Can we have a forum for "older" people with bc?

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

John F. Kennedy

Chris, sorry to hear that the lidocaine is not working, Hope whatever the "good stuff" is works to control the pain. Same goes for the demise of your Visible.

I think after 3 major surgeries since December 2023 and the prolonged recovery after the first surgery left me deconditioned. This last surgery finally made me more mobile even though recovery was prolonged and hard. The last couple of weeks with the gardening has proven I am able to spend hours working outside. Symptoms such as shortness of breath have diminished and endurance has increased. I think PT resolved a lot of the endurance issues and I finally feel like I am back on my feet.

I am aware that at my age recovery will be longer, and I have to be patient with it and myself. Having been very active until my knees became problematic, threw a wrench into my retirement and travel plans as did the covid shutdown. Plus I had another major surgery in October 2021 with 7 days in hospital. Hopefully I am done with surgery for awhile.

I spent over 5 hours weeding and mulching today. I finished the bed by the rail fence, moved up to another bed weeding it and mulching it. It still needs 2 more bags but DH needs to make a Home Depot run for 10 more bags. Then I weeded the lower part of my secret garden. I reserved doing the upper section which is a fern bed because the slate walkway needs to be swept and some rocks from the wall need to be put back on the wall. They are from the top and may have been displaced by deer. It's a long section so I hope to get to it tomorrow. I quit because I was tired.

DH wanted help with weeding the fenced in area installed by the landscapers. So after a break I was back weeding that area. They were the tall ones that are easier to pull, but I was working on a steep incline again. We got about 2/3 done and will finish later. The weeds were only in the area they did not mulch. So will add some mulch here to cover those areas. I felt good about how much I have been able to accomplish in the last few weeks.

I hope everyone else also had a great day. Waving hello to everyone.

Oh Harley - so sorry to hear about the bee/wasp stings that got your DH. I too have neighbors who don't maintain their side of the property line, but they now have 12 dogs so no way I can address it. (or have my son fix the fence when he comes to town). The same neighbor has a HUGE oak in front that he planted right on the water meter. I have paid to have my side trimmed several times since he doesn't believe in maintenance. But not sure what will happen when the roots break the pipes.

Oh, Harley, I wish it were so. Nothing but surgery or opiates would allow me to resume anything close to normal use of my hands. Your hubby's stings must have been quite frightening for both of you. I would enjoy a couple of bee-stings at the base of each of my thumbs. With medical supervision, of course. Which wouldn't happen.

I took a look at Google street view of my childhood home, and the sideyards are all grown over with trees and stuff, which will grow into the basement walls. What happened? Rental property until it is a tear-down. 🤔

harley07, oh, your poor husband to get stung and for it to be on his head. Thin-skinned area so it really had to hurt. I would trim those bushes back with a vengeance once the hive is gone. Do you have a fence around your yard? If one has an inground pool here, they must have a fence around the pool, but some communities rule they have a fenced in yard as well.

Sandy, seems you are making headway on those boxes. Nice that you can then use them to pack up things that are being donated or trashed. Will you have to extend your lease?

Taco, the picture of Bella and Mutz is priceless. They look like they enjoy each others company. Also your house. O know your DH walks Mutz daily, do you walk Bella?

Chris, sorry about how your childhood home is suffering from owner neglect. Seems those who own rental properties want the income, but not the upkeep. I know the renter is responsible for lawn care, but not sure about trees and bushes. My DB lives near my parents former home and it is still in good condition because it is owned not rented. They were built in the early 50's and most were purchased by veterans.

Today is much more humid than yesterday with temp in the same range, but yesterday was more tolerable. I finished weeding the hill that DH wanted assistance with and I have to say he really bailed on me. I am mildly annoyed with him since he did not clean up as promised yesterday and bailed again today. Told him I will be out to inspect later that he removes full leaf bags from the hill and does a clean-up.

I went out around 12:30 and finally quit at 2 PM. There is a huge root ball I have to dig out, but not today. It is a combination of several bushes, none of which are worth keeping. I wanted to finish this area so I can move on to what I want to do tomorrow. However, this hill will need to be mulched because mulch put down by landscapers only covered areas where they planted and not entire fenced in area. So weeds will be back otherwise. Most likely will finish this before I start the upper section of the fern bed. DH sis apply a bag of mulch to bed that needed it to be finished. He volunteered because it was easier to do than work on the hill.

