My Mastectomy and Other Amazing Things

I Have Gone Flat. This is the word used to describe someone who has a bilateral mastectomy and elects to not have reconstructive surgery.  

My new flat look! I love it!

At Dan's cabin

I have successfully navigated the months of May, June, July, and August since my last blog entry, and I wanted to get in touch and bring you up to date with all the amazing things that have befallen me.  

Cousin Shelly and I at Mt. Ashland

I admit to having had a remarkably good time, given the circumstances for my trip to the US this spring (the mastectomy) having gotten a chance to catch up with old friends and neighbors during visits to their houses and during potlucks at Diana’s. 

Diana, by the way, was my "cancer doula," providing lodging and taking care of me throughout this potentially traumatic experience, and making it, instead, an amazing and transforming adventure. 

My cancer doula, Diana

Other cool things happened, too. My cousin Shelly, who was traversing the Pacific Crest Trail, interrupted her journey to stop by Callahan's restaurant at Mt. Ashland for a cozy lunch with Diana and me. 

Daniel, my long-time friend and companion, generously provided a little car for me to use, which made life easier as I worked my way through all the appointments, meetings, and other things related to major surgery.  

Lunch with Libby (above) and
Anna (below). 

Friends creating Celtic Jam

There were lunches and dinners with friends, a visit to Daniel’s delightful mountain cabin on his 4-wheeler, an afternoon and evening of Celtic music, sewing with Diana in her workshop, as well as a cloth dyeing workshop and shopping for fabrics, a visit to the beautiful Jackson County Extension demonstration gardens, an estate sale, John’s art show in Medford, and taking delivery of shoes, shoes, shoes (well, only 6 pairs, but it’s a great start!) for teens to wear for gym class here in Benque. If kids can’t afford gym shoes, they sometimes drop out of school because they can’t go barefoot or wear street shoes in the gym.  Several people were able to find extra walking/hiking shoes in their closets, and we took them with us to Idaho to pack up and send to Belize.

Around the first of June, a couple of weeks after my mastectomy (which was on May 18, commemorating the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, which, if you look at it in a certain way, was similarly the occasion of the removal of a conical lump) I traveled by car with Diana and John from Oregon to David and Marcia’s place in Eagle Idaho, near Boise.  

David plays his Diddly Bo

After depositing me there and staying the night, Diana and John went on to a family reunion in Nebraska, while I stayed to enjoy the company of my sibs, including David and Marcia, my sister Elsie, who lives nearby, and other assorted relatives.  

While there, I rested a lot, drank beer and talked philosophy with David, played with the gorgeous “diddly bo” he had constructed, and we worked together several evenings to install all the programs I needed into the computer Daniel gave me while I was in Oregon.  My old computer here in Belize was starting to sputter and stall, but with the new computer I can return to working on my sketchbook journal compilations, and other projects. 

Marcia painting dragonflies
on a silk scarf

Marcia and I some lovely long chats, too, and I got to watch her producing one of her amazing painted silk scarves. 


My final task of the six-week trip was to pack the donated shoes (freshly laundered!) and items I couldn’t get into my luggage into three big poly tubs to ship to Belize.  David took them to the PO to mail to Texas, where they went on a container ship to Belize, then by truck to a nearby town here where I picked them up, finally, just last week.

Some of the donated shoes.

I recovered from the operation amazingly well and fast (my doctor was impressed), including the expected retention of fluids once the drains were removed. The fluid was drawn by the surgeon once in Oregon and once again by another surgeon in Boise (a simple office call each time).  And that was the last time I saw a doctor.  I feel great.

my tubs arrived

You can almost see the house

My flight home was on June 12, a little less than two months ago, and at this point, ten weeks after surgery, I feel close to completely healed.  I’m doing all the things I normally would do, lifting coke cases with (empty) bottles into the pickup, hanging out the wash, putting things onto top shelves, sweeping the floor, doing minor landscaping tasks, and sleeping comfortably in all positions without pain or stiffness. My friends and family were wonderful to visit, but It is lovely to be home.

Me, post-op flat

A point of interest -- none of the doctors mentioned that the areas where Muriel and Janet (left and right breasts, respectively) had perched would be numb after the operation. If I’d thought about it, I might have guessed, but I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t really do much research at all on my condition before the operation. I decided that I would live one day at a time as well as possible, and not focus on what was to come – and the best way to do that was to not know too much about it. That approach served me well, keeping me upbeat and disgustingly cheerful throughout the whole thing. The numbness is just a cosmetic effect, and while it feels a bit peculiar, it has no bearing on how well or how healthy I feel. 

