Carrie's Blog about Scott's cancer

NED; and THIS is how she does it

2011-01-29T11:47:00.000-08:00

But first, the good news!

Scott had another scan in early January, and it’s once again clear! Yes, NED again. No Evidence of Disease. The recurrence from March is no longer visible on the scans. This is very good, and probably miraculous news – very few Stage IV colon cancer patients get to NED once. To get to NED twice is, well, pretty gosh darn special.

This means several great things for Scott. He can scale back from the “heavy” chemo (the oxaliplatin-driven “husband has the flu” sort of chemo) to a “maintenance” chemo. The maintenance chemo has turned out to be Xeloda (at first 2 out of every 3 weeks, but now due to hand/foot side effects, down to one week on, one week off) and Avastin. That’s it! No oxaliplatin. No barfies. No crushing fatigue. Just the run of the mill sort of fatigue, with mouth sores, cracking hands and feet, sensitivity to spices, and a little dollop of chemo brain. All in all, it’s the best shape we’ve been in since the diagnosis 3.5 years ago.

And the next scan isn’t till May! So we have about four months of relatively light chemo and hopefully good health until we get any news. Scott’s thrilled. And we are sure you are too!

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THIS is how she does it

So, in the past few weeks, I have had not one, not two, but THREE people independently tell me that I look good. Actively good. On days when I had a kid with the stomach flu. On days when I was confused at work. On days when we were totally out of milk. And on days when they weren’t feeling guilty or overly kind, or simply trying to fill in an uncomfortable silence.

This is unprecedented. Being the caregiver for a cancer patient is not unlike being the mother of an infant. At the mall, you see these darling newborn girls, all in their perfect pink frilly dresses with the matching bow on the sides, clean little fingernails and perfectly clean noses, sleeping peacefully as they line up for their one-month pictures. And then behind each infant, the mother, with spit-up on her sweatpants, dark circles under her eyes, milk leaking through her shirt, mismatched socks, house slippers, and thirty pounds of extra baby fat doing the muffin-top over even the greyest of sweatpants. The infant looks good. The mama? As Nirvana says, Nevermind.

I have found being the wife of a cancer patient and mama to bigger children is a bit like that. So much energy goes into taking care of somebody else that precious little is left over for me, and it’s sort of not important anyways, well, largely because I don’t have cancer. The cancer patient feels tired? Perhaps he should rest. The cancer patient looks a bit thin? Perhaps he should eat. The cancer patient looks a bit fat? Perhaps it’s fluid retention – should we call the doctor? The caregiver feels – cut that thought off right here; let’s get back to the mouth sores of the cancer patient. Is he able to eat with those sores going on?

But we have turned a corner, yet again, and in a positive way. We are navigating the polygon of cancer and this particular corner has me getting regular sleep and exercise, managing to eat my veggies despite the fact nobody else around here likes them, and avoiding the great black demerits on the report card of amateur housewifery: being out of food, being out of clean clothing, and forgetting to send in the permission slip for the second grade field trip.

It turns out I do count, after all. It’s just that I have had to make me count, and that has required standing up to the collective wisdom and righteousness of the world, plus of course giving significant pushback to two elementary school age children who anchor their own universes in a developmentally appropriate but still gravitationally significant way.

How, some of you are asking, do you do it? It’s taken 3.5 years to ease my way into this new sort of madness, and today, lucky readers, you are about to get a tour of certain areas of my life.

Warning: get permission from your psychiatrist before attempting to implement any of these techniques at home, especially if you iron your own sheets, don’t regularly sleep in your exercise clothes, eat a hot dinner in a timely fashion more often than not, or consider rush hour traffic a significant problem in your life.

FOOD. When we first got the diagnosis, I was doing my grocery shopping every weekend, generally about 8 in the morning, with a mental list and a two-year-old and a four-year-old in the cart. We’d eat breakfast, go potty, stock up the diaper bag, and then rush out to get a week’s worth of groceries, in hopes of being home in time to put them away, eat lunch, and get people down for a nap. This ended up being massively impractical once we were dealing with a cancer diagnosis. In addition to the weirdness associated with chemotherapy eating patterns (and the associated grocery store roulette), it was difficult to get out of the house. The kids were freaked out and wanted to sit in a lap that was all Mommy’s, all the time. Car seats and grocery carts didn’t cut it. My Saturdays were often spent doing something bizarre, such as waiting on hold with {the oncology hotline, our accountant’s office, the veterinarian’s office, the airlines, AT&T} to discuss crises such as {a weird fever Scott was running, the proper tax treatment of disability insurance, the salivary inflammation of the dog’s dew claws, the refund of the plane tickets we didn’t use but paid for, the lack of Internet connectivity for the third straight day}.

When I did make it grocery shopping, my brain was full of {why is this happening to us / however will we get Elli to sleep tonight / was the oncology appointment at 4 pm on the 2nd or 2 pm on the 4th / will our friend be able to find daycare to pick the kids up given the construction in the parking lot / was technical issue #495823 at work caused by some spacing-out on my part and if so, is it possible to fix it now or am I too spacey to close that ticket}. I would do things like walk right past the milk and cheese (both staples in our household) and stare blankly at the frozen taquitos (remembering that nobody here would eat them, but at a loss to find something more appropriate to bring home).

And to top matters off, wouldn’t you know but the kids, as they got bigger, ate more and more, so the random collection of grocery items I did manage to bring home lasted for shorter and shorter periods of time. About this time we also began our space-case practice of getting so distracted that we would leave perishable items out on the counter overnight (anything sufficiently delicate will work – spinach, beef, milk, tuna, but really, this effect is most spectacular when you do it with something like ice cream that also has the potential for the ever-famous “slow-motion waterfall effect” plus, if you time the seasons just right, will attract ants as well. Even the most dedicated ant-eating dog can only clean this up as far as her tongue will reach, which in our case, left a nice little slick all over the counter.)

That was then. This is now. Now, THIS is now I do it.

Now, I generally do not go to grocery stores, and certainly do not go with kids, in a hurry, with an empty fridge, or with the intent to bring food home. Instead, I order food to be brought to me. I order $700 worth of groceries once a month from Safeway.com, to be delivered on a Saturday afternoon.

The Safeway truck driver knows me by name, and the bags cover our kitchen counters, table, and half the kitchen floor. (I try to remember to put the dog out so she doesn’t find the beef before I do.) It takes about an hour to put it all away, and then I’m done for another month. For additional freshness and wholesome locally grown organic goodness, we have a Farm Fresh to You box full of produce that comes every other week, also to the house. If I’m especially on fire in the scheduling department, I will schedule the Safeway truck for some week when the Farm Fresh To You guy doesn’t come. Periodically, responsible grownups around here make a small run to get milk and bread and Scotch when we are out of those items. This entire setup gives us fresh produce three weeks out of four, and the fourth week we just eat jellybeans, potato chips, frozen spinach, and canned pineapple.

I have not yet been able to properly coordinate grocery delivery with the chemo schedule, but that may come with experience and time. The problem has been that up until recently, chemo has been every 3 weeks, and Safeway is every 4 weeks (every 5 weeks if I’m really busy). I’m also unsure if it’s optimal to have groceries come when Scott’s on or off of chemo. This means even if I could decide where in the chemo cycle grocery delivery should fall, because 3 and 4 are coprime, my good buddies in the Number Theory Department tell me that to coordinate groceries and chemo would involve either 1) doing groceries every 3 weeks (waaaay too much work for me) 2) doing chemo every 4 weeks (waaaay above my pay grade to make that decision call) or 3) doing groceries every 12 weeks (because 3 x 4 = 12), which would need so much inventory storage space that it would displace some very important man-toys from the garage and would probably end up with something really weird managing to go bad on me. So for now, the grocery truck and the chemotherapy schedule are sort of like birthday parties and rain: sometimes they coincide, sometimes they don’t, and this occurs seemingly at random.

If you’re going to order $700 worth of food, you need to be prepared. Now, we store food in industrial fashion. I have cleared out about one-third of the garage and installed industrial-strength InterMetro shelves from the Container Store there. Room-temperature food goes into these large airtight containers. These same containers are the ones that real housewives use to store their beading projects, cake-decorating supplies, or Christmas decorations. Over some protest, I have also commandeered Scott’s old full-sized garage beer fridge and turned it into the Southern Inventory Surplus Storage Facility. I keep a grocery list in our kitchen with a pen nearby, and write down items as we run out.

I can hear the next question: how, exactly, do you know how much of what to order? Dear friends, I’m an engineer, and I use a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is a printout of our fifty most common items (soy milk, coffee, noodles, cheese, Doritos, toilet paper, paper towels – statisticians will recognize the Pareto Principle at work, which says that 80% of our food bulk comes from 20% of the items). I tracked data for how many of each item we used each month for about six months (but I do want to go down on record as saying I realize I need 25 months of data to get a statistically significant data set, which means I just bumped up the safety stock way high to counterbalance this lack of precision. In my life, when ya gotta estimate the standard deviation of anything, guess high, baby, guess high.)

I keep a 50% safety stock of these items on hand. For example, if we usually consume 10 containers of soy milk each month, I ensure when the next Safeway truck leaves, we’ll have 10 + 50% safety stock = 15 containers in the garage. If we currently have 3 containers, I’ll order 12, because 3 + 12 = 15. If we currently have 10 containers, I’ll order 5, because (you guessed it), 10 + 5 = 15. (For those of you who are Industrial Engineering geeks like myself, you will recognize the “order-up-to” policy in effect here. You may ding me a bit for not better determining the safety stock levels, or computing a percentage in-stock rate, or for factoring in the randomness of the lead time (that Safeway van isn’t always available to come on short notice). But troops, I’ve done my homework here, and the net-net is we are not running out of food on anything like a regular basis.)

Moving to this sort of food ordering policy is actually easier if you were never much of a cook to begin with. We eat very basic meals, and the room-temperature beans out of a can are still very much a hit with the girls.

There are several best things about this new setup. We always have something to eat. The kids know when we’re out of something in the inside fridge, they do not pass go and do not collect $200; instead, they go directly to the garage and check there. If they can’t find what they want, they often find something else. If they can’t, that’s just too flipping bad. There is no pressure on me to make anything particularly yummy, because it was ordered weeks ago and because chemo messes up people’s taste buds anyways. And I have my Saturdays free to do other things, like go to the office and work, or go to the gym, or take the kids to a park.

LAUNDRY. I don’t do it. This is an every-kid-for-themselves sort of thing, with all the accompanying wrinkling, re-wearing of chocolate-stained clothing, throwing-out-of-poopy-underpants, mismatching of socks, stashing-of-clean-laundry-under-the-bunk-bed-for-use-next-summer, and sisterly interchangeability of size 5 and size 7 clothing.

The one exception to this is when there’s a food product stashed with the otherwise clean clothing under the bed and the dog will NOT rest until she’s gotten it. In those cases, I have been known to pull the clothing out, let Lucky get her small piece of old cheese or bit of Dorito, and then shove the otherwise clean clothing back under the bed. Otherwise, what with the dog whining about it, I’d never get any sleep.

DISHES. I don’t do them, either. This is Scott’s kingdom when he feels up to it. When he doesn’t, we’re a paper plate sort of operation around here.

COOKING. This I do, but never under time pressure, which means never just before we eat. On the weekends I will make a large pot of rice and/or noodles, and cut up fruits and veggies, and occasionally locate or cook some meat (preferentially hot dogs or salmon, but very occasionally something like a pound of ground beef.) I store all this in Pyrex glass containers in the fridge. At dinnertime during the week, I am home at 4:45 pm and dinner is being eaten at 5 pm. As the designated kid is setting the table, I simply set out the cold Pyrex serving dishes, and add ketchup and Parmesan cheese. Where possible, I will warm up a little something -noodles with parmesan cheese; rice with melted cheese. Last week, dinners included the following:

Dinner #1: Carton of yogurt. Pyrex of cooked carrots and onions. Microwaved bowl of veggie soup. Microwaved cheesy rice and beans. Sliced sourdough bread. Butter. Sugar. Cinnamon. Earl Grey tea for Scott for the early evening caffeine hit. More Sugar. And Sugar. And one scoop of brown sugar for your spoon if you eat your carrots.

Dinner #2: Carton of applesauce. Pyrex of sliced cooked steak from Scott’s weekend BBQ exploit. Cold noodles and Parmesan cheese. Sliced sourdough bread. Butter. Sugar. Cinnamon. Cold Pyrex of pinto beans. Earl Grey tea. Brown sugar for pinto beans.

Dinner #3: Block of Swiss cheese and the way cool cheese slicer. Pyrex of cooked carrots and onions. Plastic thing of prewashed organic baby spinach. Ranch dressing. Pyrex of homemade salad dressing for mama (olive oil, mustard, garlic, balsamic vinegar, and other things too gross for the rest of the diners.) Microwaved cheesy noodles. Sliced apples and oranges. Much protest because Mama forgot to put the sugar for the spinach on the table and is forbidding anybody to get up to get it. Earl Grey tea for Scott. Much rejoicing because Daddy is exempt from the forbidding-anybody-to-get-up-to-get-the-sugar edict, and so he did get up to get sugar for his tea, and brought it back to the table for general purpose application to the spinach.

Dinner #4: Chinese takeout, because Scott decided he couldn’t face the cheesy noodles one more night in a row. So we have Chinese noodles instead, and Maggie puts Parmesan cheese on them.

Dinner #5: Cheesy rice and beans. Microwaved broccoli. Cold Pyrex of remaining pinto beans. Raw broccoli. Ranch dressing. Mama’s homemade (and to general palates disgusting) salad dressing. Carton of yogurt. Sliced sourdough bread. Pyrex of tuna, container of mayonnaise for Scott to make a tuna sandwich on the sliced sourdough bread. Room temperature butter to put on the microwaved broccoli. Room temperature butter which is actually used as a glue on raw broccoli so the sugar will stick to it better. Chinese leftovers.

This actually represents the best practices we have accumulated over the years of our clever little living situation. I do realize we are not likely to make it onto Martha Stewart’s cover anytime in the near future. We eat too much sugar, and Scott still thinks sugar on broccoli is disgusting. If we make it back to Michigan next summer to see my mom, there will probably be meat on the table three nights running. But we are sitting down and eating dinner as a family, without any stress on the “cook,” and the dishwashing is minimal. I am able to sit down for dinner and remain seated for the entire fifteen minutes. Putting the leftovers away is a snap, because we simply put the Pyrex lids back on the containers and stick them back in the fridge. I spend almost no time having to think about food or menus or dinner, because they are now pretty much prefab and pretty much all the same. And the kids eat it, because it’s what they’re used to, and all kids eat what they’re used to.

The nighttime snack (a mere 90 minutes in the future) is also generally easy, because it involves some recapitulation of the dinnertime menu.

I am ordering groceries once a month. I am willing to spend up to two hours cooking on any weekend, plus 15 minutes a night during the week. We’ve got a variety of palates (Scott’s chemo taste buds change fairly regularly, plus the kids go through their usual phases, and I’m still liking my spicy vegetarian food, especially if you define “spicy” as anything that tastes vaguely of mustard, pepper, cumin, or Tabasco.) We’re meeting a variety of goals. For the girls: to put weight on and develop a taste for vegetables and fruits and whole grains (even if it currently involves a plentitude of sugar). For Scott, to keep the weight on any way he can. For me, to maintain current girth.

And for Lucky our dog, to never let a meatball actually hit the ground.

She may be the most successful of us all.

Belated posting from November - Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-01-29T11:46:00.001-08:00

Hello all!

Happy post-Thanksgiving and wishing you all many happy turkey leftover dinners. We are finally "right-sizing" our holidays around here. It's a complex multi-step process. First, we had to get an accurate picture of our collective energy budget. Then, we had to not spending all our remaining energy being super upset that the current energy budget is smaller than it used to be and smaller than we would want. And finally, we had to learn to spend what we had wisely instead of blowing it all in the first hour of the holiday.

I suppose this behavior is typical of all sorts of people who are coming "down" in the world from some prior status. People who used to have money and now don't? Sometimes it takes a year or two before they realize they're not going to be flying to Colorado to go skiing over Christmas. People who used to have yuppie-style lives and now have an infant and a toddler? Sometimes it takes a season to realize that when you're having trouble getting out of the house even to go to the grocery store, squeezing in a four-day-weekend getaway to Cabo San Lucas by cruise ship is over the energy budget. People who used to be in shape to play an impromptu game of tackle football and now aren't? The emergency room is full of them after lovely spring weekends, nursing sprained ankles, pulled backs, and a variety of other casualties of the misestimation of the aging process. (For those of you who are simply too refined, too well-educated, or too classy to ski Colorado, harbor an infant/toddler duo, or attempt an impromptu game of tackle anything, to get the "coming down" picture, simply think of Blanche duBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire.")

Well, my friends, this used to be us. Our collective energy budget as a family is smaller than it used to be, and we used to chronically mis-estimate it. And we paid - meltdowns at the grocery store (who knew once a week was far too often for me to try to grocery shop?). Bizarre events in the kitchen (who knew that once a day was far too often for me to try to cook dinner?) Scary near-misses on the freeway when we were trying to drive too far in one day (who knew "too far" would be a measly 30 minutes? But at the end of a long day, even that can be too long.) Scarier visits from the Brown Bomber when we tried to go too long between breaks to go potty (again - who knew two hours between potty stops was too long? One child is built like a camel with a firm "off" spigot on all egresses. But the other isn't. And for the record, neither is the mama. Which is why I got a dog and not a camel for my pet.)

But we are smarter now, and we realize that a simple fall at the playground can turn into an emergency room visit; a simple cold can run into pneumonia; and a simple failure to consult the calendar and the Daily Plan on the whiteboard in our kitchen can result in somebody showing up at the gym with a kiddie leotard while the kiddie is running around the school play dress rehearsal in sweatpants, wondering where the h**k her white snowflake leotard is and how it was possible everybody else's mommy not only got the memo but brought cookies as well.

So, for Thanksgiving, we took the right-sized way out. School was out the three days prior to Thanksgiving, and as a family we simply don't have the surplus to keep these kids well-exercised in a way that would let me still go to work (get that - work doesn't close simply because school's closed!) So we sent the kids with one of our wonderful nanny/babysitters - three full days, out of the house. And we had Barbara (my wonderful Virtual Assistant) order a Thanksgiving dinner from the grocery store for us. A little while later I had a moment of little faith and emailed her back - could she please phone them and ensure it was a thawed (non-frozen) turkey? She emailed me the confirmation and several days ahead of time, our Thanksgiving dinner was solved and I didn't have to go grocery shopping in the usual meaning of the word. Scott got to rest, and think about how to prepare the turkey.

And I got to go to work. There is some very interesting stuff going on at work these days, and while I won't bore you with the nerdy details, suffice it to say the jury is in, and I am a far more competent engineer than I am a housewife. (I did reach Housewife Level III before sort of plateauing out of that game, at least for the time being, however, and I'm sort of proud of that.) But back to my life as an engineer. At the office I have some new software to play with. I have some new machines on which I can push buttons and watch blinking lights. There is new voice software, with programmable macros. Usually these macros are used so you can say something like, "Print that document" and it will execute a series of commands: open the document, sent it to the printer, and return you to your regularly scheduled spreadsheet. I am itching to program the voice software with a macro so that when I say "Worship me," it will say back in a velvety subservient voice, "Yes Mistress! Your wish is my command." And then perhaps show me a picture of some cappuccino. Who could *not* love going to work when you have toys like that there?

So, this is what a right-sized holiday looked like for us:

Tuesday night: I come home from work at 5 pm. Elli sets the table while Maggie stays Out Of The Way. Part of the New Smackdown Rules are that everybody helps; other parts of it include the much-reviled Distraction Clause. Evidently there are few pleasures in life greater than to watch your sister set the table while you don't have to. Say, for example, you knew you were "off duty" during the table-setting portion of the evening, and you knew you would come "on duty" during the table-clearing portion of the evening (some scant 20 minutes in the future). Wouldn't you maximize your "'off duty" time? Perhaps sit down and read a magazine? Wash your hands? Surf the web? Or even go in and try to raid your sister's secret candy stash while she couldn't come defend it? Well, this discounts that force which is stronger than gravitation and twice as pervasive: sibling rivalry. There is something much more fun than *not* having to set the table while your sister has to set it. It is to watch her set the table, while making distracting noises from the kitchen doorway. And not just any distracting noises - the inflammatory type of distracting noises, such as, "I think the dog is getting ready to chew on your Barbie" and "Bet you can't catch me!" and "I'm going to put my juicy booty on your pillow so it will smell like Parmesan cheese!" In the Good Old Days, before the Distraction Clause, we would get a plate and two spoons onto the table, and then it would fully degenerate into a round-the-house circular high-speed chase, involving (at a minimum) one Barbie, one dog, one pillow, and (in times of extreme glory) one Parmesan cheese shaker.

Hence, the Distraction Clause. If you so distract your sister such that she can't set the table, the new person who sets the table is You. (Scott would like me to tell you all that his track record for compliance with the Distraction Clause is approaching 100% - not once has he given up his Web surfing for the ecstasy of waving a Barbie doll about the kitchen, followed by the agony of setting the table himself.)

And the Anti-Distraction Clause. The burden of proof is on the initial table-setter, and Mom is not only the cook but also the judge and jury. If your sister is waaaay back in her room and making absolutely no noise, you can't claim that she so distracted you that you couldn't set the table. You can't credibly claim, for instance, that you are so distracted that you can't set the table due to your thoughts of what your sister might be wanting to do to your Barbie with her Parmesan cheese shaker. That sort of emotional distress does not qualify. She is also allowed to sneeze (Respiratory Exemption) and use the restroom (Elimination Exemption). But the minute she shows her face in the kitchen before it's dinnertime, it's a bona fide Distraction Disqualification.

(Some of you may be wondering, my goodness, aren't I worried about all the Parmesan cheese that seems to be flying around this house? Very little of it appears to be landing on, say, orthodox platforms such as spaghetti. And that would be true. But in reality, our dog Lucky loves Parmesan cheese, and will simply follow any trails of it around, patiently licking it up. In the summertime, it occasionally does bring ants, but she will eat ants too, especially if covered in Parmesan cheese. So while our floors aren't quite as clean as those of people with no kids or dogs, our floors are actually substantially cleaner than you would expect, all things considered.)

But I digress. It's now 5:01 pm and Elli has set the table for dinner. Maggie has remained in her room, stifling all sneezes but running back and forth to the bathroom seven times (with seven loud closings of the bathroom door and seven other loud closings of the door to her room) in an attempt to stay within the sanctioned Elimination Exemption yet still Distract The Sister. I set out dinner - refrigerated hippie vegetarian beans (can opened yesterday). Refrigerated organic whole-wheat macaroni noodles tossed with extra virgin olive oil (noodles cooked two days ago). Chopped carrots (freshly chopped tonight). Ranch dressing (procured sometime in the past month.) Cut-up Fuyu persimmons and a ruby-red pomegranite. Butter. Yogurt. And bread - delicious, dense whole grain, locally baked, organic wheat bread. Oops - no bread. We just had two loaves of it, purchased three days ago, and it is all gone. OK, so no bread. (Remember I told you once a day was far too often for me to cook dinner? This is what an energy-budget family meal at our house looks like. I simply cannot get home from work, supervise the Table Setting Chore (while enforcing the Anti-Distraction Clause), and heat a flipping meal up. It turns out it was much easier to train them all to eat it cold out of a can/fridge. Next year I may invoke the microwave, but for now, even that is too much. My first order of business is to find out who or what is eating an average of a loaf of bread a day around here. I suspect it's Elli.)

Twenty minutes later (5:21 pm), dinner was long over. Scott settled down to watch a movie with the kids while I set out on surface streets only (no freeways - 'twas rush hour!) to Whole Foods in Walnut Creek to pick up the turkey and the sides from the outside way station - the butcher and the deli people bring it outside for easier pickup! This is in full compliance with our New Energy Budget, which you may recall does not permit daily cooking of a dinner, certain drives on the freeway, or any trips to the grocery store. I was originally going to complete the entire transaction without actually setting foot inside the store, hence technically avoiding a "grocery shopping trip." I ended up weakening slightly on that account because I remembered we were totally out of bread and the kids wouldn't consider the side order of stuffing to be "bread." (Besides, whatever is eating a loaf of bread a day will switch to something else if we don't have any bread, and the two most likely candidates are brown sugar and Cheetos. So we need bread.)

I put my turkey and prefab meal in a grocery cart (oh, the heresy!), took a deep breath, and stepped inside the grocery store. I picked up 2 more loaves of bread....and, in honor of Christmas, 1 pint of eggnog...and, in honor of Maggie, one gallon of milk. At that point I had to retreat to the outdoor cashier lest I be in real danger of having made a "grocery trip" too close to Thanksgiving. I stashed it all in the minivan, drove back home on those same surface streets, watched the freeway come to a completely standstill even though it was now 7 pm, and unloaded our Thanksgiving booty into the garage fridge.

Wednesday: Scott picked up some coffee for the mornings, some brandy for the eggnog, and some wine for Thanksgiving. (Scott is allowed to go grocery shopping and he makes most of our little runs. The person who is not allowed to go, especially with kids in tow, especially after work, especially when there's an entire week's worth of food to procure, especially when there's a list and a budget - that person is me.) Scott laid out the thermometer, the brush, and two pounds of butter for the basting. I decided that while eggnog was usually a Christmas treat, since I had already broken a rule by setting foot inside of a grocery store to obtain it (albeit without kids), it wouldn't hurt to break another rule by having the eggnog (with brandy, whipped cream, and nutmeg) before Thanksgiving. It was fantastic.

Thursday: Scott broke out the November 2009 issue of Martha Stewart's "Living" Magazine. (I subscribe for the pictures, not for the articles. It should be obvious that since I delegate table-setting to the elementary-school crowd, decorate this house with brown patterned floors to better accommodate a mud-loving dog, and will not go grocery shopping on foot, there's really precious little I could do even if I did read the articles therein.) But Her Marthaness is in full glory for Thanksgiving. This issue shows how to "spatchcock" a turkey, which is fully in line with our New Rules. Scott basically takes his poultry shears, removes the backbone of the turkey, splays it flat on a baking sheet, and bakes it in an hour instead of four. Quick, easy, and fantastic.

Some dear old friends came over with their two kids, and we reheated the Whole Foods stuffing and gravy. We set out the Whole Foods cranberry sauce and the Whole Foods dinner rolls. We drank wine, ate turkey and our guests' ham, oinked it up on Whole Foods pumpkin pie covered with whipped cream (straight from the aerosol container).

(Later on I found out the dinner rolls weren't actually fully cooked; I was supposed to heat them for 7-9 minutes at 375 degrees. I did think they tasted a little funny, but it was the only portion of the entire dinner Maggie would eat. Note to self: next time I order a holiday dinner from the grocery store, read the directions instead of just blithely deciding what to reheat and what to serve cold.)

Friday: We have all the glorious leftovers with none of the work! This morning, I tackled the kids and we did our schoolwork as soon as I finished my coffee. (Another new nonnegotiable - if you're my kid, and you want to get along with me, you do your spelling or reading first thing in the morning during holidays. If you behave well, it will take ten minutes and our whole day can be full of fun, playdates, sand, dirt, whipped cream, and Parmesan cheese Barbies. If you behave poorly, it can take all morning, and then your morning will be full of spelling and your sister's morning will be full of fun, playdates, sand, dirt, whipped cream, and Parmesan cheese Barbies. Elli and Maggie were fast learners - twenty minutes (10 minutes per kid) and we were en route to ChildWatch at the YMCA, where they played Polly Pocket and I got to work out.) And now I'm writing this from the waiting room at the other gym, the kiddie gym, where they are playing on the trampoline and the balance beams, and I'm getting ready to go home and eat some more.

Grandma's Smackdown

2010-11-07T11:38:00.000-08:00

Hello dear readers!

Well, the time has changed. It's dark late in the mornings, dark early in the evenings, and dark many days about noon as well. There was also evidently some sort of large baseball game involving San Francisco and while I'm hazy on the details, I did appreciate the orange and black confetti everywhere.

Many of you want to know how we are doing, and the answer is pretty well - we are puddling along over here. (And, if it's not obvious, we're not really sports fans.)

Scott is doing generally well, and amazingly well all things considered.

He's still on the Big Chemo, which still gives us a tripartite organization to our lives. Week 1 is still "Husband has the flu," in which he doesn't get out of bed much, is extremely sensitive to cold, and has many and varied other discomforts in sundry body parts, ranging from mouth sores to bruises and scabs on the feet. Unlovely. Week 2 is still a transition week, in which he's up and about more, and Week 3 is almost a normal week for somebody on serious chemo.

This means during Week 3 he's able to stay up and watch an hour or so of TV with me after the kids are in bed. He's napping less frequently, and he's able to do wonderfully normal things like getting milk at the grocery store (because the cold sensitivity has faded a bit), going to lunch with friends (because his appetite has returned), and playing war games online (because he's not wretchedly napping the fatigue away). His Week 3 is not what many of you would think of as a "normal" week, in that his activities don't generally include eating spicy food (McDonald's chicken sandwiches are now counted as spicy and our beloved Indian food is officially out of consideration), doing anything that could invite a bruise (because the blood thinners give him bruises amazingly out of proportion to the offense), or doing anything that involves a lot of planning (the chemo brain still makes all the dates, times, appointment places, and appointment faces look the same.)

The savvy readers will notice that there are contradictions riffled through this. He gets his blood drawn frequently by the vampires down at Kaiser's lab - they like to ensure his platelets are plentiful, his blood isn't too thin or too thick, and a few other things - and they leave a large bruise every time they stick him with a needle. Anybody with this sort of medical condition has various appointments with various health professionals - in addition to the oncologist, it becomes important for cancer patients to keep up to date with the rest of the health care team, a thousand and one other people they don't really want to see.

Are you thinking it's beyond unfair yet? Already immunocompromised and bleed too easily? Gotta stay in tip-top shape so you can qualify for your next round of chemo? Don't really want that extra unit of blood, that infusion of iron, or to be "benched" for the chemo cycle? Well, for all you do, just for you - now you're even more prone to infection (cancer is not a "get out of jail free" card for the auxiliary ailments - cancer patients can and do get root canals, the flu, pneumonia, and they even get into car accidents just like the boring old rest of us.) And each serious health issue will probably delay your next chemo treatment, because the chemo is hard enough on a poor body all by its ugly chemo-smelling self.

So along with the monthly appointments to see the oncologist and the every-three-week appointments to get chemo and the weekly appointments to placate the vampires at the blood lab, there's the dentist, the optometrist, the general practitioner, the acupuncturist, and, on an especially good week, something like the flu clinic (where you have to remember to get the shot (dead virus), not the mist (live virus), because live virus + immunocompromised self = bad idea.)

And to top it all off, the chemo brain is in full force. Was that an appointment with Dr. Wang at 10 am on Monday the 9th? Or an appointment with Dr. Teng at 9 am on Wednesday the 10th? Was this the week we were supposed to take the kids to get flu shots in Martinez on Monday at 3 pm on the third floor? Or was it that the kids were getting flu shots in Walnut Creek on Tuesday on the fourth floor and the live flu mist for grownups is near the optometrist on the ground level in Martinez on Thursdays and Fridays? And when is the next appointment with the oncologist - this Monday or next?

(As it turns out, very little of the above turned out to be accurate. Flu shots for kids = Tuesday, and while Friday was indeed Bike to School day and we intentionally "forgot" that one, as a bonus forgetting, we also simply forgot Friday was also Share Day in kindergarten and so poor Maggie went without a share toy for the umpteenth straight week...I will have to ask her teacher if I can bring our dog Lucky in to the class as a Hail Mary sort of make-it-up-to-the-kid thing. A real live dog who loves kindergarteners, will shake and sit on command, and can balance a cookie on her nose before tossing it in the air to catch it has got to be worth at least a few Frisbees, stuffed animals, and Transformer toys. Besides, periodically she will stop to snuffle about and lick her behind, and the kids universally and enthusiastically love that.)

***********************************

And now I am going to take you away from thoughts of behind-licking dogs and back to Michigan for the summer. If you are just joining us, you will remember we spent the summer with my mom in rural Michigan, where the culture is slightly different from our overeducated, hyperliberal, supercaffeinated Bay Area ambience. Scott came for a week, and then he had to fly back and get more chemo. I brought my laptop and telecommuted, and stayed for the month. We hired a local student, Ms. Erika, to be our full-time nanny while I was working, and between Erika and my mom, I learned a thing or three.

I'm not sure if this is a full-fledged character weakness on my part, or a side effect of the cancer. But the girls we delivered to Michigan were, to put it mildly, not behaving according to local standards.

When there's serious illness in a family, it's all too easy to want to focus on any good moments, to want squeeze all the fun and wonderfulness out of a good day, to bank it as a glowing memory to keep us warm through the chill of the next round of chemo. When Daddy's feeling good, we want to go to Disney on Ice! We want to go for ice cream and to the park! We don't want to do homework or fold laundry.

When there's serious illness, everything gets squeezed, and I wanted these girls to know they were loved, to know we cared for them more than anything, even if they spent a lot of time in daycare or with sitters, even if sometimes their parents are really tired and super cranky. And I think there's a (selfish) part of both Scott and me that wants our time with the kids to be full of love and fun, not full of time-outs and showdowns. Who wants to stay home on a glorious Saturday until the kids have cleaned their rooms, when it's so much easier to give them ice cream, put them in front of the TV, let Mommy clean it all and fold the laundry in about 10 minutes, and then we can all go to the park?

In a nutshell, disciplining kids is hard, gritty, exhausting work, and we weren't doing it as much as we should have been. When Scott was feeling good, we didn't want to do it. And when he was feeling bad, all our energy for hard, gritty, exhausting activity went by default first to the hard, gritty, exhausting work of fighting the cancer. We didn't have the steam left over to fight the Battle of Who Cleans Barbie Up From the Living Room Floor, not after a day of fighting the illness.

It happened in every area of life, but I'll give you perhaps the best example: food.

When Scott was feeling nauseated, I knew the importance of keeping his weight up, and wanted to prepare anything at all he could eat - ramen noodles? Toast and butter? Chicken? The very creamiest of pot pies, with heavy whipping cream in the filling? Applesauce at room temperature so it wouldn't hurt his cold-sensitive mouth? You name it, I wanted to make it. And when he couldn't eat Item 1, I wanted to have Item 2 and Item 3 as a backup. I don't think there's a problem per se with trying to spoil a cancer patient with food items (it's technically impossible - when they don't want to eat, they don't want to eat, and you may as well just go paint your toenails because that will be as effective as cooking yet another tempting dish and heck, the acetone may actually smell better to the cancer patient than cream gravy does. You may as well try to influence the orbit of the space station with a chicken pot pie or a pedicure - excellent activities both, but neither with any real control over the desired object). So you can't spoil a cancer patient with food.

But it's definitely possible to spoil an observant 4-year-old and an observant 6-year-old with the whole idea that Mommy is a short-order cook and waitress. They had become absolute professionals with the concept that all they had to do was shout "yuck!" at something and I would make something else. And the greatest thing about it was, I'd really hop to it quickly, because I knew they'd cry and yell if they didn't get it quickly, and I also knew Scott was feeling rotten. His last nerve was rubbed off about four hours ago, and most people feeling like cr*p warmed over have zero tolerance for gratuitous yet shrill yelling and screaming, at that at the end of the day.

I didn't want my precious babies feeling so insecure, so unattended-to, that they were compelled to yell to make their needs heard. I wanted my kids feeling warm, feeling loved, feeling that somebody cared enough about them to remember somebody liked Swiss cheese in squares and somebody else liked Cheddar cheese in triangles. I wasn't writing notes in hand-packed lunches, nor was I volunteering in the classroom or baking birthday cakes, and I was generally too tired to feel guilty, but I could at least cut cheese in a custom fashion as poor compensation for everything else their young lives were lacking because of this awful disease that has roosted in our family.

And so it came to pass that we four all tacitly agreed: a good amount of fussing (and the periodic shriek) allowed the girls to eat dinner in front of the TV, where no grownups policed their (atrocious) table manners. I would serve Scott's food in the kitchen. I would serve the kid dinners (one for each, slightly different, with the precise spoon color and proper accoutrements for each individual girl). I would lower the volume on the TV so it wouldn't be too irritating. I would set out my own hippie vegetarian dinner (different from each of the 3 dinners I'd prepared above.) And then I would sit down and try to make a little dinner conversation with a man who looked like he wanted to be in bed, asleep, or at the very least lying down and watching a movie about WWII. As soon as I picked up my fork, it would start.

(As you read this, keep in mind this is at the end of a usual weekday for me, which means, among other things, that I've generally been up since 5:30 am, dropped kid(s) off at school, and walked the dog...)

"I need some parmesan cheese!"

(Earlier today I went to work, paid the dentist's bill, and arranged for the house gutters to be cleaned...)

"I don't want this cup!"

(Earlier today I signed the field trip permission slip, noted that somebody needs new shoes, made a note to buy a birthday present for somebody's party, decided I don't even have time to tell the PTA "no" to anything so I threw their d**n flyer out but made a mental note to smile beatifically if asked about it on the playground...)

"I don't want juice - I want milk!"

(Earlier today I did a few clever and hopefully paycheckworthy things whilst at work, and then I picked kid(s) up at school, and came home...)

"I want ranch dressing!"

"I don't want ranch dressing - I like hummus with my carrots!"

"My carrots aren't cut right! I want cheese in triangles like sissy has!"

(Later today there will be dishes to do, laundry to fold, school lunches to pack...)

"Why does she have two ice cubes and I only have one?"

(Later today there will be long curly tangled hair to comb (nontrivial), a phone call from a student to return, and bedtime to do...)

