Tag: health (Page 2 of 12)

In Loving Memory of Our Precious Liz

November 2, 2018 / Lindsey / 6 Comments

♥ Liz ♥

July 18, 2000 – May 14, 2018

This is a hard post to write.

It is with such deep sadness that I tell you that we lost our precious little Liz to an aggressive oral squamous cell cancer (a mass under her tongue) on May 14th. She would have turned 18 on July 18th, 2018.

My precious girl, my precious Liz…my guardian angel physically watching over me for almost 18 years…she was that once-in-a-lifetime cat. Not just a cat, but her own person. A highly evolved heavenly being, she loved me with unflagging loyalty and dedication until literally the very last moment of her life. The amount of unconditional love this precious being could give was staggering. I will be forever indebted to her.

She was of pure intent, with none of the aloofness or air of ulterior motive that cats can have. She was absolutely nothing but sweetness. So, so dear and sweet.

♥♥♥

I hate that this cancer took her away. And the rest of her body was still in good shape… I feel that she still had good, solid years left in her.

The upside to this was that her body supported her right up to the end. She maintained her weight, she maintained her spunky spirit, and she was able to be herself and do the things she loved to do. She was a happy cat and she kept having great quality of life right up until the last week or two when things really got real.

In late February she lost the ability to eat by mouth due to the tumor. But she was still so robust and otherwise completely her normal everyday self that we elected to have the veterinary oncologist place a feeding tube — like a little port in her neck, protected by an adorable white padded collar — which was a great solution and Liz adapted to it, no problemo. I continued to bake chickens for her and cook 12-hour chicken bone broth, which I would puree for her in my Nutribullet blender along with her Balance-It vitamin supplement, various other supplements, Chinese medicine, homeopathic remedies, my own flower remedies, as well as some wet food (either Newman’s Own or the Science Diet a/d Urgent Care that the vet gave us.) I was so grateful for that feeding tube!! Being able to continue to nourish Liz gave us three more priceless months with her, and I hold the memory of that sweet time dearly to my heart. We got to simply be together for as long as we possibly could.

The chemotherapies we gave her (oral Palladia at first, then IV Carboplatin) both worked for a little while but then stopped working. Liz and I elected not to do palliative radiation sessions because of the low success rate combined with the fact that she’d need to be sedated each time.

Lizzie didn’t want to be euthanized, so we were together right till the very end, surrounded by all the comforting familiarity of our childhood home where we grew up together. She fought literally to her last breath, but the cancer finally just got her, and took her.

Even on her last day on Earth, we were outside together enjoying the fragrant spring air, sunshine, and lilac blossoms in the peaceful, familiar backyard. Her beloved yard! Her last few days were tough and rough, no doubt. What I found interesting was that even through this, and right up till the very end, her tail continued to do its usual light tapping “all is well” sign. She also tried to reassure me as best she could, with her special noises, purring, and nuzzling me. Her last day was really hard. It was a struggle, and she could no longer purr, but her tail continued to lightly tap, and she made deep eye contact with me for reassurance. That was a hard, scary day. My wish for her was that she could cross the rainbow bridge peacefully in her sleep, but alas it was not to be. I’m just glad we were together in familiar surroundings, not in the hospital, no strangers around… just us two together, staring death in the face, being brave for each other, and cherishing every last possible second together. ♥

Liz was an extraordinary cat; a very special being — she really was a guardian angel to me — and she brought me such joy and unwavering love and truly constant support over the almost 18 years she was with me. I am lost without her. I don’t know how to express how much I desperately miss her. We were so close that we were practically one in the same. And you can surely bet that I am grateful for each and every one of the probably thousands and thousands of photos I’ve taken of her over the years. And even more for the videos. I wish I had more videos.

Precious Lizzie we miss you.

♥♥♥

There are so many pictures of her that I love. But here are just a few.

♥

Baby Liz. She showed up one Friday morning at our back doorstep, and we took her on our camping trip to the mountains the next day!:

♥♥♥

The rest are from just this year — in her last 4 months on the Earth:

For some reason she loved celery and celery seeds almost as much as she loved catnip. One morning I found my bucket of homegrown celery seeds like this! I wonder who did it!?!

Making chicken for her!:

Taken the afternoon of May 14th… I was so worried about her, and at the same time cherishing every second with her. This was one of her favorite mouse-watching spots:

♥♥♥

Good Days and… Crash Days

January 18, 2018 / Lindsey / 9 Comments

Hi again!