Full-moon dinner cruise with neighbors
on Laz's pontoon boat.  $10 each.

While I was in the US, my young friend José kept my house safe, and I returned to a clean, orderly, sweet-smelling home, compliments of Millie, who came in the day before I arrived to spiff things up to welcome me back.

Now I’m back to my usual tasks, providing cokes and chips for the construction crew; doing the footwork for our Belize Scholarships program for the local kiddies; joining in on community celebrations – most recently, a full-moon cruise on the lake with Laz on his pontoon boat; and tying up loose ends with the Lights for Students program. 

Laz pilots the pontoon boat

Thanks to so many of you who made donations to my Lights for Students gig, nearly all of the local families with kids now have lights at night, and the children are consequently able to do their homework after dark so that they don't fall behind the town kids in their studies.

sweet scholarship kids

So now I have turned my efforts to creating a Study Center in my spare room so the kids who come to use the internet after school will have a comfortable and warm place to study.  If the “warm” concept puzzles you, keep in mind that with the high humidity here, a week of cloudy, rainy weather can have us shivering in our boots sandals. I often loan kids jackets and sweaters to wear home after dark.

So to launch the Study Center, I’m now trying to get money together for a 6’ folding table (you know, those nice durable plastic ones), four chairs, and a printer.  My friend Jenny, who lives here at BIB, donated most of the cost for a computer for the kids, and we have that now, but a printer is essential.  

Freddy, my friend who is foreman on the construction crew, still owes me a couple of days work to pay off the cell phone I brought him from the US, so he’ll make me some shelves and help me wire the lights over the table.  

This katydid looks exactly like a leaf and twigs.

I think another $700 should do the trick, so if you are one of the people who asked me to tell you what is needed here, there ya go! Any amount is welcome, and any money left over (if we get extra) will be used to buy printer ink, paper, and school supplies! Jenny and I are headed to Spanish Lookout to buy the table and chairs next week, so if you're thinking of helping out, now is the time to do it. You can send donations via PayPal -- it's very easy. And hey, if a donation is not on your agenda, this paragraph wasn’t aimed at you. 😊

Moving right along.....The latest event in my MIcasa saga (my teeny jungle shack) was somewhere between hilarious and horrible.  After ten weeks of neglect, I finally made it to my little house in the big woods, only to be greeted by an ominous termite trail leading out of the forest, across the veranda, and under the front door.  

Termite wings everywhere!

Opening the door, I discovered that there had been a termite hatch inside, and the entire inside of the house was coated with discarded termite wings (termites ditch their wings after mating). Wings were on every surface and even clinging to all the walls. They are like tiny bits of cellophane, somewhat electrostatic, and elude clean-up efforts easily. But it wasn't only termites...

The entire interior space was swagged like a Halloween horror house with dusty gray spiderwebs, festooned from one end of the house to the other. My very first act was to get a long stick and wave it around in the air until it was swirled with webs and it was possible to walk cross the room without getting strands of silk stuck to my eyelids and lips.

Mouse nest under pot

Then I noticed a chewed towel, and jute twine trailing across the room, and discovered, under an upturned pot in the dish drainer (my final cleaning act of the previous visit) a well-stuffed mouse nest made of bits of towel and jute twine, and – oh NO! – heavy white string that could only have come from my hammock, which was hanging from a nail over by the door…..Aughhhhh!   

my mouse-chewed hammock

You can imagine how the next few hours were spent. Since the hammock is where I relax after doing scrubbing or carpentering tasks, mending the hammock was high on my to-do list. The mice had chewed off most of the support strings on both ends, and gnawed seven gaping holes in the body of the hammock.  Fortunately, I had a roll of nylon string used for carpentry jobs, and after only six hours of labor, my hammock was reassembled. 

Every string had to be tied off, and the end support strings had to be replaced, but by the time I was exhausted from cleaning and scrubbing and dusting (and mending!), I had a hammock to rest in again.  But like I said, it was really kind of humorous, with no major harm done (except to the hammock) and it makes a great story.  

Heliconia plant

However, I’ll try not to let ten weeks pass between visits again – the wildlife had every right to think I’d abandoned the place.

 Millie and I have been working on my landscaping here at Casa de la Tierra (yeah, yeah, I know, that sounds horribly pretentious, but in Spanish-speaking countries people name their houses). Right now it looks really pretty, with the wet season well begun and greenery flourishing. Here's one of my heliconia plants.

