Sunshine and Changes

The end of July is here, that means I start to think only of riding. It seems that I spend the spring and part of summer tending to everything else but riding.

I had hired Molly to help me with things around the farm and sadly that only lasted two weeks. She stopped coming over and then after the lost dog incident she took off to who knows where.

[The dog was found alive 5 days later in a creek bottom about 1/2 mile from their house!]

With Rich's PT schedule which is 3 times a week, I have to rethink my whole weekly plans. 

Thankfully with the nicer weather and the yard and gardens all doing quite nicely, I turned to my other summer project. I dove into saddle and tack cleaning.

Most of our tack is kept in the horse trailer as the tack room Rich was 'gonna' build in the shed never happened. I have 3 saddles that I do use. So I keep all my gear for Siera and Sunshine in good shape.

The saddle shown below was a custom built saddle for me. It even has my 

name stamped on it. 
It is a nice mule saddle. The only drawback is, it is heavy.

My Mule Saddle is always ridden with a britchen as the places I ride are steep. This saddle would slide forward on those steep downhills. I use a crupper on the lighter saddles but am thinking of using a britchen on the other western Simco saddle too.

While I was cleaning and inspecting the gear, I tried to think of how old these items where. The britchens are well over 30 years old. The Simco saddle I purchased in 1991 at Midwest Horse Fair in Madison WI.

Anyway the Mule Saddle looks like this when being used:

Old photo from 2009 with me on Siera at Wildcat parking area

What britchens look like on our mule Mica who is fully retired now:

So I got off track with all the saddle stuff.

In the evening I caught up Sunshine and planned on taking her out and about on the ridge to visit some neighbors.

So, the little mule herd decided to run, buck, fart, and carry on when I came out to catch my red mule.

The turds! I caught up Sunshine and tied her to the shade tree just as I always do. As soon as I walked off to get a brush and other grooming tools, she brayed and started to paw and shake her head.

She calmed down when I groomed her and saddled her but was all wiggly and sketchy. 

Hmmm. I decided to do a bit of 'ground' work with her to check her attitude since this was so unusual. Her sister didn't help by running the fence line in another area and screaming.

Finally! After a few commands on a long line, she was ready to listen. I got on and sat. I explained to her that behaving stupidly was not in my best interests. 

We rode to the ridge to get the mail. Once we reached the mailbox, she was all mule business and eager to ride. 

I kept it short and simple. We stopped to watch deer.

She went back to her calm and chilled little self. 

When I got home I put her in what we call The Jenny Craig paddock. I put Siera in there too. Both Siera and Sunshine are super easy keepers and probably a bit on the fat side. If they are handy and not out back where it is harder to get them, it is easier for me to grab one for a ride. Be it a short one or a longer one.

I plan on evening rides and exercising them. 

At least, that is my goal.

[Separated from their buddies, even just by a mere hot wire, they both are now self exercising by walking back and forth. Rich said they are self lunging. In a few days, they will get over it.]

As I was putting gear away after our short ride, I saw my neighbor walking with a young couple that had a baby and a young one around the edge of the woods.

I guess the house at the top of the hill must be for sale. 

Huh.

Eventually I will have to break in yet another set of neighbors?

Changes. 

At least I still have my beautiful girls, Charlie, and of course, hubby.

Our days of riding together are gone, but I still have the memories of all of our fun adventures:

This and That

Well, a bit more fun with Sven the little goat.

Basil who is my neighbor's dog, greets Sven. She stayed by him while I bottle fed him and then she wanted to play.
He wasn't quite sure what he should do. A couple of times he tried to hide from her.

When I took them outside for some fresh air, Sven did go potty and Basil supervised. She was a good host and as you can tell, she loves having her picture taken....

Here she is cuddling with Sven and I after coming in from outside.

We had a short session of play and then Sven was tired. After all, he is only two days old.

Soon I will bring Charlie to a bottle feeding and see how they get along. I want Charlie to understand that goats are not to be chased. He likes to chase ALL things except the mules.

