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And it’s not for sissies. I’m going to talk about what it’s like sometimes and you might not want to read this. My wife has been getting weaker for a full year. After she was diagnosed with a brain lesion she had a strong radiation treatment. She was still walking on her own at this time. The radiation oncologist referred her to a medical oncologist to continue treatment. She started losing strength day by day after starting chemo. At first I would help her to the car and drive her to the cancer care center. At the CCC I would get one of their wheel chairs for her because they make you check in and go from one end of the building to the other and back again. She started having trouble with our stairs and I would have to get behind her and push and lift on her butt to get her up the stairs. On the way down I went in front of her and held her hand. I could see this getting worse so I searched online for a used stairlift. I found one on eBay and bought it only to find out the guy had already sold it. It took me three days to get my money back. I couldn’t wait for that so I went to Craig’s list and found another one. Craig’s list works a little better than eBay and I was able to contact the seller before buying it, in fact I didn’t even pay online but gave him cash when he delivered it. I thought I was all set now until the first day we used the stairlift she still had to walk out to the car and we had a total of three steps between the house and the car. She fell on the third step, I managed to get her back on her feet but realized I would need to build a ramp. I called my son’s father in law when we got home from the doctor. He came over and made some measurements and a list of materials I needed. I picked them up that evening and gave him a call. He came over in the morning and we built the ramp. That worked pretty well until the end of the year she was having a hard time standing and walking. I moved a commode chair right next to her recliner so all I had to do was help her to her feet and turn her a bit so she could sit on the commode. The last week of the year she was losing strength daily and I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to wait for Monday’s doctor appointment. I ended up calling an ambulance for her on Friday evening to take her to the ER. Our son and I spent the entire night with her in the ER as they ran test after test. They finally discovered she had a UTI just before they were going to ship her to Pittsburgh where they have brain doctors. They started her on IV antibiotic and admitted her to the hospital. She spent a week on the sixth floor getting the UTI under control and another week on the fifth floor getting physical therapy to try to get her back on her feet. They were unsuccessful at that and sent her back home by ambulance and put her on hospice care. We have an RN visit on Mondays and Fridays for about a half hour and an Aide on Tuesday and Thursday for about a half hour. The rest of the time it’s up to me. I’m getting pretty good with getting her on a bedpan and wiping her butt. I have a couple hundred pairs of rubber gloves to make the job easier. I keep my phone with me where ever I go around the house so she can call me when she has to go. Usually she wakes me twice a night when she thinks she has to poop. When you are bedridden you can never trust a fart. Better safe than sorry. Changing the bedding while the patient is still in the bed is not an easy task. I somewhat enjoy giving her a sponge bath. I keep the house real warm so she doesn’t get chilled and massage her as I wash her. She seems to enjoy her bath. I tell her how much I love her all the time, after everything is washed I put special body lotion on her because her skin is so dry. I bought her a half dozen hospital gowns because they are the most practical thing to wear when she is in the condition she is in. We are accumulating quite the assortment of medical equipment. She had a walker from when she had her hips replaced. She used that during physical therapy but they suggested a wheelie walker for her trips to the bathroom. We got one but she never used it. I had a shower chair and adult commode chair from when I broke my hip. She wanted a wider chair because she has wider hips. Now we have two of each. We have a hospital bed complete with the mattress that continuously changes air pressure in the different sections to help prevent blood clots and bed sores. We didn’t have any sheets that size so I bought some twin bed sheets to get us started and ordered hospital bed sheets on Amazon. We had just about weened her off her steroids before she went to the hospital. They put her back on them. They give her a good appetite but I’d like to see her get off them. Who knows what side effects she is getting from them? They are known to cause weakness and that’s her biggest problem right now. She slept most of the day today, I don’t think I like that. I would like to see her more active. Well I guess I jabbered enough tonite, I just wanted to say what was on my mind. I’ll try to get back to this and give an update later.

