Battling Breast Cancer

 I know I have been absent awhile.  I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer November 17th 2022.  I just didn’t feel up to writing.  I have had a lot of testing, chemotherapy, 2 surgeries, radiation, way too many blood tests, went bald…grew hair back that is silver and curly, have lymphedema now and doing physical therapy.  I have had lots of scans and tried several drugs that had bad side effects too.  I am tired, but I am surviving stage four breast cancer…so far anyway.

I had to reduce my flock, haven’t had a garden in two years and have been concentrating on getting better, trying to get some strength back.  I just have flowers and a few tomato and pepper plants in pots.  All the things I was doing on the farm, pretty much stopped.  So, I didn’t really have anything to write about.

It has been a tough journey.  It is very hard to make decisions about treatment, especially when things like chemotherapy haven’t worked on relatives like my brother and grandfather.  I have a CHEK2 mutation, not the traditional BRAC1 or BRAC2.  I believe the mutation comes from my Mom’s side of the family, it is more common in people with Polish Ancestry.  From what I read, CHEK2 is the gene that fights cancer, mine doesn’t do a good job.  I had ovarian cancer before and there are several others that people with the mutation are more susceptible to.  My brother had brain cancer which is one, my grandfather had kidney cancer, which is another, colon cancer and prostate cancer too.  I tried Chemotherapy and it didn’t work on me, but it didn’t work on my brother and grandfather either.  

I am still standing, just painfully so.  I am doing my best to figure all this out, they really need to come up with better treatments that aren’t so damaging to your body.  I guess if I wasn’t built like a “brick shithouse” like my Dad use to say, I may not have done as well as I did.  You would not believe all the supplements and concoctions I have taken.  In spite of going through chemotherapy and it not shrinking the tumors, I am still walking around all be it slowly because of neuropathy at times.  Hormone blockers are the devil too, so is Verzenio…my body doesn’t like them and I quit taking them.  I am hoping my body will heal from the damage from those, I don’t like taking drugs that make me feel awful.  At times I cannot use my hands, my tendons hurt and my knees and hips aren’t operating like they should and the sharp pains hit and I have to sit down.  I get out of breath easily too, that is not normal and I started coughing the last week of radiation and drugs made that worsen.

I had after treatment scans, they don’t show any Metastic disease (cancer), but a few other things have popped up, not sure what will happen next.  Wish me luck, I need all I can get.

Angel Baby

It was a long weekend of canning and attempting to get things put up.  I have learned how to can meat and beans lately.  When I am busy all day in the orchard or garden, cleaning chicken coops, tending bees or doing general yard work and daily chores, it comes in very handy.  Pressure canning is time consuming, but spending a day or two doing it, I can have home cooked meals for a few weeks when I don’t feel like cooking after a long day.  Canned brisket is really good for street tacos or burritos, and slapping some on a bun with pickles onions and BBQ sauce is great!

We have had the white dog Angel in the house for about a week now, she is pretty good at going into her kennel with a treat prompt, but she is food aggressive with my dogs.  She is a counter surfer, which I need to remember it is not good to leave anything out she might like.  She needs to learn the house rules.  I guess she decided she needed some cheese shreds last night because I left them on the island…she ate what was left in the bag then my dog Gretchen brought the empty bag into the living room.  I cannot see into the kitchen from the living room…but, since my dogs have never done anything like that…I know it was Angel.  

Angel was taken to the mobile vet today for Spaying and shots.  She was let into the house so that she could get use to being in a kennel.  It is very hot out, the anesthesia makes it hard on them for regulating body temperature…so she gets to be in the house.  It has been hard with the food aggression.  My dogs are use to sharing.  Angel has started a few fights and I am hoping spaying helps calm down the fighting.  My dogs have some battle scars now.  Poor Sophie didn’t do anything but try and eat and now the bridge of her nose has a couple of wounds and swelling, her eye keeps getting gooey too.  You would think a 100+ pound dog would put a 45 to 50 pound dog down…but she came out the looser in that fight.

