Dreamer

Those of you who know me personally, know that I'm notorious for having strange dreams which I inflict upon any listening ear. I have been good--I haven't been recounting many of them lately. However, last night I had a dream that was so potent, I think I should share it.

I dreamt that I was a duck. I was swimming with another duck down, or rather up, a ramp. We were out for a leisurely “duck stroll.” Talking about stuff. Floating on the waters and paddling along with our webbed feet. Rather calming. I was saying how I had interpreted recent actions to be a sign of romantic interest in me. The other duck chuckled and asked what sorts of things gave that impression. It wasn't a mean chuckle, more like a friend. I started to give an example when we reached the height of the ramp. Our conversation stopped as I peered over the edge of the ramp to see how far down the jump would be to the river below. I nearly lost my stomach when I saw that the height was literally like a skyscraper! It was ridiculously far! I thought, “My heart won't be able to take that. It will be worse than the tallest roller coaster ride that I've ever been on!” I remember turning to the other duck and explaining my concern and stammering certainty that I wouldn't and couldn't take that jump and that I would have to go back down the ramp.

I thought about sliding down, but there was some sort of large boat starting up the ramp as well. With the sheer height and length of the ramp, I was afraid that I would slide right into the boat. Instead, there were little stairs on the sides of the ramp (like a flume gorge ride) and I figured I would just go down those. The other duck was neutrally in the background at this moment. Almost like saying, "Suit yourself."

At this point, I woke up, because I had to go to the bathroom.

And then I realized it. I COULD have made the jump. I was a DUCK. I could have just flown down. I was so scared of the jump that I didn'’t think of flying. I thought it was impossible.

Walking back through molasses

So, for the past few days the breathing has actually begun to get better. It's making me think that Lister might actually know what he's doing. ;-) At first, I was hesitant to post the improvement, because I was afraid I would jinx myself. Now, however, it's been about 3-4 days of marginal improvement. I figured I'd attempt it and let you all know that there is SOME improvement. It's still not completely fixed--it still feels like I'm drudging through breaths at times--but I haven't had the fish-out-of-water sensation that I had been having for the past couple of months. Of course, now I have less excuse as to why our laundry isn't done. :-P

Ho-Hum.

So, the massive increase in steroids last week didn't do what we had hoped. It's still really difficult to breathe. So, Lister has kept me up on the steroids and added two new meds (one anti-bacterial, and one anti-fungal). I think the breathing thing seems to be two-fold--part Graft vs. Host (GvH) and part infection (the cough). Given that it's still SUCH an issue, everyone involved (myself, my husband, my doctor, my boss, and my disability insurance company) thinks it's better for me to go back onto disability full time until this stuff clears up. Lister seems to think that he can have it fixed in 3 weeks or at least "markedly improved." I'm skeptical, but happy to hear him be so optimistic.

I have to say that feels like a bit of a relief. I've been trying to work part-time since September 1st and it's been difficult. It's hard to focus on designing a page layout when just trying to breathe is an effort.

This breathing thing...

...is getting really annoying (and difficult). It's making it almost impossible for me to perform basic activities (emptying the dishwasher, walking down a long hallway, picking up a pen on the floor). The docs up'ed my steroids even more now to 100mg daily, hoping that will do the trick, and ordered me back to see them again on Monday. In the meantime, they have ordered some sort of scope to head down my lungs tomorrow morning to see what they can see in there.

On one hand, I'm glad that they are taking a closer concern about this--it's been pretty bad for me. On the other hand, it would just be nice to not have to worry about this at all. We'll see. I know, however, that I could be doing a lot worse. I'm thankful for at least doing as well as I am.

Here's the latest in the health series, dealing with my breathing issues: "Breathe"

Finally up!

So, I bought the domain name back in JUNE, and this weekend, I finally got around to putting together a website of my work: www.stacyraegross.com. It's a simple site, but it does the job—for now. I'll probably have to re-evaluate it in a few months as more of the health (cancer treatment/recovery) series is filled out. I'm not sure how that work fits in with the other pieces I currently have up there.

The health series is progressing into a two-part series: half, self portraits and half, abstracts of meditation sessions. Actually, if you are curious, I put 2 of the health series paintings in with the images on the website (Bathing I and Bathing II).

I will still be posting updates of paintings and sketches here on this blog, but the new site is one where I will be able to give more information about them and have all the painting images in one place for folks to browse.