You're Invited to the Green Party

In honor of the demise of Grazelda the deviant ovary, to celebrate the close of chemotherapy, coumadin, and cancer, for the general merriment of all and enjoyment of foods rich in Vitamin K, if you're reading this blog post, 

YOU'RE INVITED 

to a potluck of foods that are green.

What: The Green Party
When: Friday, May 21.  6:00 pm.
Where: Margaret's House.  Tucson.  Email me for directions.
What to Bring: a dish to share that contains some substantial amount of Vitamin K (ingredient suggestions below)
What to Wear: Green, of course!
Why: "Because I'd rather eat spinach than chocolate.  Well, most of the time . . . " -mp

There are rumors of the Great Green Vegetable Pasta, maybe some All-Green Twister, and Jodi's in town!

RSVP if you get a chance to pennermk AT gmail DOT com 

***********

A Dozen Foods Containing Lots of Vitamin K:

Leafy Greens (except iceberg lettuce)

Brussels Sprouts

Broccoli

Green Onions

Asparagus

Cilantro

Cabbage/Sauerkraut

Okra

Black-eyed peas

Green Peas

Parsley

Endive

(because I had to do an image search to find out what an endive looks like)

An exhaustive list can be found here: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/SR20/nutrlist/sr20w430.pdf

Oh yeah, as far as I can tell, my physical health has never been better.  Yanking the port went well.   My scar is healing nicely, and I'm working on a necklace - if anyone has experience converting medical devices into jewelry, drop me a line. 

Farewell to Port

Here are the boring medical details, as promised:
I had my (bi-)monthly oncology check up last week and it went swimmingly.  My AFP was a 5, and I've apparently been on blood thinner long enough that we can trust my clots to be gone.  So I could go off my blood thinner and "dive head first into the salad bar," as Dr. Hallum put it, EXCEPT that I still have a foreign body lodged in my vein, in the form of a port-a-cath, the thing they put in my chest in September so they wouldn't have to start IVs all the time.  And I'm stuck on blood thinner till I have that taken out.  I hesitated for about .2 seconds before telling them to pull it.

The risk, of course, is that Grazelda might come back.  We're not yet at the big One Year UnCancerversary, when odds of recurrence plummet.  And it's a surgical procedure, they knock you out at least partways and cut you open, and you have to sleep all day, while your sister is totally wired and bouncing off the walls after getting the LARGE coffee at the hospital cafeteria.  (Well, that's what happened last time.)

Many people live happily with their ports in for many years.  Those people either don't have clotting problems or don't like spinach as much as I do.   So, I'm taking the risk, and this Friday (which is almost tomorrow) at 7:30 am Pacific Time at Northwest Hospital in Tucson, I'm getting my port out.  
I'll miss it, I think.  I play with it and tap on it and slide it around under my skin. I push on it occasionally and think, "Beam me up, Scotty!" On the other hand, it looks a little odd especially with my sleeveless summer attire, and it rubs a little when I have a backpack on.  And now that I'm not using it anymore, I'll gladly trade it in for copious quantities of basil and cilantro.

 picture by Kristi

Dinner

Still Life with Porter

Here's what I bought at the grocery store today:

(I don't get to eat them till Monday, but still . . . life is good.)  

And I'll save boring medical details for another post.  

It turns out . . .

. . . undeniably, 

genuinely,

when-it-gets-longer-it-might-be-able-to-go-boing-boing

curly. 

Yup - that's what my hair does if I get it wet and scrunch it a little bit and let it dry without putting a bike helmet or work bandanna on.  So I don't get to see it that way all that often, but I love it.  There's no way to tell if curly is from the chemo, the fact that this crop has never been cut, or my "no-poo" routine - I have started washing every few days with baking soda and a vinegar rinse on Saturday night.  It's also baby-soft, and I do obsess over touching it.

My life, like my hair, is settling into its new normal.  My left ovary has regained function and is picking up the slack that Grazelda left behind (unfortunately, having only one ovary does not mean you only get your period every other month).  I'm juggling work and rocking my classes and biking wherever I can and cooking good food and dreaming of broccoli.  I have very vivid dreams about broccoli.

There was a day a couple weeks ago that I felt bad at breakfast.  Lots of pressure in my lower abdomen depending on how I sat.  Nothing I did seemed to relieve it.  It wasn't horrible, but it was the kind of pain I had last July that was the very first sign of cancer.  So after a little hemming and hawing, I called in to my oncologist.  I felt better the next day, but went ahead and had the blood test to confirm it: With an AFP at 3.8, I still don't have cancer.  I guess normal people with this sensation would just think they had gas and blame it on the mac and cheese the night before, so maybe I do feel a little more fragile. 