I had a late lunch and needed to cool down from the humidity. Tomorrow is supposed to be less humid so I will decide then what the game plan is.

cindyny, you are not the only one who unpacks and does laundry almost immediately. I dislike the clutter so I am on it and will leave items in the bag that just need to be returned upstairs. I want the bag upstairs, too. I do distribute gifts ASAP quickly as well unless they are for a future birthday or Christmas and then they get stashed in a gift box for safe keeping. I can't sleep on a plane so the overnight flights to Europe mean I arrive exhausted and ready for bed. I take a nap and usually wake in time for dinner. I don't get jet lag when we have day time return flights so I am ready to go. I may go to bed early though.

Hope everyone has a great day.

Betrayal - fences are required with pools in our town. Our neighbors installed their fence first so when we put in the pool we installed a fence on 3 sides of the backyard and the neighbors fence is on the 4th side. Our fence is 6 feet high with locking gates. We put in a vinyl resin type fence which while more expensive has the benefits of durability and easier upkeep so 20 years on it just requires an occasional power wash. Their fence (put in by the original owners in 1998 is wood and they have not done any maintenance on it since they moved in 15 years ago.

We also have an automatic pool cover that opens and closes in about 30 seconds. It is controlled by using a key on an electrical box attached just outside our back door. While it definitely helps keep the pool clean, our initial intent was for safety. Our son was 12 yo when we installed the pool and we both worked. We kept the key with us so that he and his friends could not use the pool in our absence. The cover can withstand something like 3000 pounds of weight. If any of them had any mechanical inclination they could have hot wired the box to open the pool but to the best of our knowledge that did not happen. It may be that since we are required to have a fence, our neighbors are holding off on repairing the last section of their fence in the hopes that we run out of patience and just add our own fence between the yards. I’m not looking forward to that expense but it may come to that point.

Chris - it’s sad to see our childhood homes go to ruins. My DH’s childhood home was sold about 15 years ago. It was a lovely two story with a big front porch on a corner lot in a small town. Unfortunately the new owners have not kept it up - peeling paint, sagging porch, overgrown landscaping. It’s sad but I do understand that upkeep costs money and not everyone has the funds available.

Sadly, my thought that Bella would be going home soon was dismissed this morning when Jie reported that Phil was back in the hospital. She spends the whole day down there which is why she hasn't tried to keep Bella at her place. So our visitor will be here a little longer. Generally Ken walks them both although with this hot weather it's only early in the morning and after dark at night. They go out in the front yard briefly mid-day. When it gets a little cooler, I'm sure I'll be back as the after dinner walker. We have discovered that it's easier for one of us to take both dogs. They get the leashes even more tangled up if we both go. While he used to love it, Mutz has suddenly gotten very stubborn about riding in the car so drives to grassy areas in the neighborhood have stopped (no grass in yards here as a water saving measure.). I really dread next month's visit to the vet.

It seems as if Ken "needs" to be the dog walker and the cook. He's given up so much that he used to do that I haven't argued with him. I know his telling me that I needed to take over handling our money was hard. He still drives, but only in our senior community. I worried about that until he had his cataracts done, but he now drives well if he knows where he is going. Aging really isn't for the faint of heart!

I was so glad to see Fleetwood win the golf tournament and now look forward to watching tennis for two weeks. I knit during commercials.

Have just finished an afghan for the last of seven great-nieces' high school graduations and have ordered yarn for one for Ella. Just hate the Joanne's went out of business as it is really hard to visualize the true color from a small picture on line. I'm already returning one variegated skein I ordered as it wasn't the right shades for the solid.

Mission BBQ was good. Six sauces to choose from so everyone was happy and we all liked the sides we choose. On the noisy side but it seems most places are these days.

Have a good week everyone. Pace yourself, Sandy.

Harley, I'd be tempted to hire an arborist (who knows how to deal with wasp nests) to trim back that lilac bush and stick your neighbors with the bill. We've always been conscientious about trimming back any of our trees that impinge on our neighbors' yard, and they reciprocate. (There's a pair of honey locusts on either side of our shared privacy fence). When we had to "true up" our rear gate, we discovered that the roots of their stinky "tree of heaven" (ailanthus) had grown on to our property and were pushing up the bottom of the fence—so we split the cost of an arborist to remove it.

We just bought a new loveseat for the den, to replace the 20-yr-old black leather one from IKEA that four different cats wore down (scratched but not ripped) and was haphazardly patched. It too is leather, but this time we will use well-placed throws or maybe a serape. As a coffee table we were using a black leather tufted storage bench from Overstock that is also the worse for wear—but I just bought a large piece of self-adhesive black leatherette I can cut to fit the top of the lid exactly and use the excess as trim around the edges. If it still looks like crap I can always use a blanket or throw atop it until we buy an actual coffee table or new storage bench to replace it.

