Previously on The Murder of Ted…
The last few weeks had been dark and dreary, but a few small victories helped this sleuth find her footing again. Glorious beans returned to the menu, my son stepped in to help Team Mummy, and a renewed sense of peace.
This week: Autumn went missing, Dead Ted may or may not be Weekend at Bernie’s material, and a ten-pound poop mystery nearly landed this sleuth in the emergency room.
Thank you for joining me on this unexpected, uncozy adventure.
The Murder of Ted
A Series of Unfortunate Events, an Uncozy Adventure
Chapter Seventeen: The Case of the Missing Autumn
Just about every cozy mystery sleuth you meet loves fall, and this sleuth is no different. So, when fall goes missing, the sleuth goes searching!
We had tentatively planned a trip along America’s favorite highway, winding through the Smoky Mountains right in the middle of the season I love most. Fall! But when Ted struck, things changed drastically. Our fall adventure wasn’t going to happen the way we’d imagined.
My daughter, however, had a trip of her own planned. She was going to cancel to help care for me, and I said no way! Ted didn’t need to ruin her fun too. She headed to Boston to visit her best friend and sent me beautiful pictures every day.
They went to pumpkin patches; made homemade pumpkin lattes and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies! She knitted, photographed the fall leaves, and soaked up the season I was missing.
I loved every minute of it. I wanted her to have a wonderful trip so badly that, for a little while, I forgot about Ted. When she would call or send photos, I wasn’t thinking about treatment or side effects. I was looking at her pictures, enjoying the beautiful fall scenery, and feeling happy that she was out there experiencing it all.
I couldn’t take our planned trip, but I could still share a little of the season through her eyes. And Ted could not take that away!
There was something special about that. I wasn’t just missing out on fall; I was getting to watch someone I loved enjoy it. Her happiness gave me something lovely to focus on.
Sometimes, you have to find a little joy in someone else’s adventure.
Mama Bear’s renewed energy gave her a fall mission. Cinnamon paleo low-carb scones to go with my fat-filled coffee that tasted like a bit of heaven!
She had created a little fall fun!
Thank you, Mama Bear, for helping ring in the season. When you can’t go chasing autumn leaves through the Smoky Mountains, a heavenly cinnamon scone is a pretty good consolation prize.
Plus, we were even able to share them with Martha. Because she had officially been moved to Paleo with me. She could eat again! We were twinnies on the weight-loss, no-poo path during the 12-carb keto fiasco.
There was only one problem. She hadn’t been given the gift of beans.
We were in the home stretch. Every treatment mattered, and every day brought us closer to the end of this particular round.
The next challenge was already looming on the horizon: Dead Ted Lake was getting larger.
My blood counts continued to hold on, and I was able to keep receiving chemotherapy. That was good news, especially as we edged closer to the finish line. I couldn’t say the same for some of my friends.
My brain and liver seemed to have formed their own little conspiracy. As if last week’s heroics weren’t enough. They decided hypothermia wasn’t going to happen at all. I only got to 102.5. I chose to believe this was because Ted was already dead. And since they knew this, there was nothing to worry about.
Think about it. If the villain has already been defeated, why would you need to keep fighting him?
Clearly, we were no longer battling a living enemy. We were simply reenacting Weekend at Bernie’s. I was carrying around a dead Ted, propping him up, and pretending he was still part of the action.
This whole operation was starting to look a little like a Dexter episode. We had our dead body, and now we just needed to find somewhere to dump it.
Naturally, this was my preferred explanation for why hyperthermia wasn’t working as planned. It was considerably more entertaining than contemplating all the things about Ted that I couldn’t control. Everyone was tired of Ted, and we all loved the idea he was dead. Parading him around was just the type of humiliation a stalker like Ted needed.
I even had additional evidence to support my theory. While lying in my mission space HBOT capsule, I could feel Ted bubbling and brooding. Liquid Ted is dead cancer cells. I realize that sounds a little strange. But pressure changes affect how liquids behave, so why couldn’t it be plausible that Weekend at Bernie’s with Ted was happening?
Either way, I was sticking with my theory. Ted was dead, and I was just waiting for the cleanup crew to arrive.
We were approaching the end of my time with LW for this round anyway. That brought a different kind of sadness.
As the final week approached, I found myself thinking more and more about the people who had become part of my daily life.
