A couple different friends just sent me a link (below) to an amazing article that is in today's New York Times. It touches on so many aspects of what Pete and I have been dealing with through this whole journey that it brings tears to my eyes. Reading the article makes me acutely aware of how lucky and blessed I truly am on so many fronts (e.g., excellent medical care, financial resources to pursue any and all options, stage 2.5 versus stage 4, etc.)
Click here to link to the article.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Quick Update
Phew!!! I am finally feeling better!
Yesterday morning was a bit nerve-wracking since I had more really strange neuropathy symptoms. Specifically, my fingers (which in the days prior just felt really tight and tense) began cramping up to the point that I couldn't move my thumbs or index fingers for a couple minutes; they would literally freeze in place. I told my mom that I felt like I was getting a taste of what arthritis must feel like. My hands literally would deform into these weird positions that looked like an old woman's hands!! It was so strange and obviously really alarming to me, so I called my doctor again. Before he was able to call me back, though, I spoke with a friend of mine, Elizabeth. A mutual friend introduced Elizabeth and I when she learned of my diagnosis since our stories are very similar. Elizabeth was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer a couple years ago and underwent chemo, radiation, even more complicated surgery than mine, and FOLFOX. She is now cancer-free and has been so for about a year. Needless to say, she has been such a wonderful resource and incredible inspiration to me through this whole process!! (Thank you, Elizabeth -- you are the BEST!!)
Ironically, Elizabeth has another friend (also a young mom in her 30's) who is being treated for stage 3 colorectal cancer. Her friend, Elika, is about a month ahead of me in treatment and so Elizabeth has been counseling both of us simultaneously. Anyway, Elizabeth confirmed for me that, while she was undergoing treatment, she also had the strange finger cramping and she said that Elika has had it as well. She told me not to worry that it would go away -- phew, again! But she also shared with me that Elika's doctor decided to switch her medicine. She is now on a different protocol called FOLFIRI (I have no idea what this is, but am guessing that this might be what my doctor has in mind.) Apparently, Elika was also having the same chest cramps as I had earlier this week and her doctor decided that the FOLFOX was just hitting her too hard. Yep, I can relate!!
Anyway, I think that it's safe for me to say that I am now safely on the "upswing." I expect that I'll keep feeling a bit better each day and that the neuropathy will slowly fade (it's already much better this morning.) I meet with my oncologist again this coming Thursday so see what he recommends next, but I am guessing that he'll switch things around a bit. In the meantime, we have lots of family in town this weekend (Pete's cousin is getting married and so everyone flew in for the event) and so I have lots of wonderful family around to distract me from thinking about any lingering symptoms. :)
Yesterday morning was a bit nerve-wracking since I had more really strange neuropathy symptoms. Specifically, my fingers (which in the days prior just felt really tight and tense) began cramping up to the point that I couldn't move my thumbs or index fingers for a couple minutes; they would literally freeze in place. I told my mom that I felt like I was getting a taste of what arthritis must feel like. My hands literally would deform into these weird positions that looked like an old woman's hands!! It was so strange and obviously really alarming to me, so I called my doctor again. Before he was able to call me back, though, I spoke with a friend of mine, Elizabeth. A mutual friend introduced Elizabeth and I when she learned of my diagnosis since our stories are very similar. Elizabeth was diagnosed with stage 3 colorectal cancer a couple years ago and underwent chemo, radiation, even more complicated surgery than mine, and FOLFOX. She is now cancer-free and has been so for about a year. Needless to say, she has been such a wonderful resource and incredible inspiration to me through this whole process!! (Thank you, Elizabeth -- you are the BEST!!)
Ironically, Elizabeth has another friend (also a young mom in her 30's) who is being treated for stage 3 colorectal cancer. Her friend, Elika, is about a month ahead of me in treatment and so Elizabeth has been counseling both of us simultaneously. Anyway, Elizabeth confirmed for me that, while she was undergoing treatment, she also had the strange finger cramping and she said that Elika has had it as well. She told me not to worry that it would go away -- phew, again! But she also shared with me that Elika's doctor decided to switch her medicine. She is now on a different protocol called FOLFIRI (I have no idea what this is, but am guessing that this might be what my doctor has in mind.) Apparently, Elika was also having the same chest cramps as I had earlier this week and her doctor decided that the FOLFOX was just hitting her too hard. Yep, I can relate!!
Anyway, I think that it's safe for me to say that I am now safely on the "upswing." I expect that I'll keep feeling a bit better each day and that the neuropathy will slowly fade (it's already much better this morning.) I meet with my oncologist again this coming Thursday so see what he recommends next, but I am guessing that he'll switch things around a bit. In the meantime, we have lots of family in town this weekend (Pete's cousin is getting married and so everyone flew in for the event) and so I have lots of wonderful family around to distract me from thinking about any lingering symptoms. :)
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Not A Good Day
I think that it's fair to say that yesterday was one of my worst days yet on this whole journey.
I went in the morning to be disconnected from the chemo pump, expecting that the appointment would take about 10-15 minutes and then I would be "free." But, unfortunately, as my nurse was disconnecting me, she noticed that the incision from my port-a-cath surgery had opened AGAIN! It was just a small opening, but enough that she could see the white catheter clearly through a small hole in the skin. And obviously if there is a hole in the skin, there is a huge risk of infection (which is the last thing that I need, given that my white blood count is so low.) As soon as she mentioned it, though, I knew exactly what was coming next....I was going to be sent back to the hospital for another surgery to re-close the wound and sure enough, this is exactly what happened. I found myself laying on a hospital gurney a couple hours later while the radiologist re-sutured my incision back together while my poor mom sat in the reception room anxiously waiting for me to resurface. She and my dad have been such a Godsend to me through all these months -- they are both so willing to drop everything on a moment's notice to take care of me. And I have to say that it was really, really nice to have my mom there to give me a big hug and take me home to tuck me into bed after the surgery was over.
During the procedure, I asked the radiologist how this could have happened again, but his answer was simply "I don't know." The reality is that chemo works by targeting and destroying fast-dividing cells (which cancer cells happen to be.) Unfortunately, any area of the body that is also trying to heal contains lots of fast-dividing cells. And each time that the doctors have tried to close my port incision, I have been on chemo and so I am sure that my body is just having a hard time trying to figure out what exactly it's suppose to do. Is it suppose to heal? Or are those cells suppose to die? What the heck is going on?
To make matters even worse, I feel soooo darn crummy. The new nausea drugs are helping tremendously, but the neuropathy side-effect is really, really bad this time. My hands are so stiff and tingly that I am having a hard time doing simple things like pulling a band-aid off for Luke or opening a jar of food. And it's not just my hands; I feel a really weird pressure in my head and in my chest and it scares me!! I mentioned the symptoms to my doctor a couple days ago and he is definitely concerned. The nurse told me that, when I meet with Dr Gullion next week for my check-in appointment, he will evaluate me and decide whether it makes sense to take me off FOLFOX and try a different chemo drug instead. She said that they have a "huge amount of respect for the chemo drugs in FOLFOX" and that they don't want to cause any long-term damage to my body, which I totally appreciate.
Given what the nurse said, I called Jeremy and Shannon last night to talk with them and get their perspective as well. While we were talking, Jeremy did a quick search through some online medical studies to see if he could find any info about long-term, permanent effects of FOLFOX and there was one study that showed 5 out of 30 patients suffered long-term effects. Five out of thirty -- holy crap!! When I mentioned this to Pete later, though, he pointed out that I need to balance this percentage (which, by the way, is 16.67%) against the number of patients who don't do FOLFOX and who have a recurrence of cancer, because that is the real trade-off. FOLFOX has been proven to be extremely effective against colon cancer; it is one of the major advances that has been made in the past 5 years. It's one of the reasons that colon cancer can now be "cured" for some people. And so I feel like I need to take a complete gamble: do I stay on the FOLFOX and risk being one of the 16.67% who suffer long-term effects or do I switch to another drug and risk being one of the cancer patients for whom the cancer comes back?
Pete's right. I know that he is right. And I know that Jeremy and Shannon feel the same way; they both were very direct and blunt in saying that they would "highly recommend that I stay on the FOLFOX," but it's soooo darn hard to think about feeling this way for the next 13+ weeks. It's so scary to think that the side-effects that I am having right now might last forever or that I might be doing permanent damage to my kidneys or liver or something else. It's so hard in the midst of chemo for me to keep my head on straight because I want so badly to be done with this and have it all over. In some ways, it's almost harder that I was re-staged as "either stage 2 or early stage 3." If I were stage 4, there would be no question in my mind that I needed to do the most aggressive chemo possible; the alternative is pretty cut-and-dry. But at "stage 2.5" (as I have come to think of myself) it's so much easier for my mind to search desperately for an easier path. I have already done two sessions...maybe that's enough...Do I really NEED all eight? My pathology report showed "well-differentiated cells"...doesn't that mean that we can drop smaller bombs and still kill the cells? What if I go in every 3 weeks rather than every 2...would it still work?
Ohhh, this is all so hard!! This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life!!
I went in the morning to be disconnected from the chemo pump, expecting that the appointment would take about 10-15 minutes and then I would be "free." But, unfortunately, as my nurse was disconnecting me, she noticed that the incision from my port-a-cath surgery had opened AGAIN! It was just a small opening, but enough that she could see the white catheter clearly through a small hole in the skin. And obviously if there is a hole in the skin, there is a huge risk of infection (which is the last thing that I need, given that my white blood count is so low.) As soon as she mentioned it, though, I knew exactly what was coming next....I was going to be sent back to the hospital for another surgery to re-close the wound and sure enough, this is exactly what happened. I found myself laying on a hospital gurney a couple hours later while the radiologist re-sutured my incision back together while my poor mom sat in the reception room anxiously waiting for me to resurface. She and my dad have been such a Godsend to me through all these months -- they are both so willing to drop everything on a moment's notice to take care of me. And I have to say that it was really, really nice to have my mom there to give me a big hug and take me home to tuck me into bed after the surgery was over.
During the procedure, I asked the radiologist how this could have happened again, but his answer was simply "I don't know." The reality is that chemo works by targeting and destroying fast-dividing cells (which cancer cells happen to be.) Unfortunately, any area of the body that is also trying to heal contains lots of fast-dividing cells. And each time that the doctors have tried to close my port incision, I have been on chemo and so I am sure that my body is just having a hard time trying to figure out what exactly it's suppose to do. Is it suppose to heal? Or are those cells suppose to die? What the heck is going on?
To make matters even worse, I feel soooo darn crummy. The new nausea drugs are helping tremendously, but the neuropathy side-effect is really, really bad this time. My hands are so stiff and tingly that I am having a hard time doing simple things like pulling a band-aid off for Luke or opening a jar of food. And it's not just my hands; I feel a really weird pressure in my head and in my chest and it scares me!! I mentioned the symptoms to my doctor a couple days ago and he is definitely concerned. The nurse told me that, when I meet with Dr Gullion next week for my check-in appointment, he will evaluate me and decide whether it makes sense to take me off FOLFOX and try a different chemo drug instead. She said that they have a "huge amount of respect for the chemo drugs in FOLFOX" and that they don't want to cause any long-term damage to my body, which I totally appreciate.
Given what the nurse said, I called Jeremy and Shannon last night to talk with them and get their perspective as well. While we were talking, Jeremy did a quick search through some online medical studies to see if he could find any info about long-term, permanent effects of FOLFOX and there was one study that showed 5 out of 30 patients suffered long-term effects. Five out of thirty -- holy crap!! When I mentioned this to Pete later, though, he pointed out that I need to balance this percentage (which, by the way, is 16.67%) against the number of patients who don't do FOLFOX and who have a recurrence of cancer, because that is the real trade-off. FOLFOX has been proven to be extremely effective against colon cancer; it is one of the major advances that has been made in the past 5 years. It's one of the reasons that colon cancer can now be "cured" for some people. And so I feel like I need to take a complete gamble: do I stay on the FOLFOX and risk being one of the 16.67% who suffer long-term effects or do I switch to another drug and risk being one of the cancer patients for whom the cancer comes back?
Pete's right. I know that he is right. And I know that Jeremy and Shannon feel the same way; they both were very direct and blunt in saying that they would "highly recommend that I stay on the FOLFOX," but it's soooo darn hard to think about feeling this way for the next 13+ weeks. It's so scary to think that the side-effects that I am having right now might last forever or that I might be doing permanent damage to my kidneys or liver or something else. It's so hard in the midst of chemo for me to keep my head on straight because I want so badly to be done with this and have it all over. In some ways, it's almost harder that I was re-staged as "either stage 2 or early stage 3." If I were stage 4, there would be no question in my mind that I needed to do the most aggressive chemo possible; the alternative is pretty cut-and-dry. But at "stage 2.5" (as I have come to think of myself) it's so much easier for my mind to search desperately for an easier path. I have already done two sessions...maybe that's enough...Do I really NEED all eight? My pathology report showed "well-differentiated cells"...doesn't that mean that we can drop smaller bombs and still kill the cells? What if I go in every 3 weeks rather than every 2...would it still work?
Ohhh, this is all so hard!! This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life!!
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Update
Hmmm...so much for being nausea-free. It's 6:45pm and I am beginning to not feel so great. Ugh.
Feeling Pretty Well
Day 2 of treatment #2 is well underway and I am happy to report that I am feeling much better than I was on this day during treatment #1. The new anti-nausea drugs are working great and I am virtually nausea-free, which is a huge relief. I still have a horrid headache (like last time) and the neuropathy has gotten worse since yesterday (my hands, legs and neck are feeling really stiff, achy, tingly and uncomfortable), but other than that, I am feeling pretty well. :)
It's 3:30 now....maybe I'll get out of my PJ's and actually join the real world...hmmm...or maybe I'll go curl up and take a nap...