Crayola Katydid

And of course, there is the usual parade of amazing insects – I’d never seen one of these Crayola Katydids until José spotted this one on a tree just off the veranda, then went down and caught it for me to sketch (nope, haven’t sketched it yet, but I took lots of photos and I PLAN to sketch it).  

Wow! My very own
bananas!

And LO! my banana tree is producing fruit!  I asked Millie when to harvest the bunch (called “a hand of bananas”) and she said when all the leaves die, you chop off the hand of bananas with a machete, then chop the tree down (O horrors!). A new sprout at the base of the chopped-down tree will rise up to become a new tree in short order (well, okay).

All righty, enough blathering.  I hope you have enjoyed this little tour of recent happenings in my life.  But if you didn’t, why on earth did you read this far?!

Big hugs for you, my friend! 
Renie

Costa Rica Sketch Journal ~ July 14, 2008

You may have noticed.... the last blog entry contained the early morning entries for July 14, today's blog. You could go back and read them, but just in case you don't want to, I'm going to pull out an observation I made verbatim:

"The variety is the pull of this place. Every day has its new adventure, visitor, or revelation. I suppose the same could be said of my Oregon woods, if one searched hard enough, but here they pour from a cornucopia in great profusion, right in one's path. Yesterday it was an 8" chameleon perched on a little shrub by La Caramba. Last night it was bats lacing the air over diners in the [open air] restaurant."

Here's the chameleon ~ remember to click to see a bigger view!

We (and the other guests) were entranced with the bats ~ one of them got out his camera and managed to get some really excellent stop-action in-flight shots.

Hmmmm.....I'm running low on time today. I work at Daniel's native plant nursery, weeding, transplanting, pruning, stuff like that, most days from about 4pm on, and it's getting late. I'll get as far as I can today and take up the rest tomorrow.

This second journal page (with the map) has a hole cut in it to show the back of the fungus glued on the other side (the first journal page at the beginning of this blog). Be sure to take a look ~ it resembles nylon netting! Okay, onward.

Dan and I'd been planning to do the River Trail from the beginning, and finally we both felt lively enough to take it on. During breakfast, Dan pored over the reptile book so he'd know of any snakes to watch for, while I caught up my journal.
We were both entranced with the beautiful hike, the gorgeous heliconias, other strange plants with amazing fruits, and the strangler figs and big-buttressed trees we discovered.









Okay, I'm out of time,
more tomorrow.

Costa Rica Sketch Journal ~ July 12 & 13, 2008

Ya stay close to home when you have the trots, so I'm combining journal entries July 12 and 13 to make a decent showing. Remember to click on the images to enlarge them.

We spent most of the day at our cabina, out on the terraza (sometimes "elsewhere"), Daniel reading in the hammock or gazing out over our lovely view, I coloring yesterday's currasow and other drawings and sketching the flower of the jicaro tree ~ that's the stonefruit tree in the path with the cantaloup-sized green fruit upon whose topside perches the big brown cicada.

Then I sketched a big cockroach I had previously found belly-up on the path. The ants hadn't even discovered it yet, so it was quite freshly dead when I found it. I had kept it under a water glass on my bedside table for a couple of days to deter ants (probably to the horror of the maids), waiting for time to draw it. Now, finished with the sketch, I laid the cockroach down on the grass over the edge of the terraza to see what would happen (to find out, read the bottom of the first journal page).

Feeling a bit better, I got out my camera to photograph nearby wonders: the tent bats (in the palm by the path) which chew halfway through palm frond blades so that they drop down to form a little alcove the bats can hang in (look at their badger-like, stripey faces in the closeup!); a colorful little grasshopper that entertained Dan and me for awhile, a bigger green one that also kept us guessing ~ whenever a breeze rattled the big leaf it was perched on, it made chattering sounds with its leg and abdomen that sounded exactly like an angry bird. Took us awhile to figure it out.

To be honest, the surroundings are so lovely and so many fascinating things happen all the time, it wasn't a terrible tragedy to just sit still and watch from the terraza!

Early the next morning we were feeling a little better, so to get a little exercise we walked up the driveway to the road, spotting (and smelling) two collared peccaries in the dim green light. Still, we kept pretty close to home for obvious reasons ~ we weren't cured quite yet.

Finally, I found time to draw and paint the three-toed sloth skull. It's an odd skull, very heavy and without the seams (sutures) found on most skulls, for some reason. It was also very irregular in shape, with one side not exactly the same as the other. Skulls are usually pretty symmetrical, but not this one. Check out the brown, hollowed, peg-like teeth in the photo. Cool, huh?

