This was a blog about my adventures with Joe. Then, along came Nia. Four years later, along came Stage 3 breast cancer, and nothing -- not even the blog -- was ever the same again.
It's been one year since I found that fateful lump.
One year of discovery, diagnosis, treatment, and recovery. Between finding the lump and being diagnosed, Joe, Nia & I took a trip to Tahoe to celebrate my 35th birthday. Tomorrow, we are heading to Tahoe again. A bookend to the cancer year, and a kick-off to my 36th year. Cheers!
~~~
The lump...
Getting the port for chemo installed; my first surgery...
The day before my first chemo treatment...
And now, growing my hair back; getting used to the new me; getting stronger every day...
Getting an early start on packing for a mid-week trip to Tahoe...
... and enjoying lots of one-on-one time with my little one, like over twin "bowls of soul" at Verve. :)
I had a doctor appointment on Friday that came up with this result: NED -- "No Evidence of Disease." Celebrating and remembering the important stuff this weekend.
Hope your weekend is going well, too! Let's carry this stress-less-ness into our work week tomorrow, eh?
We woke up to heavy frost this morning. Cold but beautiful!
Over the weekend we had the opportunity to go play in some real snow over in the Bass Lake area, where my brother Dale lives. Nothing like saucer-ing down a frozen road!
More pictures from our trip here. From Nia's first driving lesson in the Mule, to roasting marshmallows, to a Bald Eagle site seeing trip on Millertown Lake, to snow. :) Big thanks to Dale, Ella & Amy for the memories!
This sweet little heart garland came to life between dinner & bedtime last night. I think it is my first official Valentine's Day decoration. Ever.
I'm really happy with how it turned out. I love a craft that takes less than an hour and looks like a million bucks. I'm sure I'm quite unique in that sentiment. ;)
Supplies:
Crayons (for melting)
Vegetable peeler
Wax paper
Iron
2 towels or pieces of fabric
Heart-shape stencil
Pen
Scissors
Needle
Thread
I made six small garlands using 4 crayons -- blue, green, yellow, red. My garlands are 3-5 hearts each.
Step 1: Heat the iron. Meanwhile, unwrap the crayons and shave them down as best you can with the vegetable peeler into piles on sheets of wax paper (I did one pile of yellow & red shavings, and another of blue & green shavings). At a certain point shaving the crayons will stop working and you'll just break them into small pieces (don't worry if they aren't tiny).
Step 2: Layer another sheet of wax paper on top of your crayon pile. Give yourself a lot of room for the wax to melt and spread. Put your wax paper and crayon shavings sandwich on top of a towel. Layer another towel on top of the whole thing.
Step 3: Iron until you don't feel any lumps in the crayons anymore.
Step 4: Using your heart stencil, trace hearts all over your wax paper and melted crayons (you will not be peeling the wax paper away -- the hearts would become too fragile and flake apart).
Step 5: Cut out your hearts.
Step 6: Thread your needle and "sew" the hearts together in a string, tying a knot around each one to space them evenly.
For so long, I longed for everything to "just go back to normal."
I wanted my life back the way it was before the cancer. Things were going so well -- work was humming, parenting was clicking, Joe and I were thinking of adding to our family... And then the cancer diagnosis came and suddenly, in a flash, a year was taken from us. Some things froze in place, other things were set back. Some things may have been striped from the horizon forever.
My 1-year "cancerversary" is coming up in one month, and the light at the end of the tunnel is almost dazzling. Six weeks past my last radiation treatment, my brain is clearing. My skin has already peeled & is healed again. The mobility of my left arm is all but where it was prior to the mastectomy.
Everything is normal again. Sorta.
There is a post-cancer cliche I keep hearing: "New normal."
In some ways I welcome the new normal, and in some ways I want the old normal. The new normal includes an eyes-wide open feeling, a thankful-to-be-alive feeling, but also way too many on-going doctor appointments.
And compression garments. (I'll get to that in a sec.)
Things will get in a good rhythm with work, preschool, exercise & writing and then suddenly I have to spend a huge chunk of time at a doctor's office, surrounded by other patients who look... well, sick. Wheel-chair bound, bald, pale, tired... The club no one asks to join.
Last week I added in a new doctor: The occupational therapist in the Lymphedema Management Center.
It seems when it comes to lymphedema, cancer is the gift that keeps on giving. What is it? Swelling & pain caused by the removal of lymph nodes and complicated by radiation therapy. In my case, I had 13 nodes removed from my left arm pit during my mastectomy. That means 13 fewer nodes in the lymphatic system to manage the waste fluid in my body. As the OT nurse put it, "Thirteen garbage trucks were taken off duty in your waste management program."
Awesome.
That means there is a risk of painful fluid build-up now or tomorrow. Or, thirty years from now. It never goes away, and can crop up any time. (More on the lymphatic system here.)
So I'm in the clinic to find out how to avoid it, and how to manage the light swelling I'm experiencing now. The short answer is that I must wear a compression sleeve when I exercise or travel to high altitudes. I must wear a compression insert in my bra as well. I should take up swimming (think: full-body compression). And I'll never wear my wedding ring on my left hand again.
Don't mistake me: I'm grateful lymphedema isn't simply a given & that I can learn tricks to combat it/manage it. It is just one more way that my life is forever changed.
New normal.
~~~
Check out this cool interview I did back in December with Parenting With Cancer!
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you like what you see here. Feel free to
leave a comment or to simply visit quietly. Looking for my cancer-specific posts? My "Cancerland Timeline" is a good introduction. And this link will take you back to my first post. (By clicking the right arrow at the bottom of each page, you can read my journey chronologically from March 2012 forward.)
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blog, Green Tea & Chocolate in which I write about my post-cancer wellness via nutrition & fitness (food is my pharmacy!). Thanks! ~April
We love us some Dutch Baby 'round here. It is a fast, tasty hot breakfast that all three of us enjoy. Recently I experimented with cutting out some of the butter and adding in some whole wheat flour. I wasn't sure how it would take since it is a recipe without many ingredients to begin with. But the result was delicious (by trading some of the butter for coconut oil, it added a healthful component plus another dimension and subtle complexity to the recipe -- win!) and the texture was nearly identical to its full all-purpose flour cousin.
If you've never made a Dutch Baby before, I highly recommend it. It's so easy. Following is my recipe.
Step 1: In an oven-proof, deep pan put 2 TBSP butter and 2 TBSP coconut oil. (If you don't have coconut oil, or just aren't a fan, you can double the butter, or experiment with another type of oil, like canola.)
Step 2: Put the dish in the cold oven, with the rack in the top third of the oven.
Step 3: Switch the oven on to 425 degrees.
Step 4: Meanwhile, in a large bowl, crack 3 eggs and add 3/4 cup milk. With an immersion blender, combine the eggs and milk well. (Alternatively, you can do this in a blender.)
Step 5: To the egg and milk mixture, add 1/4 cup corn starch, 1/4 cup all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour (alternatively, you can simply use 3/4 cup all-purpose flour -- the corn starch is for a little crisp-ness at the end).
Step 6: Blend the mixture well. (I think this is the trick to the whole recipe.)
Step 7: Once your oven reaches 425 degrees, take the hot pan out and add the egg mixture to the melted oil & butter. Return it to the hot oven.
Step 8: Bake for 20 minutes.
Step 9: Enjoy! Nia and Joe like theirs with maple syrup. I like mine with a drizzle of agave syrup. You could also dust it with powdered sugar.
If you want to make a bigger Dutch Baby, the Foodie Crush bloggess as a simple chart for increasing the proportions here.
{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by SouleMama. You can play, too!
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