It's 3:30 now....maybe I'll get out of my PJ's and actually join the real world...hmmm...or maybe I'll go curl up and take a nap...
Monday, July 23, 2007
Neuropathy
Okay, I think that it's safe to say that the chemo drugs have given me worse neuropathy (e.g., increased sensitivity to cold) this time than last. This afternoon, right after I ate some applesauce straight out of the fridge, our new neighbor called to see if we could get the kids together to play. I tried my best to talk with her and be friendly, but my lips suddenly felt like they were completely frozen and swollen. I couldn't even talk and I am sure that I sounded like a complete idiot!! I ended the conversation as quickly as I could and, unfortunately, I am pretty sure that I sounded completely rude and uninterested. I definitely need to call her and explain, but it's kind of an awkward thing to explain to someone who I just met... Anyway, the sensation luckily passed within a few minutes and I am back to normal now. Ugh -- chalk this up as one of the huge downsides of FOLFOX!
My Three Boys
How could I NOT be inspired to fight like hell...just look at these three cuties! :)
p.s. It's only a slight optical illusion that Kyle looks bigger than Luke...He really is smaller. Really. That said, he is a HUGE almost-two-year-old. All the better to beat up your older brother, I guess.
Summer Nights + Bubbles = Pure Bliss!!
Click here for pics from tonight's bubble fest: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=1AbNnDFs3YsXRw
Neutrophils
Here is a definition I just found online for neutrophils:
Absolute neutrophil count: The absolute neutrophil count is commonly called the ANC. Neutrophils are key components in the system of defense against infection. An absence or scarcity of neutrophils (a condition called neutropenia) makes a person vulnerable to infection. After chemotherapy, radiation, or a blood or marrow transplant, the ANC is usually depressed and then slowly rises, reflecting the fact that the bone marrow is recovering and new blood cells are beginning to grow and mature.
Absolute neutrophil count: The absolute neutrophil count is commonly called the ANC. Neutrophils are key components in the system of defense against infection. An absence or scarcity of neutrophils (a condition called neutropenia) makes a person vulnerable to infection. After chemotherapy, radiation, or a blood or marrow transplant, the ANC is usually depressed and then slowly rises, reflecting the fact that the bone marrow is recovering and new blood cells are beginning to grow and mature.
White Blood Counts Low
I just got home from my chemo appointment and am -- again -- already starting to feel the symptoms. Ugh!! I don't feel too nauseous yet, but just feel kind of icky (headache, hot flashes, etc).
Anyway, the big "excitement" for the morning was the fact that my chemo session was almost canceled! I had to have a blood test done so that my doctor could assess my white and red blood counts and apparently my white blood cells (WBC) took a bit of a beating in this last go-around. The low end of the "normal" range for WBC is 4.5 (whatever that means!) and mine registered in at 2.7. The nurse said that the more important factor is actually something in the white blood cells called neutrophils and the normal range for these is 1.5 - 8.0 (again, I have no idea what those numbers mean) and anything below 1.5 is problematic and the chemo session gets postponed. Well, mine squeeked in at 1.51 -- yikes! That was a really close call!
We asked the nurse whether the effects of chemo is cumulative (e.g., should we expect my neutrophil counts to inch down every week?) but she said no. She explained that I basically have two "camps" of white blood cells: the ones that are already mature and floating around my body ready to attack and those that are still in the bone marrow currently "incubating." She said that it takes the body about 7-10 days to produce white blood cells and that the chemo only affects the ones in the bone marrow that are not yet mature. And so, we'll know in 7-10 days how this round of chemo impacts my next batch of white blood cells. I am hoping, though, that by being on different anti-nausea drugs I'll be able to eat more (and healthier!) foods than I was able to last time, and hopefully this will help my little white blood cells to kick some serious booty!
Anyway, the big "excitement" for the morning was the fact that my chemo session was almost canceled! I had to have a blood test done so that my doctor could assess my white and red blood counts and apparently my white blood cells (WBC) took a bit of a beating in this last go-around. The low end of the "normal" range for WBC is 4.5 (whatever that means!) and mine registered in at 2.7. The nurse said that the more important factor is actually something in the white blood cells called neutrophils and the normal range for these is 1.5 - 8.0 (again, I have no idea what those numbers mean) and anything below 1.5 is problematic and the chemo session gets postponed. Well, mine squeeked in at 1.51 -- yikes! That was a really close call!
We asked the nurse whether the effects of chemo is cumulative (e.g., should we expect my neutrophil counts to inch down every week?) but she said no. She explained that I basically have two "camps" of white blood cells: the ones that are already mature and floating around my body ready to attack and those that are still in the bone marrow currently "incubating." She said that it takes the body about 7-10 days to produce white blood cells and that the chemo only affects the ones in the bone marrow that are not yet mature. And so, we'll know in 7-10 days how this round of chemo impacts my next batch of white blood cells. I am hoping, though, that by being on different anti-nausea drugs I'll be able to eat more (and healthier!) foods than I was able to last time, and hopefully this will help my little white blood cells to kick some serious booty!
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Chemo Round Two
I am off to my second chemo appointment tomorrow and am feeling a little more relaxed about it than last time. I am still really bummed to have to go (I am finally feeling much better...just in time to get knocked out again -- ugh!), but at least I know what to expect this time around and I know that it will just be a few days of feeling yucky. Last time, I didn't have any idea how long the symptoms would last, which I think is part of what made the whole process so hard.
Plus, when I went in to see Dr Gullion this week for my "check-in" appointment, he was not happy that I had lost another 5 pounds (even though I have gained 4 back already.) He said that I should not have been that nauseous for that long and so he has switched my anti-nausea meds around a bit. Hopefully, these new ones will do a better job so that I don't feel as sick. Keep your fingers crossed!!
Plus, when I went in to see Dr Gullion this week for my "check-in" appointment, he was not happy that I had lost another 5 pounds (even though I have gained 4 back already.) He said that I should not have been that nauseous for that long and so he has switched my anti-nausea meds around a bit. Hopefully, these new ones will do a better job so that I don't feel as sick. Keep your fingers crossed!!
Friday, July 20, 2007
Nature Is Really Damn Smart
Someone just added the following comment to my blog entry below and I wanted to respond...
Julie I know you are food obsessed with cancer but I am surprised you have not commented on fertilizers/pesticides used on lawns which is positively linked to dog cancer and possible some human cancers -- causative rather than preventative. This is probably even a bigger factor than eating no meat!
I think that one of the main reasons that I have focused so intently on the food angle is because I still fundamentally believe that if the body is provided with proper nutrition, it can overcome a multitude of evils. Cancer is caused when just one of the trillions of cells in your body gets mixed up in the process of replicating and then the new "mutated" version begins to multiple. Things get "mixed up" for a variety of reasons, only one of which is exposure to carcinogens. But the body also has ways to recognize and eliminate these mutated cells and get things back on track, IF it is healthy and if it is genetically pre-disposed to being able to fight (e.g., some people's bodies lack the ability to detect wayward cells.) This is why not everyone who is exposed to a carcinogen will develop cancer; their cells might mutate, but their bodies are able to destroy those cells before they can develop into cancer. And the only way for the body to be healthy is by feeding it the nutrients that it needs. There is no other way around it; there are no short-cut that you can take; there are no "free passes." Eating crappy food, but exercising regularly does not make a healthy body. Eating crappy food and not exercising creates an even unhealthier one. The challenge is to understand WHAT constitutes a healthy diet versus a crappy one and, as I have said before, I really believe that many people have completely lost touch with what "eating healthy" even means (I know that I certainly did before I got cancer and began doing research on the subject!) After everything that I have read, though, I feel strongly that The China Study, The Omnivore's Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle are all doing a really great job at beginning to make sense of the issue, which is why I would encourage everyone to read them.
Interestingly, my belief about healthy eating was supported by a particular study that I read in The China Study. In the study, the author tested the impact of exposure to small versus large doses of a known carcinogen and the role that protein played in "activating" the carcinogen. What he found was that even those subjects who were exposed to the mega doses of the carcinogen did not develop cancer if they did not eat animal-protein based diets. It was the animal protein which "activated" the cancer genes!
I struggle every day with how to make sense of all the information I read. It's completely overwhelming, to say the least! Since I began this new chapter of my life almost 6 months ago, I have been collecting and researching information about many different products in our lives which have been linked to cancer...everything from food to skin care products (e.g., sunscreen and moisturizers) to household cleaning supplies to microwave ovens. And now I'll add lawn care products to my list. The sad reality is that, by virtue of where we live, we are knowingly (and unknowingly!) surrounded in almost every aspect of our lives by products which contain chemicals linked to cancer. Maybe in isolation the chemicals in skin moisturizer wouldn't cause cancer, or the pesticides in fruit wouldn't cause it, or the fertilizer that we spray on our trees and lawns, but the reality is that as Americans we are bombarded on all sides from products that contain carcinogens and, at some point, the build-up of toxins become too much for the body to handle. Sadly, I am no longer surprised that I got cancer; rather, I am shocked that more people I know don't have it!
And so what is a person to do?? Short of moving to Antarctica (which is not really even a legitimate solution since, as the saying goes, "In a round world, we all live downstream"), I guess we just need to pick and choose our battles. Here is the simple truth: Nature is really damn smart. The human body is an incredible, complex system. And the way that our bodies interact with and respond to natural substances (such as plants, air, the sun) is truly magical. Regardless of whether you believe that God gets all the credit for creating such a miraculous synergistic accomplishment or whether you believe simply in the powers of evolution, the fact remains that our bodies are most in balance and most optimal when we stay rooted in all that is natural. History has shown time and again that the more that we try to "improve" on nature, the more that we tinker with what nature has provided us (by adding pesticides to our lawns, by processing our foods and adding chemicals to keep them "fresh" longer, by injecting our cattle with antibiotics so that they don't get sick when we feed them a diet that they were never designed to eat (e.g., corn or cannibalistic cattle parts), by wiping down our countertops with chemicals to kill bacteria rather than just using good old soap and water, etc), the more we run the risk of killing ourselves.
I definitely don't have all of the answers -- not even close! But I am committed to slowly moving my family towards a life that is as chemical, pesticide, and hormone-free as possible...I am committed to moving back to a life as Mother Nature intended it to be. This is certainly not going to happen overnight -- like I wrote yesterday, 39-year-old habits can be hard to break! -- but I am committed to making these changes as part of my "no regrets living". And if we end up a little dirtier, or if we have to eat things that aren't quite as sweet, or if my skin isn't quite as soft as it used to be, then Oh Well! I would so much rather be alive with wrinkly skin than dead with soft skin.
And I sincerely hope that all of you who have been faithfully reading my blog and have "journeyed with me" these past 6 months will consider making similar changes because I care a great deal about all of you...you are my "village", after all!!
Julie I know you are food obsessed with cancer but I am surprised you have not commented on fertilizers/pesticides used on lawns which is positively linked to dog cancer and possible some human cancers -- causative rather than preventative. This is probably even a bigger factor than eating no meat!
I think that one of the main reasons that I have focused so intently on the food angle is because I still fundamentally believe that if the body is provided with proper nutrition, it can overcome a multitude of evils. Cancer is caused when just one of the trillions of cells in your body gets mixed up in the process of replicating and then the new "mutated" version begins to multiple. Things get "mixed up" for a variety of reasons, only one of which is exposure to carcinogens. But the body also has ways to recognize and eliminate these mutated cells and get things back on track, IF it is healthy and if it is genetically pre-disposed to being able to fight (e.g., some people's bodies lack the ability to detect wayward cells.) This is why not everyone who is exposed to a carcinogen will develop cancer; their cells might mutate, but their bodies are able to destroy those cells before they can develop into cancer. And the only way for the body to be healthy is by feeding it the nutrients that it needs. There is no other way around it; there are no short-cut that you can take; there are no "free passes." Eating crappy food, but exercising regularly does not make a healthy body. Eating crappy food and not exercising creates an even unhealthier one. The challenge is to understand WHAT constitutes a healthy diet versus a crappy one and, as I have said before, I really believe that many people have completely lost touch with what "eating healthy" even means (I know that I certainly did before I got cancer and began doing research on the subject!) After everything that I have read, though, I feel strongly that The China Study, The Omnivore's Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle are all doing a really great job at beginning to make sense of the issue, which is why I would encourage everyone to read them.
Interestingly, my belief about healthy eating was supported by a particular study that I read in The China Study. In the study, the author tested the impact of exposure to small versus large doses of a known carcinogen and the role that protein played in "activating" the carcinogen. What he found was that even those subjects who were exposed to the mega doses of the carcinogen did not develop cancer if they did not eat animal-protein based diets. It was the animal protein which "activated" the cancer genes!
I struggle every day with how to make sense of all the information I read. It's completely overwhelming, to say the least! Since I began this new chapter of my life almost 6 months ago, I have been collecting and researching information about many different products in our lives which have been linked to cancer...everything from food to skin care products (e.g., sunscreen and moisturizers) to household cleaning supplies to microwave ovens. And now I'll add lawn care products to my list. The sad reality is that, by virtue of where we live, we are knowingly (and unknowingly!) surrounded in almost every aspect of our lives by products which contain chemicals linked to cancer. Maybe in isolation the chemicals in skin moisturizer wouldn't cause cancer, or the pesticides in fruit wouldn't cause it, or the fertilizer that we spray on our trees and lawns, but the reality is that as Americans we are bombarded on all sides from products that contain carcinogens and, at some point, the build-up of toxins become too much for the body to handle. Sadly, I am no longer surprised that I got cancer; rather, I am shocked that more people I know don't have it!
