Free Happy
Okay, grouch-break! Free happy:
- toddler giggles
- grey rainy days in october when the woods glow with yellow maple leaves above wet, black tree trunks
- waking up early and realizing it’s saturday and rolling over to go back to sleep
- getting into a warm sunny car on a cool day
- hot showers
- full-body hugs
- warm brownies with vanilla ice cream (okay, that’s not free but it’s accessible)
- watching my dog play with a stick the way a cat would, tossing it and barking at it
- sitting down to dinner with my family every night
- using a big word like flaneur or schadenfreude accurately in a sentence
- someone else emptying the clean dishwasher
- the sun-sparkles on freshly fallen snow
- my boys being old enough to play a board game for 2 hours without parental intervention
- four words: nap on the beach
- youtube
- how quiet it is during a snowstorm
- hanging with friends that really get me
- diving in and swimming underwater from one end of the pool to the other
- The Daily Show
- new magazines (again, not free, but close)
- human-free inter-species friendships:
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- seeing plants starting to push up out of the ground in my garden in the spring
- re-reading a childhood favorite book with my kids
- personal snail mail
- cicadas and owls in my woods at night
- did I mention brownies?
Have any of your own to share?
Feelin’ Funky
I kinda spent the weekend moping. Not off-by-myself, staring-at-the-TV, gorging-on-chips moping, but quiet reading, contemplation, unusual lack of exercise. I even vacuumed.
I don’t want to say that the results of the scan have gotten me depressed, but they threw me for a little loop, more than I would have expected. I guess I’ve been feeling so fine on the Avastin that I started to get a little cocky, and as anyone can tell you, that’s a sure sign of a fall waiting to happen. It’s not as if I’d stopped worrying about it (“Just say it, wimp, ’the cancer’”), MY cancer, but it had receded to a place where I was actually thinking about learning about a new job, going on a kayaking adventure trip and feeling strong, planning summer trips and activities and not worrying about exhaustion or side effects.
Now, it’s not as if I’m going to keel over next week. The tumors are in the one- to three-millimeter range, and won’t impact my lung function for another six months or so even if we do nothing about them. And I still have lots of options for treating them. But as I was making pizza dough on Saturday, it hit me: some clinical-trial med they put me on might have hideous side effects. This might be the best I feel for a while. And before I could stop myself I took a little march down memory lane: summer 2006, unable to climb stairs without a break; nannies; supporters delivering meals. Mom trekking up here ten out of every 20 days to help run my household. Bald, rotund, shredded.
I feel like Mike Myers on SNL when he played that little hyperactive boy Phillip tied with a leash to the jungle gym: no matter how I try to get away from the damn cancer, eat right and exercise my feet off and do yoga and live in the moment and play with my kids and take tennis lessons and plan kayaking trips and chairing committees and all of it, I’m still tied to this effing jungle gym.
At least I look better than Nicole Kidman’s duck-lips.
Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back
Have you ever had that dream where you’re running, something’s chasing you and you’re running as fast as you can, but no matter how fast you move your legs you don’t go anywhere? Yeah.
Got the results of the CT yesterday. (You see where this is going, don’t you.) The Avastin is successfully holding down the pelvic tumors – they’re even smaller than they were in November. The lungs, however, don’t seem to be getting the message. Old (tiny, glacially progressing) nodules have grown a millimeter or two; new subcentimeter nodules are appearing. No lymph node increases, nothing in the abdomen or bones. But those lung guys, off by themselves, clearly on their own program, making trouble.
I’m working on my optimism, but today it feels like my balloon is a little deflated. I know all the things I’m doing to take care of myself, exercise, diet, good attitude, and all the things my medical team are doing to take care of me, scans, great medicines, oodles of treatment options, are the best in the business. Seems the glacier’s gonna carve that canyon anyway.
The Avastin will continue; I’m meeting March 1 with the head of the clinical trial department to see if there are any open studies looking for a guinea pig who’s totally healthy except for the damn cancer. Let’s hope the nasty make-your-hair-fall-out-again studies are all full.
One thing’s for sure, I’m going shopping with my usual post-tax-return IRA deposit this year.
Non-Cancer-Patients Have Feelings, Too
Before I was The Carcinista, I was known as the Fashion Nazi. Working hard at building a style consulting business, I was the go-to gal for advice of all sorts (“I have this wedding to go to…” or “Gee, how about we go to the mall this weekend? I’m looking for boots…”) and quite popular when friends or acquaintances wondered if this outfit made them look fat/out of date/mutton-dressed-as-lamb. Clients streamlined their wardrobes and lost fifteen visual pounds/years. Fashion review columns flowed from my fingertips. Withering red-carpet reviews became my calling card.