Late that afternoon I taught a watercolor pencil session to Adri, who wanted more advice on the painting part. As she painted, I did a little protrait of her, but it's pretty bad ~ she's MUCH prettier than that.

Oh well, that's one thing about journaling. It's a real-time record of where you are and what you're doing, with all its warts. Poor Adri!

I only filled half of that journal page, and being "all sketched out," I made a page divider which looked like a long twig to separate July 14 from the next day. I like that twig a lot. I think maybe I'll try designing a whole bunch of page dividers to use as inspiration when I need them.

++And Now, TA~DA! ++

They don't make fonts BIG enough to express my great elation at having finished and sent off The Southern Swamp Explorer to the printer!

It's like bearing a child, raising it in intimate detail for five or six years (I'm afraid to figure out how long this book has really been in process) then delivering that child to the kindergarten door and waving goodbye.

You come home and look around and say "NOW what am I supposed to do?" I'm sure I'll get over it ~ it isn't as though I don't have things to attend to. But my overriding goal for years has been to get that book off to press, and now it IS off to press and....umm......well........ONWARD ~ I guess

Costa Rica Sketch Journal ~ July 5&6, 2008

I've been trying to get my journal scanned in, but yesterday I ran out of time and got ahead of myself with the photos. So step back a day into my sketch journal.

JULY 5. I had some time in San José to do a bit of sketching and watercolor pencil painting as Dan puzzled out the news from a San José newspaper (in Spanish, of course), which kept him busy for quite some time. At the bar I did a modified contour drawing (in which you don't lift the pen point while drawing) of my margarita. Sketching and journaling in the bar were easy because the light was soft but decent and CLASSICAL music played in the background! I complimented the hotelier on the choice of music. I would recommend this hotel without hesitation.

I worked on my page with the "black cow" and the fig leaf that night in bed, but then realized I would need to plan page designs better ~ these last two pages have almost identical format. I do love how mess-free the watercolor pencils and waterbrush make the process.

But all was not mess-free. When I pulled out my glue to stick the fig leaf on, I found that it had expanded during the plane flight and the ziplock bag containing it (and my toothbrush, sunscreen, etc.) was muy sticky inside. I was very glad to discover that the glue was water soluble, but I was in and out of bed for awhile, cleaning up the gluey mess.

The Nature Air ticket was so pretty I wanted to make the back of it visible, too (plus save room on journal pages) so I accordian pleated it and just glued in one end of it. The graphic here shows it unfolded ~ there were a lot of Photoshop steps required between scanning it in and making the ticket look 3-dimensional. Just having fun. [There -- that catches me up on the journal pages.]

JULY 6. After arriving at El Remanso from Puerto Jimenez, we got settled in our cabina and had breakfast with Adri and Danni, who run the lodge. Then we headed down to the beach ~ Dan'l's favorite place. He simmered in the wonderful tidepools for ages, but I got cooked before he did so I beachcombed and enjoyed the soft tropical air while collecting treasures from the sand.

That afternoon I painted the lavender vine flower while Dan read in the hammock. The more I use these watercolor pencils, the better I like them. I sincerely doubt you could tell these sketches were colored with watercolor pencils rather than straight watercolors.

Sitting on the terraza (Spanish for terrace) was wonderfully peaceful yet exciting at the same time. There always seemed to be something happening right before our eyes. Every afternoon at about 3:30, for instance, a coati bounded up out of the ravine and across our lawn, barely six feet from our bare toes. A heliconia flower daily lowered a petal, revealing flower parts feasted on by little black furry bees. Rains came some afternoons, and we reveled in the lightning and thunder as the storm rushed up the ravine, huge raindrops tapping on wide, rubbery heliconia leaves, the forest canopy, then finally on our clay roof tiles ~ to then cascade off the eaves in silvery waterfalls. It was mesmerizing. This photo shows the terraza view with a storm coming up from the beach.

That first evening on our terraza, I journaled the wonderful night sounds I was hearing with words and color. Those are what I miss most since my return ~ the dawn and dusk choruses.

More tomorrow.

Costa Rica Nature Journal/Sketching Workshop ~ 8

The Last Day of the Workshop (but not the last day of this blog). I got up pretty early, because on class days it's hard to find time to journal-- by 5:45am I was lying in the hammock on my patio writing busily away, and sketching in some things I had collected the day before. (Remember, you can click on the graphics to get a bigger image.)

I was hoping this last day would be really fun ~ the only fly in the ointment was that Kathy would miss it, needing to catch the lodge van to Puerto Jimenez to make her flight to San José.