Angel Baby is a protective dog and she will put other dogs down that try to get to me, Roxy and Warren have both just wanted attention and she will take them down too.  These are the dogs the neighbor left to starve.  We want to keep Angel, but not at the expense of our dogs happiness or health.  So I am hoping the lady helping me with them is right and the spay will help.  Otherwise she will have to go.  

We had an unfortunate event yesterday too.  We let the dogs stay inside while my husband mowed and I picked fruit.  I normally put my dogs in their kennels if I am going to be outside awhile, but, I didn’t yesterday.  I was just picking blueberries so I figured I wouldn’t be outside that long.  I came in and after washing the berries, went into the living room.  At first I thought the dogs tore up one of their beds…until I picked up a piece of what I thought was foam rubber…it was not!  It took me a minute to realize what it actually was…it felt slightly sticky, it had a mild scent…it was everywhere, all over the floor, the rug, several of the dog beds.  I noticed one of my candles was missing and put two and two together.  Yep, they chewed up a 3 inch thick pillar candle that was about 8 inches tall.  It was tiny bits and pieces, with a few bigger pieces maybe an inch or so…but the floor and surfaces were covered in wax.

Oh well, live and learn!  I am hoping that Warren, the last male has a home soon.  He is a good boy and I like him, but I can not have 8 dogs much longer.  I spend too much time cleaning up messes like the wax, or cleaning up things they chew up outside, or filling holes so I don’t break an ankle.  My patience isn’t what it use to be and I have enough to do already!

Dogs everywhere!

 When we named our place it kind of happened because we had three dogs, but my Dad use to always talk about a Three Dog Night, it is kind of named for both.  My Dad loved the Piney Woods of East Texas, he never made it out here, he never saw any of my dreams coming true…he died at the age of 49.  

Why did I bring that up?  Well, I have always liked big dogs…having acreage is kind of nice when you have big dogs.  I no longer have just three dogs anymore though, it seems like I have collected a few more.  We found Ciara on the side of the house as a very young, sickly puppy.  I can’t basically nurse a dog back to health from the brink of death and not have an emotional attachment.  I got Gretchen and Schotzie from my local feed store, they had been dropped off on a highway and Gretchen followed me all over the store, Jackie was trying to find homes for the puppies and it was the last two.  She already had 7 dogs at home…she couldn’t take them home and was worried about leaving them at the store…lol, I love puppies!  Yep I took them home.  We had lost one of our original three, so now we have five big dogs.

Well…we did have five, but then my husband saw how skinny the neighbors dogs were.  Noticed that it didn’t look like they were still there.  The dogs were chasing cars, and getting thinner.  He took food to them.  The next morning he asked me to take more food to them and water.  I did…and it appeared that one of them was nursing puppies.  She was very food aggressive.  I spread food out so the five of them could all eat…but, she stood on top of the food and if any of them got close, she barked and snapped at them.  I told them tho follow me, we could get some more food at my house.  I could easily count their ribs, their hip bones were poking out and the spine was clearly visible.  I knew we needed to help them, if we didn’t they would die.

The first few days they would go back to their house after I fed them.  I saw the Momma dogs face in the window of one of the abandoned houses next door.  I had not seen her puppies, but thought they might be in that house.  My husband forbid me to search the houses for the puppies.  But, after reaching out on social media a lady who helps rescue dogs came out and found them.  Trouble is, we didn’t have a place for 5 adults and 5 puppies at my house!  Yes, ten dogs!  Remember, I already have five big dogs.  Well, the Momma dog decided to move her puppies under my shed, the adults took up residence on my porch.

At least they had food and water, some kind of shelter too…my porch and under my shed.  I tried to find a rescue, they were all full.  So, I asked for help and I have gotten help.  Food and donations.  Good news is, I was able to keep the puppies until they were weaned, then a foster was found and now the five puppies have all found homes.  The three adult males were all health checked and neutered, two have found homes.  The Momma dog has dried up now and will be scheduled for spay soon, if she is ready.  The white female gets spayed Monday, it has been postponed a few times.  I have one male left to find a home for too.  But all in all, the dogs are healthy getting spayed and neutered and their shots.  At the moment, I still have 8 dogs, not the original 3, but at least these extra ten won’t be a statistic out here and I won’t find their bones and fur in my woods.

