I have been up for a couple of hours now.
This is not a good thing.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
Lump appointment
1) Still have lumps, no changes. The onc's gut says that everything is fine, but we of course are following up. I have an appointment with a neck surgeon on Tuesday morning to discuss scans, surgery, or ?? (Boy do I hope that he's got something wonderful behind door number three. I am sick of scans, worried about all the radiation I keep receiving, and more-than-tired of surgery.) I just want this done with QUICKLY. I'm tired of living in anxiety-land.
2) My thyroid levels are way, way, way off. I've been hypo thyroid since 1989 and I get tested every few months, but something radical has changed and now I'm hyperthyroid and my test results are wacky. Apparently, in addition to other things, this can cause anxiety. So, I'm not crazy for feeling crazy. I'm to go off my thyroid meds immediately and I have an appointment with an endocrinologist on Monday morning. This is not related to the lumps in any way, but an incidental finding from my blood work.
I am grateful for girlfriends who hold my hand through these appointments. This is not fun.
I am grateful for all of you here, too. Thank you for caring about me.
2) My thyroid levels are way, way, way off. I've been hypo thyroid since 1989 and I get tested every few months, but something radical has changed and now I'm hyperthyroid and my test results are wacky. Apparently, in addition to other things, this can cause anxiety. So, I'm not crazy for feeling crazy. I'm to go off my thyroid meds immediately and I have an appointment with an endocrinologist on Monday morning. This is not related to the lumps in any way, but an incidental finding from my blood work.
I am grateful for girlfriends who hold my hand through these appointments. This is not fun.
I am grateful for all of you here, too. Thank you for caring about me.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Feeding Ourselves and Our Children
I'm distracting myself - let's see if it works.
-------------------------------------
Today I read this in the New York Times:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/six-meaningless-claims-on-food-labels/?apage=2#comments
and this:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/when-kids-eat-what-they-watch/?src=tp
I find the comments on such articles as interesting as the articles themselves. I recognize that the NYT is more elitist than not, so it's not a cross section of America, but it's a starting place.
It is no surprise to me that I fall on the far end of the food debate. I'm not the most extreme (yes, Tessa knows what Oreos are, and she loves them, and I let her eat them....at other peoples houses) but I'm towards that end. No surprise to anyone who knows me, and I know my own biases.
What I am saddened by is that more people do not share these biases.
What's my main food philosophy? I'll take the words from Michael Pollan: Eat foods. Mostly plants. Not too much.
I think that this applies quadruply to children. Just watching how Tessa grows, both physically, intellectually, and emotionally, lets me know that he body is undergoing incredible changes and needs all the support it can get. Not only is she developing habits to last her a lifetime, she is developing a body to last her a lifetime. I take that pretty seriously: it is my job to give her the best body I can.
There are so many components to nutrition that I worry about, including ethical sourcing of food, organic, and the like. But even more important that that, I think is that she needs to eat food. Not food like substances, but real food.
-----------
I recently stopped buying Kashi TLC crackers. I have liked them for years - they taste good, they have whole grains in them, they're high in fiber. But looking further at their ingredients:
Unbleached Wheat Flour, Kashi Seven Whole Grain and Sesame Flour (Whole: Oats, Hard Red Winter Wheat, Rye, Long Grain Brown Rice, Triticale, Barley, Buckwheat, Sesame Seeds), Expeller Pressed Sunflower Oil, Evaporated Cane Juice, Toasted Whole Wheat, Toasted Sesame Seeds, Wehat Bran, Contains two percent or less of Brown Rice Syrup, Stone Ground Whole Wheat Flour, Sea Salt, Malt Extract, Yellow Corn Meal, Millet, Onion Powder, Horseradish Powder, Rice Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Natural Leavenings (Potassium Bicarbonate, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Whey
...makes me question.
The very first ingredient is processed flour. The grains are good (and what drew me to the crackers in the first place). Evaporated cane juice is just sugar, so is brown rice syrup. More research:
http://www.goodguide.com/products/224047-kashi-tlc-crackers-original-7-grain
Not harmful, but doesn't exactly come across like health food.