"Mommy! This is ALL WRONG! You gave me the PURPLE SPOON and the PINK PLATE but you know I like everything all purple and she gets all pink. I NEED ANOTHER PLATE NOW!!!!"

(Later today, once the kids are in bed, I will likely watch some TV with Scott if he's up for it, and whether or not we get to watch TV, at some point I will fire up the laptop to clean up the clever work items I didn't fully shine earlier today...)

"Mommy! Mommy! MOMMY!!!!!"

(Later today, by 9:30 at the latest, it's time to get the mail, let the dog out, lock up the house, make sure all the windows are closed and the faucets turned off and the headlights on vehicles off, and go to bed...to start again in 8 hours...)

"MOMMY!!!!!!!!!! I SAID THIS IS THE WRONG COLOR SPOON!"

********************************************************************

These are the kids I took to rural Michigan. Rural Michigan is where farm kids do outdoor chores before they go to school in the morning, even in the snowy dead of winter. It's where families eat together after saying a blessing and being genuinely grateful for their food. It's where kids never were the center of anybody's universe. And it's a place where you certainly can clench a cigarette in your teeth while you spank your child at a public playground. Not only will nobody stop you, but many onlookers will nod approvingly if they think your kid was being a brat.

And my mother loves nearly every blessed thing about her little zip code.

Consider the California dinner scene I just described to you, and you can probably see where this is going.

The Titanic hit the iceberg with less of a thud.

My mom started off just like that iceberg - gleaming, shiny, and oh so stealthy. She fooled us all, hook, line, and sinker. Perhaps it was the curly white hair. The Grandma glasses. The nice wool pants, or the Garrison Keillor on the radio. The complete willingness to admire artwork after artwork, no matter how abstract. Or her ability to listen attentively to Elli read the very same crazy-making Dr. Seuss book six times over, while displaying a beatific smile regarding Sam-I-Am's green eggs and ham (perhaps she perfected that beatific smile whilst dodging the PTA of 30 years ago so she could bag the auction committee and instead sneak out to lift weights, run laps, put her baby in a playpen near the net and play tennis? I have my suspicions...)

Ms. Erika, our sitter, started off like that as well. She'd babysat for us several previous summers, with generally delightful results. She could do Braids with a capital B. She drove a convertible car and could give rides with the wind whistling through kids' hair. She knew everybody in town and could take children to see a real live farm animal without having to first look it up in an online directory or make an appointment. She brought new and exciting dolls and toys from her house. She had a frog pond in her backyard and blueberries on the twig for the picking.

The first week, all was sweetness and light. The kids were up and down from the dinner table like yo-yos. Nobody used any silverware. Elli was beyond bothering to say "no" to a grownup; she simply would disregard instructions she didn't like (and these included doozies such as, "that's too deep in the lake, you need to come closer to shore" or "that's poison ivy, don't touch it.") Maggie managed to bite Elli on the naked rear end hard enough to draw blood. There was screeching in Grandma's car and whining over every imaginable offense. They each showed their behinds in full anatomic detail to anybody (un)fortunate enough to be in the vicinity. They were perpetually wild on sugar, and would eat it straight from the sugar bowl. It was a disaster. It was such a disaster, and it had been my life for so long, that I didn't even see it as such - it was normal to me.

The first week of vacation was over, and I drove Scott back to the airport to fly back home.

Elli: "Mommy, how long do we get to stay at Grandma's?"

Me: "We'll be here for another month. 4 weeks."

Elli: "YIPPEE!"

The Titanic was under full power, straight ahead.

********************************************************************

The Intervention came in the form of a large red piece of cardboard. Erika sat me down and said we needed house rules. It takes guts for a summer sitter to say this to the employer! But she was right, she was right, she was right. She conferred with Grandma and they concurred. They were beyond right. (In retrospect, I think she may have been at her wits' end, and thinking she stood a good chance of finishing the summer out with us only if she got better behavior from Thing 1 and Thing 2.)

We wrote the rules out. We walked the kids through them. We walked everybody through the penalties (Time out. Loss of privilege.) It took about 30 seconds for the captain of the Titanic to honk the horn and gun her engines. Elli stood up and shouted, "I hate these rules! I'm not listening to them!" I scooped her up and put her in time out. "Elli, our house rules are that you listen to grownups. You're not listening. Time out."

She kicked. She yelled. She screamed. But the times, they were a-changin'. There was nobody sick in the house trying to sleep. Nobody whose last nerve was gone hours ago, just trying to make it through the evening. It was 10 am, so we had hours of good energy ahead of us. Grandma, Erika, and Mommy were all united in this. In Elli's rage, she even tried to bang her head on the floor. Grandma had installed a lovely hard slate tile floor in the kitchen, and while perhaps Grandma didn't exactly anticipate this sort of challenge to her new floor, the greenish-gray Michigan slate was quite up to it. Elli gave up the head-banging after the first attempt.

Maggie watched the whole scene with the widest dark blue eyes I have ever seen on that child.

Crunch. Titanic 0, Iceberg 1.

********************************************************************

The next four days were interesting. I'll give you just the barest of highlights.

At dinner one night:

Grandma: "Girls, when you're done eating, get up from the table and clear your plate."

Six seconds later, Maggie sees a dog outside and gets up from her chair to run to the window.

Grandma: "Maggie, are you done eating? You're up from the table."

Maggie: "No, I'm just running to see the doggie."

Grandma: "Our house rules are that we stay seated while eating. If you're up, you're done. Come back and sit down."

Maggie (no answer to Grandma, looking out the window): "Look Elli! It's a brown and white doggie!"

Grandma (gets up and dramatically throws Maggie's dinner away. Pours out her drink and clears her silverware): "Maggie, you're excused."

Maggie (crying): "But I'm NOT DONE! I'm STILL HUNGRY!"

Grandma: "Bedtime snack will be served in 2 hours."

Maggie (really crying now): "I NEED MY DINNER!"

Grandma: "Nonsense. You're a big girl, almost five years old and 40 pounds. You can skip a meal now and then. And stop that crying. We don't want to hear it. It's not pleasant for us. If you're going to cry, go into your room and cry. But no crying in my kitchen."

Maggie (stunned into silence): "What?"

Grandma: "You heard me. Go play, or go cry in your room. But you are done with dinner, and you can't cry in my kitchen."

Maggie (walking pitifully out of the kitchen): "But I said I'm still hungry!"

(She did stop crying, though, and was glued to her seat during pre-bed snack.)

Elli watched the whole scene with the widest light blue eyes I have ever seen on that child.

Titanic 0, Iceberg 2.

************************************************************

During playtime one day:

Erika: "Girls, you're done with the dolls. Let's put them away before we go outside."

Elli: "I don't want to clean them up. You do it!"

Maggie: "Yeah, Erika, you do it!"

Erika (not about to do anything): "If you don't clean them up, you can't play with them tomorrow."

The girls ran off, and Erika followed them. (She had decided to stop taking them swimming for now, because they weren't minding her enough to keep them safe. The unbehavers got converted into landlubbers, a Loss of Privilege.)

Like a mako shark on the scent of a good chum slick, Grandma came out of the kitchen (where she had been listening to Garrison Keillor on the radio, wearing her nice navy blue wool pants, and probably viewing the wildlife or thinking about volunteer work). She took off her glasses and prodded the dolls with her foot.

Grandma (loudly): "Oh! Oh! What is this? A doll?"

Elli and Maggie, in the other room (laughing with each other): "Hee hee! Shhh...let Grandma clean it up!"

Grandma (loudly): "Oh, oh! Well, I guess nobody wants this doll anymore. Or that one. I'll just tidy it up."

Elli and Maggie, in the other room (thumbs up): "Weeeeeee!!!!"

Grandma (loudly), and an accompanying "clunk" sound: "There. That's better. Nice clean living room floor."

And then Grandma went back to her Garrison Keillor. Elli and Maggie and Erika went out, and I remained in the basement, industriously typing away on my laptop, with my faithful dog at my feet.

Later that day, the girls noticed the trash can on the stairs. The lid was off, and inside were the dolls!

Elli (very loudly): "Oh no! Maggie! Look! Your doll is in the garbage!"

Maggie (very loudly, bursting into tears): "Oh no! Get it, sissy, get it! Quick!"

Grandma (very matter of fact, holding garbage can up high): "What's this? Why do you two care about my garbage? I was just going to throw that out."

Elli (yelling): "But Grandma! THAT'S OUR DOLL AND YOU DON'T GET TO THROW IT OUT!"

Grandma (matter of fact): "First of all, we don't yell in this house. And second of all, somebody left it out without cleaning it up. When you leave things out, I assume they're garbage and I throw them out."

Erika (approving): "Oh yes, I thought it was garbage too."

The two little pairs of very wide blue eyes, one dark blue, one light blue, engaged in vigorous negotiations with the pair of wise old blue eyes behind Grandma's glasses. The meeting of the minds sprang the dolls free from the garbage, but also gave two little girls an incentive to pick up after themselves.

By this time, the score was something like Titanic 0, Iceberg 28.

************************************************************

And so we kept it up.

I got the wailies - "Why don't you love me anymore, Mommy? You used to be a nice mommy and do nice things for me but now you're mean and I hate you!"

I got the missies - "Daddy! Daaaaaaadddy! I miss my Daaaaaaaaadddddddddyyyyy! I MISS HIM!!!!!!"

I got the why-ies - "Why? Why do I have to {do X}?"

I got the unfair-ies - "It's sooooo not fair! Why does she get to {do X} and I only get to {do Y, do not X}?"

I got the don't-like-ies - "I don't *like* {food X}. I want {food Y} instead."

But I was a camel come in from three years in the high desert - I had gotten a whiff of water and wasn't going to let a little fussing get in the way of comparative freedom.

And by the time we went back to California, the clouds had parted. By the time I had donated EIGHT LARGE GARBAGE BAGS of their toys and clothing to Goodwill (one per week for 2 months), they began to pick up the surviving items pretty regularly. And to date, the girls are into the following few ideas:

1. Mommy is the boss.

2. Life is unfair.

3. When a grownup tells you to do something, you do it. If you must ask why, do it first and then ask why.

4. Be helpful. We all pull our share around here and this means we all do chores.

5. Be pleasant.

6. Nobody wants to hear you whine, so you will be doing that by yourself and in your room.

7. We are over the "make hay while the sun shines" concept with regards to cancer and child rearing. It was fine as an emergency measure, but three years into this, the junk-food brand of parenting had become a way of life, and it wasn't good for the kids. Whether Daddy's feeling good or bad, you do your homework and you fold your laundry, and then we'll consider going to the park. If it takes you four hours to get 10 minutes of homework and 10 minutes of laundry done, you may have burned through the park time. Daddy may or may not eat his dinner, but your choices are binary (with one of them being "take it" and the other the obvious counterpart of "leave it.") You eat with your parents at the kitchen table and you use silverware. We aren't simply cramming as much fun as possible into our days, squeezing every silvery drop of rainbows and magic out of childhood, so we can forget we also are a cancer family. We're doing what we need to do, to raise well-mannered kids who are going to contribute to society, whether or not we are a cancer family.

Don't like it? Go whine in your room, and don't let the floor put too big a bruise on your temple.

It's probably not necessary to let you know this, but the Titanic of bratly behavior has officially sunk. (At least until our next medical crisis!)

Michigan flashback: free range, local, and fresh, but not organic

2010-09-18T16:09:00.000-07:00

Scott's doing just great - we have no Scott news since our last updates, which is extremely good news.

I do not currently have sweet Michigan cherry wine on hand. However, I am not without vice.

Last night was the night my dear friend Robin came over, and we ate a box of truffles and some Brie and Blue cheese (on high fiber crackers). We drank cheap red California wine.

And today, Saturday, I did not get up early, go to the 8:45 am Weight Watchers meeting at the Y, and then do a full Sweat-Inducing Workout At The Gym With Post-Workout Stretching while the children went first to ChildWatch and then to their 10 am Swim Classes.

Instead, last night I set out Pop Tarts and Sun Chips and the TV remote, and told the girls they could eat as much of that as they wanted and watch whatever they wanted, so long as they let Mommy sleep in the morning. The minute Mama got up, the TV and the Pop Tarts were going away.

It worked.

I got to sleep until 9, bagged Weight Watchers, dragged the troops into swim classes at 9:58 am, and slurped down my lukewarm coffee on the pool deck while watching the virtuous exit the Weight Watchers meeting and drift towards the treadmills.

This puts me perfectly in the mood to write. I shall tell you a tale of lands long ago and far away.

*****************************************************************************

We went to rural Michigan for the summer.

It really was quite the trip - me and my overliberal hippie California household going to see Grandma in her small rural town. It was what they call a high-impact visit, and while her town is probably much the same now that those wacky Left Coast tourists have all left, we surely aren't.

All five of us (Scott, me, Elli, Maggie, and Lucky the dog) flew out to see my mom for the 4th of July weekend. Lady Luck smiled on us; the 4th of July was Week 3 of Chemo, so Scott was feeling pretty gosh darn good. At the end of the week, Scott flew back to California early on a Friday morning, to arrive at SFO mid-day, so he could get to Kaiser to get his blood drawn before close of business, so his labs could be "run" in time for him - if the bloodwork turned out okay - to get another infusion of chemo on Monday.

I stayed in Michigan with the girls and the dog for another month. It was a real vacation for me - a vacation from cancer, from the responsibilities of running a household, from having to drive anybody to gymnastics or to an oncology appointment. To stay that length of time, I did bring my laptop computer and continued to telecommute while I was there, so I was officially "working." But the sort of paid work I do on the computer doesn't exhaust me the way the cancer (or housewifery) does, and so just being in a different zip code, in a different mindset, was such a vacation.

***

I could give you a day-by-day description of the vacation - we had steak for dinner this night; we watched the most amazing sunset over Lake Huron on that night; we got supersized ice cream cones and they dribbled everywhere nearly every night. But those sorts of descriptions of somebody else's vacation are Boring. You don't want to hear about the lamb dinner we ate one night. You may not even know it yet, but instead, you want to hear about the saga of Blinky the Lamb. He's had quite the run on this planet. All in good time, my friends, all in good time.

We'll start at the beginning. My mom moved up to this little town on Lake Huron a few years ago, after my father passed away. She lives in a lovely house right on the shores of Lake Huron, off of a dirt road. There are about twenty other little (and big!) houses on her dirt road, and if you follow the dirt road out to the main paved road, you run smack into the cemetery. (The cemetery folks have been awesome neighbors mostly because they'll take any level of noise and don't really ever make much.)

Take a left and go a few miles, and you get to Grindstone City, where they used to make large circular grindstones, used to grind the grain of the Great Plains into flour and cereal; bring your Master Card and you can buy a two-story stone building built in the 1800's sitting a few fields away - the outhouse is included at no extra charge. Today's Grindstone City is a bit lighter on the grain but heavier on the sugar: now they sell massive quantities of Midwestern ice cream atop wobbly little cones, and Danny Zeb's Party Store down the street sells the distilled sort of sugar geared to the grownup palate.

Back to my mom's house. Take the dirt road out to the cemetery and take a right, and in about ten minutes you'll come to the traffic light in town. In the summer it displays all three colors: green, yellow, and red. In the fall and spring it sort of blinks weakly. And, I am given to understand, in the brutal winters, in the teeth of blizzards blowing heavily in from the Great Lakes, that little traffic light shuts off its blinking and just holds onto the wires overhead for dear life. It's just as well; even if it were to be typing out Michael Jackson's "Thriller" in Morse Code, people wouldn't pay much attention to it. There's not much need for traffic control here in December. There are only about 600 people in town full-time, many of them either too old or too young to realize they're not, say, in Los Angeles or New York City or Bangkok.

The town appears geared to leisure (in particular, the summer sort of leisure.) Relative to the San Francisco Bay Area where we live, the population is somewhat skewed to either end of the age spectrum. The very young appear fairly content.

The teenagers can't wait to get out of there and even in the days of the Iraq wars the military looked pretty gosh darn good to many of them, boys and girls alike.

The young families are all looking for that needle in the haystack: in the middle of farm country, in the middle of an economically depressed region, they are looking for that elusive well-paying secure job which will let them raise a family.

The retirees fall into two categories. The first category are those who grew up here, raised a family here (as a farm wife? as a teacher? as a beauty salon owner?), and now find themselves being old here. The second category of retirees have been to Los Angeles, New York City, and occasionally Bangkok, and have decided those places are too gosh darn {expensive/loud/fast/liberal/crowded/full of bulls**t} for their tastes, and so they have retired to this, their own little piece of paradise. These retirees are my mom's crowd. In the summers they read poetry by the shores of the Great Lake as the sun sets at 9:30 pm. In the winters they get properly snowed in and listen to their Elvis Presley CDs. In the spring they have the leisure to watch the snow melt (in a region which measures snowfall in feet, this is actually a nontrivial activity.) In the fall they sit in their living rooms and vote Republican.

*****

This whole business of voting Republican brings me to the next subject of the Rural Michigan Experience. There is Acceptable and Not Acceptable Behavior. It differs somewhat based upon zip code, and (while not going anywhere near politics) here I will give you a brief outline of Ways We Know We're Not in Kansas Anymore.

In urban California, it is Acceptable to eat with an eye to the global pesticide load, to calculate the total (weighted average) distance your dinner has travelled to your table (in kilometers so you can appear more European), and to Do Your Part in Keeping Organic Farmers in Business. (This has a whole host of possible extensions, including going vegan, joining those Zero Population Growth people, and Freecycling early and often.)

In the rural Midwest, it is Acceptable to get the very best yield for your farming investment that you can, and while you're at it, everybody earns their keep - even the children and the dog.

Do you see the orthogonality building?

Just before we left, Scott and I got on (yet another) health kick. What if this cancer was caused by, say high-fructose corn syrup? What if these massive quantities of this sweetener are actually feeding the cancer? We try to remain semi-un-hysterical, but when there's something like metastatic cancer, it's hard not to channel those folks in the 1950's who were wondering, what if this lung cancer really is caused by cigarettes?

Well, if the cancer liked high-fructose corn syrup, we were going to starve it out. The "HF" was banned from our house, from our children, from our cars, and (mostly) from our grocery order.

Like self-respecting Bay Area yuppies with an added burst of mortal fear thrown into the equation, we skimmed Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma." We watched Morgan Spurlock get Super Sized. We shuddered our way through Fast Food Nation. And I am too afraid to watch the one where the cow has a UPC code on it (is it Food Inc?) We already have organic vegetables delivered to the house as part of a CSA, and have kids who eat whole-wheat pasta with No Genetically Modified Ingredients, Ever! Even our dog eats green beans (and adding to this shameful behavior, she also doesn't really "earn" her keep. At least not in the Midwestern farm dog sense of earning one's keep by hunting, herding, or guarding.)

And so, after a red-eye from SFO to Chicago, a few hours running around O'Hare, a stop at McDonald's for breakfast (and a fervent hope that all the organic steel-cut oatmeal I'd eaten in the previous six days would somehow absorb or subvert the McFood we were eating at the airport), we caught the puddle-jumper to rural Michigan. Within ten minutes of landing, we had all our luggage (including the dog), and were standing in the morning sunlight, blinking stupidly, in the middle of what was essentially a giant cornfield.

There were rows and rows of corn. Each row had a little sign at the end of it.

Scott pointed the signs out to me. "Look at that! What do you make of that?"

I knew exactly what "that" was. "Darling, it's a sign telling you what brand of corn seed they planted there."

He was fascinated. "I guess not everybody eats organic corn seed raised by local farmers."

The entire two hour ride back, we passed row after row of corn. Big ones, small ones, droopy ones, floppy ones. Ones for people to eat. Ones for dairy cows to eat. Ones to feed to beef cattle that we then feed to people. I'm sure an amazing number of them were slated for High Fructose Corn Syrup glory.

The Midwestern love affair with genetically modified corn continued in the newspapers. In addition to advertisements for trailers, livestock, babysitters, and farm equipment, you can buy genetically modified seeds. On page 3, there's the ad for AVA Soft White Winter Wheat, which is moderately resistant to Fusarium (scab). It has Excellent Yield Potential, Good Test Weight, and it was developed by Hyland seeds, from Ontario, Canada.

The ads for corn, wheat, and other seeds in the paper looked just like the technology, clothing, and recreation ads we see out here. Fry's Electronics advertises network cable; Macy's advertises its fall collection, and Hawaii advertises its airfares to the Bay Area crowd, just like the good folks at Hyland seeds, in Ontario, Canada, were advertising their products, complete with full technical specifications and locations where they could be purchased, to their target market audience.

With newspaper ads like that, it was time to realize that were essentially in Rome. So for the time we were there, we ate non-organic meat-heavy saturated-fat-laden delicious (and locally grown) produce and meat and dairy.

(One of the reasons you see me going to Weight Watchers these days is that I put on 8 lbs in 5 weeks. I didn't think such a thing was possible outside of pregnancy, but evidently with enough ice cream, anything is possible.)

***********************************************************************

At least my mom said the eggs were bona fide local, fresh, and free range. I asked her how she knew that.

"Well," she said. "I know they're local because I pick them up off the highway on my way back from Bad Axe. There's a farm, and they have a little brown fridge out near the road. You stick your money in the little box, and you take your eggs out of the fridge."

(Isn't it just delicious that the closest "town" is called Bad Axe, Michigan?)
"But," I pressed. "That's local. How do you know they're fresh?" I was used to egg cartons from the manufacturer, with stamped expiration dates, and a little "USDA Organic" certification plus some other verbiage saying something about the chickens getting to run around. These eggs came in cartons from all sorts of manufacturers, with a little note inside saying the eggs were not from the name stamped on the carton. (I guess the farmer sourced gently used empty egg cartons from Somewhere Else?) There was no expiration date applicable to the actual eggs in the carton.

She said, "You know how you have a hard time peeling the hard boiled eggs?" That was true. Every blasted time I hard boiled up a dozen of these, getting the peel off of it required a chisel. It turns out that's because the eggs were *too fresh* - a new concept to me - and that if the eggs are really that perfectly fresh, the wise housewife knows to let them sit a few days before trying to hard boil them. The wise housewife serves fried eggs the first three days, watching as the large lovely orangish-sunny yolks occupy up a huge portion of the whites. The wise housewife watches the thick egg yolk drip slowly down the side of the fork, onto the white buttered toast, and keeps her hard boiling activities down to a low simmer for a few days. I may be a wise housewife someday, but for now I'm still squarely in the "forced to use a chisel because she's in a hurry" camp, in all too many areas of my life.

"All right, all right," I conceded. "That's fresh. How do you know they're free range?"

I came with her the next time she bought eggs. Sure enough, we pulled into the dirt and gravel driveway. We got a carton of eggs from the rainbow of carton sizes and shapes in the little brown dorm fridge. (Is there a Society of Little Brown Dorm Fridges? Do they Facebook together? Is this fridge surprised she's packing eggs when all her other sister fridges are probably full of beer? Or, more likely, did she do a noble stint in the dorms at Michigan State, and then at Delta College, and then again at Wayne State, and after a serious Tour of Duty, is she relieved to be back in the peaceful country, servicing sober Christians who want good eggs during reasonable daylight hours? But I digress.)

We put the money into the box. I don't remember exactly, but it was probably about $2 - far less than the $6/dozen it costs to get anything comparable in the Bay Area.

My mom pointed to the back yard. Sure enough, behind the farmhouse were all the usual accoutrements: a horse, a barn, a field (full of genetically modified corn), and The Free Range. The Free Range was, of course, chock full of chickens. They were a rangin' and a rollin' and a peckin' and a scratchin'. Every so often the Working Dog would run by and they would shift to tremendous a-cluckin'.

So, dear readers, here's how you know you're getting eggs which are local, fresh, free-range, and non-organic.

They're local because you don't go very far to get them.

They're fresh if they don't hard boil well but make lovely hollandaise sauce.

They're free-range if you can see the chickens running around.

And they're not organic if you're in a part of the country where under "organic," the local dictionary lists: "paying excessive money for corn which is moldy, produce which is worm-eaten, and cows that don't produce very much milk. See also: d**n fool."

Back in the trenches - it's working!

2010-09-02T19:24:00.000-07:00

Hello all. It's been a while - some of you left us queasily quaffing sand-laced champagne as we lurched back through the Santa Cruz mountains in a limo as we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. Others of you were with me through the Great Preschool Caper of 2010, in which I was desperately searching for that hen's tooth: a preschool, with high technology on the premises, which could do something fast.

Things have calmed down a tiny bit - we have our two kids back in school. We have Scott still on chemo. And at work (at least for the time being) I'm preschool-ful and don't need immediate assistance in the high-tech fast-moving anklebiter category.

So now, it's time for an update on Scott. You may remember he had a recurrence of his cancer in three separate places, discovered in March on a scan. It was quite the surprise, because he felt well and had no pain. But on his oral maintenance chemo (which was Xeloda pills only), he had disease progression, so she trotted out the bigger guns.

The oncologist put him back on "Big Chemo," which is a combination of three drugs: 1) Genentech's wonder drug Avastin, 2) oxaliplatin, and 3) 5-FU (fluorouracil, known colloquially in the cancer community by a different set of works that go intuitively with the letters "F" and "U.")

If you're not interested in any details, skip a few paragraphs.

If you'd like the "sound bite" version of the drugs, this trifecta is known as XELOX. Go ahead, I dare you to Google it.

And for those of you desperate for the details of this but not headed to medical school in the near future, the Avastin and oxaliplatin are in liquid form and need to go straight into the body in an IV infusion in the hospital, which takes a few hours any given Monday. The 5-FU comes in either liquid form or pill form. If you take it in liquid form, you get an infusion over 48 hours, which means you go to the hospital, get hooked up, take a little bottle of hoochy-hoochy home in your pocket, keep it away from the kids, try to dress in a way that you can carry this bottle and the IV tubing and the needle into your chemotherapy port around with you everywhere you go, refrain from showering for 2 days, and go back to the hospital to get disconnected. If you take it in pill form, the pill is called Xeloda and you just take it twice a day for some period of time - in Scott's case, two weeks - and then don't take it for some other period of time - in Scott's case, the third week. In the beginning, three years ago, Scott had the 5-FU in liquid infusion form. Now, he's taking it in pill form. You can probably see why.)

He's on a once-every-three weeks schedule of the XELOX regimen now.

Week 1 is the week he gets infused intravenously at the hospital with the Avastin and oxaliplatin, and the fatigue, nausea, and other side effects make that week most akin to a week known in healthy families as "husband has the flu."

Week 2 is the week he begins to feel a little better, and would probably be more akin to "husband has jet lag and lingering GI symptoms from a weeklong business trip to India."

Week 3 is the week known around here as "husband grills bits of cow" and "family goes to Waterworld."

And then Week 4 - you'd think with this continuous linear improvement, that Week 4 would be "husband does flips on trapeze" and "husband beats Lance Armstrong and Tiger Woods in the same week." But Week 4 doesn't actually exist around here - a three-week chemo cycle means that as soon as he's feeling fairly decent, he goes back to Week 1, which puts him (instead of on the golf course or the Tour de France), back into the "flu" category.

But it's working! We went to see his oncologist last week, and the results of his latest scan are in. The cancer has receded again. All three of the previous hot spots are NOT VISIBLE. Not visible, as in they are NOT THERE (or at a minimum, too small to see). The tumors are once again responding to this behind-kicking chemotherapy, and the oncologist smiled and used the word "excellent."

I didn't know oncologists actually had the word "excellent" in their vocabulary. In medical school, they teach you new words for things: "hiney" becomes "gluteus maximus." "Head up the a**" becomes "exhibits depressive symptoms." "Stark, raving mad" becomes "discomfort related to childbirth." And I had been convinced that before they'll let you out of oncology school, they delete words like "excellent" from your vocabulary, replacing them with phrases like "cautious optimism" and "responsive to treatment" and "interval improvement in {insert Latin word for "hiney" here}."

But our oncologist broke all the rules. She smiled. She said "excellent." Before she could break into a Highland fling or launch into an aria, Scott asked, "so does this mean I can get off the heavy chemo?"

She smiled. "Not yet."

He said, "What do you mean, not yet?"

She said, "When you had the recurrence in March, I recommended a six-month treatment with XELOX. We are at the four-month mark now, and this is an excellent response. To keep the cancer at bay, I recommend you finish out at least two more months on the XELOX, and then we'll re-evaluate. I might even like to recommend two additional months of the heavy chemo on top of that, before you go back on maintenance chemotherapy."

So for that Friday, at the end of a Week 3, we left the oncologist's office. Scott was on Cloud 9 - the treatment was working again! All the fatigue, all the nausea, all the feeling like a twice-wrung-out-sock in a hurricane - it was all worth it. He was focusing on the treatment's success. He was focusing on the two more grueling treatments of this Big Chemo before he could re-evaluate.

I was still in a haze of disbelief. One of the hardest parts of this for me has been the element of Surprise. Not a lower case "surprise," as in "surprise birthday party" or "surprise bill from the IRS." I don't even think it's comparable to "surprise - you're having twins!" This is the Capital Surprise, as in March's "he looks really healthy and we think he's still in remission, but Surprise! the cancer's back!" Or as in this week's "he looks really sick and chemo doesn't usually work super well a second time around but Surprise! it's working!"

From what I have seen, usually, in these parts of the cancer world, you don't get second and third chances like this. Chemo usually works for some period of time, and then the disease progresses. I have known so many people who have had a recurrence of metastatic disease as the beginning of the end, and I was trying hard not to think of what could be. In my cancer caregiver support group, over the past 3 years, I would estimate that conservatively I have watched twenty caregivers go through the death of their loved ones from cancer. It's a rate of about one every two months or so. It's a lovely group and a great bunch of people, but we are pulled together once a week in a gruesome waiting game - for whom will the bell toll next?

But at least this time, the bell is not tolling for our household.

I couldn't believe it.

The same first line of chemo which beat it back the first time was working again.

We left the oncologist's office on a Friday. Scott went home. I went back to work. An hour later, I was on the phone having a mundane business conference call with people whose world is full of lower-case surprises - "surprise! this part of that project is late." "surprise! that shipment got lost." "surprise! we messed up the time zones for the conference call."

At the house, we had a lovely weekend, grilling pieces of cow and eating fresh corn.

Two days later, on Monday morning, I was up as usual about 5:30 am. It was Maggie's first day of kindergarten. At 7:30 am, I left the house to take Maggie to her first day of school. I totally forgot to take a picture, and felt all sorts of Mommy Guilt when I saw the other mommies taking pictures of their little dears on the front steps. Scott stayed home with Elli until about 10 am, when she went with her sitter for the day (second grade didn't start for her till Wednesday.) At work, I remembered we hadn't taken Elli school shopping, so I swallowed some more Mommy Guilt and texted our wonderful sitter and asked her if she would take Elli school shopping while I was at work.

And that afternoon, Scott went back to the hospital for another infusion, another entry into the Week 1 of Big Chemo.

He was able to drive himself home from chemo, but was firmly in bed when I got home about 4 pm with Maggie, all flush with excitement at her first day of kindergarten. Elli was all excited about the purple school folder and the new markers our sitter had gotten for her, and was looking forward to the start of second grade in less than 48 hours.

And thus we launched into another Week 1 of Big Chemo, also known as "husband has the flu."

Our dog Lucky vastly prefers Week 3, when the big event is "husband grills pieces of cow."

Preschool GOTTEN! THANK YOU ALL!!!

2010-08-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody!

This is just a brief post to say thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

We've got the preschool downloads we needed; boss is on an airplane on his vacation, and I am once again pulled out of the fire of crisis. Thank you all - you saved me in a moment of great need.

Give those sticky darling preschoolers a big hug for me. And yourself too!

Got Preschool? URGENT HELP NEEDED!

2010-08-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

Hello lovelies(and handsomes) - it's been a long time since I've given you an update, and this may be the only post here which is not (much) about Scott or cancer. Scott's still on chemo, still doing well, and scheduled for a scan later this month, so we're in hurry up and wait mode.

This post is all about me. I need some urgent help from the wonderfuls among you.

You may remember I have work that I go to? The place my paycheck comes from? They've been wonderful to me there - they've coped with me coming in late and leaving early with no complaints for THREE YEARS. They've let me telecommute. They've let me switch jobs to accommodate the wackiness in my life. They've given me time off with no hassle for trips to rural Michigan or the ICU.

It's the most wonderful job, the most wonderful client, and I'm in a bit of a quandary. They're making a line of educational tools to help teachers assess the natural number sense of pre-school children.

And, well, I was supposed to get them some pre-schools to download (and run) their initial product offerings by, like, well, actually by yesterday. And where was I yesterday? I can't exactly remember, but I can say mentally I was somewhere between attending a Weight Watchers meeting and getting buzzed on Michigan sweet cherry wine. (Both are fairly preschool-unfriendly activities, and they sort of give me that equal-but-opposite tension in my life.)

And Maggie, bless her chubby little cheeks, JUST TURNED FIVE AND IS NO LONGER IN PRESCHOOL.

If you could help me get some preschools, I would be forever grateful. Here's exactly what I need:

1. Locate a bona fide preschool, which has children between the ages of 2-4 enrolled. If you have a child in this age group, please take this to his/her teacher. Feel free to direct all your friends here - the more the merrier. I so need the help.

2. Ask them to go to www.mathemazing.com

3. Click on the "Educational Content" link. This is totally free and if they don't have a userid, they get to create one for themselves. No cost, no junk email, no nothing but sweetness and light coming from this site.

4. Click on "Register" to register themselves as a new user. Fill out their information and click "Register."

5. Login with their brand spanking new userid and password.

6. DOWNLOAD ALL THREE OF THE TOOLS ON THE SITE. It don't mean a thing if we don't get these downloads.

* Preschool Number Sense Tool #1 - left click on this and play that game at least once!

* Download Audio Walkthrough - right click on this to download the podcast. (Left clicking on this will get you some exciting stuff which is probably illegal in most of Michigan but done in the Upper Peninsula anyways, so do the right thing here and right click that baby.)

* Download Our White Paper - right click on this to download the paper.

7. Let me know that you have just pulled my a** out of the fire! You can reach me at carrie_beam [at] yahoo.com and/or just leave a comment on Facebook (or heck, even here on the blog). Call me on my cellphone at (925) 285 - 1977 if you have any difficulties with any of this, any time of the day or night.

So, you're feeling a bit strange about this? I can't promise you that you're in a preschool sort of mood.

What I can promise is that there are no bugs or viruses here, and if we can get a preschool to register and download ALL THREE PRODUCTS by yesterday (or heck, by today if that's all we can do), it will help me BEYOND immensely.

Did I mention we just got back from a monthlong vacation in rural Michigan (and do I have tractor racing and bullfrog hunting stories to tell)?

And did I mention my boss is going on vacation in TWO DAYS?

And that I need to have a preschool download these BEFORE HE GOES???

And that I was evidently the preschool lady and I'm just needing a little help from my friends?

Thank you - I LOVE YOU ALL FOREVER!!!!!

Happy Anniversary to Us! (and the little f**ker was malignant)

2010-06-21T21:00:00.001-07:00

Hello all.

You may remember last month at this spot, you left us recovering from a bronchoscopy, a biopsy of the lymph nodes in Scott's chest. That, in turn, was somewhat spurred by a CAT/PET scan in March, which showed a recurrence of the cancer in not one, not two, but - count 'em - three! places in his body: about a 1 cm square bit of liver, the chest lymph nodes, and a piece of his right leg bone.

Well, we got the biopsy results back, and they're cancerous. No s**t, Sherlock. We actually sort of knew that going into the thing. The interesting thing here is they can't really tell what sorts of cancer cells they are. They were going to see if the lymph malignancy was a new cancer of the lymph system (a sort of Hodgkins' Disease, if you will), or a metastasis of the colon cancer to the lymph (which would be the worse of the two options.)

We were braced to hear he had a new primary cancer (which would be good news, because a new primary is often a Stage 1 or 2, and easier to treat than the ol' Stage 4 bugger that's been riding us hard these past few years).

We were braced to hear that he had a confirmed metastasis from the liver to the lymph nodes (which would be bad news, because the lymph nodes are to the body sort of like the drainage sewers are to the city, and once the bad oozy stuff gets into one lymph node, it often goes a-wanderin' near and far.)

But we were not braced to hear the medical infighting that is evidently all too commonplace these days when big hospitals employ big doctors. The bronchoscopy doctor said the lab doctors were not doing a good enough job analyzing the perfectly adequate sample he had gotten. The lab doctors told the esteemed bronchoscopy doctor that he hadn't got enough of a sample for them to tell whether it was colon cancer or something else. All they could say was for sure was that it surely was cancer. They didn't know what type it was and they weren't going to risk any sort of professional reputation based on such a small, inadequate sample.

Before this degenerated too far into a "did too / did not!" sort of preschool-style exchange, our wonderful oncologist came on the scene, waving her hands and calling a truce.

She said that although Scott was a trooper and willing (even eager) to undergo another bronchoscopy (and I could have gotten anther foot rub/Yogurt Park), she was not going to put him through the medical risks of a repeat procedure.

Whether it was a new primary cancer, or the same ol' stuff, the metastatic colon cancer was the biggest, most pressing problem, and anything else would just have to wait. She was going to continue to treat the metastatic colon cancer, and once that was beaten into remission, she would entertain thoughts of what might or might not be fartknocking around the lymph nodes in the chest.

Most folks would be devastated to hear this sort of news - malignant cells of unknown origin in the chest! But we often deal with more bad news by 9 am than most people deal with all day.

So, we did the only reasonable thing. We rented a limo and took the kids to the beach to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary.

******************************************************************************

This is the place to put in a HUGE thank you to our Bikini Squad! The girls LOVE their bikinis and wore them to the beach (and Maggie occasionally sleeps in hers). So thank you, thank you, thank you - you know who you are.

