Cancer’s Sweet Tooth, And Mine
About six months after my heinous surgery for my first recurrence, Mr. Wonderful, needing to DO something about this, hit up amazon.com for a box of Cancer Nutrition cookbooks. While I spent some time leafing through them when they first arrived, much to his chagrin I didn’t actually implement any of their eating plans, nor did I run out and buy the ingredients for the seven different varieties of kale-and-cauliflower soup. I eat veggies, but couldn’t stomach the thought of vegetarianism or macrobiotic whacko-ness…if these were effective cancer-beaters, wouldn’t we all be living on broccoli by now? Surely there would be a press release, and someone would be trying to make money on it.
My diet isn’t perfect, but we eat very well: lean poultry and fish, with the occasional hamburger or pork tenderloin; plenty of unrefined carbs and whole grains, vegetables, etc. We don’t eat out often, maybe once a month, and when we do, it’s usually a salad for me (but I’m happy to pick fries from my kids’ plates – no calories if I didn’t order ‘em!). I drink only occasionally, eat a healthy breakfast every day, get plenty of exercise, etc. etc.
But oh, the sweet tooth. Raised by a woman who didn’t see the need for dessert after dinner every night, when I reached the age of independence, I started supplying my habit, and haven’t looked back. Now that I have discovered how hard it is to control my weight through exercise alone (thank you, menopause), I do limit myself to the single afternoon diet Coke, and I’ve trained myself to like black coffee. I can go nearly all day without naughty snacks, yet once the kids are in bed, the trolling begins. What am I craving tonight? Four marshmallows (25 cal. ea.)? No, those didn’t do it. Handful of Cinnamon Oat Swirls (130 cal. per 1/2 cup)? Nope. Keep looking… Peppermint Joe-joe? Heavens, no, those are 75 cal. a piece! Maybe a chocolate truffle (60 cal.). You see my issue.
Last week I read yet another (unconfirmed but footnoted with journals) article on the relationship between tumor growth and sugar. Upon further research, it appears the scientifically-reliable, journal-publishing, study-backed community is still unconvinced that cancer cells gain their evil powers from dietary sugar. But for some reason I felt as if I had crossed some threshhold, some point of maturity that gave me the strength to actually take this final stage of control of my diet. If I cut out refined sugars and carbs (table sugar and processed sweeteners, not honey or maple syrup; white bread and pasta, not whole-grain), maybe I’d give the Avastin a leg up and really knock those tumors down. What harm would there be? I’d still be eating carbs, fruit, veggies, etc., just more of a caveman diet. Not far from where I started, but without the useless sugar. Sure, go for it. You can always quit.
Seven days later, I’m shocked. Not only am I not feeling like I’m making any great sacrifice, I don’t even miss it. See you later, sugar. I started eating completely unsweetened cereal (used to eat Barbara’s Shredded Oats), and found myself, on Thursday morning, noticing the natural sweetness of a walnut. A walnut. I’m having a grapefruit with a drizzle of honey after dinner, and being satisfied, even full, and not looking for more. And some of you will argue that I didn’t have any to lose, which is false, but my (admittedly not bulky) layer of energy stores seems to be fading away FAST. Could it be this easy to keep my weight steady?
WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TELL ME THIS BEFORE??? (I’m looking at you, Ed and Mom.)
[I'll keep you posted on further developments, including the results of my upcoming 2/11 CT scan.]
P.S. Ed, sorry about the cookbook thing. And not doing this in 2008.
P. P.S. Mom, I’m just kidding – I know you’ve been telling me this for years. Would you stop being right all the damn time?
Save Money: Get Cancer!
Recent articles in the media may give you the impression that cancer can be expensive. So expensive, in fact, that many patients need help in paying for their treatments. But I’ve put together a little list of the fantastically fiscally responsible features of this insidious illness. Check it out:
Baldness: Eliminates costs for hot water to wash the hair, electricity to blow-dry and straighten the hair. No shampoo, conditioner, frizz serum, or hairspray. No salon appointments, cuts, color, etc. No razor blades or shaving cream, waxing or eyebrow appointments. Average annual savings: ~$2,500 – 3,000.