Alas, we will likely need another lease extension—the contractor crew chief (the only Anglophone) is still in Poland and we're not going to do the punch list without him. (Been 5 days since the public adjuster told me to "stop worrying" and that he's "working on it"). We will insist the kitchen and baths be repainted and cured before we move back—and we still don't have all our furniture & basement fridge, nor any of the clothes that were dry cleaned (likely in some of those 600 boxes yet to be delivered). No point in packing up here yet and living out of suitcases because we can't ferry things back without where to place them!

Our landscaper has been amazing! We'd previously used him as our exterminator (when the firm we'd been using for 30+ years fired its manager and then us because we were "never home" when the techs arrived—we'd always left instructions for them to come when our housekeeper was there; and ever since the pandemic they kept sending new inexperienced techs who didn't have pet-safe chemicals. The owner called to fire me while I was at Urgent Care getting a gash stitched, which was why I wasn't home to greet the tech)! Our landscaper has done all sorts of carpentry fixes (including installing a new lock), lifted heavy boxes so I could go through them, broken them down, hauled out trash, even laid our new area rugs. He also re-sodded our lawn, fixed the parts of the deck that the contractor missed, did new seasonal plantings front & back. and wired our backyard magnolia with white LEDs (on a dusk-to-dawn timer). Will post pix of rooms when each is devoid of boxes and has its full complement of furniture & accessories (including AV systems), and a nighttime shot of our backyard.

Great quote today. I need this reminder.

Taco, we were glad to see Fleetwood win, too. Still, that's an obscene amount of money to win for playing a sport. We also will be watching some US Open tennis. It's nice to have American women doing well in tennis.

I missed the post about Chris's old home. I went back a few pages and couldn't find it.

It's cold this morning, low 40's. We're running the heat pump and a small electric heater. We have a furnace but seldom use it. It runs on propane.

Hi to all and wishes for a good day.

There might be problems with lymphedema, even this far down the road. Would be willing to wear a sleeve as a prevention measure. But he is aware of all that.

My childhood home is 5 blocks from where I live now. A pink ranch house on a dead end street that my dad bought new. After both parents passing, my niece bought it. She sold it maybe 10 years ago. My parents sided it in havrvest gold aluminum siding. My niece had it painted white. But in my head it’s still a “little pink house.” I’ve driven past it, it looks fine. My only sadness is I’ll never be in it again.

I took notes and everything yesterday but never got back on here. I’m running around a lot. So my comments are late.

Taco, loved the pic of the dogs. Sorry there is no end in site for returning Bella. But they do look cute together!

Chris, I hope the new cream helps you.

Betrayal, I believe you’re back in full swing with your garden work! We went to town trimming shrubs yesterday. Filled about 4 bags in between drizzle/rain. We then pulled weeds from the gravel - we have the house, 2’ of gravel, then the flower bed. My back was screaming at me.

Harley, yikes on the bees! My neighbors, same ones that burnt down the fence, have crap trees growing right along side their foundation. I’d love to take my chainsaw to them and then pour some herbicide over the whole area. It’s about 2 feet wide and next to the retaining wall and my driveway.

Today I called the dentist as soon as I got up. I think I’ve said I had a tooth ache while in Ireland. They got me in at 11. Turns out I need a root canal. $194 for the visit, but thankful they could get me in

Referral to an endondontist. Called there and the girl asked if I had insurance. I said yes I have insurance but I don’t think you accept it. She then says - we don’t take any insurance. Me laughing asked - if you don’t take any, then why did you ask me if I have insurance?!? I’m getting old. Consult is $395, includes a CT of your mouth and the “cold” test. If they confirm I need a root canal it’s $2,815-$3,215. The insurance part, they’ll file for you to receive direct reimbursement if you have it. Appointment is on Wednesday.

I also called an overhead door company located around the corner from me. When the firemen yanked up the garage door (single car, non electric) they pulled it off the tracks. It’s not working right. They’ll be here tomorrow. Their fees are $99 to get here and, (are you sitting down?) $30 every 15 minutes. No chit chat with this guy - get out of your truck and fix it!

I also called for an estimate on power washing the house, the retaining wall, and my SO said to get the fence done too. White vinyl privacy fence has lichen on the outside. I think they’ll soft wash the house & fence, and power washing the cement retaining wall. I have a small power washer but I’m so overwhelmed with the garage I have no interest in doing it myself.

Speaking of the garage, my cousin said he’ll stop over to really look at it. He can probably do most of the work himself. I’ll know more after he takes a look. But just knowing he’s done this kind of work before and seems unfazed vs me feeling over my head, is a relief to me.

Sandy, I still don’t know how you’re doing it all!

