Being Active While I Can

I’m due to start chemo again in a couple of days, so while I’m feeling good I'm being active - uploading videos and pitching in with the cooking. This afternoon I walked around the block for the first time.

Speaking of videos, be sure to check out my YouTube Channel for all my videos. If you like them, click “like”. Here is a video I put up today.

As for cooking, I just finished one of the simplest but most delicious recipes I know and I’ll share it -

Home Made Croutons

Pre-heat over to 400 degrees F

Use one or two day old unsliced bread (fresh takes too long to bake).

If the crust is very light just start in, if it’s thick, cut the bread in half lengthwise.

With your fingers rip the bread into crouton size chunks (much better than slicing, I promise)

Put bread chunks in a bowl and infuse with extra virgin olive oil (pour in a bit, “stir” by hand. If necessary add a bit more etc). You want all the chucks to be well coated.

(You can add dried herbs, chile oil or whatever you think might spice up the crouton, but if it’s good bread and good oil this is not at all necessary.)

Place croutons in a single layer on a cookie sheet or baking dish

Put in oven. Check after 10 minutes. Take out when golden brown. It will probably take 15 minutes or so.

A Good Saturday

I’ve explained about how Terry is giving me fluids, but I thought you might like to see us in action. Our good friend Jennifer, who gave Terry a nice five hour break today, took these shots at my request. I'm holding the end of the tube that accesses my port while Terry gets ready to shoot me some saline solution.

Note my Missoni shirt (under the apron). I decided just because I was sick I didn’t have to ignore my designer clothes. Also, Jennifer is someone who appreciates things like that. Heck, the shirt under the Missoni has cuff links as well. Why not?

With Jennifer’s help I managed to record a tune. My playing sounds a bit rusty, but I like the performance okay. Here's the link to YouTube

Appetite

My appetite has been pretty poor for awhile. My abused gastrointestinal tract first had a huge tumor grow over it, pressing it down, and then had its large intestine taken temporarily out of commission. Not a prescription for a robust appetite.

Giants Jersey courtesy Eric Helbush

On top of this, as many of you know or have read, chemo can bring on a state where familiar foods smell and taste bland, strange or even nauseous. You know you need to gain weight, but you just can’t produce any saliva or enthusiasm. You choke down a few bites, chase them with a lot of water or juice, and tell yourself it is for your own good. In my own case, a bowl of cereal with yogurt, milk and fruit in the morning and a smoothie (ice cream, banana, berries, protein powder) in the afternoon were the only things that elevated themselves out of the “gag me” realm.

That’s why I’m happy to report that my appetite has returned. Thursday it was pretty good and then yesterday I downed - with enthusiasm - a bowl of cereal, a croissant, a turkey and cheese sandwich and, for dinner, homemade spaghetti sauce cooked by yours truly with help from brother-in-law Hank (chopped all ingredients, ate huge portions and teamed up for the the clean-up) and Terry (vegetables and clean up). Without the ingredients to make a classic Bolognese sauce, I improvised with onion, garlic, anchovy, carrots, stewed tomatoes and ground beef, simmered for 2 1/2 hours. For pasta we mixed 1/2 whole wheat dry with 1/2 traditional fresh (all we had left). It was an improv, but the two pastas added another layer of interest for me.

My Favorite Giant Sergio Romo's Number

For lunch today, a classic Sloppy Joe using the remaining spaghetti sauce. Yum. Such fun to enjoy food again.

If things continue apace, it’s take out Indian food (mild) from Ajanta for our Monday dinner with Carol (one hopes)! 

Our Garden

The first thing I noticed getting out of the car at home after my month in the hospital was how great the back yard looked. Everything appeared to be in bloom including the Cecil Brunner Roses above our arbor. This arbor is the human social center of our garden. The roses start giving shade in the mid to late afternoon, depending on the time of year. We have a wrought iron table and chairs from Restoration Hardware, plus two odd metal chairs from the late lamented Smith & Hawken outlet (a recliner is in the works).

One of joys of seeing the roses is knowing how hard Terry (with occasional aid from yours truly) has had to work with them. Their origin is at the bottom of the stone wall that divides us from our downhill neighbors (on their side). Jasmine, ivy and native morning glory have all tried and continue to try to strangle the rose branches. One doesn’t have to prune that often, but the pruning is not easy and Terry has to wear protection gloves, spend much time on the ladder, and lean perilously into our neighbor’s garden. This is the only real garden work Terry got in before the medical tsunami hit so she is especially thrilled by the glory of the rose bloom.

Our other plants are doing well, especially our lime tree, jasmine (on the back low fence), rosemary, yellow flowered potentilla, Australian tea tree, Japanese maple and the marguerite and strawberry tree in the picture. Fauna usually seen include squirrels, ravens, humming birds, scrub jays, various ground feeders (safer now with Judy into middle age) and butterflies. Our neighborhood deer dine in the front yard usually, but they’ll hop the back fence too.