And so what is a person to do?? Short of moving to Antarctica (which is not really even a legitimate solution since, as the saying goes, "In a round world, we all live downstream"), I guess we just need to pick and choose our battles. Here is the simple truth: Nature is really damn smart. The human body is an incredible, complex system. And the way that our bodies interact with and respond to natural substances (such as plants, air, the sun) is truly magical. Regardless of whether you believe that God gets all the credit for creating such a miraculous synergistic accomplishment or whether you believe simply in the powers of evolution, the fact remains that our bodies are most in balance and most optimal when we stay rooted in all that is natural. History has shown time and again that the more that we try to "improve" on nature, the more that we tinker with what nature has provided us (by adding pesticides to our lawns, by processing our foods and adding chemicals to keep them "fresh" longer, by injecting our cattle with antibiotics so that they don't get sick when we feed them a diet that they were never designed to eat (e.g., corn or cannibalistic cattle parts), by wiping down our countertops with chemicals to kill bacteria rather than just using good old soap and water, etc), the more we run the risk of killing ourselves.
I definitely don't have all of the answers -- not even close! But I am committed to slowly moving my family towards a life that is as chemical, pesticide, and hormone-free as possible...I am committed to moving back to a life as Mother Nature intended it to be. This is certainly not going to happen overnight -- like I wrote yesterday, 39-year-old habits can be hard to break! -- but I am committed to making these changes as part of my "no regrets living". And if we end up a little dirtier, or if we have to eat things that aren't quite as sweet, or if my skin isn't quite as soft as it used to be, then Oh Well! I would so much rather be alive with wrinkly skin than dead with soft skin.
And I sincerely hope that all of you who have been faithfully reading my blog and have "journeyed with me" these past 6 months will consider making similar changes because I care a great deal about all of you...you are my "village", after all!!
Thursday, July 19, 2007
The China Study
I don't know about other parts of the country, but here in the Bay Area there has been a huge amount of press in the last couple days about a recent government-sponsored breast cancer study which found that there is "no benefit from a mega-fruits-and-veggies diet over the US recommended servings of 5 fruits and vegetables a day [in preventing the return of breast cancer]." The research was kicked off by a $5 million grant from the late Wal-mart heir John Walton and got an additional $30 million in support from the National Cancer Institute.
Half of the women in the study were instructed to eat the normal suggested servings of "5 a day" while the other half were instructed to eat "5 vegetable servings, 3 fruit servings, 16 ounces of vegetable juice and 30 grams of fiber." All of the women in the study were allowed to eat meat, but were told to get no more than 15-20% of their calories from fat, a goal that they were ultimately unable to achieve. The researchers, while admitting that they need to "go back to the drawing board," seem to be focusing primarily on the fact that the women in the study ate too much fat and that perhaps this is the real "trigger" for recurrence.
While I will definitely be interested in learning conclusively if and how diets high in fat contribute to cancer recurrence, I think that researchers would be remiss in not focusing as well on the women's meat consumption. The reason that I say this is because of a fascinating book I just read called The China Study (I added a link to the book in the upper right corner of my blog). The book was actually recommended to me by my oncologist, who is a firm believer in the role of nutrition in maintaining health. I finished reading the book last week and when I met with Dr Gullion today I asked him whether he really believes that the information in the book is credible; I wanted to get an opinion from a highly-qualified medical/oncology professional rather than just assuming that what the author wrote is correct. And since Dr Gulllion spend 20 years at UCSF practicing oncology before relocating his practice to Marin about 10 years ago, I consider him to be "highly qualified." His answer was "Absolutely! The author [Dr Campbell] has been around for many years and is highly-respected. And the studies which he references are all highly-regarded and very legitimate."
The underlying premises of the book are:
1) While protein is a critical building block of life, Americans eat WAY more protein than is necessary for optimal health (and often at the expense of other critical macro-nutrients, such as carbs), PLUS
2) The majority of the protein that we eat comes from animal sources (beef, chicken, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, etc), rather than plant-based sources (beans, grains, vegetables -- yes, even foods like spinach contain protein!)
3) An extraordinary number of research studies have been done which show a significant correlation between eating animal proteins and fat and developing typical "Western diseases" (such as diabetes, heart disease, colon cancer, breast cancer and numerous other cancers)
4) In order to maintain optimal health and avoid typical Western diseases we need to move toward a "whole foods, plant-based diet." [Note: "Whole foods" simply refers to actually eating spinach, for example, rather than trying to get the same nutrients in spinach from popping supplements]
Here is a summary of the book:
Early in his career as a researcher with MIT and Virginia Tech, Dr. Campbell worked to promote better health by eating more meat, milk and eggs -- “high-quality animal protein … It was an obvious sequel to my own life on the farm and I was happy to believe that the American diet was the best in the world.”
He later was a researcher on a project in the Philippines working with malnourished children. The project became an investigation for Dr. Campbell, as to why so many Filipino children were being diagnosed with liver cancer, predominately an adult disease. The primary goal of the project was to ensure that the children were getting as much protein as possible.
“In this project, however, I uncovered a dark secret. Children who ate the highest protein diets were the ones most likely to get liver cancer...” He began to review other reports from around the world that reflected the findings of his research in the Philippines.
Although it was “heretical to say that protein wasn’t healthy,” he started an in-depth study into the role of nutrition, especially protein, in the cause of cancer.
The research project culminated in a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, a survey of diseases and lifestyle factors in rural China and Taiwan. More commonly known as the China Study, “this project eventually produced more than 8000 statistically significant associations between various dietary factors and disease.”
The findings? “People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease … People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored,” said Dr. Campbell.
In The China Study, Dr. Campbell details the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and also its ability to reduce or reverse the risk or effects of these deadly illnesses. The China Study also examines the source of nutritional confusion produced by powerful lobbies, government entities, and irresponsible scientists.
So, after reading The China Study, I tend to look at the results of the breast cancer study mentioned above with a bit of skepticism. I guess I have a hard time believing that a diet of fruits and vegetables isn't beneficial in helping to prevent cancer, and unfortunately, this is exactly what the study results imply. I think that the real insight of the study is that fruits and vegetables -- even at mega doses -- are not enough to overcome the bigger "sins" of a typical Western diet which includes huge amounts of animal protein and animal fat, both of which contribute to disease (if you believe what The China Study proposes, as I do.)
In fact, I am beginning to believe that this was at least a contributing factor to why I got cancer. All these years I thought that I was a fairly health eater -- lean chicken or fish instead of fattier beef; skim milk rather than whole; poached eggs rather than scrambled -- but the reality is that a huge portion of what I ate was animal-based. This fact really dawned on me as I was reading the book and simultaneously thinking about what I was going to make my family for meals each day. I began to realize just how much of our diet has traditionally come from animal products -- especially my kids, who practically have an allergic reaction to any vegetable other than broccoli and cucumbers! Foods such as yogurt, cheese, cow's milk, chicken, fish, eggs...one or more of these have been a part of almost every single meal that we have eaten in the past. And until my nutritionist instructed me to "make 75% of every meal fruits and/or vegetables," I fully admit that our meals were more likely to be the other way around (e.g., 75% animal-based.) And as I began to look around, I realized that the author is right -- this is the way that almost all American's eat!
So, of all the books that I have mentioned on my blog so far, this is probably the most important one to read. It will absolutely make you re-think your own food choices or at a minimum make you much more aware of the true origins of your meals. As always, I am not trying to tell anyone what or how they should eat...I am simply sharing the info that I have learned on my own quest for better health. And I'll be the first to admit that changing eating habits from being animal-based to plant-based at the age of 39 is ridiculously hard... But, then again, there is nothing like getting cancer at the age of 38 to provide the proper perspective!
Half of the women in the study were instructed to eat the normal suggested servings of "5 a day" while the other half were instructed to eat "5 vegetable servings, 3 fruit servings, 16 ounces of vegetable juice and 30 grams of fiber." All of the women in the study were allowed to eat meat, but were told to get no more than 15-20% of their calories from fat, a goal that they were ultimately unable to achieve. The researchers, while admitting that they need to "go back to the drawing board," seem to be focusing primarily on the fact that the women in the study ate too much fat and that perhaps this is the real "trigger" for recurrence.
While I will definitely be interested in learning conclusively if and how diets high in fat contribute to cancer recurrence, I think that researchers would be remiss in not focusing as well on the women's meat consumption. The reason that I say this is because of a fascinating book I just read called The China Study (I added a link to the book in the upper right corner of my blog). The book was actually recommended to me by my oncologist, who is a firm believer in the role of nutrition in maintaining health. I finished reading the book last week and when I met with Dr Gullion today I asked him whether he really believes that the information in the book is credible; I wanted to get an opinion from a highly-qualified medical/oncology professional rather than just assuming that what the author wrote is correct. And since Dr Gulllion spend 20 years at UCSF practicing oncology before relocating his practice to Marin about 10 years ago, I consider him to be "highly qualified." His answer was "Absolutely! The author [Dr Campbell] has been around for many years and is highly-respected. And the studies which he references are all highly-regarded and very legitimate."
The underlying premises of the book are:
1) While protein is a critical building block of life, Americans eat WAY more protein than is necessary for optimal health (and often at the expense of other critical macro-nutrients, such as carbs), PLUS
2) The majority of the protein that we eat comes from animal sources (beef, chicken, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, etc), rather than plant-based sources (beans, grains, vegetables -- yes, even foods like spinach contain protein!)
3) An extraordinary number of research studies have been done which show a significant correlation between eating animal proteins and fat and developing typical "Western diseases" (such as diabetes, heart disease, colon cancer, breast cancer and numerous other cancers)
4) In order to maintain optimal health and avoid typical Western diseases we need to move toward a "whole foods, plant-based diet." [Note: "Whole foods" simply refers to actually eating spinach, for example, rather than trying to get the same nutrients in spinach from popping supplements]
Here is a summary of the book:
Early in his career as a researcher with MIT and Virginia Tech, Dr. Campbell worked to promote better health by eating more meat, milk and eggs -- “high-quality animal protein … It was an obvious sequel to my own life on the farm and I was happy to believe that the American diet was the best in the world.”
He later was a researcher on a project in the Philippines working with malnourished children. The project became an investigation for Dr. Campbell, as to why so many Filipino children were being diagnosed with liver cancer, predominately an adult disease. The primary goal of the project was to ensure that the children were getting as much protein as possible.
“In this project, however, I uncovered a dark secret. Children who ate the highest protein diets were the ones most likely to get liver cancer...” He began to review other reports from around the world that reflected the findings of his research in the Philippines.
Although it was “heretical to say that protein wasn’t healthy,” he started an in-depth study into the role of nutrition, especially protein, in the cause of cancer.
The research project culminated in a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University, and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, a survey of diseases and lifestyle factors in rural China and Taiwan. More commonly known as the China Study, “this project eventually produced more than 8000 statistically significant associations between various dietary factors and disease.”
The findings? “People who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease … People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. These results could not be ignored,” said Dr. Campbell.
In The China Study, Dr. Campbell details the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and also its ability to reduce or reverse the risk or effects of these deadly illnesses. The China Study also examines the source of nutritional confusion produced by powerful lobbies, government entities, and irresponsible scientists.
So, after reading The China Study, I tend to look at the results of the breast cancer study mentioned above with a bit of skepticism. I guess I have a hard time believing that a diet of fruits and vegetables isn't beneficial in helping to prevent cancer, and unfortunately, this is exactly what the study results imply. I think that the real insight of the study is that fruits and vegetables -- even at mega doses -- are not enough to overcome the bigger "sins" of a typical Western diet which includes huge amounts of animal protein and animal fat, both of which contribute to disease (if you believe what The China Study proposes, as I do.)
In fact, I am beginning to believe that this was at least a contributing factor to why I got cancer. All these years I thought that I was a fairly health eater -- lean chicken or fish instead of fattier beef; skim milk rather than whole; poached eggs rather than scrambled -- but the reality is that a huge portion of what I ate was animal-based. This fact really dawned on me as I was reading the book and simultaneously thinking about what I was going to make my family for meals each day. I began to realize just how much of our diet has traditionally come from animal products -- especially my kids, who practically have an allergic reaction to any vegetable other than broccoli and cucumbers! Foods such as yogurt, cheese, cow's milk, chicken, fish, eggs...one or more of these have been a part of almost every single meal that we have eaten in the past. And until my nutritionist instructed me to "make 75% of every meal fruits and/or vegetables," I fully admit that our meals were more likely to be the other way around (e.g., 75% animal-based.) And as I began to look around, I realized that the author is right -- this is the way that almost all American's eat!
So, of all the books that I have mentioned on my blog so far, this is probably the most important one to read. It will absolutely make you re-think your own food choices or at a minimum make you much more aware of the true origins of your meals. As always, I am not trying to tell anyone what or how they should eat...I am simply sharing the info that I have learned on my own quest for better health. And I'll be the first to admit that changing eating habits from being animal-based to plant-based at the age of 39 is ridiculously hard... But, then again, there is nothing like getting cancer at the age of 38 to provide the proper perspective!
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Insurance
We received a bill in the mail today for $69,725. This is just for a portion of my hospital stay -- this doesn't even include the doctor fees, pathology labs, etc. Anyway, the most beautiful line on the whole page read: "It is not your responsibility to pay: $69,725."
Ohhh, thank God we got our insurance issues ironed out!!
Ohhh, thank God we got our insurance issues ironed out!!
Laugh-Out-Loud Funny
My friend, Lisa, sent these to me today and I have not laughed this hard in a long time...Enjoy!
KIDS IN CHURCH
3-year-old Reese:
"Our Father, Who does art in heaven,
Harold is His name.
Amen."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A little boy was overheard praying:
"Lord, if you can't make me a better boy, don't worry about it.
I'm having a real good time like I am."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Sunday school teacher asked her children as they
were on the way to church service,
"And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?"