I was so excited that my blog post worked that I wanted to start updating you on stuff. Unsure where to begin with that, I decided to “start where I am,” so took my camera around and took pictures of various things on what had been a good day recently. I was going to post the pictures that night, but was feeling kind of off color, so didn’t. The next day was a big crash day, so here over a week later I am bubbling up to the surface, thinking about that post again! I’ll put the original pictures up, plus those from the next day too. What better way to update you than to show you the Reality.

These green shakes I’ve been making are delicious and nutritious: pineapple, green apple, fresh ginger piece, spinach, parsley, rice milk, milk thistle seed, pumpkin/sesame/sunflower seeds, turmeric powder, protein powder, brewer’s yeast, spirulina, kelp powder.

Unloading coffee grounds, to be spread in the gardens.

I love flower gardens even in Winter — the browns and the branches.

This soup was so good. Black eyed peas for New Years — soaked near the woodstove as pork neck bone broth simmered on top of the woodstove. Then the black eyed peas cooked on top of the woodstove in the broth, as I thawed some frozen cooked-together zucchini and onions from this year’s garden, and opened a home-canned jar of homegrown organic heirloom tomatoes! Mixed all of this together, ate with chunks of avocado, and oh my gosh!!!

That kombucha did eventually get bottled much later in the week…

…but there were more important things to do.

Next day.

Maximizing that sun patch, with freezing chills.

Fever of 103.5°

Anymore, I let fevers burn. After a bad experience several years ago while bringing down a 104° fever with tylenol (like that weird movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), I thought Never Again. “Why do we do this?” I started to wonder, why disable this potentially helpful immune response? Later on, I came across Anthroposophical medical literature (Steiner-based — like Waldorf schools and biodynamic agriculture) where their view is that fevers are healers not to be tampered with. Burn off the dross! Top, top priority is keeping up with oral hydration though, that is for sure!

My standard hydration thing for when I’m sick is diluted juice. About 1/3 juice, 2/3 water. I always have several jugs of apple juice on the back shelf for times like this, just in case.

If you’re guzzling diluted juice, don’t forget your other electrolytes. Potassium and sodium are easily washed out with lots of liquid consumption. If you have a huge nonstop headache unrelieved by hydration, try getting more salt in. I like Ume Plum Vinegar in some warm water, like a salty broth drink. It’s your one-stop salt shop, with an astounding 1050mg (44% daily value) sodium in 1 tsp (5mL). It’s also really good mixed into plain yogurt as a salad dressing, for when you’re not sick. 😉

Potassium powder is cheap at the health food store (or buy it at grocery stores in the salt section as the “NoSalt” brand potassium chloride salt substitute). The NOW brand in the picture has 365mg (10% daily value) in 1/8 tsp (0.7 g). By comparison, a medium banana has ~420mg of potassium. The way I take the potassium is put some water into my mouth, measure the powder and dump it into my mouth, swish to dissolve, and swallow. Down the hatch.

And if you’re blowing your nose a lot like I am this time, these two are my favorite things to rub on, in, and around my chafed nose and upper lip: Weleda Calendula Diaper Rash Cream (goes on white but rubs in) and Alaffia brand Africa’s Secret.

***

I’m doing better. I’d been noticing something simmering since Christmas, a lung exacerbation (a flaring-up of the ever-present infection where there is lung scarring), and then I think this was just some wandering virus on top of that which really came on like a Mac truck. Not the flu, but some other thing. F came down with it too, several days later. We’re both better but not best. I’m still “running warm” with some lung unhappiness. Hanging really low, taking it slow.

***

May you be keeping healthy and warm!

*****

Need a Christmas gift? My Mandala Coloring Book is out!

December 10, 2014 / Lindsey / 12 Comments

I just released my new hand-illustrated coloring book, Mandala Dreaming.

Take a look; the mandalas are so much fun to color!

And, it makes a great Christmas gift!

(Order by 10:30am MST, on Saturday Dec 20th to receive by the 24th with standard shipping. But they’ll remain for sale beyond that, of course, if you don’t happen to need one for Christmas…)

Coloring is a low-tech, creative activity that has been enjoyed for generations. It’s not just for children, although of course it is wonderful for them too!

Coloring has grown up, as you’ll discover in this beautifully hand-illustrated coloring book.

The 20 intricate mandalas contained within are just waiting for you to allow yourself the luxury — nay, the necessity — of a bit of quiet time for yourself… to play creatively with color… to allow your deep-down spirit to come alive.

These high-quality coloring books are handmade, one by one, in my Colorado studio. The pages are thick 110-lb (199 g/m²), acid-free, 8.5″ x 11″ cardstock, perforated for easy removal, and the mandalas are printed on the front side only of each page. The book is spiral-bound so you can fold it back completely for ease of coloring.

Enjoyed most by Adults, Teens, or Older kids because the designs are a little more complex.

