It is a Burn or a Cut or a Scrape

I am not sure.  It does not hurt.  I have no memory of when it happened, sometime yesterday.  I didn't notice it until I went to bed last night.
   So it is an excuse to talk about neuropathy today?  It is probably a little worse than I describe it.  My main method of dealing with neuropathy is to ignore it as much as possible.  I do take a vocodine first thing in the morning and the last thing at night but this just takes the edge off, reduces my focus on my hands and allows me to do stuff during the day.
   It has been a year and a half since my last "chemo" and this is my on going souvenir, the only reminder that I once had cancer.  It is mostly in my hands and it is very hard to describe.  Conflicting messages.  Like being asleep, like being electrocuted, like stirring a bucket full of cut glass, that is it mostly.  It travels up my forearm and while not as intense, it leaves them a bit numb.  No pain there just not what they used to be, not sensitive to the touch.
   I would describe the bottoms of my feet the same way, no pain, just a bit numb.  I could walk on coals.
My Voodoo Doctor tells me that a nerve cell can be four feet long and take along time to grow, to heal.  He says that in eight years I will be a lot better.  My regular Doctor tells me that in eight years I will be used to this.  Either way there is hope, huh?

 A wound in the shop

   I don't think about this very much.  It would be consuming and I could easily become the pain that I am left with.

My other Blog is Here

Atrophy

   I am afraid of atrophy.  If you take a perfectly well person and put him in the hospital for a week he will become sick, weak from doing nothing.  I once broke my left hand, rather stupidly I smash it with a small heavy hammer wielded by by right hand! It was place in a cast for six weeks and everyone said when it was removed that, for a while I wouldn't be able to use it.  The inactivity makes the muscles weak, useless.
Every day, within the confines of the cast I would move my fingers a little tiny bit.  Little tiny exercises, but they grew bigger each day.  At the end of the six weeks my cast was pretty much mush, no longer the hard plaster trapping my hand into immobility.  It was easy to tear off, almost like removing a glove, and within two days I was back at work, hammering again!
     Now my hand, the right one this time, is in a cast of broken nerves.  At its worst, while in the thick of "chemo", this ABVD cocktail my Voodoo doctors so happily prescribed, my hand seemed paralyzed, no longer a hand really but a dysfunctional and deformed lump at the end of my arm.  It is actually worse than that.  I want to say "badder" so bad so you will begin to understand!  It is like stirring a bucket full of cut glass, maybe one with electrodes in it because there are about a million electrical shocks, all the time!
    I exercise it daily. Not for ten minutes but all the time, every waking hour.  It hurts a lot and I wear my rabbit fur lined gloves which softens every sensation.  Sometimes I would like to sit with my hands in my lap,
gently holding one to the other, an attempt at suspension of sensation.  This does not stop the pain and sometimes does exactly the opposite, manipulating the focus to where I don't want it.
    There is so much to do.  I am not a good member of the audience and life should not be a spectator sport.
So everyday I use this hand and it is getting stronger.  I can make a fist and pick up big things with it now.
I still can't button my shirts or pick up a quarter, but I notice improvement.  There is no improvement to the pain, that might be the gift I get to keep.  In little increments I am learning to ignore it, putting the focus on what I want to do not on what I can't.
My other blog is Here.

"Known to the State of California to Cause Cancer"

I see this title on everything now and wonder why I hadn't noticed it before.  I wonder if it would have made a difference?  It is on all plastic bottles yet we still deliver milk to babies that way.  Before a child reaches two years old they are full of fire retardants and god knows what else?  I couldn't weld, that warning is on all of my supplies and in big lettering on the wire I use.  I still weld, of course, and have been known to drink from plastic bottles. I like bacon and  char-broiled hamburgers.  We are optimistic in our sins and never think it is this one that will give us cancer.
     Cancer wasn't as common a hundred years ago because we didn't live long enough to get it.  Despite our lousy diets and lack of caution, we eat better diets than even Kings in the olden days.  Our bread is fortified with vitamins. 
     I would hate to live in fear, thinking this or that misstep will cause me cancer, would spell my doom.  That thinking will stop you from going for a walk because of the fear of being hit by a car.  So I have gone my entire life thinking "not me, not now."
   Then, of course, I got it.  Been there, done that, had the 12 chemos and it almost killed me and nothing has changed.  I am still welding!  My behavior has not altered but my attitude has.  I consider each day a gift and find enjoyment in the simplest things, everything is a pleasure.  Even the hardest of things gives me satisfaction that I am able to do them.
   I didn't escape scot free with no reminder of where I have been.  I have peripheral neuropathy, a little in my feet and a lot in my hands.  I can do things with pain or not do them at all.  So, I am back welding, creating art from steel and on each occasion when I open the box of welding wire I see the printed words:
"Known to the State of California to cause Cancer". Great.
My Other Blog is HERE.

