Easter nostalgia

Mac, Ellen, and William with Daddy   1953

Easter 1958.  Some of the cousins at the Giddens farm in Cook county
Back row: Marsha Giddens, Martha Davis, Bucky Davis, Becky Giddens, Tallulah Hunter, John Godehn, Berkley Godehn
Front row: Sally Giddens, Ellen, Richard Godehn, William Mackey, Mac Mackey

Easter 1962. More cousins at 1203 N. Patterson

Clare Bray Hunter, Ellen, Tallulah Hunter, John Godehn, Corra Clare Peeples Sheffield,
Camille Peeples holding John, William Mackey, Bill Peeples, Susie Godehn, Mac Mackey holding Chip Sheffield, Richard Godehn

Ellen and Mac with Chip Sheffield and John Peeples on the beautiful front stairs at 1203.  

Ellen with Godehn cousins

Cousins Riley Howard, William Mackey, ?, Henry Sherman, Ellen, Mac Mackey, Erin Sherman

Mema (Kate Morgan) with great-granddaughter Elizabeth Mackey

Skunked, and other adventures

Every spring break, Claudia Mullis and I would load up our four children, Jackie, Ellen, Marcus and Max, and strike out in search of adventure.  Once, when the boys were all baseball crazy, we went to a lot of Grapefruit League games down in Florida -  spring training for the Major League players. The kids watched their heroes play ball, collected baseball cards and autographs, and had a fine time.

 The beach was always a biggie, and Disney World, and the alligator farm, and so on, but we loved the mountains the most, with all the state parks and the hiking and nature trails.

One foggy evening, we had the misfortune of running over a skunk.  We could hardly stand being in the car, it smelled so bad.  Claudia reminded me that even a year later, when we were at Epcot, we were able to locate our vehicle in that sea of cars, just from the stench.

Our gang: Ellen Frances, Marcus, Jackie and Maxwell



Another time, we stopped by a mountain stream for a picnic.  Between throwing stones in the water and splashing each other and slipping on rocks and falling in, all four ended up soaked to the skin: shoes, socks, sweatshirts, jeans, jackets, everything.  We drove our shivering brood to the nearest Walmart and suited them up in dry clothes, then stuffed the wet ones, dirty and smelling,  into garbage bags lashed to the car's roof  with bungee cords.

Later in the day, when we were somewhere between Cade's Cove, Tennessee and Pigeon Forge, one of the Daddys in Valdosta got a phone call:  "This is the Tennessee State Patrol.  Do you own a beige 1985 Jeep Wagoneer with a Lowndes County, Georgia license plate?"  "Y-y-y-yes..."  Fear was setting in.  "Sir, the license number of this vehicle was called in by concerned motorists. Clothes and shoes have been blowing off of it for 15 miles up and down Highway 321."

Happy times.  And nobody enjoyed them more than Claudia and me.

Congrats, Pat!

A little over three years ago when our son-in-law Patrick Kerns decided to go to law school, Jimmy and I were ...a little..I'm searching for the right word...apprehensive?...about it.  He's plenty smart - we knew he could do the work.  We knew he'd make an excellent attorney.  I guess we were concerned about Rosey and the children.  Pat's a terrific father, very hands on and involved with his kids, and we were worried about how hard it would be on Rosey, holding down the family fort in Valdosta while Patrick was in school in Jacksonville.

Patrick and new puppy Nellie

But they've made it work.  It was a real team effort, and everybody, including the children, William, now 8, Jake, 6, and Caroline, almost 5, did their part, and on May 18th, Pat graduates from law school.  Congratulations, Pat and Rosey: what a team you are!

Emory visit: the short and the long of it

We got back from Atlanta late Tuesday afternoon, in time to pick Andy up from the vet.  He's pouting with us.

The short report:  Jimmy's initial blood tests were surprisingly good.  Dr. Lonial was upbeat and reassuring.

The hall outside our room

And the long:  Jimmy has been feeling so wiped out lately, we were expecting a big drop in his blood counts, especially the red, but they looked good. Of course we won't get the full report until next week, but Dr. Lonial saw indications that the cancer's already responding to the Revlimid.

He seems fairly unconcerned about Jimmy's respiratory problems; he says he's been seeing myeloma patients presenting these symptoms all winter, and it's taking them a long time to get over them.  The truth is, he sees patients with a lot, lot worse every day.

