Visions of growing things dance in my head...

Every once a while in central Indiana we get to experience a few amazingly warm days during the winter months.  Yesterday, it reached 70℉, and today may see a high of 65 before the rains and winds blow in more seasonably cold weather for the next week of days.  

I celebrated this spring-like weather by sitting myself in the sun and planting some seeds in pots.  Just whatever struck my fancy.

Mostly, lettuces and other leafy greens.  And a few herbs.  And kohlrabi - which is possibly a ridiculous thing to plant in a pot, but I did it anyway.

I also moved my hibiscus plants (above) into the sunroom, and fertilized them. If these perk up, I will repot them to a larger planter outside when the temperatures have stabilized.  These were bought on clearance last summer. Years ago, I had great success with clearanced hibiscus - keeping them for a couple of summers.  I'm hoping I can get at least another summer out of these.

And the amaryllis (above) that my neighbor gave me last spring is producing some growth, so it got a side dressing of new soil and some fertilizer.  Since Easter is early this year (at least in my mind it is) I might be a tad late getting this back in the sun if I hope for a bloom by then.  I'm not overly hoping.  I'll just be thrilled if it blooms again, given my complete neglect of it since its blooms died off last spring.

We'll see if anything above grows.  Just planting and tending these things made me happy yesterday. And then dinner and good discussion with youngest son made my day complete.  The snow here has finally melted. Birds are singing. Sandhill cranes are flying overhead with their distinct call.  Spring is coming! 

Indeed...  there is lots to celebrate.

A small cross stitch...

Thanks to all who gave feedback on my blanket project.  I've decided to put it on hold until I get with my friend for her to weigh in on it again.  Comments helped me see some ideas I didn't think about, and also made me feel a little more confident of the colors I'm working with.  I appreciate it.

While waiting to get back to the blanket, I've given myself permission to start a small cross stitch project I found in an older (February 2015) Just Cross Stitch magazine.  I have found some gems in old craft magazines - which is good and bad.  It's fun, because the ideas are so old, they're new again.  It's bad because it feeds my hoarding tendency of all things crafty...  Do you relate?

While Valentine's Day was the inspiration for picking this pattern to work on, and the variegated thread color, I think the finished project will look fine through the spring and summer months displayed with other colorful small projects.  Do I have those other colorful projects done?  No...  But this may just inspire me to begin that collection.  😉

We're warming up here for the next week to temps in the 50's and 60's.  Anticipating the warm up, I bought some seeds a few days ago - with the thought that I might just get something planted this week.  We are also expecting a fair amount of rain in the upcoming days, but hopefully I can find a dry one to do some potting of seeds outside.  The idea of doing that in February just sounds incredible!

The 10 year window...

This short video stopped my mindless scrolling, and started me thinking...

My guess is it will be worth 2 1/2 minutes of your life, too.

A new project...

It's been a little bit since I've shared anything I've been working on because, frankly, having a desire to hand-craft has been hit or miss in recent weeks.  

That said, in early January I offered (and a friend accepted) for me to make a gift for her of a crocheted blanket.  I gave her free reign to tell me what colors she would like it in - with yarns that are available to me locally, that is.  

She had a vision...  An ombre blanket with shades of brown to beige.  Now shades of brown and beige aren't really my bent, but I also didn't think it was a bad idea.  So I gathered some options, and together we picked out shades of yarn that will hopefully fade nicely from dark to light, and make a respectable looking blanket. 

I started this before I landed in the hospital three weeks ago.  Up to that point, it took some trial and error to get the size right.  And I needed to decide from the outset how many colors I would use, and how big (tall) each color section would be.  I (thought I'd) finally settled on five colors, each approximately 14 inches tall, which would make a blanket around 72 inches long.  

And, I did some crochet tests with colors, and order of colors, and finally landed on the five colors I would use.  And wouldn't you know...  today, I'm once again second guessing the colors. and how many colors to use. 

Here are the options:

Five shades

Six shades

I hate all this waffling, especially after being sure (for most of a week) that five shades would be enough.  And an odd number always sounds good to me.  But when I see how large 14 inches is, and thinking this might look better with more shades, I think six shades is a respectable idea too.

Using six colors will mean ripping back and restarting the second shade earlier.  But that's a small price to pay if it looks better in the end.

Feel free to weigh in.  The colors above are pretty true (on my screen), but that second skein from the left is slightly darker  than it shows in the picture.  So it works best in the order I've placed these colors.