One bright little girl replied, "Because people are sleeping."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3.
The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake.
Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson.
"If Jesus were sitting here, He would say,
'Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.'
Kevin turned to his younger brother and said,
"Ryan, you be Jesus!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A father was at the beach with his children
when the four-year-old son ran up to him,
grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore
where a seagull lay dead in the sand.
"Daddy, what happened to him?" the son asked.
"He died and went to Heaven," the Dad replied.
The boy thought a moment and then said,
"Did God throw him back down?"
KIDS IN CHURCH
3-year-old Reese:
"Our Father, Who does art in heaven,
Harold is His name.
Amen."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A little boy was overheard praying:
"Lord, if you can't make me a better boy, don't worry about it.
I'm having a real good time like I am."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Sunday school teacher asked her children as they
were on the way to church service,
"And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?"
One bright little girl replied, "Because people are sleeping."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A mother was preparing pancakes for her sons, Kevin 5, and Ryan 3.
The boys began to argue over who would get the first pancake.
Their mother saw the opportunity for a moral lesson.
"If Jesus were sitting here, He would say,
'Let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.'
Kevin turned to his younger brother and said,
"Ryan, you be Jesus!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A father was at the beach with his children
when the four-year-old son ran up to him,
grabbed his hand, and led him to the shore
where a seagull lay dead in the sand.
"Daddy, what happened to him?" the son asked.
"He died and went to Heaven," the Dad replied.
The boy thought a moment and then said,
"Did God throw him back down?"
Monday, July 16, 2007
Week One -- Check!
It's been exactly a week since my chemo last Monday and what a week it has been. This new chemo regime (FOLFOX) hit me so incredibly hard!!! I did fairly well on the first day of treatment (although, like I mentioned before, I could start to feel the symptoms starting before I even left the doctor's office), but then Tuesday and Wednesday I was completely wiped out. I basically slept all day and fought off constant nausea. Plus, I just felt "off." I don't know how else to describe it other than that. My body just felt really, really crappy -- which I guess makes sense given that I had just poured poison into it. Ugh!! By Thursday I was starting to feel better... or so I thought! ... Friday I was back in bed again the entire day feeling completely awful. In fact, Friday was probably my hardest day! The nausea is the worst symptom that I had and, unfortunately, the nausea medicine that they gave me (1) didn't work very well and (2) made me really sleepy. So I basically slept all day Friday to avoid throwing up. All in all, I lost another 5 pounds last week, which is not at all what I need to be doing at this point -- I need to be putting weight back on (well...at least some of it...I don't really want all of it back)!
Needless to say, it was very demoralizing to spend basically the entire week in bed; by Friday, I was downright depressed. I was beginning to fear that the symptoms were going to be with me for the next four months and I honestly couldn't imagine how in the world I was going to survive that long feeling so awful. Luckily, I slowly began feeling better during the weekend and am back to feeling relatively normal today. In fact, I felt well enough today to actually go for my first true workout since surgery. Granted, it's still nothing close to what I was able to do 5 months ago, but it's a start. And as I was power-walking on the treadmill, I happened to turn on the Tour de France. Talk about inspirational -- wow! All I could think as I watched was that I don't want to just get my body back to "feeling normal" again; I want to take this opportunity to work towards a much bigger goal. I told Pete that, once I am fully recovered, I want to go to France and bike from castle to castle for a month. Or resurrect our climb up Machu Picchu (we were supposed to be going in October for our 10th anniversary). Or go on a hiking expedition someplace else equally amazing. Or all of the above!! I want to live life to the fullest! And for anyone who knows Pete "All I Really Want To Do In Life Is Travel" Wheelan, this was music to his ears -- Ha! So I think that in the next few days, we are going to do a bit of dreaming and come up with a list of "Must See/Do In Our Lifetime" places that will inspire me to get up out of bed and sweat these crazy toxins out of my body.
Anyway, if you don't hear from me again this week it's just because I am committed to spending every moment that I feel well focusing on (1) eating as much food as I can possible tolerate, (2) drinking ridiculous quantities of water (a gallon a day!) to flush the chemo drugs OUT!, (3) exercising to build up my strength, (4) meditating so that I am in an optimal frame of mind for what lies ahead. Or, who knows -- maybe I'll be inspired to write something else based on a great "life epiphany" I have while meditating. :) For now, though, assume that no news is good news.
p.s. A health club near us called The Bay Club is where I went to work out today. They believe so strongly in the role of exercise in preventing cancer and in treating chemo-induced symptoms that they actually set up a program with the cancer center where I am being treated. For example, there have been studies done that prove exercise during chemo treatment can raise the red blood cell count, which is important since chemo is notorious for suppressing red blood cell production (which leads to fatigue and anemia.) Anything that can be done to counter this effect inevitably helps the patient to feel better. As part of this special program, I get free membership for 6 months, discounted membership for the following 6 months, and 12 free personal training sessions. And if I choose to join at the end of the year, I never need to pay the initiation fee (which is like $1000 -- yikes! Gives you some perspective on how nice the club is, eh?) Anyway, I mention this just because I know that there are many people reading this blog who live in Marin and so I wanted to put a good plug in for The Bay Club -- I think that what they are doing is really wonderful!
Needless to say, it was very demoralizing to spend basically the entire week in bed; by Friday, I was downright depressed. I was beginning to fear that the symptoms were going to be with me for the next four months and I honestly couldn't imagine how in the world I was going to survive that long feeling so awful. Luckily, I slowly began feeling better during the weekend and am back to feeling relatively normal today. In fact, I felt well enough today to actually go for my first true workout since surgery. Granted, it's still nothing close to what I was able to do 5 months ago, but it's a start. And as I was power-walking on the treadmill, I happened to turn on the Tour de France. Talk about inspirational -- wow! All I could think as I watched was that I don't want to just get my body back to "feeling normal" again; I want to take this opportunity to work towards a much bigger goal. I told Pete that, once I am fully recovered, I want to go to France and bike from castle to castle for a month. Or resurrect our climb up Machu Picchu (we were supposed to be going in October for our 10th anniversary). Or go on a hiking expedition someplace else equally amazing. Or all of the above!! I want to live life to the fullest! And for anyone who knows Pete "All I Really Want To Do In Life Is Travel" Wheelan, this was music to his ears -- Ha! So I think that in the next few days, we are going to do a bit of dreaming and come up with a list of "Must See/Do In Our Lifetime" places that will inspire me to get up out of bed and sweat these crazy toxins out of my body.
Anyway, if you don't hear from me again this week it's just because I am committed to spending every moment that I feel well focusing on (1) eating as much food as I can possible tolerate, (2) drinking ridiculous quantities of water (a gallon a day!) to flush the chemo drugs OUT!, (3) exercising to build up my strength, (4) meditating so that I am in an optimal frame of mind for what lies ahead. Or, who knows -- maybe I'll be inspired to write something else based on a great "life epiphany" I have while meditating. :) For now, though, assume that no news is good news.
p.s. A health club near us called The Bay Club is where I went to work out today. They believe so strongly in the role of exercise in preventing cancer and in treating chemo-induced symptoms that they actually set up a program with the cancer center where I am being treated. For example, there have been studies done that prove exercise during chemo treatment can raise the red blood cell count, which is important since chemo is notorious for suppressing red blood cell production (which leads to fatigue and anemia.) Anything that can be done to counter this effect inevitably helps the patient to feel better. As part of this special program, I get free membership for 6 months, discounted membership for the following 6 months, and 12 free personal training sessions. And if I choose to join at the end of the year, I never need to pay the initiation fee (which is like $1000 -- yikes! Gives you some perspective on how nice the club is, eh?) Anyway, I mention this just because I know that there are many people reading this blog who live in Marin and so I wanted to put a good plug in for The Bay Club -- I think that what they are doing is really wonderful!
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Day Three of Chemo
Well, it's Day 3 of my new chemo regime and I am definitely feeling some side effects, although they are not quite as bad as I imagined they would be. The biggest issues are that I am completely wiped out (I have slept on and off for the past two days), I am pretty nauseous, and I have a raging headache. I also feel really achy and just generally "off", kind of like the feeling before the flu hits full-force. But I got unhooked from my chemo pump this morning and so I am hoping that I'll start feeling a little better by tomorrow.
Emotionally, I am still having a hard time imagining going through this for the next four months. I feel like I have just completely lost the past 3 days and it annoys me to think that every other week is going to be like this. Pete reminds me, though, that I am investing in a "healthy, long life" which I know is true and I have to hang on to this thought since it's what will sustain me these next few months.
Emotionally, I am still having a hard time imagining going through this for the next four months. I feel like I have just completely lost the past 3 days and it annoys me to think that every other week is going to be like this. Pete reminds me, though, that I am investing in a "healthy, long life" which I know is true and I have to hang on to this thought since it's what will sustain me these next few months.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Food Conscious
Seems that my new-found health food obsession has an even wider following than I thought...below is an article off the front page of today's San Francisco Chronicle. Hmmm, maybe political activism around the Farm Bill will be my new calling.
Food Conscious -- The new food crusade
Organic farms, conservation, fruits and veggies in schools -
The Bay Area leads the charge to change how Congress subsidizes farming
Carol Ness, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
It was almost accidental activism. Acme Bread's Steve Sullivan was on a class trip to Washington, D.C., with his 13-year-old daughter when their flight home was canceled. A scramble to rebook ended with the Berkeley food artisan and his family seated almost across the aisle from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
So he handed her a copy of his new favorite book, "Food Fight," by Sonoma County author Daniel Imhoff. The book is a call to arms, urging Congress to use the 2007 farm bill to put more healthful food on people's plates.
The bill, which in recent years has totaled about $70 billion annually, comes up about once every five years. Although the farm bill has far-reaching consequences for the food supply, most people outside the Midwestern Farm Belt, which gets huge farm bill subsidies, have ignored it.
This year, things are different. Sullivan's trip down the aisle, and the book, are part of a wave of populist activism, much of it centered in the Bay Area, that is trying to change how a big chunk of farm bill money is spent.
The short version of the argument -- and nothing is short when it comes to the mind-numbing, complex farm bill -- is that the bill subsidizes the overproduction of corn and soy in the Midwest, which is driving up obesity and diabetes and polluting the land. Instead, they say, the farm bill should put more money into sustainable and organic food production, agricultural conservation and efforts to put a higher priority on fresh, local fruits and vegetables.
Their slogan: It's the food, health and farm bill.
"I want you to realize how many people in the Bay Area are talking about this," Sullivan said he told Feinstein.
Earlier, when the class visited a Feinstein constituent breakfast, he'd asked her the key question fueling the push for change: Have you ever considered using the farm bill to improve childhood nutrition, public health, pollution problems, environmental quality and farmer incomes?
"I don't know if she's just a good actress or what," Sullivan recounted. "But she stopped, her jaw dropped, and she said, 'I haven't. That's a really good way of thinking about it.' "
What happens to the farm bill this time around could turn on such moments. This year's burst of activism rises from the national trend toward local, sustainable and conscious eating -- consumers who want to know what they're eating, where it comes from and how it is produced.
Michael Pollan, the sustainable food movement leader and UC Berkeley professor and writer, has led the charge, starting with his best-selling "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and in articles and public appearances. A Pollan-moderated forum on the farm bill attracted a crowd of 700 to UC Berkeley's Wheeler Auditorium this year.
Similar forums have sprouted at farmers' markets and community halls all over the country. Influential voices such as health guru Andrew Weil and author Barbara Kingsolver have taken up the cause and attracted overflow audiences.
Imhoff, a food policy writer whose "Food Fight" is in its second printing, was a guest on National Public Radio's "West Coast Live" in late June, broadcast from San Francisco's Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.
These writers are the public face of a movement being worked from the inside by broad coalition of farm, environment and anti-hunger groups, including the Watsonville-based California Coalition for Food and Farming and the Venice-based California Food and Justice Coalition.
California, long a sleeping tiger when it comes to the farm bill, has awakened, too. Although it's the biggest agricultural state, California grows mainly fruits and vegetables, which aren't considered commodity crops and have never been subsidized. But now the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and 26 members of California's congressional delegation are pressing for farm bill reform.
Cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles have hopped on board, too. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom got the U.S. Conference of Mayors to pass a resolution urging farm bill reform at its recent meeting in Los Angeles.
"This is the first time that the farm bill is being scrutinized by people outside the farm block," Imhoff said in an interview. "To change it, people have to realize how it affects their lives on a daily basis, and that's what's happening."
The juicy prize that's arousing new appetites is the subsidy program, which has totaled about $30 billion a year in recent years. Nutrition programs, including food stamps, consume another $30 billion-plus of the bill's funding. Conservation's share has risen to $8 billion. Champions of sustainability, organics and the like have always found themselves competing for crumbs around the edges.
Farm Belt politicians defend the subsidies as necessary to keep family farmers in business, secure the food supply, fuel the engines of trade, and keep the agribusiness economy revving high.
The reformers argue that the subsidies amount to price supports for junk food. They say subsidies encourage commodity growers to plant an oversupply of low-priced corn and soy, which is processed into high-calorie high-fructose corn syrup and soybean oil and fed to feedlot animals bound for burgerville. The result: cheap food full of added sugar and fat.
The retail price of fruits and vegetables doubled from 1985 to 2000, but the cost of added fats and sugars remained the same, according to a paper by University of Washington public health specialist Adam Drewnowski, published June 24 in Epidemiologic Reviews. The paper drew a direct connection between cheap corn- and soy-based food and the obesity and diabetes epidemics.
California's interest has been piqued, among other things, by the fact that, dollar for agricultural dollar, the Golden State is shortchanged.