For starters, we got the limo for Wednesday the 16th.

"Oh, you were married on the 16th?" asked a neighbor.

"Actually, no, on the 24th." This much I remember, despite the mush that has become my brain.

"Then why are you celebrating on the 16th?"

Ummmm...what do I say here? Because the 24th falls in a Week 1 of the New Big Chemo, which means Scott will likely be seeing double from the anti-nausea drugs and too sick to get very far out of bed, the kids will be wild with anxiety, and I'll be rather too caffeinated to make it all the way to the beach without a perma-porta-potty on board?

"Well, it was more convenient to do it this week." I was hoping it would sort of fly under the radar. It sort of did. And it sort of was.

*************************************************************************

9:05 am. The limo has not yet arrived. I ordered it for 9 am and I am getting nervous. Scott has long ago learned that 10 minutes doesn't count for squat in the course of the universe and hasn't even realized that the limo might be late. I have my equipment stacked out front: map, cooler of food (brie, fresh-baked baguettes, cheap champagne, cheaper sparking apple juice, organic grapes, organic strawberries), epi-pen bag, brand new thing of diaper wipes, roll of paper towels, purse, cellphone, beach tote #1, beach tote #2, beach tote #3, change of clothings Nos. 1 through 6 (two apiece for myself, Elli, and Maggie; Scott does not go through clothing at the same rate the rest of us do), and the ubiquitous Diaper Bag (which has now become the Poopy Pants Bag because while we are generally potty trained, we still Fudgie and Betsy-Wetsy semi-regularly.)

9:10 am. The limo is here. It is large, white, and straight outta 1985. The driver is Mr. Kemal, staid, proper, in his little suit, and straight outta Karachi. I realize he thinks he *is* on time because he's only ten minutes late.

9:30 am. It takes us easily twenty minutes to get in the car. It now does not matter when Mr. Kemal got here, because we have eclipsed his lateness with our own chaos factors. First Elli gets in the trunk. Then I have to sweep the cabin for peanuts. Then we have to find Maggie. We put the dog in the house, take the car seats out of the minivan, try to install the car seats in the limo, realize not all the seat belts work, and settle on the few working ones. The girls face sideways. The dog is now out of the house and wants to get into the trunk with Elli. Maggie is in the limo and wants to eat the ice from the champagne thingy. As far as I'm concerned, she can eat the chewing gum under the seat so long as it doesn't have peanuts in it.

9:35 am. We are still not going anywhere because Mr. Kemal wants to know where we want to go and I don't know. I tell him, "Santa Cruz! The beach boardwalk! It's our tenth wedding anniversary!" He is unimpressed. I can tell he's jaded, all too jaded - he's taken too many drunken yuppies wine tasting, too many spoiled rich debutantes to proms in Blackhawk and Danville, too many ungrateful demanding people to too many of the same places. He wants an address he can plug into his GPS system. I put the dog back in the house.

9:40 am. Scott is coming out of the house with the exact address of the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk. The dog comes out of the house too. Mr. Kemal is thrilled to have an address to plug into his GPS. We buckle in Kid 1 and Kid 2. Scott and I sit in the back of the limo. Then we get out and put the dog back in the house. Then, finally, we are off to the beach! Mr. Kemal rolls away and I see the driver partition roll up. I imagine he is relieved he doesn't have to hear us. He is probably quite right.

10:15 am. We made it as far as Mission Blvd down near Milpitas (I think) before we had to stop. This is actually a personal best. With one colon cancer patient, one coffee addict, one Fudgaholic, and one five-year-old with an averaged sized bladder and a penchant for 8-oz bottles of milk, it's actually amazing we made it this far before we had to stop. We frantically push the "driver call" button and he takes us to Jack in the Box.

10:40 am. We have pottied twice, eaten once, washed hands once, sprayed water all over the ladies' room only once, and gotten back in the car. Limo goes through Silicon Valley and over the vomit highway, otherwise known as Route 17. If you're not prone to motion sickness, it's a glorious route through ancient redwood groves en route to the glorious beach. If you are prone to motion sickness (especially if you're now sitting sideways between two girls because they won't leave each other alone, and that steak pita thingy from Jack in the Box isn't sitting too well), well, let's just say Highway 17 is something to survive.

11:15 am. We are getting close to the beach. I can see the surf shops. The ice plants. The hippies. Elli raises her hands to her face and issues the Battle Cry: "I GOTTA GO POO!"

11:17 am. We stop again, this time at a Denny's. Scott cannot believe we have had to potty twice on what should be one 90-minute drive to the beach. Mr. Kemal long ago gave up trying to believe what his clientele do or do not do in the limo. I am too busy rushing the girls into the ladies' room to care. Depending on who you are, it's terrible, mediocre, or excellent. (You can quit reading here if poo offends you.)

Have you ever seen the word "Monster" used as an adjective? You know, as in "Monster Truck," or "Monster Beverage," or "Monster Final Exam?" Think of the most extreme incarnation of that general effect, and then think of what size production a six year old, 55-lb girl would have to produce to qualify as a "Monster Turd." Then double it. Put 95% of it in the potty at Denny's (with the door to the stall wide open and some other poor lady trying to wash her hands and Not Look). And put the other 5% of it on the underwear.

Maggie thinks this is terrible. "Oh Elli! You pooped in MY underwear! You pooped in MY Fancy Nancy underwear! You're not my friend and you can't be my sister anymore. Not till you say you're sorry. I don't want you to wear my underwear anymore!"

It is true, all too true. In the scramble to get dressed this morning, we had some illicit laundry poaching, some reallotment of the few remaining pairs of coveted non-pooped Fancy Nancy underwear (we started the spring with three 3-packs of pristine white Fancy Nancy undies, and because everybody likes to wear them, and half of everybody likes to poop in them, we are now down to something like 3 clean Fancy Nancy ones and 6 ones with visible poo stains in them. This despite my best scrubbing, bleaching, and soaking.) Now the score is Cleans 2, Fudgies 7.

All the Fancy Nancy underwear technically belongs to Maggie (Elli's is Hannah Montana, which got pooped through and through long long ago, and one day when the laundry lady around here admits defeat, she'll nudge the shopping lady to go out and procure some more Size 7 undies. But the laundry lady is still working with her chlorine-free bleach and her Sit-On-The-Throne-Every-Hour-On-The-Hour-Because-I-Said-So campaign. Losing the campaign, but still working valiantly. The next campaign is shaping up to be the ever-more-powerful Sit-On-The-Throne-Every-Hour-On-The-Hour-Because-I-Said-So-And-I-Am-Your-Mother version.)

Elli thinks this is mediocre. "Well, at least I got a lot in the potty! Mommy, do we have any changes of clothing for me?"

And I think this is excellent, wonderful, awesome, and any combination thereof. For starters, better in any sort of potty than in the limo, and don't think for a minute the fact of being in a limo would have forestalled that sort of volcano. And there are so many worse places to put that last 5% of the turd than on your sister's underwear. For example, last year I learned that when you leak even a tiny bit out during abdominal surgery, it can cause septic shock. Relative to that sort of consequence, even a little scrubby-scrubby on the limo seats doesn't sound so bad. (Note to self: if I ever hire a limo again for this family, see if I can find one with brown leather seats.)

We wipe Elli down, bundle up the biohazard undies, get out Change of Clothing Number 2-A (person #2, change A), change Elli in the limo, and proceed to the beach.

High noon. It has taken us somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5 hours to get here, a good hour above even the most laid-back of estimates. But we are at the beach! And it's our anniversary!

Mr. Kemal is warming up to us. He cracks a smile when he drops us off and mentions he has one child. (I think it was that last desperate sprint to Denny's, when we didn't even want him to park - simply stop in the street and unlock the friggin' doors - don't bother to walk around formally and let us out. Ever since then, he's been thawing.)

We grab our beach totes and bags. We each grab a kid. Mr. Kemal rolls off with the white limo and walk to the white hot sand of the glittering Santa Cruz beach. I realize he's rolling off with our cooler, with our organic strawberries, with our artisan baguettes, with our diaper wipes and our paper towels, but no matter. Cannon Elli has been Unloaded for the morning, and all is well with the world.

We spent a few lovely hours on the beach. The sea lions barked. The Pacific Ocean danced and sparkled. Elli said she could see China. Both girls ran into and out of the cold surf, gathering kelp and seaweed. They appropriated a large sand castle left over from a previous inhabitant. We watched Junior Baywatch jog down the beach in their matching red swimsuits (it looks MUCH better on TV), and watched them limp back about 30 minutes later, straggling one red suit at a time back to the Lifeguard Camp.

This is a little bit of a Dream for Scott. He remembers the first time his father showed him the California beaches, and he's been wanting to show our girls the beach for a long time. In particular, he wanted to be the first one to show them the beach, and he's thrilled he got to do it.

By 2:30, we were trying to go. By 3 pm, we were almost in Mr. Kemal's limo. He was looking around the boardwalk, worried about us, and we were coming along like the mythical herd of turtles. (Lost your organic strawberries and double-cream brie? No matter - we bought some lovely deep-fried fish-n-chips and sourdough cheese sandwiches, sprinkled them with sand and black flies, and ate them cold in the shade whilst the footwashers splashed on us. Any old coot can have champagne and strawberries; it takes a special person to enjoy the sandy version with a spritz of salt water and the crunch of the black fly as protein. And Maggie, who is very wary of new foods, has embraced sand as the Fifth Food Group.)

By 3:15, we had gotten ourselves fully into the limo and were headed back home.

We fished the champagne and the sparkling apple cider out of the trunk, and buckled everybody in their car seats. I got out champagne flutes for everybody, and Scott popped both bottles.

Maggie's grubby sandy little hands gripped her champagne flute like a baby monkey holding a banana. Elli held hers like a movie star. Scott tried to balance his on his knees while he poured, and I didn't even bother trying to hold one until everybody else's was poured.

I tried to bring a little gravity to the situation. "Girls, do you know what we're doing? We're doing a toast. Mommy and Daddy have been married 10 years today. It's our wedding's tenth birthday today. And we're celebrating with you girls!"

Maggie looked at me like I was mad and sucked down her sparkling cider.

Elli guzzled hers and held out her cup for more. Scott refilled it.

"Girls, this is your mother speaking. Some day, 100 years from now, you will be 106 and 104 years old. And you will be telling your grandchildren that you sat in a limousine, and drank a toast to your parents' 10th wedding anniversary. And you rode in a gas powered limousine, to the beach, in a car seat."

Elli thumped her chest and let out a huge belch. Mr. Kemal raised the partition fully so he could quit listening to us once again. I gave it up.

By 3:45, Scott, Maggie, and Elli were all asleep in the limo. I put their cups down.

By 4 pm, we were on the freeway proper. I had a kid asleep on my shoulder, but I managed to generate just enough wiggle room that I could lean out and nudge the rest of the champagne bottle free.

I sat there, husband and kid asleep in the way-back, another kid asleep sandy on my shoulder, guzzling champagne straight out of the bottle as the trusty Mr. Kemal drove us home, thinking, The great part about this is I don't have to drive. The challenging part is that I'm going to have to pee before we get back home. And ain't nobody stopping for nothing as long as these kids are still sleeping.

We made it home.

And I made it, just barely.

Leaving a Tiny Bit Here, a Tiny Bit There

2010-05-20T20:16:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

This may a brief update, but I will try to make up for it in comprehensiveness, snarkiness, and overall glory. It's late for me (7:39 pm) and I've not yet had the proper combination of coffee and champagne and sleep to really put me in the mood to spin tales, and it's been rather a long day, but I am your humble servant and will certainly give it the old Girl Scout try, even if I'm a few Thin Mints short of a full cookie drive.

Today, Scott had a biopsy at Kaiser. He's left not one, not two, not three, but evidently about six little pieces of him behind. And I, for one, am NOT going back to get them.

This whole business started a few weeks ago, when he was reviewing his chest scans with his oncologist. I wasn't at this meeting, and my understand is semi-fuzzy at best, but apparently there was some speculation about what exactly the bright "hot spots" in his chest could be. (I don't think the oncologist was really gearing up for a game of Twenty Questions, complete with the "Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?" starter question, but nevertheless she wanted a biopsy of the hot spots in the chest.)

Ever heard of a colonoscopy, in which they run a camera up your rear end and take little snippets of interesting tissue if you have any?

*****

Well, it turns out they can do it from the other end as well. It's called a "bronchoscopy" when they go through your nose or your mouth. (We learned it's pronounced "bron-COS-cop-ee," not "BRONC-oh-scopy," when the admitting nurse gave us that Go-Directly-To-Jail Look-o-Death when we were registering at admitting and Scott got the accent on the wrong syllable. Medical elitist linguistic pig-f**ker of a lady, no wonder they don't let her near a scalpel. She'd remove your crown jewels if you so much as *thought * of San Francisco as 'Frisco. But I digress. Back to bron-COS-cop-ee, pronounced correctly from here and ever after.)

To do the Big B, they sedate the patient, snake in the camera, follow with the biopsy tools (and for all I know, then they admit the entire Roman army to the chest), and take little bits of interesting prize tissue (so actually, make that the invading Viking army, because they were slightly more famous for going in somewhere, stealing something of interest, and then snaking it back home again.)
So he had the sedation. He had the biopsy. He came out of sedation and asked me if it was really 3:30 pm. And then by six we were home to see the kids and our wonderful sitter.

*****

We've been through this drill so many times by now that we are becoming frequent flyers, complete with nostalgic remembrances. Last time for the ostomy reversal preop, he was in that other bed over there and I only had M&Ms to eat, so I ate those till I was sick. The very first time he had surgery, we were in that other corner, where the guy with the funny feet is lying now. Today I'm smarter - I've brought a sweater and a bottle of water, and even a PowerBar. Out the window is the parking spot we used when he had his septic shock, right in front of the ER. That wheelchair looks like the one he rode out of the hospital last time in. And this preop nurse is the same one who worked on him last time. She doesn't remember us, but we remember her. She still has cold hands but is a firm believer in pain medication, and with enough pain medication, they can massage you with ice cubes and it's generally all right.

When it's time to go into surgery, I walk behind the bed as they wheel him all the way in. It's a left here, a right there, all around past the loopy volunteer station, past Labor and Delivery and all their Nervous Family Members, down the hall and through the Big Doors marked ICU. Even this evokes some sense of historical familiarity - that is the bathroom where I fielded calls from a client the first time he was in the ICU. That is the room he was in the second time he was here, when he had that super nice Indian nurse named Taj, like Taj Mahal.

It's a bit interesting to note that his biopsy is being done in a procedure room that is, ahem, in the friggin' ICU. You are only ever allowed into here when you've got Something Major Happening. Why can't my husband be one of those wayward fellows getting a fishhook pulled out of his finger in Minor Injury? But then again, he's got some health issues here and there, and they *are* putting a lot of things in his throat and trying to sneak past his heart and punch a little hole in his lungs to snag a piece of chunk in the chest. One good sneeze from the good doctor during something like this and I can see why they're wanting the ICU really close by.

*****

And here is where my experience really comes in handy. The doctor tells me the procedure will take an hour. I say goodbye to my husband. The nurse shows me to the ICU waiting room. I smile at her and wave goodbye, and the security doors of the ICU slam shut behind her. I see the "NO CELL PHONES" sign in its angry red letters. I take a quick peek into the ICU waiting room. There's an equally unfriendly sign saying that "Family members will be allowed to visit ICU patients for five minutes out of every hour. Two family members will be allowed, one at a time." From what I can piece together from the seven similar-looking multi-aged equally-wretched folks sitting there,

1) it's their Grandma in the ICU

2) they have vastly differing opinions about what's wrong with her, what treatment she should have, and whose fault it is, and

3) they all need a good stiff drink, a cigarette, or a sedative and

4) they are all ICU newbies. They are burning their candles at both ends and in the middle. They don't realize ICU stuff happens on glacial time, and that Grandma's probably so out of it that she doesn't even know how many of them are there. Somebody could surely go home and walk the dog.

It's toxic, purely toxic, awash with panic, blame, desperation, and noise.

I am NOT sitting here for an hour. I don't even go in. I wait until the nurse is safely behind the ICU security door, and then I turn my cellphone to ON, note the time, whirl on my heel, and walk out - down the corridor, past the Big Doors (I don't buzz them, I just wait and sneak out in the wake of the big whooshy laundry thingy), past Labor and Delivery (it's a boy!), past the loopy volunteer (seriously, I don't know where they find these lovely old ladies, but they all must have to pass a hairdo uniformity test in order to sit at the volunteer desk), a left there, a right here, and down the elevators into the parking lot. Around an ambulance (another Grandma with Entourage! OMG - if she goes to the ICU, the ICU waiting room could erupt in a Hatfields vs McCoys sort of situation). And I'm out, into Downtown Walnut Creek.

*****

Downtown Walnut Creek.

Where there's Free Parking. Nordstrom's. Security guards on Segways. Little girls in ballet clothes and Crocs, with their hair in buns. I think it would be responsible for me to eat something.

Instead, I duck into the Creekside Spa and get a wonderful $15 foot massage from a mahogany-colored Chinese man of indeterminate age but of certain inability to speak English.

Then, I go to Yogurt Park and have my "lunch" - vanilla and Bavarian mint, swirled, with M&Ms in them. My feet squeak in my flip-flops.

Then, I go back to Kaiser. Up, around, past, through Labor and Delivery (it's a girl and her name is Javani!), and -- wait for it -- on the heels of two doctors running to answer a page to the ICU I get in past the security doors and sit myself back in the waiting room.

The McCoys are still there. Hatfields didn't show up - perhaps their Grandma just got stuck in the ER? Maybe she was fishing and just needed a fishhook taken out of her thumb. (That is most certainly the most likely cause if my mother ever gets taken to the ER.)

But the McCoys have been going at it full scale for the past hour. Their neo-matriarch, Grandma's fifty-something daughter, comes clicking into the room in her business suit and high heels. She has evidently Won the Who Sees Grandma for These Five Minutes This Hour battle, and she didn't share her five minutes with anybody. New fuss-fuss with the rest of 'em, new blaming, new discourse on the use of mushrooms, cigarettes, and Mexican Leeches to cure [insert your version of Grandma' s condition here] that [insert your nemesis' name here] gave to her because of [insert irresponsible action here.]"

Three minutes later, the doctor comes into the waiting room to get me.

"We are finished with your husband's procedure. I'm so sorry it ran a bit over. Were you waiting long?"

I smile, all fresh as a daisy. "No, doctor, not long at all."

***

We'll find out the results next week sometime. I'm curious to see - did they find anything? Was it animal, vegetable, or mineral? Perhaps a wayward Viking pickaxe?

I have yogurt drips down the front of my shirt.

Wonderful day, all told.

One Year Later ... the Beast is Back ...

2010-04-19T20:27:00.000-07:00

Hi all, and welcome back. It's been almost exactly one year since I posted here, and you probably have a sinking feeling as to why I'm updating this now.

Scott had a wonderful year basking in his NED (no evidence of disease) status. He continued to take the Xeloda chemo pills, and did all of that live in the moment, enjoy life to the fullest business, as did the rest of us, whenever possible. He's now 45, and the girls are 4 and 6, and I am turning FORTY fairly goshdarned soon. So time is moving onwards.

For those of you keeping counts of these things, it's been approximately 33 months since his initial diagnosis - we're coming up on the 3 year anniversary in July. That's enough time to grow a baby human from a microscopic zero to a screaming two year old who swipes dogfood from the pet and bites his babysitter. It's not nearly enough time to get used to the idea of having a serious form of cancer.

But we got some scan results at the end of March, and let's just suffice it to say Scott's broken up with NED. Or maybe NED has broken up with Scott. Semantics aside, the Beast is Back. The only bright spot here is the Beast appears to be no longer biting Scott in the a** (the colon tumor from the original colon cancer is nowhere to be seen on the scans). However, the Beast is gnawing at a few other tender places.

If I recall the scan results correctly, there is a recurrence of the cancer in his lymph nodes in the chest (about six of 'em), a 25 x 35 mm spot in his liver, and a possible "hot spot" in the bones of his right leg. This legbone business is both the most mysterious (it's sort of "warm", and they flagged it for further watching) and the most dismal (who wants the Beast to go somewhere like a bone???).

And with the recurrence comes the dive back into Big Chemo. He's back on the same regimen that took him back to NED status last time, for a minimum of a 4-6 month commitment, and we're hopeful it will work its magic again. He's on Avastin + oxaliplatin infused intravenously every two weeks in the hospital, plus oral Xeloda taken daily, with periodic breaks. He gets to give the vampires in the blood lab regular donations, tithe to the Nap God, and do all the other sorts of things that chemo patients do but nobody really wants to do anyways.

He had his first treatment today and already the effects are here. He feels the cold sensitivity kicking in, and he's Tired with a capital T.

Needless to say, this sucks. Majorly.

And you all are so wonderful - you're practically jumping through my computer screen right now with your desire to help. Well, darlings, you hold that thought and you hold it tight. We're gonna need lots of help, but like many saints praying for virtues, just not all just yet.

What we'd like you to do immediately (if you want):

* Sign up for our helpers list - it's on the Lotshelpinghands.com link to the left of this blog

* Dust off those prayin' hands and offer up a big one. At this point, we're accepting (nay, actively soliciting) all sorts of prayers from all different directions. We don't know what is happening, and want to hedge our bets in case somebody really does have a direct line upstairs.

* Facebook me, baby! Leave me (Carrie) a message.

* Ask me (Carrie) anything you want, anytime you see her. I'm a gabber. :)

What we'd like you to NOT do immediately (regardless of whether you want to or not :) )

* Please don't call Scott or me - the phones are ringing enough as it is with medical schtuff

* Please give Scott his headspace dealing with this cancer. He'd love to talk to you, and go to lunch with you, and go see totally violent space alien movies with you ... but not if the first ten minutes of the conversation has to be about how sorry you are that the cancer came back. If you can help us with our little dance of denial, that would be much appreciated. His ideal day would involve forgetting about cancer, recurrences, chemo, etc. for as much of it as possible, and anything you can do to help us with that mindset would be much appreciated. So find a great lunch spot, locate a grisly metal-eating space-alien-crunching giant caterpillar Transformer movie, and get the large popcorn. Just putten das popcorn in das mouth and closen it, and nicht speaken about der cancer.

* Please don't bring any food to the house just yet. We've got food allergies (and besides, I've just learned how to cook, really cook!) and we don't need seven million lasagnes to clog up the freezer whilst we eat our way through polenta and tuna casserole. We love you all. We really do. You are undoubtedly better cooks singlehandedly than I will ever be in a full generation. And we will need to eat. We just need to be judicious about food for the moment.

* Please don't talk to the kids (Elli and Maggie) about this just yet - we haven't sat down with them and told them. It's hard enough dealing with the recurrence; it's a bit on the melodramatic side of heartbreaking to figure out what's appropriate for a six year old. (The four-year-old I can do; I did that last time, when Elli was 4 and Maggie was a blessedly ignorant 2. But six years old asks more questions than I can easily answer...at least not till I get to the library and get one of those lovely books from the pariah shelf marked with the black dot, the ones with titles like "When a Parent Has Cancer" and "Why Is Daddy Sick?" Sigh. I was just really getting into the intellectual books like Tina Turner's autobiography or the life of the Indian mathematician Ramanujan, and now I'm back on the depressing side of self-help, all the way to the "how the flip do I help a kid deal with this when I don't actually know what is happening???")

* Please don't tell me that I can't claim to really be learning to cook when I try to make Fettuccine Alfredo sauce in a microwave with a frozen cube of heavy cream, a dollop of butter, and a shake of parmesan cheese. (FYI - It doesn't really work. It melts, it pops, it congeals, and then later on it hardens...) I will get into the Alfredo sauce later on, when I have time to find a frying pan and use it. Till then, if I can't microwave cream and butter, I'll have to microwave bacon instead.

So, until later my lovelies, it's goodnight for now. I'll write more later, and in the meanwhile I'm going to buy Alfredo sauce from Safeway (or if I get really desperate, go to an Italian restaurant and press the pros into service.)

Thanks for everything, in the past and in the future, and to all a good night.

Biohazard abatement

2009-04-26T12:42:00.001-07:00

Hello everybody. Apologies for the long silence; I've been busy, mostly doing biohazard abatement of all shapes and sizes.

Scott is doing well, really well. His abdominal wound has healed, pretty much completely. At first it was the size of a grapefruit, then the size of half a McDonald's apple pie, then half the size of a Snickers bar, then half the size of a HotWheels car, and finally it would just take the tip of somebody's thumb (not that I was poking it or anything). It's finally calmed down to just another wicked-looking scar on his abdomen, a bit off-color with grey and pink and some weird scar tissue. But it's quiet enough that he can use the sauna at the gym without any weird gestures.

What this means for you: call away! Call him! Take him to lunch! Invite him for beers! Go with him to that horridly violent movie in which a thousand warriors kill a thousand more quickly and the king escapes but not for long! It's time! It's time to play!

He is feeling better than he has in a long time. Part of it is getting over the septic shock - that tends to put a damper on feel-good vibes. Part of it is having been off of the chemo for such a long time. It's been eight months (August) since he's been on the oxaliplain, which is the super-powerful stuff which gives him mouth sores, neuropathy in the hands and feet, extreme fatigue, sensitivity to food spices, sensitivity to hot and cold, and chemo brain. It's been four months (December) since he's been on any form of any chemo - the Avastin gave him bloody noses, and the 5-FU gave smaller versions of mouth sores. And it's been March (a month and a half) since he's beein the ICU with most of his major bodily functions hooked up to some faithful machine.

We're enjoying this period of time. We're not exactly going on Mexican cruises, climbing Kilimanjaro, or even frequenting nudist colonies, but we are eating medium-spicy Indian food with wild abandon. Scott went as a chaperone on a field trip for Elli's kindergarten (thereby cementing his place as The Cool Parent) and took her to the Hannah Montana movie (what's a stronger substance than cement? Polyurethane? He polyurethaned his position as the Fun One when he bought her the adult-sized popcorn and let her dance in the aisles during the songs of the movie.) During both of these interludes, Mama (evidently the Uncool Parent) was, alas, at work.

Scott's got another visit with the oncologist coming up in a little while. Last visit was in March, and she basically said his first order of business was to heal that wound up, and then she'd talk more chemo. So I would expect that our next visit, for April/May, will be to show her he's healed that wound up, and then she may talk more chemo.

Everybody always asks me, why more chemo? There are a few catch-all answers to this one.

1. Because the oncologist says so. This is both my first answer and the answer of last resort.

2. To keep the cancer at bay. He's NED, which stands for "No Evidence of Disease." The scanners are pretty good - they can see cancer globules the size of a pea, or even smaller. But cells are pretty gosh darned small, and even a few hundred cancer cells could glom together. They would be too small to be picked up by a scanner, but might not stay that way for long. (That's the problem with cancer cells - a few hundred today, a few thousand next week, and before long you're talking about real-sized tumors. If they weren't so prone to grow, they wouldn't be cancer cells, and they wouldn't be such a problem. They need their discipline to keep from overgrowing their boundaries.) So the chemo is seen as a preventive, a "mopping up" to keep any rogue colonies of cells from growing into rogue nations of tumor.

3. Because the oncologist says so. (This logic is akin to those signs that say "Rule #1: The customer is always right. Rule #2: If the customer is wrong, see Rule #1." Substitute oncologist for customer and you've got Scott's approach to this at the moment.)

**********************************************************************************

And now, for the rest of our story.

Actually, there's not a huge one. Part of the reason for my extended silence on this blog is that a week and a half after Scott came home from the ICU, I came down with the flu. Influenza A, to be exact.

I was, as usual, super responsible when I did it. I taught my last Saturday class, went to Target and filled up on toilet paper and other necessities, came home, paid our babysitter, put the kids to bed, and then said, "Hmmm....I think I have a sore throat." By the next morning, I had completely lost my voice and would have to whisper for the rest of the week.

Three days later I had not really gotten out of bed. I had filed my final grades for my class (over the Internet!). I had consumed about six gallons of ice cream. I had been to the doctor, had a blood test (to rule out weird infections that one occassionally picks up visiting the ICU), a chest X-ray (to rule out pneumonia) and had a nasal swab (which ruled in Influenza A).

I got to spend spring break in bed, sick with the flu. The first four days were pretty horrid. But the last three --- ahhh, who needs a Mexican cruise when one can lie in bed, eating ice cream and drinking coffee, with the kids safely at school (I was too sick to care for them) and the husband safely out in the garage (he really shouldn't have been around me at all)? I watched all sorts of back episodes of Jerry Springer, Oprah Winfrey, and "The Real Housewives of New York City." It was wonderful. I hadn't realized how fried I had gotten, between Scott's first surgery, the first recovery, his septic shock, the ICU stay, the hospital stay, and his recovery from that too.

There was some collateral damage, mostly on the psyches of the kids. Make that kid. Maggie's pretty steady, and was fairly philosophical about it. She's also 3, with a shorter time horizon and a briefer span of attention. Elli's our canary in the coal mine, and she did NOT like what she saw. First Daddy sick. Then Daddy home and looking unwell. Then Daddy back in the hospital and too sick for kids to visit. Then Daddy home with a huge weeping abdominal wound and a lap she couldn't sit on. Then Mommy coughing, unable to speak, lying in bed, and a weird combination of Daddy and babysitters taking her to school. She's 5, and part of her was probably thinking, "Surely if this continues any longer, all the grownups around here will be incapacitated and I'll be left to walk the dog and wash the dishes!"

She did what any self-respecting spirited five year old would do. She threw a few temper fits. She screamed a bit. She shook her finger at me and told me to get out of bed. She even tried to get me up by prying my eyes open with her fingers (thumb over my nose for greater effect). None of that worked.

So she staged the Great Poop-A-Thon of 2009. She began to poop her pants. It started with a few fudgie stripes here and there. Then it moved into wet farts. Then (when I was too sick in bed with the flu to care if she had dropped an elephant in her pants) the Full Monty. Make that Monties. Before I knew it, I was packing two and three changes of underwear to school with her and they were coming home in plastic bag after plastic bag.

I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say it required Mommy being well for two full weeks (and proving it by leaving work early to get Elli out of school early, spending special Mommy time with just Elli while Maggie napped) before the Fudgies receded.

I haven't tallied up the final damages just yet, but we're almost out of Clorox bleach and I shall be shopping heavily at Sears when next they have a Disney Princess Underwear sale. And at some point this year I hope I shall be replacing our living room carpet.

(This actually does make me feel somewhat better. Daddy may be the Super Cool One Who Goes to Movies, and his illness was enough to start the 2009 incarnation of the Fudgie Train, but it appears it would be me, and only me, who had the power to halt the Fudgies in their tracks. This may actually be a notch in my Housewife's Apprentice belt (or apron?) -- don't those happy housewives on TV always pride themselves on clean laundry? And what requires greater skill - laundering a delicately crumpled white linen napkin from an outdoor picnic, or doing a months' worth of biohazard removal of (high fiber)(organic) kiddie poo from pair after pair of Ariel the Little Mermaid underwear? I didn't have the heart to tell Ariel that industrial sludge dumping had come to her pristine piece of territory.)

But we are back in usual form again. I back at work (gloriously behind once again), the kids are back to school (and we are even getting there on time), and Scott is feeling much much better.

I may even attempt to be social again. Right after, of course, I bake organic whole-wheat bread rolls, hand-baste lace onto my kitchen curtains, mount a "Mozard Mustard" blackout shade in the living room, plan a lecture on predictive analytics, go to Pilates class, find Elli some summer pajamas, clean up a little vomit from Maggie, coax my darling baby dog continue her "senior dog" diet doggie food, catch the sparrow which has somehow flown into our kitchen (messing up my lace-bottomed curtains!), and plant the tomato plants Scott brought home.

Actually, monkeys will fly out of you-know-where before all that happens. I'm going to actually try to see what remains of my own social life before that entire list happens.

Who knew? After nearly three months of biohazard, Mama is back in the game again. Pour the coffee - let springtime begin!

Home again, home again!

2009-03-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

Hi all - I'm delighted to tell you Scott was discharged yesterday from Kaiser and he's at home now.

The wound vaccuum got to stay at the hospital, but he's still got quite the open wound on his abdomen. It used to be the size of a grapefruit; now it's down to the size of a golf ball. It's open but now mostly red and pink, with few or none of the green, purple, and yellow colors we saw in the hospital.

With the help of his heavy oral antibiotics, it is healing, slowly but surely.

He is changing his bandages at home (I didn't know Band-Aids CAME in the Jumbo size, but evidently they do!) and trying to avoid straining or further aggravating this, at least until it heals a little more.

He's pretty tired - is sleeping much of the afternoons and going to bed about 7 pm. He got up for breakfast with the kids this morning and went right back to bed after breakfast. I took the kids into the bedroom to say bye bye to Daddy before taking them to school.

What this means for you: there are some of you who are desperate to see him, take him to lunch, talk to him on the phone, and the works.

Hold that thought. Hold on tight, because next week he's going to be desperate to get out of the house and see you, go to lunch, talk on the phone, go to the movies, the whole works.

But I might suggest it would be wise to let him rest through this weekend. Let him lie low, drink his fluids, take his antibiotics, take his naps, and generally cope with the bundles of energy which are the delighted kids.

Email him or message him on Facebook if you must, but please hold the phone calls, visits and playdates until next week.

It appears that the way we got into this situation was doing too much, too soon after the colostomy closure surgery, and the only thing worse than doing that once is doing it twice.

***********************************************************

I am delighted to report I have perfected the art of being late.

Neophytes (this used to be me) are never late at all: they are the sorts of people who consult calendars, factor delays into travel time, arrive early, and instill the value of punctuality in their children.

Junior apprentices (this also used to be me) are late, sometimes by as much as an hour, but never without stress. They know they are late. They call to apologize for being late. They feel their blood pressure rise when delayed by traffic, the missing pink Hello Kitty sock, the gallon of ice cream left on the counter last night. They may even try to adjust their behavior (by, say, getting up fifteen minutes earlier) so they won't be late tomorrow.

But, as with so many things from playing the violin to making a souffle, perfection has quite a different veneer than these clumsy beginning attempts. I now get the kids to school two minutes late without breaking a sweat, and certainly without speeding, hurrying them out of the car, or sprinting up the stairs. We find the Hello Kitty sock; we clean up the ice cream; we even take the time to do Elli's hair in two pom-poms and affix the crown to Maggie's dolly's hair, and all of this with nary a thought of getting up earlier tomorrow and with never a wayward glance at the clock.

I am often two to three hours late to work, because I now walk the dog (or do a hospital pick-up, or attend Pilates class) after dropping the kids off and before opening my office door. I don't wear a watch. I return business calls within the week; I return personal emails within the month. (My taxes, however, will be paid on time, largely because they are the provice of our accountant. She's not as accomplished in late-ism as I am; evidently the IRS takes a dimmer view of tardies than I currently do. My hair is entirely another story, because the last time I had it cut was, I think, for my sister's wedding about six months ago...)

I will let you know if it is possible to go beyond perfection in this matter.

Stephen Hawking would think so. I read his "A Brief History of Time" book. There are the usual four dimensions of length, width, height, and time. I was delighted to learn in this book that they think there may be as many as ten or even twenty-four dimensions. Moreover, they think some of these may be very small, or curled up like the inside of a drinking straw. This is excellent news all around, because it now means

1) I am for sure not late, because the smarty-smarts like Hawking and Einstein say everything's relative; I'm simply travelling much slower than the speed of light and just a tad slower than you all

2) My keys are for sure not lost. They just keep slipping off into the seventeenth dimension and are probably at this minute curled up inside a drinking straw somewhere off of the planet Jupiter. They periodically make their appearances in my kitchen, in Einsteinian time, occasionally near the speed of light, but never quite fast enough to get the kids to school on time. We are simply asymptotically approaching the 8 am school bell, but like the heroines of Greek mythology, may be doomed to never quite make it.

Maybe, maybe

2009-03-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

Hi all! This will be a quickie post.

Scott is, as I write this, still at Kaiser on the third floor, but there's talk he may be coming home today. He's off of all IVs and all catheters, and moved from IV to oral antibiotics yesterday. (He'll need to be on antibiotics for another week or so to ensure the bugs are totally out of his blood).

He's gotten clearance from two doctors (colorectal surgeon and wound specialist) and needs clearance from one more (vascular specialist).

It's also unclear whether the wound vaccuum will be coming home with him, or whether he'll be able to leave his high-tech leech behind and just go to the hospital every day for wound care. At any rate, the wound is healing nicely and looks like it will close completely.

What is clear, though, is that I need to stay on standby for the discharge call. It typically comes between 9:30 and 1:30 pm (uniformly distributed about the advertised 11 am discharge time), and they go from keeping him in the hospital at all costs to being ready to boot (wheelchair, actually) him out the door pronto. I have learned that for the duration of a possible hospital discharge, I should not do things like shower, make a big Target run, schedule a work conference call (even after 1:30 pm, because Murphy's Law can catch me wherever I go), paint my toenails, or bake anything. I should do things I can drop at a moment's notice, like grade Quiz 4. Last time this went on for several days - I'm hopeful today's "discharge vigil" will be a little shorter-lived.

*************************************************************************************

And what else is clear is that I am not Fancy. Fancy, as in Fancy Nancy. She's a children's book character, and the Fancy Nancy books were given to Elli and Maggie by my sister's mother-in-law Lydia over Christmas. Fancy Nancy has displaced Hop on Pop and Dora's Great Adventure as our all-time favorite bedtime readings. Maggie of course knows the words by heart now, and gets very upset if I skip even one mention of "parfait" (instead of plain "ice cream") or "Marabelle Lavinia Chandelier" (instead of "Nancy's dolly").

