Life, Love, & thanks for all the Jalapenos

Life is so strange sometimes. You run into people in real life or on the Internet and you wonder who and what they are in reality. Are they honest, do they give to charity, are they ethical and moral or the opposite. It's hard to say unless they actually do something to prove themselves one way or another.

Because I survived a very abusive childhood and young adulthood, I really have no reason to trust anyone. However, I try to trust most people because if I don't, I feel the abusers have won. Most people I've meet have good hearts, and I think that's a good thing, especially when we can't even trust our politicians--even the President.

I haven't voted for anyone of the Presidential candidates since 1980 because I didn't trust them and I refuse to vote for the "lesser of the two evils." I've written in the person I believed to be the best person for that position. I may not get that person into office, but I'm making a large statement about the quality of the candidates by saying that I don't like the people that are getting onto the ballots, besides exercising my right to vote.

I guess I make a real effort to vote because no one that I know of in my family does vote. My Mom thinks it is a good thing that she hasn't ever voted, my Dad and Stepmonster (oops, I meant Stepmother) do the same thing...but then they complain about who gets elected. I don't think that they have any right to complain if they didn't do anything to make a difference in the first place. But that's my opinion on voting and who's elected.

Anyway, I tend to trust people first, and let them show me what they're really like over time...how else can I explain why I have people I've had friends for over 40 years... Mostly, I like people, and though I do make mistakes like everyone else, I try to make amends and apologize if I've harmed someone.

In the past 13+ years since I had the 1993 brain surgery, I've had to up with severe, chronic head painm and it's been a lot harder to stay in contact with people and make new friends (thank God for the Internet). I'm down so much of the time from the pain and breakthrough headaches, that I have to make a extra efforts to stay in touch. I've had an additional 4 surgeries since then, and the last finally reduced the level 8-9 pain to a 7-8, it's still hard to function.

Let me explain a bit more: after the first surgery, the neuro-oncologist left me with all but 1/5th of the tumor in my optic nerve, and didn't seem to care about the 3-day cerebral spinal fluid leak, that left me with chronic, severe right-sided head pain. I was let go from my job at the University because I couldn't do the work because the pain was so bad. The good news was that the tumor was benign, but that was about all the good news after that.

After the surgery, I couldn't read without tossing my cookies after only a few minutes, and that about killed me as I love reading: text books, reference books, poetry, romance and scifi--everything and anything. I'm what you'd call an information Junkie. The original surgeon wouldn't prescribe any pain meds. I went to a neurologist in Bremerton, WA, who tried to find something that worked--accupuncture, medications, etc. and found one medication that sort of work, but he sent me to the pain clinic at Swedish Medical Center to see if they could find something that worked better. The MD, who had my case, tried other things like injecting lidocaine into my spinal column and other things before he tried other medications. The injection didn't work, but he did find a medication that did work and it brought the pain down to a lower level, but then the breakthrough pain was still higher and the meds didn't work for that--I had to stay in bed with a pan beside me because when I had that pain, I was throwing up constantly...so I didn't have to diet. lol

I was already exercising 3-4 hours a day to build endorphins, I knitted, crocheted, and did what I could to keep my spirits up and to not focus on the pain, but it was so bad, there wasn't much I could do. I did want a life though, so I did what I could, and was as functional as I could be under the circumstances.

Then I needed to have another surgery--the second--because the MD didn't take out all of the tumor--he took out what was from the right optic nerve to the carotid artery and optic chiasm behind it, where it was girdling artery/chiasm, and took the top off the optic nerve, then put it back on. No one could figure out why he didn't take the tumor out of the optic nerve. The second surgery happened because the other MDs thought it might help the pain and becasue the tumor was growing outside the optic nerve again. A little later, we found out that the tumor by the artery/chiasm was growing again.

So that's where the third surgery came into the picture. It was called a Gamma Knife procedure that was supposed to stop the tumor from growing--it was supposed to help within a year--and eventually it did stop it, but after 9 years. And through it all, the pain was so bad I wasn't sure that anyone could do anything about it.

During this time, I was trying to date and figure out if there was something else I could do despite the pain. I tried going to school, but with the problems I've had from the pain when I read, I couldn't do it, so dropped the math class.

I joined Match.com when it was still a small company and met a lot of single men, and made some friends with some women as well. I met my second husband, Lance (see the pic on my main page) through them. We were friends for almost a year and we talked about everything: how we felt about our divorces, what was our part in the failed marriage, childrearing ideas as we both had daughters (his daughter was about a year old than mine), what wines and foods we liked, our families and the problems there. We were both still dating as we weren't sure the 1000 miles expanse between us would allow us to get closer than friends.

