#stroch

[elfpuddle]

My parathyroidectomy, the surgery I’ve been waiting for for years, is today. Thank you in advance for your prayers.

St. Blaise, St. Servatius, and St. Roch, pray for us.

Our Lady, hold us close.

Holy Lord, have mercy upon us.

[dieschnitzstelle]

[riverfloww]

Thanks so much for the follow @riverfloww. I'm always happy to meet another Musical Genesis @riverfloclassic 👏! Remember to tag us and use @Riverfloww⚜️ on your Creative posts for a chance to be featured on our page 🍘 @100BlackMen @ACEMentorship @BigClass @BoysandGirlsClub @TheButterflyMovement @CatholicCharitiesArc @CollegeTrack @CommunitiesInSchools @CommunityWorks @DressforSuccess @danydl129325 @EachOneSaveOne @FoundationforLouisia @GirlsontheRun @HeartofPassion @BigClass @BoysandGirlsClub @TheButterflyMovement @CatholicCharitiesArchdioceseofNO@LAIsaiah43 @collegetrackneworleans #MidCity #UptownCarrollton #Audubon #BayouStJohn #CentralBusinessDistrict #Tremelafitte #CityPark #WarehouseDistrict #GardenDistrict #EastRiverside #LowerGardenDistrict #AlgiersPoint #Bywater #Marginy #irishchannel #StRoch (at West Deptford, New Jersey) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwZzeFuAsYZ/?igshid=1go17d0fwiew

[anastpaul]

Saint of the Day – 16 August- St Roch – Confessor, Pilgrim, Hermit, Apostle of the Sick, Miracle Worker, (1295 at Montpelier, France – 1327 at Montpelier or Angleria, France of natural causes).   His relics are in Venice, Italy in the church of San Rocco, in Rome, Italy and in Arles, France.   Patronages –  against cholera, against diseased cattle, against epidemics, against knee problems, against the plague, against skin diseases and rashes, bachelors, of dogs, falsely accused people, invalids, relief from pestilence, surgeons, tile makers, Tagbilaran, Philippines, diocese of, Constantinople, 24 other assorted cities around the world.   Attributes – angel, bread, dog, pilgrim with staff, often displaying a plague wound on his leg, pilgrim with a dog, pilgrim with a dog licking the wound, pilgrim with a dog carrying a loaf of bread in its mouth.

According to his Acta and his vita in the Golden Legend, he was born at Montpellier, at that time “upon the border of France”, as the Golden Legend has it, the son of the noble governor of that city.   Even his birth was accounted a miracle, for his noble mother had been barren until she prayed to the Virgin Mary.   Miraculously marked from birth with a red cross on his breast that grew as he did, he early began to manifest strict asceticism and great devoutness;  on days when his “devout mother fasted twice in the week and the blessed child Rocke abstained him twice also, when his mother fasted in the week, and would suck his mother but once that day”.

On the death of his parents in his twentieth year he distributed all his worldly goods among the poor like Francis of Assisi—though his father on his deathbed had ordained him governor of Montpellier—and set out as a mendicant pilgrim for Rome.   Coming into Italy during an epidemic of plague, he was very diligent in tending the sick in the public hospitals at Acquapendente, Cesena, Rimini, Novara and Rome, and is said to have effected many miraculous cures by prayer and the sign of the cross and the touch of his hand.

In Rome, according to the Golden Legend he preserved the “cardinal of Angleria in Lombardy” by making the mark of the cross on his forehead, which miraculously remained.   Ministering at Piacenza he himself finally fell ill.   He was expelled from the town;  and withdrew into the forest, where he made himself a hut of boughs and leaves, which was miraculously supplied with water by a spring that arose in the place;  he would have perished had not a dog belonging to a nobleman named Gothard Palastrelli supplied him with bread and licked his wounds, healing them.   Count Gothard, following his hunting dog that carried the bread, discovered Saint Roch and became his acolyte.