And what is sodium acid pyrophosphate?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disodium_pyrophosphate
Or monocalcium phosphate?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocalcium_phosphate
The first line for the wikipedia definition of monocalcium phosphate reads:
Monocalcium phosphate is a chemical compound with the formula Ca(H2PO4)2. It is commonly found as the monohydrate, Ca(H2PO4)2·H2O.
Okay, seriously? Is that what I want to eat? Is this food, or a food-like-substance? Why does "health food" need chemicals in it?
I used to eat Luna bars. Here is the ingredients list for Nutz Over Chocolate:
LunaPro (TM) (soy rice crisp [soy protein isolate, rice flour], organic oats, organic soy flour, organic roasted soybeans, organic milled flaxseed), brown rice syrup, Coating (organic evaporated cane juice, palm kernel oil, cocoa, inulin, soy lecithin, natural vanilla), vegetable glycerin, organic peanut butter, inulin, peanut flour, natural flavors, sea salt, geen tea extract.Vitamins & Minerals: calcium carbonate, dicalcium phosphate, magnesium oxide, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), alpha-tocophero
Now, let me go to the kitchen to whip some of those up. Where is my soy protein isolate? And my inulin? (What is inulin, anyway?) And glycerin? (Oh, I have glycerin. In the bathroom. It's called SOAP.)
This list makes me lose my appetite.
--------------
Feeding myself is complicated enough. I aim for a mainly plant based diet, with occassional ethically sourced, sustainably raised meat. I hope to eat mostly whole grains, unprocessed foods. I shop at "healthy" grocery stores, and I try to stick to the health foods aisles. Kashi and Clif (the manufacturer of Luna bars) are actually among the higher-scoring companies for healthy items, and if you ask me, they're falling short. I can't count on the "healthy" companies to take care of me.
But throw the likes and dislikes of a seven year old into the mix, and it's much, much harder.
Everywhere we go, we see messages about food-like-substances. Cereals, cookies, crackers, bars, and packaged dinners that are designed to be appealing to children. Chicken in the shape of dinosaurs, for example, includes these ingredients:
Chicken breast with rib meat, water, dried whole eggs, seasoning (salt, onion powder, modified corn starch, natural flavor), and sodium phosphates. BREADED WITH: Enriched unbleached wheat flour (enriched with niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, dextrose, iodized salt, yellow corn flour, modified corn starch, dried whey, soy flour, sugar, spices, caramel color, garlic powder, methylcellulose, oleoresin paprika, spice extractive. Breading set in vegetable oil.
Of the 23 ingredients listed, only 12 look like real foods to me (and I'm counting water, spices, and oleoresin paprika in there, even though I have no idea what oleoresin means). That means that 11 ingredients aren't even real ingredients....they're food-like substances. And I'm not even getting into ethical sourcing, or organics, or processing.
As a stay at home mom and chief cook at our house, it's pretty hard to compete. Assuming I was willing to make my own chicken nuggets (sounds like a lot of effort for little return) I'm certainly not going to make them shaped like dinosaurs or some other cute creatures (because I'm not sure I could - how do you make chicken do that?). They won't each look like carbon copies of each other, and they won't taste like the ones from the plastic bag in the freezer section; they won't have the same "caramel color". And they won't take 15 minutes in an oven or a blast of the microwave, either - they'd take at least an hour.
But Tessa doesn't see that. She just sees yummy chicken nuggets.
Tessa is more adventurous than many, but she's pretty sick of my cooking. Vegetables? Yuck. Pasta? Okay, but none of your sauce. (The penne with sausage, chard, and zuchinni that I made recently got gagging sounds.) Thai stir fry? Blech. Salad? How about I just pick out the blue cheese.
I'm not giving up, but it is a hard thing to face every day, multiple times per day. Tessa wants peanut butter that doesn't seperate (the natural stuff I buy does; it contains peanuts and salt, and nothing else); compare that to Jif:
MADE FROM ROASTED PEANUTS AND SUGAR. CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: MOLASSES, FULLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OILS (RAPESEED AND SOYBEAN), MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, SALT.
And don't get me started on jam.
I'm more attuned to food ingredients than most people, and I struggle. I won't give up, and I'll keep trying to work it out, but I'm constantly tweaking. Just this week I found out (through a friend) that Tillamook ice cream - chosen because they have cows with no growth hormones, and they're local, and they promote their natural flavors - uses corn syrup. Well, cross that one off the list.
