Palm Trees, Spring Flowers And Good News

 

I needed to have a bone density scan, so last week, Jasmine drove me to Bakersfield.

Since my pulmonary NP told me I have a broken bone in my spine, I've been a bit concerned. 

As it turned out, all is well, or well enough for me to be very happy! 

The day after my test, my doctor's office called and said I have osteopenia. I've had that for about ten years, so it hasn't progressed. Must be all the yogurt I eat, plus the calcium and D3. I'm so happy, I was worried. So happy, in fact, that I forgot to ask about the broken bone. Will do that later.

I had such a nice time with Jasmine. I forgot to bring something to eat. Which wasn't good since I would miss my lunch. So Jasmine found a Vons store and bought the best yogurt for me. It was half full of fresh fruit and tasted so good. 

I hope this was the last medically necessary trip for a long time. But it was a nice trip, fields of spring flowers lined the highway as we got closer to the valley below.  

I took this on our way home, I should have pulled the window all the way down, as you can see, I didn't. Spring flowers around here are so awesome. 

Soon we were in the mountains and I was almost home, while Jasmine had to drive another 50 miles or so to get home. 

She's been a great help and I've enjoyed spending time with her. A caring, smart and thoughtful young woman. 

Jasmine Drove Us

 to Bakersfield, on Monday. I was scheduled for a CT scan of my chest at Kern Radiology.  

With the holiday this week, it will be awhile before I know the results. 

In order to learn the results, I need to schedule another appointment with the Nurse Practioner, henceforth (oh what a lovely oldfashioned word) the NP in this story. Except I don't think she will appear in it again. 

I will then learn if I have COPD and also if I will need to use oxygen during the day. Day and night. -- All the time. 

Something I feel she could tell me over the phone. The cancer surgeon from UCLA called me to tell me I had breast cancer. It was a Thursday, trash day, and the noisy trash truck was on our street, rumbling away. I will never forget it, but at least I didn't have to drive a long way to find out. 

 

Strange thing is, I have no symptoms that I notice, just a little out of breath walking uphill. But the oxygen meter on my finger during the night told the night-time story, which determined that supplemental oxygen was needed.

For the record: Yes, I smoked, both my parents smoked. On December 21st, I haven't smoked for 28 years. Unfortunately, I've inhaled a fair amount of smoke from wildfires since then.  

 

From Novemer to March, fog is common in the Central Valley.  Tule fog, which is a radiation fog, can be very thick with low visibility, sometimes as little as eight feet. Fortunately, this fog was just the usual smog/fog morning condition in the valley. It disappears shortly after sunrise. 

I was very lucky after we arrived at Kern Radiology. First, there was no one in line to sign in. I was given the usual sign-in forms, I never filled anything out, as soon as I signed the forms, I was called. Jasmine came with me and we walked to the room with the scanner. 

I've been in MRI and other machines where you have to stay for more than half and hour sometimes. Here, I was just partially inside the machine, the tech did a few things, said, "inhale, hold your breath," a couple of times and I was done. 

 

It was the fastest and easiest test I've even had done.

Pretty soon, we were going back up the mountain, where I did one tiny little backseat driving comment, which I immediatly regretted and aplogized for. It's not always an easy mountain to manuever up, with it's multitude of trucks. Those with heavy loads going at close to standstill speeds.  

Jasmine did great!

And soon we turned in on my road and were home, greeted by two happy dogs. 

I'm so grateful for Jasmine's help. It's making a huge difference in my life. 

Living here, so far from everything, I can't afford to not want to drive. Fortunately, I still enjoy it and my new car. 

 

The Green, Green Hills Of

What? Kern county? Yes, it happens for a fleeting moment in time and I'm so happy Jeanne, Mary and I took short road trip to enjoy them. 

We drove on country roads, lined by oak trees,

down steep hills, that opened up to beautiful views of

green fields, hills, and oaks with more leaves than those above.

As I post this, I notice a faint hint of orange across the hillsides, a promise of what's to come once the poppies open up. It will be gorgeous and inspire more road trips. I took the picture because of the railroad tracks that curve around the hill, I didn't really notice all that orange. I can only now imagine how incredible the poppies will be. And pretty much unreachable by humans, maybe.... Hope so, anyway. I know I will be turned off by the crowds at the poppy preserve. Jeanne told us a helicopter landed in the midst of it all when she was there! Really! I have been there and people trample, people lie down, people walk on the flowers, and so on, with no respect for nature, just wanting to get the best selfie.......

We saw many beehives in the fields by the road.

On a different road, we found fields covered in wildflowers.

Sturdy yellow fiddlenecks and dainty white flowers.

And no people, just Mary getting her camera out of the car. 

We finished our outing with lunch at the Keene Cafe, in the company of locals, firemen, and our favorite highway patrol officer, a woman who has come to our canyon meetings to talk about road laws and road safety. 

The fire helicopter at the station next door to the cafe. And can you see the orange spread across the hill in the distance?

On the way home, up the last hill before our town. 