We all went to see her off and got Adriana to take a group photo of us (here it is again, the one I opened this blog set with). We hugged Kathy warmly and saw her off up the lane. As the Ticos say, "Que lastima!" How sad! Interestingly enough, during her previous morning on the beach (I think it was then -- right, Kathy?) she had painted a charming little beach scene that turned out to look amazingly like the scene we opted for during this day's final pleine air assignment. She later glued on a fragment of sea shell, as a memento.

In the classroom, after the morning's critique of the previous day's work, we packed up our journals, binoculars, watercolor pencils, sunscreen, waterbottles, etc., and headed down the trail to the beach.

Since we were all keenly interested in all things natural, it was hard to make headway in the face of the fascinating things we kept encountering...the camouflaged frog on the trail; crabs that became instantly invisible when they stopped on the sand; a tiny cicada that landed on Jocelyn's white shirt and made itself at home; feisty scuttling hermit crabs; and lastly, a gorgeous blue morpho butterfly with brown underwings.

When a morpho's wings flap up, the brown undersides blend into the scenery and it disappears. When the wings go down, the iridescent blue catches the sun like a turquoise neon sign, and it reappears as a blue flash ~ only to disappear when the wings flap back up. Morphos also fly an erratic course. Instead of flying in a straight line so a predator can easily catch them, they dodge from side to side while flashing brown and blue. Hey! Hah! Catch me if you can! We were fascinated. Marilyn is a butterfly aficionado, and tried in vain to catch a morpho on video. I've linked to a short video here, which I found online, so you can see the effect.

But finally, we settled on a scene near the north lagoon (see yesterday's map) and sat down to create our assignment, which was "a beach scene in color, with foliage, a close-up of some item found on the beach, with some journaled comment/s." We spent a contented couple of hours on our pen sketches, then recorded the scene with our digital cameras so that we could add color later on. We could have added color at that point, but hey, it was pretty warm out there, and we needed to catch the tidepools before the tide rose back up too high.

So, hot under the midmorning sun, we trekked half an hour or so to the other end of El Remanso's long, footprintless stretch of beach to the tidepools, where we commenced to strip down to our swimsuits (and that colorful underwear again) to burble up to our chins in the jacuzzi style pools. Every few moments the returning tide would wash white foam into the pool, refreshing and cooling the warm water -- it was heavenly. Marilyn managed a timed photo so she could set the camera and fling herself into the pool to be with us in the picture.

When we'd gotten enough sun and surf, we all dried on my huge (but folds up tiny) travel towel ~ what an excellent purchase THAT was ~ which I then hung on a branch of the beach almond tree to dry (it did, within an hour).

Marilyn and Jocelyn headed back around noon as they had planned, but I had brought a granola snack, as I had planned (when I travel, I carry a whole bunch of these for emergencies and, well, hedonistic pleasure. The lodge would have provided a bag lunch, but I DO love my granola bars!). I plunked down in the shade of the big rock to sketch and journal. Later I went down the beach, turned in at the waterfall creek lagoon, and went up to the waterfall.

After walking up the creek for a few minutes, admiring the heliconias along the bank and hearing scarlet macaws overhead, you start to hear the rush of the waterfall. It plunges (I'd guess 40', but I could be wayyyyy off) into a small, dim grotto, very private, and you can stand under the deluge in water up to your calves, and let the water pound your shoulders in a totally satisfying aqua-massage. Heavenly. (okay, okay, I confess to airbrushing on that charming bikini!).

Later, after I'd returned and taken a short swim in the pool, we all gathered at Jocelyn and Marilyn's cabina to work on our beach scenes and then critique them. They critiqued mine, as well, which is always helpful and properly humbling to an instructor. We teachers need critiques, too!

Although Marilyn's journal page wasn't finished that night, she has since sent me this photo for the blog. Before dinner that night, we shared our journals with the other lodge guests, laying them out on an empty table. They were a real hit, with a constant stream of admiring viewers until Elyer and Michael began bringing the food. I guess there's no competing with fresh-caught-tuna steaks and mashed juca (tastier than potatoes!), with green beans, the plate decorated with an artful arrangement of julienned peppers and fresh jicama formed into a delicate flower; and finally, a tasty flan dessert with caramel topping. Oh, the food at El Remanso is always delicious! We would eat until we could eat no more.

The workshop was over now, but the journaling definitely was not. The next day we would have the entire day to explore the forest and beach and have more adventures, which we would then journal with abandon. See you then!