The weekend before his birthday, we had family dinner to celebrate. We included our friend Linda as her kids live further away from her than ours do, and does not have the same opportunities to see them. Moreover, we really like her! Heather, Jose, Joseph and Winky arrived early so Joseph could have some grandpa time riding bikes and hitting balls in the back yard. All was going well until Heather, Linda and I heard Grandpa yell in obvious pain from the backyard. We all looked at each other and as I started to rise Heather said she would go.
We did not hear anything from her for a bit, so assumed all was ok out back. Not so much… Seems Grandpa was showing Joseph how to ride a wheelie, and when he transitioned from dirt to the cement pad, the bike slid out from under him. He has degenerative disc disease, and landing on his tailbone then rolling back, and hitting his helmeted head did a huge number on his back. When Heather did not come back in after about 5 minutes, I went to see what was going on. Robert was up and trying to walk it off, but I could tell he was in severe pain. He felt the initial jolt from the landing all the way up his back to his head. Not good. I went and got him some Aleve and tried to convince him to get an ice pack on his back right away. He finally conceded the ice pack would probably be a good thing after about 15 more minutes.
He spent the rest of the afternoon and evening coddling his back. He did request pizza as his birthday dinner, to which Joseph was very excited. Heather brought his favorite dessert – Marie Calendar’s Lemon Cream Cheese Pie. We ate pizza and it was decided that Grandpa should open his gifts before birthday pie so everyone had a chance to digest their pizza a bit.
Jordon, Kelly, Heather, Jose and Joseph all pitched in to get Robert a driving experience at the Porsche Experience Center in Carson. They got him a package that includes 1.5 hours of track time in one of the cars he has always admired.
In addition, Joseph picked out a T-Shirt for Grandpa that matches a shirt he has, so they can wear them together when they hang out. Joseph also picked out a gift bag covered in sharks, with red tissue paper to represent the blood from shark bites.
After presents and birthday pie, in which the musical whirl candle that did not play birthday music much to my chagrin, Jordon and Joseph found some old wrapping paper tubes I had put aside for playing with, and proceeded to have a tube sword duel. Winky in the meantime was having fun trying to shred all the tissue paper from the gifts. I do not know who started it first, but both Joseph and Jordon and picked up all the tissue paper and shoved it under their shirts. Jordon had all the red tissue paper and Joseph the white. Anytime Joseph connected to Jordon’s body with his “sword”, Jordon would reach under his shirt and pull out a piece of red tissue paper to represent blood. At one point Joseph got him in the face, so he found one of Winky’s shredded pieces and shoved it in his nose to represent a bloody nose. I was laughing so hard at their antics! Despite Grandpa having hurt his back, it was a good start to his 55th birthday.
Robert was worried that his back would not heal in time for our planned trip to Disneyland on Wednesday. But he rested his back as much as he could, stayed on Aleve and iced his back for two full days and felt good enough to make the trip to Anaheim so he could get his birthday button, and of course get some birthday ice cream.
We were not sure how long either of us was going to last, as I had discovered over the course of a month or so that the Klonopin that Dr. R had prescribed for my neuropathy worked great at controlling my symptoms, but was also effecting my cognition. I lost a lot of mental abilities due to chemo; the ability to concentrate longer than a few minutes, short term memory loss, multitasking abilities, as well as not able to do tasks with ease. I spent months working hard to rehabilitate my brain. I regained the ability to do simple multitasking, like watching TV and knitting at the same time. I am slowly gaining back the ease in doing more complex tasks, but they still take my longer to complete than it used to take. I still cannot multitask if I have a difficult process going.
I used to be able to work on an intricate spreadsheet and answer someone if they asked me a question without skipping a beat. Now I cannot even acknowledge if someone sneezes if I am engrossed in a difficult or intricate task. I can hear the sneeze, and acknowledge I have heard it in my brain, but I cannot physically make my lips/mouth move to say God Bless You. I used to be able to take a process I had created in Excel and be able to work through the process/formulas/macros as I explained each step to someone so they could learn how to use the tool I had created. I still cannot do that. I have to put instructions into a document and hand it over. If someone interrupts me while doing a thought/concentration intensive task I cannot go right back to the task and pick it back up where I left off. I have to go back to a beginning step or start over.
I noticed the longer I took the Klonopin the more advances in my brain function I was losing. Therefore, I stopped taking the Klonopin. It has a fairly long ½ life – about 40 hours, so every 40 hours the amount of active drug in your system decreases by ½. As the Klonopin was wearing off, the effects it had on my brain were receding, and I was back to being able to knit and talk or watch TV again. My short term memory, even though it’s still bad, did improve back to its previous level of bad; and my typing, even though it is not as fast as it was before chemo, also improved to my new speed. Granted I find all these diminished abilities frustrating, so having a drug make them worse is just not something I am willing to live with. It still takes me longer to accomplish tasks that I know I could complete in less time two years ago. As my brain improved, the neuropathy symptoms returned. I had hoped that after over a year of healing from chemo, the neuropathy would have improved. I am not so lucky there. Within two weeks I was back to full on neuropathy symptoms I had before we started Gabapentin to try to relieve some of the irritation and pain.
After a week or so at full neuropathy pain, I took Robert’s suggestion of taking ½ a tablet a day instead of a whole tablet. I had been doing this for a little over a week when we made the trip to Disneyland.
Because we didn’t know how long either of us would last at Disneyland, we opted to forego renting an ECV. Robert was in no condition to push me in a wheel chair, and if he could only last two hours renting an ECV for $50 was just not worth it. We walked into Disneyland and the first thing we did was get Robert his birthday button. After that we wandered through the park, saw ducklings, which are always present at this time of year, then headed over to Cal Adventure to get lunch. Robert wanted to try a new dish that is now available at one of the restaurants in Paradise Gardens – The Impossible Meatless Meatball Sandwich. We both ordered one and found a seat in the covered patio/dining area where we sat for over an hour while we ate and talked. The Impossible meatless meat turned out to be excellent. We finally meandered our way around Cal Adventure and of course found our way to Ghirardelli Chocolate to get that birthday ice cream Robert had to have. Again we sat for over an hour. We ended up staying almost 5 hours, so it was a good day.
The following day, when I took out the trash, that musical candle started playing the birthday song. We had a good laugh. I also received the letter from the Breast Diagnostic Center advising no signs of cancer in my first mammogram since September of 2017.
Life is making memories