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Lebanon, Oregon, United States
We are Terry & Cathye Kinkelaar. If you've followed my blog in the past, you know that Lydia, my beautiful wife of 52 years, and I made the lifestyle choice to move to Oregon in 2017. You've seen my posts about losing her in May 2020 to cancer. Although I was left alone, I am pleased to say that I have found happiness again. In April 2021, I met Cathye, who also lost her longtime husband in 2020. Well, we fell in love and were married in April 2022. So, if folks are still interested, I will continue to post here as we move forward with our lives and adventures!

Friday, April 24, 2020

Oregon Living 2020 – Blog #32 – Hangin Around Home and then Back for Another Round of Chemo



Tuesday, Apr 21st, 2020…… This morning we decided to have omelets for breakfast. I wanted to try out our new copper pans so we used the smaller one for Lydia’s and the larger one for mine. Lydia helped with the ‘fixins’. Everything turned out super good!


Today is the last of the sunny weather. We are supposed to get rain tomorrow and also into next week. I wanted to go out and get the patio furniture from the garage and get it put back out, but Kirk texted me and needed my help. He has now bought a second truck for his lawn business and this one has a tonneau cover that needed some love. So, I helped him get it fixed and operational again. By the time he left, I didn’t feel like going out to move furniture.
Lydia had two appointments today. Dominique for PT and Jeremy for her health check. Since she is doing very well, this would be the last scheduled health check. OT and PT will continue. We are still working on trying to get copays lowered for both of her next round meds. What a joke! Meanwhile, we continue to wait. I helped Lydia get everything together for bean soup for dinner. She had me soak the beans last night and the pot was now ready and on the stove.  She sat at the kitchen table and cut up all of the veggies. When I was outside with Kirk, my sister had come by and she was drafted into cutting up the leftover ham into chunks and getting them into the pot. I got back in and dumped in the rest of the goodies and kept an eye on them for the rest of the afternoon. Later, I baked some flaky biscuits and we had a nice meal.       
  
Wednesday, Apr 22nd, 2020…… Rains came as predicted. I waited until there was a slight break and then took Rylee out for our walk. She sure enjoys getting out and doesn’t care what the weather is like! She found some good smells down in the ditches on both sides of our street. Of course, she needed to be hosed off after romping through the water down there! We got back inside and found Grammy was still sleeping. I fed butthead and fixed myself some coffee.  Later, I took off and got my breakfast and came back and made Lydia some waffles for her breakfast. She hung around the bedroom and relaxed until it was time to get dressed and go to dialysis. Once I dropped her off, I headed back home. Not much to do today in the rain so I did some rearranging for the new skillets we have now and got some ready to take to Safe Haven/Teen Challenge to donate.  I also got out the stuffed salmon to defrost.  Another project - Lydia wants to go through her clothes. Since I have been getting her dressed each day (that means bringing out something from the closet and holding it up and saying “is this ok?”, or “is this what you wanted?”), she is aware of some older apparel that she doesn’t want anymore. So, I will be bringing everything out shelf by shelf and hanger by hanger so she can go through it all. And that’s not even counting the stuff in her dresser!  I don’t think I want to start that today though!
I fixed the crab-stuffed salmon and we had a nice meal. That is one of my favorite dishes! Afterward, we watched our latest taped Blacklist, but this one turned out to be a rerun that showcased the recently deceased Brian Dennehy, who was prominently featured in this episode from last year. I read online that this was a dedication to honor his memory. We also watched The Masked Singer. I had correctly predicted the Banana, who was eliminated tonight. It was Bret Michaels. I had a clue from the beginning but when they passed his bag through x-ray, and I saw the bug killer and that tied it to his rock group – Poison, I knew I had it right.  We also watched the after-show. I didn’t care for it too much and ended up fast forwarding through for the most part. We both wished they would have just continued with eliminations. With all of that going tonight, we passed on watching Survivor and will save that for tomorrow.
       
Thursday, Apr 23rd, 2020…… Today was the next phase in Lydia’s treatment. Even with the copay still in the air, we went ahead with the latest infusion cancer med treatment. This was first thought to just be a two-hour infusion, then they said it was scheduled for a six-hour period. I had to have her there (Lebanon Community Hospital Infusion Center - this is a section inside the hospital) by 8:00am so I got up and out with Rylee and got breakfast made for Lydia before we left. We made it with no worries.  I got her a wheelchair and got in the front reception area where I had to hand her off to a nurse who took her back to Infusion. I left and stopped and got coffee and headed home and fixed my breakfast then went over to my sister’s house to help her to download some photos from her cell phone into her laptop. Once I got back home again, I rested for a few hours. Turns out that since Lydia had had infusions like this before, they were able to speed up the flow rate and she was done in 4 hours. She texted me and I picked her up just after noon. We watched our taped Survivor episode and then I left her to her tv and then kicked back in my room.  Lydia took a nap and I watched tv.  Dominique was supposed to come by at 4:00pm which was a rescheduled time to accommodate Lydia’s schedule, but she called and was running behind and wanted to change it to tomorrow morning. That was good for us.  I had gotten soup out to heat up and also heated the biscuits for a quick and easy dinner. Tonight was the finale of The Great Food Truck Race so we watched that before going into our own taped shows and then it was time for bed. So far, so good from today’s treatment but I’ll be watching her pretty closely for the next few days….     

Friday, Apr 24th, 2020……  Another rainy day. Lydia has started having one of the chemo symptoms she didn’t want – diarrhea! It started early this morning.  She can navigate herself to the bathroom potty so she doesn’t need my help anymore. But she’s worried about the 3 ¼ hours she has to sit in the dialysis chair this afternoon. If she has to unhook for any reason, that’s it – they have to terminate the session. Hopefully, it will go ok. Dominique was here at 9:00am for Lydia’s PT which went well.  As for me, I spent the morning cleaning the house up a bit. I vacuumed and dusted. Just call me Suzy Homemaker!  Later, I took her over to Albany and dropped her off and then came home and finished my cleaning and then had lunch and rested until it was time to go back and pick her up. She said she had no issues at dialysis but she is retaining fluids again in her lower legs. This is from the infusion fluid. But she is feeling ok so far. I wasn’t sure how hungry she would be so I didn’t get anything out for dinner. So, we headed off, on the way home, to Los Dos Arbolitos for takeout. We ate and I found out later that I forgot to put all of the stuff back in place when I vacuumed in the bedroom when Lydia went in to go watch tv and put her feet up! I got her set up and went back to my office to watch tv and relax until bedtime.  

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