Turns out that in my jeans and ponytail and glasses, I look just like the mom in the book, which is Not Fancy.

And Elli has decided she is, like Nancy, Very Fancy.

While Scott was in the hospital, I took Elli out of school for one afternoon and we did some special Mommy time. A few hours and a few dollars at the Goodwill Store and Michael's crafts, and we are on track to make Elli's room a little bit more Fancy.

There's only one small complication: she shares it with Maggie. Maggie is having a binary relationship with all this finery. On one hand, she adjusts to change slowly, so had a full-scale meltdown when she saw her new room at 5 pm yesterday. On the other, she is still living with her own personal goddess (the big sister) and has a short attention span, so by 10 pm last night she was not only okay with the Fanciness, but was putting on lipstick and sleeping with a heart-shaped pink pillow and some silk orchids.

Next week, we have got to get some Fanciness for Maggie, so it will keep her out of Elli's Fanciness.

Thank goodness the mom in those books is Plain. I just don't have it in me to be so Fancy all the time.

Moving on up to the third floor

2009-03-08T14:44:00.001-07:00

Hi all! This will be another brief (but hopefully glorious) post.

Scott was released from the ICU yesterday and has moved up in the world, to the third floor of Kaiser Walnut Creek, in the Med/Surg recovery unit. This is a place where you have to breathe on your own, feed yourself, and it is generally considered good form to know your own name, what day it is, and what's wrong with you.

He's still got the little vaccuum cleaner negative-pressure thing on his colostomy closure wound, and it drains some truly interesting looking stuff. His right arm is back to normal size, but the left arm is still so swollen they are concerned about clots. As a result, the doctor has determined that his port-a-cath must come out. It's currently in, and I'll let you know when the removal surgery is scheduled.

Those of you who are faithful readers may remember the port-a-cath is a quarter-shaped thing implanted under the skin of his left chest; it's the port by which the chemotherapy enters his body. It gives them always an open vein, and so they don't need to worry about veins collapsing or not being able to get a good needle stick.

This raises another point, which is that without the port-a-cath, how will chemotherapy be able to get into him? The brief answer is I don't know. The second answer is it's not really an issue right now, because the clotting problem is a much more immediate threat to his health than any tumor activity. The third answer is that the chemo is really not a problem at all right now, because he was off if it for the surgery and would have gone back on it next week at the very earliest, so he wouldn't be on it now anyways. And the last answer is I'm sure they'll figure out a way, because they always do.

I took the kids to visit him this morning. It was the first time they'd really seen their daddy in 11 days, and he was thrilled to see them. It took me the usual - about two hours - in total. Why so long? It's actually nontrivial to get everybody dressed, in the car, watching their movie, down the freeway, in the parking garage, to the elevator, down the elevator, across the lawn, across the lobby of Kaiser, into the elevator, up three floors, out of the elevator, past the nurses' station, and into Daddy's room, and then all of that in reverse. This two hour chunk of my morning gave us a good but brief visit with Daddy.

We lasted fourteen minutes.

Elli got into bed with him, took off one shoe, took off the other shoe, snuggled up with his right (good) arm, got out of bed, got a rubber glove, asked him to blow it up, put on one shoe, got another glove, tried to pull the bandage off of his neck where the pic IV line used to be, asked him why he had such a beard, wanted his juice box of apple juice, and ran into the hallway, nearly colliding with a nurse pushing something large, fragile, and expensive.

Maggie was fairly calm until the shoe-taking-off business got started; then she got both shoes off and wanted to also remove her panty hose, underpants, and dress. She is more cautious by nature, and was having none of it: wouldn't get in bed with Daddy, wouldn't touch him, wouldn't drink his juice, mess with his IV, or bang his TV remote. (She did, however, manage to poke around near his feet and find the drainage bag for the vaccuum thing on his wound, which is how I know what colors were in that thing. Let's just say I'm glad that sort of biohazard is well sealed off.)

We distracted her with Elli's latex glove. Scott couldn't blow up or tie off the surgical gloves to make balloons like last time, and that's never been one of my strengths. I did manage to get one glove inflated and tied off, and the kids batted that balloon around the room for a while.

Then Maggie began running back and forth, back and forth, through the privacy curtain, pulling a little harder on it each time. When she put her full weight on it and swung like George of the Jungle, I knew it was time to leave before we broke something more expensive than a curtain or a nurse.

So Scott's doing as well as can be expected.

******************************************************************************

There actually is no rest of the story today. My entire life has been consumed with caretaking: my husband, my kids, my students, my clients, my dog, my house, my checking account, even the special form of mold which is growing in my kids' room (and which I eradicated this morning with a shot of vinegar).

I will get more of a life later on, I hope.

Scott update: Friday is Rip Van Winkle Day

2009-03-06T10:06:00.000-08:00

Hi all - a quick update on Scott. No news here is good news. He is currently in "fair" condition in the ICU at Kaiser (I'm not exactly sure how this compares to the "fair/good" condition of yesterday, but it's definitely better than the "critical" condition of Sunday night.)

He just ate a large breakfast and is now sleeping (10:07 am). He fell asleep during my visit to him yesterday after 15 minutes, which was wonderful, because 15 minutes was the longest he's been awake to speak with me since this whole thing happened, and the sleep is what he needs right now. (I had a little extra time before I was due home, so I went out and climbed in the back of my minivan in the five-story parking garage and took a 20 minute nap as well. Ahhh, the luxury of a minivan with tinted windows!)

And I have no health updates, because his nurse was momentarily off of the floor. This in and of itself is great news, because those ICU nurses don't step out when a patient's in any sort of trouble.

*********************************************************************************************

Updates on all of the rest of us:

Elli (age 5) is still coughing but at school for half a day today. She was up a lot last night with bad dreams and -- you guessed it -- she wants her mama. That would be me. Oh yes, oh yes, that would most certainly be me.

Maggie (age 3) is wearing her Dora the Explorer nightgown and floral pantyhose to school today. She wore this Monday, too. She has actually worn this every day this week, and I haven't even been able to sneak it out to the laundry to wash. But since she was home Tues, Weds, and Thurs, hopefully her teachers will think I washed it in the meanwhile. She insists she does not smell, as Elli says, like Parmesan cheese but rather, as she says, like gym socks.

Lucky (canine, age 7) in her infinite mercy, spared Battie the stuffed bat this past 24 hours, so Battie remains swaddled, with a binkie, and went to school intact with Elli this morning. (It's Stuffed Animal Day at school, and for once I'm on top of it). While I was in the ICU yesterday, Lucky did get a hold of Squirrelley, our stuffed squirrel, and chewed Squirrelley's right eye off. This was upsetting to the girls, but nowhere near as traumatic as Battie would have been, and several rungs below chewing up Barbie, Snow White, Ariel, or Cinderella dolls. I even walked Lucky this morning, so hopefully some of that pent-up energy has been spent chasing real squirrels (who are considerably more skilled at evasive maneuvers than Squirrelley and Battie are.)

And I remain, as they say, good in a crisis. It's actually fairly easy for me to have Scott in the ICU, once I got past the worry element of it. I'm not having to be hypervigilant at home, waiting for the other shoe to drop - it already fell. And there's absolutely nothing more that I can do for him - he's in the best hands I could put him in and I visit him about as much as he can take - fifteen minutes a day.

The ICU is like Daddy Day Camp, Sleepaway Scouting for Grownups - they bring his meals, do his meds, change his TV channel, and even empty his pee-wee (he's got the Foley catheter in again.)

I've got no special creamy meaty un-spicy dinners to prepare, so the kids are eating ramen noodles and I'm regressing to organic locally grown kale with potatoes and cayenne pepper, and eating my Protest Food (chocolate covered peanuts) in the office as soon as I get in. I have no dishes to do (because Aunt Kay, bless her, is doing them for me!)

I've got no laundry to do. Maggie isn't changing out of her Dora dress, I'm sleeping in my street clothes (by day and by night), Elli wore her pajamas for four days straight, and Lucky the dog remains firmly committed to her nudist lifestyle, so the laundry is actually very manageable.

I've got free rein to feed the kids unorthodox meals at weird hours without offending more mannerly sensibilities, so Maggie had juice and only the raisins from her Raisin Bran (plus two sleeves of Smarties) for breakfast this morning, and Elli refused to eat her cereal so I made her a special bottle of juice and a half sandwich of cream cheese (on organic whole wheat bread which could pass for sandpaper in another zip code) for her to eat on the couch while watching TV. All of these are violations of usual operating procedure, but hey, there ain't nothing usual about my life these days. And I even got them to school on time by 8 am, which was purely an accident, and mostly an artifact of the fact that they get up about 6:15 am, rain or shine, sick or well. If they had slept longer, we most certainly would have been gloriously late and I would have been glad of it.

And now I am in the office. I'm going to try to grade Quiz 3, because I'm teaching tomorrow (Saturday), and they're turning in Quiz 4.

Scott: now in "good" condition in ICU

2009-03-05T08:19:00.001-08:00

Hi all -

This will be brief (but glorious).

The Scott update. He's been upgraded from "critical/serious" to "good" condition, but remains in the ICU at Kaiser. Just last night he got to eat the first solid food since Saturday (a few strawberries, some of which I got to feed to him and some of which he fed to himself).

His issues now are the arms. His left arm is quite swollen, and they want to ensure there are no clots in it - you may remember he had a pulmonary embolism in the summer of 2007. If you're not medical, a pulmonary embolism is 1) a bad thing 2) a clot that starts somewhere and 3) ends up in the lungs. They want to ensure there are no repeats of this.

His white blood cell count is down from the 38,000 it was upon entry to something like 26,000 - yours and mine is probably about 12,000 or so. The infection is under control but he remains on antibiotics.

The CAT scan came back that there was no abcess under the abdominal colostomy closure wound, which is very good news. There is no need for surgery there, because there's nothing there to go in and get. They are treating the wound on the surface with what looks like a giant sponge attached to a giant vaccuum. It basically sucks the bad stuff out and encourages the good stuff to grow. He gets this because 1) it's a fancy-dancy super-duper form of a band-aid 2) the wound is too large, wet, and generally infected to put a closed dry bandage on it and 3) the vaccuum means they change the sponge less frequently then they have otherwise been changing the bandages, and that's less painful for Scott.

His "minor" issues include a pain in his right wrist (possibly sprained? broken? who knows?), fluid around his heart (which they're just watching but does not currently seem to be impacting circulation), and a "density" in his right lung (and nobody knows what this is, but since it's not impacting his breathing just now they don't really seem to bother about it much.)

He remains fairly happily morphined up, but recognizes people he knows, knows what day and time it is, and even sat up two different times yesterday.

So while he's still quite sick, he appears to be improving.

************************************************************

And the update on everybody else:

I'm still home with two sick kids, and my tasks this morning include getting a shower (done), calling the ICU for more information (not done yet - they're doing shift change just now and I know their schedule well enough to know I get the best info about 30 minutes after the new shift comes on), and going to the bank (because I'm out of checks in my checkbook and out of cash, and it's bad form to run around with no money these days).

Elli is still coughing heavily but getting better. She felt well enough this morning to eat something (tuna fish; she's a kitten today) and take advantage of Daddy's absence to use his entire roll of precious cellophane tape to make a Charlotte's Web in her bedroom. (The web construction is how I'm getting this written.)

Maggie is getting sick, probably with what Elli had. She didn't eat breakfast this morning, just proclaimed herself to be "Baby Pinkie" this morning and drank a bottle. She is beyond alarmed at the web of cellophane tape in her bedroom and has poked her toe through her pajama footie bottoms, and is desperate for me to sew it up NOW.

Lucky has thoroughly chewed up one large pink My Little Pony, one small purple Baby My Little Pony, one Bratz doll with gloriously long blond hair, and is (unfortunately) stalking Battie. Battie is a stuffed bat from our Halloween stash that the girls got out of the garage yesterday, and Battie has the unfortunate lot of being irresistably cute to my girls and irresistably setting off the prey drive in the dog. Right at the moment Battie is swaddled in a baby blanket, in a basket, with a binkie in its fangs; the little mommies did leave Battie on the floor, however, so Battie's time on this planet is probably limited. Lucky is just waiting until we go to the bank so she can hunt unimpeded.

Scott's Aunt Kay and Uncle David took a plane down from Seattle yesterday, and are staying nearby in a hotel, so alleluia! I've got backup. They are going to visit him in the ICU while I hold the sick kids, and they are going to stay with the sick kids while I go visit him in the ICU.

A few things which are not even making it onto my to-do list:
* brushing kids' teeth
* checking my usual emails
* washing my hair
* sleeping in pajamas (I'm back to sleeping in street clothing to save time)

And the thing which is now at the top of my to-do list:
* investigating the crash from the girls' bedroom. I've been typing entirely too long.

Scott update - and Carrie's to do list

2009-03-03T11:52:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

First, the Scott update. He remains in the ICU at Kaiser Walnut Creek, but is improving to "critical stable."

He is off of his blood pressure medicines, and his blood pressure has improved enough he can have pain meds.

He's not well enough to undergo surgery just now, but his surgeon, the wonderful Dr. F., thinks he can do some bedside debridement (think of scrubbing grout out of tile, except this time it's dead tissue out of an abdominal wound the size of a softball).

He may be going to have a CAT scan today, if he is well enough for it, so they can try to identify the site of the infection. It appears to be deep in the abdomen. He's got only a mild fever, and they've cultured the bacteria in his blood as Strep-A, so they can give him appropriate antibiotics.

And, thanks to the morphine, he's in no pain. Not only no pain, but a delightfully loopy dreamy happy state.

I am bringing him his cellphone later today. If he happens to call you, please keep in mind he may be deliciously full of opiates, and take whatever he may say accordingly.

*********************************************************

So this morning I was at Kaiser pediatrics, with Elli. You may remember she was really too sick to go to school yesterday but I had our babysitter drop her off anyways and begged school to keep her. Well, today she really wasn't well - fever and coughing - and so we went to pediatrics.

We were in the examination room with the physician. You know, the place where they ask you to turn cell phones off, so you can give the doctor your undivided attention?

Well, as he was listening to her lungs and ordering up a chest X-Ray to see if she had pneumonia, my cellphone rang. It was from the ICU.

This is a time of firsts for me. I have never in my life asked an examining doctor (at a managed care HMO, no less!) to wait while I stepped outside and took a phone call, but I did it today. He knew the background and agreed to wait.

I was prepared for the usual. Perhaps his nurse calling me with a status update. Perhaps his surgeon with a surgery date. Perhaps the surgeon telling me they did emergency surgery just now. It is these sorts of times when you really hope it's not the hospital chaplain or grief counsellor, because under the circumstances I don't want to hear what they might have to say.

And, as usual, it was unusual. It was Scott, who had come out of his morphine haze long enough to dial my phone number, which was written on the whiteboard at the foot of his bed. He was high as a kite and twice as loopy.

Scott: "Hi darling! Where are you?"
Me: "At Kaiser with Elli. She's got a cough and I don't like the sound of it."

Scott: "That's great! Why don't you bring her to visit me?"
Me: "Sweetie, they don't let kids into the ICU."

Scott: "Why not? Well, why don't you come to see me and leave her in the hallway?"
Me: "Actually, darling, can I call you back in a few minutes? The doctor is listening to her chest and we want to rule out pneumonia. He's actually examing her right now, and then we're going to head down to X-Ray."

Scott: "An X-Ray? Why don't they get a CAT scan? That's a real scanner. The X-Ray is for weenies."
Me: "I love you darling. I'm going to hang up now and call you back in a few minutes. Bye."

And so we got the X-Ray order written, signed out of pediatrics, and at the front desk I stopped to call Scott back.

Of course, the phone number he had called from was one of those outgoing-only; to actually talk to an ICU patient you need to pass the nurse switchboard's gatekeepers.

I had left the business card with the ICU phone number at home.

This number is so secret that Kaiser pediatrics didn't have it, and neither did the volunteers at the front gate.

I knew if Elli had pneumonia I shouldn't get her anywhere near the ICU. (At the time, I thought it was so she wouldn't infect the ICU patients; later on Scott's nurse told me it was actually so the ICU patients wouldn't make Elli even sicker...go figure...)

Finally, the pediatrics receptionist saw a look in my face that made her have mercy. She dialed the hospital operator, identified herself as a Kaiser employee, asked to be connected to the ICU, and as it was ringing, passed the handset over to me. I identified myself to his nurse and she forwarded the phone into his room.

I stood behind the pediatrics desk, trying to talk to Scott.

Elli was sucking on her binky, with her teddy bear in her hands, coughing so violently she doubled over at times, and pulling on my leg. (Yes, she is FIVE years old and we recently bought an entire new inventory of binkies and bottles. You know that bit about stress making them regress? Well, Daddy's latest illness has kicked us all the way back to infancy. I'm just glad the ICU can take care of him, because if he were any sicker they'd both want to crawl back into the womb, and I've been there, done that, and that hotel room is CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. So considering the alternatives, a little binky here and a little bottle there doesn't sound so awful.)

Our second conversation was much the same as the first, except he thought 1) Elli had pneumonia and 2) it was no big deal.

I tried really hard to convey the following:

* that I would visit him later today, when Elli was home with our babysitter
* that we wouldn't know if it was pneumonia or not until we got the X-Rays back, and to do that we needed to hang up the phone and get down to the X-Ray clinic, and then return to pediatrics
* that I would bring him his cellphone this afternoon
* the reason I wasn't bringing Elli to visit him right this very minute was that his evil nurse and Elli's wicked doctor both said no children with suspected pneumonia are allowed in the ICU, and
* the follow-up reason I couldn't visit him myself right that moment was that the vile candy stripers won't let me leave her in the hallway unattended

(I am trying to play the angelic faultless wife here, and goodness knows I need all the help I can get with that role - hence wicked everybody and everything else.)

This business about not coming to visit him right now was getting nowhere, so I took a different tack. When in Rome, I guess sometimes you gotta suck it up and speak Italian.

So, I said, "Sweetheart, you're absolutely right. I'm coming now. Right away. Just one little thing has to happen first. You just ring for your nurse and ask for some more morphine, and as soon as she gives you your next dose then they'll let me come visit. I'll be there when you wake up."

I held the line until I heard him ring the nurse bell; then I hung up the receptionist's, and then took Elli down to X-Ray to get her chest checked out.

To make the rest of my morning briefer,

* At first read, Elli doesn't have pneumonia, just a bad cold - alleluia!

* Pediatrician is sending X-Rays to radiology for a second opinion because I told him that I was NOT messing around today, and no disrespect intended, but the only thing worse than one critically ill family member was two critically ill family members, and I was not quite yet in the mood to "watch and wait" and see if this cold develops into something worse. I promised him that sometime next summer, when all is calmer, I will volunteer both girls for a vaccine study or something like that. I also asked him in the meanwhile, to please remember I was pretty laid-back and un-neurotic when kids were newborns, and to please just carry forward some of that good karma to pay any current deficits in my laid-back-ness in this great checkbook of life. (I didn't want to get a black mark next to my name in the pediatrics log, because I want them to continue to take my phone calls.)

* We got home and Elli's down for a nap, so I'm updating you all.

Today's to-do list for me looks like this:

* ICU check - ask if Scott surgery and if so when? DONE

* take a nap (self and Elli; she's sick and I'm too old to be pulling all-nighters anywhere, let alone big exciting ones like Sunday in the ER was) HALF

* call (my sister) Cathy - is she here or in Minneapolis? DONE - she's here

* visit Scott if no surgery - short visit - arrange afternoon sitter - NOT YET DONE

* visit Scott if surgery - long visit - arrange overnight sitter - NOT DOING TODAY

* email check; blog update (this is this; I should note this to do list is not in order of priority or execution.) DONE

* Quiz 3 grade (for my class) NOT YET DONE, probably NOT GOING TO GET DONE

* Cancel class and final exam review (it's tomorrow, but Murphy's Law says I ain't gonna make it and best to let students know now) - GOING TO DO NEXT

* pack spare underwear, pants, and socks for Maggie for school. HALF DONE. I have them in a bag on the front bench but not yet in the car.

* Walk Lucky (our dog has been housebound since Sunday and is now chewing her way through our Barbie collection with all that pent-up wild creature energy. While generally I delight at the demise of any Barbie at any time for any reason, it's not helping the stress level of the kids any to watch their beloved Barbie dolls get stalked, stolen, "killed," and eaten by my beloved baby dog. It does make picking up the dog poop an exercise in multicolor artwork, though - against the brown background canvas I get dainty little pieces of peach plastic, strands of blond hair, and once even a bit of her necklace. I guess domestication has only made moderate progress against her canine instincts.) TO DO when sitter arrives, just before ICU visit.

* make peace with library. I borrowed "My Brother, My Sister," an early reading book for Elli, and it's overdue. I am not going to find it in 2009, so best to pay the fine and move on. NOT DONE.

* ask my mom to call Scott's Aunt Kay and Uncle David in Seattle and let them know what's going on. DONE.

* ask my virtual assistant Barbara if she can make peace with the library for me. DONE. So I can walk into the library with my head held high.

* be alert to calls on my cellphone from the ICU, from pediatrics, and from radiology. NEVERENDING STORY. DONE, DONE, DONE, DONE, and DONE AGAIN, but NEVER FINISHED. At least not for today.

So, my lovelies, I'm off to email my students and take a nap. I've got the phone volume turned up full blast so it will wake me up when the ICU next calls ... so it's times like this I soooo appreciate you all not calling me just to see how I am. Hopefully you know a bit more by now.

I need to sleep when I can.

I have snuck one of Elli's pink plastic "My Little Pony" toys in my back pocket.

I am going to surreptitiously feed it to Lucky in my room at naptime, to 1) keep her busy and 2) keep her from eating another Barbie while Mama sleeps. After all, horsemeat is dogfood, no?

Septic

2009-03-02T14:04:00.000-08:00

Hi all - so this is the blog post I didn't really want to write.

Some of you may be holding out hope we're having potty problems with pesky little tree roots digging into our septic tank, and looking forward to reading about our riotous adventures with Mr. Roto-Rooter.

Alas, not today.

Last night Scott was admitted to Kaiser Walnut Creek. His colostomy closure wound had become infected and gone septic, and the infection had spread. I was there from 9 pm until 5:30 this morning, when he was finally stable enough in the ER so they could move him upstairs to the ICU.

During those hours, we went through our paces: renal failure, liver distress, respiratory distress, norepinephrine syringes, INT values between 15 and 19 (they should be between 2 and 3, and this means he's bleeding too much to make surgery a responsible option at this point, so they can't even operate to excise the infection just now).

The coagulation finally calmed down enough they could get a pic line inserted into his neck, because they'd collapsed or used all the veins in both his hands, arms, and feet.

The Full Monty. I am still in a little shock of my own about it. Usually when we go to the ER, we wait for hours while they repair some wreck in the back room. Last night, we were the wreck; I rolled his wheelchair straight from the minivan right on back and into the big "isolation" room. (Septic shock = can't really walk, at least not straight and certainly not across a parking lot.)

It wasn't until nearly two hours into his IV circus that the admissions clerk tracked me down, got me to sign him in, dig out his photo ID, and fish out the $10 copay from my purse.

He's currently in "critical stable" condition in the ICU, which means 1) alas, no visitors; 2) he's staying there for a while and 3) it was, after all, a good idea to take him down to the hospital.

I thought I was doing pretty well - called our wonderful babysitter Debbie, packed a snack and a book to read, brought his wallet, an extra jacket for me, and the cellphone charger. Debbie and the extra jacket turned out to be most useful; the snack was wonderful about 2 am in the ER, and the book and cellphone never made it out of my backpack.

This is going to send some of you into overdrive, and I want to encourage you to hold that energy.

What would we appreciate? Prayers, good thoughts, and breath-holding.

What would we like to ask you to hold off on for now?
* please don't call Carrie for updates - check this blog
* please don't send me lurid stories of anybody you know who did or did not have cancer or septic shock and who did or did not survive it.
* if you end up having a lot of pent-up helping energy, get ready. When he comes home, we'll be probably putting together another wish list and we'd so appreciate your help then.

And, to make my life complete, my mommy guilt got to a whole new level this morning. I got home at 6 and went to sleep.

The wonderful Debbie got the kids up and took them to school - Elli with a bad enough cold and cough I would have kept her home on a usual day. I am trying to tell myself the school will call me if she's too sick to stay (despite the fact she didn't eat breakfast).

And the cherry on the mommy guilt: just now I remembered it's Dr. Seuss day at school today, and I forgot to pack their favorite Dr. Seuss books for sharing.

So they are the only kids there without a copy of "The Foot Book" or "Fox in Socks."

Alas, sometimes life is so very hard.

Plop, plop, fizz, fizz ...

2009-02-02T12:12:00.001-08:00

... oh, what a relief it is!

I'm happy to tell you Scott was discharged from Kaiser this morning, and is home.

He's wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, just like a normal person, instead of a hospital gown, like a sickie.

He wanted to stop at Nation's Hamburgers on the way home, so he's had a lunch of french fries and a strawberry milkshake, just like a normal person, instead of apple juice and jello, like a sickie.

He's been off of the Internet for nearly a week, and was unable to hack into the hospital's wireless system, so he's soon going to be back tending his Facebook and Civilization and Diplomacy pages, just like a normal person, instead of watching yet another rerun of Maury Povich's "Who's My Baby's Daddy?" on a hospital TV, like a sickie.

And, probably happiest of all, all that input has finally had some output. You want it in mythic terms? In the beginning there was nothing - just darkness. Then, there was smoke. Then there was fire. Then there was an explosion, a great outpouring of molten lava and noxious gases, with small chunks of organic matter. And then, yesterday, the great volcano settled into a more manageable state, with medium-sized streams of mostly solid lava sliding down the hillsides at predictable, manageable intervals. And today, it's back to behaving like a regular old volcano, with only occasional rumblings and a solid if irregular discharge.

So yes, Virginia, the king is back on his throne, and quite enjoying the view from the loo.

The kids are in school.

It's 12:17 pm and I am actually in the office (but not yet officially "at work"), thereby setting close to a personal record for getting to work "on time" over the past week. This is the earliest I've been here since Scott started his surgery prep.

This past week I made one entire batch of chocolate chip cookie dough and managed to consume nearly all of it. I shared a small amount with my sister (who can fully appreciate these things and richly deserved it for all her help) and a small amount with my dog (whose unswerving loyalty needs to be rewarded periodically and I'm plumb out of beef bones), and none whatsoever with the kids.

It's not like their blood sugar is in danger of plummeting - they have been stocked full of Smarties, Twizzlers, ice cream, whipped cream, and Junior Mints.

I buy candy, 10 lbs at a time at Target, more when it's on sale after Halloween and Valentine's Day.

You didn't think I'd actually do something so rational as put one pound in my kitchen and store the other nine in the garage pantry, arranged alphabetically and chosen with the season in mind, so they would neither melt nor freeze?

Or perhaps arrange a few bits from each bag attractively in a citrus-themed bowl, and set it on a doily on the coffee table in the living room, to offer periodically to houseguests, while safely stashing the remainder in the fridge or freezer in a 5-gallon Ziplog bag with the date written on it (and a reminder on my calendar to get it out in 2 months)?

Of course I would not do that. I put all 10 lbs in the minivan, and everybody who gets in their car seat and refrains from screaming during the commute to school gets as much candy as they can cram into their mouths.

This applies to grownups who come riding in my minivan as well.

It's a 2-mile commute, and I'm amazed the kids aren't much, much fatter and aren't missing many, many more teeth.

But now you know why I didn't think it was necessary to give them my chocolate chip cookie dough for breakfast, when they were headed into the Van O Candy.

So now time for a little detective work of my own. I am all out of cookie dough, but still have some brussels sprouts. (Go figure - why do the veggies always get eaten last???) You may remember a few days ago I wasn't sure if it was the cookie dough or brussels sprouts giving me such extraordinary gas. Well, now, if I'm brave, I could do a dinner of brussels sprouts alone, and see if I get any action.

Or, I could savor the mystery and wait until the kids go to bed tonight and mix up another batch of cookie dough.

I might even share some with Scott. He's probably napping as I write this, and is on a special low-residue diet (read: no fiber whatsoever for a week! oh, the horror!). But I bet he can have some cookie dough.

The issue now becomes: how can I sneak some to Lucky the dog without letting Scott see?

He does not think it dignified to feed Lucky cookie dough.

And I don't think letting her lick the bowl would meet with his approval either.

Homeward bound?

2009-02-01T13:08:00.000-08:00

Hi all - so, if the fact that Scott was pooping wasn't enough to entice you to call or visit him at Kaiser, perhaps this will be.

He's getting promoted from juice and jello to solid food today, and if all that sits well, he may be getting discharged as early as tomorrow, Monday.

What this means to you:

1. If you haven't visited him yet, do so today, because it may be your only chance.

2. If you aren't going to be able to visit him in the hospital, get ready to take him to lunch sometime in February. Or call. Or friend him on Facebook. When he's home, I'll be back at work and the kids will be in school, so he'll be all yours.

3. If you'd like to witness some really fantastic bowel noises and movements, you should really go today, because there's nothing like watching the first solid food in a week make it through the pipes. It's a full five-senses experience. If you catch the nurses there, you can even listen in with a stethoscope.

And in other news, my lunch today consisted of Twizzlers (raspberry red), brussels sprouts (organically and locally grown, braised in olive oil and balsamic vinegar), homemade whole wheat organic bread, and (of course) chocolate chip cookie dough.

This combination has given me quite a righteous case of gas myself, and ordinarily it would be tops in bragging rights on this blog, but as usual, Scott's intestines are more interesting than mine, and he wins again. :)

Poop! Come visit!!!

2009-01-31T12:54:00.000-08:00

Hi all!

You will be happy to hear that the duty train has begun to move on its tracks, and the cars full of coal are able to reach their grand porcelain depot. Several cars, in fact, each one with about a teaspoon of coal or raw liquid coal ore.

The king is sitting on his throne, multiple times, round the clock.

And the vomit comet has ceased to streak through the sky.

Lest you think the next line here is that there is snow on the rooftops of St. Petersburg this time of the year, I should clarify.

In layman's terms, Scott has quit barfing, started pooping, and is feeling much better.

He's actually a trifle bored at Kaiser just now, and would welcome any visitors. He's even gotten moved to a private room (3102 I think) on the third floor, so his cranky roommate (with the bickering sons, the neurotic wife, the high-volume TV, and the missing bladder) won't be an issue. So visit, call, send him an email - he'd love to hear from you because he can't take too much more of us.

We were there this morning. The girls brought six little packets of Smarties (which they wouldn't share with him). They consumed his juice boxes and jello (he's allowed back to a liquid diet and is smart enough to just give them up easily and ring the nurse for more when we leave). They took away the dead flower they brought him yesterday. They almost pulled out his IV twice and for sure sat on his surgical incision once. They put sticky fingerprints all over his window, and inflated several surgical gloves. And they did all of this in about a fifteen-minute visit, while the nurse was trying to change his IV, clean out his tray, bring him some socks, and scan his wristband, and I was trying to contain them in his room without raising his comatose neighbors on the postop recovery floor.

The home front continues to fartknock along. They slept till 7 this morning, which was most excellent.

I, continuing my state of excess, had some organic wheatberries in soy milk with frozen organic blueberries for breakfast, and topped it off with a very large cup (a pint? a quart? a gallon? who's counting in this land of excess?) of coffee and an indeterminate amount of chocolate chip cookie dough. I eat my cookie dough furtively from an opaque plastic container so I don't have to share any with the girls. They are eating enough Smarties (we got the 2-lb bonus pack yesterday at Target) to keep their blood sugar plenty high without needing my cookie dough also. Last time he was in the hospital I got way too thin, so I look at this cookie dough for breakfast as sort of a preventative measure. Perhaps this time I will manage to get way too fat. I have been both and let me tell you, fat is better.

So ta ta for now - we're all wishing Scott happy pooping, and I'm happy he's feeling better.

Barf - no visitors just now please

2009-01-30T11:01:00.000-08:00

Hi all - semi-ungood news to report.

Briefly - Scott's had a small setback and is not up for visitors or phone calls at this time.

He had been feeling very full last night, probably because he had been drinking all the broth and eating all the jello the nurses would let him have. Last night he threw it all up.

We aren't sure exactly what is happening (that's the doctor's area of expertise), and I'm headed down there in a few minutes to find out more (by asking the doctor, of course).

But if I had to hazard a guess, I'd guess his bowels aren't quite used to being all reconnected and somehow weren't allowing the broth and jello to go down and out. So it backed up, and overflowed. (Hey, at least it overflowed in the hospital, where the person to clean it up was not me!)

We are coping fairly well, mostly because even this is a walk in the park compared to last time, at least thus far.

Kids are in school, and I am leading a life of excess.

Excessive coffee, excessive chocolate, and I am now so excessively late to work I wonder if it is possible to be any later and still count it as 'late.' It's Friday and I haven't really showed up since Monday, the day before surgery - I think technically when you don't make it in at all, it counts as an 'absence' instead of a 'tardy' - but what about when I check work email for the first time at 9 pm? Doesn't that count as a 'telecommute,' and a tardy one at that?

At any rate, 'nuff about my excesses. Take care, indulge in some excesses of your own, and watch this site for news updates.

If you'd like to do something, please continue any prayer or card-sending activities, and please continue to refrain from the flowers-and-chocolate business. If you'd like a more complete update, you can call Kaiser and ask to speak to the nurses on the third floor - he has given permission for them to give out status information.

Reunited!

2009-01-28T10:25:00.001-08:00

Hi all - as promised, here's a brief (but glorious) update on Scott's surgery.

His colostomy reversal was yesterday, Tuesday 1/27, and went well. His intestines are now reunited, and when he is allowed to eat something solid, we now expect the duty train will be able to chug down its original tracks. The king will once again be able to sit on his throne, and we may once again (esp if Elli stops pooping her pants out of anxiety) be four for four in the great potty training scoreboard.

Surgery started about 4:30 pm and he was done by 7 pm and able to talk coherently by 9 pm.

He's at Kaiser Walnut Creek, 3rd floor, in the surgical recovery room. He would welcome visitors or phone calls - I'm bringing him his cellphone today about lunchtime.

I will of course write more later, but for now I'm a little busy. :)

Surgeon, surgeon, where art thou?

2009-01-17T15:00:00.000-08:00

Hi all!

Happy January. I hope your New Year's Resolutions have lasted these few weeks - you should still be non-smoking, less-eating, more-saving, and the variety of other behaviors you resolved to do a few short weeks ago.

But if you're not, perhaps this blog will help distract you for the time being.

Scott continues to do well - he's fat (188 lbs) and happy (loves the nice weather; 72 degrees today!), and is scheduled for his colostomy reversal surgery on Tuesday, January 27th.

It will require general anesthesia and a hospital stay of a few days, followed by 4-6 weeks off of chemo to heal.

***************************************************************************************

Warning: bossy wife coming up.

Want to help with this latest greatest surgery? Here are our do's and don'ts. It's probably some violation of etiquette to put this up here, but you have spent 1.5 years reading my blog about poop, so you're probably fairly solidly with me at this point.

DO:

* send or bring him a card, cartoons, or an easy-reading magazine anytime. He especially likes military (Marine) stuff, Boy Scout stuff, Tin Tin, motorcycling stuff, travel, and anything and everything relating to exotic travel by motorcycle. If you can find something about an ex-Marine Boy Scout who is riding his motorcycle around the world while wearing a Tin Tin T-shirt, you'll have found the Holy Grail. No need to call ahead - just mail it or drop it off at the house. :)

* send us useful gift cards, like for Safeway (he'll be on a special diet post-op for a while) or Target (we always need stuff from there, and our lifestyle isn't exactly getting cheaper by the minute.) No amount too small; even $5 will help.

* try to visit him in the hospital when this blog says it's OK to - details will appear :)

DON'T:

* call me to see how he is - check this blog!

* send any flowers - kids don't keep their hands off of them, so they get shredded within minutes, and the $$ is MUCH better spent on a Safeway or Target gift card (see above)

* send any chocolate - he is plenty fat, I am plenty fat, and there's always the peanut risk for the Princess Margaret

~ End of Bossy Wife Tirade ~

*************************************************************************************

Back to Scott:

He's been off of Avastin for the past 6 weeks and off of the rest of his chemo cocktails for the past 4. Going off of chemo is still for him a thing to be done carefully and for short periods of time. But - he is soooo enjoying the lack of chemo side effects. His hands are less chapped; his feet are less painful and tingly; his mouth sores are gone; his nosebleeds are no longer hitting the breakfast table each morning, and even that foggy chemo brain that makes us unsure if we were meeting the doctor on the second floor at three or on the third floor at two, or on the second day of the third week of next month - that has cleared up a bit.

For example, I am fairly sure that today is Saturday. And we met with Dr. F - his wonderful surgeon - last Wednesday at 3:30 pm.

It is in the same office it always is in - that stark exam room, with the chirpy secretary, the bright overhead lights, the little flyers about it never being too late to quit smoking, the rubber exam gloves, the little table with the paper roll so you don't sit in the last patient's funk, and that awful poster of the human digestive system.

You may not know this, but I haven't always had issues with posters of the human digestive tract. I made it through high school biology just fine, and I am to this day fine with various other posters of human bits - those "female reproductive" things in the ob/gyn office, those tooth charts in the dentist's office, even those showing all the ways my baby's hip could be dislocated, which came with a nifty 3-D plastic skeletal hip which the orthopedic surgeon would manipulate to show me where Maggie's hip was (wrong spot) and where he would put it (right spot).