He wants to tweak Jimmy's dosages: go from 15 mg Revlimid every other day to 5 mg daily, three weeks a month, and instead of 40 mg dex once a week, 20 mg twice a week.  Hopefully, he'll get the same benefits, while reducing the unpleasant side-effects. We know people taking much higher dosages of Revlimid, and it doesn't seem to bother them that much, but it zaps Jimmy.  And the steroids... of all the nasty chemicals I took when I was being treated for lymphoma, I hated them the worst.  The hyped-up nervous jitters are bad enough, but the crash...you feel like you can barely move, depressed, hopeless, like it's the end of the world... bad business.

The winter has been tough.  Jimmy has struggled physically, and we've been scared and our morale sometimes low, but we feel better now.  A little optimism goes a long way.

An I-75 reverie

Jimmy had an appointment at Emory this Tuesday. I drove, while he listened to the last round of the Arnold Palmer golf tournament, postponed from the day before, due to rain.  Traffic seemed surprisingly heavy for a Monday afternoon, until it dawned on me that it's spring break time.

I daydream a lot when I drive, especially if Jimmy's preoccupied and won't talk. I started thinking about spring break, and drifted back to when I was in school at Ashley Hall in Charleston.  About this time of year, we'd start working on our summer tans.  Any day that was sunny and the temperature topped 65 degrees, we'd go "lay out,"  as in  "Where ya goin'?"  "Lay out - don't have class til 2."  We'd slather our bodies with baby oil and iodine and bake ourselves in any little patch of sun we could find.  One popular spot could be accessed by climbing out a third story window onto a flat protected second floor roof.

I remember one girl from down the hall, Russell something or other: she was pretty enough, in an ordinary way, until she got in the sun.  Then she turned into a goddess.

In the same amount of time it took us lesser mortals to cook to a bright pink, Russell would look like she'd been dipped in bronze.  Her hair, into which she'd squeezed a lemon, magically transformed from mousy brown to shades of honey, dappled with pale blond. (WE'd sometimes resort to Marchand, with predictably unfortunate results.)  Her light green eyes glittered against the even darkness of her skin and her teeth dazzled  with an impossibe white (salt and baking soda, so they said.)

We marveled at her and gnashed our teeth in envious dismay, and despaired of the unfairness of it all.

Denial: it's not just a river in Egypt

When life gets too painful or too frightening or too overwhelming, we can cope by wrapping up in a big warm blanket of denial, and smile, keep busy, act normal. Maybe it's psychological self-defense to stick your head in the sand and pretend problems don't exist and that everything will work out, but that's really, really tough for me.  I want to do all I can, the best I can.

Jimmy says I'm a fretter. Guilty. ( He does admit that I don't hold a candle to his sweet mother in the fretting department. All of her world-class, Olympic gold medal winning anxieties were focused on Jimmy, her only child, until the grandchildren came along. We put on a big charade for almost a year after he was diagnosed with cancer, to keep her from finding out and worrying herself into an early grave.)  My children accuse me of worrying too much.  Guilty on that count, too, but I just can't seem to adopt a laissez-faire attitude toward the people I love.

When Jimmy and I were spending months in the hospital, I monitored his every medication, his every procedure - and probably drove the nurses crazy.  As good as his healthcare providers are, human mistakes do happen, hence the hyper-vigilance, and my need to stay informed and aware and alert.

Balance is the key.  Maybe I can find it somewhere between blissful ignorance and running everybody around me nuts.

Blog stuff

Several people have told me they've tried to leave comments, but were unable to. I was getting bombarded with spam, and in trying to block that, I'm afraid I blocked legitimate comments, too. I have no clue how to fix it but I'll try.

This blog has been useful in a lot of ways:

1.It's a great way to disseminate information.  Recently, when my sister-in-law Pam was hospitalized, I was anxious to know what was going on, but didn't want to be intrusive. William was spending nights at the hospital, and I was afraid of calling while he was trying to take a nap, etc.  He was wonderful about keeping everybody in the loop, but I'm sure it was time-consuming and that he had to tell the same story over and over, with every update.

2. It's good therapy for me: cathartic, more fun and a lot cheaper that going to a shrink.

3.  Having all this written down has been a great reference source for us medically. We both still have "chemo-brain" to some extent and it's very helpful to be able to look things up. One of us will say, "When did thus-and-so happen?"  Of course, neither of us can remember, so we go to the computer for help. It's disconcerting, though, that it reads backwards: you start at the end and read to the beginning.

Yesterday I discovered that I can get this printed off, from start to finish, 342 pages, hardcover, with all full-color photographs, one copy, for Jimmy and me to use as reference. I had to work at keeping it under the 350 page limit, but I left out the table of contents (27 pages) and comments, which whittled it down even more. It'll probably look like Who-Shot-Lizzy, but should serve its purpose.