California rice and cotton farmers pulled in $5.9 billion in subsidies between 1995 and 2005 -- but that put it behind nine other states, according to a searchable database published by the Washington- and Oakland-based Environmental Working Group, a key player in farm bill reform. Only 9 percent of California's farmers get any subsidy at all.
An interactive map on the site dramatically shows where the money goes -- and where it doesn't. Having the database online has been a major weapon for reformers, because it shows where the subsidy money is concentrated. The environmental group's own analysis concludes that two-thirds of the subsidy money for 2003 through 2005 went to just 10 percent of all recipients.
For all the family farms that subsidies help support, many corporate farms rake in more than $250,000 a year in subsidies, and a few earn more than $500,000.
"This is a food fight, but it's really a fight about money," the environmental group's executive director, Ken Cook, has said.
The farm bill reformers stopped short of pushing for subsidies for broccoli or peaches.
The ethanol craze has pushed corn prices up so high that projected subsidies have been reduced by $7 billion to $8 billion a year -- but the congressional budget process already has stripped that money out of 2007 farm bill.
Various proposals would further limit subsidies, a little or a lot. That would free money for programs that make it easier and less expensive for people to buy fruits and vegetables, for farmers to develop local markets for their crops, and for research into organic and sustainable farming techniques.
A model is the tiny farmers' market in San Francisco's Bayview-Hunters Point, which got a rare community food project grant from the farm bill for startup costs. The money also pays the handful of vendors $50 a week to underwrite low prices and to keep coming back, though they can't earn much. It's one of a very few such markets to get farm bill money.
On one recent Wednesday morning, market neighbor Mary Charles loaded up. For just $10, she bought four baskets of pesticide-free Yerena Farms strawberries as well as carrots, garlic, summer squash, lettuce, spring onions and chard grown in the neighborhood and at nearby Alemany Farm, which is the kind of program that could benefit from changes in the farm bill. It held its own farm bill forum this year.
Charles could buy lots more food energy -- calories -- if she bought processed food across the street at the corner store. But she is diabetic, and she cooks for her four kids and two grandkids. Putting fresh produce on their plates is the best thing Charles can do for her family's health, she says, and she stops by the farmers' market every week.
"It's a good thing to have in the neighborhood to change people's ideas about how to eat," Charles says.
Another example is a pilot program, rolled out in the 2002 farm bill, that gives schools $92 extra per child to be spent just on fruits and vegetables. The program hasn't reached California, but a change being pushed in the 2007 farm bill would extend it to all 50 states.
In the 2002 farm bill, community food projects like the Bayview market got a total of $5 million -- about one-third of the amount that a single Arkansas rice cooperative earned in crop subsidies in 2005. The community projects' share could rise to $30 million under changes proposed in the 2007 farm bill, but final action is far off.
Conservationists also embraced broad reform this time around, according to Ralph Grossi, a Marin County beef rancher and president of American Farmland Trust.
"This time, our group made the determination that just focusing on conservation is not enough," he said.
Another reason is that while Congress has approved many conservation programs in principle, it hasn't come through with the money to fund many of them.
How far the reform movement can push Congress will start to play out late this month, and if it's not exactly a summer blockbuster, the lobbying has been intense.
California has extra muscle in this time around, with Democrats back in power, San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker and Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater (Merced County), sponsor of the reformist Eat Healthy America Act, sitting on the Agriculture Committee.
Yet, last month, the commodities subcommittee -- the one in charge of subsidies -- refused to consider any changes and voted to extend the current farm bill for another two years, past the next presidential election.
That set up a showdown, scheduled for July 17-19 in the House Agriculture Committee. The Senate's Agriculture Committee will have its own go-round. Later, the appropriations committees of both houses will decide which programs will actually be funded.
And this is where Feinstein comes in -- and, potentially, "Food Fight."
"People hand her things all the time," her spokesman, Scott Gerber, said Monday. "She hasn't had a chance to read it."
But, he added, "It's still early."
Online resources for farm bill information:
U.S. Department of Agriculture: www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome
California Department of Food and Agriculture: www.cdfa.ca.gov/farmbill07
Environmental Working Group Interactive Farm Bill Database: farm.ewg.org/sites/farmbill2007/index.php
California Food and Justice Coalition: www.foodsecurity.org/california/Farm_Bill.html
California Coalition for Food and Farming: www.calfoodandfarming.org
Food Fight: www.watershedmedia.org/foodfight_overview.html
Community Alliance With Family Farmers: www.caff.org
American Farmland Trust: www.farmland.org
Sustainable Agriculture Coalition: www.msawg.org
Western Growers: www.wga.com
Organic Farming Research Foundation: www.ofrf.org/index.html
Food Conscious -- The new food crusade
Organic farms, conservation, fruits and veggies in schools -
The Bay Area leads the charge to change how Congress subsidizes farming
Carol Ness, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
It was almost accidental activism. Acme Bread's Steve Sullivan was on a class trip to Washington, D.C., with his 13-year-old daughter when their flight home was canceled. A scramble to rebook ended with the Berkeley food artisan and his family seated almost across the aisle from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
So he handed her a copy of his new favorite book, "Food Fight," by Sonoma County author Daniel Imhoff. The book is a call to arms, urging Congress to use the 2007 farm bill to put more healthful food on people's plates.
The bill, which in recent years has totaled about $70 billion annually, comes up about once every five years. Although the farm bill has far-reaching consequences for the food supply, most people outside the Midwestern Farm Belt, which gets huge farm bill subsidies, have ignored it.
This year, things are different. Sullivan's trip down the aisle, and the book, are part of a wave of populist activism, much of it centered in the Bay Area, that is trying to change how a big chunk of farm bill money is spent.
The short version of the argument -- and nothing is short when it comes to the mind-numbing, complex farm bill -- is that the bill subsidizes the overproduction of corn and soy in the Midwest, which is driving up obesity and diabetes and polluting the land. Instead, they say, the farm bill should put more money into sustainable and organic food production, agricultural conservation and efforts to put a higher priority on fresh, local fruits and vegetables.
Their slogan: It's the food, health and farm bill.
"I want you to realize how many people in the Bay Area are talking about this," Sullivan said he told Feinstein.
Earlier, when the class visited a Feinstein constituent breakfast, he'd asked her the key question fueling the push for change: Have you ever considered using the farm bill to improve childhood nutrition, public health, pollution problems, environmental quality and farmer incomes?
"I don't know if she's just a good actress or what," Sullivan recounted. "But she stopped, her jaw dropped, and she said, 'I haven't. That's a really good way of thinking about it.' "
What happens to the farm bill this time around could turn on such moments. This year's burst of activism rises from the national trend toward local, sustainable and conscious eating -- consumers who want to know what they're eating, where it comes from and how it is produced.
Michael Pollan, the sustainable food movement leader and UC Berkeley professor and writer, has led the charge, starting with his best-selling "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and in articles and public appearances. A Pollan-moderated forum on the farm bill attracted a crowd of 700 to UC Berkeley's Wheeler Auditorium this year.
Similar forums have sprouted at farmers' markets and community halls all over the country. Influential voices such as health guru Andrew Weil and author Barbara Kingsolver have taken up the cause and attracted overflow audiences.
Imhoff, a food policy writer whose "Food Fight" is in its second printing, was a guest on National Public Radio's "West Coast Live" in late June, broadcast from San Francisco's Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.
These writers are the public face of a movement being worked from the inside by broad coalition of farm, environment and anti-hunger groups, including the Watsonville-based California Coalition for Food and Farming and the Venice-based California Food and Justice Coalition.
California, long a sleeping tiger when it comes to the farm bill, has awakened, too. Although it's the biggest agricultural state, California grows mainly fruits and vegetables, which aren't considered commodity crops and have never been subsidized. But now the administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and 26 members of California's congressional delegation are pressing for farm bill reform.
Cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles have hopped on board, too. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom got the U.S. Conference of Mayors to pass a resolution urging farm bill reform at its recent meeting in Los Angeles.
"This is the first time that the farm bill is being scrutinized by people outside the farm block," Imhoff said in an interview. "To change it, people have to realize how it affects their lives on a daily basis, and that's what's happening."
The juicy prize that's arousing new appetites is the subsidy program, which has totaled about $30 billion a year in recent years. Nutrition programs, including food stamps, consume another $30 billion-plus of the bill's funding. Conservation's share has risen to $8 billion. Champions of sustainability, organics and the like have always found themselves competing for crumbs around the edges.
Farm Belt politicians defend the subsidies as necessary to keep family farmers in business, secure the food supply, fuel the engines of trade, and keep the agribusiness economy revving high.
The reformers argue that the subsidies amount to price supports for junk food. They say subsidies encourage commodity growers to plant an oversupply of low-priced corn and soy, which is processed into high-calorie high-fructose corn syrup and soybean oil and fed to feedlot animals bound for burgerville. The result: cheap food full of added sugar and fat.
The retail price of fruits and vegetables doubled from 1985 to 2000, but the cost of added fats and sugars remained the same, according to a paper by University of Washington public health specialist Adam Drewnowski, published June 24 in Epidemiologic Reviews. The paper drew a direct connection between cheap corn- and soy-based food and the obesity and diabetes epidemics.
California's interest has been piqued, among other things, by the fact that, dollar for agricultural dollar, the Golden State is shortchanged.
California rice and cotton farmers pulled in $5.9 billion in subsidies between 1995 and 2005 -- but that put it behind nine other states, according to a searchable database published by the Washington- and Oakland-based Environmental Working Group, a key player in farm bill reform. Only 9 percent of California's farmers get any subsidy at all.
An interactive map on the site dramatically shows where the money goes -- and where it doesn't. Having the database online has been a major weapon for reformers, because it shows where the subsidy money is concentrated. The environmental group's own analysis concludes that two-thirds of the subsidy money for 2003 through 2005 went to just 10 percent of all recipients.
For all the family farms that subsidies help support, many corporate farms rake in more than $250,000 a year in subsidies, and a few earn more than $500,000.
"This is a food fight, but it's really a fight about money," the environmental group's executive director, Ken Cook, has said.
The farm bill reformers stopped short of pushing for subsidies for broccoli or peaches.
The ethanol craze has pushed corn prices up so high that projected subsidies have been reduced by $7 billion to $8 billion a year -- but the congressional budget process already has stripped that money out of 2007 farm bill.
Various proposals would further limit subsidies, a little or a lot. That would free money for programs that make it easier and less expensive for people to buy fruits and vegetables, for farmers to develop local markets for their crops, and for research into organic and sustainable farming techniques.
A model is the tiny farmers' market in San Francisco's Bayview-Hunters Point, which got a rare community food project grant from the farm bill for startup costs. The money also pays the handful of vendors $50 a week to underwrite low prices and to keep coming back, though they can't earn much. It's one of a very few such markets to get farm bill money.
On one recent Wednesday morning, market neighbor Mary Charles loaded up. For just $10, she bought four baskets of pesticide-free Yerena Farms strawberries as well as carrots, garlic, summer squash, lettuce, spring onions and chard grown in the neighborhood and at nearby Alemany Farm, which is the kind of program that could benefit from changes in the farm bill. It held its own farm bill forum this year.
Charles could buy lots more food energy -- calories -- if she bought processed food across the street at the corner store. But she is diabetic, and she cooks for her four kids and two grandkids. Putting fresh produce on their plates is the best thing Charles can do for her family's health, she says, and she stops by the farmers' market every week.
"It's a good thing to have in the neighborhood to change people's ideas about how to eat," Charles says.
Another example is a pilot program, rolled out in the 2002 farm bill, that gives schools $92 extra per child to be spent just on fruits and vegetables. The program hasn't reached California, but a change being pushed in the 2007 farm bill would extend it to all 50 states.
In the 2002 farm bill, community food projects like the Bayview market got a total of $5 million -- about one-third of the amount that a single Arkansas rice cooperative earned in crop subsidies in 2005. The community projects' share could rise to $30 million under changes proposed in the 2007 farm bill, but final action is far off.
Conservationists also embraced broad reform this time around, according to Ralph Grossi, a Marin County beef rancher and president of American Farmland Trust.
"This time, our group made the determination that just focusing on conservation is not enough," he said.
Another reason is that while Congress has approved many conservation programs in principle, it hasn't come through with the money to fund many of them.
How far the reform movement can push Congress will start to play out late this month, and if it's not exactly a summer blockbuster, the lobbying has been intense.
California has extra muscle in this time around, with Democrats back in power, San Francisco's Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker and Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater (Merced County), sponsor of the reformist Eat Healthy America Act, sitting on the Agriculture Committee.
Yet, last month, the commodities subcommittee -- the one in charge of subsidies -- refused to consider any changes and voted to extend the current farm bill for another two years, past the next presidential election.
That set up a showdown, scheduled for July 17-19 in the House Agriculture Committee. The Senate's Agriculture Committee will have its own go-round. Later, the appropriations committees of both houses will decide which programs will actually be funded.
And this is where Feinstein comes in -- and, potentially, "Food Fight."
"People hand her things all the time," her spokesman, Scott Gerber, said Monday. "She hasn't had a chance to read it."
But, he added, "It's still early."
Online resources for farm bill information:
U.S. Department of Agriculture: www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome
California Department of Food and Agriculture: www.cdfa.ca.gov/farmbill07
Environmental Working Group Interactive Farm Bill Database: farm.ewg.org/sites/farmbill2007/index.php
California Food and Justice Coalition: www.foodsecurity.org/california/Farm_Bill.html
California Coalition for Food and Farming: www.calfoodandfarming.org
Food Fight: www.watershedmedia.org/foodfight_overview.html
Community Alliance With Family Farmers: www.caff.org
American Farmland Trust: www.farmland.org
Sustainable Agriculture Coalition: www.msawg.org
Western Growers: www.wga.com
Organic Farming Research Foundation: www.ofrf.org/index.html
Monday, July 9, 2007
"A Bit Manic"
Pete just finished reading my blog entries from today and his comment was: "They were good. A bit manic, but good."
