Archives for posts with tag: Coping with cancer

I met a goal today. My BMI (body mass index) now officially lands in the “Healthy Weight” category. Hooray!!!!

Now for maintenance, which is even harder. But I am cautiously optimistic and for today, I’m going to concentrate on the achievement!

By eating better and exercising, I have:

-Decreased my chance of future serious health problems, including decreasing the chance breast cancer recurrence.
-Improved my daily quality of life. I am more energetic, positive in attitude, and confident.

-I am now a better role model of healthy living for my 14 year-old daughter.

Okay, now to celebrate with a big box of chocolates! I kid, I kid!

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Thanks to the very inspirational Tracy of FEC-this, my blog has received another nomination for Very Inspirational Blog. I have again fudged the rules for the nomination, mainly the rule that I nominate fifteen other blogs for the award. Instead, I will write something related to inspiration.

In my last post, I wrote about my initial foray into gluten-free bread baking. At the recommendation of my naturopath, I checked out the Gluten Free Girl and the Chef blog. I found what I was looking for, gluten free recipes but I also found an inspiring love story. Gluten-Free Girl, a.k.a. Shauna, is a woman who was terribly ill for YEARS until she was diagnosed with celiac disease several years ago and cut gluten out of her diet.

Then she falls in love with a chef. He ends up owning his own fine dining restaurant. Eventually, without her even asking, he changes his cuisine to gluten-free. He wants to share all of his cooking with her and also to provide a place for people to eat safely who have celiac disease, which I’ve learned is really quite awful. Even a little bit of gluten will make Shauna sick for three days, like chemo-level sick. So chef’s restaurant was (it has since closed) a mecca for folks who had not eaten in restaurants in years because of their health problems, as well as to people without celiac disease who were simply looking for a fine meal.

Shauna is also a professional writer and former English teacher. She is passionate about the subject as well as about her family. This combination is a recipe for a very well written blog.

A little lumpy but delicious!

A little lumpy but delicious!

P.S. My bread is delicious! I followed the recipe here.

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As a kid growing up in the Seattle area, I often wished very hard for a white Christmas only to end up with a soggy one. This Christmas morning was no different. It has been raining steadily for hours. What was different this year was that I put on my rain gear and went out for a three mile walk, which is my new daily habit.

Yes, the rain was falling and heavily at times, but I was warm and mostly dry, as I like to remind myself on rainy walks. And although I took care to avoid walking through the deep puddles, I did admire the patterns the rain drops made as they landed on the water’s surface. I even got to see some squirrels chasing each other while splashing through them.

And the human animals were active, as well. I could see children opening their presents in their brightly decorated living rooms. Some others were watching Curious George wearing a Santa hat, on television.

I ended my walk in a very merry mood, indeed.

Merry Christmas! And if you don’t celebrate today’s holiday, I wish you a very terrific Tuesday!

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As they say, “You win some and you lose some.” But today both the gains and the loss are good news! We have two more minutes of day light today! And two more tomorrow! And two more the day after that! Until the summer solstice!

As for the loss, I lost a pound this week, which makes for a total of 30 pounds since May 5th! In one pound, my BMI will enter the “Healthy Weight” range. Hooray!

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I had a visit with Dr. Welk, my plastic surgeon, today. Although I have another bandage (one of those tiny round ones), I received a great award today. I do not have to see him again until February 28th! I saw Dr. Lucas, my naturopath, last Friday. I am not scheduled to see her again until February 22nd! And my next mammogram and medical oncology appointments are not until next month! I do have other healthcare appointments, not to mention the fact that I am planning to start acupuncture to address the sleep and menopause symptoms, but I have to tell you that it is a huge boost to me for these appointments to slow down some. Since my screening mammogram on May 7th of this year, I have had 70 healthcare appointments, only two of which have been unrelated to my cancer treatment. Five of those visits included time in an operating room. (I’ve had six surgeries but two of them were done on the same day. If you think I’m cheating, both surgeries hurt like Hell and also remember that I’m counting my mastectomy, which required overnight hospitalization as one healthcare visit.)

Seventy appointments is a lot for a 7 1/2 month period of time. Some people call the kind of cancer that I have, “cancer light” because I did not do chemo or radiation. And believe me, I am incredibly grateful to have skipped chemotherapy and hope to avoid it altogether in my life. I am here to tell you that there’s no such thing as “cancer light.” I’ve seen a couple of women’s blogs where they were apologizing for complaining about the inconvenience of cancer treatment because “other women have it much worse.”  This reminds me of one of the mom’s of my patients. She said, “This has been a really hard summer.” I said, “Yes, it has.” Then she apologized for complaining since I had been in cancer treatment all summer. I told her, “You don’t have to have the shittiest summer to have a shitty summer. You definitely had a shitty summer.” (I don’t normally curse but with some folks it introduces humor.)  So I may have “cancer light” but it’s still shitty.

How did I get on this tangent? Back to my story. Hooray, hooray, hooray! I have fewer doctors’ appointments for awhile! I have none at all during Christmas and New Years’ weeks!

 

I was walking this morning, as usual. A little girl was walking toward me, on her way to the bus stop. When she saw me, she bolted past me in a full run and didn’t stop until she was about 50 yards past me. She did return my greeting of “Good morning” as she hurried by in fright.

I imagine that a lot of parents have had the “stranger danger” talk since the recent horrific school shooting in Connecticut. What a stark contrast to the little girls I met on my walk last September, who had missed their bus and asked me if I had a car and could drive them to school!

It was sad to see a little girl frantically running past me, a middle aged lady taking her daily exercise. I hope we as a country, make something positive out of this tragedy as well as the problem of violence in our society. My Christmas wish is almost always for peace and this year is no exception.

Peace in our hearts.
Peace in our hands.
Peace for the world.

Lindbergh High School Reunion '82, '83, '84, '85

Join us this summer for our reunion in Renton, WA!

George Lakoff

George Lakoff has retired as Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. His newest book "The Neural Mind" is now available.

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