These weren’t just the people treating me or fighting their Ted. They were the people who had walked alongside me through the weird, wonderful, terrifying, and occasionally ridiculous business of trying to kill Ted.
They knew my routines and my jokes. They knew when I was having a good day and when I was struggling to get through one.
Much like the quirky townsfolk at the beginning of this journey, they had become part of my story. Our time together was drawing to a close.
Would I see these beautiful people again? I certainly hoped so.
I came up with an idea to start a Facebook group where we could all keep in touch. I called it the Round Table – The Friends We Met Along The Way.
Still, saying goodbye, even a temporary goodbye with the promise of a Facebook page, was going to be hard.
I wasn’t ready for that part.
Okay, this was getting emotional; I sense a theatrical drama being added to the list of genres this has become!
Let’s lighten it with poop.
Do you remember the Great Flynn Poo Disaster from Chapter 14?
I’m beginning to suspect this entire story contains almost as much poo as it does Ted.
On one fateful Friday, I was weighing in for treatment when my technician looked at the scale and smiled.
“Look at you gaining weight! You’re up to 109 pounds!”
I looked at her and said bluntly, “It’s all poop.”
She cracked a smile. “No, it can’t be.”
Oh, but it was. I still wasn’t gaining the right kind of weight.
My stomach had been misbehaving for weeks, and the situation was finally coming to a head. Literally, figuratively, and in ways nobody wants to discuss over anything.
Once my technician delivered me to Trish, I explained that I was fairly certain I was carrying around ten pounds of poop. I was also getting concerned that I might end up needing a procedure I would really rather not explain to anyone.
There are plenty of things you expect to discuss during cancer treatment. Chemotherapy, blood counts, scans, side effects, and the occasional suspicious Dead Ted Lake.
But A ten-pound backlog of poop doesn’t usually make the brochure.
Trish reminded me about Smooth Move tea. I hoped it could resolve this situation without a trip to the emergency room. Poor Martha had already experienced that unpleasantry, and I didn’t want to have any part of it.
With the addition of tea to my diet, let’s just say I spent that weekend trading one unpleasant bodily function for another.
There was plenty of smooth move movement, and while I didn’t destroy the house the way poor Flynn had, I did manage to lose ten pounds in less than twenty-four hours.
Ten pounds of Poo!
The good news? No horrifying procedure at the emergency room.
That’s a win in my book.
I’d learned something important about managing the constipation that came with chemotherapy, Zofran, and the other medications that slowed everything down. I planned to continue using the Smooth Move tea until things returned to normal.
Ted was enough of a problem without my digestive system opening its own investigation.
When the toilet demons weren’t calling, we decorated the house with probably two hundred fall leaves, determined to convince Florida that it was autumn.
I say “we” decorated, but it was really the kids. My energy was still low, so I watched as my kids transformed the house into a fall wonderland.
Little by little, the missing season began to appear around me. It wasn’t the Smoky Mountains trip we’d planned. But it was something wonderful.
Over the weekend, my son had developed a new nickname for me.
Chemo Brain.
Some days, my brain seemed to be operating on a delayed signal. I’d start a sentence, forget where I was going with it, and then wander off in search of whatever thought had escaped.
The title was well earned!
I would get a what-up chemo brain? Did you drink your poo tea?
It made me laugh!
If you haven’t noticed, we had a thing about naming things. When he had his hip surgery a few years ago, he would hobble down the hall; all you could hear was the click, click, click of his crutches. We started calling him Creepy Tim. There was no hiding where he was.
Ted severely underestimated this family’s shenanigans!
The case of the missing autumn wasn’t quite solved. But we were finding little clues of joy along the way.
That was enough to keep this amateur sleuth going.
Stay tuned for the next episode: Chapter 18: The Final Countdown
Need a little escape from life’s uncozy mysteries?
Join Taryn O’Kelly for a few fluffy murders, quirky characters, and twists you won’t see coming. Happy endings guaranteed!
Start with Party Planning for Murder, Book One of the Taryn O’Kelly Mysteries, then follow Taryn through Frost and Foul Play, Cruises, Cocktails, and Corpses, and Sparks, S’mores, and Scandals.
And don’t forget, the antidote to the uncozy is a cozy mystery.
Until next chapter…
Happy reading.
As always, thanks for stopping by for some Salty Inspirations! -Michelle ❤️
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