On the other hand, my cousins Noah, Elissa, and Dustin came out at the end of February, and we backpacked down into the Grand Canyon and back out again in two days.  It was beautiful and challenging, a sort of victory lap for getting Grazelda gone. How awe-some to have such a powerful, strong body that can do amazing things!  And it doesn't even matter that when we stopped at Chipotle for supper on the way back, we were hobbling so badly we thought people might assume we were drunk and refuse us service. 

Spring break is over.  Curly hair is in.  And the Grand Canyon is really, really deep.

Peace and Health and Love,
margaret

WOOHOO it's 3.2!

I have been noticing lately that on warm days, after my car sits in the sun for a while, and then I open the door and get inside, it smells like I'm going to chemotherapy.  Maybe it's that Yankee Candle "macintosh" air freshener I put in in August, or maybe it's just the warm car smell that permeated the 20 minute drives to and from the oncology office in the summer and fall.  In any case, I'm very much an olefactory person, and that smell takes me back.  (As do a few others - particular hand sanitizers, soaps, and definitely the alcohol swab they use to clean my port before poking me).

Yesterday was rainy and (relatively) cold, so my car didn't smell like it should, but I went to visit my oncologist anyway.  Dr. Hank was pretty excited about my bloodwork, bursting into the room to give me a "high five," before even telling me.  3.2 is my latest count, which is well in the normal range of AFP produced by the liver of a normal, healthy, cancer-free person.  It was especially good to see the nurses in the infusion room (although the less you get poked, the more it hurts, so my port is still a little sore from being flushed, which is almost refreshing to have such a miniscule, short-lived side effect), and they weren't so busy, giving us some time to catch up.  I don't have to go again till April, at which point we may schedule a date to remove the funny plastic lump on my chest, and then, one more month, and then I can eat GREENS!!

Otherwise I'm generally happy and healthy.  I'm very busy with work and school and life.  I'm doing well in all my classes, loving learning, and even the rote memorization is kind of fun.  I bike my commute whenever possible (generally twice a week), and some cousins are coming out to hike the grand canyon later this month.  My hair is almost to the point of just being "very short" instead of "coming back in," though I may have to achieve a pony tail before I'll abandon headscarves altogether.  There are hours that pass when cancer doesn't cross my mind even once.  And there are nostalgic moments when I open the drawer with all my cancer cards in it and pick out a few to re-read. 

I do miss the blogging thing.  I get a small fix posting for my online nutrition class discussions, but it really can't compare to the caring folks here at Getting Rid of Grazelda.  I hope, friend, that you are also well and in good spirits. 

Cheers,
margaret

The Beginning

Today is exactly six months from the day that I woke up with unusual discomfort in my lower abdomen, the first hint of this crazy time of cancer and chemo and healing.   So I guess it's appropriate that this should be my last regular post, though I do have more compelling reasons for bowing out of the blogosphere.  Besides successfully getting rid of Grazelda, my demonic muse, starting this coming week I'll be far too busy taking pre-requisite courses for nursing school. 

"Margaret," you ask (and I know you will, because everyone does), "Has this whole Cancer Experience influenced you choice to make this career move?" 

Why yes, like pretty much everything else in my life, my future plans have been influenced by cancer.  I'd been thinking about going into medicine in some capacity before I got sick, but I have definitely gotten a closer look at the field and its challenges and rewards and possibilities.


Medical technology of the past fifty years saved my life and has given me back a life of the same (or greater) quality with a similar life expectancy than before Grazelda.  Even Margaret the Luddite can get behind those results. 

I had some fantastic care from doctors and nurses who had a vast amount of knowledge that I needed them to have, the communication ability to share it with me, and the technical skills to coax my body back to health.  Especially Shirley, my chemotherapy nurse (have I mentioned how cool she is?).

I want to help people, I want to work with my hands, and I'm going to study my tail off to become the best nurse I can.  I'll still be working at Community Home Repair full time, so it's going to be a very, very full year.  But I don't have cancer anymore, so I have to do something with my time! 

That is also to say, Thank You, dear reader, for coming along with me on this journey, being the statistics that boost my spirits, the comments that make me smile, and people who are informed about my life without me having to recount the gory details over and over again.  I have never felt alone. 

I'll post medical results as they come, but we're hoping for really mundane and no more than monthly.  So for now, I bid you good health, good friends, and as much hair as your heart desires.