What I actually forgot to write. I had a very, very interesting experience. Uplifting, yes, phenomenal, and very interesting.
Friday evening, as I was getting ready to go to bed - after a quite long "evening", I had one of my bouts of insomnia so I didn't get to crush in bed until a little bit after 3 am - I felt a presence. Hard to describe. A beautiful, beautiful presence, and I just felt happy. And as I laid in bed, with my eyes closed, I somehow "heard" (well, not physically heard, again, hard to describe, I heard in my mind if you want to call it that way) a delightful sound like a carillon (those ancient music boxes). Instantly in my mind came my garden, the way it looks in summer, and on that image, started to superimpose flowers. Not just flowers in a flower bed, but it was like someone was pouring flowers all around me, and those flowers were like sprouting from her hands. And I smelled those flowers (again, in my mind). They were beautiful, colored flowers. And I had this wonderful feeling of happiness. No, I didn't take any drugs to cause me hallucinations.
The feeling hadn't left me since. It actually feels like back in the late '90s, when I loved the whole world and everything I desired was happening. Maybe that was my Guardian Angel. Maybe it was a fairy. I don't know. What I know is that it's back and I'm happy (this time for real) again and looking forward to miracles to happen.
Ok, winter is starting to get on my nerves. I feel so cooped up it's not even funny.
Yes, I have news. I started the Atkins diet. Tomorrow morning will be one week since I started it, so I'm still in what is called the "induction phase". Good news: as of this morning I lost 6 lbs. We'll see how much the scale shows tomorrow morning. Not bad for the induction phase. I know that the average is 3-4 lbs per week in the induction phase, but I also know some people lost up to 13 lbs a week. I am happy with my 6 (hopefully 7 by tomorrow morning) lbs. I can't wait to finally break under the dreaded 180. and keep losing. It will be a hard battle, as my plan is to get back to 120. I don't even dream to get back to my (once) normal 105-107.Even 120 will mean that I would have lost 30% of my body weight. And hopefully most of the pain that I have in my knees and my hips will go away. I am so tired of being so fat, of not being me.
I can tell you though that compared to other diets, Atkins is very feasible. For one, you don't go hungry. I guess that is the most important thing. For two, you can even eat sweet stuff (whatever is made with eggs, butter and cream cheese and using Splenda sweetener). Not that you have a lot of variation there, but hey! you're not going hungry. And I presume that after a while meat meat meat eggs eggs eggs cheese cheese cheese will be quite boring and won't give you much of an appetite. I wonder if the touted "appetite curbing" that happens during Atkins is not so much related to ketosis but to the fact that you just get fed up with meat, cheese and eggs. True, there are some veggies there, but only a few and after a while you get fed up with those too. Oh well. Did I mention that you never go hungry?
Anyway - I had a load of stuff to do and still didn't finish it. Two websites (I did one), prepare merchandise for one fair (that I've attended this past week and I didn't make everything I was planning to), prepare my documentation for SSD and SSI, prepare merchandise for an "art market" fair I will be attending on the 9th of February (I did do some things for that, but still need to be working), get a package ready for my Mom, prepare more Tree of Life creams (done that), continue my medical transcription classes (nope didn't get there) and in between clean the house (hey, I started doing that!), do laundry (done, but it's like it never ends) and prepare meals. It is so frustrating, it seems like days are not even a quarter of what they used to be, in terms of time. Schumann resonance. I hate Schumann resonance. You don't know what that is? Here's some information. That is why time goes by so fast. Irritating.
