Every Day Matters

Sciatica

I have been consumed for the last two weeks with sciatica. And I must apologize to anyone I know who has ever told me they had sciatica, because I was not sorry enough for you. I had no idea how painful this was!

I did nothing - it just came on. Excruciating pain in one side of my butt which sometimes shot down my leg. I learned that sciatica is not a condition, it is a symptom of a sciatic nerve problem (pinched, etc) or a disc problem (herniated, compressed, etc), or a spinal tumor. So you know which one of these things I was most concerned about.

When I went to my doctor Tuesday, she gave me Percocet and sent me for a spinal x-ray, which was fine. Thank goodness!!!! But Percocet does nothing for the infllammation which is the cause of the pain. Advil actually relieved the pain better...but lots of Advil, which is not good for one's stomach or liver, especially after having had chemo.

So after two more days, she prescribed a prednisone dose-pack (decreasing dosage). Before I started taking it, I visited my acupuncturist who told me I should probably see a chiropractor. This was at 3 on Friday. I called my sister Debbie who caught her chiropractor in her office so I rushed over there. Fortunately I already had the spinal x-ray, which Debbie brought to the office. So I had my first-ever chiropractic treatment. Until 10 PM, I felt good and then the pain hit me like a brick wall.

So I started the prednisone yeserday morning and it provided instant relief. There is some breakthrough pain which Advil takes care of, but I really cannot continue to take that in quantity. Just hopeful that the prednisone will work, as well as the two additional sessions I have scheduled with the chiropractor on Monday and Thursday. What I really want to avoid is having an epidural injection or a nerve block done.

Brendan arrived home last night and tomorrow we leave for a few days at Laura and Ken's. He is looking forward to seeing the little ones and is also going to be investigating job opportunities nearby. Keeping our fingers crossed.

 

Charlie at Thomasland for his 3rd birthday

To think that just a few months ago I knew almost nothing about Thomas the Tank Engine. Things have changed....Thomas is a HUGE part of our family now!

For his birthday, Charlie went to "A Day with Thomas" at the B and O Museum in Baltimore. The full-sized Thomas engine pulled into the station and the look on Charlie's face was priceless. He squealed with joy, waving his hands - a sight to behold! We had a party of two of his friends, their parents and siblings and my sister Debbie. Nine adults and six children under the age of 3! And we needed every one of those adults.

All the kids loved the model train display above.

After walking around the station, we got on the train for a 25-minute train ride. Thomas music was playing and Charlie was a very happy little boy. After some more hanging around, we all went out for lunch.

After arriving home there were more friends, pizza, and a cake made of cupcakes in the shape of a "3" with a Thomas replica on it.

Charlie pretty much had a day in Thomas-heaven! What a wonderful day.

And this little beauty was along for the ride

 

 

 

Asparagus Soup with Herbed Goat Cheese

I am all "moved in" at the beach. My cleaning crew came last week - what a good feeling to have the house cleaned so well at the beginning of the season. They leave nothing untouched!

On my way home from Laura and Ken's on Saturday, I stopped at a farm that was selling local asparagus. Isn't this beautiful?

I grilled a pound of it for dinner last night (that is all I ate!) and today decided to make asparagus soup....it was a cold and gloomy day. I used a recipe of Giada's that she made on her show quite a while ago and it is also in her new cookbook.

I just used part of the recipe....I skipped the herbed goat cheese. Why make it when you can buy it?

Soup Ingredients:

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large leek (white and light green part only), thinly sliced (I used 2 medium ones)
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 pounds medium asparagus, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces (do not use asparagus that is too thin or too thick)
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil leaves (I only had a small amount)
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a Dutch oven or large saucepan, heat the butter over medium heat. Add the leeks and cook, stirring constantly until softened, about 3 to 4 minutes.

Add the asparagus and saute a couple of minutes, then add broth and basil.

I love my new Zyliss knife. Not expensive at all and it cuts and feels as good as my "heirloom" Sabatier knife which I bought for $45 in 1976!

