Devon Volkel's Blog, page 60
April 3, 2014
A Witchs Aura
Today on Straight talk with with Carly Alyssa Thorne , Carly interviews Devon Volkel about her new book “A Witch’s Aura”; and they discuss Devon’s journey as a…
March 31, 2014
A Day In the Life of a Child with Diabetes
A Day In the Life of a Child with Diabetes
My son, Gauge is 5. He was diagnosed with diabetes in February of last year. Already having a disadvantage, he is in a wheelchair with a muscle weakness, this news was to say the least, upsetting. After all his challenges, why my boy, my sweet five year old baby boy. But, like everything, he has handled it with courage and grace. He knows what he has and even checks his own blood from time to…
Chemo Brain
Chemo Brain
We all know what a horrible thing cancer is. They invented chemo to save you from it. Chemo is an entirely awful thing in and of itself, regardless of the blessing it may carry with bringing you a second chance at life. So many things happen in your body that you didn’t ever think you’d go through. From phantom pain, to random spasms, horrible uncontrollable clenching, mouth sores so bad that you can’t intake anything, walking pneumonia; everybody’s list is different. Then there’s the draining feeling, walking around like a zombie, barely being able to climb a set of stairs, watching your muscles wither away into nothingness. After it is all said and done and the cancer is gone, you’re left with a whole new brain. Everything in your mind changes. There are glimmers of the person that you used to be, but when you go into cancer you don’t come out the same. Where as I used to be able to read normally, now I look at a page with words and my eyes go everywhere but to where they should go first. Then I randomly try to find my place by glancing all over the page until I focus my eyes to the top right. Simple arithmetic has become a problem for me now— granted numbers were never my strong suit—I’m talking simple long division is now a challenge. Grocery stores are terrifying for me. I have a problem making simple decisions and now I find myself inundated with choices, terrified that I’ll make the wrong one. Planning things out is a struggle. I have to think of everything I have to accomplish and truly sit down and figure out my day, where as I used to fly by the seat of my pants and just go with the flow. For me, I don’t know if it’s everyone, now there is the insomnia. When it is time to go to sleep, I used to be able to lay my head down, let my thoughts wander a bit and slowly drift off to dreamland. Now when I lay my head down, my thoughts and words find me but when sleep comes for me, my words burst the soft mists of sleep and now dreamland eludes me. Last night, I tried everything. I took calcium and magnesium, rubbed lemon and lavender on the soles of my feet, drank my chamomile, and meditated before sleep. I felt relaxed. When I went upstairs to my room and laid my head down I was sleepy, my mind was sleepy. Thoughts of the day surrounded my mind and I gently shoved the thoughts away. This beautiful black and blue and sparkling mist came drifting towards me and I was ready to follow it to the land of dreams. Right when I was about to drift, English words deluged my mist and it slowly scampered away. It happened a few times and when I realized I wasn’t going to get to go to that beautiful place last night, I came and laid on the couch. I passed out a few times from sheer exhaustion, but passing out and sleeping aren’t the same. I have come to realize I have a new brain. I have to figure out how to shut off the words so I can join the mists of dreamland. The irony in it all is that during the day my words are my gift. At night they are my curse. With this new brain of mine I have to find a way to shut off the words so the mists will come for me again. I will figure this out as I always do, but it is a trying time for me. Cancer changes who you are. I am still me, there are just new facets to me that I have to learn about. It will become a part of who I am and I will embrace it when I learn how to control it, but for now it is a curse.