Gearing up for our next storm. Need to push some snow back further. My duties don't seem to end this winter.

PT went okay. Not much they can do for Rich. But Aric did suggest a few exercises to help him maintain some leg strength to assist him in getting up and down from his chair [he doesn't do recliners]. He also gave him a compression sleeve for the knee.

Other than seeking a visit from our local ortho guy there isn't much else to do. Though we will see Aric in another two weeks to see how it is going with the little light exercises and the adjusted chain.

Now to find a slightly higher chair for him to sit in. It was suggested to put nail 2X4's to some legs to give it some elevation. We shall see.

The Diagnosis

A month ago we went to the VA hospital in Madison for a Neuro-psychology exam. This is a brain function test of executive functions, thinking, making decisions, planning, understanding, language, perception, and ...well, you get the idea.

It was a two hour test that we did on the 14th of last month. I should say, a two hour test that Rich did last month.
I learned in Physical Therapy-Speech last year that issues a person has pre stroke generally become worse post stroke or as the PT gal said, the issues would be greater in general.

We sat down in the room and I mentally thought I was prepared for hearing the two doctors conclusions.
I wasn't.

Cognitive Disorder, specifically Vascular Dementia -- the doctors were quick to say that Dementia means Brain Changes-- the stigma of hearing "You have Dementia" is about as horrid as hearing the word "Cancer".  Perhaps even much worse. Dementia is like saying: You are going to lose your mind.

We have gone down the Cancer Road already so I didn't think anything would actually shock me.

Rich has not just had one stroke. Last year's stroke was just a big bang compared to all the others he has had over the years. In other words, he has had a lot of insidious brain damage over the years.

I had thought perhaps that Rich had Vascular Dementia, but until the words were clearly spoken to me in that room, there was a chance that it wouldn't be that.

I looked over at my husband and wondered how he was taking the news. Hard to tell as he was just listening and watching. The doctors were very good to look us both directly in the eye.

Then they asked a few direct questions. "Val, you are not working correct?" I smiled and said that was correct, I had to quit last year to stay home and take care of Rich.
"We have a treatment plan and some things we believe will be helpful but it is a big commitment."

The question behind the question. 'Will you go running from this room screaming your head off and ditch your husband? Or are you willing to put in time and extreme effort for his therapy and care?'

I replied to them that I was there for the long haul. After all, I'd driven to the UW 5 days a week for over 6 weeks to take Rich to radiation treatments and tried to work on the weekends.

They went over the details of getting appointments with PT, OT, and seeing a Medical Psychologist too. I inquired if that would be that same as the gent we saw during cancer treatments. He was quite helpful. They thought they'd try to schedule us back with him since we had a history already of seeing him during the cancer treatments.

Social workers, OT coming to the house for inspection, testing Rich for safety, OT doing driving tests with Rich...arranging Respite Care.

Discussions of driving, not driving.

And then the bombshell.

"Do you have your POA set up?" the one doctor asks of us.
"Yes," I answer, "we did that quite a while ago."
"Financial and Medical?"
I nodded.
Rich nodded.

They turned and looked at Rich. "We may ask your wife to be your Medical Agent as we are not sure you can make your own health decisions. We will consider Financial POA also."

I could see that Rich was a bit shocked. So I piped up.
"Honey, if they do that, nothing really changes. Right now we are doing all of this together anyway. We sit and do the bills together, we go to appointments together right?"
He nodded. "I could do the checkbook," he said, "but my tremors are so bad. I can't write so Val does it."

There it was, the same thing we went through with his mother. Losing your independence officially. It didn't matter that I've already been doing most of what a Guardian or an Agent for Health/Finances would be doing already. But the 'threat' of having that taken away was downright frightening for him.

The discussion went on to talk about how Speech Therapy would help, meeting with the Med/Psych doctor would help, PT, OT, Social Workers, setting things up.