I met a guy, let's call him Johnny for the sake of privacy, who seemed to be nice. He took me to meet his Grandmother and we became friends with his now deceased Grandmother. She warned me about Johnny--saying he never stayed with any woman for very long--and I told her that I was aware that he wasn't going to be in my life for very long. That didn't make it any less painful when he broke it off 3 months later (we were together for 4 months and he'd proposed to me after 1 month). I told Lance about it, so he suggested that as friends, I should come down for 5 days over the Christmas/New Year's Holiday. He's take me to museums and we'd go for hikes/walks and that would help me get over him.

So, I flew down to LAX from Seattle on December 30, 1996. When I got off the plane, he was as good looking as his picture. He asked me if I was too tired or would I like to do something before we headed back to his home. I wanted to do something, so he took me to the Huntington Library and Arboretum near Glendale. It was so nice there and I had a great time, and all the while we talked. Then he took me to dinner. We both realized we had started to love one another over the time we were emailing and phoning each other.

The next night was NewYear's Eve, and he cooked me dinner (ratatouille, boulliabase, veggies, salad) with fine china, crystal, candlelight, and silver dinner ware. No man had ever cooked me dinner before and it was lovely. He had bought some very nice champagne, and even made a whipped cream cake for dessert. I gave him the Christmas gift I'd bought--Ottmar Leibert's Nouveau Flamenco CD--and we danced to it. He proposed to me. I asked him if I could give him an answer in a couple days, so over the 3 remaining days, we spent a lot of time talking instead of sleeping--we probably got about 10 hours of sleep in 5 days as we talked about even more than we had, seeing he was talking about spending the rest of our lives together.

So, now we talked about more private things like our previous lovers/spouses, what life was like and what we thought we'd like our lives to be like if we did get married, favorite colors, favorite music, and those sorts of things. The last evening, his daughter came by to spend the night after her return from her Christmas vacation with her mom and grandparents in Hawaii. So, she opened her Christmas presents from her Dad, then we all goofed around with she and I putting Christmas ribbons on Lance's hair...we even have some pics of that. After she went to bed, we danced more to Ottmar, and I told him that I'd marry him. To say he was ecstatic was putting it mildly...and I was very happy as well.

The next day, I was going to leave about 3 PM, we went shopping for an engagement ring. I've never liked diamonds all that much because they're too cold and I've never been a traditionalist anyway. I chose a 1/2-carat amethyst--which was perfect being that our birthdays are 4 days apart and I was the older of the two of us--with diamond chips around it. It was beautiful. Lance and Andrea took me to the airport after we ate lunch, then waited until I was settled at the airport and left. I couldn't believe those 5 days...and when I got on the plane, I promptly fell asleep on the trip back to Seattle. I was so tired.

I told my daughter what had happened and she was so excited for me, not to mention that it meant we'd be moving from Seattle to Southern California and she could be a "beach babe." Mainly, she just wanted me to be happy and she always wanted to have a sister, so she got everything she wanted.

We were going to get married in June, but we figured that we'd waited long enough and decided instead to get married on Valentine's Day. We were wed at the Maple Leaf Evangelical Church, the same church I became a born again Christian, and were married. There were 26 people at the ceremony and Alexandria, my daughter, was there with Susanne Wilhelm, my Matron of honor, and Sol Porras, Lance's Best man. My friend and our wedding photographer, Herb Goode, gave me away. Neither of our families were at the wedding, but I had all my friends there.

The next day, we loaded up the moving truck and were on our way to Southern California. It took 4 days as the truck they gave us couldn't get past 15 mph on the steep hills. When we got to Fullerton, we unloaded the truck, then we went to his folks for our belated reception with his family and friends. It was very nice, but I could tell that his folks were worried because he told them after he proposed to me, that we were going to get married. So, when we got married 45 days later, I guess they had a right to be. It took a year or so before they realized that this was going to last.

It's been almost 9 years now and I can harldy believe it.

In 1999, I had my fourth surgery by the same neurosurgeon who did the Gamma Knife procedure, this called a cingulotomy. It took a few days to recover, but when I was feeling better, I realized I could read again--at a much slower rate, but I so didn't throw up, which was a very good thing and I could read again.

However, I lost my cooking skills...I had been a dinner chef at a Red Lion Restaurant and those are gone and the surgery did not get rid of any of the head pain.

I had the fifth surgery in December 2005. It was called a rhyzotomy and the result was a 20% decrease in the pain, which meant a 20% decrease in my pain medication. I'm hoping to have another of these surgeries because when they did the temporary procedure (when they inject lodocaine in both the upper and mid branch of the Trigeminal nerve), it reduced the pain by about 40% and I believe that if they do the rhyzotomy again, it will reduce the pain some more. We'll see how it goes.

As you can see, my life has not been as nice as some have had, but I'm a much stronger person than I ever thought I was or could be, so I'm happy with how I've grown over the years. What more could a woman ask for?

Hugs,
Jet