But this digestive poster is just getting too much air time. Last time it was actually on the floor next to my chair and I had to shift to avoid touching it. This time it is on the wall directly across from me. I decided to pay extra special attention to the surgeon to avoid having to look at the salivary glands (too much drool in my life already), the tongue (disturbingly large), the tonsils (vaguely pornographic), the pancreas (makes me think of Apple Computer's Steve Jobs, who is having issues with his), the liver (makes me think of fried chicken livers wrapped in bacon from my childhood days in Michigan), the colon (the blood vessels going to/from it look like worms), the appendix (looks like a tonsil), and of course the anus (the only goshdarned thing on that whole poster - including the poster man's face - that actually looks like the real thing.)

Actually, I can't fully state that the anus and only the anus is realistic, because I haven't ever actually seen a real live human liver or pancreas. With luck I won't. And you have probably figured this out already, but I shan't be going to medical school either, at least not in this incarnation, so I'm not going to see any dead ones either. And in no incarnation of my life shall I touch one.

So, back to our surgeon. He's late fortysomething, sandy brown hair and a big bushy moustache, and wears surgical scrubs and tennis shoes to all our meetings (and probably into surgery too).

Dr. F.: "...so you'll probably have to stop taking the Coumadin (blood thinner) 5 days before surgery, and we'll do a Lovinox injection bridge until the day before surgery..."

Scott: "Yes, I did that before, that should be fine."

Dr. F.: "We'll detach the stoma from the abdominal wall and suture it back together using titanium staples."

Scott: "Staples! I don't want to be stapled! Will they stay in me forever?"

Dr. F: "Yes, they're tiny and you won't even know they're there."

Me: "Will he set off the metal detector in the airport?"

Dr. F: "No, not unless I leave a a surgical instrument in there, and we don't do that too often. No airport security problems...then we'll close the incision ... 4-5 days in the hospital recovery time, and then 4-5 weeks until you're back at full strength, back to go on the chemo...low residue diet upon exit for a while ... it looks like this will be scheduled for about 1 pm on the 27th, unless we have any emergency cases come in."

I had been fine until I heard that.

Cancer patients are famous for wanting to control all aspects of their lives, because so much of this disease is out of control. The cancer spouse role is a bit like being at the very tip of the bullwhip, because not only am I not in control of the disease, I am also not in control of Scott. So I get the combined fallout of the disease and my husband's various decisions. I assure you, it is not merely linearly additive. And when that nasty little control freak part of me rears its head, it is never pretty.

I did NOT want his surgery to be at 1 pm. That implied lunch issues.

I didn't want Dr. F. to be hungry and cranky when doing the surgery. So of course I would want the good doctor to eat breakfast and lunch (and two healthy snacks, if warranted) that day.

But if YOU were doing something at 1 pm, when would you eat lunch? Probably noon.

Right. And if that digestive poster in the room is so revoltingly massively gross, just imagine what the real thing looks like. When you have your hands in it, a little bit of the intestinal odor wafting through the air, a little squirt of blood here, a little drip of bile there.

And now pretend you are wearing those surgical spectacles, with the big google-y eyes, so you can see it all super-up-close. And bright lights. And mirrors. And maybe there's even a junior doctor watching, so you can hold bits of it up and show Junior what a real piece of a sigmoid colon looks like.

Easily enough to make me lose my lunch. Not be able to snippy snippy, sew-ey sew-ey.

Now, some of you are probably going to say something like, "Carrie, just because you don't like chicken liver doesn't mean everybody doesn't like chicken liver. And just because you find surgery on the intestinal tract gross doesn't mean everybody finds it gross. Somebody who has spent fifteen years as a surgeon - and even bothered to get himself board-certified in colorectal surgery - probably does not find his 2,284th incision in somebody's colon lunch-hurlingly gross. He probably literally does this after lunch many days of the week, and if he's on call he may do it before breakfast as well. He probably even *likes* that poster on his wall. So just go back and inspect your children, arrange to be there when Scott comes out of anesthesia, and let the surgeon be a grownup and manage his own eating patterns and office decor."

I STILL DO NOT WANT HIM EATING LUNCH IMMEDIATELY BEFORE SCOTT'S SURGERY.

AND I WANT HIM TO REPLACE THAT POSTER OF THE DIGESTIVE TRACT WITH SOMETHING SHOWING A SUNSET OVER THE GREEK ISLES.

Told you the control freak's a b**ch.

*****************************************************************************************

This is the part where I would ordinarily tell you about some part of my life unrelated to Scott's health. You've come with me to funerals and nudist colonies, to preschooler baths and shopping malls, to the kitchen and to Michigan.

Well, today I'm going to tell you about a day in Scott's life last week. With, of course, some (light) commentary from me.

It was a weekday - a Wednesday I think - but not the same Wednesday we saw the lunch-eating surgeon.

5:20 am: Scott awake. It is still dark outside. He logs into Facebook and begins broadcasting snippets such as, "Scott had simple parents. That would explain why he is a simpleton," or "Scott had gay burglars last night. They broke in and rearranged the furniture." He is enormously popular on Facebook and you should become his friend there, too.

5:40 am: Scott drinks Barium Beverage #1. This is about a half-gallon of slightly radioactive liquid that will let the CT scanner see inside him. It tastes not nearly as awful as he was expecting it to.

6:10 am: I check on him to make sure he's awake and drinking his barium. He is. I go back to staggering around in the dark. I step on the dog. Oh, the guilt. Much worse than the time I forgot to bring snacks and everybody knew Maggie's mom was the Snack Slacker.

6:40 am: Scott drinks Barium Beverage #2. He gets two of these, exactly an hour apart.

7:30 am: I have the kids up, dressed, fed, and Scott helps me load them into the minivan. To school for them, to work for me, and back to the kitchen for Scott.

7:40 am: Scott is at Kaiser Hospital, in their basement radiology lab which contains the CT machine. The barium is sloshing around inside him, hopefully lighting up nothing cancerous inside of him. He lies still, arms over his head, and holds his breath while the magnetic thing whooshes and whumps down over him. He is missing his morning coffee tremendously.

7:45 am: Scott is in Kaiser's cafeteria, eating two scrambled eggs, four strips of bacon, two cups of coffee, a large Danish pastry, and four slices of toast. No wonder he's not exactly wasting away these days - it's not the barium drinks, for sure.

8:25 am: Scott drives home. It's rush hour and the roads are crazy - everybody else is desperate to get to work, and he's desperate to get home. He showers, gets dressed for real, and settles down at his computer to play a first-person shooter game. This is where he gets to play a machine gunner on a team of warriors, and they try to shoot the bad guys (who in this fantasy world can range from Nazis to space aliens to other teams of people). He gets so into this world that I often really scare him if I come up from behind; he thinks it's the Nazi/space alien/bad guy coming to get him.

11:20 am: It was not a good morning on the battlefield. One of his teammates ran in front of him, and Scott accidentally shot and "killed" him. Then the teammate did it again, and Scott shot him again. And then a third time. Scott asked for "forgiveness," but the teammate wouldn't push the ALT-F button, so the server kicked Scott off for shooting too much friendly fire. It took Scott all of two minutes to log in and find another server on the Web, and he spent the rest of the morning manning a slightly different model of machine gun on a battlefield with tanks on it. Until his optometrist appointment. He arrived at the optometrist's at 11:20 on the nose for his 11:20 appointment, but the line was so long he missed his time slot, so he had to wait in the lobby until the next one was available. At 11:55, he left (without seeing the eye doctor - had to reschedule) - he is meeting friends for lunch! Hooray for friends for lunch!

12:00 noon. Scott thinks he was supposed to meet friends for lunch. They were going for Chinese. There is slight mixup on who was to meet whom where and when. Thank goodness for cell phones.

12:30 pm. Lunch is most excellent. He's eating with some fellows from the office at a Chinese place they call "Hey How You," because that's how the owner greets people. It's been a few months since Scott's eaten there, but they remember him and bring him four super-large prawns, deep fried the way he likes them, and some egg drop soup and a plate of chow mein. He catches up on office gossip - a new baby here, a lawsuit there, property values dropping like meteors, and how about those Raiders?

1:30 pm. Office buddies back in the office. Robby, the best man from our wedding, is still on winter break (he's now a teacher). He was going to come over to play video games this afternoon. Not on laptop computers, but on the PlayStation attached to our large TV. Robby is excellent for these sorts of shoot-em-up games because he actually spent some time in the Middle East doing George W's bidding, which turned out to involve dealing with real guns, tanks, and Ninjas. (The Ninjas are actually simply women in chadors, but they look like Ninjas and vanish into nowhere...) Turns out Robby is sick, and can't come over, partly because he's not feeling up to it, but also partly because as an immunocompromised chemo patient, Scott shouldn't be around infectious people. Scott begins to feel the excitement of the day and takes a big fat honking nap.

5:08 pm. The minivan pulls up to the house and out we tumble. Me, somewhat self-satisfied because I sent some good emails today at work and put together an coherent lecture on Chi-Squared Automated Interaction Detection Trees for my students. Elli, screaming her head off because she pooped her pants at school today and didn't tell the kindergarten teacher, so now she has butt rash. Maggie, screaming her head off because she can't hear the minivan's TV playing "Elmo's Birthday Party" over Elli's butt-rash yodel. Out of the house come: Lucky the dog, thrilled to see us and LOVING the new scents on the butt-rash-yodeller, and Scott, waking from his nap. We convene in the garage.

5:12 pm. I am in the bathroom with Elli, who is screaming bloody murder. I am trying to use toilet paper and water to scrub the crusted poop off of her rear end. She has pooped in her only clean pair of Cinderella underpants and does not want to wear Belle or Jasmine. Lucky the dog is stuck - she loves the smell but hates the noise. She stands in the bathroom doorway in a state of tremendous tension. On the way out to get Elli some clean undies I step on the dog again. So I am now in the running for Worst Doggie Mommy Ever. Must get her some sausage later on to make up for this.

5:18 pm. Scott gets the mail and it scatters over the kitchen table. This table also contains Elli's butt-rash poopy pants, Maggie's monochrome artwork, one of Elli's shoes, the morning's newspaper and breakfast dishes, and the butter dish. I pull an important-looking letter out of the butter and say, "Oh darling, our letter from Karen the Accountant is here." He says, "Great! Does she have our taxes done yet?" And I say, "No, sweetheart, it's only January and all the forms haven't arrived yet, so this is probably just the letter setting us up with our appointment." Scott says, "Oh, great, I definitely definitely want to come to that appointment." I put the accountant's letter in my inbox atop the fridge so it doesn't get swept away with the rest of the milieu.

5:32 pm. Both kids are in time-out for fuss-fuss. Scott is watching Elli glower in her corner. He is trying to look strict and stern and very displeased that she put her new lipstick all over Maggie's left (face) cheek.

5:41 pm. Scott has Maggie pinned in the bathroom and unholy shrieks are coming out. He is trying to scrub the lipstick off of her cheek using toilet paper and water. Unfortunately, it is the good stuff - Cover Girl Outlast All Day Lipcolor in something like Ever-Reddy or Violet Craze, purchased by Elli with her allowance. (She would never buy something so tame as Soft Pink or Flirty Nude.) (I am working very very hard not to tell him people pay extra money for that particular brand of lipstick so it *won't* come off with toilet paper and water, and that he should really use Vaseline and a washcloth.)(I am also trying very hard not to think that he got off easy - I was the one who had to use toilet paper and water to scrub s**t off of a crusty little rump, whereas he gets to scrub lipstick off of a cute little face. Motherhood ain't fair. Sigh.)

5:44 pm. Scott has both girls in front of him and is saying in his sternest, most military voice. "New Rule around here. No Putting Makeup on your Sister. ONLY put makeup on your Self. Got it? Right." (I am working very very hard not to say anything here, either. I mean, he's never had a sister nor been one. He's an only child and a man-child at that. How is he supposed to know that one of the BEST parts of having a sister is getting to wear her makeup, try on her clothes, do her hair? That the lipstick-on-the-cheek and the screeching-in-the-bathroom are merely toe-bruisings in this sisterly minuet, this dance which lasts a lifetime? He is NOT in the mood to hear that I used to do my sister's makeup, too. This is technically true, but it happened so long ago that it is actually probably more correctly stated as myth than fact. She got more fashionable than I was when she was about 7 and I was 11. From then on, the makeup, clothing, and hairdos have been coming from her to me. But back to our hero here.)

6:02 pm. I am sitting down at the table, eating my hippie food. I have organic arborio rice, tomato soup, black beans and spinach, put in a large bowl and microwaved until it bubbled over. Scott does not eat hippie food in general unless I also put sausage, sour cream, or cheese on it, and in any case today he's still so full from his prawns at lunch that he's not eating right now. Elli ate all her rice, beans and spinach (on separate compartments - never shall they touch) and Maggie is evidently so full from eating all that Cover Girl Lipstick that she doesn't even want the beans. We put the "Rapunzel Barbie" DVD on for the kids. (I may more fully comment at a later date on Rapunzel Barbie, but suffice it for now to say 1) I find it anti-feminist and counter to nearly every liberated-woman value I wish to instill in my girls 2) it is better than opium for calming them down so I can eat, 3) it was 99 cents at the Goodwill Store, and 4) I am working on getting Elli to believe the baldface lie that Rapunzel Barbie does math homework every single night, because otherwise obviously her mother wouldn't let her grow her hair so very long. I can't actually decide which of these represents the most egregious selling out of my values. I will let you know.)

6:03 pm. Back to dinner. Scott sits with me at the table and tells me about this new implement called a Jaffle iron. He wants to buy one. Evidently you can make pseudo-grilled cheese sandwiches with it, and he wants to buy one, cut off the handles, tie it on his motorcycle, pack cheese and Pillsbury Roll-up Biscuits, go somewhere, and make a toasted cheese sandwich. (Curious? You can see them here: http://www.pieiron.com/designs.htm ).

6:04 pm. Scott is no longer wanting to Steampunk his motorcycle. (Curious? You can see more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk ) I find this generally good news, because the way things go around here, it would have first been the bike, then the dog, then the girls, and lastly the wife. And believe me, you do NOT want to Steampunk your wife, especially not if you are expecting her to drive you to surgery in a few weeks.

6:22 pm. Scott puts Maggie to bed, reading her stories and putting her down. Her cheek is still hugely red from the lipstick. I make a mental note to tell her teacher at school tomorrow that it's just lipstick, not scabies or staph or strep or hand-foot-and-mouth or any of the other things preschoolers tend to get. That is by far easier than trying to scrub the rest of the lipstick off of her, even if I could find the Vaseline.

6:22 pm also. I do homework with Elli. Doesn't everybody know Rapunzel Barbie was doing calculus right along with Isaac Newton - how else would Newton have gotten his mother to let him wear that hairdo out in public????

7:18 pm. Scott takes the trash out.

7:22 pm. Scott comes in in his socks. This is the third time in three days that he has stepped in the dog s**t in the front yard, and the third time in three days he has said he really has to pick up that pile of dog s**t. He now has three pairs of shoes on our front porch and tomorrow must either clean them or wear his boots all day. I am smugly confident that I should not pick up the pile of dog s**t, because I am even more smugly confident that it is not MY dog who shat in the front yard. It couldn't have been, because my darling baby dog s**ts all over the back yard, and I do pick that up periodically, and I do not think it possible for a creature of her size to do what I know she does in the back yard and do that thing in the front yard too. Must have been something else. Perhaps a space alien from the Internet shooter game, or a Steampunked dog.

7:23 pm. It crosses my mind that it could be me or one of my kids who stepped in the dog s**t in the front yard. I dismiss this as catastrophic thinking and very un-zen-like. I only ever walk out to the minivan, which is not on the dog s**t path. And my most immediate problem involving my kids and s**t is not their feet but their a**es. Once we solve the poopy butt issue, then and only then should I spend bandwidth worrying about poopy feet. At least that's why I tell myself I don't need to go out and pick up the dog s**t just now.

7:30 pm. Scott takes Elli to read stories and to put down to bed. I pack school lunches, soak the poopy underpants, and start a poopy laundry. I use so much hand sanitizer these days you all should buy stock in Purell.

7:58 pm. I pack myself a lunch for the office tomorrow, and pack up important papers. The Important Papers include the letter from Karen the Accountant, the fact that Tuesday the 20th is Multicultural Potluck Day at school and I should send bread and cheese, and the list of groceries I had Safeway deliver last week (I may write more on nerdly tightwadded housewifery later, but suffice it to say I categorize the computerized printout of my groceries in a spreadsheet prior to importing into Quicken. Nuff said. It's awful, I know, and I really should stick to those Chi-Squared tree thingys to satisfy my inner nerd.)

8:01 pm. Scott and I try to watch a movie. We are currently trying to watch Ewan McGregor's "Long Way Down," which is about the actor's motorcycle trip from John O'Groats in Scotland to Capetown, South Africa. Scott is eating Cheez-Its and drinking chocolate milk. I drinking peppermint tea.

8:22 pm. I cannot watch any more TV, so I am going to bed.

8:25 pm. Scott says he's going to bed as well.

Ta-ta for now, darlings - keep drinking your barium, eating your fiber, categorizing your groceries, pooping your pants, or whatever else gets you through the day - one would hate to have to fall back on quitting smoking or losing weight or any standard New Year's Resolution to have an interesting day!

The Princess Margaret

2008-12-11T14:05:00.001-08:00

Hi everybody!

Happy gluttony redux - hope you had a good Thanksgiving and are in high gear for the holiday season. Given the economy, the politicians, global warming, and a variety of other catastrophes, the least you could do is go shopping a bit.

But some of you aren't reading this to hear me exhort you to shop. You want to know how Scott is.

He is doing great! He's still in remission, and feeling fat and happy. Yes, I said fat. He's up to 188 lbs, a full seven big juicy ones above his pre-diagnosis weight. This is unheard-of in gastric cancer patients. And he continues to eat - Marie Callendar's pot pies; ice cream; creamy pork; cheesy noodles, steak and potatoes, and of course leftover turkey in the crock pot. Very occasionally he relapses into the occasional bite of broccoli but I assure you these lapses are infrequent and quickly remedied with a dollop of full-fat Ranch dressing.

You may remember his chemo had been reduced quite a bit to prepare him for his colostomy reversal surgery. They do this six weeks before surgery, which would have put his surgery squarely between Christmas and New Year's. We've heard from the surgeon, who has suggested early January as a good time for the reattachment of his colon. There's a possibility Scott will ask the surgeon to delay it a month further, because he has some other things he wants to do, so while I do think the surgery is coming up, it is definitely not December. It may be January. It may be February.

When, exactly, will it be? At the risk of sounding a bit like a Dr. Seuss book, I don't know.

I don't know these things, you see.
These things are not things known to me.

Not up high and not down low.
I do not know them where I go.

I do not know them in a box.
I do not know them with a fox.

I do not know these sorts of things;
I do not know what cancer brings.

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But I do know there are at least some of you logging in - not to see me channel Dr. Seuss, but rather to hear about the rest of us.

You may wonder why I nudged you to shop? Well, it's because I am not doing it. The "No No Mama" is in fine form this holiday season.

Got a question? The answer is no.

Christmas cards? I'm not sending them. I'm not taking pictures, addressing envelopes, or trying to get to the post office. I'm opening the ones people send us with gratitude, and using them to create a holiday feeling in my kitchen. Martha Stewart would not exactly be impressed, but she would absolutely have to concede an improvement in "holiday cheer" from last year. So if you're on the fence about sending us a card, by all means, send it!

Kids having a Christmas concert at school? We're not going, because I'm not finding anybody a red dress (see earlier entries about my shopping phobia) and I'm not about to go out in public with my crew past 5 pm. We don't quite turn into werewolves, but we get close.

Work party at a nice restaurant - get a sitter and bring the spouse? I'm not going, because I don't want to dress up, don't want to stay up that late, have carefully recanted any earlier interest in any prospects for advancement, and don't want to spend the money on a babysitter. (Our pecunity is not globally sourced. In plain English, this means my own personal recession started 17 months ago, with Scott's diagnosis -- this whole Wall Street crash and the ensuing waves of global financial disaster are actually not very relevant when compared with the other hits we've taken since the diagnosis.)

Friends having lovely holiday open houses, with 9-foot Christmas trees, food bank donations, Toys for Tots collections, and hearty appetizers? I'm not going. It's entirely too much work to get the kids all dressed up and out of the house, bring the epi-pen (for who knows - there could be Thai satay peanut sauce on one of those little chicken skewers and Maggie's quite fast these days), and then try to keep them from breaking a glass ornament or opening a Toys for Tots donation. I'm sending gracious RSVPs. I'm hoping they'll invite me next year. But I'm not going this year.

Well, then, what *am* I doing?

I am putting up twice the Christmas decorations of a year ago - two strings of lights (one in the kitchen, one in the living room).

I am getting a few Christmas movies from Netflix and have alternated watching them with "Kung Fu Panda" until I can quote liberally from each -- "Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus;" "I'm not a big fat panda ... I'm THE big fat panda!"

I am taking the kids to see Santa. Rumor has it he's coming to church, in which case that's that.

If not, I will make a desperate commando run to the mall on a Wednesday afternoon. (For those of you who knew me in the days when "going commando" meant "running about intoxicated with no undergarments," no, not that kind of commando, and not for the reason you might think. I've just recently potty trained Maggie, and there is no way I'm giving her the idea underwear is optional, and it's not responsible to drive my children to the mall while intoxicated enough to qualify as the other form of Commando. The "Mommy Commando" means we come immediately after a nap, armed with our own snacks and juice boxes, enter at the door closest to Santa, avoid the dreaded toy store, see Santa, and sprint for the exit, trying to avoid Gymboree as we blast off. Those last twenty feet - the ones containing Gymboree - are really the deadly pitfall. Elli has a near-fatal attraction to stores with pretty dresses in the window with double-digit price tags on them, and sadly for her she also has a Mama who dresses herself out of Goodwill and sees no reason to give her elder daughter anything less.

(I am also sending Elli shopping with Aunt Cathy after the holidays, but that's a story for another time. You can write the happy ending for it now, though. Pink dresses, pink frills, pink tights, pink ruffles, pink turtlenecks, pink skirts, and a pink poodle motif on a sweater to top it all off. The details may vary but this gives you the general idea.)

I have delegated any Christmas tree acquisition to Scott.

And I am shampooing the Princess Margaret.

This is nontrivial. In fact, it would probably be easier to go to multiple Christmas concerts, take Elli shopping at both Gymboree and gapKids, and play peanut satay roulette with Maggie.

Maggie is three, you see, and likes her bath just fine, but does NOT like to be shampooed. And this past 17 months or so, I've been only too busy, and only too happy to oblige.

But about a month ago, I actually had enough time on my hands that I began to inspect my children again.

Fingers, toes, all those spaces behind their ears and upon the tops of their heads. (Note to you all - don't do this. You will only find something you don't like that will cost you time, energy, or money. It gets worse as your kids get older and there is no upper age limit on this. Just close your eyes and look the other way.)

And I saw it. Cradle cap. Lots of cradle cap. On her forehead. On her crown. Behind her ears. On the top of her head. On the sides. Cradle cap creeping everywhere. And once I saw it, I could not NOT see it each and every time I looked at her.

For those of you who get to work by 8 am, wear dark suits or white pants, leave sharp things down low, panic if a child begins to cry, dine in restaurants (as opposed to fast food joints), rarely wipe somebody else's butt, sleep in on Sundays and spend all your disposable income on yourselves, here's the drill. Many newborns have too much gunk coming out of their scalps, and it dries into this crusty, thin yellow-peanut-butter-looking crust.

This is cradle cap.

Experts in this area blithely say you can remove it "gently with baby shampoo" or "using vigorous massage with baby oil," and you can prevent its return "using proper scalp hygiene" by "fully washing the area with a good shampoo."

It's harmless, but unsightly.

And it meant one thing to me as a mama: I wasn't keeping my baby's head clean.

If you ask my mom, I had it (until she scrubbed the bejeebers out of my little head).

Elli had it.

Maggie had it. Maggie had a lot of it. Maggie had a tremendous amount of it and since she was my second baby in 23 months, she didn't exactly get vigorously massaged with baby oil (or fully washed) all that frequently.

Maggie also actually had surgery when she was 5 weeks old for a dislocated hip, and ended up in a hot pink full body cast. She got to spend the night in the pediatrics ward. The other mothers were spending wretched nights on chairs beside their sick babies. I left Maggie there overnight and went to a dear friend's house to sleep; as I snuck out, I left the nurses a new Oprah magazine and a pound of M&M's "from Maggie" as a make-nice pseudo-bribe. And boy does that sort of stuff work. When I came to see her the next day, they had monitored her oxygen saturation, weighed every gram of pee she produced, tracked her eye function, and fed her with warm formula. And the night nurse had even scrubbed all her cradle cap off. She had this bright shiny pink cast on her a** and this bright shiny pink bald head on her shoulders.

And so three years and change later, I ended up thinking, if those nurses can fully denude her head while she's in a body cast, in a bassinet, hooked up to an oxygen monitor, surely I can scrub the cradle cap off of it now.

It turns out that was beyond completely flawed thinking. For starters, a floppy newborn in a body cast is much easier to work on than a flailing thirty-pounder who bites, runs away, and knows fifty ways to say "NO!" Additionally, a nurse in a pediatrics ward is a Professional. She knows what the f**k she's doing. I was an Amateur. I had No Clue and was too busy to really care.

But back to the future. 2008, with a three year old and several cubic inches of cradle cap.

I finally came to an uneasy weeklong equilbrium with Maggie. I would put Vaseline on her head. She would yell and wipe most of it off. Then after some diversion, I would sit at the kitchen table with a large bag of chocolate chips in front of me, and sunlight streaming over my shoulder. Elli does not like chocolate chips, so this one of the few opportunities in Maggie's brief life to eat something yummy without giving the customary inverse tithe (90%) to somebody else.

Maggie would eat the chocolate chips with both fists as fast as possible -- remember, this child has grown up in my hippie kitchen, so her dinner is most commonly something like brown rice, black beans, broccoli with ranch dressing, and organic milk.

The last time she got open season on the chocolate chips was never.

With both of her hands occupied, I could now pick, pick, pick at the cradle cap. Because, you see, these layers of crud defied "vigorous massage" or "proper scalp hygiene." I needed to take my fingernails and scrape it off, one scale at a time. Too light a scratch and I would not dislodge the cradle cap. Too heavy a scratch and she would thrash, slide off my lap and run off with melted chocolate all over her hands (and with impossible accuracy head for something new, white, electronic, or expensive on that hip which is tremendously firmly re-located.)

If, like me, you have seriously Vaselined your child's head, when the cradle cap scratches off, the little yellow flakes stick to the grease in her hair, giving her the "before" look from a bad dandruff-shampoo ad.

I could generally get about two square inches cleared per session.

In five days, I got most of her head cleared.

For those of you keeping close track of these things, that means that she went to school five days with increasing amounts of dandruff in her hair.

I'm no fool.

I knew I would have to shampoo it out eventually. But I also knew the shampoo would be an even bigger deal than the Vaseline, and I was running out of chocolate chips.

Me: "Maggie! It's time for a bath! Hooray!"
Maggie (who loves the bath from neck down): "Ok! Ok! Me first!"

Me: "Maggie! It's time to shampoo you!"
Maggie (stopping half undressed): "No. You not shampoo me. You go away."

Me: "Maggie! Come back here. It's not time to get a cookie from the kitchen. It's time to come back and get in the bath, back with Elli." (Elli was already naked and in the tub. She also does not like to be shampooed but I have made easy shampoos a condition of long hair and she will, even at this tender age, suffer anything for the sake of fashion.)

I had to catch Maggie, who had a large oatmeal-raisin cookie in her hand. I forcibly stripped her clothing off and took her into the bathroom.

Elli: "Maggie! Want to play horses in the bathtub? I'm the Princess Horsey and you can be the Baby Princess Horsey!"

Maggie (still holding her cookie, naked, standing up in tub): "OK!"

Me (trying for some modicum of control): "Okay Horsies. Who gets her mane shampooed first?"

Elli (in her most authoritative voice): "Maggie does! I'm the Princess and she's the Baby Princess so I'm the boss of her!"

Maggie (suddenly in full revolt, mistaking Elli's word for law): "NO! You do NOT shampoo me!"

Maggie looked straight at me, stood up, and peed on her sister's shoulder. It cascaded into the tub. (This is how angel babies rebel. None of this nonsense of staying up too late or not eating dinner or picking fights with the sibling or destroying property ... just a little passive aggression.)

Me (taking my cellphone off my belt and putting it out in the hallway): "Maggie, that's gross. Yechy. Pee pee is not for the bathtub. It's for the potty."

Maggie looked straight at me again and dipped her oatmeal cookie into the bathtub, right where she had peed.

Me (a little grossed out): "Maggie, sweetie, that cookie is gross. It's got pee-wee on it. Can you give it to me?"

Maggie (scowling tremendously): "You NOT shampoo me! I don't have cradle cap! I don't have shampoo! Go away, go away, just you make yourself go away."

Elli (laughing hysterically): "Can I have a bite of your pee-wee cookie?"

Me (now a little worried, as the cookie was beginning to fall apart): "Nobody's going to have a bite of the pee-wee cookie. Give me the cookie. Let's just shampoo you both fast, and then you can both have a big cookie afterwards."

It was at this point I tried to reason that if urine was sterile, and urea was actually an ingredient in some nicer shampoos, it was not absolutely necessary for me to drain the tub and refill it with fresh water to complete the bathing process. Besides, even if I got a fresh tub, there's nothing to say she wouldn't pee (or worse) in it again.

Maggie (turning away from me and taking a big bite of the pee-wee cookie): "You shampoo Elli. I eat my cookie. Then I very want another very bigger cookie. And no shampoo. Only for Elli, not for me."

Me (thinking we could have all been washed and out of the tub by now if we were the least bit task-oriented): "Maggie, yecchy. Spit the pee-wee cookie into my hand. And then I'm going to shampoo you."

Maggie swallowed her first bite of cookie. She took a second bite and spat that into my hand. Then she dunked her head under the pee-wee bathwater, tried to drink some, came up coughing, and dropped the rest of the cookie into the water. Elli went diving after it.

I did end up getting the Princess Margaret shampooed.

It was not pretty.

It was a good thing I had taken off my cellphone and shoes; I got wet up to my knees.

I had to let Elli eat bits of the cookie off of the bottom of the tub whilest I "vigorously massaged" Maggie's scalp.

I had to threaten to run the shower (which Maggie hates) and cut Elli's hair (which Elli fears).

I had to reassure Scott (who only heard these unholy screeches from the bathroom and wanted to know what sort of animal I was sacrificing and to what end).

And I had to promise them both not only another cookie but a measuring cup full of whipped cream which they could eat with a baby spoon in the living room (I cannot tell you how many house rules this is breaking - whipped cream without ice cream; eating with baby spoons when you're a big girl; eating sticky sweet ant-attracting things on the leather couch in the living room, and all of it before dinner...the list goes on and on...)

But in the end, the Princess Margaret once again has a fresh bright pink scalp, with no cradle cap on it.

And peace, prosperity, discipline and cleanliness rule once again in our kingdom, at least until next week, when I shall have to re-shampoo her in order to maintain the fresh scalp.

Didn't I tell you it would be overall easier to simply not inspect your kids?

The Old Guard

2008-11-20T10:37:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody!

Thanks to all who came to our remission party - it was a lovely time. We ate, drank, and made merry, as one should in our circumstances.

Some of you probably want to know about Scott. He continues to do really well - he's up to 182 lbs, which is 1 lb MORE than he was before he was diagnosed. In the world of gastric cancer, when skinny = bad and fat = good, he's a veritable Thanksgiving turkey, stuffed to the gills, and even able to make a little potbelly if he bends over just right. This is sort of unprecedented for chemo patients, so three cheers for the fat!

We have gotten some more information on his next surgery, the one to reverse his colostomy and get him back to 100% potty trained again. At first I thought it might be in September, then in October, then in November, and now I'm thinking it is looking more like December. In about six weeks. I realize to some of you, this may not sound like a lot of information. You might want to know a date, or a time, or something specific like that. But - but - but - this is not how cancer works. (But heh heh heh, I did say butt...)

People can schedule C-sections, so the baby comes on schedule. People can schedule audits with the IRS, so their taxman cometh on time. They can schedule Mr. Roto-Rooter, so their septic tanks get cleansed on the dot.

So why is Scott's reanastomosis (colostomy reversal) such a hippie dippie slippery doopy-doo thing to schedule? Don't we invade Middle Eastern countries with less advance notice?

There are some things in this life which defy schedules and time. Earthquakes and volcanoes fall into this category.

So do newborns - not the usual sort of newborn, where you can at least schedule a babysitter or a maternity leave. I'm thinking the of schedule-defying sorts of newborns, the ones that come in pairs, 10 weeks early, and both end up in the ICU, wearing wedding rings around their wrists and forgetting to breathe every so often.

Or parents. Not the sorts of parents who grow gracefully grey and send you breathtaking "wish you were here" postcards from their world cruise's stop in Fiji. I'm thinking of the papery Alzheimer's sorts of parents, the ones who have outlived not only multiple spouses but all their friends and are beginning to outlive their friends' kids. You know the types - they are the ones who can't tell you are cheating at cards because they keep trying to dry hump the nurse.

So I am happy to report that Scott and I have already been to Fiji, he will not let Elli cheat at cards, and (to my knowledge) he has not tried to dry hump any of his nurses. (That sort of behavior, while commonplace in spay/neuter veterinary clinics and tolerated in the eldercare world, does not exactly tend to extend your life span if you try it on an oncology nurse. Drink all their orange juice and vomit it back on them all you like. Screw up your blood cell counts. Shed all your hair all over their nice clean floor. Weep copiously at the drop of a hat if you must. But no dry humping. They will get all concerned that if you get out of your chair improperly you'll mess up the tubes and wires going from your chemo IV into your chest port, and you do NOT want to make them have to restart a chemo session. Nobody in their right mind would seriously p*ss off the nurse who is going to have to stick yet another needle into those poor tired veins.)

So metastatic cancer falls into the same category as the earthquakes and volcanoes, and other Major Life Events. Not as easy as the Roto-Rooter guy, and they aren't mailing out 20% off coupons just yet.

We needed to have the surgeon decide if he could reattach it. He thinks yes.

Then the surgeon needed the oncologist's permission to operate. She says yes.

Then the surgeon needed to decide how to adjust Scott's blood thinners before the surgery. He figured that out (and boy is it gross - Scott gets to give himself shots in the stomach!).

Then the surgeon needed to ask the oncologist to stop certain types of chemo 6 weeks before the surgery, because in particular the Avastin that Scott is on inhibits healing. He'll be off of the Avastin for 6 weeks before and 6 weeks after surgery, a total of 3 months.

Then the oncologist needed to talk with Scott to get Scott's informed consent to stop the chemo. Scott said yes.

Then the oncologist needed to actually stop Scott's Avastin. This happened two days ago, when he just got 5-FU and leucovorin. (He's off of oxaliplatin until about January, although this may change with the surgery as well...)

Then Scott had to call the surgeon, report the Avastin was stopped, and formally request a surgery date be scheduled.

In all likeliness the surgeon will say yes, but we haven't heard back from him yet. He's probably doing his own due diligence and verifying the Avastin has stopped, plus a few other things I would find too gross to report here even if I knew what they were. Six weeks from today would put it somewhere around Christmas or New Year's. I'm hoping the good surgeon is a typical overachieving workaholic butthole surfer. This would mean that instead of, say, taking his lovely wife and two boys skiing to Tahoe over the holidays this year, he wants to stay in town and stick his hand up my husband's rear end.

I'm actually fairly hopeful that this will be the case, because you don't make it through umpteen years of medical school, residency, internship, and board certifications without a fairly strong streak of insane overachievement and a fanatical work ethic. And you don't remain a colorectal surgeon without finding some meaning, purpose, and (I hope!) enjoyment in people's rear ends.

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So that is how Scott is doing.

What about me?

I have been having myself a decadent old time. You may remember last fall was the time in my life in which I was sleeping in my clothes, eating in public restrooms, and making sure they didn't cancel our health insurance while teaching a class, keeping a job, visiting lawyers and doctors and accountants galore, and generally careening towards a nervous breakdown because I had no time at all.

Well, this fall is different. I'm older, wiser, and better at this cancer caregiver thing. I know surgery is a BIG deal - if not for Scott then surely for me - and his surgery will require a LOT of extra time and attention from me. (Scott is not going to want that to be true, so darling, if you're reading this you can just skip this paragraph, but for the rest of you, it IS true. It is SO true that I've deliberately scaled back my work commitments - turned down two large consulting engagements on purpose and by accident am not even teaching this fall. I'll go back to teaching one class in January.)

It's not just Scott who requires the attention. It's the girls. It's the dog. It's the bank accounts. It's the house. Every appliance in our house knows when Scott's having a big medical issue and chooses that time to break - last fall it was the kitchen garbage disposal which went when he was in the ICU, and BOTH toilets which went when he was starting Avastin. It's wintertime now, so I suspect the furnace will act up next.

And what do I get when I super scale back my life, and then have to wait for four months before the surgery? The uber-obvious: less money, more time. (Don't worry; I know it won't last.)

And what have I been doing with my time? I've been learning to cook. I've been balancing our checking account. I've been reading "Covered Wagon Women," about these women on the Oregon Trail in 1853 who did things like leave Iowa with seven children and arrive in Oregon with eight, having given birth in the Cascade Mountains amongst the oxen, greased tarp, and cornbread drippings.

I have been dropping the kids off at school at 8 and getting them at 4. Elli is in kindergarten and she has to be there by 8. Maggie goes to preschool in the same building. It took a little adjusting in August for the kids to get the 8 - 4 fulltime daycare schedule at their new school, and the last thing I need to do is to pull them out of full day school now, and have to fuss with them over another adjustment back to full time just when I've got a surgery patient coming back from the hospital. So I'm leaving the kiddie daycare schedule gloriously alone.

