good day

we started a timber cruise project this last month.

yay!

all these photos are from the Black Hills of South Dakota.

yay!

We are glad to work as this will help us with the non-insured burned up thing$!

yay!

this is the first cruise since my surgery last October.

Oh, I have been doing office paperwork all this time.

but not woods work.

until now.

and I didn't fall down.

 it was good!

I get to walk in the woods with my best friends, Mr. foresterman & Dexter.

mr. foresterman especially is my bestest.

he encouraged me when I was in despair,

when I was thinking I wouldn't ever work again cruising.

You see, I didn't tell you the whole story a little while back.

because its kinda depressing.

I hate depressing.

and I dont do depressing martyr well.

it comes out like a whiny martyr weasel depressed, the worst kind.

but i wanna share now -

not because I'm in a depressing, whiny martyr weasel mood,

but because I owe my ability to cruise to Mr. Foresterman.

and well, maybe someone out there can benefit who might have the same issue?

I'll whine it happy, 'k?

you see, not only did I get a India motif paisley scar that kinda looks like the country of  romantic Italy

one-sided around my belly button down to my unknown nether regions (did I just write that?) 

but the surgery left me with a permanent blood clot in my leg;

not a little one.

one from ankle to groin. 

 a "here to stay  Deep Vein Thrombosis aka chronic DVT"
its when the blood clot hardens and sticks to the main vein forever.

so there goes my chance to be the first 53 year old  to ever run the 100 meters in the 2016 Olympics and win the US gold, ever.

I know, I'm pretty broke up about that.

Since its here to stay I'm going to call him "thrombi"...

rhymes with gumby.

kind of fitting since he's hogged up the main vein totally.

like Montana gumbo, cheez whiz,

and a over-abundant testosterone fueled boorish male friend of a friend who won't let you out of the store until you hear his latest endeavor of his reliving his past experience of accidentally going off trail into the vast unknown on his souped-up ATV with a full cooler strapped on the back and GPS in hand and how he survived for two hours until a timber cruiser found him and guided him back to safety with the cruisers paper map.

yes, I just stereotyped my thrombi.

;)

but the good news is,

 that the scans I get for the Castlemans disease showed that other good little veins 

have taken the place of scooting the blood back up to my heart. 

that's a good thing.

they call them collateral veins.

yay collateral veins!

security - gotta love collateral!

So I take a baby aspirin a day (childhood memories revisited daily!) wear a compression stocking when it really active to help things scoot as I can get kinda puffy (wear one on each leg & they become stylish tights!), never cross my legs (but keep my knees together, I am a lady you know...feral, but a scary lady darns it!), sit for no more than 2 hours at any given time (fitting in totally with my squirrelly pop up mole nature anyway!), drink lots of water that makes me visit every bathroom within a 50 mile radius (hmm... speechless...!) .

and try to make sure I move around a lot so no other blood clots wanna visit again.  

one thromby in my house is enough.

the goal is to keep active, eat right and not gain weight, and to avoid having post-thrombotic syndrome and chronic venous insufficiency (fancy words, I copied them from the internet). and most important, not get mad at mr. foresterman when he asks me if i want to go for a 7 mile hike instead when I want to sit and finish off the half gallon container of chocolate chip ice cream and 1/4 full cream soda liter bottle, or ask if I have my stocking on when we are about to hike a 35% slope and I'm trying to psych myself out, let alone worry about my undergarments...

So theres some things I will have to have heads up over this during my lifetime,

but since I like to take one day at a time because of that natural blonde issue I have -

I figure this should all work out in the wash in the end, as they say.

yes, conversations, like serious ones, are hard for me.

how did you know?

but thats why i have my own mr. foresterman to interpret for me!

I'm sharing this now because i am very close to the one year mark, 

where the reoccurrence rate for another DVT drops off dramatically. 

after i got off the warfarin in February, the next few months were suppose to be touchy months.

  but i was too busy with weddings and random fires to worry about some new blood clot
having a breakup divorce
with the guilty party running away to party in my lungs.

actually (tangent, like you didnt see this coming) 

at the latest scan I asked if my lungs were black and sooty from the fire... 

the nice Doctor said they were clear, without missing a beat.

he tolerates me so well.

So anyway, we don't let anything stop us from living.

living is too important to do!

I like living!

no, let me rephrase -

 I love living!

breathing is good too!

So I remind myself constantly when I'm frustrated about limitations that

it's not the "why" but the "how"

and ill figure out a way, some HOW.

and  through all of this mr. foresterman kept encouraging me.

my cheerman.

all the time.

always.

today is his birthday.

my life didn't really start until I met him.

do you have one of those peoples in your life like that?

oh, I hope so!

where the sun seems brighter, time somewhat stands still when they are around,

and they love you unconditionally?

through sickness and in health?

what a gift.

happy birthday, mr. foresterman.

thank you for being my best friend.

you tolerate me so well.

;)