Good Productive Day

I am always grateful for each morning I wake up and can walk upright without too much pain.  I just turned 63 so I have the usual problems that come with age, arthritis, back pain, stiffness, you get it if you are over fifty.  I didn’t really want to go out and muck chicken coops today, but we have storms coming and a blast of winter temperatures hitting tonight and several days of cold.  My body does not like temperatures below about 45, I have screws and wire in both feet too and I can feel exactly where they are and it hurts.  So, I decided today would be a great day to muck out coops!  I would much rather work outside when it is in the 60’s than in the 30’s or low 40’s…especially if it is damp outside.

I have never seen any kind of tool that was specifically for mucking out chicken coops.  However, I really like using a digging fork and a commercial roof scraper.  I use the roof scraper on the wooden floors or to scrape a layer of muck off of the sandy soil we have.  It has a long handle and a slightly bent shovel like blade almost a foot wide.  I also use metal putty knifes and taping blades for flat roosts and some walls, plastic putty knives for some plastic nest boxes.  I am pretty good at figuring out good tools to use for the particular dirty jobs.  Long handle stiff brushes for dish type waterers and long handled car wash brushes for plastic 3 to 5 gallon waterers…the soft brushes get in the grooves a bit better.

Today my tools of choice were varied, I had a muck bucket, a big garden cart, my brushes and net covered sponge, my wide blade putty knife, my scraper, my digging fork and my rubber coated gloves…I started with the duck house.  The duck coop has a dirt bottom, if there is enough straw or wood shavings, it usually is not too awful to remove all of the spent bedding…it is dryer under the top layer, so it basically scoops up fairly easy.  If it hasn’t rained a lot, it usually doesn’t smell bad either.  It was unusual today, I didn’t have chicken and turkey helpers…but that may be because I let the dogs run the yard and they would periodically come check on me.  I did have to holler at the youngest several times, she likes to chase chickens and jump in the duck pools.  I like them running around the large open area, it wears them out and they will nap when we go inside.  I dug down to fresh dirt in the duck coop, then spread a bundle of pine shavings on it.  Normally I use straw, I had straw…but the chickens will go in and scratch around in there so much, the kick a good part of it out…not so much with pine shavings.  The straw has some wheat left in it, the pine doesn’t have that.  I felt pretty good after getting that one mucked out, went and dumped the garden cart and went to the breeding pens next.

The coop section in the breeding pens is pressure treated plywood, I don’t normally put straw in it unless it rains a lot or it stays cold for longer than a couple of days.  The chickens just sleep on roosts above the floor…it gets nasty quick sometimes.  The commercial roof scraper works well in this area, I have to use the muck bucket in this coop…and then carry it to dump. There are actually four sections, four feet by four feet square…but all connected, if that makes since?  I did divide the coops intending to divide the run, but never have completed it.  The run is divided into two sections though, so I could separate two breeds in it.  The plan was to make 8 sections total for breeding purposes, but things changed and I had to use materials differently than originally planned.  There were going to be 8 doors too…but the structure is half the size originally planned.  The run has a metal roof, all of my coops runs are covered in metal now…I had polycarbonate on them, but after some huge hail punching holes in it, a change had to be made.

I don’t know why I am telling you this, I guess because things evolved and mistakes had to be fixed over the years. If you get into chickens maybe, it will help you decide how to build things or something.

I just really got in my groove today and got a lot done in the cleaning department.  We call our coops different names, so we know the locations and what coop it is.  My chicken yard is divided up by different fenced areas too.  I try and clean three coops in a day when I clean, I don’t always get all three, because some days things don’t go as planned.  Today I did four and moved dirt too!  I know I will probably feel it tomorrow.  But today was a good day.  

I still have repairs to make, but that will have to wait a bit longer.

Last Bathroom Floor is Done!