No wonder our nation's kids are becoming more and more obese, and with higher rates of type II diabetes. No wonder heart disease is a number one killer. No wonder cancer is so prevelant: we just weren't meant to be eating all of this junk.
I don't want to spend my life in the kitchen, even though I believe that there is honor in it. But feeding myself and my family is a bit like running a gauntlet. I'm managing, and doing relatively well, but it is a challenge that I think our great grandmothers would shake their heads at.
How are you handling feeding your family? What are your solutions for these problems?
-------------------------------------
Today I read this in the New York Times:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/six-meaningless-claims-on-food-labels/?apage=2#comments
and this:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/when-kids-eat-what-they-watch/?src=tp
I find the comments on such articles as interesting as the articles themselves. I recognize that the NYT is more elitist than not, so it's not a cross section of America, but it's a starting place.
It is no surprise to me that I fall on the far end of the food debate. I'm not the most extreme (yes, Tessa knows what Oreos are, and she loves them, and I let her eat them....at other peoples houses) but I'm towards that end. No surprise to anyone who knows me, and I know my own biases.
What I am saddened by is that more people do not share these biases.
What's my main food philosophy? I'll take the words from Michael Pollan: Eat foods. Mostly plants. Not too much.
I think that this applies quadruply to children. Just watching how Tessa grows, both physically, intellectually, and emotionally, lets me know that he body is undergoing incredible changes and needs all the support it can get. Not only is she developing habits to last her a lifetime, she is developing a body to last her a lifetime. I take that pretty seriously: it is my job to give her the best body I can.
There are so many components to nutrition that I worry about, including ethical sourcing of food, organic, and the like. But even more important that that, I think is that she needs to eat food. Not food like substances, but real food.
-----------
I recently stopped buying Kashi TLC crackers. I have liked them for years - they taste good, they have whole grains in them, they're high in fiber. But looking further at their ingredients:
Unbleached Wheat Flour, Kashi Seven Whole Grain and Sesame Flour (Whole: Oats, Hard Red Winter Wheat, Rye, Long Grain Brown Rice, Triticale, Barley, Buckwheat, Sesame Seeds), Expeller Pressed Sunflower Oil, Evaporated Cane Juice, Toasted Whole Wheat, Toasted Sesame Seeds, Wehat Bran, Contains two percent or less of Brown Rice Syrup, Stone Ground Whole Wheat Flour, Sea Salt, Malt Extract, Yellow Corn Meal, Millet, Onion Powder, Horseradish Powder, Rice Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Natural Leavenings (Potassium Bicarbonate, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Whey
...makes me question.
The very first ingredient is processed flour. The grains are good (and what drew me to the crackers in the first place). Evaporated cane juice is just sugar, so is brown rice syrup. More research:
http://www.goodguide.com/products/224047-kashi-tlc-crackers-original-7-grain
Not harmful, but doesn't exactly come across like health food.
And what is sodium acid pyrophosphate?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disodium_pyrophosphate
Or monocalcium phosphate?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monocalcium_phosphate
The first line for the wikipedia definition of monocalcium phosphate reads:
Monocalcium phosphate is a chemical compound with the formula Ca(H2PO4)2. It is commonly found as the monohydrate, Ca(H2PO4)2·H2O.
Okay, seriously? Is that what I want to eat? Is this food, or a food-like-substance? Why does "health food" need chemicals in it?
I used to eat Luna bars. Here is the ingredients list for Nutz Over Chocolate:
LunaPro (TM) (soy rice crisp [soy protein isolate, rice flour], organic oats, organic soy flour, organic roasted soybeans, organic milled flaxseed), brown rice syrup, Coating (organic evaporated cane juice, palm kernel oil, cocoa, inulin, soy lecithin, natural vanilla), vegetable glycerin, organic peanut butter, inulin, peanut flour, natural flavors, sea salt, geen tea extract.Vitamins & Minerals: calcium carbonate, dicalcium phosphate, magnesium oxide, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), alpha-tocophero
Now, let me go to the kitchen to whip some of those up. Where is my soy protein isolate? And my inulin? (What is inulin, anyway?) And glycerin? (Oh, I have glycerin. In the bathroom. It's called SOAP.)