Routine + Internet Improvement + Lincoln Review

I know it’s been awhile - chalk it up mainly to the internet going down for three or four days. 

Before getting to my normal ramblings (non detail oriented feel free to skip this paragraph) our daily routine consists of three home administered saline drip sessions, scheduled and emergency ostomy appliance changes, taking 25 pills a day and keeping myself amused reading, watching t.v., napping, playing guitar, pontificating on Facebook and keeping up this blog. As my nephew would say, now you know.

I want to write a bit about our latest AT&T tech guy and my optimism for our latest repair job. We’ve had DSL in this house for 13 years and it’s always been slow and funky. What the the first tech did was take one of our phone outputs and divide it into data and talk. Then we were given filter thingies to put on the other outlets. The way things went, the other phones could screw up our WiFi and, since so much was going on internally, problems couldn’t often be resolved without a visit to the house. This was true through 12 + years with 2Wire and the last six months with U-Verse.

Well this young man (early 20s probably) said, “to heck with this” and quickly ran a new wire from the outside of the house to a dedicated data outlet. The Data and talk divider is now outside the house. We now know, he swore, that any problem you have will have to be outside the house.

That makes sense to me, plus it’s definitely working faster. So kudos to the AT&T techo-nerd installer. And anyone with AT&T U-Verse or other DSL keep this in mind to suggest to your set up or trouble shooting guy.

I’ll close by talking about another movie I saw in the hospital. That would be be Lincoln, a terrific movie about striking while the fire is hot (among other things). Lincoln knew that the lame duck congress was his best and perhaps only bet to get through the 13th Amendment, and he did it. LBJ certainly understood the importance of timing. Even a slight delay can lead to no progress, witness the gun control issue. 

Anyway, It’s a bravura performance by Daniel Day Lewis, with an excellent script. It was also nice to see one of Terry’s and my favorite actors, David Strathairn, get such a nice meaty role in a major picture.

A thought provoking part of the picture is the question of what cause, tactic, or end is worth spending lives on. Obviously, the troops killed in battle are “legitimate” casualties. But what about Lincoln’s situation vis a vis the 13th amendment. The movie makes it pretty clear that peace could have come about sooner, but the slavery question wouldn’t have been settled to Lincoln’s and others' satisfaction. The Emancipation Proclamation was on shaky legal ground. So, he let the fighting continue, even permitting a Southern peace delegation to slowly make its way to Washington, while he maneuvered to get the amendment proposed and passed.

The Upper Terrace Walk Cancer Cluster

So far 2013 is shaping up as our worst year by far. Terry’s latest mammogram and follow up biopsy has revealed two labular carcinomas in her right breast - Unbelievable, but true. However, she could not have a less dangerous cancer. Quoting from the email she sent out to some of you, “I have seen the oncologist and the surgeon this week. Both are very encouraging. The surgeon says that right now it looks like a ‘stage zero,’ slow growing cancer with very little chance of spreading to the lymph nodes. I will have an MRI this coming Thursday to confirm that the two carcinomas are as small as they appear from the mammograms and ultrasound. The treatment options include surgery (lumpectomy or mastectomy), hormone treatments (for sure) and radiation (although I've already had two radiation treatments - a lot). Both these doctors are full understanding my needs in relation to Dale and are saying, ‘Don't panic. There's no rush.’ I, at least, unlike Dale, feel fine, have no symptoms, etc. The carcinomas were found with a routine mammogram.”

We’ve known this for a week or so, but Terry preferred to get a fairly thorough picture before we shared the info. 

We’ve decided to rename our patch of ground the Upper Terrace Walk Cancer Cluster or the UTWCC. 

I’m enjoying being home. My main annoyance is bone pain (those who have had chemo know what I’m talking about). I caught the great classic movie Here Comes Mr. Jordan on t.v. last night. Love that actor Edward Everett Horton. Remember his scenes with Eric Blore in some Fred Astaire movies? We also caught up with Project Runway - go Patricia! I'm managing a bit of guitar playing every day.

Signing off for now from the UTWCC.

Retail Therapy

According to Google, it was Marilyn Monroe who famously said, “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.” Well, a lot of Americans certainly do, including yours truly. Shopping is even patriotic and courageous. Remember President Shrub saying after 9/11, "This great nation will never be intimidated. People are going about their daily lives, working and shopping and playing, worshiping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and to baseball games." So, who am I to argue.

Terry and I have often discussed moving to cars with automatic transmissions, especially after one of us has spent an hour inching up to the Bay Bridge toll plaza with left knee tendons burning. Conveniently, automatic transmissions have made a huge leap forward in the last few years. The current Porsche DoppelKupplung PDK system uses two clutches, one for the even gears and one for the odd. So the next gear up or down has already engaged when the car shifts. A modern Porsche with automatic transmission actually performs better than one equipped with a standard transmission.

So, we’ve decided to buy a new car (or two) as we go through this [preowned new, probably]. Top on my list - the Porsche Cayman with the PDK system.