Out of the Ordinary

This morning we had an experience that was definitely out of the ordinary. Our car was chased by a wild turkey. YUP! He literally was waddling as fast as he could alongside the car and then jumped into the road behind it. The speed limit there is only 20 mph and I was coming to a stop sign, so he had plenty of time to catch up to us. We were glad we weren't walking! This was a tom turkey, but his mate was there as well. We were wondering if they had a nest of eggs or babies nearby and felt our car was a threat. Too funny, though, to look in the side mirror and see a turkey chasing the car.

Many people responded to my "ordinary things" ideas. I also put it out on Facebook and got a lot of comments about the ordinary things people were doing yesterday. Most everyone agreed that doing ordinary things is great. There is nothing wrong with that! I agree.

Mark put all six dining room chairs together yesterday. They look great. I'm going to go back to IKEA one more time to buy seat cushions for them. I like them so much that I want to get four more in white for the kitchen table. Today Mark plans to put the dining room table together. In preparation for that, I also moved about 8 boxes out of the dining room/hallway area so when the table is up, it will look really nice and not cluttered with boxes we haven't unpacked. I put them in the garage until we can get to them.

Yesterday I did walk the 2.4 miles up to The Palms and back. It took an hour, but I was glad I did it. I also went for radiation, as always.

On Tuesdays I also visit with the radiation oncologist. He checks my skin and asks how I'm doing. I told him that sometimes my breast feels stiff when I raise my arms and that I get random pains in it now and then. He said the radiation is doing all of that. He said I should do arm stretches morning and night to keep the tissue supple. He said to take Advil for the breast pain if it gets bad. He said the radiation affects the nerve endings. As he said that, it seemed like I should have known that. Radiation is just frying everything in there. It's killing off cells, hopefully any stray cancer cells, but other healthy cells as well. It also mutates healthy cells. In fact I was told not to take large amounts of anti-oxidant vitamins while on radiation. Anti-oxidants kill free radicals, which normally is a good thing since free radicals kill off healthy cells. Radiation is creating free radicals just for the purpose of killing cells, healthy and cancerous. So taking large amounts of vitamins C, A, E, or D is defeating the purpose of the radiation. I don't take large doses of any of those except D. So for the next few weeks, I am not taking the 1,000 units of Vitamin D that I usually take daily. I'm sure I'm getting enough sunshine down here to compensate! Hopefully the radiation is going to kill off all the remaining cancer cells that may still exist without killing off too many healthy cells or mutating too many so that I get lung or bone cancer 10 or 15 years down the road. A percentage of women do get those secondary cancers later on. The risk of this is considered small, however, to the benefit achieved from the radiation. So I will go get #13 today.