This list makes me lose my appetite.
--------------
Feeding myself is complicated enough. I aim for a mainly plant based diet, with occassional ethically sourced, sustainably raised meat. I hope to eat mostly whole grains, unprocessed foods. I shop at "healthy" grocery stores, and I try to stick to the health foods aisles. Kashi and Clif (the manufacturer of Luna bars) are actually among the higher-scoring companies for healthy items, and if you ask me, they're falling short. I can't count on the "healthy" companies to take care of me.
But throw the likes and dislikes of a seven year old into the mix, and it's much, much harder.
Everywhere we go, we see messages about food-like-substances. Cereals, cookies, crackers, bars, and packaged dinners that are designed to be appealing to children. Chicken in the shape of dinosaurs, for example, includes these ingredients:
Chicken breast with rib meat, water, dried whole eggs, seasoning (salt, onion powder, modified corn starch, natural flavor), and sodium phosphates. BREADED WITH: Enriched unbleached wheat flour (enriched with niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, dextrose, iodized salt, yellow corn flour, modified corn starch, dried whey, soy flour, sugar, spices, caramel color, garlic powder, methylcellulose, oleoresin paprika, spice extractive. Breading set in vegetable oil.
Of the 23 ingredients listed, only 12 look like real foods to me (and I'm counting water, spices, and oleoresin paprika in there, even though I have no idea what oleoresin means). That means that 11 ingredients aren't even real ingredients....they're food-like substances. And I'm not even getting into ethical sourcing, or organics, or processing.
As a stay at home mom and chief cook at our house, it's pretty hard to compete. Assuming I was willing to make my own chicken nuggets (sounds like a lot of effort for little return) I'm certainly not going to make them shaped like dinosaurs or some other cute creatures (because I'm not sure I could - how do you make chicken do that?). They won't each look like carbon copies of each other, and they won't taste like the ones from the plastic bag in the freezer section; they won't have the same "caramel color". And they won't take 15 minutes in an oven or a blast of the microwave, either - they'd take at least an hour.
But Tessa doesn't see that. She just sees yummy chicken nuggets.
Tessa is more adventurous than many, but she's pretty sick of my cooking. Vegetables? Yuck. Pasta? Okay, but none of your sauce. (The penne with sausage, chard, and zuchinni that I made recently got gagging sounds.) Thai stir fry? Blech. Salad? How about I just pick out the blue cheese.
I'm not giving up, but it is a hard thing to face every day, multiple times per day. Tessa wants peanut butter that doesn't seperate (the natural stuff I buy does; it contains peanuts and salt, and nothing else); compare that to Jif:
MADE FROM ROASTED PEANUTS AND SUGAR. CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF: MOLASSES, FULLY HYDROGENATED VEGETABLE OILS (RAPESEED AND SOYBEAN), MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, SALT.
And don't get me started on jam.
I'm more attuned to food ingredients than most people, and I struggle. I won't give up, and I'll keep trying to work it out, but I'm constantly tweaking. Just this week I found out (through a friend) that Tillamook ice cream - chosen because they have cows with no growth hormones, and they're local, and they promote their natural flavors - uses corn syrup. Well, cross that one off the list.
No wonder our nation's kids are becoming more and more obese, and with higher rates of type II diabetes. No wonder heart disease is a number one killer. No wonder cancer is so prevelant: we just weren't meant to be eating all of this junk.
I don't want to spend my life in the kitchen, even though I believe that there is honor in it. But feeding myself and my family is a bit like running a gauntlet. I'm managing, and doing relatively well, but it is a challenge that I think our great grandmothers would shake their heads at.
How are you handling feeding your family? What are your solutions for these problems?
That panicky feeling
As my appointment gets closer and closer, I am getting more frightened. It's like all rational thought completely disappears, and leaves in its place a giant black hole.
I started to believe that it was metastacized breast cancer....but I must stop. I will prepare myself for surgery and benign results. Deep breaths...
Today I'm going to do yoga to try to get myself calmer. I'm going to try to push away the fears, to reclaim my thoughts, to visualize my healthy body. Deep breaths...
I would really appreciate your thoughts, prayers, white light, and love right now. Thank you.
I started to believe that it was metastacized breast cancer....but I must stop. I will prepare myself for surgery and benign results. Deep breaths...
