New Name for a CPH

A little late to be updating this, but I've been distracted with building houses. I love our new last name, which Caera and I created for ourselves, and couldn't possibly be sappier. (Grá is the Irish word for love, and amore is obviously the Italian word for love.) If you're unsure how to pronounce it, just sing a little Dean Martin.

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's... :)

Here's the Awesome Part of 2016

The previous post was really a bummer, but last year wasn't all bad. In fact, some pretty incredible things happened. Here are my gratitudes:

I started the year off getting ibogaine treatment, which deserves a post all of its own (in fact, I've got a whole website about it if you're curious). It was a phenomenal experience that helped me break through some of my depression and anxiety.

In February, I was feeling energized and decided to volunteer again at the Northwest Flower and Garden Show in Seattle.

    

After the show, I really wanted to donate some of my time to a gardening project, and Caera's new workplace at Compass Health provided the perfect opportunity. I thought an herb/flower spiral would fit nicely in a long-neglected 10'x10' space outside her window.

   

I didn't have time to go back to the Red Barn community farm plot, but I did carve out a little time to build some flower and veggie beds at the place where we're renting.

Most importantly, on October 8, Caera and I got married! I'm so happy to be sharing my life with this amazing woman. I think this picture says it all:

And in other good news, we got accepted into Housing Hope's Team Home Building program, which means we're framing houses with seven other families in Arlington. By the end of 2017, we'll be homeowners!

The Curse of 2016

I think it's time for an update. Last year was rough -- unbelievably so. In March, just after I had gotten sick with norovirus, Caera and I were rear-ended by a cement truck, which gave us both pretty bad whiplash. We needed treatment for a few months afterward. I also started having the worst panic attacks of my life -- the kind where I was convinced I was dying. I started going to therapy and tried to find solutions for dealing with the enormous anxiety I was experiencing, which was always worst at night when I was trying to fall asleep. On top of that, Caera kept getting nasty gut infections for months, which involved round after round of increasingly potent antibiotics. We found out after the fact that one of the original infections came from a recalled jar of organic sunflower butter contaminated with listeria!

Unfortunately, that was just the beginning. My mother, a Type I diabetic with a lot of health problems, passed out last August while at home by herself, and when the neighbors found her the next morning, she was still unconscious and near death. When the medics took her blood sugar, it was mind-boggling high -- around 2000. I flew out to Ohio the next day, but she was still unresponsive, and there wasn't anything left that they could do (she had a DNR order). She died the next day, at 66 years old.

I'm not sure that I've even finished grieving, or that I really know how. I've thought about death and mortality a lot in my life, but nothing really prepares you for watching your parent die. My mom and I had a complicated relationship, but I still loved her, and I wish I could have seen her more recently while she was alive.

I don't have the stamina to talk about politics, but let's just say that the country became a much more disturbing place in November. Everything that I care about is under attack, and it scares and angers me to see what's happening every day.

And then there's my own health. Last November, I noticed that my belly was protruding a bit (I was still chalking it up to weight gain), and I was having lots of digestive problems. I was getting more and more uncomfortable bending over, and one day the pain was so bad that I took myself to the ER. Eventually I got an ultrasound and CT scan, and it was clear that I had a big tumor growing in my gut. I was referred to a gynecological surgeon, and he suspected it was an endometioid tumor that seemed to be encapsulating my right ovary, and there was a good chance that I had cancer. Whatever the case, it needed to come out immediately. After discussing my options and the likelihood of this problem returning, we also decided it was best to remove my uterus and ovaries. So on December 12, I had a hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. He removed the tumor, several lymph nodes, and scraped a lot of endometriosis off my other organs. The biopsy confirmed that I had had ovarian cancer, but the good news is that it had not metastasized.

The rest of the year, and well into 2017, I've been recovering from my surgery, and trying to figure out my next steps. Because my jobs involved a good deal of physical labor, I wasn't able to return to the nursery or maintenance work. I'm slowly trying to get my strength back, but it's just going to take time. I also wasn't prepared to enter abrupt menopause at age 34, and that's presented additional challenges that I'm still trying to navigate.

I want to say good riddance to 2016, but it wasn't all bad...