Hands Down!



 My right "bad" hand



Where did that expression come from?  Hands down?  Anyway, on a good day my hands are pretty bad.

My right hand got the worst of it and slowly I am learning to become left handed!  I just changed the bandages on my left hand and the fingers decided to bleed again, self cleaning of the wound I suppose!



 My left "good" hand with bandages!

I can't do what I used to be able to do and I am sure we all complain about that!  But I can still do things, just a bit slower, with a little more deliberation, yeah, and with some pain.  I force myself.  "Just do this," I tell myself, "for ten minutes."  Sometimes at the end of ten minutes, that is all I can take and other times it will stretch to 15 or 30 minutes, or longer, for hours.  If I am liking what I am doing the pain is sufferable, almost forgetting it at times.  Creating "Art" does this for me more than anything.  It is a huge satisfaction just getting dressed in the morning. I still can't button buttons!  I can't zip the zipper on my pants and I am waiting patiently for the fun in that!

I need "art".  I need the satisfaction of implementing my dreams, to create something that was just a thought.

I can do it in many forms.  On really good days, in my shop, working with metal.

When my hands are in rebellion I can paint, maybe

put on canvas what should have been steel.  I am a good

cook and on bad days I create art in the kitchen, if only

a breakfast for one!  The point is, art takes me outside of myself

and away from any pain and into another world.  It alters

my focus.  Focus is everything in life.  If you believe you

can't, soon enough you won't be able to.  I believe that

with all my heart. So I move forward because I believe I can.



 Here I am this morning!
My Other Blog is  HERE.



Cuts and Bruizes

Well, crap!  I just cut my fingers pretty bad so I am taking a break from welding!  Bandaged up and, of course, there is no pain at all.  That is part of the problem with neuropathy, can't feel anything but cut glass and electrical shocks in my hands and my feet are just plain numb.  It is my fault.  I knew better.  I should have done a better job clamping the metal to my work table.  I didn't and the grinding made it go flying and it smashed into my fingers!  I didn't even feel it, just noticed the blood everywhere!  First I found the piece on the floor and then I went into the house for clean up and bandages.
     This is a downside to neuropathy.  I haven't found the upside yet but I am still searching for it.  I think I will go have some breakfast and then back to work!  I am happy that I can do it at all.
My other blog is Here.

New Gloves!

    I bought new rabbit fur lined gloves!  Off the Internet and they came in the mail yesterday.  If I had to choose between vicodin and the gloves, the gloves would win for sure.  I wear them 20 hours a day and am pretty hard on them.  Now I have an inside pair and an outside pair and I think they will last longer.  My hands hurt all the time and I just can't be touching things like I used to.  With the gloves they are soft and warm and safe, allowing me to weld, make art stuff and live.  No kind of cure I know but it is the next best thing.
My other Blog is Here.

My Hands

Sometimes my hands hurt worse than other times.  They always hurt when I think about them, sort of like giving them that power to hurt.  Today I awoke at 2AM and they were throbbing as if having spent a couple hours in a cement mixer.  I can move my fingers but I can't make a fist, touching anything is like being electrocuted, but first you would have to stir a bucket full of cut glass and add salt, then you would get the idea.  If I didn't have my rabbit fur lined gloves I think I would cry.  I will order two more pairs today! They are dress gloves really and not designed to be worn 20 hours a day as I do.  I wear them for welding and just about everything.  They are soft and gentle and just prevent the over sensation on my hands.  Sometimes I feel like just sitting, holding my hands in my lap and just doing nothing.  I have tried this technique and it doesn't work for me.  In fact it is about the worst thing I can do.  When I concentrate on the pain, well, that is what I get.
     What works for me is movement, like a basketball player continuing to play while injured.  I will get up, take a bath as hot as I can stand it and go out to my studio and get lost in a project.  Soon enough my focus is on that and I will forget about my hands entirely.  It is a strange thing about my shop and work.  When at my sickest I went eight months without working.  I couldn't do it and the phone wasn't ringing anyway.  Now that I am getting stronger the phone is ringing and I have plenty of work, doing three jobs at the same time.
I am sure there is some kind of mystery there.