Fatigue: Depending on your pre-cancer social life, savings can be significant. No cost for movie theaters, club cover charges, bar tabs, or concert tickets. (Who could stand up for three hours straight?) Deduct the cost of increasing your cable selection or increasing your Netflix membership, but average annual savings: $500 – 3,000.
Figure changes: Who knows what size you’ll be next week? Depending on your treatment protocol, you could be pumped full of fluid, plumped up on steroids, recovering from surgery, or in no mood to eat. And since the only places you’ll go will be the drive-thru at the pharmacy or a medical facility, you’re going to be looking for comfort anyway. Buy some yoga pants and this fleecy-lined sweatshirt in three colors each and you’re all set. Shelve your shopping addiction until your shape has settled. Average annual savings: $1,000 – 10,000 (depending on your habit). [NOTE: I didn't really do this, but hypothetically, it could work. Nothing could stop me from shopping. Nothing.]
Feet: Don’t need heels (see reduced social life). Don’t need new trainers (see fatigue). Yoga doesn’t take shoes, and besides, your feet hurt. Get some snuggly boots or comfy soft slip-ons and relaaaaax. Average annual savings: $250 – $750+.
Nutrition: Eating out is limited to take-out, since who wants to be perky enough to be in a restaurant for an hour? People will be bringing you food since you’re too tired to cook, and other than that there’s a case of Ensure in the cupboard. Bananas and yogurt will round out the selection. Average annual savings: $300 – 1,000+.
Reading: You can cancel your magazine subscriptions. People will bring you the current issue of every trashy Hollywood tabloid, and, if they’re really good friends, shopping bags full of shelter mags. Plus, you’ll be spending a ton of time on the internet doing treatment research, reading killer blogs and connecting on i[2]y.com. Average annual savings: $50 – 300.
Home decor: for the first two weeks at least after your surgery, friends and relatives (especially those at a geographical distance too far to visit) will send flowers. LOTS of flowers. Plants, cut blooms, and, if you’re lucky, gorgeous bouquets from Winston’s. Since you’ll be a little immunologically compromised, the nurses won’t let you keep flowers in your room, so they’ll all have to go home. Which means that no one will notice the dirty slipcover on the armchair or the fact that the neglected and frustrated dog has eaten the doormat. Average annual savings: $100 – 500+.
See? Now run right out and tell your favorite cancer patient to quit their caterwauling about health insurance, co-pays, and pharmacy costs. This ought to cover at least one and possibly two recurrences of even the most hideous diagnosis. Right?
How To Help A Cancer Patient, Part I
When you first hear the words, “You have cancer,” instantly a million things pop into your head. If you’re like me, after the initial “Holy sh!t I’m going to die” comes, “Who’s going to run carpool this week?” or “Oh, no, my house is a disaster area and people will be coming over.”
Once other people hear you have cancer, they unfailingly end every conversation by saying, “Let me know what I can do to help.” But at the time, you can never think of anything, and then when you think, “Wow, I wish I had someone to walk the dog tomorrow…” you can’t remember who it was who offered to help (chemo brain). How can something so generous turn out to be such a royal pain?
Within about forty-eight hours of my surgery, my crack research team (read: family members with internet connections desperate to DO something) had located the best Gyn/Onc in the area for my case, researched the then-hot-and-trendy-new IP chemo protocol, sent Edible Arrangements, and hooked me up with a lifesaving website that would feature prominently in my treatment and recovery plans for the next three years (and may come around again).