Anyway, the world seems to get more and more crazy. More shootings, tornadoes in January (well, that happened before though), more on immigration. To be very honest, being an immigrant myself - a legal one - I do not have too much pity on the illegals. I do not think that they need to receive so many handouts and then complain that authorities want to deport them. I still remember, years and years ago, when I was still a greencard holder, and was extremely ill, and my ex had abandoned me to die, I went to the SS office to file for SSI, so I could have at least a little bit of money - court had ordered him to pay me $1500 a month as temporary spousal support, and he was sending me $300, of which I had to pay utilities, eat and buy detergent, dog food, etc. But that is not the point. The point was that, at the Social Security office, I found out that I do not qualify, because even if we were separated and going through a divorce, even if we would have been divorced, I did not qualify because he was my "sponsor" and his income was well over $100k a year, and it was "deemed" into mine. I received these news with my head bend, hiding my tears, while at a nearby desk a big Mexican mama with a slew of at least 6 children, illegals, were receiving their financial aid. Until that moment, until I got so sick I could barely walk, I had worked hard and always paid my taxes. But I could not benefit from them, even if I was a legal immigrant, because the law said that the man who had gotten me so ill and abandoned me to die and was doing everything in his power that I would not have enough to survive was making too much money, no matter if I didn't see much of that, while the illegals at the nearby desk were receiving everything they needed, housing, medical care, food. Yea. I'm not that sweet on illegal immigrants.
I sure hope to be able to workout again soon. And maybe start that video with exercises for the Latissimus Dorsi breast reconstruction recovery.
Well, it did sink in, but I'm not over it. I need to find my balance, my happy place. I had thought I had found it - and that helped me go through everything, but once I got another slap from life, I got thrown out of it again.
The silver lining is that the diagnosis is not idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis - the kind that gives you 5 more years to live from the time of the diagnosis, tops; it's the post-inflammatory pulmonary fibrosis, that has a little bit of a more lenient grip on you. You have a pretty good chance to make it past 5 years. By how much? I don't know. And thinking that I have been complaining of the wheezing for 2 1/2 years, that means that I had it then - your lungs don't start wheezing all of a sudden out of the blue sky. I think that what bothers me the most is the idea of suffocation. That is the one way I didn't want to go when my time comes. I'm terrified of suffocating. Back in 1991 I had double pneumonia. A very severe case of it. It took them a month almost to keep me among the living. Maybe it wasn't a month, it was only 3 weeks, but it sure seemed like 2 years. I still remember how I couldn't breathe, how my breath stank of pus. How I had not one, but two IVs that were bringing not one, not two, not three, but four different antibiotics in my blood stream, to try and fight it. and of course, being communist Romania, they didn't have oxygen, so I was fighting to breathe by myself. I remember how many times I was hallucinating because of the fever. The thin blanket I was covered with in the hospital seemed to weigh a ton, and I couldn't move it, and there were little leprechauns that could move it for me if I would bribe them. I don't remember what I had to give them as a bribe. But you get the idea.
I've been trying to snap out of it for three days now. I have a lot of things to do and don't seem to be able to pull myself together. I have to finish the Tree of Life website, to work on jewelry and sculptures and if possible, continue my online class in medical transcription. All I managed to do today was to write two articles on the website. Two. Well, I was also able to do some housekeeping, mostly laundry and some kitchen cleaning and cooking, but that was it. I am tired. I feel like I walked 100 miles pulling a millstone tied around my waist. I don't know how much of it is the chronic pain, how much is the pulmonary fibrosis or how much is me fighting depression. I do not want to get depressed. I know I sound gloomy, but I do have a lot of things planned. Depressed people don't have lots of things planned, things that are long-range, that imply that you need to be alive 2 and 3 and 5 years from now, right?
I can't wait for spring. This is how spring is - 4 years ago, my front lawn, March 8. The first butterfly of the year. Little did I know that that fall I would be wondering if I'll ever see a spring again. And here I am, almost four years later, and looking forward to spring. Because I know when spring comes I will be here, and working my garden. And planting parsley and dill specially for the caterpillars of the black swallowtail, so the butterflies would have a place to lay their eggs, and the pretty caterpillars something to munch on and grow and become butterflies. And the photo of the catterpillars thriving on the parsley, last summer.
"You need a reason to wake up in the morning. And sometimes, even when you find it, life turns around and spits right in your face".
