Best Of

Petite, hugs and condolences. May your DH's memory be for a blessing.

Well, adjusting to being back home was going swimmingly…until it wasn't. First, we discovered the washing machine's drain pump had cracked in transit either to or from storage, so we had to have the pump replaced (2 week wait). Then, last week as I was washing a skillet in the sink (because it was ceramic), the sink began backing up and so did the garbage disposal (cheap-@$$ Glacier Bay instead of the In-Sink-er-Ator I had before the fire). And said disposal would spit back up a couple of seconds after turning it off. My longtime plumber came the next morning and power-snaked the drain line—it solved the problem short-term but he showed me the waste stack in the basement: century-old cast iron with a botched repair (done 40-50 yrs ago by the previous owner, the chairman of the English Dept. at Loyola and his teenage sons who'd watched episodes of "This Old House." Words to live by: "Never give a PhD access to hand tools"). The repair was done because that joint leaked. But the former owner didn't think to investigate the cause for the leak.

Our plumbers, who returned today, in the course of replacing the old cast iron with PVC, ran a camera down the line under the floor—and the camera stopped at 6', encountering a total clog consisting of corroded cast iron. That was the cause of the leak—water backing up from the clog and oozing from the pipe. They are coming back next week for a "Hail Mary:" remove the botched section of cast iron, power-rod the pipe till they break through the clog, insert a rubber liner and then PVC pipe. Basicslly, the plumbing equivalent of a balloon angioplasty (rubber liner) & stent (PVC pipe). It's a "Hail Mary" pass because if it doesn't work, we're looking at excavation (hopefully not all the way to the city sewer, which would require a city inspector who would find our entire plumbing system horribly code-noncompliant. A total home repipe could exceed six figures. FMV of the house is >950K, so it wouldn't be counterproductive but still a huge chunk of change we would likely never recoup at resale. Meanwhile, we had to put down a circle of kitty litter on the floor around the leak to absorb the ooze; we've been advised not to run the dishwasher, use the kitchen sink as little as humanly possible (preferably washing dishes in the bathroom sink) and take the shortest showers necessary till the problem is fixed…if it's ever fixed. Nuking frozen pizza and eating off paper plates with disposable utensils—and we will likely stay overnight in a hotel tomorrow to be able to take nice long showers and dine out (cats should be ok overnight without us, as long as we leave them kibble, water and two clean litterboxes). We'd take the cats back with us to a pet-friendly hotel till the work is done, but we'd never be able to wrangle them back into their carriers (and BangBang would probably puke again like she did the last couple of moves).

Gordy moves Sunday—he has a mover, but he may need me to take him grocery shopping once he's settled in.

"But wait—there's more" (as they say in the infomercials). Lately I find I'm eating anything I want yet lost 3 lbs. in the past 6 months. And began having L-sided upper back/rib soreness 3 weeks ago (feels like wearing a bra), as well as my lower back being "glitchy" over the past year despite proper lifting technique (squatting, not bending at the waist). Could be costochondritis (which I've had before, as long ago as 1988), or muscle strain due to having to twist & reach higher now that I'm shrinking (was 5'3" at dx, now barely 5'2"); but it's also a classic presentation for rib mets. I get semiannual abdominal MRIs to check for mets from both bc and OM—the latest one last week showed "no metatstases in abdomen;" but as I understand it it might not show bone mets (though the prior one's report specifically mentioned "degenerative disc changes without blastic or lytic lesions"). When I see my MO on Monday for a routine visit, he'll check out my current rib pain. (He said not to get an x-ray at Urgent Care tomorrow—he might not get results in time and he's not a fan of unnecessary radiation exposure). Wouldn't be surprised if he orders a PET scan, as well as adding tumor markers to the bloodwork (CMP, CBC, lipids, immune globulin titers as I briefly had a slight MGUS) I get at Kellogg's lab after the visit.

So I'm steeling myself to be reclassified Stage IV after a decade NED. (Breast, not OM which spreads to liver, not bones). Luminal A IDC (60-80% of postmenopausal bc) when it recurs, almost always recurs distantly after 20-30 years, but 10 years would be sort of a shock, as my OncotypeDX and online Predict tool put my recurrence risk at 6-8%. Quite frankly, I'd originally expected a 50% chance of my ciliary-body OM having spread to my liver & killed me by now, so I guess I've been "playing with the house's money."

Good morning. It would have been my DH's 73 birthday, today. I will celebrate without him. I am going on a boat ride with my LIFT group and out to dinner with some friends from the grief support group. Still have tears in my eyes.