And Square Wheels said he thought it would be OK on my blog. You have all heard whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. Actually that is a Biblical principal taught in James chapter one. 2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Nobody chooses to go through hard times but everyone does in one way or another. Everybody dies eventually. Through a lot of prayer and great medical care I got an extra 20+ years with my beautiful wife from the first time she was diagnosed with cancer. Some people die from the kind of cancer she had in less than a year. We were blessed. I won’t bore you with all the times the cancer came back and all the different treatments we endured. I’ve told it all before. She had never been put under hospice care before so I knew the medically expected outcome from the beginning. It’s not unheard of for someone to recover and get off Hospice and return to a normal life but it is extremely rare. All I could do is give her the best care I could, pray for her daily, I asked for a total healing but if that was not to be I asked that she would be pain free and keep a clear mind until the end. I was granted that second part of my prayer. We talked every day, talking about the good times. We had many good times and up until the last month she had good enough vision I could show her photos of the good times and we would talk about them and the many ways God had blessed us. I told her how much I loved her every day. We had a hospice aide Monday through Friday for between one and two hours a day. She would help me bathe my wife and change the bedding. It is really hard to change the bedding by yourself with the person in the bed. Our aide was named Joselyn and she was an angel. She would always bring a smile on my wife’s face. This went on for 15 months that she was bedridden and it was wearing me down. I had my first heart attack in July the year before she died and the second one the last day of February one month before she passed. I came through the heart catheterizations and stent placements With only a few problems. Each one took four days in the hospital and our son came over and took care of his mom. I took care of her the rest of the month until she passed. I called our three sons and told them she was dying and John took the first flight out of Nashville. He got here while she was still breathing but unconscious. She passed during the night. John’s wife and family drove up and they stayed with me for a month until we had the celebration of life service. I was just starting to get back to riding my bike when my oncologist called and told me I had to come in and start chemotherapy because my blood counts were way out of whack. Indeed they were, she showed me what they were and what they were supposed to be. I drove myself to the cancer center for my treatments but they didn’t always go well and they would call an ambulance to rush me to the hospital. One time they just pumped me full of saline and let me go. I had to have my son come and get me and drive me back to the cancer center to get my car. The second time it happened the hospital kept me for a week and gave me two pints of blood before discharging me. I finally finished my chemo and the blood numbers are much better. Once I started riding my bike again my strength started to return. My vision was really bad by now because I needed cataract surgery but couldn’t have it with everything else going on. I scheduled my cataract surgery and was expecting this to be easy peasy. It wasn’t, I came out of surgery blind in the eye they just operated on. My other eye was near sighted and also had bad cataracts so I was unable to see well enough to drive. I had to depend on my brother or an 89 year old friend from church to take me to appointments every other day and grocery shopping and to church. All of these things were a test of my faith but God had never let me down before so I trusted him to bring me through all of this and he did. In six weeks I got my vision back and had the surgery on my other eye and it went as planned. I came out of surgery able to see better than I had in years. Living as a Bachelor after 45 years of marriage is not easy. I wondered if a 72 year old man should even consider a dating site. I prayed about it and felt it would be ok to try it. I got on two sites eHarmony a Christian site and Silver Singles a dating site for old people. I have had dates from both sites and I will say I never met a woman I didn’t like. Trying to choose who to concentrate my attention on was difficult. I never expected to be so much in demand at my age. One lady told me she decided she wasn’t ready for a serious relationship and one lady I knew right away was not a good fit for me. She really didn’t have much information on her profile so I took her to Olive Garden and treated her well. I coached her on how to fill out her profile to attract the men that really want the real you. I told her the more information you put on your profile the more likely fit you will be with the men that want to see you. The Silver Singles site has a lot more women on it but it also has a lot of questionable profiles. I don’t even think they are women, they might be robots running some kind of scam. I get about twenty five of these a day. They all have their age listed from 25 up to fifty. I put on my profile I was only interested in age 65 and up. They usually have a photo of a pretty young lady. I was deleting these one day without really looking at them and just as I was about to hit the delete button on this one pretty lady I noticed she listed her age as 67. I opened up her profile it it was just what I have been looking for. We started messaging each other and I have been told to slow down by everyone. Well I didn’t want to let this one get away so we set up a time to meet for a walk and lunch in two days. We ended up meeting for dinner that night and again on the day we planned. This is the happiest I have been for a long time. Is she really going to be the one? I don’t know but for now we are really getting along great. She lives further away than I had planned but we are making it work at $4.00 a gallon. I mostly drive over to her house but she has driven over to mine and sometimes we meet in the middle. She lives 60-70 miles away depending on which way you go. I told her I was trained and certified by Crisis Response International to go into a disaster areas and help out but was never able to be deployed to the fires and floods and hurricanes and tornadoes in this country or Puerto Rico because I was caring for my wife. Now they are sending teams over to the border of the Ukraine to help with the refugees. She thinks I should go. I’m thinking about it.