March 25, 2014
A Day in the Life of a Child with Diabetes
My son, Gauge is 5. He was diagnosed with diabetes in February of last year. Already having a disadvantage, he is in a wheelchair with a muscle weakness, this news was to say the least, upsetting. After all his challenges, why my boy, my sweet five year old baby boy. But, like everything, he has handled it with courage and grace. He knows what he has and even checks his own blood from time to time, but it doesn’t make it easier. If you don’t know what diabetes is, just know that it is a balancing act, every day. From the moment he wakes up, we start by checking his blood. This involves prick of one of his tiny fingers. People with healthy-working pancreases have glucose levels that range from 70-140. Gauge has parameters that we have to keep him in between and that is 80-180. This means we don’t want him going low because low glucose levels cause a person to crash. Gauge gets droopy eyes and sometimes he gets sweaty. If it goes too low he can have a seizure. When their glucose levels are high is also bad as this can cause damage to his nervous system, circulation, his eye-sight—so many things—in the long run. So, we check his levels and then count the carbs he is going to eat at breakfast. I won’t get into that math as it won’t make any sense to someone who doesn’t know what the heck I am talking about. Depending on what his levels are and how many carbs he is about to intake, I measure the insulin dose on his humalog pen and inject it into the back of his little arm. Then I log what his levels were, what food he ate, how much he ate and what the carbs were in a little book that I keep in his medic-pack. Then we play. Before school, I check the lunch calendar to see what he will be eating that day and check the school’s website for the carbs. I log it in the book, carry my 40lb boy to the car and take him to school. When I get there, I take out the wheelchair—at home he uses his “lobster” crutches or crawls—I put him in his chair and wheel him in. I sign him in, take off his coat and backpack and take him into a back room where I take out his meter, poke his poor finger, and check his glucose levels. Depending on where he is at, I measure the units of insulin, inject his little arm, and kiss him goodbye. (He is in half-day pre-school) At snack time, the teachers take out his meter, poke his sweet tiny finger, and if he is within range, he is allowed to have the snack they have. If he is too high he gets string cheese. If he is low, below 70, we give him apple juice and 15 grams of carbs per snack and re-check him again in 15 minutes. After school, if it is a Monday or Wednesday, I take him to karate. His instructors love him so much and let me wheel him around the mat with the other kids his age. He loves it! At dinner, I poke his precious finger, test his blood, count the carbs and inject his little arm. At bed time, I poke his finger, test his blood and then give him a longer acting insulin in the belly for night time. We want his glucose levels to be 140 for bed because lows in the night can be scary. And that is our day. Every day. My husband works on the road two weeks at a time and helps as much as he can when he’s home, but every other two weeks I do it alone. But Gauge always has to endure this. It is a horrible disease and I wish that I could take it from him. But I can’t. The research their doing is amazing but nowhere near a cure. We will get him on a pump eventually and that will be less pokes, one every three days, but he will always have this. I couldn’t protect him from this horrible thing and that kills me. If there was anything that I wished for, it would be to take this from him. Diabetes is an awful thing.
That is my rant for the day.
February 25, 2014
January 24, 2014
This year was supposed to be great!
This year was supposed to be great!
January 18, 2014
January 13, 2014
My Story
My name is Devon Volkel. I am a mother. I am a writer. I am a cancer survivor. And I have a story to tell.
When I was pregnant with my son in 2008, I noticed that he didn’t move around a lot. I didn’t have good health insurance and so I was going to a clinic with 18 different doctors. It was very impersonal for a very personal experience. When I was 28 weeks, an insensitive doctor poked his head in, said, “Devon, has anyone ever told you your son might be breech?” and left the room. I panicked. “What does that even mean?” I asked myself. I freaked out. I called everyone I knew to calm my nerves. “It’s okay, Devon, they can try and turn him and if they can’t, you’ll just have a c-section.” It was the general consensus about it. So I let it go and refused to see that doctor again. At 38 weeks, he was the only one available. He apologized and asked if I had ever found out. I returned with a “No.” Sure enough, Gauge was breech, so we set up a version, which is a manual attempt at turning him in the womb. When I went in for my version, they found out his arms and legs were out like a frog. It was too dangerous to do it. I had to try to get him to turn myself over the weekend. I began to have contractions the next day and went in, thinking I’d just be sent home. They scheduled the c-section for 3 p.m. that day. As I was lying on the operating table, I looked to my husband who had a tear in his eye. The doctors asked if Dusty—my husband—would like to watch his son being born. He stood and watched Gauge come into the world. But something was wrong. There were no cries at first. Silence. My heartbeat returned to normal when I hear his sweet cry. They wrapped him up, put him to my lips to let me kiss his little head, and took him to the NICU. “He’s having a hard time breathing Devon. We’re gonna take him somewhere to help him breathe.” An hour later there was still no word. No baby at my side, no people coming in with smiles and balloons, no fun statistics. Only ominous glances and sorrow-filled smiles. Finally, my nurse decided to wheel me to the NICU. We entered, I saw an array of doctors and nurses crowded around where my baby was, and then she wheeled me out. I didn’t get to see him until he was three hours old. Hooked up to a plethora of machines with a very swollen head. No one knew what was wrong. His left leg was purple. They decided they must have broke his femur when pulling him out and put him on a fetnel drip, wrapped the bottom half of his little body in a cast, and still had no words for me on what was wrong with him. Days later there was still no change. I got to hold him for the first time on the third day. On the fifth day, when everyone was at work, the neonatologist came to my room to tell me that she feared Gauge would not make it off the ventilator, he wasn’t acting like a normal baby. Keep in mind he was currently receiving a narcotic for pain-what baby wouldn’t act normal? After I cried harder than I ever did, I let her tell my family what she had just told me. Then, when they were getting ready to go say goodbye to him, I said, “NO!!! He is not going to die.” This fight arose in me that I had never felt in my life. A drive that said he would make it because I couldn’t live without him. Two days later he was accidentally extubated while they were lying him on my chest. He was able to breath alright without the tubes. When they took him off of the fetnel drip, he started acting like a normal baby. Go figure. Gauge still had to spend a month in the NICU and he came home on oxygen, but he came home. He was
diagnosed with Congenital Myopathy and cannot walk, but he is the most amazingly bright little boy I have ever met.