The goal was to maintain Rich on a plateau provided there wasn't another brain incident or other health incidents.

In one year they would test him again to see if he was able to maintain or...
Well.
Let's just say it out loud. This sort of brain damage doesn't reverse itself.

I'm not asking for sympathy or writing this for shock value.
I may continue writing about this on my other blog called The Long Road.
The Long Road is where I addressed our travels through Cancer.

I hope that I am prepared to travel down this new fork in the road.

Dang it All to ...

Well dang it all to heck and back.

I'm not going to really whine about this too much. Hmmm. Maybe I will. It seems that osteoarthritis has crept into my life. Well at least into my hands.
I of course figured that it wouldn't happen to me.

Stupid me. I sort of knew it would. My Grandmother Pearl had twisted gnarly hands and she barely whispered a word about it. I'd see her gardening, crocheting, sewing, and doing all those normal things with her beat up hands. At the time I admired those well worn hands and said something to her about it.
In all her infinite wisdom that I never learned...she replied, "Oh I don't think you want these hands. Some days they don't do so well."
She said this as she was artfully cleaning a fish with quick skilled movements.

My mom began to suffer the same fate as did her sisters. Arthritis crept up on their hands deforming them and sometimes twisting the joints.

Over the past year or so, my hands began to ache a lot. Certain movements hurt. Grasping things was painful. My left thumb continued to hurt making grasping door knobs a real chore. In fact when we remodeled, I had handles put on the door that I could just push down on.

Opening a jar can be tricky. Using an old fashioned can opener can be a trying feat. Over the winter my hands became worse. I developed Herberden's Nodes on the ends of my fingers. As those nodes develop, the pain is quite intense. I recall my father showing me the tips of his fingers and telling me that once the bump was formed, it stopped hurting, so it wasn't so terribly bad.
Oh, he was not kidding!

So this summer those wonderful little nodes pretty much quit hurting and I was able to get along except for the thumb issue. Sometimes at night, I'd fall asleep with a cold pack wrapped around the left hand. It numbed things enough so I could sleep.
Peeling apples for apple crisp last month made the pain nearly unbearable. So I decided to see how I could process apples without causing myself a lot of pain. Easier to make jelly, juice, and apple sauce than to peel apples.
Plus I got a food mill which helped tremendously.

Brushing the mules out for riding was even a bit difficult, but I decided worth the pain.

I sort of knew what may be going on with the hands. Goodness knows I've seen it in my grandmother, my mom, and my dad. However my fingers are not being deformed much.

So when my doctor and I looked over the hand X-ray results, I was sort of surprised. There it was osteoarthritis in both hands. No fingers were left unscathed.
The left thumb showed degenerative joint 'disease'. Oh. Ick.
Mostly it means that the hands will slowly get a bit worse as I get older.

Now dammit, how did I get older? In my mind I am about 30! I look in the mirror and see that older person looking back at me. She disappears when I take my glasses off. She looks much younger after I take a shower and peer at her in a fogged up mirror.

My doctor recommended that I see Occupational Therapy for exercises to strengthen my left hand and to see how they could suggest non drug like therapies to lessen the aches and pains. I am all for that. Our local clinic has an excellent PT/OT department and they have helped me quite a bit in the past.

How am I going to 'deal' with this? Well, now that I have a name and a cause for the pain, I will not quit doing things or baby my hands. The pain is not indicative of something that will harm me.
It is simply wear and tear. I need to work out how to do some things smarter and need to be aware of the "Use it or Lose it" theory. If I stop doing things with my hands, or I stop being active ... I will be in more pain and more health problems will arise.
If the body stops moving, it will destroy itself.

My doctor said that if the thumb issue got too bad she would send me to a hand specialist to explore injections [eeks!] and perhaps surgery [eek gads! NO!]. She said she had a patient who went through the surgical procedure and the recovery and PT time took about 6 months. No thank you!

This is not earth shattering but it will include some minor changes for me.

Yes, I think my father was correct. Aging is not for sissies.