On his return incognito to Montpellier he was arrested as a spy (by orders of his own uncle) and thrown into prison, where he languished five years and died on 16 August 1327, without revealing his name, to avoid worldly glory.   After his death, according to the Golden Legend;

“anon an angel brought from heaven a table divinely written with letters of gold into the prison, which he laid under the head of St Rocke.   And in that table was written that God had granted to him his prayer, that is to wit, that who that calleth meekly to St Rocke he shall not be hurt with any hurt of pestilence.”

The townspeople recognised him as well by his birthmark;  he was soon canonised in the popular mind and a great church erected in veneration.

The story that when the Council of Constance was threatened with plague in 1414, public processions and prayers for the intercession of Roch were ordered and the outbreak ceased, is provided by Francesco Diedo, the Venetian governor of Brescia, in his Vita Sancti Rochi, 1478.   The cult of Roch gained momentum during the bubonic plague that passed through northern Italy in 1477–79.

His popularity, originally in central and northern Italy and at Montpellier, spread through Spain, France, Lebanon the Low Countries, Brazil and Germany, where he was often interpolated into the roster of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, whose veneration spread in the wake of the Black Death.   The magnificent 16th-century Scuola Grande di San Rocco and the adjacent church of San Rocco were dedicated to him by a confraternity at Venice, where his body was said to have been surreptitiously translated and was triumphantly inaugurated in 1485;  the Scuola Grande is famous for its sequence of paintings by Tintoretto, who painted St Roch visited by an angel, in a ceiling canvas (1564).

We know for certain that the body of St. Roch was carried from Voghera, instead of Montpellier as previously thought, to Venice in 1485.   Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503) built a church and a hospital in his honour.   Pope Paul III (1534–1549) instituted a confraternity of St Roch.   This was raised to an arch-confraternity in 1556 by Pope Paul IV;  it still thrives today.   Saint Roch had not been officially recognised as a Saint as yet, however.   In 1590 the Venetian ambassador at Rome reported back to the Serenissima that he had been repeatedly urged to present the witnesses and documentation of the life and miracles of San Rocco, already deeply entrenched in the Venetian life, because Pope Sixtus V “is strong in his opinion either to canonise him or else to remove him from the ranks of the saints”;  the ambassador had warned a cardinal of the general scandal that would result if the widely venerated San Rocco were impugned as an impostor. Sixtus did not pursue the matter but left it to later popes to proceed with the canonisation process.   His successor, Pope Gregory XIV (1590–1591), added Roch of Montpellier, who had already been memorialised in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for two centuries, to the Roman Catholic Church Martyrology, thereby fixing August 16 as his universal feast day.

Numerous brotherhoods have been instituted in his honour.   He is usually represented in the garb of a pilgrim, often lifting his tunic to demonstrate the plague sore in his thigh, and accompanied by a dog carrying a loaf in its mouth.   The Third Order of Saint Francis, by tradition, claims him as a member and includes his feast on its own calendar of saints, observing it on August 17.

(via AnaStpaul – Breathing Catholic)

[fenetresurquebec]

Saint-Roch

(Raphaël Lavoie)

[elfpuddle]

Did Elfie Leave?

No, no, no, I didn't. Well, not really.

The week before Memorial Day, my parathyroid flared up again. With it came the instant pseudo-gout and swelling of everything. (TMI, but without my bidet, there was going to be no hope of hygiene, because my hips and thighs had swollen enough that tp wasn't going to get anywhere it needed to.) And, of course the pain. The level 10, I'm not human anymore pain. I spent my fiftieth birthday in a wheelchair wishing that I could just get a friend to get this stupid little gland out of my neck. It took more than a week to get a hold of my endocrinologist because his staff is the literal worst. I do have a new doctor, an otolaryngaologist who is both an endocrine and ent surgeon. He's a teacher, a director of an ent / endocrine center in nearby Atlanta, and just all-around welcome member to my medical team.

I see him tomorrow. Please pray for HubbyTMC & my travels there and back...it takes me a solid arduous hour of work just to get from this spare bedroom to the bathroom across the hall. Getting ready to go, into the car, and then driving to Atlanta in the heat wave we're having is going to tax me beyond all my limits. I'm hoping that the next step is surgery, and that it is soon, like "oh, I have an opening today" kind of soon. My body is exhausted, my pain meds aren't enough, and everything except for my right ear hurts, and that's where my tinnitus is coming from.