I think we did pretty well getting the bathrooms in this house fixed up.  They aren’t perfect, but we learned and did them all ourselves, with the exception of having some help in the beginning.  We had to fix several plumbing issues that he did, pipes started leaking in the wall, so with the help of push to fit connectors my husband got the plumbing repaired.  It was left to me for the most part, to do the sheetrock and repairs, he textured some then I finished texturing and painted.  I am not really familiar with plumbing other than faucet change outs and my husband did that for me this time.  We managed to remodel two bathrooms in one year!  Lol, eventually we will need a new vanity and tub in the guest bath, but it isn’t used that much so it may be awhile for that much of a renovation.  I ripped up the stained vinyl flooring, scraped and cleaned the floor, patched the walls and did fresh paint and then laid tile, oh and painted baseboards and put them back on.  It looks much better than it did.  I bought a plug-in light for over the sink so you could see to shave or put on makeup, but we put up a new overhead light when we first moved in, the fixture was awful and only had a single light and it was rather dark.  One of these days I might hire an electrician to actually wire for a light over the sink.  Maybe when we replace the bathtub and vanity…or I will learn how to run electrical wires and add a switch.  My husband can do it, he just doesn’t like going into the attic, especially when it is hot out.  We renovated the office bathroom about this time last year and the master bath about a year before that (I need to fix the shower floor still though…maybe I will do that soon.

This time of year is the best for me to do outside projects, but I have been working inside mostly.  Put different shelving in my small pantry and decided to start the changeover from what we previously used as “the kitty room” to a walk-in pantry.  I cleared it out, moved the cats to the non-carpeted guest room and got to work.  I am not completely done, but all four walls have shelving now.  I took a bunch of small appliances off my counters and put them in the “new” pantry, and actually have all my canning jars, implements and canners in one spot…I think?  I am just finally trying to get better organized.  I took some shelves out of that room and actually added them to my closet.  So I have several projects going at once really.  I need to get things done before spring and gardening season.

I want to get started on my kitchen island build and greenhouse too.  But, I need to do some chicken coop repairs too.  I need to prioritize things and some things just have to be pushed to the back burner at times, so other things can be done that are more important.  Housing animals verses building an island?  Well, animals are first on that one.  I keep swearing I will get the greenhouse built…who knows when it will really happen?

Lol…guess what?  After being here in the country for 9 years, we finally invited someone to dinner!  I would have preferred to have everything neat and orderly before we did it.  But the sky didn’t fall and at least when they used the guest bath, it didn’t look like someone peed on the floor anymore!  

Getting Things Done

It was tough going for awhile with a new puppy, but she is doing great.  Ciara is getting close to fifty pounds now, she is almost as tall as Gretchen my smallest dog who we rescued a bit over two years ago.  Ciara is close to six months old now, so not done growing yet.  She is however potty trained…so I can leave her unattended for a few hours to work on the house, on nice days the dogs go outside while I have loud tools going in the house…otherwise they go into their kennels.

We had a strange thing happen.  We haven’t had company since the pandemic lockdowns, so about two years.  We don’t normally use the quest bathroom, but…do you know if you don’t use a bathroom the water in the toilet dries up and sewer gases escape?  It happened and did not smell great.  So, we have been trying to remember to go flush that toilet at least once a week.  Well, sometime between the last time we flushed it and my trip in there to clean it for company coming…small piles of what looked like sawdust or sandy dirt appeared behind the toilet.  We were afraid of maybe termites in the wall, or carpenter ants.  I talked my husband into removing the toilet so we could cut and look into the wall to see what was happening.  I got the bright idea of repainting and tiling the floor since the toilet was out of the bathroom, and had him remove the vanity too.  There were no ants or termites in the wall that I could see, I cut a good sized section open too.  I drilled holes in the bottom of the wall in several spots too, no bugs or sawdust/sand came out.  I did put some powdered termite and carpenter ant killer in the wall, I sprayed a foam termite and ant killer in the holes I drilled, just in case.

