that it was actually her second anniversary of her 29th birthday.

There was food, of course. Like a spinach dip to start people off.

Crabcakes that I threw together, shaped, and put in the freezer that morning to store for the party.

These plus the other two trays were fried off in some olive oil.

By far the best batch I’ve ever made. There were none left, unfortunately, to leave uncooked in the freezer for meals or snacks later. Four pounds of crabmeat in these.

We also had some croissants with crab and artichoke spread. These were set under the broiler with a crumb topping on them and were mighty tasty.

I had smoked a couple of pork butts and roasted a chicken as well. My sister also requested tofu. I marinated it in a ginger-lime sauce.

Then seared that off in some olive oil, too.

What gathering would be complete without rolls?

Nothing like a fresh roll out of the oven.

None of these survived the day, either.

For dessert, mini angel food cakes with a warm berry sauce.

Oh, and let’s not forget the homemade whipped cream.

Not a bad way to spend a day, surrounded by friends and family, even if all the family could not be there.

On a side note, what is it with the long, long movie trailers that pretty much give you the entire movie in the extended trailer, making it unnecessary to see the movie? Number one, it hardly qualifies as a teaser, number two, it’s annoying considering how many times they play, and number three, people are going to go see the type of movies they like (Fast and Furious) or the actors they love (Clive Owen, Julia Roberts) regardless. I was so happy when those Valkyrie trailers finally stopped running, but it’s a bit like tribbles or gremlins: more have multiplied to take its place.

That was a week and a half ago.

I’m not as aggravated by things and I have a lot more time to Get Things Done as I’ve discussed before.

This way is so much better.

I’ll probably continue it indefinitely.