Yes, I'm offering it all up. It's a huge blessings to be able to unite my sufferings to those of our Savior, and know that it all is being used for someone's good. But just because I endure it for the sake of others' souls doesn't mean I enjoy it or want it to last any longer than it already has.

I'll be back when I can. In the meantime, enjoy the food queue that I've been saving up for probably years. Keep HubbyTMC and all those caring for me in your prayers, and help me endure this for the sake of the souls who need the redemption. Sts. Blase, Servatius, and Roch, pray for us. Our Lady of Sorrows, hold us close. Our Lady of Prompt Succor, stand with us and guide us.

[elfpuddle]

A personal rambling in place of your Robin River Update...

   This is the last queued post for a little while. I’m having surgery on Tuesday, Dec. 8th, and it may take me a few days to get new posts loaded. If you’ve been skipping everything tagged “nonsims”, this is the spot where you want to stop reading. (I didn’t tag this post because I wanted to make sure you knew why there was a break in the queue.) So, a bit of rambling about what’s wrong and what the surgery’s for. (I’d do this under a cut, but I don’t know how.)

Last April, I strained a back muscle by reading on the floor too long. (I know. That’s both very lame and very #HornedSerpent and #EnglishTeacher of me.) It was bad enough that I had a video conference with a doctor, who recommended a few things like anti-inflammatories and gave me a list of “if this happens, see a doctor in person.” That was on a Wednesday. The next evening, my feet ballooned to a shocking size, and HubbyTMC took me to an Urgent Care on Friday morning. It was so painful to walk that I was crying, nearly screaming, just walking from the car to the front door of the Urgent Care. The doctor there couldn’t find anything wrong outside of the swelling and the sore back, so gave me a steroid shot to reduce the swelling and gave me a list of “if this happens, get to the ER.” By Sunday evening, the swelling was worse. My toes had practically disappeared into the balloons that were my feet. Even lightly touching my feet with the bed sheet had me screaming in pain. I went to the ER early Monday morning. I spent the rest of April and May in and out of my doctor’s office and the ER, and being sent to various specialists for a myriad of tests. When I wasn’t doing that, I was commanded to stay in bed with my feet elevated above my heart. I’ll spare you the long list of tests and pains and whatnots and jump to the exciting conclusion.

It turns out that at least one of my parathyroid glands had just up and decided to kill me. I’m on some pretty high-powered meds now, which is the only reason that I can sit at the computer at all. My feet are still pretty swollen, even though I wear compression socks whenever I’m awake. Hyperparathyroidism is my current nemesis and diagnosis. At least one of the four little parathyroid glands has gone rogue. By which I mean that it’s leeching calcium and other minerals out of my bones *and* causing my body to overproduce calcium and potassium. Instead of leaving it in my bones and filtering out the rest, my body (thank you, parathyroid) is depositing the excess on the tendons and ligaments of my feet, and in a clump in the back of my left breast near the rib cage. There’s so much extra mineral going on in my body that my urine is full of crystals...like bitty shards of kidney stones in every drop. The deposits in my feet are causing gout-like constant pain. The parathyroid is also causing depression, anxiety, forgetfulness, and hair loss. I haven’t been this mentally unstable since my miscarriage. I’ve lost half my hair. I had surgery lined up for the beginning of November, but the surgeon’s office didn’t notice what all meds I’m on, and the surgery had to be rescheduled. It’s now Tuesday the 8th, which happens to be the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, so I’m hoping that bodes well for her intercession for me. It’s also the anniversary of the Baptism of two of my Godchildren. It’s a good day for Elves. So, Tuesday, my surgeon will do an exploration of my neck, take out one offending parathyroid, test the hormone levels of the other three, and take out any other offenders. I’ll stay in the hospital overnight, and, God Willing, come home on Wednesday with healing already begun. If you’re the praying kind, I’d appreciate whatever prayers you have to offer. If you aren’t, I appreciate whatever kindness you have to offer. Thank you for reading this long post, and for being my friend. God Bless you. Be well until I see you again. St. Blaise, St. Roch, and St. Servatius, pray for us. Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, hold us under your mantle.

