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 6:30 in the morning. The sun has not yet risen, but the sky is slowly brightening. It's cold out. I pull on my hat and my slippers, and turn on the heater. I have my hot water with lemon. The house is quiet except for the low hum of the laptop.
It's the perfect time to sit down & write.
OK, write! Now! Do it! Go!
....
And yet the words are not coming.
The blank page stares back at me, the cursor blinking...
I find myself typing "Chemobrain" into Google instead.
I learn that this feeling of cognitive "slowness" could go on for years (!). I believe the radiation treatments I'm currently receiving are aggravating the condition. I feel foggy most of the time, but especially right after treatments (did I tell you I put regular gasoline in my diesel car minutes after my first treatment?).
~~~~
My radiation appointments are becoming routine:
Arrive at 11:40a and change into my hospital gown (everyone else has white or pink; I feel pretty cool in this one, even though I have to wear it backwards for easy access).
By 11:43a I'm sitting with a magazine in the little waiting area. (The other day I found myself reading this article, which was a little surreal, especially this part: "Since patients who undergo radiation to the chest have a somewhat higher
risk of later developing breast cancer and other health problems,
avoiding radiation would be a big plus for Christina.") Awesome.
Thanks, Good Housekeeping.
Around 11:45a, the technician calls me back to the treatment room. I begin to untie my gown on the way. By the time I get there, I slip my left arm out of the sleeve of the gown, hoist the fabric up over my jeans and lie down on the metal "bed." I'm a model of efficiency. I lift my arms over my head and hold the plastic handles there for this purpose.
The techs adjust my head so I'm looking slightly right, then using calipers they line up my little tattoo marks with the green laser lines and then tape a layer of "fake skin" to my chest (that's what they really call it; it fools the machine into radiating my body to the correct depth). Once I'm all set up, they leave the room.
For ten minutes the machine buzzes and rotates around me. I close my eyes and work on a to-do list in my head. The time passes quickly.
The techs come back in and un-tape the fake skin and offer me an arm up off the metal bed -- something they do automatically for the older patients. I slip my arm back into the hospital gown and re-tie the side as I'm already walking back down the hall. Back in the dressing room, I slather my skin with calendula lotion. I look in the mirror. My skin is warm and looks somewhat sunburn. It is getting more and more sensitive. I barely have to shave that arm-pit anymore.
By 12:05p I'm exiting the building.
~~~~
You froze your eggs, right?!
This question keeps coming up lately. For the record, no, I didn't freeze my eggs before I began chemo. There was no time: Within two weeks of my diagnosis, I had my first chemo infusion. The cancer was too aggressive to wait.
Now, the months go by and my chemo-induced menopause ("chemopause") persists. Fingers crossed it reverses. I believe the body longs for health, for homeostasis. I imagine all the little healthy cells are trying to find their way back to "normal." To "well."
I know I'm lucky to be alive, to be cancer-free. Ever so lucky for modern, Western medicine. (My oncologist is my homeboy, for realz.)
But the truth is, it is hard having cancer as a young person, in the midst of having children. I don't know what it is like to have cancer at 45, or 55, or 85. I only know what it is like to have it at 35.
This is my cancer story: I had cancer when my daughter was 4, right when we'd decided to go for baby #2.
We thought we had the luxury of time. We thought it was up to us.
~~~~
As my brain continues to stay foggy, my house is getting cleaner and cleaner.
I'm drawn to cleaning these days. Maybe if the toilet was a little cleaner, my brain would be less fuzzy...Maybe if the corners were dust-bunny-free, I could keep a train of thought...
I finally learned how to properly clean & season my cast-iron skillet (3 steps: scrub (hot water, no soap), dry, apply a little veggie oil); I made my own kick-ass soft scrub (baking soda + peppermint Castile soap + tea tree oil + enough water to make a paste) which makes my sinks attractively shiny; and I've been cleaning my toilet with science (baking soda + tea tree oil + vinegar --- oooh, toilet volcano!).
Nia's been helping with all of this. It's fun to clean when you get to follow a recipe -- and get all wet!
Last night we tackled the shower. First I had her get in and spray the whole thing down well with water ("This is more like playing than cleaning!"), then we filled the tub up about 6" with warm water and added 1/8 c. dishwashing soap + baking soda. Then we got to work scrubbing. At the end, we drained the water and she got back in to spray the whole thing off again.
She got to play with water & I got mildew-free grout (and a clean kid).
Win-win-win!
(As I'm typing this, Typepad wants to suggest a link to somewhere in the Interwebs titled "Curing Cancer With Baking Soda." I heart baking soda, and it is doing some wonderful things for me right now mentally, but I don't think I'd trust it to literally cure my cancer. Just sayin'.)
~~~
I don't know much these days, but I can tell you this:
1. The dishwasher door is a great place to do things like kneed bread dough because when you/she is done, you can just close it and all the mess goes inside.
2. Slow down & start your day by reading aloud to your child in the still-warm bed. You'll both be thankful.
If you have a small child, you know the middle-of-the-night drill: Loud snoring, lots of tossing and turning, mumbling in her sleep, clammy sheets, violently kicking those sheets off, migrating to your bed and then kicking you in the back all night... When she's finally awake, it turns out she's sick; so congested she is honking.
My little one has been sick before, of course. But the notion of a "sick day" -- a day home from school -- is a new one.
What do you do? Luckily for us, Monday is the day when Joe doesn't have to report to work till 4p. So he and Nia hung out -- played some board games & indoor hopscotch, watched a movie, and dressed up some Laura Ingalls Wilder-inspired paper dolls.