The downside, apart from wasting countless hours lost in W and on style.com, was that in social situations, good friends and new acquaintances alike were constantly apologizing for what they were wearing. “Gee, Kate, if you’d told me Sarah was coming to the party, I would have dressed up!” I tried to explain that unless they were my clients, their appearance was their own business, and it didn’t matter to me what they wore, but I guess Clinton and Stacy’s reputations preceded me. No matter how much I reassured them, there were always sheepish mea culpas for all-black outfits, comfortable shoes, or un-made-up faces.
Now that my public persona has shifted a bit, although I’m still the sassy style arbitrix I always was (with occasional forays into the yoga-pants-and-oversized-sweater look on schlumpy days), I’m still getting bowing and scraping from people. Only this time, they’re apologizing because I have cancer. Everyone has gripes. Everyone has a lousy day, a sore muscle, a bad cold. But no one feels like they can tell me about it, because my cancer trumps any other life gripe.
Thanks, everyone, I appreciate your…what, grasp of reality? But it’s all relative. My reality is mine, and your reality is yours, and if you’re sore from shoveling snow, it’s okay to complain about it. I promise I’m not thinking, “Wow, what a selfish bitch she is, grousing about sitting in traffic; I have CANCER!” I actually got back in contact with a dear friend after a too-long hiatus, and she told me she hadn’t called in over a year because she’d been having confusing medical problems but they didn’t hold a candle to mine, and she hadn’t wanted to complain. Are you kidding me?
Look, kids, you love me, scars and all. And I love you, baggy sweatshirts and all. And I want to know what’s going on in your lives because I care about you and how you feel. So complain about the flunky at Starbucks who screwed up your chai. Cancel our playdate because you have a headache. There’s no measuring stick for a crappy day.
Just don’t tell anyone I dress you if you wear that out in public.
How To Grow A Tumor
You know how once you finally hear the new song everyone’s been talking about, you start to hear it everywhere – in the mall, in a commercial, in line at the supermarket? Since I started this little anti-white-poisons kick a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been hearing a lot more about food as anti-cancer medication than I ever have. And while I’m not sure that I’m onto something unprecedented and groundbreaking, there are links worth sharing, and I’m wondering why more people don’t.
When I wrote that I was cutting out sugar and white flour, one reader encouraged me to look not only at the sugar content of my food but also its place in the glycemic index, or how quickly the body turns it into sugar, and raises blood glucose levels, once I’ve eaten it. Her argument was based on the book Anti-Cancer, by Dr. Servan-Schreiber, which admittedly I’ve yet to read. (As I said before, I’m a little wary of people espousing radical diets as a way to cure cancer, and having been exposed to some more…um, enthusiastic proponents of various whole-hog lifestyle changes in the past [with little or no effect] I’m one to ask questions first and shoot second.)
But I’m an open-minded girl, so I looked into the glycemic index and its effects on the body a little further. [WARNING: scientific content to follow! Bear with me - I'll try to keep it simple.] Raising the level of glucose (sugar) in the blood, which you do every time you eat, triggers the release of insulin in your body. Insulin breaks down and stores the sugar in your body for later use as energy. The higher the glycemic index of a particular food, the higher and faster it spikes your blood glucose level after you eat it. [Still with me?]
An increase in blood glucose also triggers the release of insulin-like growth factors (IGFs), compounds that play a role in the promotion of cell proliferation (more and more cells) and the inhibition of cell apoptosis (a cell’s self-regulating kill switch). In other words, with too much sugar in your blood, not only do some cells grow and multiply much more quickly, their automatic “time to die!” trigger is canceled.
Sound like anyone we know?
I’ve gotten my hands on some journal articles that have drawn a link between tumor growth and insulin-like growth factor (IGF). Some of them discuss the mounting evidence between the western, high-animal-protein, high-processed-carbohydrate diet and the increasing risk of cancer.(1) Others go as far as to draw direct links between high blood glucose, insulin and IGF and increases in tumor growth and decreases in tumor cell death: “Epidemiological evidence is accumulating and suggests that the risk of cancers of the colon, pancreas, endometrium, breast and prostate are related to circulating levels of insulin, IGF-1, or both.”(2)
So the short story is that too much sugar in your diet, and not just the classic “sweet” foods but processed grains, some fruits, basically nearly anything advertised anywhere, will spike your blood glucose, insulin, and IGF. And will fuel the tumors that you know about, if you already have cancer, or tumors you don’t know about, if you haven’t been diagnosed yet.
I’m just curious why my nutritionist at The Cancer Factory didn’t mention any of this when I met with her last year… You might want to pass this along.
[Thanks for hanging on 'til the end! I should probably reward you with a joke or something:
How many cancer patients does it take to change a lightbulb?
No one knows; they're too tired to climb the ladder!]
Tell a friend.