Today I'm going to do yoga to try to get myself calmer. I'm going to try to push away the fears, to reclaim my thoughts, to visualize my healthy body. Deep breaths...
I would really appreciate your thoughts, prayers, white light, and love right now. Thank you.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Stuck
I'm starting to think that now might be a good time to find my therapist's phone number. I haven't been in about a year, but perhaps I should.
I am feeling stuck.
Stuck in Cancerland.
A few weeks ago I found a lump in my neck, not far from where the scar from the August/September 2009 debacle was. I waited a week, and the lump didn't go away. I made an appointment with my oncologist, and she affirmed it: yes, there are lumps. The "big" one that I felt (about the size of my index fingernail) and a few smaller ones. In a chain, probably lymph nodes. Only on one side of my neck. (Not the cancer side, though.)
My doctor is wise, and trustworthy. She suggested that I might have some underlying infection, and that I should take antibiotics to see if that made my nodes return to normal. Because of the r ecent surgery, the anatomy of my nodes might be different; closer to the skin or something - and maybe that is why we could only feel them on one side. She said that she could not tell why they were large - they did not pathologically feel like cancer (not rock hard) but she couldn't say that it wasn't, either. She said "Maybe you just have a squirrely neck" (which Ryan thinks is hysterical; he says I have squirrels in my neck).
I finished the antibiotics several days ago. The lumps are still there.
So now, I have to find the energy to pick up the phone and make follow up appointments with my oncologist and the neck surgeon who operated on me last fall. I need to go see my GP, as well, to discuss my thyroid issues, which may be the source of my fatigue. (I've had thyroid issues for years, and chemo has exacerbated them.) And I really should call the therapist instead of whining here.
Since I entered Cancerland almost five years ago, I have not had a solid six months without problems or surgery or some heinous side effect. Some months have been great, some have been horrid, but it's been a roller coaster. I honestly feel like I haven't had time to catch my breath....for five years.
Five years is a long time to be out of breath, and I'm tired. And feeling very stuck.
Who I want to be: Energetic, grateful, active.
Who I am: Tired, and grateful to be alive but resentful at so much of this trouble. Stuck.
I am optimistic about living a long life. And I am grateful, and happy, for so much. But I want out of Cancerland, right now. Badly. It's a desperate feeling.
I am feeling stuck.
Stuck in Cancerland.
A few weeks ago I found a lump in my neck, not far from where the scar from the August/September 2009 debacle was. I waited a week, and the lump didn't go away. I made an appointment with my oncologist, and she affirmed it: yes, there are lumps. The "big" one that I felt (about the size of my index fingernail) and a few smaller ones. In a chain, probably lymph nodes. Only on one side of my neck. (Not the cancer side, though.)
My doctor is wise, and trustworthy. She suggested that I might have some underlying infection, and that I should take antibiotics to see if that made my nodes return to normal. Because of the r ecent surgery, the anatomy of my nodes might be different; closer to the skin or something - and maybe that is why we could only feel them on one side. She said that she could not tell why they were large - they did not pathologically feel like cancer (not rock hard) but she couldn't say that it wasn't, either. She said "Maybe you just have a squirrely neck" (which Ryan thinks is hysterical; he says I have squirrels in my neck).
I finished the antibiotics several days ago. The lumps are still there.
So now, I have to find the energy to pick up the phone and make follow up appointments with my oncologist and the neck surgeon who operated on me last fall. I need to go see my GP, as well, to discuss my thyroid issues, which may be the source of my fatigue. (I've had thyroid issues for years, and chemo has exacerbated them.) And I really should call the therapist instead of whining here.
Since I entered Cancerland almost five years ago, I have not had a solid six months without problems or surgery or some heinous side effect. Some months have been great, some have been horrid, but it's been a roller coaster. I honestly feel like I haven't had time to catch my breath....for five years.
Five years is a long time to be out of breath, and I'm tired. And feeling very stuck.
Who I want to be: Energetic, grateful, active.
Who I am: Tired, and grateful to be alive but resentful at so much of this trouble. Stuck.
I am optimistic about living a long life. And I am grateful, and happy, for so much. But I want out of Cancerland, right now. Badly. It's a desperate feeling.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