A couple of months ago, we decided to embark on the the epic journey that is the Little House books. We actually started them a year ago or so, with the "My First Little House Books," which are picture book versions of the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. They are great; I'd recommend them to anyone.
The illustrations are gorgeous and the stories are sweet.
After reading many of these picture books, we decided to try some of the novels. We read Little House in the Big Woods, Farmer Boy, and On the Banks of Plum Creek. We even listened to a few of these as audio books.
So, yeah, we invested some real time in the Little House books.
I was excited to lose ourselves in some historical fiction, to give her a glimpse of how life was for little girls a hundred years plus years ago.
I wanted to like these books, I really did.
But, to be honest, I felt the novels had a little too much... well, detail.
There was more corporal punishment that I remembered from hearing them when I was a kid, there was the whole "kids should be seen and not heard" theme not to mention strict gender roles -- girls in the kitchen, guys outside (and Pa never includes Ma in decision-making), Pa's songs were more often then not racist (and inescapable on the audio version). And there was a lot of fear about Native Americans that was down right uncomfortable to read aloud. (Christine at The Aums blog wrote a great post about her misgivings about the Little House stories a few months back here.)
Nia enjoyed the books, for the most part. She asked a lot of questions and so we had some good discussions, but one of the things that Nia seemed to like the most about the Little House books was any mention of clothing. She poured over the illustrations, analyzing what Laura, Mary & Ma were wearing and how they fixed their hair. It was nice to read about the girls selecting new cloth for party dresses on a special occasion & Ma sewing their clothes, or Ma twisting their hair in rags to create curls over night.
So one day I searched for a book about the fashions of the time. What I came up with were Little House Paper Dolls -- brilliant!
Yesterday, when Nia stayed home from school, these got a lot of play time. For us, this seems to be the perfect solution to the Little House books having some good ideas but being a little undesirable in the full novel format. This way she could make her own stories with the dolls -- some of it from bits she remembered from the books, and some of it just out of her own imagination. And of course, here were the wonderful clothes we'd read about!
These are our first paper dolls & I'm impressed with them. They are really very well done: Beautifully crafted, colorful, high-quality. The dolls themselves are on thick card stock and the clothes are on fairly heavy-weight paper, too. The only thing that takes some patience is cutting everything out: Each doll has a variety of clothing and there are also props for each of the scenes (one outdoor and one inside the cabin).
What's nice is that you don't have to cut everything out at once: You can cut out an outfit for each member of the family one day, and then cut some more another day to extend the life of the toy.
After a few years, you suddenly realize, "Hey, we've been doing this thing every year just like this; this thing is a tradition!"
Others, well, they have to be made.
That's how it is with the donuts.
I am making donuts our family tradition. I am forcing them into tradition-ness.
I just really like the idea of it: We don't eat donuts the rest of the year, but on the morning that we get up early and go out into the wild and find ourselves a wild Christmas tree, we eat donuts. (Ok, it is, like, 11:30a. It isn't really the Wild. And the trees are pretty domesticated. But you know what I mean: We use our bare hands to saw down a tree; we wear boots. It's very Into the Wild minus the bears.)
But seriously, I like the idea of making a special day that much more fun and special by adding a totally out of the ordinary food, like donuts. So, last night I was on Yelp and researched the best donut place in the area (Donut Station in Capitola, it turns out) and then I was out the door at 6:30a into the 40-degree morning on my Donut Quest.
I don't know how to choose donuts. Maybe this is something that will develop as the tradition matures. But I know Joe likes cruelers and I know I like old-fashioneds, so I bought every single crueler they had, plus half a dozen assorted old-fasioneds, plus some donut holes for the kids.
And they were good. Really, really good.
More important than the sugar food, though, was sharing the whole afternoon with friends in this awesome place where I grew up. That's the stuff that really makes a tradition worth perpetuating.
{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo -- PLUS A VIDEO - 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!
Yesterday, our 25-week-old Americana, Sweet Cicely, layed her first-ever egg. She is the first of our 3-hen flock to start laying. I'll let Nia explain:
We are ever-so-proud of this moment!
In case anyone is wondering, yes, getting chickens in the midst of my health crisis this summer was one of the best decisions we made to keep life moving forward, and to bring a little distraction to our home. Chickens, in turns out, make wonderful pets! If you had the pleasure of seeing Nia carrying a chicken around the backyard, then you know how this process has enhanced my girl's life!
This weekend we added a new headboard/bed shelf to our bedroom. Nia and I had fun painting it this squash blossom gold -- paint made from goat milk! We bought it at Harley Farms in Pescadero a couple months back and I love it! It doesn't smell fume-y like paint at all -- in fact, we ended up bringing it inside and doing the second coat inside. I'm loving the color so much. It is a lovely accent to the rust-orange, deep-red, avocado-green I already have going on in this room we all three spend so much time in. As the days get shorter, it is lovely to bring some golden-warmth indoors.
{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!
Only it was only a couple of dots on either side of my mastectomy scar and it was totally cancer-related. (And have I mentioned how absolutely tired I am of needles right now?) Anyway, the tattoo was part of the set up for the next phase of my cancer journey: Radiation.
On Friday I had a CT scan and all the mapping and measuring done so that when the radiation begins next week, they don't accidentally zap my heart, or my lungs, or any other important organ. Just nuke the invisible cancer cells, please.
More on all of this later, I promise.
But first an escape from Cancerland is well over-due. Grab your pink, glitter cowboy boots and your sequin beret, we're off to Coarsegold for the weekend!
{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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