August, 2025

We started the month with SKA events. The Folsom group met for dinner at our place as we welcomed Hiroko, our overnight guest for the night. The next day, Rog left with Jay, Brent and Hiroko for a 4 day trip to Santa Barbara to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the grand opening of the main dojo. Rog says this is his last trip down there but he found this one to be very useful. He learned a lot from Hiroko and the other seniors. As he says, “lots of little secrets”.

The rest of the month was spent on medical issues. I had an ECHO, a chest x-ray, and a CT scan and made a visit to my doc because I was having more and more trouble breathing. My doctor recommended hospice as he felt this was all a result of the mitochondrial disorder. We met with the kids and broke the news to them. The next day, (four days after the CAT scan) I got a call at 6pm from the Cancer Center asking me to go to the ER immediately. They had found blood clots in my left lung and pleural effusion in my right lung. My doc agreed that a trip to the ER was warranted and I got ready, waiting an hour for Rog to get home from Aikido. As soon as he got home, we headed to SRMC ED. Ryan and Beth met us there as we waited a couple of hours to be seen. Long story shortened, I was admitted and spent the next 3 days there while they started blood thinners and Lasix. On Sunday, the pulmonologist removed 1½ liters of fluid from my right lung sac. I had hoped that the removal of the fluid would get me back to where I was a couple of weeks prior but, although I could breathe easier, I wasn’t feeling much better. We decided to move forward with Hospice. The nurses spent the first week stabilizing my blood pressure which had tanked. I am now off of all of my heart meds. Rog and I have been treasuring every day we have now…and he is learning how to do things I usually do for him. He is doing all of the cooking and laundry now. I’m afraid I am keeping him so busy he can’t get his own blog done.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying visits from friends and family. I feel so blessed to have time to say goodbyes and thanks to people who are special to me. We celebrated Karissa’s birthday with a hamburger lunch at the Blooms’. She has grown into such a strong young woman!

Karissa started coming over for voice lessons. She will be coming once a week. And Ryan has declared F! Sunday and they will be coming over for the race every Sunday. There was a thunderstorm at the end of the month that had some particularly loud thunder. It scared Scout, the Blooms’ dog, so much that he escaped the back yard and took off. That followed with 5 days of worry and searching. He showed up at the front door all by himself, battered and exhausted, but alive. A trip to the vet for stitches and bandages and he is now home and everyone is relieved and happy.

I feel lucky that I was able to do weeding and trimming on the yards. Rog gets me settled in a spot and I can work for about 30 minutes. I am not sure what will happen next or how this thing will progress. Another adventure! We shall see.