Season with salt and pepper, to taste. Increase the heat to high and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook until the asparagus is tender, about 15 minutes. Using an immersion blender, blend the soup until almost smooth. I left some chunks in it. Keep the soup warm over low heat.

To serve: Ladle the soup into shallow bowls and garnish with the herbed goat cheese. I forgot to take a photo of the soup with the goat cheese melting atop it, but it was delicious. And such an easy recipe

Here is the original recipe, from Giada's newest cookbook
Asparagus Soup with Herbed Goat Cheese

packing

I am "moving" to the beach a bit early this year....in the next week or so. I resolved to be more organized about packing so that when I get there, it is easier to unpack --- and I have done pretty well, I think.

Yes, I take a lot of STUFF. I like to be sure that I have all the pleasures of home with me. I also pack in bags because they are so easy to carry and organize.

I use our dining room as a "staging area" and below is what I have packed so far (no clothes, toiletries/medications, houseplants, or coolers have yet been packed  - yes, I take some of my houseplants!).

6 bags of food (I cleaned out the pantry yesterday), 3 bags of books, a bag of knitting, 3 bags of watercolor supplies, a bag of Isaac's foods......and then there is the "miscellaneous" category!

my little feathered friends

I have recently become rather disgusted by the things I have read about chicken "farming".

You see, I was buying cage-free eggs, thinking I was doing myself a favor. Turns out that cage-free usually just means that chickens are packed into a huge warehouse, not roaming around a pasture, as the words "cage-free" would make you think. Most of these chickens never go outside and many have their beaks removed so they cannot peck each other to death. Like I said, disgusting.

Even the label "organic chicken" is not a guarantee that the chickens were raised humanely. WholeFoods' chicken labels say that they were fed no antibiotics, were not caged, and can be traced back to the farms where they were raised. But this does not mean that they are pasture-raised.

Almost all chicken processors/labels (Whole Foods, Perdue, Mountaire) use small farmers to raise their poultry. This is so-called "factory farming". When I drive along the back roads at the beach, I see many chicken houses on farms and near the mailbox there will be a small sign indicating "Perdue", "Mountaire", etc.

One name in which I do have some faith is a small Pennsylvania company, Bell and Evans, which appears to raise its own chickens. But B and E products are not easy to find.

I was riding down a back road near our house this past week and saw a sign "Fresh Brown Eggs $2.95" so I drove down a really long driveway where I found my new friends

and I bought these...different sizes and shades of brown because of the variety of chickens this lady has in her yard. 40 chickens.

Tonight I made a fritatta, containing eggs, pancetta, potatoes, cheese and shallots.....delicious

 

I Shall Return

Yes, I will blog again. Sometime.

I am so tired and sore that even my fingers hurt. I am just back from 3 days at Laura and Ken's beautiful new home in the woods of Centreville, MD....helping them make order out of chaos. They had belongings brought from their rental house, from a POD, and from a storage unit. A lot of stuff even though they greatly pared down before leaving Broadmoor.

The four-family on their new front steps

Can't wait to eat on their screened porch, looking out into the woods

More photos to come ..........

Trials (and tribulations)

Warning....long story that describes the typical way things seemed to be handled in medical care. Or don't get handled. Often one hand does not know what the other is doing.

I get online alerts about any news that refers to uterine or endometrial cancer (because UPSC is so rare, there is hardly ever any news about it. I just found out today that it does not even have a listing in the national cancer database!) I firmly believe that every cancer patient has to be her own advocate because otherwise, you just fall through the cracks. No one is really looking out for you. I do not care who your doctor is or what hospital you use. Oncologists have tunnel vision. They treat you and check on you every few months but nothing in between. Any problems, you are told to see your primary care doctor. Thank goodness for those wonderful chemo nurses that I see once a month when I get my port flushed. They answer questions, write scripts, and generally offer comfort. They are special women.