Use markers, crayons, colored pencils, watercolor pencils, and even actual watercolors! (For watercolors, tear out page and tape corners to a board.)

One of my favorite ways is to color with art markers first (Prismacolor brand is very nice, but there are others), and then add highlights and depth with colored pencils on top of the marker.

These really are fun to color!

***

$14.95

BUY NOW

***

Color and display!

The back cover

Mandala (c) The Herbangardener

*****

Catching up with photos!

November 28, 2014 / Lindsey / 10 Comments

Happy late-Autumn to you all! We only recently stepped into real Autumn actually, after the longest and most luxurious Indian Summer here, which topped off a perfect Summer season and glorious Springtime. The garden looked beautiful this year, it was a satisfying harvest for most items, everything was lush, we received rain at regularly spaced intervals, and it never got uncomfortably hot. On the health front, I’ve certainly made progress after referral to a more responsive, take-the-reins style doctor and some quality time on a couple of antibiotics. Another pneumonia came on in the Spring, as well as various other ups and downs, several viruses, and the identification of an immune deficiency. That pretty well glazes over it. It’s been a hard, embittering year. I’ve fought tooth and nail to even be this far. Obamacare itself has been my saving grace, and yet our alleged “world-class” healthcare system is a giant obstacle course, broken in many places. When you’re feeling awful, you don’t have the strength or stamina to run through a marathon obstacle course, yet that’s what a patient often must do if they’re unfortunate enough to be a patient. As I said though, I’ve been feeling far better overall than I have in quite a while, and by hook or by crook, that trend must continue.

Let’s move on though; there’s a lot of good stuff that balances out the infuriating crud, so let’s go on and have a tour through that, okay?

Oh right — and the downtime and move to a new web hosting provider did happen a couple months ago. I was shamelessly puffed-up for weeks afterward, because I blindly googled my way through the manual migration of this wordpress blog and database, augmented by my minimal technical “expertise,” and without benefit of handy-dandy migration plugins or other sanity-saving tools (learned about those too late, after the old hosting was already turned off). I certainly “learned a lot” — which is the euphemism that you use, instead of telling people that you nearly murdered your laptop trying to rebuild your wordpress file structure.

Anyway, get ready — we’ve got a lot of catching up to do with the photos! Starting with the succulent, late Spring garden bounty, through Summertime, and into the late Autumn now…

*****

Images of Springtime!

April 22, 2014 / Lindsey / 6 Comments

***

Happy Spring to you!

Ohh this time of the year is glorious, with apple blossoms and tulips and the grass greening up by the hour. Lilacs coming soon, and some peach blossoms on the homegrown peach tree (above)!

It’s been a while since I posted, with the usual ups and downs of life intervening… a terrible cold germ that gripped our household and overstayed its welcome by weeks, more medical testing and appointments which drain my energy but are part of the deal right now, a long overdue visit to the dentist with shocking news of 7 cavities — then a couple appointments to get them filled, along with a definite improvement in my condition thanks to the fabulous antibiotic, and then a bit of a relapse with my lungs certainly improved (ohhhh what sweet relief!!!), but still with a ways to go, with the underlying issue persisting. A recent sinus CT scan showed sinusitis in several areas which has likely been there for the past 3 years, improved by — but persisting through — multiple rounds of antibiotics, and largely ignored by me (as were the cavities) because of so much other crap going on in my body. It’s possible that my sinuses have been seeding my lungs continuously with infection, but it’s not clear yet.

And so it goes. But of course amidst the churning and distress and medical decision making that goes with being sick, there is beauty and sweetness all around, and having My People around me (or thru phone/email/video skype) is highly sustaining. Good things have happened too — I won tickets to the theater to see our children’s chorale sing, which turned into the most wonderful, stress-free afternoon out with F., where we could each forget our respective life-stressors, be lifted out of Survival Mode for a few hours, and be doing something fun and not too energy intensive, simply for the Joy of it! What a concept!!!!!! It was something that we both sorely needed as life has been awfully Real lately for both of us. We got sushi after the show and came home and had a picnic outside in the pretty evening.

And this year our bird baths are overflowing with the comings and goings of robins, finches, chickadees, nuthatch type things, grackles, a mystery bird, and even a couple of blue jays one special afternoon. Birds and birdsong add such a wonderful element to life, and I’m very thankful for them personally. And I love that when I’m resting out on the grass, they feel safe enough now to come within a few feet to bathe and drink.

***

So here are a number of pictures from the past couple months, as winter has wound down and spring has begun in earnest. And now, with spring is in its peak week, I am loving every second of it!

I hope this post finds you all well and enjoying your springtime (or hopefully that you will be soon, if winter is still hanging on in your neck of the woods)!