Quick review we wad a wonderful celebration of life service for my wife, Esther would have loved it. I had a whole bunch of health problems after the caring for my wife was over. I’m glad it held off until she didn’t need me anymore. Really low blood pressure and then my oncologist called and said I had to come in and start chemotherapy because all my numbers were seriously out of whack. Chemo didn’t play well with my heart drugs. Three trips to the hospital, two by ambulance and two admissions for four days each. Finally got that straightened out and finished chemo the end of August. Signed up for a September bike challenge to raise money to fight childhood cancer. I didn’t even know if I would be able to ride at all but I was going to give it a try. I started out small four days after my last chemo I rode eight miles. I felt like I had just rode a century. My energy level picked up quickly as I rode to fight cancer. By the 18th of September, my birthday I turned 72 years old. I rode my age in miles on my birthday and felt good afterwards. My profile picture was taken at the end of my ride. I rode over 400 miles in September. I have been riding an average of every other day. Mostly on the gravel and dirt roads around my house with trips to Lake Wilhelm when I want to ride a paved trail and see other people. I have never seen any other bikes on my neighborhood rides. I feel better than I have for a long time. I wish it wasn’t so dang cold. I have some winter riding gear that works ok. The cold air makes my nose run which gets complicated if I wear a face mask. I can finally ride hills again. During the September challenge I avoided hills because I just didn’t have the strength to climb them. I’m going to celebrate Thanksgiving with my son’s family and then take some grandkids home with me for a sleepover. I haven’t had them here for a sleepover since my wife died.

I knew it was coming but I still cried.

My wife has abdominal pain. To change the bed or put her on the bedpan I have to roll her on her side. There is no other way to do it. When I do she moans and groans and pushes back to try to get back on her back. I’m trying to hold her on her side while I am doing what I have to do. One hand holding her up and the other doing everything else. I guess I’ll just have to keep her doped up on morphine all the time because I never know when she needs to use the bed pain. This is getting depressing, it wasn’t a fun job to begin with. I just needed to vent.

It's good to do some surfin' on the interweb before you head out to your destination. That is how I stumbled upon this nifty event. It's a flea market for cyclists, and it was great! I rode there on my bike. I had purchased some panniers to go with my rack just cuz I had the rack; I was REALLY glad I decided to take them this day! I got there a little early upon advice the day before from the mechanics at Bicycle Roots. The place was busy already! I locked up my bike, and off I went. I ended up buying the first thing I saw, but it was too cute to pass up. On the back it says, "Enjoy the Buzz." Being a carbon roadie, I loved that! I've been wondering how I can store Bad Ass (the fat bike). I saw this and decided my husband will be assembling one for me with one wide slot! I bought a couple cute bracelets and some plastic water bottle cages ($2 each!). Pretty sure I bought more stuff; just can't think of it right now. I had been struggling with how to carry my 4.5# New York lock. I saw a guy with a U-lock tucked in his back pocket. Cute, but I have a bigger lock. Then it dawned on me; I think I've seen this, so I'll try it. It worked great! Yup. Stick it through a belt! It's best to keep it on your left side; it won't knock into your seat when you put your left foot down to stop and won't catch on the seat when trying to get back on. Those bad things happen when the lock is on your right butt cheek! Fun stuff: Yes, in the bottom right of that last pic there is a plastic "hobby horse" cut in half and mounted on a bike. It was disturbing. I didn't mean to include it in the pic. If I had known I was going to get the front half in, I would have included the whole thing. Still, disturbing. It was time to eat, and I had found a place called Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. I got myself over there, learned a new way to lock up my bike (saw another person's bike), and went in. I had a nice lunch and found out Ithica Brewing's Flower Power IPA is good! Finally a piney IPA! I did a little more riding around and then headed home. It was a great day!