By now, I also have an office staff trained that I generally show up about 10 or 10:30, and generally leave by 3 or 3:30, and am not in on Tuesdays (that's when I do my cancer stuff), and they will often let me go two or three days not showing up at all before they begin to worry. It would be patently unwise to let the office think I'm actually back into this business of showing up at 8:15, because it will only last until a week or so before Scott's surgery. Change is hard. Schedules are easy. These days, I take the easy way out.

So what's a girl to do? I had to find somewhere free to go between 8 and 10 each morning.
I have been going to the gym.

And what to do when there's no kids in ChildWatch at the gym, no clock breathing down my neck? I do change into gym clothes. I run. I lift weights. I go to yoga class. I've even started to take a beginning Pilates class because that way I figure I can skip my situps the rest of the week. But most of all, I am in less of a rush. I hang out. I eavesdrop. I make friends. I talk to the other people who are there at 8:30 in the morning.

And who, besides me, you may wonder, is actually *at* the gym at 8:30 on a Thursday morning?

It ain't the students - they go to their univerity gyms or to 24 Hour Fitness, so they can See and Be Seen by the Right People, and generally after 4 pm.

It ain't the corporate crowd - if they go, they go at 6 am so they can be at work by 8 am.

It ain't the mommies - if they go, they go at 10 am because that lets them watch Sesame Street over breakfast and get out of the house with the double stroller, the diaper bag, the bottle, the Taggie blanket, the Dora toy, and their sunglasses (but generally without something crucial, like the binkie or their purse.)

It's the old folks. Mostly old ladies, but the occasional old gent as well. You know the ones - they wear floatation belts in their 8 am water aerobics class. They wear pink sweatpants and immaculate white tennis shoes. They wear bright red lipstick. They use walkers with tennis balls on the front two feet. They spend 45 minutes in the lobby with their friends, each one drinking two little styrofoam cups of coffee sweetened with saccharine, each one thriftily reusing the little red coffee stirrey stick.

They used to sit in the hot tub wearing sturdy blue floral swimsuits with a prosthesis on the left from a mastectomy done when Reagan was still in the White House. But lately they've decided the fake boob is entirely too much work and they just go to the pool lopsided. If their swimsuit straps fall down because of the lopsidedness, they get Gertrude or Edna or Betty Lou to tie the straps together in the back with a shoelace which also dates from the Reagan Era. And they don't ever bother walking back to the locker room to tie up their suits; they just do it right out on the pool deck. They figure if a new mother can breastfeed her child on the pool deck these days, they can gosh darn well tie up a bathing suit out there too.

I've learned a lot from them. You don't survive the Depression, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Bill Gates and Monica Lewinsky without getting a little bit of perspective.

For example (and please remember this is California; your mileage may vary), many of them are not nearly as against premarital sex as they used to be.

It's one thing when it's 1969, and your're a respectable fortysomething housewife trying to persuade your teenage Baby Boomer kids that they shouldn't really be getting that high or sleeping with that many people. You gotta set the standard; you gotta tell your kids that the only Pill that works 100% for birth control is that aspirin you kept between your knees until you were good and married at the ripe old age of 21.

But it's a different thing, entirely, when it's 2008, and you're 80, and there are about ten single women to every eligible bachelor. You are safely past the point of contraception. The only Pill that now works most of the time is Viagra. Your first husband (bless his soul) died when Jimmy Carter was in office, leaving you with four kids, and your second husband (bless his soul) passed away a few years ago after a long illness, leaving you with two stepchildren determined to contest every clause in his will despite the fact they made themselves mighty scarce when their "dear" father needed his diapers changed or his applesauce fed to him.

And now you have the opportunity to go to dinner with a charming dapper widower. He's picked you over the rest of the madding crowd. He's got his brains; he's got his own teeth; he's got both his natural hips and even still has some hair. He's got medical insurance so he's got Viagra if needed. He's also got a will, a trust, two kids of his own, plus some leftover stock in oil wells in Texas he bought there in the 1950's of uncertain valuation.

You would have to be crazy not to go to dinner with him.

And you would have to be crazy to marry him.

Keep the paperwork separate; keep the estates clean and divided.

So go to your water aerobics at 8 am on a Thursday.

Get your hair set on a Friday.

Play Bingo on Saturday nights at the Senior Center, and afterwards go home with your boyfriend.

So whom do you tell?

Well, you can't tell Edna at the gym; she might not tie your swimsuit up if she knew you were seeing the last eligible bachelor in our zip code.

You obviously can't tell your kids, not after what you did the time you caught Jenny in the backyard in the sleeping bag with that skinny fellow whose name she didn't know.

So you tell me. I am the anonymous 38-year-old lady at the gym who has time for a second cup of coffee. The one who will let you ramble on about Dwight Eisenhower and doesn't mind when you confuse Jesse Jackson with Michael Jackson. The one who is changing into her gym clothes for Pilates at the same time you're coming of your water aerobics class. The one who isn't rushing off to get her kids, or to go to playgroup, or to do the thousand other unnecessary things these overscheduled mothers do these days.

The one who actually wants to hear how the f**k to make a meatloaf.

I am learning quite a lot about the older generation. Maybe even enough so that when my sabbatical ends and Scott's surgery is due, I'll be able to make a meatloaf to welcome him home from the hospital with the Italian breadcrumbs browned in butter on top of it.

Maybe.

You're invited!

2008-10-31T12:32:00.001-07:00

Hi all,

This is actually from Scott:

We are going to have a “Scott is in Remission Party” over at our place on November 15th, 4pm-8pm.

This is to thank everyone for all the generous help and support we have received over past year. It was the greatest challenge we have ever faced. We couldn’t have done it without your help.

We will supply the drinks and if you can bring a dish to share, that would be great. Kids of all ages are welcome.

We will have the BBQ’s going and the sand box open. If it rains, we will find out how many people we can stuff in to the house.

Scott, Carrie and the two wild girls.

Email him if you need directions and to RSVP!

scottwynter at yahoo dot com

(obviously, you need to type in things like "@" and "." - this is so the webcrawlers don't horridly spam him!)

Reunited!

2008-10-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

Hello all!

It's been a while since I've written anything here, and I'm so sorry for the absence. We've been busy with all sorts of wonderful things, including attending my sister's wedding last month.

Those of you who know her know beyond a shadow of a doubt it was a glamorous affair, complete with a dress that stayed up in all the right places and a reception that allegedly went until 4 am (although I left at 9 pm to go home to bed.)

And the net-net is that she is safely married off, and there is one fewer straight single thirtysomething marriage-minded man in San Francisco. (Some of you will be surprised to hear that there *ever* had been even one straight single thirtysomething marriage-minded man in San Fran; it does happen, but if you find one, ya gotta move quick.)

So what else have we been up to? Answering FAQs, taking Scott to the doctor, and getting Elli through kindergarten. Maggie, true to form, has ended up potty training herself, well before the freshman year in college deadline that I had set for her.

So, in order (we may stop short of actual show-n-tell on the potty training):

****************************************************************************

FAQs about Scott's condition:

Q1. This is wonderful! This is really wonderful! We've been thinking of / praying for / babysitting for / sending food to you guys! Hooray!

A1: (This is not really a FAQ, more a Frequently Occurring Statement, but I wanted to answer it here, so here goes). Yes, it is wonderful, really wonderful, and thank you all so much for everything you do. Whatever you did, individually and collectively, it seems to have worked.

Q2. Is he cured?

A2: I don't know.

Q3: I thought they told you this treatment was palliative, and that remission was not really in the cards. How come he's in remission now?

A3: I don't know. If you don't like that answer, I can also offer that God is greater than we thought, or that modern medicine is better than we thought. But I have to say, among the highest truths here is that I don't know.

Q4: So if he's in remission, why is he still on chemotherapy?

A4 - part 1. Because the oncologist says so, and she's walking about one half step behind the dominant deity these days.

A4 - part 2. I don't know.

Q5: How long will he have to stay on chemotherapy?

A5: I'm not sure. This is actually different than I don't know. I think I have a vague recollection of hearing the oncologist say something like "indefinite chemo," which to me means "for a very long time." But we actually didn't expect to get this far, so who knows what will happen? But we don't have to split hairs here - I am very comfortable with either an "I'm not sure" or an "I don't know" for this answer.

Q6: Will he ever get rid of the colostomy bag?

A6: Finally! Something I do know the answer for! The answer here is yes, yes, yes! Read on!

Q7: Fill in whatever else you'd like to ask here.

A7: I don't know.

***************************************************************************************
So we had another appointment with Scott's surgeon, Dr. F., last Friday. Scott had booked the appointment to inquire about having his colostomy reversed.

It is so hugely different for me from the surgical appointments last year. A full night's of sleep beforehand, in pajamas. Only one cup (not a pot, a cup) of coffee beforehand, drunk while hot to lukewarm. Two children dressed in street clothes and taken to school on time (albeit the preschooler smelling of musty parmesan cheese). In the office by 8 am, a FedEx package sent to the East Coast, a phone call with a client, a little paperwork from the IRS which I still didn't fill out, and a 10:30 departure from the office to go to The Appointment.

No gratuitous crying in the parking lot, the ladies' room, or the waiting room for me, no sir, not this time. And, when our 11:30 am appointment was delayed nearly an hour for all sorts of reasons, there was no surprise or shock on my part - I had blocked off until 5 pm today for this appointment. Gone are the days of fifteen minute doctor's appointments and returning to work immediately afterwards.

After one of these things I can never tell if we'll need to spend two hours waiting in various lab and pharmacy lines to acquire medication and donate body fluids, or if I'll need four hours to complete a small nervous breakdown before composing myself to pick up the kids, or if it's simply a one-hour large frozen yogurt sort of afternoon. The conservative choice is to keep the afternoon free.

So we finally get ushered into the surgical consultation room; Scott sits on the table and I sit in the "spouse chair." They have one of those impossibly detailed posters of the human digestive system propped up on the floor, very close to my knees. (You have heard of the rock band the Butthole Surfers? Well, it turns out medical schools graduate Butthole Surgeons, and you never really care until you need, well, a specialist for the caboose. I think the proper term is colorectal surgeon.)

I scoot over a little bit because the large intestine on the poster is too close to my right leg and it is grossing me out. (Yes, I am extraordinarily prissy about these things and despite what people might think, the past year hasn't actually upped my tolerance for any sort of intestinal material touching my knees.)

I'll just report on the little conversations that went on.

Dr. F: "Hello Scott! Good to see you today. What can I do for you?"
Scott: "Hi Dr F! I'd like to get my colonoscopy reversed."
Me (thinking, not saying aloud): I think he means colostomy, not colonoscopy. I am sure the doctor realizes nobody wants a reverse colonoscopy. Or is that the sort of thing people pay good money for in San Francisco over New Year's?

Dr F (pulling up the medical records on the computer): "I see you're really doing well on this chemo. It's really extraordinary, to be in this good a shape fifteen months after diagnosis. I think your oncologist should write you up in a medical journal."
Scott: "I feel great!"
Me (again, not saying aloud): But he already is written up! I write him up on my blog from time to time!

Dr F (looking at something else on the computer): "It says here that Dr. C. could not even see the tumor when he did a scope exam on you in July. I trust him implicitly, but if you don't mind, I'd like to check for myself during our preop. Just to make sure it's really gone, hasn't come back."

Scott: "Yeah, he told me he couldn't see it either. And check away, all you want."

Me (still thinking; grateful they can't read thoughts): What could be more fun than having one highly paid professional look up your ass? Having TWO highly paid medical professionals look up it! Do I hear three? Surely there's a spare gastroenterologist around here who wants to see a vamoosed booty tumor over lunch?

Dr. F: "You know, standard medical protocol in these cases, in which the primary rectal tumor has shrunk, is to remove the rectum, to prevent further metastases."

Scott: "I want to keep my rectum."

Me (still silent, just thinking): Um, we've already HAD metastases?

Dr. F: "The thinking is that if we remove the primary site of the cancer, it might inhibit further recurrence in the future."

Scott: "I want to keep my rectum."

Me (still thinking, not saying): If he keeps his rectum and can poop in the potty again, now that Maggie's potty-trained, we'll be four for five at our house. Lucky the dog will still poop outside.

Dr. F: "But...(looking at old scans which show Scott's liver in its Swiss-cheese state of last fall)...it would appear the cat's already been out of the barn, so to speak, so there would be no incremental benefit to removing the rectum."

Scott: "Good. I want to keep my rectum."

Me (still silent): So there are some perks to this metastatic disease, after all! He can have whatever he wants because he's already HAD what they're generally trying to avoid! Curiouser and curiouser, my dear white rabbit.

Dr F: "So, I'll talk with the oncologist ... we'll have to change your blood thinner about a week or so before the surgery ... three days in the hospital ... four to six week recovery ... should have usual bowel function, ability to sense urgency ... no undue bathroom issues ... "

Scott: "I get to keep my rectum!"

Me (still thinking to myself): The last time they said five days in the hospital it was closer to two weeks ...

And so Scott gets to keep his rectum, and may even be getting to use it again in the medium future. They're coordinating amongst themselves, and will be getting back to us with instructions, diet, paperwork, and drugs galore. It will probably be a month or so, because it requires an awful lot of fancy dancing around a variety of drugs and chemotherapy agents I can’t really pronounce all the time.

In my post-appointment space case state of mind, I ended up going grocery shopping afterwards. I somehow spent $188 at Trader Joe’s and managed to get four 8-packs of nitrate-free hot dogs, three dozen organic free range eggs, several boxes of organic soy milk, 8 cans of organic kidney beans, 4 cartons of organic yogurt, 2 lbs of rBGH-free cheese, two boxes of darling little oyster crackers, and some merely pesticide-free (but not yet fully certified as organic) frozen spinach.

But I got nary even one feather off of an organic free range chicken, which (I learned after I arrived home) has turned out to be Scott’s single food craving for the week.

Actually, the hippie-dippie organic free range business is mine. It makes me feel virtuous, as if I could somehow buy forgiveness for driving a minivan via organic food items.

Scott just wants to sink his teeth into a chicken, any sort of chicken, even an agribusiness genetically engineered talking chicken from a fast food restaurant, and most particularly a deep-fried chicken -- anything so he can bulk up for his upcoming surgery.

Lest you worry too much (or lest several dozen chickens of varying provenance show up on our doorstep), when I next run to the store for milk (probably tomorrow) I will buy an entire chicken, so Scottie will be properly fed for yet another few days. :)

Fulfilling my newly expanded housewifery ambitions, I have high hopes of cooking the innards up into a gloriously soupy mess for my dear baby dog. (I am hopelessly overinvolved with my dog; I probably told you that a long time ago.)

And true to my squeamish pseudovegetarian self, I am going to do this without actually having to ever touch or look too closely at said innards. (Remember, I couldn’t even cope with a picture of a human intestine touching my knee… what do you think I’m going to do with something that could possibly be real dead chicken intestine touching my hand? Do chickens even have intestines? Do NOT answer that, I do NOT want to know, not even if you’ve been to veterinary school or grew up on a farm and know for sure.).

*******************************************************************

And those of you who are reading on still: you may be a bit disappointed – I’m not about to detail my maiden attempts to eviscerate and cook a chicken, not even on behalf of my beloved doggie.

But I am going to tell you about something a great deal more glorious. I have finally found one aspect of parenting at which I KICK ASS.

It is homework.

I should be more precise – I am claiming excellent personal parental performance for the Week 9 homework for Elli’s kindergarten class.

Lest this bold declaration give rise to an improper appearance of hubris, let me tell you I have been flunking and floundering my way from conception until now, age 5.

I got a C- in Pregnancy: I did deliver a healthy baby (twice), so I passed that class (twice). But I got waaaaay too fat (twice). I whined incessantly (enough for three pregnancies). I burped; I farted; I drank coffee; I cried unpredictably, and was in generally a p*ssy mood for the duration.

I got an I/NC (Incomplete, with No Credit on the repeat attempt) in Breastfeeding: despite healthy infants who had good latch-on and a tidal wave-like milk supply, I hated breastfeeding and switched those babies to formula before they even had their eyes fully open. This in a time and a place in which the Earth Mama concept was resurgent, and it appeared that I was surrounded by excellent milkers blissfully nursing their exclusively breast-fed infants while swathing them in organic cotton baby carriers. To add further insult to my poor grade here, it turns out I fed them out of plastic baby bottles, which now the FDA thinks contain bad chemicals.

I got a D in Stay at Home Motherhood: I put those babies in daycare and fled back to part-time work at 9 and 10 weeks respectively. I knew I’d found the right babysitting coop when I asked them how young a child they’d take and the answer came back: “Home from the hospital, takes a bottle.”

So I have been a student and a teacher long enough to know that when you get a student with this sort of transcript, it’s unusual for her to spring right into the top of the class, especially when she gets advanced along with the rest of her peers instead of being held back a year to repeat Four Year Old parenting.

But I did!

I am!

I have finally been tasked with something that is in my skill set!

Elli has six sight words on flash cards. We are supposed to do these cards every single night until she learns them, and then we will get more. These are irregular words, like “he” and “she,” like “see” and “no.”

She is a high strung child who wants to dance around in high heels, do my makeup and hair, get me dressed in church attire at every possible opportunity, and stay up late. She does not want to sit quietly and learn to read in the cranky dark evenings of our weeknights. (The one who is currently sitting quietly and learning to read would happen to be three year old Maggie, who has a temperament such that I could toss her into the garage with an encyclopedia and twelve years later fish her out, dust her off, and send her to Harvard with no worries. I shall not be doing any of that for a variety of reasons, but my mother will tell you, I was that kid who would sit down and read the dictionary for fun, and it does take one to know one. Maggie has the temperament of a scholar. Elli has the temperament of a French Poodle, with a diamond leash and painted pink toenails.)

So our conversation goes something like this:

Me: “Elli, this is wonderful. You are so big, you get to do homework with Mama! How special is that?”

Elli: “I want a Diamond Barbie with the flippy pink glittery skirt for my birthday. When is my birthday?”

Me: “Yes, isn’t Barbie wonderful?” (This makes the feminist in me gag chicken innards, but as John Milton said, ‘The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven.’ If the mind is indeed that good, surely it can make a completed homework set out of a desire to be Glamour Barbie when you grow up. Why I got the Paris Hilton High School Musical wannabe for a child is beyond me – I would have been so good with the rocket scientist kid who ended up at another family down the street!)

Elli: “So when is my birthday?”

Me: “Your birthday is in August, which is hundreds of days away. Wouldn’t you like to go to Target and buy Jewelry Barbie sooner? You can earn stars doing your homework, and if you get enough stars, you can buy your very own Jewelry Barbie.”

Elli: “It’s not Jewelry Barbie. It’s Diamond Barbie. And her friend Teresa too.”

Me: “Wow! That’s great! There’s two of them! That means we get to do our flash cards two times each night!” (Note to all my faithful readers – you may want to consider buying stock in Mattel if this keeps up…)

… three minutes later, Elli is sitting at my big desk, in her pink Barbie high heels, with my very nice rolling ball pen in her right hand, demurely copying over “See” and “he.”

…four minutes later, we have been through the flash cards twice for the evening, once for Diamond Barbie and once for Teresa. I cannot believe this compliant, sedate creature is my daughter.

…five minutes later, Elli asks me, “Mama, do you know all the letters? All million of them? Anything I want can you spell it? Can you spell Barbie?” This is more like my daughter.

…six minutes later, Elli has me printing out very carefully, “Elli is a pretty princess and will grow up and marry her boyfriend Jackson whose parents moved to Reno but they will bring him back for the wedding just like Aunt Cathy married Uncle Stevie and Maggie can’t come because she will not be the flower girl, just Mommy and Barbie and Daddy coming to the wedding.”

…seven minutes later, Elli has gotten me to tell her how to spell poop. It is her new all time favorite word.

…fifteen minutes later, Elli has exchanged my black velvet tip pen for a hot pink marker, changed into a floaty yellow knee-length Disney Princess negligee (and matching gold heels) and has written “POOP” about ten times on the carefully lined kindergarten paper.

…sixteen minutes later, I have fallen off the bed because I am laughing so hard.

…seventeen minutes later, I have made several “bonus” flash cards, containing the words “I” and “pee” and “stinky butt,” plus a few gratuitous verbs, so we can move them around on the floor (it is not safe for me to get back on the bed) and make sentences, like “I see Elli poop” and “I see Elli’s stinky butt” and “Mama pees.”

…twenty minutes later, I consider her this first flash card homework session a total success because 1) she has done her flash cards 2) she didn’t want to quit and 3) as long as Mattel remains in business, we have a clear path to literacy for this petit-consumer.

But with all sins, there is a price to pay. And while there’s been quite a lot said about the sins of the father, the sins of the mother often go unnoticed or at least unwritten.

Until now.

We had been fairly consistently doing the flash cards and then the Poop-a-thon (complete with outfit changes to complement the marker color change) for about a week. She knows the following words cold, well enough to write them all by herself with no prompting:

Elli
Maggie
No
See
Poop

When I dropped her off at school today, the teacher had written the sentence of the day on the board. The students were supposed to copy it down and fill it in, and then draw a picture. It was:

“I like to eat ______.”

Six bucks says she’s not going to fill that blank in with any of the first four words on her “known word” list.

Scott loves NED!

2008-08-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

Hi all - an entry from our guest blogger:

This is Scott, and it’s about time I wrote an entry in this blog. Yesterday we went to see our favorite oncologist Dr. L.

I had a PET scan (kinda like a CAT scan) a couple of weeks ago, and we were kina anxious to hear the results. I was expecting to hear good news like “Yep, the tumors are still shrinking”.

Well, it turns out they could not find any cancer.

That’s right, nothing in the colon, liver or lung…nada…zip.

We couldn’t believe what we heard and asked her several times to repeat it. I am in remission…wow.

Yesterday we kinda stumbled around in shock. It was almost like the way were when we heard the original diagnosis…(10 months to live, sorry) I am finally starting to feel giddy. I almost don’t want to start jumping up and down in fear of jinxing it. Silly, yah I know. When we have fully wrapped our heads around this, it’s going to be party time at the Wynter-Beam’s house.

A big THANK YOU for all the support from our friends and family. We could not have done it with your help.

********************************************************

This is Carrie again. I actually am in such shock that I have not much to say at this point.

The only two things I said after we left the oncologist's office were these:

1. Yes, darling, I think I'm okay to drive

2. You know, darling, do you think that now you're in remission you could start doing the dishes?

I'm sure I'll have more comments on this later - and this blog is by no means closed - we are far too loquacious for that - but for now, it's a bit more easy sailing! hooray!

The No No Mama

2008-08-17T20:36:00.000-07:00

Hello to all of you again! It’s been a while, and for the silence, I apologize. I’ve been beyond busy with several things.

These things include back to school for Elli (who is starting kindergarten and will only wear pink dresses, which is too d**n bad because buying new pink dresses is going to have to wait until early October, when my sister is done getting married and honeymooning. I do poop, flip flops, and bad hair days. I don’t do gold. I don’t do heels. And I don’t do pink dresses. At least not the way Aunt Cathy does, with matching tights, shoes, hair thingys, and purses.).

They include my continuing stint as the housewife’s apprentice. On this week’s menu: homemade cheesecake made with cream cheese free of rBGH, six organic farm-fresh plums, and shelf-stable prefab graham cracker crust which contains enough preservatives, trans-fats, and plastic to survive a nuclear war. This is a) because I found the crust, still in its packaging, in my garage, with no legible expiration date, so after ascertaining it contained BHT, BHA, and a variety of other preservatives, I could in good conscience presume it still good and b) because actually making pie crust is in Housewifery Level II at least, and I ain’t there yet. I’m still the apprentice, who gets to mostly wash dishes, sweep floors, do laundry, and scrub poopy underwear. Perhaps when I learn to bleach with precision -- only and exactly the poopy underwear – not the entire bleeping load, yet missing not a smudge of the brown bull’s eye at Ground Zero – then, and only then, will I be within arms’ length of Desserts 103: Pie Crusts.

And of course these things I’ve been busy with include poop, colons, fiber, and bungholes, but not always belonging to the usual suspects.

But I digress. Some of you actually wouldn’t care if I took my pseudo-organic cheesecake and allowed the kindergartener in question to eat it all, thereby guaranteeing myself at least six Ground Zeros on six pairs of Disney Princess underpants (one bull’s eye for each Princess for each of the six plums therein) -- you want to know how Scott is doing.

He’s doing well. Really well. Physically he’s really strong – walking around easily and eating tons (he is up to 168 lbs again, which is still about 20 lbs down from his pre-diagnosis weight but is up 20 lbs from his super-skinny sickie weight, and I like to think that cheesecakes of all sorts are doing their part here.) He still bruises easily, is sensitive to the sun, has dry mouth and occasional mouth sores, gets weird aches at times, has the chemo fatigue, and feels a little numbness in the hands and feet. But if you just ran into him at the store, you would not necessarily think he has cancer. He looks like a normal human being, and can mix with the rest of humanity in relative obscurity, which is wonderful.

He still has a little bit of the “space case” chemo brain, but we seem to be coping better with it. I have seen people say insanity is hereditary (you get it from your kids). My slogan might be that chemo brain is hereditary (you get it from your spouse). We (and I am fully including me in here) write lists for *everything*, and we have cut our lives down to as close to *nothing* as we can. I am the “No No Mama.” Every question that gets asked of me – the default answer is “no.” (The secondary answer is “can I get you something to eat?” and the tertiary answer is “oh, dear, here, let Mama scrub those out for you.”)

I quit the Saturday 10 am swim lessons for the kids because it was too hard to get there on time, with the swim suits, swim diapers, snacks, sunscreen, pink towel in the pink bag for Kid #1 and yellow towel in the yellow bag for Kid #2, swim sandals in Bag #2, swim Crocs in Bag #1, and of course Mama with her keys, purse, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something here. I sort of dropped out of my wonderful Tuesday afternoon playgroup for the summer (but hope to go back in the fall). I have started to do my grocery shopping online every other week and my Target runs in person about once a month (unless we’re out of diapers). I have dropped out of the Mothers’ Club Wine Club (boo hoo!), the Institute of Management Consultants, a few other professional organizations, and never actually made it into the Junior League (so it was very simple to continue not going to their events either). I have tried to drop out of the Pottery Barn Kids catalog but they won’t take me off their mailing list despite the fact the next time I am likely to buy something from there is NEVER. Neither child is in any extracurriculars – no ballet class, no My Little Gym, no music lessons, no soccer, no carpools, no playdates, no nothing – because as a family we simply don’t have the resources to make these things happen and keep me in a good mood. And when Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Most other people think they can control whether they’re on time or late to activities, but believe they can’t control whether they’re having a good or a bad day. We’re the polar opposites: we have no control over whether we are late to anything or not, but we have gotten pretty good at being in a fairly good mood about the little we do do.

With very little to do, there is less to keep track of, and less to worry about. Or, should I say, we can save our worry for more important things. Like my cheesecake, and Scott’s doctor’s appointments. He has an appointment with the oncologist in about two weeks, and at that point we will have a more specific update.

So you probably want to know – what exactly *am* I doing with myself if I’m not driving soccer carpool, shopping for pink dresses, or drinking wine? I do work and continue to bring home a paycheck. I take care of my husband and children and dog. But besides that, it’s hard to figure out exactly what I’m busy with. But I’m quite busy – that I can assure you. Let me tell you how busy I mean.

A few weeks ago, on a Monday, I got something in the mail. It was hidden between a postcard reminding Scott of yet another doctor’s appointment, yet another catalog from Pottery Barn Kids that I’ve not yet unsubscribed to, and a $149 water bill. This something was a postcard of Geoffrey, the giraffe from Kids R Us, and he’s saying “Happy Birthday! Use this coupon to save $3 off anything in our store!”

I work professionally building predictive statistical models for direct response marketing – among other things, I know the computer schtuff that should be going on behind a decision to mail a postcard like that. And you don’t spend the 50 cents to send a card like that with a birthday message on it unless your database says there’s a birthday in the house. (You also don’t keep sending catalogs to people who tell you they will buy your stuff NEVER, but that’s a different story altogether…)

So I recycled Geoffrey and went about my business.

On Tuesday morning, I was dropping the kids off at daycare and I looked at their monthly calendar. On the square for Thursday, there was a little handwritten note, “Happy Birthday to Maggie!”

My first thought was, “Oh, I didn’t realize they had two Maggies here.”

My second thought was, OMG, what’s below an apprentice? A sous-apprentice? A pseudo-apprentice? A journeywoman? A pre-novice?

Because, you see, the Maggie to whom daycare was referring was my own darling angel baby, and the birthday to which Geoffrey’s postcard had been referring was her third one, coming up in a very few days. (Hence probably the $3 savings - $1 for each year.)

It was good that as the No No Mama I had already decided we are not throwing large or elaborate birthday parties for anybody at our house. Not me, not Scott, not Lucky our dog, not nobody. No need to invite anybody, find a pony, get a piñata, hire a clown or a princess or a magician, order a cake, buy the ice cream, rent a park, or get decorations. So at least all those decisions had been taken care of several months ago.

But – things are not always as bad as they seem. There are several redeeming factors here,

and we were actually in line for a pretty good birthday.

The first – and biggest – was that Maggie had no idea her third birthday was coming up so fast.

The second was that neither child has ever had a large party thrown for her; in fact, to date I have outsourced them all to Grandma (who did make it safely back to Michigan; our encounter this time left her with 10 lbs of Trader Joe’s dark chocolate and me with Dr. Andrew Weil’s Horse Pills That Turn Your Pee Yellow.)

The third was that we did have an aspiring housewife on the premises, and I knew what housewives did for their kids’ birthdays: they sent homemade cupcakes into school. I thought Thursday was a bit ambitious, but I thought I could probably hit Friday, thereby invoking yet another instance in which we cannot control how late we are but we can get there in a pretty good mood.

This cupcakemaking was a large and messy affair. After 8 years of marriage, Scott has learned that when I make noises about heading to the kitchen, his best course of action is to become mighty hard to find. He has also learned that he has No Official Opinion about any goings-on in the kitchen, from the initial cracking of the cookbook until the final mopping of the floor.

So I do not know where he was during all of this, but he was not here and he had No Opinion on what we were doing.

I had my apprentices helping me – Elli on the spatula, Maggie on the butter, Lucky on cleanup duty. I did not preheat the oven. I did open the “Joy of Cooking” to “Easy White Cake,” but I did not read the recipe completely before we began to mix the stuff, so I ran out of white flour and had to fill in the rest with my beloved organic whole wheat spelt (Scott calls this stuff sandpaper).

Turns out we don’t have cupcake molds either, so it went into a glass cake pan. (Turns out you need to adjust the oven temperature when you make one large glass pan instead of several small cupcakes, but it also turns out that glass pan = need less heat; big pan = need more/longer heat; failure to preheat = delivers less heat; forgetting cake was in the oven = more/longer heat; cake made with heavy dark brown flour = can’t tell if it’s burned or not; double batch of homemade frosting = nobody cares what is underneath it. So it did in the end work out fairly nicely. The only real problem is I did not document exactly what I did, so I can’t duplicate it, except to recommend a double batch of frosting for all future endeavors.)

To ease the cleanup duty, all my cakes are one-bowl cakes. I start with the wet stuff and toss in the dry stuff. (We are actually no slouches on the cleanup front – these things inevitably require a full floor mopping and occasional window/wall cleaning, so to save my energy for those really important tasks I try to minimize use of cookware.)

This wet stuff started with butter and eggs.

Soften butter = put it in microwave and allow Elli to enter “1234567:89” for the time. She loves to push all the buttons sequentially, finishing with “START,” and watch the butter melt.

Maggie was eating sugar directly out of the container and I tried to talk her out of it. No luck.

Our butter had been in there several minutes and was foaming and hissing.

I began to worry: will breaking the eggs into this foaming hissing mass of butter cause them to fry before they can fully mix into the cake batter? (Secondary worry: if I let the kids break the eggs, how much of the eggshells will get in the batter? Tertiary worry: would bits of fried eggs really be that bad in a birthday cake? Quaternary worry: how bad are eggshells in a cake?)

What can I tell you about this? I can tell you my engineering background has given me precisely the wrong amount of chemistry to make cakes. If I knew less chemistry, I would probably be content to read the directions, or have been born with an uncanny ability to separate room-temperature eggs with one hand while amusing my preschoolers with a sock puppet held up by my left foot.

If I knew more chemistry, I would know the melting point of butter and the temperature at which egg albumen changes phase. Of course, my first instinct was to pick up the phone and call one of my dear friends who holds a PhD in chemistry and currently works at Genentech and ask her. If she didn’t know offhand, she would know where to go for this sort of boiling point /phase change information. (They have it for all sorts of benzenes and silicates and DNA and things too fierce to mention; surely I’m not the first person who wants to know at what temperature an egg will fry?). My second instinct was to pick up the phone and call another dear friend who is a lawyer – while I would not expect her to be fully up on phase change temperatures of organic compounds, she is an excellent cook and could probably tell me what to do with two preschoolers, some very hot butter, and three eggs. My third instinct was to check the Internet. (You should be getting the picture by now: me = hopelessly overeducated, hopelessly overthinking way too many details of this.)

I did not pick up the phone or fire up my laptop because my hands were sticky to the elbows. (We get into the sugar early and often in these cooking experiments – keeps everybody in a good mood). The only way around this mountain was through. Damn the torpedos; full speed ahead. Let’s just break the eggs into this hot hot butter and see if those suckers cook. If they do fry, I’ll get to break out the electric hand mixer and we can frappe the blasted thing until it’s smooth again. My dear friend Robin, who accompanies me to Harbin sometimes, loaned me this hand mixer. My kids LOVE the hand mixer. (It is generally hand mixer episodes which require wall mopping.)

And then I smelled it. Somebody had pooped.

I will spare you the details, and assure you I did wash my hands thoroughly after this episode and before resuming the birthday cakery, but in the time it took to clean that mess up the butter cooled and rendered my organo-chemical phase change concerns moot.
The “white” cake came out dark and lovely. Cooled it; frosted it with puce green Incredible Hulk frosting because that’s what Maggie wanted. Put plastic wrap over it and put it in the fridge. Soon thereafter, Scott realized the coast was clear and he reappeared to do a little taste testing on the frosting.

Friday afternoon about 3 pm Scott and I showed up at daycare, bearing this handmade thing. It was lopsided. It was blotchy; it was lumpy; it was mostly organic. Scott was wearing a T-shirt and cargo pants; in my office it’s always Casual Day, so I was in flip-flops, shorts, and a T-shirt.

Maggie was thrilled to see us.

She got to sit in the seat of honor, and all her friends at school sat around as they sang to her. The children couldn’t keep from staring – staring, staring, staring. They stared at me. They stared at Scott. And they stared and stared and stared at the cake.

And then it hit me. This is a full-time daycare, and most of these kids have two full-time high-powered working parents.

They rarely see a Mommy dressed in T-shirts and sandals – most of their Mommies wear pearls and heels. And makeup. Oh, the makeup.

They never see a Daddy at 3 pm – most of their Daddies are At Work from 8 am until 5 pm. And longer. Oh, the longer hours.

And they *never* see a homemade cake. Many of these children eat out several nights a week, and subsist on frozen dinners and pizza delivery the rest of the time. To a child, on their birthdays, each of them has had the Multi-Pak of cupcakes – some from Costco, some from Safeway, some from a local bakery - with some sort of superhero airbrushed atop the Crisco frosting and a “Happy birthday ___________” written in cheery cursive lettering.

It is a darn good thing Maggie’s three.

She loved her cake.

The kids ate it all up (they don’t know it was supposed to have been a white cake).

We had a wonderful time.

In a very few years, it will be beyond uncool to have the sloucher parents coming in with a cheapie homemade version of the snazzy storebought thing. But for now, she didn’t even miss the pony, the decorations, the candles, or the cupcakes.

She had her Mommy, and her Daddy, and her big sister, and her cake.

And that weekend, I sent Scott out shopping (without, alas, the coupon, because we’d recycled it), and we got her a birthday present as well: a Cinderella doll with a horsey to ride. Elli promptly commandeered the horsey, and Maggie knew it was useless to appeal this 50% taxation, so in typical second kid fashion she was just glad to have net-net one doll.

Elli turns five next week. I was really hoping she didn’t want a big party, because the No No Mama can’t throw one for her.

Me (apprehensively): “Sweetheart, for your birthday, what do you want?”

Elli: “I want a piñata. Full of candy. And a pink cake.”

Me (swallowing hard): “Did you want to invite anybody?”

Elli: “No. Nobody.”

Me (somewhat relieved): “Well, did you want a cake at school like we had for Maggie?”

Elli: “No. And I don’t want anybody to know it’s my birthday. Not even Maggie.”

Me (seeing an alternative problem emerge): “But Maggie is your sister. She will probably be at your birthday party.”

Elli: “Well, she can come if she wants. But she can’t have any of the candy in the piñata. That’s all for me.”

So at least it would appear I’m off the hook for Elli’s birthday, at least for one more year.

Enter the Grandma

2008-07-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

Hello all! It hasn't been so very long since I updated this, and we really don't have so very much to report.

Scott continues to do well on his chemotherapy, so well, in fact, that he's taking a "chemo holiday" over the next two weeks. He'll skip one of his regularly scheduled treatments (thereby possibly allowing his bloody nose and mouth sores to heal?) and do something manly and motorcycle-related. He's much looking forward to being one of the normal creatures for a brief period in time.