Andy, the brave and the powerful

Thunderstorms rolled through Valdosta this morning, with heavy rain and a smattering of pea-sized hail.   Andy, instead of reacting with his usual quivering, cowering terror, confronted the enemy with aggression:  he ran angrily from room to room, barking and snarling with his best tough-guy swagger.

When the menace had passed, he jumped onto the bed, wagging his tail with a self-satisfied look on his face.  "What a good, brave puppy you are! " we bragged, petting him. "You protected us, and scared away that bad old thunder."

Being proactive is empowering.

The saga of the pink dress continues

I received this e-mail from my brother William:

Hey Ellen,
   Mac told me about the resurrection of the blog  and I showed it to Pam tonight. She immediately started   reflecting upon the dress.  I told her to hold on and start over and I would try to type it out as spoken:

"Ellen, there is no way you can ever throw away the pink dress.  Not only did your mother tell me the story many times, but over half a year's diary [Pam has the daily logs Mama wrote for years, and they are hilarious] was dedicated to it.  Your mother said more time was spent on that dress than on most bride's dresses.  But, as your mother said,"It was worth it!" .... so don't ever think of throwing that dress away. It should go to the Lowndes County Historical Society."

Love you,
wm&pam

The pink dress, back in its place, hanging on the ladder to the loft

I wrote William back and said that explained it:  my overwhelming impulse was Mama saying,"Ellen, you get yourself right back out there this minute, and get that pink dress out of the trash!"

There are piles of paintings in my studio in varying stages of completion.  I think it's called Attention Deficit Disorder.

I just unearthed this old watercolor sketch I painted of Max a few years ago, and I really like it now.

Whew.

Dr. Beale conferring with his very groggy patient

Once you've been told the dreaded "C" word, you're paranoid from then on. People who've undergone high-dose chemotherapy have a much greater risk of developing a secondary cancer, so when Dr. Beale said he saw no signs of cancer in Jimmy's lungs today, we were Relieved. Specimens were taken and sent off for analysis, but we feel good about it.

Jimmy's bronchoscopy this morning showed bilateral lung abnormalities (scarring) and bronchitic changes which are probably late effects from all the chemotherapy he's had. These late effects can occur years after treatment and may vary widely from person to person.

What does this mean? I'm not sure. It's hard to get definitive answers, because, I think, there aren't any. My take on it is that Jimmy has developed some mild COPD, and we'll deal with this like everything else: one step at the time.

On a lighter note:  another addition to the Saved By Dr. Beale Club.  Cathy Bright e-mailed to tell me that a few years ago, when Micky went into cardiac arrest in ICU, it was Dr. Beale who responded to the Code Blue.  Cathy said that Dr. Beale was not Micky's doctor, but they were mighty glad he was around.

And never the twain shall meet...'cept for Pawn Stars

Jimmy and I rarely watch television together. The stuff he watches just doesn't interest me: the golf channel, war documentaries, old westerns, action thrillers, those "discussion" shows where a lot of rude people spend an hour interrupting each other in loud voices, and no one ever answers the questions they are asked.

Chumlee, the Old Man, Rick, and Corey ("Big Hoss")

BUT... then there's PAWN STARS on the History Channel.  It's a far cry from Downton Abbey, but 'til that comes back on, we've found something we can happily watch together.

Fun old photos

Earlier today, I added an old picture to a recent post about the May Day dress.  Then I had so much fun looking through Mama's scrapbooks, I decided to share a few more.

Mary Young Smotherman and Ellen.  1st day of school, 1st Grade  1955

Bill Brannen, Ellen, and Eleanor Scruggs,  1st day of school, 1st Grade 1955

Mac Mackey and Bill Lastinger, 1st day of kindergarten, First Methodist, 1955

The Brownie Scout Christmas party was held at the Mackeys' and I guess Mama took the picture.  In the forground are Kay Blanton, Laura Lynn McCorkle, and Suzi Shingler. Back of Kay may be Susan Clary, then Cathy Tillman, Christine Smith, Mary Young Smotherman, Ellen (so proud of the Janet Leigh paper doll set she'd received), Linda Reddick, Gretchen McCoy, Karen Eager.  In the back are Vista Blanton, our scout leader, and two little brothers, Mac Mackey and Gary Blanton.

Brownie Scout Troop Christmas party 1957

The next 4 photos were taken at a high school graduation party given for Hyta and Josie and me at the Felton Davis' beach cottage, Fernandina Beach, May 1967.

