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Saturday, August 29, 2009 Far cry from canned chili and peas One of my favorite things is watching my husband cook. You have to understand that this is a man whose specialty as a bachelor was heating canned chili and canned peas – mixed together (no comment).
Here’s the thing with my man – not only has he been easy to live with all these years, but he adapts easily to change. Cancer? No big deal, we’ll change our lifestyle a bit. Working-outside-the-home wife? We’ll pitch in together on the domestic stuff. He’s even doing some of his own experimenting with recipes (although there are only so many things you can add green onion and green peppers to, if you know what I'm sayin').
So, in case you're wondering, yes, the hash browns are delish ... and a far cry from canned chili and peas.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 Knight in shining armor There was a noticeable hiss coming from one of my rear tires while out on a work-related errand today. It’s not like I’ve never changed a flat tire, but whoever designed the flat-tire changing system on our vehicle probably wasn’t female. It’s not intuitive.
I remembered where the jack and crowbar were hiding in a side panel and began the jacking-up process. But my skinny little wrists could only rotate the crowbar so many times. The vehicle was nowhere near off the ground and I had no idea where to find the next tool.
And, it seems that this long doo-hickey (LDH) was the key to getting at the spare tire. You insert the LDH into a tiny hole just above the license plate (who would have guessed?!) and then rotate it to slowly let down the tire. Then you wrestle with the thingy-ma-bob to get it unhooked from the spare tire – or at least that’s what Gary did.
So, whoever designed this scavenger hunt … er, I mean tire-changing system, had successfully hidden the parts and pieces all over the vehicle, but without any clues.
At any rate, Gary saved the day, mounted his white horse that resembles a red Toyota pick-up, and charged back to work. I’m not sure what I would ever do without him.
Monday, August 24, 2009 Berry-Peach Cobbler
Our daughter gifted me with a subscription to Cooking Light
magazine and I’ve had fun experimenting with their recipes,
tweaking them here and there just a little to fit our regimen.
I should back up and say that Gary—who grew up on homegrown beef and whose mom made the most fabulous biscuits and gravy for breakfast—has cooperated with me on the diet change thing from the time of his diagnosis. We’re not doing anything crazy, like day-long juicing with coffee enemas. Just your common sense increase of fruits, veggies, whole grains, legumes and seafood … and elimination of unhealthy fats and sugars. Which allows room for dessert from time to time.
and Earth Balance Buttery Sticks (tastes like butter, made from expeller-pressed healthy oils) and whole wheat pastry flour for the crust.
If I do say so myself, the cobbler turned out quite delicious – especially warm out of the oven with Luna & Larry’s Coconut Bliss Vanilla Island non-dairy frozen dessert perched on top (think “ice cream” made from coconut milk). The Berry-Peach Cobbler is posted at our For Your Health recipe site if you'd like to check it out.
Our daughter and I are thinking of starting a food & family blog – one of those multi-generational “I’m Not My Mother’s Daughter” fun things where she writes about her kids' cooking and about her culinary art classes (she just enrolled in a sauces class at the Institute for Culinary Education in NYC). And I write about experimenting for healthier eating when cancer is part of the picture. And we can poke fun at each other in typical mother-daughter fashion and comment on the joys of raising families. She’s a great cook, BTW.
Meanwhile, until we find the time to get started on a mother-daughter blog, you can read her jerseyhousewife blog while I go have a piece of Berry-Peach Cobbler!
Friday, August 21, 2009 Roller coaster rides
different drugs are introduced … except we’re running out of options.
Gary says that our lives are cut up into 4-month increments. He likens the PSA blood tests to finals in school—
“One of the worst parts of school was the finals. I worried and stressed, and then after I took the test, there was the waiting. The day finally came when I went to class and nervously waited for the teacher to pass out the tests so I could see what grade I got. Sometimes I was very happy, and sometimes (most times), I was not. I knew that number would affect my overall grade and maybe my future.
“Every four months I go to the lab and have blood drawn. Then I have to wait seven days before they’ll give me the test results. I know the lab opens at 7:00am, so on the seventh day at 7:05 (I give them 5 minutes to get situated) I make the phone call. The number they give me tells me what my cancer is doing. Unlike grades in school, the higher the number, the worse the score.”
Usually when Gary’s PSA climbs, the doctor orders more blood work in one month. Which we hate, because one month isn’t a long enough breather. At Gary’s appointment with the good Dr. E this past Monday, he said we could wait another 4 months for the next test. Ah, 4-month breathers are so much better than 1-month breaks.
And, Dr. E told us that if the count rises again 4 months from now, then they’ll increase the dose of the current drug. Which we didn’t know they could do. We thought chemo was next on the list. Dr. E is my new best friend!
So here’s to life on a roller coaster, which isn’t ideal, but hey … it’s life!
Sunday, August 16, 2009 Celebrating life Gary and I are just leaving Suttle Lake Camp—a rustic collection of cabins and old lodges tucked in the tall trees along the shores of beautiful Suttle Lake—where we (the St. Charles Cancer Services team) hosted our annual Soaring Spirits cancer survivor family camp.