Okay, I admit it...In hindsight, my blog entries do seem a bit manic. I started the day "fighting back tears" and ended on a high note by walking 4 miles and feeling strong enough to take whatever is thrown at me. But alas, this is the life of a cancer patient. I'm just telling it like it is.
Okay, I admit it...In hindsight, my blog entries do seem a bit manic. I started the day "fighting back tears" and ended on a high note by walking 4 miles and feeling strong enough to take whatever is thrown at me. But alas, this is the life of a cancer patient. I'm just telling it like it is.
Four Mile Hike
I just got back from taking a walk to Tennessee Valley Beach (which is almost 4 miles round-trip) and I feel tired, but great!! There is such an enormous part of my happiness and well-being that is directly linked to my ability to move my body. This has always been true for me. In fact, I remember in high school my mom would gently, but firmly, urge me to go out for a run whenever she sensed that I was getting grumpy or agitated. She recognized even before I did that getting outdoors and moving my body was incredibly therapeutic for me. And so I think that one of the hardest parts of these past few weeks post-surgery has been the fact that I have not been able to be very active. It has really only been in the past week that I have felt energetic enough to begin walking very far.
My doctor actually warned me early on that I should think about developing other ways to relieve stress. He knew that there would be times like this when I would not be able to be active and I think that he worried about what this would do to my emotions. And I have had friends and family who have cautioned me to take it easy on my body as well. They worried that I might over-extend myself and compromise my ability to heal. But I can be pretty darn stubborn and this time was no exception: I basically ignored everyone's advice! I feel like I know my body pretty darn well. I know what it can handle and I have always believed that I will prevail over any surgery or treatment that gets thrown at me. And I was right -- four miles after only four weeks of recovery -- woo hoo!!
Maybe someday I will be in the unfortunate position of truly needing to find other less-physical "therapeutic" hobbies, but I am not crossing that bridge until I get to it.
My doctor actually warned me early on that I should think about developing other ways to relieve stress. He knew that there would be times like this when I would not be able to be active and I think that he worried about what this would do to my emotions. And I have had friends and family who have cautioned me to take it easy on my body as well. They worried that I might over-extend myself and compromise my ability to heal. But I can be pretty darn stubborn and this time was no exception: I basically ignored everyone's advice! I feel like I know my body pretty darn well. I know what it can handle and I have always believed that I will prevail over any surgery or treatment that gets thrown at me. And I was right -- four miles after only four weeks of recovery -- woo hoo!!
Maybe someday I will be in the unfortunate position of truly needing to find other less-physical "therapeutic" hobbies, but I am not crossing that bridge until I get to it.
Amador's Advice
Pete and I were married by a good friend of ours, Father Amador Garza. He was actually a friend of Pete's first -- Pete met him through the family he was living with while attending graduate school (Jeanine and Sandy McNally). Jeanine and Amador are childhood friends and Amador visited frequently while Pete lived there.
We have been married almost 10 years and have stayed close with Amador this whole time. He always remembers to call us on our anniversary; we exchange emails to share updates in our lives; and I have called him a handful of times in the past to get his advice on how to navigate through some of life's bigger challenges. For instance, during my pregnancy with Kyle I was actually pregnant initially with triplets. The thought of having triplets was completely overwhelming to Pete and I not only for the obvious reason (e.g., how exactly do two people take care of three newborns at the same time while also having a 4-year-old to care for?) but also because the risks that accompany triplet pregnancies are enormous. There is a 40+% chance that one or more of the babies will end up with a disability (and given the fact that Pete and I were told while we were undergoing IVF that we only had a 20% chance of ending up pregnant with triplets, forty percent seemed pretty damn daunting!); with triple pregnancies, there is a very high likelihood that the whole pregnancy will terminate prematurely; and 0% of triplet pregnancies make it to full term, which leads to a whole host of possible complications. Given these statistics, a couple of our doctors were actually recommending that we do what's called "selective reduction", whereby they would selectively abort one of the babies in the hopes of increasing the odds for the other two. As if the thought of this procedure were not emotionally heart-wrenching enough, there is a 20% chance of losing all three babies during this procedure, which obviously needs to be factored into the decision. Needless to say, Pete and I were at a complete loss as to what to do. The thought of selective reduction was horrifying to me! I could not fathom actually aborting one of my own babies. And yet, I was also terrified that if I didn't, we would lose the entire pregnancy as the doctors were predicting. And so I called Amador; I wanted to know his thoughts on how to weigh these two incredibly difficult options. His answer was simple: "Leave it to God." He told me to rejoice in the fact that I was pregnant with three babies and not to be scared. He told me that God would handle everything. And in the end, that is exactly what happened: Before we were forced to decide what to do, we ended up losing two of the babies naturally and Kyle miraculously survived. I will never forget Amador's advice, however. While I was looking for someone to help me make sense of our "shades-of-gray" medical options, he was able to focus my attention instead on the fact that there are some things in life which we cannot -- or more appropriately, should not -- try to control.
Anyway, all of this is a long-winded way of leading up to the point that Amador called me today to check in. He has been reading my blog and wanted to see how I was doing on my first day back in treatment. Ironically, he called right at the moment when I was posting my blog entry below (about how I had a hard day and about how my parents and Pete were struggling to help me feel better) and so I talked with him about the things that I had written. As always, Amador shared with me some very sage advice. He told me that when he first joined the priesthood, members of his parish who were struggling with depression would come to him seeking help. Amador is, by nature, not a depressed person. In fact, he is quite the opposite: always happy and joking around, always able to keep life in perspective and stay optimistic. He admitted, therefore, that he had a hard time at first relating to these parishioner's struggles and an even harder timing knowing what to do to help them. Over time, however, he told me that he began to realize that it was not up to him to help them feel better or to "fix" them -- they needed to find happiness within themselves. All that he could really do was to "journey with them," and to be there to lend a listening ear when they need it. And so this is what he now tells people who come to him for help.
The more that I thought about this advice, the more I realized that it is true for me as well. As much as Pete or my parents or other friends and family want to help me to feel better, I need to heal myself. As I have said from the beginning, this is my mountain to climb. It's not a fun or an easy mountain, and as much as I would love to "pass the baton" to someone else at this point so that they can take over for awhile, unfortunately, no one else can make the climb for me. What everyone else can do, though, is to stay at the top of the mountain and continue to yell encouragement down to me; to remind me that I am strong and that I can do this. And they can keep Luke and Kyle happy and healthy so that I don't have to waste any energy worrying about them. And they can lower my children down to me as I climb so that I can see them and laugh with them and kiss them and know that they are safe. And they can make sure that my ropes are strong so that they don't break and send me crashing to the bottom. In an nutshell, everyone who loves me can "journey with me", but ultimately, it's up to me to heal myself and to find my own happiness.
We have been married almost 10 years and have stayed close with Amador this whole time. He always remembers to call us on our anniversary; we exchange emails to share updates in our lives; and I have called him a handful of times in the past to get his advice on how to navigate through some of life's bigger challenges. For instance, during my pregnancy with Kyle I was actually pregnant initially with triplets. The thought of having triplets was completely overwhelming to Pete and I not only for the obvious reason (e.g., how exactly do two people take care of three newborns at the same time while also having a 4-year-old to care for?) but also because the risks that accompany triplet pregnancies are enormous. There is a 40+% chance that one or more of the babies will end up with a disability (and given the fact that Pete and I were told while we were undergoing IVF that we only had a 20% chance of ending up pregnant with triplets, forty percent seemed pretty damn daunting!); with triple pregnancies, there is a very high likelihood that the whole pregnancy will terminate prematurely; and 0% of triplet pregnancies make it to full term, which leads to a whole host of possible complications. Given these statistics, a couple of our doctors were actually recommending that we do what's called "selective reduction", whereby they would selectively abort one of the babies in the hopes of increasing the odds for the other two. As if the thought of this procedure were not emotionally heart-wrenching enough, there is a 20% chance of losing all three babies during this procedure, which obviously needs to be factored into the decision. Needless to say, Pete and I were at a complete loss as to what to do. The thought of selective reduction was horrifying to me! I could not fathom actually aborting one of my own babies. And yet, I was also terrified that if I didn't, we would lose the entire pregnancy as the doctors were predicting. And so I called Amador; I wanted to know his thoughts on how to weigh these two incredibly difficult options. His answer was simple: "Leave it to God." He told me to rejoice in the fact that I was pregnant with three babies and not to be scared. He told me that God would handle everything. And in the end, that is exactly what happened: Before we were forced to decide what to do, we ended up losing two of the babies naturally and Kyle miraculously survived. I will never forget Amador's advice, however. While I was looking for someone to help me make sense of our "shades-of-gray" medical options, he was able to focus my attention instead on the fact that there are some things in life which we cannot -- or more appropriately, should not -- try to control.
Anyway, all of this is a long-winded way of leading up to the point that Amador called me today to check in. He has been reading my blog and wanted to see how I was doing on my first day back in treatment. Ironically, he called right at the moment when I was posting my blog entry below (about how I had a hard day and about how my parents and Pete were struggling to help me feel better) and so I talked with him about the things that I had written. As always, Amador shared with me some very sage advice. He told me that when he first joined the priesthood, members of his parish who were struggling with depression would come to him seeking help. Amador is, by nature, not a depressed person. In fact, he is quite the opposite: always happy and joking around, always able to keep life in perspective and stay optimistic. He admitted, therefore, that he had a hard time at first relating to these parishioner's struggles and an even harder timing knowing what to do to help them. Over time, however, he told me that he began to realize that it was not up to him to help them feel better or to "fix" them -- they needed to find happiness within themselves. All that he could really do was to "journey with them," and to be there to lend a listening ear when they need it. And so this is what he now tells people who come to him for help.
The more that I thought about this advice, the more I realized that it is true for me as well. As much as Pete or my parents or other friends and family want to help me to feel better, I need to heal myself. As I have said from the beginning, this is my mountain to climb. It's not a fun or an easy mountain, and as much as I would love to "pass the baton" to someone else at this point so that they can take over for awhile, unfortunately, no one else can make the climb for me. What everyone else can do, though, is to stay at the top of the mountain and continue to yell encouragement down to me; to remind me that I am strong and that I can do this. And they can keep Luke and Kyle happy and healthy so that I don't have to waste any energy worrying about them. And they can lower my children down to me as I climb so that I can see them and laugh with them and kiss them and know that they are safe. And they can make sure that my ropes are strong so that they don't break and send me crashing to the bottom. In an nutshell, everyone who loves me can "journey with me", but ultimately, it's up to me to heal myself and to find my own happiness.
One Down, Seven To Go
Well, I am home now from my chemo treatment. All in all, it was pretty uneventful and easy; I just kicked back in a recliner chair for about 4 hours while the nurse administered the various different drugs to me via an IV that was hooked up to my port (Remember my good 'ol port? The"carabiner" in my upper chest which caused me so much trouble early on? Well, it's back in action again!)
The first drug that the nurse gave me was an anti-nausea drug to prevent the other drugs from, well, making me nauseous. The second drug was a hefty dose of calcium-magnesium, which apparently helps to alleviate some of the side effects of the chemo drugs. The pleasant side effect of this treatment is that it made me feel very relaxed and sleepy. Interestingly, the woman sitting next to me (who was in her 60's and being treated for breast cancer) told me that she takes calcium-magnesium pills to help prevent menopause-induced osteoporosis and she said that she finally started taking the pills at night since she found that calcium-magnesium had the same effect on her (e.g., relaxation and sleepiness)...hmmm, maybe this will become my new healthy sleeping aid! The third drug was actually a combination of two different drugs: Leucovorin and Oxaliplatin. Leucovorin is technically not a chemo drug, but rather a type of vitamin which helps the other chemo drugs kill cancer cells more effectively. And Oxaliplatin is a chemotherapy medication that doesn't allow cancer cells to divide and grow normally and ultimately causes tumor cell death. I love the sound of that!! Then I got one more dose of calcium-magnesium and, finally, I was hooked up to a continuous-infusion pump again which contains the same drug that I took before (5-FU). Unlike last time (when I had the continuous pump for 6 weeks), I will only need to be hooked up this time until Wednesday morning. At that point, I'll get "unhooked" and be free to heal for 12 days before I go back in again for the same protocol.
So, like I said, pretty uneventful. Well, in theory, anyway. The reality is that I sat in the chair for 4 hours fighting back tears and slowly feeling the rumblings of random side effects starting. For example, I now have a sore throat (which the nurse said is normal), and mild neuropathy, which is a sensitivity in the mouth, throat, hands and feet to cold (again, totally normal). And for some weird reason, I get shooting pains in my eyebrows when I am about to cry (hmmm, not so normal, but the nurse didn't seemed concerned). I had heard that the side effects wouldn't really start for a few days, and so the fact that they are starting already is only adding to my despair. I really, really don't want to be doing this!! I want a normal life back! I don't want to have cancer anymore!
Both Pete and my parents could sense that I was out of sorts today and they all probed as to what they could do to make things better, but the reality is that there is nothing anyone can do. I don't have a choice...I just need to keep moving forward, one foot in front of the other, day by day. There will inevitably be days when I just feel like crying, because there is no getting around the fact that this whole thing sucks. And so, on those days, I'll cry for awhile and I'll feel sorry for myself and I'll probably be a bit miserable to be around, but hopefully everyone will understand and just give me time and space to grieve. And I know that eventually I will pick myself up, brush off the dust and focused again on the positives and on the many silver linings of this experience. I know that I will...this is just who I am. And since there is no better time than the present, here we go...