Lotsahelpinghands.com is a website that allows an administrator (you? your BFF?) to set up a free homepage for the cancer patient and their family, friends, and supporters, who log onto the site and sign up with a password once they are invited to join. The administrator sets up “tasks” – events as simple as picking up drycleaning or running to the grocery store, or as complicated as making a meal with specific dietary requirements (not too spicy, the kids don’t eat tomatoes, etc.) and bringing it over to your house. The sky’s the limit; my administrator set up “daily laugh” tasks so people would send me email jokes, and people from my then-kindergartner’s class signed up to host playdates for him and his little brother. I had people weeding my garden, raking leaves and planting mums in the fall, and delivering more delicious dinners than any one family could eat in a month of Sundays, except Mr. Wonderful was involved so we ate it all.
The BEST thing about lotsahelpinghands (aside from it being free) is that it gives the overwhelmed family a way to pass off some of the crazy-lot of organizing that comes with the new regime. And the seemingly unceasing refrain of “How can I help?” has an easy outlet: sign up for the website and start taking on tasks.
The OTHER best thing about lotsahelpinghands is that it taught me to let go a little and lean on others. My family is so self-reliant (and Mr. Wonderful and I slight control freaks) that allowing other people to take over and fold my laundry was nearly painful at the beginning. But as my kids and I got more used to giving up some control so we had more time to be together as a family (especially important when it seemed there might only be a couple more years) I realized that it was one of cancer’s silver linings. My boys learned the value of doing for others, and we now are honored to pay it forward whenever we get the chance. The sense of community may have been more instrumental in my survival than the chemo.
Annoyed
Cancer giveth, and cancer taketh away. The giving part is another post for another day. Today, we gripe.
Actually, it’s sort of a meta-gripe. I had a lousy day earlier this week, I won’t bore you with the details, but the thing that really cheesed me the most was this overarching feeling I had that I ought to just stop grousing and be thankful that I had a life to live. And that made me madder.
Not only has cancer taken away the innocence of my assumption that I’ll live to be a hundred like my grandmother, that I’ll be around to annoy and embarrass my teenage sons, that I’ll get a chance to spend some of the (admittedly smaller than previously) IRA my tax refund funnels into every spring, among other countless losses. Now I can’t even have a lousy day, sink into a funk, eat too much chocolate and ignore my vacuuming without feeling guilty? I have to be so THANKful that I’ve surVIVEd long enough to be having this day at all? That just sucks.
Wow, someone needs a nap.
Drat. Mom Was Right Again! And Here’s A Cornell Study To Back Her Up.
When we used to go outside to play in the snow, Mom always told us to put a hat on. We’d ignore her (hats were NOT cool in the ’80s – hard on the feathered hair or some such) and slog around for twenty minutes, then come inside complaining that our feet were cold. “If your feet are cold, put a hat on,” she’d say. What kind of fool sense was that? If your feet are cold, clearly you need better boots. With wedge heels and faux shearling peeking over the top. Or possibly we just needed hot chocolate.
Now that I’m a cancer chick, I’ve come to realize that there may be something to this “cold feet/body = cold head” thing. Without hair, I’m FREEZING. All the time. From mid-June to mid-October, I’m okay, but the rest of the year? Cold. Layers, and lots of them. One of the layers must be wool (ok, cashmere), including the socks, or I’m shivering. I have rediscovered the magic of hats (and thank Kors they’re fashionable again!), and wear one all the time, inside and out. (Side benefit of baldness regrowth: no hat-head!)
My constant hypothermia has become a bit of an inter-gender needling trigger chez moi. Mr. Wonderful, whose metabolism usually runs at a high boil, is comfortable in the house in a t-shirt and jeans, bare feet. Occasionally he’s been known to take the dog out in the snow in said bare feet. He’s comfortable with the thermostat set at 64 (financially as well as thermally). My boys are always complaining that when I’m cold I make them put on sweaters. I, as previously noted, am only really warm in a hot shower or tucked into bed in (dead sexy) flannel PJs and a (dead sexy) fleece hat. Oh, and please set the thermostat to at LEAST 67. Preferably 69. All three boys find my shivering amusing, and think I’m making my griping up (but have come to expect that I’ll get them with my frosty fingers in the ribs at least once a day).