Looking For Wildflowers And Finding So Much More

Last week, Mary and I drove west down the mountain to a place called Caliente. This, of course, is Spanish for HOT and since it usually looks like this as you drive by:

it is, indeed, well-named. But now it's early spring, after a winter that gave us some much needed rain, and Caliente and the surrounding hills look more like Ireland than California. The patches of orange you see on the side of the mountain, both in my header photo and the top picture here, are California poppies. 

This is the prettiest landscape I have seen in a very long time. I inhaled the beauty of the green grass, and 

the orange poppies along the wayside. When we came to this fork in the road, I said to Mary, "let's take the left one." Something I soon came to regret. The road became more and more narrow as it climbed up the mountain, my stomach responding in kind. Janice, you are so right, no guard rails in California. At least not on back roads. Mary drove, which was good --  I could keep my eyes closed. 

We stopped for a while along the road and I took a few pictures. This one of the snow clad Sierra Nevada mountains in the distance and the sad sight of almost every oak tree infested with mistletoe.

While mistletoe may be cute for Christmas kisses, out here it's a pest that can kill oak trees. I'm sure the trees are weaker now, due to the drought, and thus more susceptible. It was a very sad sight, all the dying trees.

Mary drove like a champ and soon got me off the scary road down to a place called Walker's Basin. It is named after this guy:

Joseph R. Walker, a pioneer and most likely the first white man to lay eyes on Yosemite Valley, California, according to Wikipedia. I got a feeling that this place that bears his name hasn't changed all that much, 

with free-ranging cattle crossing the road, horses grazing, and ranches spread out across the fields. 

After a while, we arrived in Twin Oaks, a small community with this old-fashioned building, once a school house, now a general store and cafeteria. Mary and I took a break there and soaked up the country atmosphere. 

The road is circular, so, lucky me, I didn't have to cross that mountain again. As we drove back toward Caliente, it was getting late afternoon and we met cows heading home, many with tiny calves that looked no more than a few days old, if that. 

As we neared the end our road trip, the landscape changed drastically and became a deep canyon with sheer rock walls. 

It was a lovely day, spent with someone who is now a very good friend. I'm learning that good things do happen after difficult times. 

I know I haven't posted anything for a long time, but I haven't been blogger idle. I will post an update soon.

Road Trip Toward Great News!

 

The pictures from our drive to Pasadena this past Monday are  a bit dark and foreboding, I know. But the news we received at the end of our trip is so great: My husband's cancer is in remission; his hepatitis C is gone; and best of all, to judge by the doctor's facial expression, his liver is coming back!!! 

My husband is not out of any kind of permanent woods, but we both will have time to relax now. Relax over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and see in a New Year. Every day is a gift for both of us, but this news was like one large present wrapped in red, with a huge silver bow on top.  

As so often is the case with medicines that work to cure serious illness, the HepC medicines, although wonderful drugs for which I am very grateful, are very debilitating. My husband has to take vitamins to maintain his red blood cell count, but he still suffers from extreme fatigue and other side effects. He began taking the the HepC drugs in the beginning of June and will finally be done with them on November 19. 

The doctor said he's most anxious to find out if the treatment worked, so more blood tests are scheduled and another MRI needs to be done at the end of January. We go back to Pasadena to see the liver specialist in the first week of February and that's when we will have a better knowledge of how well both the the cancer treatment and the HepC drugs worked.

I brought my camera along, hoping to take some pictures of the gorgeous San Gabriel mountains that border the 210 freeway to Pasadena. As we came out of the high desert, driving toward the huge interchange of freeways heading toward Los Angeles and Pasadena, we saw this: 

and into those gray clouds we drove and, since I had the camera, I decided to try for some more "industrial" looking pictures. What can I say, they certainly are a nice break from the blue skies and constant sunshine I'm faced with here at home. 

Thank you for your prayers and healing thoughts, you are the best.

Rockin' and Rolling Through the Clouds of the Pineapple Express

The much awaited Pineapple Express, a storm system from Hawaii, finally arrived in our area Monday morning, just as we set out to drive down the mountain for my eye doctor appointment in Bakersfield. 

Bear Mountain, pictured ahead, is now home to most of the California condors living free in the United States. These are the condors that were brought back from near extinction and released into the wild to fly free in the mountains, away from the dangers of civilization. I guess the birds thought differently and discovered some easy living in the gated community up there on Bear mountain. So far, two condors have drowned in water storage units and homeowners, excited at first, are now unhappy because the birds have proved to be very destructive. I will let you know what happens.

It got a little foggy, driving down the mountain.

It rained on and off, the wind blew so hard, the Jeep rocked and rolled, and we couldn't keep up a conversation. It was that loud inside.

The moonscape looked wet and green grass sprouted at the road side.

On the way home, it cleared up. 

A sign warned of 'Dense Fog' on the mountain.

But it had cleared by the time we got to the pass.

Just clouds hanging low over the mountains,

like cotton candy at the county fair.

Samson Says: And I was left behind, locked in the bedroom. But this time I got the better of them. I messed up all their bedding and made me a big old fort to play in. Heh, heh,........