[elfpuddle]

Surgery Update

I just sent this long missive as an email to coworkers, friends, and family. A few of you have asked me to keep you updated, so I’m editing it for privacy and posting it here.I hope to get back to the Sims this weekend. Today and tomorrow I’m working extra hours to make up for what I missed earlier in the week. The joys of not earning sick leave! If you’re only here for the Round Robin Legacy Updates, just stopping reading here, and know that I’ll get them up as soon as I can. Perhaps next week, sometime. Happy Feast of Our Lady of Loreto! My surgery of the 8th was deferred. Not canceled, per se, just...didn't happen. I arrived at the hospital at six in the morning, checked in, gave a urine sample, got into my fancy gown and socks, got my IVs, gave a blood sample which was sent to the lab, had a pregnancy test (negative, which is a heartbreak story for another time), had a dose of pre-op versed, and then waited. With a parathyroidectomy, the surgeon removes the parathyroid that's already been determined to be abnormal by previous tests. (Mine's the lower right, according to my endocrinologist.) After removing one gland, the surgeon tests the parathyroid hormone levels in the body. If the other parathyroids are normal, the levels will almost instantly shoot into the normal range. If not, the surgeon will find and test the other glands and remove another abnormal one. That's why it's an exploratory surgery. Each gland is somewhere between size of a grain of rice and a pencil eraser, depending on how engorged it is, and each is mashed in with all the other neck tissues and glands (and spine and throat and...). So, not a surgery for fun and games, either. At nine, my surgeon came into the room. All the levels that have been too high since April were within the normal range. Still at the upper range, but normal nonetheless. My surgeon couldn't operate because he had no measure of when to stop removing glands. He checked with my endocrinologist, and she agrees. For now, we will check my levels every two weeks and see what happens. I'm not better. With hyperparathyroidism and the hypercalcemia it has caused, it isn't a matter of "normal levels=normal ElfPuddle". It isn't the height of the levels that determines health, as much as a matter of how long they've been higher than they should be. But if they aren't higher than the normal range at the time of surgery, we've no measure for removing them.  More than one person has said that we should be grateful for the deferment. Who knows but that something could have gone horribly wrong, and skipping surgery saved my life. I believe that. We say we walk by Faith, and not by Sight. I have no idea why this is all happening the way it is, but I know I don't have to have the ideas. It isn't my plan or my timing. My team of doctors has said from the beginning that everything about this seems abnormal. It's not usual for hyperparathyroidism that my levels would jump so high so quickly, or that the pain would go from 0 to 11 overnight (which sounds like an exaggeration, but is literally how this started last Spring). They have thought that there is something in addition to the parathyroids that is going wrong, and we just can't place what it is. We've been concentrating on those little glands as a first course of action, looking to determine the rest after the glands are fixed. God only knows what it is that's really wrong with me. Perhaps this deferment is giving us a chance to figure it out. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it's yet another auto-immune disorder to add to the list I already knew I had. Perhaps not. Again, I don't know. HubbyTMC and I are tired of my illness, and frustrated by the lack of answers, yes. So, we give it up to God. We've been praying to St. Roch (disease of unknown/mysterious origin and arthritis), St. Servatius (foot pain), and St. Blaise (the throat, and so everything going on in my neck). We've also been praying the Rosary, because obviously Our Lady knows what's going on and, even more, knows what it's like to suffer. We will continue to do so, and continue to hang on to each other, our Faith, and all of you, for as long as we need to. This is a rather long and rambling missive, and I apologize for that. Thank you for your love, your notes, your prayers, the Masses...for everything. More than anything else, this illness has brought me to my knees (metaphorically) not by the pain and frustration, which are both extreme, but by being humbled and forced to ask others for help. I've never been any good at that, and I'm so very grateful that you've all stepped up and offered even before I asked. Thank you. For everything. I'll continue to keep you updated as we wait and learn. And I'll keep you in my prayers, in thanksgiving for your love and friendship. Love, Elfie