Rhett Dawson, Ellen, Josie Eager, Marc Cochran

Hyta Mederer, Steve McCormick

Cindy Wade, Jerry Carter, Sallie Smith

John Flythe, Alex Greene, Cathy Tillman

Mama took this picture of Mac and me at home before the 1966 High School Christmas dance.  I was a senior and Mac was a junior.  I cannot  remember with whom either of us had dates that night. 

Ellen and Mac, Christmas dance, 1966

Now this one: oh, dear.  Rhett Dawson, my beau at the time, was headed off to FSU where he had a football scholarship.  Little Miss Betty Crocker decided to bake him cookies to take back to school,  but when she tried to taste the cookie dough while the Mix Master was still running, she almost sliced her finger off.  Please note the sling, and the bandage on the left forefinger.  A trip to the ER ensued, the bloody batter had to be tossed, and Rhett began his collegiate football career cookie-less.

Ellen and Rhett Dawson, August 1967

It's time to take up the gauntlet...again

 We had become complacent.  For the past couple of years, with Jimmy in remission and chemo-free, we have reveled in a relative normalcy, but reality calls and it's time to mush on.

Jimmy has had a busy day.  He spent four hours in the Pearlman Cancer Center, getting an infusion of gamma gobulin, which should prop up his immune system and make him feel better.

At two o'clock, I went with him to see Dr. Beale, a highly-regarded Valdosta pulmonologist.  We have scheduled a bronchoscopy for Thursday morning. 

 To add to his credentials, Dr. Beale saved my life three years ago.  After exploratory surgery, I hit the morphine pump too often and quit breathing - several times.  When Jimmy got to the hospital in the middle of the night, he says the nurses were pumping air into my lungs with what looked like hand-held bellows.  Dr. Beale arrived at the hospital right after Jimmy, and had me intubated and on a ventilator in seconds. Evidently I had been thrashing around so badly nobody else could do it.  Thank you,  Dr. Beale!

Dr. Gregory Beale

Letting go

I'm not a hoarder ..a bit of a pack rat, maybe, but not too bad.  Like a lot of sentimental people, I save memories.  When you can see something and touch it, it has the power to take you back, like certain songs and certain smells.

In 1955, when I was 6 years old, I was asked to be the crown bearer in the annual May Day festival at the college.  Being a part of the May Queen's entourage, carrying her crown on a pink satin pillow, dressed in a long tulle gown like the big girls - oh, it was heaven! Every now and then, driving past Drexel Park, I remember that day and smile.

Somehow, that same long tulle gown, now 58 years old, has ended up in my art studio, along with a lot of other stuff that doesn't belong there.  Today's beautiful springlike weather had inspired me to paint, but I kept tripping over things, so I thought, "Enough of this!" and sternly began piling it all in the big green bin, for the trash pick-up in the morning.

May 1955

Feeling oh-so-virtuous, I rolled the overflowing can to the street, then went into the house.  After about 10 minutes of stewing and soul-searching, I crept back and retrieved the dress.  Our Caroline is almost 5 years old now.  I'll take it to the dry cleaners, and maybe soon we'll make some memories that half a century from now will make HER smile.

P.S.  I just  found this photo in a old scrapbook and decided to add it.

Classics: old cars and old friends

1950's vintage Ferrari

Notice the old golf clubs on the running board

1953 Cadillac

Maudie

MG

Alfa Romeo

Barbara

Jimmy checking out the new Porsche for Easy Ed

1937 Mercedes Benz

Still just boys

Friends for over fifty years now, these lads were hanging out Saturday at the car show at the Amelia Island Ritz Carlton.  They went to UGA  together, all were KA's  but Pat (Phi Delt) and they all turned seventy within four months of each other this winter. Old friends are the best.

Bobby Minis, Jimmy Dewar, Bill Huff, and Pat Holder

Best reality show ever

Our friend Barbara Holder has introduced Jimmy and me to a nesting pair of bald eagles in central Minnesota.  A live-streaming solar-powered camera is trained on their nest, 75 feet in the air, and you can watch their goings and comings, 24/7. No eggs have appeared  so far, but Mama Eagle laid her first egg last year on March 6, so one should arrive very shortly. Eggs should hatch after a 35-37 day incubation period. (Update 3/10 AM  an egg is here- came late yesterday afternoon!)

To access this fascinating website, go to:
http://www.mnbound.com/live-eagle-cam/

Fernandina pelicans