One of the most bizarre transformations we're having out here is my transformation from neurotic type-A engineer and consultant to semi-Zen very accepting housewife. It's not a complete transformation - I still have my office, a little action on the client front, and my darling little MBA students to teach.

But I'm eating nutritious yet tasty homemade lunches.

I am no longer annoyed (or even surprised) when I'm late to work.

My children are having semi-regular playdates with the neighbors and are known at the gym childwatch by name.

I am nearly immune to gas price increases because I don't drive much anymore.

I have made homemade turkey meatloaf and am working my way up to macaroni and cheese. Usually I just do the macaroni - opening the cheese powder packet takes way more time and energy than I generally have - but next month for sure I'm going to go that extra housewifely mile and lay on the cheese.

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The other news - my mother is coming to visit from Michigan for the week. I invited her, in fact begged her to come, and she's scheduled to touch down Saturday. And now I am all in a tizzy getting ready for her arrival.

In the business world, they call it an audit - somebody with more experience than you have comes and checks your books, looks in your warehouse, talks to your customers, and finally signs off that you are doing a respectable job.

Well, the same sort of thing exists amongst housewives and mothers.

Almost every younger housewife and mother has the same sort of audit trail when her own mother (or, heaven forbid, the mother in law) comes to visit.

And I'm just sort of remembering that with the visit comes the audit. And I'm just sort of remembering even more that - despite eight years of marriage, two small children, a dog, and a garden - I'm a veritable newbie on the hausfrau front.

But - and this is a great stroke of good fortune - my mother is not like most of the women of her generation. In her day, she was a great (famous, even) slacker on the home front. Our floor was not swept daily; the cookies we took to the classroom were store-bought; our clothing came from the Goodwill store and the yard had bright yellow dog-pee spots on it.

So whatever was she doing, if she wasn't pulling a Donna Reed? She was working. She was pumping iron. She was raising three kids and responsible for the care and feeding of multiple dogs and one husband. And she was doing it all in her own special way. Let me give you a few examples.

In the summer of 1977, she was training for a 10k road race. I was 7 years old, and was following her on my bike. These were the days when it was thought that athletes needed steak and eggs rather than carbo-loading; when the role of inflammation and "good/bad" cholesterol in heart disease was unknown, when the Atari 2600 video game was released, and a mere three years after Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon (and had to enter as K. Switzer and run beside her hubby/bodyguard to keep all the well-meaning establishmentalists from body-slamming her out of the race). But back to my mom, running in the humid Michigan July summers. The cars would drive by, do a double take, and some would honk. Every single honker would lean out the window (this was before seat belts were required, so they could really lean) and pump a fist and shout, "Hey lady! Want a ride?" And then they would laugh and laugh. She would always politely say no (she did have a few ladylike vestiges from her rather dignified upbringing left.)

I clearly remember one August a few years later, a few weeks before she had my brother. She was sitting on the floor of the kitchen with a five-gallon bucket of chocolate ice cream and encouraging my sister and me to get a spoon and sit down and eat some with her. At that point, her main concern was that we would be able to hear the garage door opening (which signified my straight-laced professor father coming home from work), and that we would hear it in enough time so that we could get up, put away the ice cream, allow the dog to lick up the drops from the kitchen floor, and get ourselves sitting somewhere respectable before Dad actually came in the house.

I don't think my father would have had a problem with chocolate ice cream per se, but somewhere along the line, something about the combination of sitting on the floor, being super pregnant, eating from the bucket, allowing the dog a righteous portion, and doing this all immediately before dinner (when everybody knows it's Best to Do Your Homework or Expand Your Mind By Reading Something Useful during that hour instead) would not have sat particularly well with him.

And now, at sixtysomething, she still "walks" (I would call that pace running) several miles a day with her dogs ("because they need the exercise"), regularly blows out the stress test treadmill at her doctor's, and still fits into the same size clothing she wore in high school. Her kitchen is much cleaner these days, but that's probably mainly because we're not there to mess it up nearly so much.

*******

So on one hand, I've got a rather understanding auditor coming to visit me from the perspective of hair on the bathroom floor or dust on the shelving.

But, but but. She is also quite into health in a nearly fanatical, superstitious way. In particular, she's into our a**es and our hearts.

The a**. Her mother died of colon cancer. Enter the fiber. From that point onwards, my mother traveled with her own Fiber One cereal and snuck it into breakfast buffets. She brought her own Fiber One crackers in her pocket for airplane rides. She packed four liters of soy milk and two boxes of prunes for a weeklong road trip across the country. She went through her entire pantry and threw out everything that didn't have at least 3 grams of fiber per serving. It was during this period that my sister sent me a postcard that read: "Mom came to visit, had a great time. Beware. She will assault your colon with fiber."

The heart. The heart has always been an interest of hers, but after losing my dad to a heart attack in 2006, this whole coronary artery disease business has reached top billing, right up there with the fiber. She did another pantry audit, this time purging her house of all trans fats. Every time cardiologist Dr. Mehmet Oz is Oprah, she stops everything and quivers at attention; you would think it was the Pope himself talking to the faithful. She knows HDL and LDL; she knows that ahi tuna and fat-free baked crispy won-tons are heart smart and that those lovely crisp apple turnovers have trans-fat laden Crisco in their crusts and are therefore actually the work of the Devil. She will point to random people on the street and wonder aloud, "I wonder if he knows what his cholesterol reading is?"

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So let me tell you the state of my house 48 hours before Mom comes to visit. See if you can guess which issues need my most urgent attention to get ready for the Amateur Housewife Audit, Level 1:

* the electricity is out on half of the house, including the garage fridge and the laundry, because the recent heat wave melted one of our buss legs (according to PG&E), so we have television but no lights, the kitchen fridge but no garbage disposal, electricity in the kids' room but no Internet, no air conditioning, and generally no electric lights after dark.

* I have four gallons of ice cream, two pounds of butter, and a pint of heavy whipping cream in my remaining fridge, and two bags of chocolate chips, one bag of coconut, two bottles of vanilla flavoring, and a small bit of Crisco in my pantry

* I need a haircut

* My children need haircuts

* My children are well-behaved and thriving, if a bit skinny and at times bossy

* My dog is well-behaved and quite fat

* My husband is well-behaved (mostly) and getting fatter by the day

* My eyebrows need plucking (she gave up on the whole leg shaving thing 15 years ago when I moved to Berkeley)

* I have four boxes of unopened Trader Joe's High Fiber Cereal in the garage, and a fifth half-eaten box in the kitchen. This has something like 11 g of fiber per 1 cup serving, putting it right up there with sandpaper in terms of abrasive power.

* I have white sugar spilled over a corner of the kitchen and believe in due time it will attract a fantastic amount of ants

* I have no bread or prunes in the house

* There are bright yellow dog pee spots in our yard

* Our garden is bursting with local, organic, homegrown tomatoes

* I have a homemade turkey loaf in the fridge with a black spot on the top of it. Upon closer examination, the black spot turns out to be a dead fly embedded in the ketchup topping.

So, what should I take care of first?????

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Time's up! What did you guess? Let me tell you what, in my opinion, the most pressing issues were and what I have done to get ready for them:

1. Remove the Crisco. Forget the electricity, let the food spoil, forgo laundry or clean clothing, let the grass die and allow the children to stay up late and bite each other if I must, but at any cost RID THE HOUSE OF THE CRISCO. It contains trans-fats, which we already know are the work of the Devil.

2. Remove the fly on the turkey loaf. I was actually so proud I made a real turkey loaf, from scratch, actually using my years of higher education to Expand My Mind By Reading Something Useful (in this case, "The Joy of Cooking"). My entire family even liked it. I couldn't bear to throw the whole thing out. I carefully sliced off the fly-trap bit, fed it to the dog, and rewrapped the rest of the turkey loaf. (This is nowhere near as gross as it sounds. My dog will always hunt down and eat black flies on the wing when they get into the house, and she will always eat turkey loaf, so she would have fully enjoyed this combination whether served separately or casserole-style.)

3. Bake some bread. I love the Hillbilly Housewife's Overnight Bread recipe (you can get very good housewifery instruction online as well). Modify the recipe to include all the Crisco in my cabinet; wrap the Crisco jar in an opaque bag and bury it deep in the Diaper Genie.

4. Sweep up. I managed to breadmake right over the sugar spill, so now it's a sugar-and-flour-and-various-little-dough-fleck spill. So one quick sweep, and then a quick hands-and-knees scrub of the area (using, gasp!, my nice kitchen hand towels, which do then go into the laundry instead of back on the dowel - I'm learning! I'm learning!), and we are ant-free for now. (This is actually a huge improvement. Seven years ago, when I had just returned from an extended trip to the Third World, we had a rather splendid ant infestation in one of the bathrooms and it took me about four days to *notice* they were there. So proactively cleaning up the sugar spill is actually a Housewifery Level 2 activity, and I give myself extra bonus points for achieving this while still only really having attained Housewifery Level 1.)

5. Go to work. All the rest will work its way out in due time.

And it is, slowly.

My husband, our hero Scott, experienced Internet withdrawal within minutes, and so is working on calling the electrician to fix the broken buss leg. Even if it's not fixed in time, my mom isn't much of an Internet addict; her cellphone will still work, and she's a pretty good sport about padding around the house after dark with a flashlight in the same clothing day after day so long as she's secure that there are no trans fats lurking around the corners.

My mom will fully approve of the full-fat dairy products (they are good for skinny little granddaughters), the high-fiber cereal (good for medium-sized little housewives and skinny little grannies), and hopefully find enough fiber already on hand to ameliorate any pressing need for prunes as well. She will see dog pee spots in the yard as a sign that we are raising children and dogs; we are not raising grass in either the Midwestern or the Californian style. (We are, however, raising tomatoes, and she will think that is very quaint and a charming throwback to her childhood when everybody had a little garden, nobody got divorced, and she used to play marbles with Pinky Plummer on the corner for hours until her nanny hunted her down for a homemade (and probably deep-fried) dinner.)

She is secure in her membership in the happy sorority of grannies who think their grandkids are not super-spoiled bratty little video game and sugar addicts (this is somewhat by accident; I've been too busy this past year to actually actively spoil anybody, and the only reason they aren't video game addicts is they won't sit still long enough to become so.)

She will independently conclude that my eyebrows are not worth the energy.

She is going to need something to tetch about when she returns to the midwest, and since the gay guys moved away from next door and I can't vote a flamingly liberal ticket just yet because the elections aren't for several months, she may as well tell them how we are all hippies because we all haven't had haircuts for several months, and that my dog is getting fat.

So here's a big hooray for Grandma!

And the real moral question is this: should I tell her the (homemade, whole-wheat and oatmeal with organic spelt supplement) bread contains Crisco?

Or do we just let her eat it?

Glamour and Elegance

2008-06-26T12:08:00.000-07:00

Hello all you readers faithful! Good to see you here once again.

We have not a whole lot of news to report on the Scott front, which is generally good news. He continues to respond well to the chemo, and has been on continuous chemotherapy for ten months now. He's still got all the usual side effects -- neuropathy in the hands and feet, dry mouth, mouth sores, nosebleeds, dry hands and feet, sensitivity to spices -- but we're fairly used to these guys by now and are learning to treat them as just another species of houseguest.

They have him scheduled for a PET scan (which is a little bit different from the usual CAT scan) at the end of July. The PET scan is evidently "better" at giving them pictures of his innards, and the results of that will be used to decide whether he gets more surgery to try to actually take the tumor out or not.

(Some of you may remember that last summer, one of the big surprises of the surgery was that at the time, the tumor was the size of a baseball and wedged in there firmly enough that the surgeon couldn't get it out.)

His weight is back up to 160, which is a gain of 12 lbs since the pneumonia, so all you who take him to lunch should feel very proud of yourselves!

And all of you who haven't taken him to lunch lately, by all means, please don't be shy. Just be sure to call him that morning to remind him. :)

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And you all may be wondering, is that it? You should know me better by now. Something that simple, straightforward, and lacking in poop is never fully *it*. So let me tell you about a 24 hour period I had last weekend. I will write in some detail here, because while the minutiae of my life are obvious to me, there are some of you reading in, say, rural Michigan or Saudi Arabia, to whom the whole concept of a lesbian babysitter who doesn't eat meat is a novel one. And that is just the start of my 24 hours.

It was a Saturday. It was about 100 degrees here, and Scott and I were in the back yard with the kids. Scott was sitting in his director's chair with a big tropics-type hat on; the chemo has left him with enough thin hair and enough shiny spots on top that it's wise for him to cover up in the midafternoon sun. (One of the weirder psychological side effects of getting, say, colon cancer is that you realize that just because you have colon cancer doesn't mean you can't also get skin cancer, or lung cancer, or a variety of other ailments. So we are Prevention City these days. Sunblock, antioxidants, and fiber.) On one side of him he had a large Mason jar in which he was brewing sun tea.

On the other side of him he had me. I was wearing a grey SPAM T-shirt and olive grey shorts. I had not combed my hair since yesterday (it had been a hectic morning) and I had not showered since before I last combed my hair. Despite the fact Memorial Day has come and gone and even Martha Stewart has given the A-OK to go bare, I hadn't shaved my legs in about six weeks. This is the female equivalent to a man who has started to grow a beard but has achieved only ugly stubble. It's not smooth and pretty. But it's also not clearly a beard, or, in the case of Bay Area women, it's not clearly enough for membership into that intellectual neo-feminist anti-beauty-industrial Berkeley sisterhood of Women Who Don't Shave. So I was neither here nor there on the hair front.

I did, however, have a lovely purple bruise the size of a morning glory blooming on my right shin, a trophy from when I had whacked it on the minivan door a few days earlier.

But I was watching Maggie slowly, methodically, wet my pants. This time, thank goodness, she was doing it with a small watering can. My budding scientist was taking her chubby little legs over to the pool, filling her watering can, and returning to slowly pour the water over my olive shorts. She loved watching the color change as the material got wet. The only real problem was that the most fascinating part of this for her was getting formerly dry material wet, which meant that after about six trips she was actually having to pour it on my lap to get the desired effect. I have wet my own pants in many ways in this lifetime, but let me tell you, it's entirely novel and a bit disconcerting to have them wet for me.

Elli was sunbathing in the nude. She had managed to skin both her right elbow and her right butt cheek in a spectacular spill at the park that morning, and we had bandaged them with hugely dramatic and unnecessary amounts of gauze and first aid tape. She was carefully lying on her belly, to keep the injured portions off of her pink beach towel, and periodically would sit up to bark some order at Maggie the little sister or Lucky the dog. They both have learned, in some way or another, that they can generally overlook most of these.

We had hours to while away. We turned on the hose. We turned off the hose. We got a snack. We ate some of it, dropped some of it, fed some of it to the dog, got the rest of it sandy and then ate that too. We looked at the garden. We put on our sandals. We took off our sandals. We climbed on the picnic table and jumped into the gravel below. We looked at the garden again. We toggled the hose a few more times and then decided to move to the front yard to start our series of activites all over again.

And then it was 5 pm, and our babysitter came running up the driveway in the 100 degree heat.

Her name is Cindy, and she lives a few miles away from us. She's a dear friend of ours with wildly curly dark hair whose only known character flaw is that she is not, indeed, Cinderella of Disney Princess fame. (There had been some serious confusion on that point the first time she came to babysit for us). I could tell you she runs marathons. I could tell you she's an inventor who also works corporate jobs involving trips to New York. I could tell you she's a vegan, a lesbian, a liberal, and a baby worshipper. I could tell you that we had a leftover steak in the fridge for Scott to eat, and noodles and salad for the girls' dinner, and that despite this fully stocked fridge Cindy's partner Arti drove over to the house with dinner for Cindy and herself.

(Arti is another peculiarly Bay Area piece of art - a midwestern girl from boo-coo rural Michigan who has found her way out here, a vegan who says she'd eat cheese if only she could digest it properly, and a student whom I met a decade ago in grad school when she told me that beging a vegan could be lots of fun - she got all the booze, chocolate and caffeine she wanted - what more could a girl need?)

But the real thing here is Cindy was willing to come stay the night with the family, and Arti was willing to sing backup, so I could go to my sister's engagement party in San Francisco. For that I will be forever grateful.

I did manage to get in the shower before heading over. Elli wanted to get in the shower with me, though, which meant
* no shampooing my hair - the suds sometimes spill down into her eyes
* no shaving any part of my body - she hasn't yet seen the razor hiding spot in the bathroom and I don't want her little monkey fingers getting the beauty itch in that particular direction.

So I put on the dress (plain brown wrinkle-free wraparound nylon which only required a few pins at strategic locations), found a pair of nylons with no holes in them (nontrivial), hoped nobody would see my shin bruise or my hairy legs, put on my single pair of black flat shoes (I do not own heels and didn't think tennis shoes or flip flops would be appropriate), combed my wet hair, skipped any thought of makeup or jewelry, left them my cellphone and Cathy's address, blew kisses all around, grabbed my toothbrush and an extra pair of socks, got in my minivan and took off like a bat out of a cave.

Always, always, when I take off on one of these little mini respite breaks, I feel I can breathe a little easier, let my blood pressure drop a few notches, and yawn from time to time. For until noon tomorrow, everything that could possibly go wrong was Not My Problem.

I had nothing to wear to the party. Not My Problem - Cathy had actually driven over to my house earlier that morning to drop off the brown wrinkle-free dress.

I got to Cathy's and I was hungry. Not My Problem - she had hummus, high fiber tortillas, tomatoes, and lovely white wine.

The party called -- they were out of ice. Not My Problem. Cathy would pick some up on the way over.

We wanted to drink whilst out on the town, so much that we shouldn't drive home. Not My Problem. Cathy would spring for a taxicab.

I had no idea where the party was or how to get there. Not My Problem. Cathy knew.

By now you are probably getting the idea that in my life at large, every little thing that happens is officially My Problem - everything from remembering a child's birthday present to buying new shoes to setting up direct deposit to stocking the fridge to installing the doggie door to returning a client phone call to sending out monthly consulting invoices to Toyota maintenance to refilling medication to grading the homework for my Thursday night class to painting the kitchen to potty training the toddler. And for now, for a brief but glorious bit of time, it was all Not My Problem.

The party was in San Francisco proper, in a lovely part of the city, hosted by Cathy's friend Kelly. Kelly is beyond "in the know" for these sorts of things. The apartment has a rooftop garden from which we watched the sun set over the Golden Gate bridge.

The hostess was in a lovely coral halter-top dress (doubtless dry clean only), and had matching coral manicure (with a blinding and recent wedding set of her own lighting up the left hand) and coral pedicure (over kitten heels).

She had created a special cocktail in honor of Cathy; she had chocolate toffee appetizers and bruschetta; she had champagne in real Waterford crystal glasses; she had framed the wrinkled napkin from a year and a half ago on which she had first written her first name and her new husband's last name.

On the large television (probably flat-screen; I was too busy eating to really notice the electronics) she had created a multimedia slide show with baby pictures of Cathy and her fiancee Steve, which had required contacting each of the mothers on the sly and convincing her new high-tech husband that he Really Wanted to scan these in for her.

Martha Stewart's got nothing on the new Mrs. Kelly V.

And the guests. I was there because I was the Big Sister. Everybody else was pedigreed. Some worked for Yahoo. Some were from the banking world. Some were from Stanford (and there were enough from Stanford you actually had to ask, Stanford Law or Stanford Business?) They were generally clean, dry, a few years younger than I am, and childless.

I will tell you a few snippets of conversation I heard at the party, just to show you how far it was from the poop-slurping pants-wetting world I usually inhabit.

***

"Have I had Botox? Of course. There's this little spa on Union street where they sell it, $11 per ml. I got my whole face done at a quarter dose about six weeks ago. Once you have it done, you can tell who else has it done, because the smile lines on the outside of the eyes don't crinkle but the ones below the eyes do. See, I'll smile and point out where it doesn't move."

"This Botox? It was $180. So cheap! Not even a week's groceries."

***

"I can't stay much later tonight. I've got a town car coming at 8 am tomorrow morning. Going back to New York for a meeting Monday morning."

***

"I used to work 60, 80, 100 hours a week, you know. And then on Saturday mornings I'd go to the spa. Get the full massage, mani and pedi. Loved it. And then I came to work in the spa business and now I hate going to the spa. So where do you go to relax when you work for the spa?"

***

Her (pointing to my cellphone, which I had clipped onto the side of this nylon wraparound dress, therefore pulling the whole thing to one side and necessitating a series of safety pins to counterweight the outfit): "What's that?"

Me: "It's my cellphone."

Her: "What sort of business are you in? I hope that's not for work at this hour."

Me: "No, it's just so the babysitter can reach me if she needs to."

Her: "Oh good. Even if your unit is in Singapore, it's still only Sunday there. You gotta set limits at work, especially when you deal across the dateline."

***

"Oh my goodness. I'm turning 38 and still single. I'm going to have to freeze my eggs."

"I work for a matchmaker in San Francisco. It's only $10,000 for a year's worth of searching for you. Let me see...38? Your skin is in really good shape for being 38 - not a lot of sun damage. You're also soooo lucky you're in San Francisco - it generally has unattractive women, so against this competition you'll do just fine. It would be a totally different story in LA."

***

"Tomorrow? High tide is at 3 pm. Who wants to go? I can't decide if we want to go waterskiing or just sailboarding. Yes, I can call you. You need to be awake by 3 pm on a Sunday. It's going to be too beautiful to sleep all day."

***

Her (nibbling one tiny crisp slice of baguette): "You have two kids? TWO? Turn around. You look great. You look absolutely great for having had two kids. Was it hard to lose all the baby weight?" (Note for you all - she was only looking at my waist, not my legs. Good thing, too.)

Me (toffee in one hand, champagne in the other): "The dress is Cathy's. And I don't really have a lot of time to eat these days."

Her (still eating same tiny crisp thing): "You know, I hear pregnancy changes your whole body. Your ribcage expands. Your hips get bigger. Your whole body changes. Right?"

Me (spearing a meatball): "It's in ways that you'd never think."

Her: "Like?"

Me (having had way too much champagne by now): "Like you're grocery shopping with your three month old and you sneeze and your tampon falls out."

Her: <<>>

***

And so the clever conversation sparkled all around. The candles in the bathroom burned low.

The ice in the metal beer barrel on the floor of the bathroom melted (this was San Francisco after all; even the lovely apartments don't exactly have square footage oozing down the back deck like they do in the Midwest.) I ate most of the toffee and chocolate. Nobody else ate much of anything.

The multimedia presentation of Cathy and Steve on TV gave way to American Idol.

Even the way we watched American Idol was new and interesting to me. For starters, it was about 1:30 am, and we were sitting on the couch, all cuddled up beneath a big blanket (because the fog had rolled in and it was beyond freezing), doing tequila shots (because nobody was driving anywhere).

They had the new AppleTV sort of thing, and to do this you need to finish your tequila shot quickly so you can take a remote control in each hand. With one hand on one remote you type in a text search, such as "David Cook Billie Jean" (David Cook is the singer who won American Idol, and Billie Jean is the name of the song we wanted to see). With the other hand on the other remote you do something else, and presto! David Cook is on the screen, singing Billie Jean.

Bored already? You can type "David Cook Bon Jovi" and see David Cook singing a Bon Jovi song.

Bored again? You can type "Domaine Chandon Summer Living" and presto! You can see a commercial for Domaine Chandon champagne's summer living series which has both my sister and Kelly starring as they responsibly, fashionably enjoy their champagne in various imaginative yet reputable ways.

It turns out you can get nearly any YouTube video this way, including one of Kelly our hostess cavorting in front of the Taj Mahal near Christmastime last year, in a stunningly clear video taken on her husband's iPhone.

***

By now it was close to 2 am and it was time to go. How we were going to get back to Cathy's place remained Not My Problem.

So how many yuppies does it take to call a cab? In this case, three. One iPhone, one regular cellphone, and one video cellphone. The iPhone got through first and our cab nosed up the hill downstairs a few minutes later.

***

Cathy put me in her palatial guestroom in her new Berkeley hills house.

The next morning, I woke up about 9:30, 3.5 hours after I usually get up but probably 2.5 hours before Cathy and Steve were going to stir. I was thrilled. I *never* get to drink my coffee while the whole cup is hot and this was going to be my final treat of the weekend.

The zip code is Berkeley, California, and it's beyond a geopolitical entity. It's a state of mind, and I was beyond confident that given a choice between seeing me in my party dress or in my gym clothes, the good people of Berkeley would rather have me err on the more "natural" side.

I went down to my minivan, got my gym bag, and pulled on yet another grey T-shirt and some gym shorts, white socks and tennis shoes. I stuffed the party dress back into my gym bag and walked over to get some coffee at Peet's, a venerated establishment beneath the Claremont hotel.

"It's fair trade shade grown organic coffee," the fellow said to me as he handed me my cup. I usually buy the small, but this was no usual morning. I splurged and gotten the medium, with enough caffeine to propel me into the middle of next week.

And I sat there in my wrinkly semi-stinky gym clothing, with my post-party face (and hairdo dating once again from the day before), in the lovely 65 degree Berkeley summer morning fog, soaking my wits in good strong coffee before heading back home.

The lady sitting on the bench next to me had long straggly brown hair and a large Great Dane puppy and a nine year old daughter with her. She was wearing a sweatsuit covered with dog hair and wore no jewelry, not even a wedding ring. Her daughter and the dog rolled around on the sidewalk in front of us, and periodically a very thin blond or redheaded woman with an infant of a different race tied to her body walked past, carefully stepping over the puppy and the girl.

We made small talk; she ran child psychiatry clinic and her husband was a writer who works from the house. They don't own a car and I didn't need to ask if they bought organic. They are probably stealth intellectuals and even their dog probably has dual degrees from Harvard.

The lady did not shave her underarms, her legs, or her upper lip. She gazed approvingly at my legs. I felt a bit guilty that I was wearing industrially mass-produced tennis shoes rather than handmade third-world rope and bamboo sandals, and was beyond relieved I had walked over, so she wouldn't see I am one of those sinners who actually buy and drive the planet-destroying Iraq-war-causing minivans, full of cavity-causing candy and planet-choking plastic water bottles.

And then all too soon it was time to sneak back to Cathy's house, say goodbye for now, and drive the gas guzzling minivan back to Pleasant Hill. As I drove through the tunnels (it's only about 20 miles but a world and a half in terms of politics and temperature), I felt the heat blast begin.

I pulled into our driveway at twenty minutes before noon. Cindy was exhausted. Scott was thrilled. Cindy went home. Scott put the girls down for their naps.

And, rather than get in the shower, I swung into housewife mode and cooked a few boneless skinless frozen chicken breasts up into kid-friendly chicken nuggets with a cornmeal coating, made some granola/energy bar stuff, cooked some noodles to pack in this week's school lunches and started the rice cooker for the beginning of this week's dinners. I cleaned the kitchen. I went through the mail. I packed a change of clothes for each girl for school next week. I got a jump on the week's chores.

And then I lay down.

Ten minutes later naptime was over and it was time to take the kids swimming.

By the time evening rolled around, I still hadn't combed my hair (but I had fed my family handsomely).

And I had moved my lovely brown nylon wraparound party dress out of my gym bag and into a little ball in the upper corner of my closet. (I don't have it on a hanger because if I hang it, Elli will pull it down and insist on wearing it herself, and it will get torn or stained or baked in or have some other tragic occurrence. I need to keep that little bit of fashion safely away from my budding fashionista.)

Every time I see that dress I remember the glamour and elegance of the party at Kelly's - the fragile things down low, the expensive alcohol, the all-you-can-eat-and-the-time-to-eat-them appetizers, the knowledge that David Cook did indeed win American Idol and the knowledge that Botox is available cheaply on Union Street in the city. I touch that dress nearly every morning now.

I'm going to see if Cathy will let me wear that dress to her wedding too.

Run for the Barn!

2008-05-31T19:47:00.000-07:00

Hi all. It's been a while since I wrote - most nearly a month, if my glance at the calendar is approximately correct. (To get this interval calculation, I also did some rough counting on my fingers - I am too lazy to get up and actually get my calculator or fire up Excel's date functions for something like this.)

You all may want to know how Scott is doing. He's doing well.

The pneumonia is pretty much in our past. (We also had the family flu this month, but fortunately it was only the kids and me; Scott managed to avoid it.)

In addition to his other cocktails, he's now also on Neurontonin, a series of pills designed to help with the neuropathy (nerve damage) in his hands and feet, and is back to eating with gusto to try to regain some of the weight he lost.

The most exciting thing in his health status is his latest sigmoidoscopy. For those of you under 50, a sigmoidoscopy is where they mount a small camera on a "comfortably" flexible rod, keep you quite quite awake and alert, lie you down, grease you up, and shove the camera up your a**, halfway to your appendix.

Those of you 50 and over will know that a colonoscopy is where they mount a large camera on such an uncomfortable rod that they sedate you with some drugs which are also used during childbirth, lie you down, grease you up, and shove the rod so far up where the sun don't shine that they can actually see your molars and rate your dentist.

The "flex sig" is the junior version of an a** inspection, and since Scott's primary tumor is about 6" up from the rectum, he only needs the Roto-Rooter Junior these days.

His last CAT scan showed such decrease in the tumor size that he got the bonus plan: another flex sig.

This flex sig didn't show anything much. This is great news - the last time they tried to get even a Q-tip up his rear there was a tumor the size of a softball blocking the pass. This time around, the flex sig made it all the way up, took a good long look around, and snaked its way back to the sunshine in fine style.

There is now even talk of having the primary tumor surgically removed. You all may remember the surgeon who said it was inoperable last summer? Well, we're going to take the new, improved Scott with his new designer rear end to the good surgeon again, and see if the primary tumor can come out now.

Needless to say, Scott is very excited about the possibility of having the primary tumor out. In addition to boding well for all sorts of long-term items, it carries with it the whisper of having a colostomy reversal and a reanastomosis, in which he'd lose the poo-bag, have his innards hooked back up so his colon once again connects to his anus.

In the best of all possible worlds he'd get to poop in the potty again like a regular old fellow.

We're trying to live in the moment and not cross any bridges before we come to them, but he is very cautiously excited about this possibility.

And if it does happen, he may be pooping in the potty just about the time Maggie finally gets potty trained, because (aside from that extremely messy week earlier this spring) she has shown absolutely no interest in toilet training.

**********************************************************

But some of you didn't tune into this channel to hear about Scott's rear.

Some of you wanted to know what I am doing dabbling with the word "jock."

I have met a member of the Laotian communist party while drinking Laotian moonshine out of a Coca-Cola bottle covered with waxed paper in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

I have made cheesecake from scratch.

I have trained my dog to chew only on her stuffed animals and not on my kids' stuffed animals.

I have subscribed to Martha Stewart Living.

And I have (on more than one occasion and in somewhat of an efficient panic) prepared the second half of my statistics class lecture for the evening while my students are taking their quiz in the first half of class.

But never, in all this living, have I messed much with the jocks.

Except for one. The jock in question is named Henry, and he is my younger brother.

I would say little brother, but that ceased to be true many years ago.

He is 27 years old, 6'4" tall, and probably about 230 lbs. He was the captain of the University of Michigan (varsity) (mens') tennis team in his day, and played professional tennis for a few years after that.

(Since this blog is probably attracting more hippies and nerds than athletes, Henry's entire string of sweaty competitions and the mantle of trophies it generated is a pretty big f**king deal in jock-worshipping circles. My mother partook of a large-scale conniption fit during nearly every match he played as a teenager and college student, and got to savor the double-conniptions anytime he made it to the finals of anything.)

Henry still is a jock. He runs 10 miles a few times a week to "clear his head," and does the free weights at his local gym for "cheap entertainment." (Despite the divergence on jockliness, we do share many characteristics, and being tightwads is one of them.)

His biceps look like these huge pythons, and he can ripple them under almost any shirt. He loves to make a muscle and then trace the vein as it pops just beneath the skin. He knows exactly how many grams of protein and carbs are in a skinless chicken breast. He knows the difference between creatine and creatinine. He knows how to remove all sorts of body hair, how to rip one's abs, how to crash one's diet, and of course the best mix of aerobic and anaerobic exercise for any particular fitness goal. He was curiously right on when advising me on postpartum weight loss ("watch what you eat and forget the rest.")

Eventually he decided that while tennis was good, law was better, so after finishing law school in frosty Michigan moved from the freezer compartment to the oven. He drove from East Lansing to Phoenix eschewing paper maps, instead using only the GPS on his cellphone for navigation (thereby allowing my mother yet another, somewhat tangential conniption fit on his behalf). He's currently studying for the bar exam in the purifying heat of the Arizona summer.

But that is not even really relevant to this posting, except that tickets from Phoenix to San Francisco are relatively cheap and easy, and Henry came out to California to visit our sister Cathy and me for one last weekend before sealing himself into some cave for the summer to study for the bar exam.

Henry wanted to visit me on a Sunday.

That was the day I was planning to run my 10k Road Race - the Workday Devil Mountain 10k run. It has been years since I've run a 10k, and it had been good for me to train for it.

And Maggie had a yellow runny nose.

Henry is the ONLY visitor whom I would ever consider inviting to run a road race with me at 6:30 on a Sunday morning at the last minute.

Me: "Dude ... I'd love to see you ... but I was going to run a road race that day. Leaving the house at 6:30 in the morning. So...do you want to come and run it with me?"

Henry: "How far is it?"

Me: "10k." (that's 6.2 miles for all you hippies out there. I generally take over an hour to do these things under the best of conditions.)

Henry: "That's all? Well, sure, I could do that even on a hangover. Probably will."

Me: "There's a possibility I'll only run the 5k." (What I really meant here was that I thought Maggie would be too sick to go the babysitter's, so instead of running the 10k like a grownup I was going to put both kids into the baby jogger stroller, make him push it, and do the 5k instead.)

Henry: "Well, sure, I could run that too."

Me: "I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to run the whole way." (What I meant here was that if we had two children in one stroller, there was very little possibility we'd make it even to the halfway point without needing to stop for some non-athletic reason.)

Henry: "It's your show, your race. Whatever distance you want to run, I'll run it with you. If we gotta walk a little bit, no problem."

Me: "Great! Thanks! This is what family is all about!"

So race day dawned bright and early. Cathy delivered Henry to our house at 6:15 and we freebased some coffee in the French Press.

(Cathy does not "do" road races, but she most certainly does coffee, preferably in locations like Champs Elysees and Sydney's Harbor Bridge, and most certainly at 6:15 on a Sunday morning.)

We packed the minivan with two children, six Disney movies, five bottles of water, six juice boxes, three cheese sticks, two baggies of Wheat Thins, two baggies of chocolate chips, one diaper bag (with epi-pen and four diapers and a large baggie of diaper wipes), one double baby jogger, one pair of light pink sparkley shoes (for Elli), one pair of Dora the Explorer tennis shoes (for Maggie), two race number bibs, three safety pins and one diaper pin, one paper map of the race location, and one BlackBerry (Henry's).

It is nearly as boring to read about somebody else's road race as it is to read about their Disney trip, so once again I will give you only the highlights.

In the car on the way down:

Henry: "So, uh, did you train for this?"

Me: "Yes." (meaning: I trained at 4 miles for the 6.2 mile race, which should be fine because I am more than okay with stopping to walk periodically if necessary. But I have been in intensive training for nearly five years in the fine art of doing anything with kids, so if anything I've overtrained for this, really.)

Elli: "Maggie is pushing my arm."

Maggie: "My nose hurts."

At the Port-o-Potties just before the start of the race:

Henry: "I'll watch the stroller while you three go."

<>

Elli: "I want to sit on the potty myself!"

Maggie: "I not want to go potty! No no no no no!"

Me: "Maggie, don't touch that ... that's where the boys pee ... NO I said don't touch, it's yucky ... Elli, sweetheart, are you done yet? Oh, you think you have to poo? Well, yes we can wait a bit ... Maggie, no no sweetheart, that is still yucky, only for the boys, how about you pull the toilet paper instead? Elli, no poo poo yet? How about you let me go and then you can sit back on the potty? Maggie, NO, please leave the door shut, we don't want all those runners to see Mama on the potty ... Elli, no, you can't touch that thing either, that's still where the boys pee ... I know it's pink but we are not supposed to touch it..."

This went on for such a gloriously long time that a few things happened:
* the race started
* Henry got a bit worried we'd somehow snuck out the back
* Elli had three different attempts but did not poo
* Maggie had at least three different attempts and did finally manage to touch the pink disinfectant thing at the bottom of the urinal after all

As we walked/jogged past the starting line, about 15 minutes into the race:

Crowd: somewhat lukewarm cheers

Announcer: "You folks must have supreme confidence in your kick! You're really moving now!"

Me: "This is great! I feel like running a bit!"

Henry: "What? You want ME to push the stroller? No, it's not too heavy for me ... but what do I do if they start to cry? Do NOT run away from me if I'm pushing this thing. You are NOT leaving me here with two rugrats and a diaper bag."

Three minutes later:

Crowd: raucous cheers. (I was later to piece together that this actually represented that somebody had crossed the finish line and was pretty much done with the 5k before I had even broken a sweat.)

Elli: "Mommy, I'm thirsty."

Maggie: "Mommy, I want candy. I not like Uncle Henry pushing me. I want you to push me. I have a fresh diaper."

Me: "We're going to run a little bit and then we'll get some juice boxes."

Henry: "I think we can make some good time here, recover a bit from the slow start. Follow me. I think I can maneuver this thing to pass those folks up there."

(Those "folks" were a large family who appeared set on walking the entire way with Frappuccinos in one hand and donuts in the other.)

At the one mile mark, we were fascinated by the orange pylons marking the race course:

Elli (leaning way out of the stroller): "Mommy, I want to touch one of those orange things."

Maggie (leaning way onto Elli): "I want to touch it too. I want to touch it too!"