On a somewhat funny note, my pool solar cover is falling apart so bad my skimmer looks to be full of blue contact lenses. (It’s like bubble wrap, exposed bubbles go onto the water) A new solar cover shows up by Friday. It will be on for maybe a few weeks before we’ll close the pool. I was hoping the old one would last until we close the pool but the sun has destroyed it.

Weather hasn’t been bad. We took turns mowing the lawn today. If you exerted a lot it was hot, but if you were the one resting it felt perfect. Ha! I think it was 81.

Hoping everyone has a good Tuesday!

I've been reading back to catch up during my absence and am heartbroken to learn of Illinois Lady's passing. She was an encouragement and I will dearly miss her here on BCO. Betrayal I appreciate your posting the obituary.

Under the weather yesterday, so spent most of day watching movies, which I have not done in ages. Did not sleep well the night before and was awake at 5:30. Called it quits at 6 and got up.

Feel better today and just spent about 90 minutes spreading mulch on the landscaped area. This hill is even steeper than one in backyard so I am glad I had PT focus on balance on an incline. It really helped, but biggest issue is sliding. No falls and the area is partially done, with the areas near new plantings done. I'd like to add some more at the top because that is where the weeds were most invasive plus it would be easier since it is relatively flat. DH will make a run to Home Depot to get 10 more bags. Tomorrow's plan is to finish weeding in fern bed area and try to mulch the lower section of the secret garden. I'd like to finish by this weekend since I am running behind on my predicted schedule.

DD is super excited about our upcoming cruise to Alaska. We fly to Seattle next Friday so I need to focus on what to pack. Weather will be cooler when we are on land so fleeces and sweaters are needed, but will also need outfits for on the ship since it will not be cold. It's been many moons since we traveled together and last trip was to Ireland, for 3 weeks, when she was in her teens. She's a good traveler. Her last cruise was one she took after she graduated from high school.

Heading to shower and plan on finishing dusting I started yesterday. Need to refresh nectar for hummingbird and clean the feeder. So just small household chores on the agenda.

intolight, I had genetic testing done after having to have bowel resection for pre-cancerous appendiceal lesion which had been removed during colonoscopy, but returned a year later. Plus there was a family hx of colon cancer, but no breast cancer. It might provide you with some usable info, but in my case, fortunately nothing was found. Still a nice to know. It is a good thing to do for your DD and DGD.

reader425, you are welcome and it is nice to know you are still around even if just lurking. I miss Jackie.

cindyny, you are right back to being the energizer bunny. Hope your cousin can fix your garage for you. Don't you love the upfront cost and then the per quarter hour charges?

Had that with Pella when they had to repair the bay window middle section. Price was over $200/hour. Was annoyed when I later realized their hand prints were visible on the interior of the glass. Yes, I could clean it, but the panel was too large for me to handle by myself. When they came to repair another window, the manager showed up and I showed him the hand prints. Suggested they provide them with white gloves to wear for use when installing windows. He offered to clean the window for me and I took him up on it. No charge for his visit.

Sandy, you lucked out with that landscaper. How nice that he goes beyond lawn care for customer service. He's a keeper. Hope your progress continues to make your home feel more live-able.

carole, I use propane for my stove and love it. Did not have access to natural gas when we redid kitchen. I'd had electric stove to that point and absolutely hated it. We'd had a propane heater for our above ground pool, so we just ran a new line to cover stove. The oven is still electric but burners are propane fueled. I love it.

Hope everyone has a great day and waving hello to everyone.

Reader - thank you for the lovely picture. Such a peaceful, calming scene.

Betrayal - how awesome that you and DD are going to Alaska. Have a wonderful time. I hope you will post pictures when you return home.

Cindy - I hope your cousin can repair your garage. That way you would know you are getting quality work.

Sandy - I would be furious if the crew replaced the higher quality fixtures with lower quality products. Is there any way you can complain to SF? When we had the water leak our insurance was replacement with ‘like’ products and we watched them carefully although I suspect they may have used a lower quality paint than the current Sherwin Williams. It’s exhausting to keep on top of the many details.

Intolight - I think the genetic testing you are having could be very helpful for your DD and DGD. When I was diagnosed with BC in 2020 I found out I have the RAD51D mutation which increases my risk of breast and ovarian cancer. My mother, maternal aunt and maternal great aunt all had BC so I’ve provided the mutation information to my niece and her two daughters. My 50 yo niece gets regular mammograms but her doctor’s reaction to,the ovarian cancer risk is ‘we’ll keep an eye on it’ which infuriates me because there are no symptoms for ovarian cancer until it’s too late. My OC was only caught early because I had a prophylactic BSO. One of the downsides of a less common mutation is that most research is done on the BRCA mutations and outside of oncology most doctors are not aware of mutations other than BRCA.