A year or so later, I had an idea for a story come to me. I sat down and a series worth of novels fell out of me. I thought it was an amazing story and looked to find an agent to help me publish it. I found one right away, and she became one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I will continue more about the story later.
Two years later, my husband and I had just been married in September of 2011. We had been trying to get pregnant and were overjoyed by the news that we were. I was looking to get better care for this pregnancy and so I went to a different doctor. He wanted me to get some additional blood work done, but said I had until November 22nd. This was November 7th. I had Dusty watching my kiddos—I had become a day-care lady in the interim—and so I decided to just go that day. The next day, my doctor called me and told me my blood counts were dangerously low, to take my husband alone to this doctor, and that was all he said. Dusty and I went the next day and the word “Cancer” was all over the building. The doctor came in, asked me some questions, and told me that I had Leukemia and had to go to Denver for a month to receive extensive chemotherapy. He informed me that my platelets were down to 8,000, a normal persons is anywhere between 140,000-160,000. I had to go to the hospital that night to receive my first of many platelet transfusions. On November 9th, I arrived in Denver and was given options. I had been diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and was informed it moved fast. They couldn’t save me and the baby. If I didn’t start receiving chemo, I would be dead within days, the cancer was in 97% of my bone marrow. On 11/11/11 we gave my guardian angel back to the stars. The cancer went right into remission, I didn’t lose my hair at first but had shaved it off anyway to have some sort of control over an uncontrollable situation. The day I found out I had cancer, I said to it that I was going to kick its ass and make it my bitch. I was determined to live because I was not done with the world yet. I snuck out of my room, walked the grounds of the hospital, and sneaked cigarettes. I refused to be a cancer patient. It was a tiny part of who I was. I kept in touch with my agent and made the many, many, many changes to my novel that she requested. To this day I am still in treatment, almost done in March of 2014. I eventually lost my hair the summer of ‘12, but I was a pretty bald chick. I do tear up when I think of my baby, I wanted her so bad, but I know she was my guardian angel and she will return to me again one day. “An angel came to my side and stayed long enough to save me.” -Jimi Hendrix.
All along we said that 2013 was going to be a better year. Well, three days into it my daddy went into cardiac arrest and almost died. He pulled through, but gave us quite the scare. Then in February, I started noticing Gauge doing weird things. He began wetting the bed all the time, so much that we had to go back to pull-ups at night. He was very skinny and always thirsty. When I looked up the symptoms, I found out he may be diabetic. I had my friend come over to test his blood. He was at 358. Normal is 70-120. I rushed him the ER where they admitted him and began treating him for diabetes. He was then diagnosed with type one, the worst kind. The hardest part is stabbing him with needles, telling him it’s to help him, looking into his beautiful five year old eyes when he tells me, “Mommy, I don’t want to have diabetes anymore” and not having the heart to tell him it’ll never go away. If I could take it from him, I would. I would endure it all. Why my son? Why the one who already had a horrendous start into this world? I screamed at the world louder than I ever had at this point. He is doing well right now, even checking his own blood. Eventually we will get him on the pump to make his life easier, but still. Why him?
I kept telling myself it was going to get better. That my 30’s were going to be awesome. I was born on St. Patrick’s day and wanted to celebrate in style, Vegas style. I deserved a break. The morning of my 30th birthday, I woke up to an email from my agent saying that my novel had been picked up by Penrose Publishing! The very first thing that I saw was this email. It was fitting, I had to be in Vegas because that is how big I felt that day. I knew that I had a good story and that the world would enjoy it as much as I had. It came out on October 13th of this year. The title is, “A Witch’s Aura.” It is, besides my son, my greatest accomplishment to date. It goes to show you that no matter what you go through in life, never give up on you or your dreams. I am in the process of writing more novels, publishing my book of poetry, and writing a book of spells that goes along with my book, along with ingredients for the spells. My motto is never give up, no matter what happens. And to those fighting cancer, positive mental attitude is what pulled me through. I never let it define me, I never let it have me, I was the ruler of my body and Leukemia wasn’t welcome anymore.
I hope my story inspires you. I hope my novel speaks to you. And I hope my battles help at least one person fighting theirs.
"Climb the clouds to find your dreams." -Devon Volkel
https://www.facebook.com/AWitchsAura
http://www.penrose-publishing.co.uk/Authors/Devon%20Volkel.php