The positives for today:
1) I have one treatment down, and only 7 more to go
2) Once I am done with these treatments, I will never look back with any regrets
3) Any and all remaining cancer cells are being pummelled right now
4) I am blessed with an incredible number of wonderful friends and family to see me through this, which is something that many people don't have.
The first drug that the nurse gave me was an anti-nausea drug to prevent the other drugs from, well, making me nauseous. The second drug was a hefty dose of calcium-magnesium, which apparently helps to alleviate some of the side effects of the chemo drugs. The pleasant side effect of this treatment is that it made me feel very relaxed and sleepy. Interestingly, the woman sitting next to me (who was in her 60's and being treated for breast cancer) told me that she takes calcium-magnesium pills to help prevent menopause-induced osteoporosis and she said that she finally started taking the pills at night since she found that calcium-magnesium had the same effect on her (e.g., relaxation and sleepiness)...hmmm, maybe this will become my new healthy sleeping aid! The third drug was actually a combination of two different drugs: Leucovorin and Oxaliplatin. Leucovorin is technically not a chemo drug, but rather a type of vitamin which helps the other chemo drugs kill cancer cells more effectively. And Oxaliplatin is a chemotherapy medication that doesn't allow cancer cells to divide and grow normally and ultimately causes tumor cell death. I love the sound of that!! Then I got one more dose of calcium-magnesium and, finally, I was hooked up to a continuous-infusion pump again which contains the same drug that I took before (5-FU). Unlike last time (when I had the continuous pump for 6 weeks), I will only need to be hooked up this time until Wednesday morning. At that point, I'll get "unhooked" and be free to heal for 12 days before I go back in again for the same protocol.
So, like I said, pretty uneventful. Well, in theory, anyway. The reality is that I sat in the chair for 4 hours fighting back tears and slowly feeling the rumblings of random side effects starting. For example, I now have a sore throat (which the nurse said is normal), and mild neuropathy, which is a sensitivity in the mouth, throat, hands and feet to cold (again, totally normal). And for some weird reason, I get shooting pains in my eyebrows when I am about to cry (hmmm, not so normal, but the nurse didn't seemed concerned). I had heard that the side effects wouldn't really start for a few days, and so the fact that they are starting already is only adding to my despair. I really, really don't want to be doing this!! I want a normal life back! I don't want to have cancer anymore!
Both Pete and my parents could sense that I was out of sorts today and they all probed as to what they could do to make things better, but the reality is that there is nothing anyone can do. I don't have a choice...I just need to keep moving forward, one foot in front of the other, day by day. There will inevitably be days when I just feel like crying, because there is no getting around the fact that this whole thing sucks. And so, on those days, I'll cry for awhile and I'll feel sorry for myself and I'll probably be a bit miserable to be around, but hopefully everyone will understand and just give me time and space to grieve. And I know that eventually I will pick myself up, brush off the dust and focused again on the positives and on the many silver linings of this experience. I know that I will...this is just who I am. And since there is no better time than the present, here we go...
The positives for today:
1) I have one treatment down, and only 7 more to go
2) Once I am done with these treatments, I will never look back with any regrets
3) Any and all remaining cancer cells are being pummelled right now
4) I am blessed with an incredible number of wonderful friends and family to see me through this, which is something that many people don't have.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
God's Answer To My Prayer
Pete took Luke camping last night and Kyle spent the night at my parent's house so I had a much-appreciated night/morning of peace and quiet. I decided this morning to take advantage of the fact that I was on my own -- unencumbered by kids -- and went to church for the first time since my surgery. I wanted to try to get my head around the idea of starting chemo again tomorrow and thought that church was the perfect place to do that. While I was there, listening to Father Tarantino speak, I was reminded of a service that Pete and I went to back in early February, shortly after I was diagnosed. At that service, we let Father Tarantino know about my situation and asked if he would do a "healing session" for us. Immediately after the regular service ended, he took us up to the alter, said a heartfelt prayer to the Lord that I be healed, and anointed me with oil. I remember after he was done, he reassured us that "a miracle has happened here today." He said that I might not immediately recognize what the miracle was, but that I should trust that God heard us and that he had answered our prayers in some way.
I have often thought about how fortuitous my "suspicious" liver spot ended up being. Without this spot, I never would have received approval from our insurance company to have my surgery done by Dr Garcia-Aguilar at UCSF. He is one of the top colorectal surgeons in the world and he practices only about 10 miles from where we live, but none of that matters to an HMO. All they care about is the fact that he is technically "out of network" for our particular insurance. In the end, the only reason that they approved me going to see him is because of my liver freckle (the hospital that is "in network" for us is not qualified to deal with liver issues). If it had not been for my freckle, I would have ended up going to a less-experienced surgeon here in Marin and who knows what the outcome would have been.
I have often wondered whether my liver freckle was somehow God's way of working things out. I believe that God really did answer my prayer... I was able to get the best treatment available, yet at the same time was ultimately blessed with less-advanced cancer. Of course, the downside is that I also went through months of uncertainty and stress about whether or not the cancer had metastasized, but the reality is that I never really had any doubt about the spot being just a freckle. And I feel like the few times that doubts did creep into my head only made me more aware of just how precious life truly is, and for this I am eternally grateful.
And so, today as I was listening to Father Tarantino and reflecting on my "healing session" so many months ago, I couldn't help but think of a saying that I heard once which goes something like this: "Pray to God for what it is that you want, but don't tell him how to answer your prayer; he will figure that part out on his own."
With chemo beginning tomorrow, my prayer tonight is for the mental and physical strength to get through these next four months of treatment and for my body to once again be completely healthy so that I can live a happy, healthy life for many years to come. And I trust that God has heard my prayer and I am confident that someday I will reflect back on these next few months and understand exactly how he answered it.
I have often thought about how fortuitous my "suspicious" liver spot ended up being. Without this spot, I never would have received approval from our insurance company to have my surgery done by Dr Garcia-Aguilar at UCSF. He is one of the top colorectal surgeons in the world and he practices only about 10 miles from where we live, but none of that matters to an HMO. All they care about is the fact that he is technically "out of network" for our particular insurance. In the end, the only reason that they approved me going to see him is because of my liver freckle (the hospital that is "in network" for us is not qualified to deal with liver issues). If it had not been for my freckle, I would have ended up going to a less-experienced surgeon here in Marin and who knows what the outcome would have been.
I have often wondered whether my liver freckle was somehow God's way of working things out. I believe that God really did answer my prayer... I was able to get the best treatment available, yet at the same time was ultimately blessed with less-advanced cancer. Of course, the downside is that I also went through months of uncertainty and stress about whether or not the cancer had metastasized, but the reality is that I never really had any doubt about the spot being just a freckle. And I feel like the few times that doubts did creep into my head only made me more aware of just how precious life truly is, and for this I am eternally grateful.
And so, today as I was listening to Father Tarantino and reflecting on my "healing session" so many months ago, I couldn't help but think of a saying that I heard once which goes something like this: "Pray to God for what it is that you want, but don't tell him how to answer your prayer; he will figure that part out on his own."
With chemo beginning tomorrow, my prayer tonight is for the mental and physical strength to get through these next four months of treatment and for my body to once again be completely healthy so that I can live a happy, healthy life for many years to come. And I trust that God has heard my prayer and I am confident that someday I will reflect back on these next few months and understand exactly how he answered it.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Official Chemo Start - Monday 8am
I just got word from my doctor's office that my official start time for chemo will be Monday at 8am. YIKES -- I am nervous about starting!!
The fact that I will start on Monday rather than Tuesday is good, though. From what I have been able to gather, the chemo will make me feel pretty crappy for a few days afterwards, but then I will slowly feel better and better (until I go in two weeks later for the next round, that is.) But at least by starting on a Monday, the chances of me feeling well by the weekend are pretty good. Between my parents and our nanny, Anne, I have lots of help with the kids during the week so I'd prefer to feel awful while "all hands are on deck" rather than on the weekends when it's mostly just Pete and I with the kids.
The fact that I will start on Monday rather than Tuesday is good, though. From what I have been able to gather, the chemo will make me feel pretty crappy for a few days afterwards, but then I will slowly feel better and better (until I go in two weeks later for the next round, that is.) But at least by starting on a Monday, the chances of me feeling well by the weekend are pretty good. Between my parents and our nanny, Anne, I have lots of help with the kids during the week so I'd prefer to feel awful while "all hands are on deck" rather than on the weekends when it's mostly just Pete and I with the kids.
Things Bad Guys Do
Pete and I took the kids to a Fourth of July pancake breakfast and parade yesterday in Sausalito. We drove there in separate cars (since I was a huge sleepy-head and didn't wake up in time to leave with the rest of the family). So when it came time to leave the parade and head home, we split up -- Luke with me, Kyle with Pete. While we were driving home, Luke and I got stuck in a small traffic jam (unfortunately, the exit for our town is also the best exit to use for anyone and everyone who wants to visit Stinson Beach, Muir Beach, Muir Woods and just about every other major attraction this side of the Golden Gate Bridge.) As we were inching along, somehow Luke and I got into a very random conversation about "what Bad Guys do/don't do." For example, we decided that Bad Guys probably wouldn't care whether Luke had buckled his seat belt before they started driving away (Mommy obviously cares about this!). In fact, we decided that Bad Guys probably don't even buckle their own seat belts. We also agreed that Bad Guys might own pets, but that they probably own pets that are mean as well. And Luke decided that Bad Guys probably don't care much about their pet and treat them badly, which is why the pets then become mean. Which prompted me to say, "Bad Guys are definitely mean to animals. Some Bad Guys even kill animals just for money."
Okay, okay, I agree...In hindsight, this was probably not the best thing to say to a 6-year-old, but it was really hot in the car and I was tired of being stuck in traffic, and since I am still completely entranced with The Omnivore's Dilemma this topic is top-of-mind for me, and so the statement just blurted out. Needless to say, Luke didn't miss a beat (how is it that I can tell him that it's time for bed, oh, about ten times and he somehow doesn't hear me until the 10th time, but when I make a statement like this -- one that I wish I could toss out the car window the second it tumbles from my mouth -- he is all over it?) Of course, his immediate response was, "What do you mean, Mommy? How do Bad Guys get money just by killing animals?" Oh Boy -- nice going, Mommy! Now how are you going to answer this question??
After a bit of hemming and hawing, I explained to Luke that there are some products which we can buy that are made from animals ("Which products, Mommy?"), like fur coats or some of the foods that we eat. And sometimes, the animals are killed in a way that is not very nice because Bad Guys who are killing them can make more money that way. ("I don't understand, Mommy. Why is it easier to not kill them nice?") Hmmm, good question, Luke. The answer is pretty complicated. The best thing for us to remember, though, is that we always want to make sure that we choose products which don't involve hurting animals in a bad way because we love animals.
Luckily, at this point, we were pulling into the driveway and so I was able to gloss over the rest of the conversation and re-direct his attention elsewhere. But the conversation did leave me with a lingering sense of angst. I am sure that this is an age-old angst that parents of all generations have faced: How do you begin to teach a young child about the evils in the world and instill values in them so that they can make informed choices (or better yet, so that they eventually grow up to be the type of person who institutes change!) while at the same time preserving some sense of innocence and naivete? It's a balancing wire that every conscientious parent walks. Personally, I think that kids are pretty darn smart and so I prefer to err on the side of too much information. I would rather my children understand that the reason I want to try to avoid eating corn-fed steaks from Safeway or hamburgers from a fast food restaurant is because I have learned that the cows which are used for these meats are raised in inhumane and immoral ways, rather than because "Mommy says so." Maybe it will take a few years for them to completely understand what I am trying to explain, but that's okay....I think that this is an really important lesson for them to learn.
p.s. If you want to better understand the issue about inhumane treatment of animals, read The Omnivore's Dilemma!
Okay, okay, I agree...In hindsight, this was probably not the best thing to say to a 6-year-old, but it was really hot in the car and I was tired of being stuck in traffic, and since I am still completely entranced with The Omnivore's Dilemma this topic is top-of-mind for me, and so the statement just blurted out. Needless to say, Luke didn't miss a beat (how is it that I can tell him that it's time for bed, oh, about ten times and he somehow doesn't hear me until the 10th time, but when I make a statement like this -- one that I wish I could toss out the car window the second it tumbles from my mouth -- he is all over it?) Of course, his immediate response was, "What do you mean, Mommy? How do Bad Guys get money just by killing animals?" Oh Boy -- nice going, Mommy! Now how are you going to answer this question??
After a bit of hemming and hawing, I explained to Luke that there are some products which we can buy that are made from animals ("Which products, Mommy?"), like fur coats or some of the foods that we eat. And sometimes, the animals are killed in a way that is not very nice because Bad Guys who are killing them can make more money that way. ("I don't understand, Mommy. Why is it easier to not kill them nice?") Hmmm, good question, Luke. The answer is pretty complicated. The best thing for us to remember, though, is that we always want to make sure that we choose products which don't involve hurting animals in a bad way because we love animals.
Luckily, at this point, we were pulling into the driveway and so I was able to gloss over the rest of the conversation and re-direct his attention elsewhere. But the conversation did leave me with a lingering sense of angst. I am sure that this is an age-old angst that parents of all generations have faced: How do you begin to teach a young child about the evils in the world and instill values in them so that they can make informed choices (or better yet, so that they eventually grow up to be the type of person who institutes change!) while at the same time preserving some sense of innocence and naivete? It's a balancing wire that every conscientious parent walks. Personally, I think that kids are pretty darn smart and so I prefer to err on the side of too much information. I would rather my children understand that the reason I want to try to avoid eating corn-fed steaks from Safeway or hamburgers from a fast food restaurant is because I have learned that the cows which are used for these meats are raised in inhumane and immoral ways, rather than because "Mommy says so." Maybe it will take a few years for them to completely understand what I am trying to explain, but that's okay....I think that this is an really important lesson for them to learn.
p.s. If you want to better understand the issue about inhumane treatment of animals, read The Omnivore's Dilemma!