Anyway, after I repaired the sheetrock and textured it… I pulled up the nasty vinyl that has been bugging me for over 8 years.  It didn’t matter how much I scrubbed it, or bleached it…it would not come clean.  Lol…I had also splashed bleach on the wall and it ruined the paint, several years ago.  White spots on Amethyst Smoke (purplish gray) paint is not attractive.  It took me a few weeks because of other chores and having to get some materials, but I got the bathroom painted, tiled baseboards painted and installed, then my husband got the toilet installed and plumbing all hooked back up in time for company.  I am still working on decorating it, but it looks tons better.  No more nicotine stained floor!  No more white splotched too dark of paint.  We will probably do a more extensive renovation one of these days and replace the bathtub and surround, and the vanity…but with a new faucet and cleaned up well, it will do for awhile longer.  I kind of like the Industrial Farmhouse look, so eventually I would like that look in the guest bath.  We did what we use as our office bathroom during the lockdowns, it looks pretty nice too…I still need to do the backsplash on that one…but not bad doing two bathrooms in about a years time.

I am working on my pantry too, and what was once used as an office because it is only a 9’x9’ room…it is going to be a walk in pantry eventually.  I just have to learn a bit more carpentry, I want to move the door from the living room to the kitchen though…so framing and sheetrock will have to happen as will floor repair.  I may decide to tile the room…if I can still do it when I am ready.  For now, I am adding shelving…since I can fruits and veggies, I need storage.  My garden was pretty much a bust last year, so I have a bunch of empty jars from using what I canned the year before.

My husband and I cut the plywood for a kitchen island today.  It is my next project.  I need to figure out the size of shelves I need for the pantry room and order them.  I am so far behind on normal chores too.  I don’t think I have completely cleaned my back porch for two years with all the projects, then my brothers illness and death…and my injuries and sicknesses too.  But, still getting things done…it is just taking longer than I like.

Cooler Weather at Last!

This past year has been rather hot.  Me being 62 and on blood pressure medication has made it seem worse, I sweat every time I exert myself…even cooking.  I have been so far behind on my chores because of this and from jumping off a ladder that was breaking and hurting my shoulder…I feel overwhelmed at times, trying to get things accomplished.  I kept trying to do heavy manual labor and my shoulder didn’t get much better, so I quit for about six weeks.  My shoulder is much better now and I am trying to get things done now, in the mornings when it is in the 70’s.  

I purchased six 8’x4’x12” metal raised bed planters that I am slowly trying to get put together…so far four are assembled.  We have a lot of rain during the first part of spring when planting normally occurs.  If I don’t till early, I can’t till during that time.  I just use a gas powered tiller that I have to manually control, it is getting harder and harder to do.  I didn’t have much of a garden this year, cucumbers and some green beans, I have yet to get a tomato out of it!   I am hoping these beds will help some, since I won’t have to till them. I am putting down a weed block, then cardboard,  before filling with soil.  The paths between them will also have weed block and wood chips so weeds should be controlled around them too…hopefully!

We also found an abandoned puppy in our side yard.  It was pretty bad off when we found it.  It was dehydrated, starving, tons of fleas covered it, so many that her skin was crusty and after washing her you could see sores and bald patches that seeped for the first two weeks we had her.  She also had a horrible case of round worms, her poor belly was huge…after the first worming, she pooped out large quantities of worms for days.  She was barely able to walk and her eyes seemed cloudy, but now I think it was because of the dehydration.  A friend brought goats milk to me, the puppy existed on goats milk the first week.  I started soaking food in goats milk and she didn’t seem too interested in it in the beginning, but slowly she started eating it.  I kept her in a laundry basket in the beginning, but the stronger she got the more I would take her outside to interact with the other dogs.  I cleaned her poop up every time and checked for worms. After she was worm free, she could roam the house with the other dogs and play.  We have now had her about 35 days, she is fully healed up, has doubled in size, weighs about 25 pounds now, her coat is sleek and shiny, she is crate trained, but potty training has not been great. I need to work on potty training  more…I wait and watch her go when I take her outside, but many times she will run in the house and go again!  She does spend a lot of time outside because of this, I do a lot of work outside and encourage her to go again before we go inside.  She does good during the day, when I am paying attention and taking her out regularly…but, not so much at night before bed.  It is making my husband mad…she pooped or peed in the house at least five times in a three hour window.  Hey, I gotta cook after spending all day doing things outside…so I am not paying attention to her, not much anyway.  I named her Ciara.  She is smart, she will learn, she already sits for treats and knows no biting and no.