Today, there’s proof for the ladies. I discovered that some researchers at Cornell have released a study that proves that bald people are colder than people with hair! That’s right, four Biological and Environmental Engineering students put sensors on the heads of test subjects and put them in a cold environment for twelve minutes. They already knew that the head is a major source (60 to 80%) of heat loss (Mom was right!). The test subjects with hats showed little difference in head temperature regardless of hair length or thickness, but subjects without hats showed much higher heat loss through the head if their hair was shorter than one cm, and once their hair length reached two cm it started adding significant insulation to the skin.
I don’t think my hair is two cm long yet, but even if it were, I’d still quote this study. Rock on, my hatted bald-chick peeps.
Making A Silk Purse Out Of A Swine’s Ear
We had the perfect family vacation week planned. After returning from the weekend in Philadelphia over Christmas, Mr. Wonderful was going to take the week off. We were planning a big New Year’s Day Open House party, something I’d been wanting to do for years (see my overcommittment issues posted earlier); I would have time to get to the gym every day, do some long-overdue organizing projects; ship hand-me-downs to the cousins in Cali; learn how to play Wii with the kids.
Well, we all know what happens to the best-laid plans of mice and men. And cancer chicks. Wednesday morning as the whole family was packing up for a day of snowboarding on the local hill, I realized I was feeling sort of achy, a little coughy in the back of the throat. First time I was going to be on skis since the ’80s, I was reluctant to back out – I’m a little sensitive about the three boys doing things together without me, as it feels like foreshadowing, and I’m not ready to relinquish control yet. But common sense (fortunately) got the better of me, and I decided to stay home, clean up, get the house ready for the influx of guests, etc. etc.
And a damn good thing, too – by 10:30 I was shivering on the couch in all-wool clothing and a throw blanket. By 11:30 I was in bed and on the phone with the Cancer Factory. Fever: 102 and change. Body: achy. Head: throbbing. Z-pack prescribed, I passed out, after receiving strict orders to escalate to inpatient IV antibiotics should I get any worse.
What the $(%&… I had JUST remembered to ask for the flu shot two weeks earlier at my last infusion appointment. “Do I need the H1N1?” I asked. “No, I don’t think it’s necessary,” replied the nurse. “Just seasonal flu.” Arm stuck, fears quieted. Now why am I lying in bed? Clearly, the swine had struck.
Four days later, I crawled to the surface. I had watched every cheesy Best-of-the-Decade TV show, learned how to cook countless holiday dishes, and finished an entire previous season of Biggest Loser. And while I was laid up, I kept having flashbacks of being sick, and remembering how much I HATE it. Not that lying in bed with my cat watching TV and napping isn’t nice, but the world keeps on turning without me. Mario Kart marathons were won. Photographs were taken. Meals were eaten, funny stories told. Like the kid who’s not in on the joke, I was reminded that there is, and will continue to be, life without me. Am I sad? Am I happy? The jury’s still out.
Short story long: the party’s postponed until tomorrow, when I’ll happily surround myself with the manic cacophony that is life in the ‘burbs when all your friends have kids under ten. And I have a renewed respect for the shopping-cart wipe-down station outside my Trader Joe’s.
My Kilt Encounter – An Update
I was checking my stats and noticed that several hits from the past few days have come from “xmarksthescot.com”. An unfamiliar URL. I traveled there to discover that it’s a community of kilt-wearing scotsmen. I guessed they were amused by the tale of my Trader Joe’s encounter of last month, and discovered that someone had put a link to my story in a comment thread. When I navigated back to the original comment, look what I found!
http://www.xmarksthescot.com/forum/good_feeling-t55992/index.html
The universe works in mysterious ways.
I'm a two-and-a-half time ovarian cancer survivor who is not only determined to make it to sixty but also to look damn good while getting there. My two boys, husband, and dog are counting on me to get out of bed every day, so I might as well wear something cute and make each one COUNT. I'd love to hear from you about your odyssey - sharing makes it all easier to take. And laugh at.