This is one of the lines of Sophia Petrillo in "the Golden Girls". For one, it is almost impossible to believe that all those vibrant women are gone, all except Betty White. For two, it's almost impossible to believe that I have watched this show almost since it started airing, and now, years and years later, I am actually almost a "Golden Girl".
But anyway, I'm rambling. Back to the point. I do have reasons to wake up in the morning. They are three. One is The Wild Wolf. One is Whisper. And one is Maya. One man and two dogs. Today Whisper decided once again that the Wild Wolf was laying on the couch not to read, but to be rubbing Whisper's belleh. So he went and stepped right on top of him, then flunked himself on his back on his chest, and demanded belly-rubs and kisses.
It took me coming with the camera to take photos to make Whisper go away. He hates the camera. I still managed to get a shot. The second shot was of the floor, Whisper was long gone.
But then life spat in my face again today. I went to get a pulmonary function test. I've been complaining for two years that I'm wheezing when I go to bed at night. I've been complaining for two years that since I had the mastectomy and the Latissimus Dorsi breast reconstruction I cannot breathe right, I feel like I'm in a tight corset. It took them two years to finally order a PLT. I'm looking at those numbers (the tech was kind enough to print the preliminary for me) and it's full of red. 80% of my pulmonary functions have red numbers. Red numbers that - combined with my other symptoms and with the last two CTs - mean that right now I have one of the four: COPD, pulmonary fibrosis, congestive heart failure or sarcoidosis. How horrid does it sound for me to wish I have COPD? I'll guess I'll hear the diagnostic sometime this week. I hope it will be sometimes this week. One of the worst things in a cancer treatment journey is waiting for test results. Waiting for a "yes" or "no" or a number that tells you that yes, you might have the chance of living enough years to eat some cherries from the cherry-trees you planted last spring, or no, you will not have that chance, and you hope that someone will take care of them and will not cut them down.
And today I realized I did another boo-boo (no, no honey boo-boo, I hate that child with a passion). yesterday when I was waiting for the Wild Wolf to come back from the drill I thought of making him some meat-filled pastries, European style. I got a tray of ground pork from the freezer and put it in the microwave to defrost. This evening, when the Wild Wolf went to buy from Lowes a heavy-frame hanging hook, I thought "oh, I should make him some of those delicious meat-filled pastries" and I started to go towards the fridge to get a tray of ground pork from the freezer, to thaw. Half way there I remembered that I said the same thing yesterday, and sure enough, the ground pork tray was in the microwave. I had to throw it away, of course, and didn't feel like making any kind of pastries anymore. I hate chemo-brain. I hate doctors who do not tell you the whole picture of the side effects from cancer treatment and surgeries, and watnots.
Anyway. Tomorrow I need to finish the Tree of Life website and start doing some of the online classes.
Can't wait for spring. At least I'll be working in the garden and will be able, for a while, to take my mind off things. I miss my garden.
Acini di pepe pasta
Crushed pineapple (canned)
Mandarin slices in syrup (canned)
1 big box of instant vanilla pudding
1 bowl of whipped topping
Boil the pasta. Rinse with cold water. Drain.
Prepare the instant pudding. Mix with pasta.
Drain very very well the pineapple and mandarins. If needed chop the mandarin slices. Add to pasta and pudding.
Add the whipped topping.
Mix well.
Let sit for about half an hour.
Carrots
Cabbage
Potatoes
Eggplant
Cauliflower
Broccoli
- all of the above, raw as well as cooked -
Bananas
The whippet's food obsessions:
Soup (preferable chicken, no noodles)
Chinese food
Mashed potatoes
Lentils
They also know how to eat from a spoon or a fork.
Yeah, I got some weird dogs. The whippet though is an oddball. We initially thought he is smarter than the average dog, so about the intelligence of a 2-3 years old. In the last year we discovered that he is way, way smarter than that.
Things he does:
- he understands complex sentences. As "you forgot your ball outside, go get it"
- when they are done with their business out, he comes and nags you to go close the back door.
