Those of you who know my husband know that he is an avid outdoorsman.  Hiking, skiing, surfing, biking, bouldering, rock climbing, mountaineering, you name it. He’s out there doing one of them.   I support him in these activities even when he comes home with scrapes and cuts.   I usually ask him to cover his wounds … Read more "Shucky Darn!" The post Shucky Darn! appeared first on My-Sunny-Side-Up ..read more

I love working with PAs but I strongly dislike dealing with PAs.  Have I piqued your curiosity?  Are you thinking I’m confused?  Do you think I need a good copy editor?  By now, you probably know that I favor using abbreviations whenever I can.  It saves time to write MO instead of medical oncologist, or MBC instead of metastatic breast cancer.  But abbreviations also can be confusing.  Does CP mean cleft palate or cerebral palsy?  Maybe it means computer programming.  I remember seeing the abbreviation “SOB” in a medical chart.  My first thoug ..read more

A funny thing happened to me the other day.  I had an MRI scheduled at Scripps Clinic.  No, that’s not the funny part.  The appointment was at the Scripps facility in Chula Vista.  I’ve had plenty of MRIs in the past, with most of them being scheduled at the Scripps Green Hospital location in La Jolla.  The Green Hospital location is easy-peasy to find.  You just follow the signs to the MRI area, park in a designated spot, follow the arrows to the check-in desk, and you’re good to go. So, when I was told that the earliest available appointment for my stat MRI was ..read more

I recently hit a rough patch in my treatment.  My latest progression of  cancer has spread to my esophagus and at least one lymph node.  The radiation oncologist proposed 10 sessions of radiation to treat the latest metastases.  The approval process from my insurance company took weeks and involved back-and-forth communication and peer-to-peer discussions between my doctor and the insurance company before the sessions could be scheduled. Radiation treatment was the strangest thing.  I started by going in for a “mapping” or “simulation” session.  During this appoin ..read more

When I was in second grade, I read a book titled, “Fortunately, Unfortunately.”  As I recall, it was a story about a child whose day began with one misadventure which led to another and another and still another.  I don’t remember how it ended, but in the last few weeks, I feel like I could have written my own version of that story. Recent events resulted in my neurologist ordering an MRI of my brain. Fortunately, I was able to schedule a STAT appointment within a few days.  Unfortunately, when I arrived for the appointment, I was told the MRI equipment was down that day.  ..read more

My husband and I consider ourselves to be part Italian.  For many years, he worked with a woman whom we referred to as his “work wife.”  She was Italian and adopted us into her large Italian family.  We were fiercely loved and well fed. There are, as with my Irish ancestors, many types of Italians.  Enter Columbo and Vinny.  Columbo was a rumpled, seemingly inept police lieutenant who investigated murders.  The crime drama television series ran in the 1970s and starred Peter Falk as Lieutenant Columbo.    Columbo ALWAYS got his man (or his woman).&n ..read more

I grew up attending church and heard all sorts of stories about God.    There were many stories from the Bible about the times God saved one or more of his faithful servants from certain death – Daniel in the lions’ den, the three Hebrew young men who were thrown into a furnace when they refused to bow to the king, Jonah (well, he kind of asked for the trouble he found himself in), and many more.  Those are the Bible stories that end up in children’s books.  An artist portrays colorful drawings showing the saved person with light from heaven shining down on his or her ..read more

A few months ago, my husband and I were driving from San Diego to Bishop to see our kids.  In case you didn’t know we had kids, we were adopted by our son at his tender age of 20-something.  When he met and married the woman of his dreams, we gladly welcomed our new daughter-in-law into our lives.  We are truly blessed by them.  But I digress. The drive to Bishop takes approximately 5 1/2 hours if we time it just right.  If we want to avoid Riverside traffic, we need to leave either very early (before 4 AM) or very late (after 10 PM.)  This time we chose to leave ..read more

I finished graduate school in 1982, earning a master’s degree from the University of Redlands in Communicative Disorders.  I spent those two years living in Loma Linda, California, after four years of college in the Napa Valley.  I remember arriving in Loma Linda in June 1980, and was struck by how brown everything was.  By “everything” I mean the sky, the ground, the buildings – just everything.  The friend who showed my roommate and me around the town said, “You won’t believe it, but there are mountains right there.”  She pointed at a brown wall of haze.  She wa ..read more

I had a visit from a couple of dear friends recently.  A woman who used to be our neighbor sent me a text message asking if she and her daughter could stop by for a visit.  My husband and I hadn’t seen either of them for at least a year – maybe longer.  We responded with a “Yes!” They arrived bearing gifts from a favorite bakery, and we sat on the front porch and visited.  It was so wonderful to catch up with them.  We got to talking about life and death and how fast life is going with no guarantee that we will see tomorrow.  If it sounds like it was a depressing ..read more