I am always looking for drug trials. I do not mind the thought of being a guinea pig, although I am not altruistic enough to do it if it would not benefit me. So when I got an alert about a vaccine trial for endometrial cancer, I was excited. It mentioned a Phase 1 trial, which means that the vaccine has not been used in humans and it is going to trial to determine dosage and safety.

So on February 16, I e-mailed the pharmaceutical company in Portland, OR that is producing the vaccine. The woman who answered my e-mail said she was forwarding it to their clinical director. I heard nothing from him for a week, so I e-mailed him. He wrote back and said he would be glad to answer my questions, so I told him my story and why I was interested in the trial, because I do not want to just sit here, waiting to cancer to recur. I want to DO something. By now 12 days had elapsed from the time of my initial inquiry. I did not hear back from him for another week, so e-mailed him again. Finally, he wrote back and said to call him. On March 9, I did call him and he gave me a contact at a military base in Texas. Why didn't he just give me this information at the beginning?

Then I emailed the Texas contact who, it turned out, has nothing to do with the trial, but she sent me the contact information for the nurse who was running the trial - in a location near DC. A ha! I thought, close to home.

Unfortunately, the phone number for this next nurse was "out of service" so I e-mailed her. I saw that the e-mail address was that of a foundation, so I googled the foundation and after some further research, actually found information about the trial! I called the foundation and left three messages in three different offices. I was just so tired of getting such a runaround.

The nurse I had e-mailed got back to me two days later telling me that she was running the Phase 2 vaccine trial for BREAST cancer. GRRRRR (Phase 2 means that dosage has been determined, they are seeing some efficacy, and it has been deemed safe enough to proceed).

Yesterday I FINALLY got a call from someone doing the trial I was inquiring about, someone in an office where I had left one of my messages. Keep in mind, it has been almost a month since my initial inquiry and I have "traveled" from Oregon to Texas to Virginia!

I talked to this nurse for an hour yesterday. She was very enthusiastic and informative and after our conversation, she faxed me the 15-page consent form. Rather daunting, as was the thought of six monthly trips I would need to make for two days to Virginia for the vaccine. But I could handle it. I told her I was going to e-mail my doctor's oncology nurse at Hopkins right away, which I did. The oncology nurse called me this morning and said she was going to have my doctor call me on Friday to discuss the trial and gave me a contact in pathology (the trial protocol requires a tumor sample. Hospitals keep these for 10 years).

So I thought I had things under control. Until the trial nurse called me at noon to tell me that I am not eligible for the trial because I am not a patient of the gyn onc group associated with a certain military hospital near DC. (The trial is sponsored by the DOD) Now certainly she knew this yesterday about me! Didn't anyone tell HER? Maddening!  She said I could change doctors and then they could take me. But frankly, it is all just too much and I decided not to pursue it any further. I was beaten down by all this effort, to be honest. I also knew that I probably would not get any benefit from this trial. It is Phase 2 where the patients see benefits. The nurse told me that she would keep me in mind for Phase 2, but that will not be for three years.

All of this was just so discouraging, from the lack of organization and the bad referrals to the lack of knowledge of the protocol. Very upsetting and disillusioning.

But I will keep trying to find things that can help me. I am persistent!

Zucchini Tortitas

My friend "Miz Honey" sent me this recipe - a type of Mexican pancakes. I made them last night with our steak and they were DELICIOUS. But be warned....it is hard to stop eating them!

                                             Zucchini Tortitas

These are great for vegetarians among us but also if you make them sliver-dollar size they could be great for cocktail snacks.  My husband did make them ahead and re-heated.

1 large zucchini(8 oz.) - should equal 1 cup shredded
2 eggs,lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese (6 oz.)
2/3 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup chopped green onions
2 teaspoons cumin seeds,crushed (I used powdered cumin)
1 teaspoon dried Mexican Oregano (I used regular dried oregano)
1/2 teaspoon salt (I used less)
1 cup cooked fresh or frozen corn (I used canned)
2 to 4 tbs. vegetable oil 

Coarsely shred zucchini with food processor shredding disk, then drain on several layers of paper towels, patting to dry.