- Nat Rev Cancer. 2008 Dec;8(12):915-28. Insulin and insulin-like growth factor signalling in neoplasia. Pollak M. Department of Oncology, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada. michael.pollak@mcgill.ca
- Novartis Found Symp. 2004;262:247-60; discussion 260-68. Nutrition, insulin, IGF-1 metabolism and cancer risk: a summary of epidemiological evidence. Kaaks R. International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France.
Kids Say the Darndest Things, Vol. I
I was heading off for my daily kip when I realized that I had put the blanket and comforter from my bed into the wash, and they weren’t finished yet. Never one to let a minor inconvenience come between me and forty winks, I stopped by the playroom to ask my five-year-old if he would mind if Mommy borrowed his comforter to wrap up in for her Quiet Time.
He looked up at me with his big brown eyes, and in the sweetest, most concerned voice, asked, “Will it get cancer on it?”
You can’t make this stuff up.
Oh, Great: Ovarian Cancer Symptoms Poor Disease Predictors
Mr. Wonderful forwarded an article to me today – he’s good like that. Anyway, there was a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that says that symptoms are of little help in predicting whether a woman has ovarian cancer. That is, out of 100 women with classic ovarian cancer symptoms (bloating, abdominal or pelvic pain, bowel changes or frequent urination), only one woman may actually end up presenting with the disease.
“The low positive predictive value of symptoms to detect ovarian cancer—particularly at an early stage—argues for a cautious approach to the use of symptom patterns to trigger extensive medical evaluation for ovarian cancer,” the authors write.
I read this news as very similar to that brouhaha about mammograms from last year: why bother testing, since it’s not going to come out positive? Not cost-effective, ladies; please hit the bricks. Yes, the editorial accompanying the study results highlights how great it is to discover that in fact all the women who have ovarian cancer do present with symptoms; and yes, they do say that this study’s results highlights the need for more effective markers and predictive testing for ovarian cancer.
But with the state of health-care today (quick shout-out to Scott Brown: hey!), don’t you just envision the suits over at Major Health “Care” Conglomerate, Inc. licking their lips and checking off another reason to deny a CA-125 or ultrasound or laparoscopy? More importantly, it’s hard enough for many women to get a doctor to believe that there’s something really wrong when they complain of any of these classic symptoms – I’ve read too many horror stories about doctors diagnosing stress, esophageal reflux, constipation, and prescribing some Ambien and Prilosec and sending the woman on her way with a pat on the head, like Cindy-Lou Who. If this gets out, how much harder will it be to impress upon someone the seriousness of the situation?
And finally, perhaps the most frustrating part of this study is that, even with such “classic” symptoms for ovarian cancer, experienced by nearly EVERY woman who has the disease, early- or late-stage, THEY’RE SO POORLY PUBLICIZED. I’m a pretty well educated woman, I know how to take really good care of my body; why did I have no idea about the symptoms of ovarian cancer? There should be a poster up in every OB/GYN’s office waiting area and another one in the exam room, so while you’re waiting an hour and a half for your appointment you can read and re-read and memorize the symptoms and maybe have a chance at identifying them while you’re still save-able.
That’d be way more useful than an eighteen-months old copy of Good Housekeeping.
More Cancer Karma
Once I had this blog up and running, I spent some time fleshing out the peripherals and racking up a pretty sweet blogroll. There are quite a few sassy cancer babes out there and some of them are terrific writers, too. It’s startling/depressing/comforting to discover that one or two of them seem to be living lives that are parallel to my own: young kids, solid marriage, suburban poster children, fighting like hell, still putting on makeup. Naming their wigs.
I don’t want to seem like I’m shamelessly trolling for readership, but the reason I started blogging in the first place (aside from a little ego-stroking) was to link up fierce cancer babes all over and build some support, outside of the established cancer communities, for keeping sane and surviving with your personality and sense of humor in tact. So I started dropping some comments on the blogs that really hit home – experiences I could relate to, really poignantly aching displays of honesty, hysterical tales of mishaps and chemo-induced forgetfulness. And one of the babes who read my comments and wrote back was My Name Is Not Cancer Girl, who’s knocking BC on its butt in the ATL while taking care of her family. And naming her wig. Now we read each other’s blogs and offer support and wiseacre commentary, just like I had hoped.
Last weekend I got an email from an old school friend (thank you, facebook) who wanted to introduce to me a dear friend of hers who’s fighting cancer, with a new bone metastasis, in Atlanta. I wrote back to say that I’m always happy (well, you know what I mean) to meet a new cancer chick and share tips, gripes, horror stories, etc. As I was writing the body of the email, I had a little tickle in the back of my brain… “Is there any chance she blogs? I asked. Bet you can’t guess the answer.
Karma? Coincidence? What do you think?
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.