Me: "We're doing great. I'm so proud of my girls for sitting in the stroller!"

Henry: "You see this bald old guy up here? He's the sort you have to beware of. These skinny old guys can run for hours without tiring. But I think we can pass him on the inside of this next curve."

Henry turned out to be right on both counts. The skinny old guy was eighty if he was a day, and weighed about 80 lbs, and had the striated thighs and crazed eye of the ultramarathoner. We passed him three times, but each time we dropped a shoe, or needed a juice box, or knocked over a pylon, he passed us. Like a true competitor, he never looked us in the eye. Stay aloof, keep your head down, and focus on your own race.

By now, we had passed two pregnant ladies, one caterpillar of eight co-workers roped together at the neck with green velvet rope, numerous other single baby joggers, a family on rollerblades, and two other double baby joggers. We had also eaten two cheese sticks and drunk three juice boxes, dropped and recovered three shoes, and moved the sun visor on the stroller up and down seven million times.

At the two mile mark:

Elli: "Maggie is pushing me! The sun is in my eyes! I want to get out and run! These straps are too hard on my shoulders! LET ME OUT OF THIS STROLLER!"

Maggie: "Elli's pushing me! I peed in my diaper. I need a fresh diaper. I not want a cheese stick. I want to get out too."

Me: "Elli, you can get out and run a little bit and Maggie will stay in the stroller. And then it will be Maggie's turn to get out and run and Elli will stay in the stroller."

Henry: "Um, we can't keep running if she gets out of the stroller, can we?"

At the two mile and 20 yard mark:

Maggie: "I WANT OUT OF THE STROLLER TOO!"

Elli: "My feet hurt! My pink sparkley shoes hurt my feet! I want to be barefoot! I want you to carry me!"

Henry: "We better think this through carefully. The pregnant lady in purple is gaining on us again."

Me: "Elli, here, come on Mama's back. I'll give you a piggyback ride so the stones on the pavement don't hurt your feet."

At the two mile and 25 yard mark:

Elli (out of the stroller): "I have to poo!"

Maggie (out of the stroller too): "I want to wear my pink sparkley shoes too! I not want my Dora shoes!"

Me (also out of the stroller): "EVERYBODY BACK IN THE STROLLER. It's time to sing a Princess song. Little Princess Foo-Foo, running in the road race..."

Henry: "We've got to be getting close to the finish. This is actually the first time in my life I've ever trotted three miles. It's an entirely new experience. So this is how Californians run road races."

At the three mile mark (with the finish line banner hugely visible a few yards ahead):

Elli (yelling): "I WANT OUT OF THIS STROLLER! UNBUCKLE ME! I DON'T WANT TO SIT NEXT TO MAGGIE FOR ONE MORE MINUTE!!!"

Maggie (whining): "Grandma...Grandma...I want my Grandma..."

Henry (a wild look in his eyes): "Uh, what do we do now?"

Me (with a shout of victory): "RUN FOR THE BARN!"

And he did. He flexed his biceps, did a small wheelie with the stroller, put his head down, flared his nostrils, and blew past a redheaded kid on roller skates, two ladies in Weight Watchers T-Shirts, and a middle-aged gentleman who had evidently been on his cellphone for the entire race.

I ran directly behind Henry, drafting off of his momentum.

Our final time for 3.1 miles: 56 minutes, 17 seconds.

And far, far ahead of us, at the far end of the exit chute, I saw that skinny old guy.

Henry had called that portion of the race exactly right.

The skinny old guy had beaten us, fair and square.

And he never did look us in the eyes.

The Fan

2008-05-03T15:34:00.001-07:00

Hello all, and happy May! It's been a little while since I updated this blog, and I hope you don't think I've forgotten about you. It's just that I've been a bit, ahem, busy.

With what? In two words: Disney and pneumonia. In that chronological order.

I sense the pneumonia is going to get the immediate attention of you Scott-watchers out there, so I'll cut to that chase first (and trust those of you to whom I owe calls or emails will understand I'm a bit behind on most of my life nowadays).

Remember all that coughing and wheezing he was doing last month?

Remember the two doctor's visits and the chest X-ray, all of which said no pneumonia?

Well, we took the old boy to Disney, had a grand old time, and came back just in time to get another CAT scan and go see our favorite oncologist.

Whatever he did or didn't have a few weeks ago, last week he had pneumonia. The most stunning thing to me about this whole development is that the oncologist didn't seem terribly interested in the pneumonia business.

"Oh, this, this is just pneumonia. Walking pneumonia. I'll order you some antibiotics." She said this breezily, clicking away at the computer.

"What?" Scott was surprised. "But I don't feel that sick. In fact, I'm feeling better."

"What?" I was surprised. "But last time they said it wasn't pneumonia. And he's already taking so many pills."

She nodded at us. "Yes. This is pneumonia. And he's going to take the five day course of azithromycin, just to be sure. Now back to that CAT scan..."

The CAT scan news is, like many spring weather reports, mixed sun and showers.

The sunny part: the tumors in his liver, lymph nodes, and colon are continuing to shrink, and there is still uncertainty as to whether the spot in his lung is a tumor, some outgrowth of this month's pneumonia, a function of last summer's pulmonary embolism, or simply a knotty bit from long ago.

The mixed showers bit: he's skinny and having side effects.

His weight has dropped to 148 lbs. To those of you counting these things, he was about 178 last summer, then had cancer surgery and dropped about 30 lbs. Over the fall and winter he has solidly gained about 20 of them back, all of which fell off again in the past month. So he's back to his post-surgery weight and is a bit on the thin side.

And the side effects. There's the usual tiny ones - mouth sores, dry mouth, and extreme sensitivity to spices (we gave away all the sausage in the house because it was too spicy.)

There's been the chemo brain going on for a good while now - it can be annoying but is generally benign, and results in things like royally fartknocking up a lunch appointment, packing three spoons and no forks for lunch, finding a still-wet load of laundry left over from last week, and regularly losing one's sunglasses.

But there's also neuropathy, which is nerve damage in the hands and feet, a side effect of the oxaliplatin. He's been on very high doses of this for a very long time, and it's beginning to show. He's got numbness and loss of sensation, which makes him a little unsteady on his feet (YOU try walking around with only one foot which is asleep - you know how that goes...). It also makes him a little klutzy with his hands (so we've gone to using our outdoor plastic dishes for most indoor meals, and given that we have two small children on the premises, it's not altogether a bad idea anyways.)

And the neuropathy has gotten bad enough that the oncologist has decided to adjust his chemo dosage. She reduced it by 20% last week, in hopes of better managing this side effect.

It's a weird dance between quantity and quality of life, and it's mostly a minuet between Scott and his oncologist; my job seems to be to sit in the bleachers, clap at clever moves, and then go down and set out refreshments and mop the floor when the dancing is done.

But it was hard for me to see the decision to reduce the chemo a bit. I felt a chill in the exam room; it was like the first cold breath of winter on my face in an otherwise golden Minnesota September.

But you didn't expect all our visits to the oncologist to be sweetness and light, did you?

***********************************************************

You can and should, however, expect all visits to Disneyland to be sweetness and light. We took the whole family to Disney in April, and it was beyond a fantastic trip.

I won't bore you with a blow-by-blow travelogue of "first we did this, and the line for this was only 30 minutes, and then we did that, and we used our FastPass to skip this part of that line, then we ate over here, then we bought this, then we got our picture taken there, and we watched the Main Street Parade and the fireworks on this night and the views from this other place were really much better than on the first night..."

Keep in mind how, with whom, and where I was travelling.

I had myself, whom I have remade into Carrie the Third, a zenlike unflappable being who lives a thoroughly unrushed, fault-tolerant lifestyle and tries to live in the moment. (This trip I was actually more like Carrie Version 3.1, where for a brief week in time in addition to being zenlike I was also actually interested in spending money. In fact, I managed to get some smoke curling up out of my Visa card, which should hold me for the next few years...)

I had Scott, age 43, whom we now know had pneumonia on the trip and so was a bit tired. In a previous lifetime, this man would have ridden Space Mountain seven million times and then eaten the large greasy fried something immediately after. But in this lifetime, he is ruled by the whims of our two small daughters, so he not only sat in the front row of the Princess Show three days running, but also had a serious conversation with Peter Pan, lunch with Ariel the Mermaid, a flight with Dumbo the elephant, and spent several hours dressing and undressing little plastic Princess dolls in the hotel room.

I had Elli, age 4, who loves Princesses more than anything, and is a small skinny thing capable of sprinting headlong into crowds at airports and ride attractions and then soundly forgetting my name and phone number.

I had Maggie, age 2, who is highly allergic to peanuts, still prone to eating random objects off the ground (including the dreaded peanut), not remotely potty trained, gets up about 6:30 am on a daily basis, needs to be fed every 2 hours, to nap for two hours after lunch, and to go to bed at 7 pm. Maggie is dreadfully afraid of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and, we were soon to learn, Minnie Mouse.

I had my sister Cathy, gently younger than me. You may remember the beloved Aunt Cathy as the one who could buy size four dresses for Elli when I was trying to dress her in dishtowels and chewing gum. Aunt Cathy is a baby worshipper with no children of her own just yet, works full time in brand management for Domaine Chandon, and lives a slightly more glamorous lifestyle than the one to which I am gloriously accustomed. Cathy rang in this millennium Down Under in Sydney. Cathy recently moved to a lovely house in the Berkeley hills; she knows the difference between Prada and Prague; she stays in hotels when she travels (as opposed to campgrounds, automobiles, hostels, nudist colonies, or couches of friends of friends). Cathy eats out frequently enough she can go three weeks without needing to buy groceries.

And - here's why she's the rock star - Cathy took a few days of her precious vacation to come to Disney with us. But she did even more than that. She brought a porter named Stevie. And she called up a classmate of hers from Stanford's MBA program and let her know we were coming. She said she'd see if she could pull a string or two for us. It ended up being more like the entire rope Tarzan swung Jane around on.

And I had Stevie with me, a San Francisco banker on whom we had recently purchased a lifetime contract as a baggage handler, line-waiter, kid-wrangler, and all-around sturdy fellow.

Some of you may be wondering if bankers aren't somewhat expensive, especially when you buy the extended plan, and if my Visa card might not have had so much smoke coming out of it if I had just hired the $3 SmartCarte at the airport like everybody else.

But, dear readers, the story there gets better -- I did not have to pay a red cent for Stevie -- he was my sister's treat. He was thrilled to be coming with us because he was more thrilled that only 48 hours earlier my sister had agreed to marry him.

(And for those of you who are thinking Stevie is not a very dignified name for a thirtysomething financial services professional, even one on the Left Coast, you are absolutely correct. His real name is something like Stephen, and until he became affianced to my sister we were very respectful and called him Steve. But he got promoted to "Stevie" when he took a few vacation days to come with us to Disney, and let us throw poopy underpants away in the garbage in his hotel room's bathroom to keep them away from our busy little fingers.)

Disney, by the numbers:

5: the number of days we were gone. 1 day to get there; 3 days there; 1 day to get back.

12: the number of pairs of underpants which were pooped in and thrown out on the spot.

35: the number of pairs of underpants I brought with us for just this contingency

0: the number of pairs of these which were pooped in by Maggie (thankfully Maggie had gone back to wearing diapers and it was Elli's Princess excitement which caused the latest decimation of our panty inventory. I am thrilled to report that nobody else, to my knowledge, pooped anywhere out of bounds. Steve may not yet fully realize what a poop-ful family we are. Or, perhaps he is simply so smitten with my sister that he's willing to overlook anything. Or, even wiser, perhaps he figures every strapping young fellow getting married will have some s**t to deal with with his new in-laws, and at least this s**t is easy to wash and biodegradable.)

3: the number of days for which we had Disney's Dream Team at our disposal (thanks to Cathy) - not only did they push the stroller and let us into a private lounge to play Candyland with Peter Pan, they let us skip all the lines, all the time, and just go straight back to see Jasmine, Mulan, Cinderella, Belle, and Minnie Mouse. We were beyond awed.

15: number of seconds Maggie lasted in the vicinity of Minnie Mouse before my angel baby was red-faced and screaming: "NO! NO! NO! I NOT LIKE THAT MOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

6: number of Mickey Mouse shaped ice cream bars we ate in one day

3: number of hours we could be at Disney on any given day. We were generally there from 8:30 - 11:30 am, and then went back to the hotel to eat organic vegetables, nap, play in the pool, bite our siblings, poop in our underwear, buy Cheetos and Doritos and Fritos from the vending machine, and recover from ourselves.

7: number of times Maggie and I rode King Arthur's Merry Go Round in a row before I got motion sick. We did not even stop to get off and back in line because there was no line because not many other people wanted to ride it at 8:30 on a Tuesday morning - which probably contributed to my motion sickness.

0: number of times we saw the fireworks.

0: number of times we saw the Main Street Parade.

0: number of times Elli napped while in the hotel.

0: number of times both kids slept past 6:15 am

160: number of dollars I spent on groceries to feed Scott, Elli, Maggie, and myself for the five days we were there. Between Maggie's peanut allergy, Scott's sensitivity to spices, Elli's inability to sit in a chair, my tightwaddedness, and our general purpose impatience, we are simply not good candidates to eat in a restaurant at this point in time. So I went online to good ol' Vons.com and ordered a bunch of paper plates, organic vegetables, deli sliced turkey, Cheerios, soy milk, beer, juice boxes, and sandwich rolls. The delivery fellow did not think it at all odd to be delivering this to a hotel room. Scott calls this form of eating "the bucket," after my beloved bucket in which I used to store my road trip food, when I used to go road tripping, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

3: number of days Scott lasted eating out of "the bucket" before he declared he could not stand one more turkey sandwich with ranch dressing and went across the street to get himself some Chinese food.

(I don't want you to think we subsisted solely upon grocery delivery and the vending machine. We bought ice cream at Disney. Scott and Cathy took Elli to lunch in Ariel's Grotto. Scott bought donuts and real coffee periodically. And Maggie ate various random small things from the ground, thankfully none of which included a peanut.)

(And, actually, I should be even more clear. The "we" eating out of the bucket is Scott, myself, Elli, and Maggie. The "we" which is Steve and Cathy does not in general eat out of a bucket and I don't have enough data to comment on their consumption of organic vegetables. I do believe, however, they are capable of sitting still in their chairs and using their indoor voices for an entire meal. On the night we were eating Cheerios with hummus, and grapes with soy milk, they were eating at Morton's Steakhouse.)

And so we came back from Disney, saturated with Princess this and Princess that. We have pictures. We have memories. We have the inside jokes.

And still, about twice a week, I have a very solemn discussion with Maggie.

Maggie: "Mama, I not like Minnie Mouse."
Me: "Yes, sweetheart, I know you don't like Minnie."

Maggie: "Minnie Mouse scared me."
Me: "Yes, I know Minnie scared you."

Maggie: "I not want to see Minnie Mouse, very very never again."
Me: "Yes, sweetheart, we're not going to see Minnie anytime soon."

Maggie: "Good. I be very very 'fraid of Minnie Mouse."
Me: "Did you like Cinderella? And Belle?"

Maggie: "Yes. But not that mouse. I not like that mouse."
Me: "Who did like Minnie Mouse?"

Maggie: "Elli and Daddy. But Daddy is very very big, more big than Minnie Mouse. My Daddy saved me from Minnie Mouse."

And so he did.

Volcano ex Infantia Puella: Levis Pondera

2008-04-09T20:23:00.001-07:00

Hi all!

It turns out the last blog left many of you in a bit of a cliffhanger. Our hero was having trouble breathing - was it the tumor? A weird new complication? Allergies caused by global warming? He was going for a chest X-ray to see if it was pneumonia and I, having eaten all the bona fide ice cream in the house, was considering getting into the low-fat stuff in a vain attempt to eat my way out of this particular problem. (Yes, it had gotten so bad that I was seriuosly considering eating the low-fat orange sherbet.)

This may be a bit anticlimactic, but alas, we don't really know what it was. Whatever it was, it's now mostly gone.

The chest X-ray was negative, so 'twas not those mischevious little pneumobacilli. His allergy medication finally kicked in, and the trees finally quit blooming, so that could have been part of it. His white blood cell count was really low Monday, so low he had to go get a re-test on Tuesday to ensure he was pumped up enough to take Tuesday's chemo. He passed the re-test, got his Tuesday chemo (it's Wednesday so he's still got the pump hooked onto his third nipple), but if his white blood cell count really was so low, it could have simply been a common garden variety cold, which got writ large on the membranes of his lungs because of this immunocompromised business.

At any rate, he's breathing better now. Still has the occasional cough, the periodic bloody nose, the bruising and a variety of clever little third-rate side effects, but the two important take-aways from this bit of the blog are

1) he's able to breathe again just fine for the most part and
2) he's still able to get his chemo.

He's had 17 treatments and counting.

********************************************************************************

Today I will tell you about Maggie.

Maggie hasn't gotten a lot of mention here yet, probably because she's my second child (my third if you let me count my dog). She's an uncannily easy one at that. She is 2 years 9 months old. Last fall, when she was 2 years 3 months, I distinctly remember telling you all I was NOT NOT NOT potty training her at that point in time. (There was enough s**t in my life that I was not going to invite in any gratuitous additional s**t from the bottom of my toddler.) I can reiterate that I am still NOT NOT NOT potty training Maggie at this point in time, either. From my point of view, she can potty train herself in college, when I'm less busy.

Turns out that that potty party is, however, happening without me. First it was Elli, our four-year-old, who announced she would do it, and got Maggie in the habit of taking her diaper off in the morning and sitting on the toddler potty. Then the folks at daycare said Maggie was ready for pull-ups. My mom had a dream about potty training Maggie.

And two days ago, while I was getting Maggie dressed, she refused to put on a diaper. She refused to put on a pull-up. She wanted underwear.

My compliant angel baby, the one who slept through the night reliably from 5 weeks old, eats almost anything save peanuts, adjusts to new babysitters easily, naps on command, uses pronouns correctly, and even skips meals well -- my angel baby was red in the face, screaming "NO NO NO NO NO! I NOT WANT DIAPER! I NOT WANT PULL-UP! I WANT UNDERWEAR!" And not just any underwear -- she wanted a pair of her big sister's underwear. (We actually don't *have* any underwear for Maggie yet; see above comment about me not potty training her.)

And the new me, the cancer spouse me, the worn-out me said, what the heck, she just peed, so she'll probably make it to school without peeing in my car. And if she pees in my car, what the heck, that's what car air fresheners are for.

(The pre-cancer me would probably have potty trained such a compliant child by now, and then wasted a lot of energy trying not to brag insufferably about it to the neighbors in an offhand sort of casual way. If the pre-cancer me hadn't managed to potty train her yet, Betsy Wetsy's maiden run in underwear would have most certainly been in my back yard, not in my car...)

I also thought Maggie would probably poo volcanically in said underpants about 10 am, because that's her habit, but by then I would hopefully be safely at work and it would be one of the few messes in this world that are delightfully Not My Problem.

So Maggie went to school in Elli's underpants, and wears them now during daylight hours.

This has had several repercussions. The most noticeable is that Elli does not want any messes in her big-girl underwear, and so follows Maggie around mercilessly, saying "Do you want to go potty now? Do you want to go potty now?"

There are a few more relevant facts.

The first would be that the elder sister is the younger's own personal goddess, and this is the most notice the younger sister has ever gotten from said live-in personal deity. Worshipper is without qualification thrilled with this sort of divine attention. So, to put it mildly, potty training is a positive experience even if you take the body functions out of it.

The second would be that they are in the same class at daycare, and share a bedroom, so Maggie has the Panty Police on her case something approaching 24/7.

The third is that they both have relatively short spans of attention, so frequently they will each get distracted and then Maggie does pee and poop in Elli's underwear. A lot.

The fourth is that the daycare staff is not particularly perturbed by these messes, especially since I have given them carte blanche to simply cut off and throw away any messes which are too godawful. Bless the professionals.

And the fifth is that I have promised Elli that if Maggie trashes her entire lingerie collection, I will take her to Target and personally buy her a full complement of Princess underwear, with special emphasis on Cinderella.

I am taking the path of least resistance, which appears to be a daily load of fresh clothing for Maggie and a weekly trip to Target's Disney underwear section for Elli.

This is the new Low Pressure Approach to potty training: I honestly don't give a s**t whether Maggie potty trains herself this week or next year. I'm pleased daycare is generally mess-tolerant. Our house is most certainly mess-tolerant. At this point Scott is the only person in our house who hasn't peed on the carpet, so it's not like our house has super pristine white angora carpeting woven by monks in Peru who hand-plucked the fibers from the beards of sacred llamas while chanting by the light of the solstice sunrise.

(For those of you too polite to ask the circumstances under which everybody else has peed on the carpet, let me tell you. Elli peed on it two years ago when potty training and periodically does so again when watching a particularly engrossing movie on TV. Our dog Lucky peed on it when we first got her, and re-pees on it every time we have a foreign dog stay the night. I peed on it once in the ninth month of each pregnancy, in 2003 with a sneeze and in 2005 with a big laugh. My mom is no longer staying with us - she's back in Michigan - and that's a good thing for many reasons, including the fact I am absolutely sure it is impolite to tell you whether and under what circumstances my dignified mother may have peed on our carpet. Suffice it to say there's no evidence she did. But honestly, unless our newest carpet peer is something like a horse or an elephant it's not going to show very much against the current milieu. At some point in my future life, I want to replace the beige carpet with fake hardwood floors and BUY A MOP.)

And right about here's where you're expecting me to tell you that voila! Despite such benign parental neglect, the child was truly ready to be potty-trained, and she's now waterproof.

Alas, for three days now, like clockwork, Vesuvius has erupted onto the white cotton fields about 10 am, and let me tell you, especially since we are now all on high fiber diets, boy can that hot lava FLOW. And even when the volcano is, ahem, dormant, the April showers are strong with us these days.

Today Maggie came home from daycare with her first three outfits in little plastic bags and wearing a darling little shirt and skirt set from the lost and found.

Maggie is in no way, shape, or form potty trained. But she is most certainly wearing Elli's underwear.

To borrow a phrase from mathematics, this is not a stable equilibrium.

To borrow a phrase from parenting: my catchphrase these days is, "progress, not perfection."

To borrow a phrase from Archimedes: "Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I will move the earth."

So I have decided to channel Archimedes. I'm going to break out my lever and find a place to stand.

Me: "Elli, sweetheart, come over here. Mama has something to tell you. Good news."
Elli: "What?"

Me: "You know how you are potty training Maggie? Well, every time Maggie pees in the potty, you get a piece of candy."

Elli: "Oh. What about if she poops in the potty?"
Me: "You get two pieces of candy."

Elli: "Do we have any pink chocolate Easter eggs left?"
Me (big smile): "Lots."

Elli (sprinting off): "Maggie! Maggie! Where are you? You have to come get a drink of water RIGHT NOW!!!!"

Wheezy breezy beautiful

2008-03-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

Hello all! Happy belated Easter; I hope the big bunny made a good appearance at your place this year.

We're going to follow our usual format, in which I tell you something about Scott, and then something only tangentially about Scott, and occasionally something that has nothing whatsoever to do with Scott.

About two weeks ago, Scott began to breathe heavily.

It started on a Wednesday as a wheezing, an allergy/asthma sort of wheezing. Then it got to being this dry rattly breathing sort of stuff, complete with night wakings. Over the weekend it slowed him down enough he didn't come to kids' swim classes, didn't go to his ukelele class, didn't do this, didn't do that. He just sort of shuffled around and lay low, insisting he was feeling just fine, just a bit winded.

This may be very well and good when a usual husband does this sort of thing, and goodness knows it's a heavy allergy season and wheezing is an equal-opportunity sort of ailment. But my husband is a bit more of the bonus plan these days, and I have proven myself more than a neurotic match for any opportunity to worry. Last year this time, I would have taken his word for it that he had allergies and/or asthma and told him to suck it up and chase that toddler.

But this year, I have a host of other things rattling around in my worried little head.

I have a vague memory that this winter a CAT scan showed a single lung tumor. Who knows if now that spring is here, it's decided to have its baby tumors in his lungs?

I have an even vaguer memory that we aren't supposed to expose him to germs because chemo patients are immunocompromised, and that means it takes a month to get over the common cold. And the kids have had runny noses all friggin' winter long.

And I have a carefully (but obviously not completely) erased memory that many cancer patients actually have pneumonia as the technical Cause of Exit (Stage Left), including two recent stories from my cancer spouse group from people who lost spouses due to breathing issues spawned by other sorts of cancer (one breast, one myeloma).

So I wasn't exactly just ignoring this wheezing from my sedate hubby, the way I can sort of ignore my preschooler's whining or my toddler's potty-training.

Then the wheezing got to be this sort of Darth-Vader like breathing, so wheezy that Saturday night when we were sitting down on the couch, watching TV, I had to actually turn up the volume so that I could hear Austin Powers' shagadelic dialogue clearly over my husband's breathing. (You didn't think we'd actually watch Terms of Endearment , or, perish the thought, something like the Bucket List? I cry enough as it is!)

And so Monday morning, just when I thought I might actually make it to the office by 10 am (again, not horridly ambitious for the vast majority of you, but these days it would have been a record early arrival for me), I went to the kitchen table to say bye to Scott. He was sitting there, very pale.

"Goodbye darling. Have a good day." I had my backpack on, my lunch packed, my laptop computer over one shoulder and my keys in my hand.

"Bye darling. Hummmph-ack-ack-ack-ack-hmmmmmmmmph! hoick! hoick!" He thumped his chest. "Ahem. Sorry. Just a little tickle in my throat. Have a good day."

There was no way I could go to work and concentrate when I knew he was wheezing and hacking this badly.

"Sweetheart, I would like us to call the advice nurse and see if we can get you seen for that cough."

"I'm hungry. I want a snack." He got up and slowly, slowly walked to the cupboard and got out a Pop-Tart. (For those of you keeping track of our diet, I do think along with Cheez-Whiz and Twinkies, Pop-Tarts are nearly perfectly un-organic non-nutritive zero-fiber high-fat high-cholesterol and probably trans-fat-containing little packages. But he loves them and so I buy them for him. I just buy a pound of something like a package of firm in-box coagulated calcium-enriched tofu or coarsely threshed spelt flour to normalize our dietary karma. I generally get the spelt all to myself.)

"Sweetheart, how about if I call the advice nurse while you eat your Pop-Tart?"

He shook his head no and leaned against the counter in front of the toaster.

(This is where ordinarily I would put a sparkling little comment about discretion and the better part of valor, or winning battles with honey instead of vinegar, or something akin to that, but the reality of it was that I couldn't leave for work until we called the advice nurse, and I was rarin' to go, so I picked up the d**m phone and dialed.)

I was put on hold. I was on hold for ten minutes, which was long enough for him to finish half his Pop-Tart. (He's turning from the World's Fastest Eater into the one who will only eat Half His Dinner and Slowly At That.)

The advice nurse didn't want to speak with me. She wanted to speak with him.

He didn't want to speak with her.

(This is where ordinarily I would put in another little phrase, a twist of humor or something, but I was running out of patience and besides, I was getting hungry and his remaining Pop-Tart smelled really good.)

I pushed the phone into his hand and he did take the call. She made him run through all his medication. This pill in the mornings only. That one mornings and night. The oval one every day as a vitamin supplement. Half of this one on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and a whole one on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays. He got down his medicine box from the kitchen shelf and read each container to her, spelling it out. We can't pronounce half of them so they're the "One that starts with L" and "the one that starts with W" and "the one with lots of X's in its name." Then he walked, slowly, so slowly, stopping to lean on the wall, down the hallway to the bathroom, and read her the rest of them.

"Anything else?" He looked at me. "She wants to know if I'm on anything else."

I was sort of stunned. I had known he was on a lot of medication, but we'd been introduced to them one week at a time - a blood thinner in August, Vitamin B in November, the blood pressure medication when he went on the Avastin. When he ran down this list it seemed like an awful lot all at once.

He turned back to the phone. "Oh yes, and I'm on chemotherapy as well."

He listened and then hung up abruptly. "They'll have a doctor call me back."

I picked the phone up from the table, walked the three steps over to the wall, and placed it back on the wall cradle.

I did make it to work by noon that day, sort of satisfied that we'd called, but rather worried underneath it all. I called Scott twice that afternoon on bogus pretense just to make sure he was still breathing well enough to answer his phone.

Over the next week, the wheezing got worse. He went in for one appointment with his regular doctor, who gave him two more allergy medications.

The fatigue worsened and the wheezing held steady, got a little better, got a lot worse. Was it the chemo? Was it just his body needing more rest?

The next week, I was taking my eldest daughter out to pee in the back yard before bed. (Yes, I am hopelessly overinvolved with my dog, and she won't go unless I go out with her, to keep her company.) I looked through the sliding glass doors into the living room and saw Scott sitting on the couch. He doubled over and I thought he was vomiting onto the carpet.

Lucky and I took our time in the back yard (you can't really rush a princess dog at her toilette, and there's no prize for being the first one on the barf scene. And besides if it was truly barf, it was possible it was yours truly who would get to clean it up, in which case I'd get a good close look at it anyways (the doctors always want to know if there's any blood or if it's just good old spaghetti sauce and I always want to say, HOW THE F**K SHOULD I KNOW? DO I LOOK LIKE I HAVE BEEN TO EITHER MEDICAL OR CULINARY SCHOOL?)).

The dog peed, and I gingerly walked back inside and took a sniff. No vomit, not even a wet burp. Merely another coughing spell, albeit one so violent it had just looked like he was vomiting.

So another day, another Pop-Tart, another phone call to the Kaiser hotline, another doctor's visit, this time to the oncologist. She listened to his lungs, poked and prodded, offered to reduce his chemotherapy to help with the fatigue (he rejected the offer; he'd rather fight these tumors as aggressively as possible even if he can't really get out of bed some days), and so the net result is she just doubled his blood pressure medication, giving us at least one additional pill to keep track of every day.

There was also some speculation that the allergy medication itself could have been causing such extreme fatigue, so he took himself off of that for a few days. The wheezing got worse, so he went back on the morning one only.

We're now on Week Three of the Big Wheeze.

Scott is doing a marvelous job of managing himself - not overexerting; keeping his energy up and trying to eat. I am just trying to turn up the volume on the television and trying to hope that the next CAT scan doesn't show anything interesting in his lungs.

I am not doing so great - I have been seeing the dentist almost monthly; it turns out all this stress has caused enough gnashing of teeth in me that I broke one crown last month and have two more which need repairs.

There are two excellent things about having major dental work done, however.

The first is that while I'm tipped back in the chair with all that drilling taking place, I can't respond to any sort of emergency about anybody else.

The second is that while I'm in that same chair, I get the undivided attention of the medical profession, and I sort of like that. Egocentric as it may sound, it's nice to be the patient over whom everybody fusses, instead of the invisible spouse (whom they just want to carry the patient's wallet, move out of the way of the X-ray machine, drive to and from the appointments on time, provide nutritious meals, cheerful company, in-home entertainment, and then fade away into thin air when the doctor has something to say).

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And now, for the rest of us. I'll tell you more of my doings in the kitchen later, but suffice it to say I have never been a great cook, and am just now starting to learn. I am a rank beginner, and cooking has always been about my fifth-string hobby (behind needlepoint, weightlifting, history, travel, coffee, and entertaining - okay, it's my sixth-string hobby).

I bought the 1000-page Joy of Cooking, and am waddling through it.

I can tell you that yesterday, Easter Sunday, we got the girls dressed in identical pink frilly little dresses and I took them to church. (Scott stayed home, to conserve his energy and to avoid the crowd).

It gives me great pleasure to tell you I'm actually appearing a bit Respectable at church these days (they've seemed to get over my Pancake Race episode, and some of the grey-haired die-hard baby-worshipper granny types apparently approve of doing anything with a baby on one's hip, including Pancake Racing.)

Showing up on time with identically dressed little girls absolutely enhances one’s Reputation.

My Respectability soared to new heights after services. I was chatting outside with a new acquaintance as my girls streaked around the courtyard, shoes off, developing new holes in their pantyhose with every step on the rough brick. This lady has two children and is expecting her third, and was dressed more elegantly in these circumstances than I ever managed to do when I was twentysomething and single.

Respectable ladies serve Easter dinner to their families.

I asked, "What are you doing for Easter dinner?"

She smiled broadly, confidently. Bingo! "I'm having about twelve people over. In fact, I've got to round up the boys and leave soon, because company's coming at two and I haven't started the pineapple glaze yet! How about you? What are you doing?"

I smiled broadly, even more confidently. "We're celebrating with friends and family. A big home-baked ham, an old family recipe. Tons of side dishes, and then of course an Easter Egg hunt for the kids in the back yard."

She said, "That sounds great. I'm a little worried about my dessert. I'm trying to do a peach cobbler but I'm not sure it's quite the right season. What about you - what are you doing for the dessert?"

I was utterly relaxed as I went all Martha Stewart on her. "Oh, I don't really know yet. Lemon meringue pie is my favorite, and we've got a fresh lemon tree in the back yard, so that may be an option!" I was trying to exude the slightly bored confidence of one who had made a thousand types of meringue over the years and could competently discuss egg white temperature, brands of mixers, and exactly how much Cream of Tartar you needed.

In reality, I don't know a SubZero from a Superhero.

My preceding 24 hours had been wild, wild, wild - Scott had been wheezing all night Friday and Saturday. He had also said he'd pick up a spiral-cut ham from the nice grocery store nearby and I ordered a fully cooked one from Safeway anyways, just in case he forgot. (I figured we could always call my mom and ask her how to freeze a ham if we ended up with two and failing that, could feed the lesser of the two to the dog.)

Well, Safeway delivered two 1/2-inch slabs of partially cooked pork product. Scott ended up going out on an orthogonal errand which netted us no fully-cooked honey-glazed spiral-cut ham (gotta love that chemo brain!), and I didn't really notice that either (I'm good enough with the chemo brain now that I don't really expect him to return with a covering subset of the items on my list).

I had not even minded that the girls' swim instructor did not show up Saturday morning; I simply got in the pool with them and had quite a good time balancing one in each hand (neither one can swim (yet) but fortunately they are fairly good sports about getting water up their noses.) I'd gotten my hair wet while swimming, driven home with the windows open (because the girls like to feel the air), and had not had the chance to shower before church, so I went to services with a large-bodied and definitely asymmetrical look. I probably don't need to tell you I couldn't find an Easter hat for myself, but you might not otherwise guess that our hallway toilet and my kitchen garbage disposal both behaved badly on this special day (and have since been replaced).

But by the end of services on Easter Sunday, baby, let me tell you, I was cool, calm, and collected about Easter dinner.

Because of Betty.

Let me tell you about Betty. Betty is my neighbor. She is a retired midwestern housewife, who raised five children, baked all her own bread from fifty-pound sacks of flour, sewed all their clothing, and got them all to Confirmation Class, and she evidently did it all without TiVo, microwave ovens, email or a minivan.

Betty does not use a cookbook; she does not need one. You can ask her how to cook pork and she will have several options for you -- what sort of pork? How much port? From where on the pig? How much time do you have? Do you want to bread it and fry it, or slow-cook it, or barbecue it?

Betty is a professional grandmother and has grandkids galore and more en route.

And Betty, bless her, invited us over to her house for Easter dinner.

This is how I was supremely confident we were having ham; Betty would serve nothing else on Easter.

This is how I knew there would be tons of side dishes; Betty tosses out side dishes the way some management consultants produce status reports.

And this is how I thought there might be lemon meringue pie for dessert; Betty made a wonderful pie when my mother was here, and there are lemon trees in both her backyard and in ours (similar climate). As it turns out, it was a pair of homemade pecan pies, with yellow-tinted whipped cream that was whipped with a mixer in a bowl, not shot out of a can.

And this is how I was certain there would be a wonderful Easter Egg hunt for the kids –and that it would be small and intimate, so Scott could sit on a chair in the shade – less walking is less wheezing and less coughing -- and watch his girls squeal in delight as they found an egg here, an egg there.

So we were able to leave our broken garbage disposal and half-cooked pitiful little slabs of ham in our kitchen, and walk across the street (with our dog, even!) to a lovely hot home-cooked ham, with German potato salad, sweet potato casserole, Caesar salad, rolls with both butter and margarine spread, wine, and even plastic Barbie plates for the girls.

One of these days I will tell you about my episodes in the kitchen, but that has to wait until this wheezing business stops.

For now, we leave you this springtime solstice with profound gratitude for all our angels.

They come from all over the place, and on Easter, they were across the street.

***************************************************************

Postscript: Scott's breathing was so bad yesterday that after his chemotherapy appointment, they sent him for a chest X-Ray. We haven't heard back, but we will of course keep you posted of the outcome...

Peel Me a Grape

2008-03-03T19:57:00.001-08:00

Hello all, and happy springtime.

You know spring is in the air out here in California, because the pollen lies so thickly on car windows that you sometimes have to start your wipers before you can see well enough to drive.

This is good news for the flowers, but not, in general, for allergy sufferers, who can add a variety of symptoms to their already busy lives.

You are probably reading this because you want a few updates on us out here.

Scott continues to do well on his chemo, which is an every-other-week cocktail of Avastin and FOLFOX. His side effects are intermittent mouth sores, possible thinning hair (we're not entirely sure this isn't standard male pattern baldness), easy bruising (due to diminishing platelet counts, so sometimes after a blood test he looks like one of those Trainspotting lovelies), a runny and often slightly bloody nose (possible allergy plus blood thinner), chemo brain (see the last post), dry hands and feet (for the first time in his life he's considering it manly to use scented hand lotion), and chemo brain (or did we tell you that already?)

Some of you wonder what, exactly, we do with ourselves, now that Scott is off of work. