Life has been tough since my last posting. I live with chronic segmental dystonia, a continuous muscle spasm on the left side of my trunk.  I say it started in 2018, my husband says it’s been twenty years. Yes, I suppose my piriformis muscle has intermittently hurt twenty years but since 2021 it has expanded and become constant. Nevertheless, I persisted, working fulltime as a traveling nurse until December 2024 when pain and the advent of AI in primary care beat the crap out of me.

  The following spring I went to the Mayo clinic in Minnesota for a three-week pain management program. I stayed at the Mennonite guest house, such kind, joyful people, and I felt optimistic. Busy with my May book tour and the summer camp, I did not fully implement the program until we returned from Slovenia at the end of September. Cobblestone streets and pedestrian hilltop cities challenged my body. Thus, when I began my Mayo pain management plan in earnest, just five minutes on my new exercycle destroyed my knees. I signed up with a great physical therapist to work on my dystonia and made an appointment for a left knee replacement for March 10— four months away. I managed to feel good some days and signed on as a substitute school nurse which didn’t give me enough work so I added some classroom subbing as well. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it but one or two days a week was enough for my old knees. At the end of January, I was struck down by what I called dystonia with a vengeance. Lower back, hip flexor, and thigh pain had me in bed for six weeks before my date with the surgeon. Afterwards I regained strength and motion quickly but the dystonia with a vengeance reared its ugly head and my therapist said, “Maybe we should get an MRI of your spine.”

Oh Lord, I had been working with a large L2-3 herniated disc since January. So now I’m in the process of getting epidural steroid injections and going to see yet another surgeon. But the knee is good, and as soon as I get my back sorted out, I’m going to get the right knee replaced. Or at least that’s what happy me says on the days when I’m not convinced that God hates me. I better use my Medicare benefits before the Orange Ogre takes them away.

Meanwhile I’m still toying with ideas about what I should do with the rest of my life. First is finishing the projects that I never finished. I kept a journal on our epic  adoption journey to the Dominican Republic for our infant son intending to write a short story. He is thirty-four years now!  I  wrote the story, added photos, and gave him a  hand bound  book as a Christmas gift. What it says stays private because I changed no names nor sugarcoated facts, and American adoption professionals, U.S. consular officials, and Dominican lawyers would be after me.

I continue to look for ways to promote Four Acres though I am pleased that I have sold 775 copies and still selling five to ten copies a month. I would love to see it available in Slovene. Many who helped me do the research and have an English copy cannot fully appreciate it. I have English readers who contact me directly asking where they can get it in Slovene to give to people back home. One of my academic supporters hoped that the Slovene Book Agency might provide financial support but it is not that easy and I cannot afford to do it. A literary translator costs $7-8,000 and then I could load it to a print-on-demand platform in Europe that prints in Slovene at no cost except the percentage withheld when a copy is sold— just like U.S. Amazon  which does not print in Slovene or I can continue to look for a traditional publisher.

Meanwhile it is time to pack up my resources that I used for Four Acres so I can clean out my brain and move on to something else. I am archiving the letters and photos to deliver to Slovenia and create a nice reproducible tree as a gift to family. Among Grandma’s photos were  ones labeled with names but not clearly family. I researched them on Ancestry.com and found them in family trees of their descendants. Some of the tree owners are my 4^th cousins.  I contacted each one and offered them the photos. I got a few responses and picked up some interesting relationships and facts. Truly surprising is the majority  who start family trees and give up even when I am offering them genealogical gems.

I have an idea to write about my interesting Aunt Jane but much of it would need to be fiction.  Give me the facts and I can write a story, but ask me to create characters, a plot, and dialogue and I am at a loss. I’m considering a college course in writing fiction and reading some books on the other elements to light some sparks. But days go by when I hurt too much to sit at a laptop and progress is slow.

But, as Grandma would write, I just wanted to let you know that I am still alive.