This is what chemo does to fingernails! 

My Other Blog is Here.

Talking about strength...

         Here is the thing about "strength", and it has very little to do with muscle.  Always, forever in my memory, I have done what I said I was going to do. I have never been late for anything, never been late for work, always got my papers turned in on time, never missed a meeting.  I always get there early. I leave in plenty of time to fix a flat tire on the way: mine or someone else's.  If I say I am going to do something, the world would have to stop to prevent this from happening.  This is part of who I am.  I am this way because my word is good.  It is my greatest asset.  For you, you can count on it as the sun will surely come up tomorrow, but I count on it too.  It is important to me.
     Cancer of course limits what one can do and you learn not to make promises that you cannot keep, but it doesn't stop you from doing anything.  So, I admit, my lists become shorter, but they are still there as an obligation to myself.  If I think today only I can do three things, then I do them.  Even if I don't feel like it.
Even if it makes me miserable.  Even if it makes me sick.  and, especially, even if I don't want to.
     I make my list in the morning when I am at my best and I always make them for tomorrow when I am hoping for a better day.  Tomorrow I will weld for one hour.  Tomorrow I will paint one little painting, and tomorrow I will go out to breakfast.  I will do this no matter what and I can do this crying and miserable or I can do this happy and cheerful, but do it I will.  What happens in reality almost every single time is my one hour of welding will stretch to two or three and I will complete a project, get lost in time, forget about the pain in my hands and for awhile forget all about cancer.  Painting is quiet time, no grinding and obnoxious fumes.  My little painting can become big.  They have a life of their own and become what they need to become, happy to be out of the tube.  That hour will also stretch and I will find myself lost there too.

My Other Blog is Here. 

The breakfast is a fun treat and I have learned to be nice to myself.  It is always with friends, some have cancer and some don't and that is the one subject we never talk about.  We give it no strength.

Bitch and Moan

That seems to be what I have been doing lately! I complain about the neuropathy in my hands that leaves them both numb and feeling as if they have been stirring a bucket full of cut glass. I can barely pick up a paint brush and can't feel it in my hands when I do. I really want to be 17 again or maybe 43? Sometime previous to this cancer and the horrendous voodoo cure. I want to get well fast! Well, it is a slow process and it is interesting how quickly I forget where I have been, literally at the edge of Hell, a frail old man looking over the abyss! My friends are just now finding the courage to tell me how bad I looked. I can reread my own blogs, this journal

I keep to realize where I have been and how lucky I am. The actual Day to Day encounters can be found on my ArtWanted Site and when I complain now I go back there and remember what it was really like!

Peripheral Neuropathy

Chemo Therapy is a contradiction of terms, like "Free Love" there is no such thing, every thing has its price. "Therapy" sounds like a little nap on a couch or aroma oils and gentle massages. In reality when mixed with Chemo it is like taking a bath in a shark tank. There is tons of "collateral damage" some probably not discovered until autopsy when they cut you open to find out what really went wrong. I am permanently sterile which might come in handy someday, at least in my dreams it could be useful! The "cat scans" and "pet scans" are the equivelent of 420 X-rays and are known to cause cancer in themselves, so that is a great thought.

Your hair grows back and pretty fast too so that's no

big deal and the weight you lose won't stay gone!

What is bothersome are my damned hands! I have

"Neuropathy" in them something bad! They hurt

24 hours a day and the only difference is sometimes

they hurt worse, throbbing and swollen, like stirring

a bucket of cut glass. I am getting used to this; they

are not getting better. When I am not working I

wear rabbit fur lined gloves and that helps a lot. I

wear them when I sleep at night. I am anxious to return to work.