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
McDonald's Chicken McNuggets
I have to share a passage in The Omnivore's Dilemma that I just read which is absolutely, completely horrifying!!! On page 112, the author describes the ingredients in McDonald's Chicken McNuggets:
The ingredients listed on the nutritional flyer at McDonalds suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leaches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There's some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market prices and availability.
According to the handout, McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasi-edible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but from a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed foods possible, by keeping the organic materials in them from going bad or looking strange after months in the freezer or on the road. Listed first are the "leavening agents": sodium aluminum phosphate, mono calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are antioxidants added to keep the various animal and vegetable fats involved in a nuggets from turning rancid. Then there are "anti-foaming agents" like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the frying. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food: According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable. But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydorquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the insides of the box it comes in to "help preserve freshness." According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e., lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our foods: It can comprise no more than .02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.
OH MY GOD!!! Lighter fluid!!! In a million-kazillion years, I cannot imagine any possible scenario where I would justify feeding my children -- or anyone!! -- lighter fluid. So then, how in the world does the FDA justify allowing a "family-friendly", child-focused restaurant like McDonald's to use this ingredient? Or, perhaps more importantly, how in the world does McDonald's justify wanting to using it in the first place? How can this possibly make sense to anyone at their corporate office? I just don't get it! McDonald's markets itself to our children; they do promotional tie-ins with the latest and hottest kids properties in order to entice our children into their stores; they promote themselves as being a family restaurant, and yet, they are knowingly including ingredients in their products which can poison our children. How does this happen? And what the hell is the point of having an FDA if they are going to make completely asinine decisions like this?
I am not trying to tell anyone else how to live their life -- really, I'm not!! I am simply using this blog as a way to share information that I uncover in my search to understand how and why I got colon cancer at the age of 38 (a disease which supposedly only affects ~5% of the population and for which the more typical profile is overweight 65-year-olds). So please don't feel like you have to alter your food choices on my account, or feel awkward about something that you choose to eat in front of me. Take this information and do with it whatever you want. The one request I do have, however, is that if you happen to be in the position of feeding my children at any time, please, please, please don't take them to McDonald's (or any other similar fast food restaurant.) Please help me keep their beautiful little bodies healthy and poison-free.
The ingredients listed on the nutritional flyer at McDonalds suggest a lot of thought goes into a nugget, that and a lot of corn. Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn: the corn-fed chicken itself; modified cornstarch (to bind the pulverized chicken meat); mono-, tri-, and diglycerides (emulsifiers, which keep the fats and water from separating); dextrose; lecithin (another emulsifier); chicken broth (to restore some of the flavor that processing leaches out); yellow corn flour and more modified cornstarch (for the batter); cornstarch (a filler); vegetable shortening; partially hydrogenated corn oil; and citric acid as a preservative. A couple of other plants take part in the nugget: There's some wheat in the batter, and on any given day the hydrogenated oil could come from soybeans, canola or cotton rather than corn, depending on the market prices and availability.
According to the handout, McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasi-edible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but from a petroleum refinery or chemical plant. These chemicals are what make modern processed foods possible, by keeping the organic materials in them from going bad or looking strange after months in the freezer or on the road. Listed first are the "leavening agents": sodium aluminum phosphate, mono calcium phosphate, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and calcium lactate. These are antioxidants added to keep the various animal and vegetable fats involved in a nuggets from turning rancid. Then there are "anti-foaming agents" like dimethylpolysiloxene, added to the cooking oil to keep the starches from binding to air molecules, so as to produce foam during the frying. The problem is evidently grave enough to warrant adding a toxic chemical to the food: According to the Handbook of Food Additives, dimethylpolysiloxene is a suspected carcinogen and an established mutagen, tumorigen, and reproductive effector; it's also flammable. But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydorquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the insides of the box it comes in to "help preserve freshness." According to A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e., lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our foods: It can comprise no more than .02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.
OH MY GOD!!! Lighter fluid!!! In a million-kazillion years, I cannot imagine any possible scenario where I would justify feeding my children -- or anyone!! -- lighter fluid. So then, how in the world does the FDA justify allowing a "family-friendly", child-focused restaurant like McDonald's to use this ingredient? Or, perhaps more importantly, how in the world does McDonald's justify wanting to using it in the first place? How can this possibly make sense to anyone at their corporate office? I just don't get it! McDonald's markets itself to our children; they do promotional tie-ins with the latest and hottest kids properties in order to entice our children into their stores; they promote themselves as being a family restaurant, and yet, they are knowingly including ingredients in their products which can poison our children. How does this happen? And what the hell is the point of having an FDA if they are going to make completely asinine decisions like this?
I am not trying to tell anyone else how to live their life -- really, I'm not!! I am simply using this blog as a way to share information that I uncover in my search to understand how and why I got colon cancer at the age of 38 (a disease which supposedly only affects ~5% of the population and for which the more typical profile is overweight 65-year-olds). So please don't feel like you have to alter your food choices on my account, or feel awkward about something that you choose to eat in front of me. Take this information and do with it whatever you want. The one request I do have, however, is that if you happen to be in the position of feeding my children at any time, please, please, please don't take them to McDonald's (or any other similar fast food restaurant.) Please help me keep their beautiful little bodies healthy and poison-free.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Omnivore's Dilemma
Okay, I have a confession to make: the other reason (aside from being incredibly tired) that I could not muster the energy to write anything in my blog during the past week is that I have also been completely mesmerized reading another book about "the food we eat." This book is called The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan and it is absolutely fascinating! Here is how one book reviewer describes it:
In this groundbreaking book, one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers [Julie's Note: I agree! Pollen is a wonderful writer!] turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of "What should we have for dinner?" To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic co-evolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.
Click on the following link and scroll half-way down the page and you'll find a link which will allow you to read the introduction and first chapter of the book: http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php
Please take the time to read at least this much of the book -- you won't regret it and hopefully you will be as fascinated as I was and actually buy/read the whole book. Do it!!! I promise you will never again think of food in the same way.
In this groundbreaking book, one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers [Julie's Note: I agree! Pollen is a wonderful writer!] turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of "What should we have for dinner?" To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic co-evolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.
Click on the following link and scroll half-way down the page and you'll find a link which will allow you to read the introduction and first chapter of the book: http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php
Please take the time to read at least this much of the book -- you won't regret it and hopefully you will be as fascinated as I was and actually buy/read the whole book. Do it!!! I promise you will never again think of food in the same way.
Back to Normal
So after I posted my blog entry yesterday (the one about being soooo tired, blah, blah, blah..) I went out to walk my dog, Shadow, and actually made it all the way around the block -- which is a whole mile! Granted, it took me about twice as long as normal, but I did it!!
Pete didn't know about my mile-long walk (since he was at work when I went) and so as soon as he got home from work he gave me a big hug and asked how I was doing (he had read my blog at work and was worried about me based on what I had written.) With a huge smile on my face, though, I informed him, "I am fine now...I walked a mile today!" He just shook his head, laughed at me and told me that I need to put the following statement on my blog:
"Sorry for all the whining. I got it all out of my system and I'm back to normal now."
Some people might think that this is a cruel thing for a husband to say, but this is exactly why I love Pete so much. He is always available to hug and comfort me when I need it, but at the same time, he doesn't allow me any extra indulgent self-pity or whining (which I fully admit that I am prone to at times!)
Pete didn't know about my mile-long walk (since he was at work when I went) and so as soon as he got home from work he gave me a big hug and asked how I was doing (he had read my blog at work and was worried about me based on what I had written.) With a huge smile on my face, though, I informed him, "I am fine now...I walked a mile today!" He just shook his head, laughed at me and told me that I need to put the following statement on my blog:
"Sorry for all the whining. I got it all out of my system and I'm back to normal now."
Some people might think that this is a cruel thing for a husband to say, but this is exactly why I love Pete so much. He is always available to hug and comfort me when I need it, but at the same time, he doesn't allow me any extra indulgent self-pity or whining (which I fully admit that I am prone to at times!)
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Overwhelming Fatigue
I know that it has been days since I last wrote anything. Every day this past week, I would wake up and think about writing...I would think about the fact that so many people are thoughtfully and faithfully checking my blog every day to see how I am faring and that I really should write an update on my progress; something, anything, just so that you know how I am doing. But then, as I would lay on the couch thinking about getting up to write, an staggering sense of fatigue would overwhelm me.
I am so tired of having cancer. I am so tired of this climb. I am tired of not feeling well and being in constant pain. I am tired of not being able to go anywhere without having someone else here to drive me. I am tired of feeling like a lousy mom and a lousy wife. I am tired of not being able to run around and play with my children and I am tired of being too tired at the end of the day to even snuggle with my husband. I am tired of worrying about every single thing I eat and whether or not it's healthy for me and whether or not it will cause a blockage in my recently-operated-on-intestines (yes, this is my latest thing to stress about, because I don't have enough things to worry about already!). I am tired of not having something in my life (e.g., work) that is intellectually challenging. And I am tired of being too tired to even think about anything intellectual. I am just so sick and tired of having cancer -- I want my old life back!
Needless to say, I have had a really hard time motivating myself to get back on my blog and write. Besides the fact that I am (obviously) tired, there is also really not much to new to report -- every day feels like the same slow-motion repeat of the one before. I am gradually recovering and getting around a bit easier every day, but I am still nowhere close to where I was before. Some days I do too much and the next day I am confined to the couch again popping pain-killers every few hours, but overall, I am slowly getting better and I can tell that my body is healing.
Emotionally, though, I feel weaker than I have since this whole ordeal started. I don't want to start chemo again. The last time I started the chemo (back in March) I was in full-blown "fighting mode". My body felt strong and I was ready to take on any chemo drugs the doctors threw at me; I felt mentally prepared to direct the drugs wherever they were most needed in my body. I felt ready to fight the cancer with all my might. But now, I feel like I have been run over by a tractor. I feel so physically weak and so mentally exhausted. The surgery was so much harder than I ever expected. It took so much out of me and the thought of starting chemo again in just 9 days is overwhelming. How in the hell am I going to survive this?? I have already lost about 25 pounds since February and, if this chemo round is anything like the last, I know that I'll lose even more. I already feel so weak -- how can I possibly do this??
But at the same time, I wonder, how can I not?? I cannot imagine finding out two or three years from now that the cancer has come back; that somehow there was a straggler cancer cell that somehow survived everything we have thrown at it already and went to to proliferate. And I cannot imagine thinking that I might have prevented the relapse had I only done one more round of chemo. I couldn't live with myself if that were to happen! I couldn't look my children in the eye and tell them that there was more that I could have done, but that I didn't feel up to it. And so I have no choice...I must do the chemo. There is only one path to follow up this mountain if I want to live a life of no regrets.
I go back to the doctor this Friday for one last check-in before the chemo starts on Tuesday of the next week. Somehow, someway, I need to find the strength within myself in the next few days to begin climbing this last passage of my mountain...
I am so tired of having cancer. I am so tired of this climb. I am tired of not feeling well and being in constant pain. I am tired of not being able to go anywhere without having someone else here to drive me. I am tired of feeling like a lousy mom and a lousy wife. I am tired of not being able to run around and play with my children and I am tired of being too tired at the end of the day to even snuggle with my husband. I am tired of worrying about every single thing I eat and whether or not it's healthy for me and whether or not it will cause a blockage in my recently-operated-on-intestines (yes, this is my latest thing to stress about, because I don't have enough things to worry about already!). I am tired of not having something in my life (e.g., work) that is intellectually challenging. And I am tired of being too tired to even think about anything intellectual. I am just so sick and tired of having cancer -- I want my old life back!
Needless to say, I have had a really hard time motivating myself to get back on my blog and write. Besides the fact that I am (obviously) tired, there is also really not much to new to report -- every day feels like the same slow-motion repeat of the one before. I am gradually recovering and getting around a bit easier every day, but I am still nowhere close to where I was before. Some days I do too much and the next day I am confined to the couch again popping pain-killers every few hours, but overall, I am slowly getting better and I can tell that my body is healing.
Emotionally, though, I feel weaker than I have since this whole ordeal started. I don't want to start chemo again. The last time I started the chemo (back in March) I was in full-blown "fighting mode". My body felt strong and I was ready to take on any chemo drugs the doctors threw at me; I felt mentally prepared to direct the drugs wherever they were most needed in my body. I felt ready to fight the cancer with all my might. But now, I feel like I have been run over by a tractor. I feel so physically weak and so mentally exhausted. The surgery was so much harder than I ever expected. It took so much out of me and the thought of starting chemo again in just 9 days is overwhelming. How in the hell am I going to survive this?? I have already lost about 25 pounds since February and, if this chemo round is anything like the last, I know that I'll lose even more. I already feel so weak -- how can I possibly do this??
But at the same time, I wonder, how can I not?? I cannot imagine finding out two or three years from now that the cancer has come back; that somehow there was a straggler cancer cell that somehow survived everything we have thrown at it already and went to to proliferate. And I cannot imagine thinking that I might have prevented the relapse had I only done one more round of chemo. I couldn't live with myself if that were to happen! I couldn't look my children in the eye and tell them that there was more that I could have done, but that I didn't feel up to it. And so I have no choice...I must do the chemo. There is only one path to follow up this mountain if I want to live a life of no regrets.
I go back to the doctor this Friday for one last check-in before the chemo starts on Tuesday of the next week. Somehow, someway, I need to find the strength within myself in the next few days to begin climbing this last passage of my mountain...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