- he taught himself to bow as "please" when he wants something. No idea where he got that one, but one day he suddenly started bowing "please"
Otherwise, he is the standard spoiled rotten dog, with an extra flavor of idiosyncrasies and emotional issues. The emotional issues coming from his childhood, being abused as a puppy and then surrendered to a (thank goodness) no-kill shelter where I got him from, freshly neutered and having a bad case of Kennel Cough.
Ok, so finally last evening I got my behind in gear long enough to finish the lipbalm I've been working on. It's great, tastes great, and really really moisturizes. Filling 50 tubes with an eye-dropper was not so much fun though - but I don't want to invest yet in a specialized tool.
I also managed to do a half-assed filing and sorting of all the stacks of papework that were strewn around the house and that finally found a place to rest: about 10% of them went in the filing cabinet, about 60% went in the trashcan and the rest went in the pile of "to burn" (we don't use a shredder but prefer to use the grill outside).
And then, of course, I had to find this piece of information that totally pissed me off. Dr. Susan Love's look on Femara. Let me try and put it in layman's terms. Breast cancer is a finicky beast. And sometimes it feeds on your hormones. When it's gourmet delicacy is the estrogen your body makes, once they remove the tumor (or do a biopsy of it) the doctors want to stop your body from producing estrogen - obviously with the intent of starving any cancer cells that might want to take residence anywhere in your body.
The thing is, your body does need estrogen for a lot of other things, like bone health and heart health and skin health and others; hence women when they reach menopause and their ovaries stop producing estrogen, their hair thins, their bones become brittle, they get shortness of breath, and they start packing on weight, as the adrenal glands take over estrogen production and store it in the body fat. You with me so far? So if you are not menopausal yet, you get this drug that is called Tamoxifen (that stops your body producing the "bad" estrogen but also carries a risk of contracting uterine cancer); if you are menopausal, then you get something called "aromatase inhibitors", of which there are three, Arimidex, Aromasin or Femara (Letrozole). These have been used only in recent years so there is not so much known about them as it is known about Tamoxifen. The only thing known is that they deplete the body of estrogen to the point that you get osteoporosis and heart conditions.
The biggest study that was done was on Femara, and it touted amazing results: 60% reduction in breast cancer recurrence. Awesome, right?
And then I find this small piece of information from Dr. Susan Love. And I see: " The study found that, overall, 2% (31) of the 1579
women taking letrozole had a recurrence compared with 4.9% (39) of the
804 women who chose to not take the drug. This is the 60 percent reduction noted in the media stories. (A reduction of 4.9% to 2% is a reduction of 60%.)" And more. Point is, it seems that the benefits aren't as great as touted, and the risks are quite considerable in terms of osteoporosis and heart health. I took Arimidex for 4 months. It brought my blood pressure to 160/90 from my normal 110/68. Then the oncologist gave me Aromasin. I was on it for about 8 months before getting in such a pain (joints and bone pain are a known side effect from any aromatase inhibitor) that I practically couldn't move. Ok, pause one month then go on Femara. After another 6 months on Femara, pain again, to the point that only opiates could make me function. Skip forward another 4 months - my MRIs and CT scans and Xrays show severe osteoarthritis in my hips, spine, shoulders, hands. Bone density scan shows I have lost a frigging 9.6% of bone density in my lumbar spine. And CT shows beginning of aterosclerosis. Wonderful, isn't it? I f@#$ING STOPPED IT. Stuffing my face now with Glucosamine and calcium and Vitamin D3 and lots and lots of supplements in the hopes I will be able to at least stop the degeneration process in my body that this shit has brought on. Of course, you will say "are you crazy? why did you stop? what if the cancer returns?" Well, peeps, between living like a 90 years old in order to live an extra 3 years, and living normally even if 3 years less, I chose quality of life. I just wish the doctors would tell you the truth, instead of touting the treatments and berating you like a child for not wanting to be a sheeple.
