Still here...

I can't believe it's been over a month since my last post.  May was a good month.  Very good, in fact.  I enjoyed taking some pictures of spring flowers, and finally after a very rainy and chilly spring (which I loved),  we finally put in half of our garden the third week of May.

We also had out-of-town and out-of-state visitors in May, and that was pretty special.  The asparagus patch went totally "to fern" by the end of the month, just as the strawberries started ripening.  We started picking strawberries and I got some in the freezer before the end of the month.   So glad I did because reading below you'll understand that my strawberry picking got cut short and we turned the task over to any friends interested in a "you pick" experience.  Most of the rest of our little strawberry patch harvest is taking up space in several friends' freezers for them to enjoy later.

And now a cherry tree is producing fruit.  A tree we didn't even realize was a cherry tree until last weekend. The fruit is some sort of sour cherry - a bit tart for eating fresh, and on the small side, but I've read that they should be very good in baked treats and in smoothies, and they perhaps make the best cherry pie.  I'm not particularly a fan of cherry (or any fruit) pie, but I might be game for making one using cherries from our own tree. Or maybe a cherry cobbler.  

My thumbs have become very sore again, so I saw a hand surgeon in mid-May.  X-rays show that the cartilage is completely gone at the basal joint on my left hand, and nearly gone on my right hand.   Surgery should provide a fix, and up until recently I was looking forward to having that done, but for the present I'm seeing how far a cortisone shot will get me.  It appears it's not going to get me very far. The joint pain and ache throughout my wrists still get to be too much when I'm active, so mostly I'm just not testing the limits of my hands very often.  The pain is very real, and I'm ever so thankful there is hope for getting back more full use of my hands.

Yes, May was filled with good and interesting, and some promising things.

And then, to finish off the month, there was a most memorable Memorial Day when all the good things took a back seat momentarily as I made a trip to the ER.  I'd been in serious discomfort since the Friday evening before, and when nothing brought relief or sleep or the ability to eat solid food for three days, I finally gave in to exhaustion and pain fatigue and asked Hub to drive me to the ER.  The whole experience was a little more involved than I'll go into here because I can't seem to write about the interesting stuff without including the mundane stuff and before I know it I've written a tome.  So the fun stuff I'll keep to myself and this I'll keep brief.  

Two weeks ago tonight I was in a recovery room contentedly sedated, eating scrambled eggs - my first solid food in four days after a miserable weekend (plus some) that finally resolved in my having a very inflamed gallbladder removed.  I suppose the reason my gallbladder was inflamed was because I had three large-ish stones fighting for space inside it.  The whole package was so big that the surgeon had to enlarge the original incision to remove the organ and its contents.  And thirty-six hours after I arrived at the ER I finally got to come home.  Sore, but happy to have surgery behind me.

That said (and really, I share this in case it's helpful for someone else), from the time all the stuff they gave me at the hospital was out of my system 'till a week out of surgery I was in a world of hurt, but after a phone consultation with the surgeon's office, I traded a fairly useless-to-me narcotic for Gabapentin (for burning pain where the gallbladder once was), and replaced an ice pack with a heating pad on spasming muscles where the incision was.  Once I did those things, I was pretty much golden.  Doing those two things produced a nearly overnight turnaround in the pain - just a week ago.  

I can still feel my innards - a bit bruised and battered, and still healing.  When I even slightly over do it I feel remnants of a burning pain (like when we put in the second half of our garden on Sunday, and when I picked cherries this morning - I hurt tonight), but believe me... I haven't been vigorous doing any of this.  I'm taking it extremely easy in my estimation, but I have a post-op appointment tomorrow, so I'll see what the doctor has to say.  I'm really hopeful that soon I'll be feeling more or less back to normal, but I'm trying to accept that it may just take me longer than I'd like.

And now since I'm trying to keep this short, I'll just finish up with some of the pictures I've taken over the last four weeks:

I hope you're having Happy June!  

I'm trying to make the most 

of the rest of mine!