In a large bowl stir together eggs, cheese, flour, green onions, oregano, and salt. Stir in zucchini and corn. It will not be batter-like, but will be fairly stiff/thick.

 

in a large skillet heat 2 tablespoons oil over medium-high heat. Drop rounded tablespoons of the zucchini mixture into hot oil. Cook for 4 minutes or until golden brown.  Drain on paper towels.  Repeat with remaining mixture using more oil as needed. Put in oven to keep warm.

Recipe called for some fancy sauce to be made but we used salsa verde and it was great.

My friend Lisa

When my dear friend Barbara Adams was killed in a car accident two + years ago, I "met" her daughter-in-law, Lisa, through e-mail. Barbara had told me about Lisa's bravery in the face of her breast cancer and her son's health challenges, so it was good to get to know her. We often correspond and I read her blog regularly. Yesterday, she had an entry entitled Why I Divorced the Susan G. Komen Foundation years ago. It is a very powerful post. Please read it.

I am so disgusted with Nancy Brinker, CEO of the Susan G. Komen foundation and Komen's sister. I "divorced" myself from the foundation years ago, too, when I found out that Brinker was being paid over $600,000 a year and that only 17% of the funds*** that are raised go to cancer research! Isn't their slogan "Komen for the cure"? That was the end for me, after years of giving the foundation large yearly donations (my mother died from breast cancer). Not only that, but I thought it was whorish for them to be "branding" so many things...I think Lisa called it "pinkwashing".

***You can read all about the finances here: Lawsuits for the Cure  - shocking!

Now there is this Komen boondoggle with Planned Parenthood (and within 2 days SGKF reversed its decision - fearful, I suppose, of fewer donations). Hopefully, people who got angry this week will have seen the true nature of this group and will no longer support it.

What Lisa wrote about cancer in her blog post applies to all cancers, not just breast. When she wrote this:

Beneath the pretty lies ugly,
the ugly truth of cancer
and what it has taken from me.

While some may be able to go on,
move on,
forget,
I cannot.
My body will not let me.

This made my heart ache. I may look good/normal, but I am not. Nor is anyone who has gone through this. I deal with daily physical problems from the treatments I had to endure. And the word "endure" is not an exaggeration. Plus there are the terrible and insidious emotional issues of anyone who has cancer, let alone an aggressive and rare cancer. Not one day goes by, not one ache occurs, that we do not think --"is it back"?

Sad but true.

Purging

I have been purging recently....purging myself and our house of unnecessary possessions and junk (and sometimes Bob's things too, much to his dismay). Someone asked me why I was on this mission and the only reason I can think of is that once I looked into the abyss, simplifying and organizing my life seemed very important --  and I don't want the "weight" of so many unnecessary possessions. 

We have an unfinished room downstairs on the lower level - we call it the Cave and it is our only storage space ---- about 10 by 15 feet in size. We had 3-foot deep shelves built along one wall (best investment EVER - we also did this in our last house). So today, after reorganizing my Christmas closet (a perfectly sized space under the stairs), I started cleaning out the Cave. A formidable challenge! I worked in there for about 2 hours and filled 5 big Force-Flex bags with trash, not to mention the tall pile of empty boxes that had somehow found their way to those shelves. Oh, and there's also a large pile of things to take to Goodwill - and I already took one gigantic car load of things there earlier this week. Tomorrow I hope to finish up --- and there will STILL be too much STUFF!

I found the box with Laura's Cabbage Patch dolls (and a CP lunchbox), another box with her American Girl dolls, and a big plastic container with a doll cradle that Bob's dad had someone make for Laura. In that same container there are a lot of Madame Alexander dolls, large and small. I cannot wait to transfer possession of all these treasures to Clara! Doesn't she look like she will love all these things?