.. and it won't be raining for a few days. Considering the old world "weather forecast" with onions that we did last year, this year is supposed to be dry, dry, dry.
The Wild Wolf got a new car today. Photos maybe tomorrow. He's very excited about it. Me - not so much. The darn dashboard is way too high and I don't like the way the stick moves. Car is pretty, but honestly? I prefer my old 1997 Hyundai to this new 2012 one. Maybe because we've been together for so long.
Anyway, was thinking to expand on the idea of these pendants (in the series of the ones with crocheting)
Just because the one that I did without crocheting looks so good. See?
We'll see tomorrow (actually today). Monday I wasn't able to clear even half of my to-do list due to the "let's buy a new car" waste of about 5 hours.By the time we were done, I had to take one of the dogs to the vet (follow-up appointment for her skin allergies) and then by the time I got back home I was so darn tired I wasn't able to do much. what was that saying? "Tomorrow is another day". yeah.
Oh, I did manage to put in two orders for my garden for this year. Plum trees, elderberry trees, some muscadine vines, and lots of vegetable seeds - well and some flowers. Garden looks so sad now, and I can't believe there are still leaves on a lot of the plants - mainly lilacs, roses, grape hyacinth, and irises. I miss my garden.
Are you serious? In my spare time, I am not a member of Psychic Friends Network. If you keep asking me that, I'll take out my chronometer and start a card reading session with you. I have to warn you though that the fee is $50/30 minutes. Emergency rate. Otherwise I'll open my agenda and schedule you for one. That is only $30/30 minutes.
2. "ZOMG WOOT come like my new page on facebook"
Honestly, I think every minute at least 20 pages like yours are created on facebook. All of them being the same - sharing the same memes, sharing the same "deep quotes" that actually make no sense in the context, bragging about the fact that overnight they became some new kind of guru destined to enlighten humankind to the bliss of love. No, sorry, for one, you are kind of late. The hippie movement happened several decades ago. What exactly should I like about your page?
3. Poorly fit bras.
Either they are too small (cup and band) and then you see muffintops above the top line of the bra, under the arm, above and below the bra on the back sides; or they are too big and stuffed/padded and they move with the blouse they're wearing and sometimes rest diagonally on the chest, with one small boob above the bra and one below it. Saw a lady today - of the first category - and she looked like a bread that had raised and fallen over the margins of the pan. Second catergory always reminds me of my Sissy-poo.
There's more. I'll remember them, as they come to me. In bits and pieces (oh, the joys of chemobrain). Anyway, on a lighter note, here's a guy that makes me laugh all the time. And in this specific videoclip, the stripper club part makes me laugh uncontrollably for at least 5 minutes.
So, it's time to start working again on my polymer clay jewelry. I have two fairs to go to, a two-day one on January 26-27, and a one day Art Market on February 9th.
Lots of stuff and ideas. I am definitely almost out of my pretty Goddess pendants (or "moonface" pendants, as my friend J. calls them). I definitely need to finish a beautiful heart-and-cherubs sculpture. And I have a lot of ideas for a new mokume-gane line. Tribal looking. And a few other tribal looking ones. I still have a few of the polymer-clay-plus-hand-crochet ones left, so no worries about that.
Like it?
Anyway. Still dealing with the pain and no pain-killers until Thursday. Doesn't help much when one would like to do a little bit of work-out as well as I definitely can not. Not without something to buffer the pain. I am still trying to hold hard to my diet. Not a hard diet (yet), I don't want to go through gall-bladder-going-berserk like it happened last January.
But still, I was able to: take down the Christmas tree; cook twice (well actually three times as dinner was separately for The Wild Wolf and me); take care of some dishes. The rest? I was lazy. It's freaking Sunday, for goodness sakes.
Filed for future use: Japanese chili peppers are hot. For me. For The Wild Wolf look for those darn round itty-bitty Mexican ones. Maybe finally he'll find them spicy enough!