Once I make my final decision, I'm hoping I can knock this out in just a few weeks.  

~~~~~

On the health front, biopsies on the two most suspicious thyroid nodules have come back as benign.  What a relief that is.  I felt I was holding well onto the most likely scenario - which was that the nodules were benign.  And that my bigger fear (a metastasis) was unlikely.  But until I saw "benign" on a final report, I didn't fully realize how preoccupied I was with it all.  I think this simply goes with the territory of having had cancer.  I'm grateful to not be plagued with worry about it coming back, but boy...  does the possibility ever rear its ugly head when you're least expecting it!  I know that not everyone will understand that, but if you feel what I'm saying, I'm happy to validate you.

I'm also very happy to say I now feel free to kick to the curb the niggling worry that hung around in the back of my mind the past two weeks.  

I'm feeling good.  I'm movin' on...  

Thank you for prayers and encouragement.  

An Adventure, Part 3...

Sometime on Saturday afternoon I started hearing a faint noise that sounded sort of like a notification sound on a phone. My room was right across from the nurse's station, so during the day there was often activity and noise out there.  And there are all kinds of beeps and other noises going on, so I didn't think much about it the first few times I heard it. But finally, it dawned on me that maybe, just maybe it was my phone.  I wondered if it was somewhere behind me where I couldn't see it, buried under something.  I was hooked up to too many thing to get up and start looking for myself.

When the nurse came in, I mentioned it to her.  She started looking through all my close-by things (that, by that time, I had already looked through).  Then she started looking through my current covers - which is probably when I mentioned my theory again - that my phone had probably gotten caught up in the bed linens of the gurney.

For some reason, this time it clicked for her!  She walked over to what was a linen hamper - which was about two arms length away from me the whole time.  Here, I thought it was a garbage bag!  With abandon, the nurse went bravely into the hamper, pulling out sheets and blankets, shaking everything trying to find my phone.  It was a funny and endearing sight.  Seeing her pull my phone out of the bottom of the bag was met with a cheer, and I declared her "Wonderful!"

In spite of my inauspicious beginning on the med/surge floor, the nursing and tech staff won me over from that point on.  Most of them looked too young to be nurses and techs, and all were tender and kind in their very different ways.  This began to be apparent to me as I started feeling better.  They were probably very kind to me in my sick hours, but I was too out of it to fully notice.

My home for 2 1/2 days...   See that blue thing in the background on the left.  That was the laundry hamper where my phone spent part of Saturday.

Okay... having dramatized enough of this hospital visit, I will wrap it up below.  

~~~~~

When one has an attack of acute pancreatitis (especially, if there is no infection present), the protocol is to give intravenous fluids, analgesics and to give the digestive system rest (i.e. starve the patient).  Not that I was interested in eating, but after about 12 hours of nothing to drink, I was excited to be offered ice chips. A few hours later, when they brought me chicken broth and frozen gelato, I savored very sip and swallow.  

Okay, nevermind the chicken broth was pretty tasteless, the important thing was it stayed down.  And the cold gelato only made me hurt a little.  Though, I was unsure how to parse out the different discomforts since I was on morphine.  Even on morphine, the pancreatic pain was still there, but by this time it merely felt "sore" or tender, instead of angrily gripping my whole middle.  The next meal was more broth and gelato (and jello if I wanted it, which I didn't), and the next meal... more of the same.  And the next day...  more of the same. 

By Sunday night, my stomach was gnawing with hunger, but the idea of eating still held no appeal.  After asking a number of times how long this process took, and getting no clear answer, I came to accept there is no clear answer.  

When a patient can tolerate clear liquids, s/he is moved to semi-solids (puddings, and I don't remember what else I was told).  Then, finally, the patient is given solids, and when s/he can tolerate solids, s/he can be discharged and finish recovering at home.  

The liquid diet went on through Monday morning, until the hospitalist's nurse came into my room, and started a conversation with me about going home.  As confusing as this was, physically, I knew I was capable of managing at home, and I would get better more quickly there.  So...  without actually saying we were skipping the middle step, that is what we did.  I was allowed to order something simple off the menu and eat solid food for the first time in 2 1/2 days. It might be worth mentioning, one of the reasons they wanted me to go home quicker than they were planning, was because flu patients were quickly filling up the floor, and they didn't want me catching it.  I didn't need the motivation, but that kicked me into high gear to order lunch, get packed, and be ready to leave as soon as they could make it happen. 

Nothing else dramatic happened in the few hours it took to eat, pack, and for them get my discharge orders completed.  It was cold - I think below zero outside - but I was so happy to be in the frigid air, set free from my hospital room.

Instructions were for me to slowly introduce new solids - preferably just one food group a week.  That seemed incredibly slow, and maybe it was too cautious, but I did my best to abide by that for the first week - and really through most of this past week. Up until just a couple of days ago food has made my innards hurt (some times more than other times), but one ibuprofen and one tylenol practically made me feel normal on those early days.  And as of this weekend, I've felt pretty good.

I hope I never have this happen to me again, and I'm prepared to never really understand why it did happen.  I have some suspicions that something autoimmune has been going on since summertime, and the high-dose flu shot I got four days prior to the attack may factor in.  And depending on what is determined about my thyroid, that could factor in (or not).

I'm trying to live by Matthew 6:34.  "So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself.  Each day has enough trouble of its own." ~ Jesus (NASB)

Okay...  so, practically speaking, that means I'm going to refrain from writing here what I already know from an ultrasound done on Friday. Hopefully, I'll hear from a doctor early this week to learn next steps.  And maybe in another week or so, I'll be able to write with some knowledge about what's up with my thyroid.

Prayers are appreciated - of course, for best outcomes, but also for peace of heart and mind to prevail - both in the waiting and in the outcome.

I appreciate the thoughts and prayers and such kind comments on these posts.  I imagine most bloggers feel this way about their readers, but I definitely feel I have the best people imaginable following along here - willing to encourage and pray.  

Thank you so much.

It's funny how the town I've lived in for over 27 years, and a road I've driven at least a thousand times looks like a different world when viewed from a third-floor hospital room.