We are now driving in the opposite direction from home over the mountains to one of our make-a-date-out-of-a-cancer-appointment trips. I won a Priceline bid for a downtown Eugene hotel room at half price. We’ll sleep in a little tomorrow morning (sleeping in on Monday mornings is so much more fun than sleeping in on weekend mornings!).
I’ll work on grant-writing in my pajamas until the hotel kicks us out (hoping to coerce Gary to go out early and find Chai tea for me!), and then maybe we’ll catch an early matinee before our late afternoon appointment.
So here are Gary’s thoughts about Soaring Spirits as we’re driving (he with his eyes on the road, me making sure he’s keeping his eyes on the road):
Gary: "On a weekend when I could have been at home with a cold juice, reading a book and catching some pre-season football, instead I was helping set up outdoor craft tables, moving campers into cabins, cleaning up after meals and sweeping floors.
"Sound like fun? Actually, it’s one of the best weekends of the year. We’re around survivors and families who are living well and we’re doing something purposeful, which helps with my cancer."
In the past, I’ve written about how making a weekend date out of a cancer appointment is just one of the ways Gary and I turn a negative into a positive.
That's what Soaring Spirits does, as well. It provides an opportunity to people dealing with cancer to make new memories ... and new friends ... and to be reminded to celebrate life.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009 Dan in real life Escaping into a good movie from time to time is part of how we manage the stress in our lives. I have a number of favorite movies that tend to be divided by category. There are the chick flicks, but only the ones that transcend fluff – such as You’ve Got Mail and anything by Jane Austen.
And of course the classics – any movie with Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Humphrey Bogart. And when you get two of the greats in one movie, like Hepburn and Grant in Charades … well, it just doesn’t get much better than that.
Gary and I also like inspirational true-life stories, like Schindler’s List and Miracle, about the US ice hockey team that beat the Soviets at the 1980 Winter Olympics against all odds. Or We are Marshall, the story of the rebuilding of the Marshall University football program after the 1970 plane crash that killed most of the team.
And it caused me to reflect on our family – blood relatives, in-laws, extended and otherwise.
Turns out Dan’s extended family is much like my husband’s. The Burns family gets together every year to close up their parents’ summer house in Rhode Island. Gary’s family doesn’t have a summer home, but they get together annually and—like the Burns family—they play games and cook and wash dishes together, and even have a family skit night.
Dan in Real Life isn’t the type of movie that would ever win any Academy Awards, but the main character and his story reminded me that what we have in family is rare. And so very precious.
Sunday, August 9, 2009 Ridiculous We were up too early yesterday morning (whose idea was this?!) and met 19 others from the DEFEAT Cancer group by 9:00am at the Green Lakes trailhead. Gary says that the last time we did this hike, it exhausted him ... so he was a bit apprehensive.
For the record, Gary finished the hike easily and is now talking about tackling South Sister before the end of summer.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009 Gift of life We were in a vacation rental home in Sunriver a week ago when I got a call at 6:24am. “Marlys!” said a voice that sounded vaguely familiar. “Get out of bed and go buy a newspaper!” It was my co-worker, Dr. Archie Bleyer. Seems he’d been up since early o’clock and didn’t realize what time he was calling until his wife’s voice in the background reminded him.
And we need to create memories – spend the weekend on the Oregon coast, arrange for our whole family to be together in Jersey, hike the Swiss Alps.
When you’re interviewed for a newspaper article, you’re at the mercy of the reporter. You bare your soul, and then you hope he/she listened well and would write the piece from an angle that truly represents you.
There were a couple minor glitches in this piece (i.e., a quote attributed to me that was really Gary speaking: “A mind is a powerful tool. I want to use mine to promote healing”). Other than that, it was a pleasure meeting Alandra Johnson, the reporter, who seemed to get that we are grateful for where this journey has taken us and we are living well in the present, not afraid of what the future holds.
See what you think.
Sunday, August 2, 2009 Grant-writing retreat The definition of a grant-writing retreat is where the wife explains to the husband that an NCI grant deadline is coming up and it would be helpful to get away from the house – even if that meant camping out at Barnes & Noble for a couple of days – to concentrate on reading through the funding opportunities and guidelines, and brainstorming over a proposal.
The wife was thinking of sometime in the next week or so, but the husband—brilliant man that he is—suggested staying in Eugene for the weekend since we were going there for a wedding anyway.
I got online and made a bid for 2 nights’ lodging through Priceline.com, and then packed in record time. Yesterday we hunkered down – reading and writing and thrashing out ideas, coming up for air to take a brisk walk along the Willamette River … and then back to work.
Last evening we attended the wedding. The bride was radiant, literally, and it was fun to see old friends – fellow staff members from a boarding high school where we spent 12 years in a previous life … and students that have grown into mature and productive adults (some you weren’t so sure would get there!). It was the frosting on the cake of this good weekend.
We’re now driving back over the mountains toward home with 223 pages of NCI grant guidelines perused, the online grant application process started, and my head buzzing.
Now all I need is a retreat from our retreat.
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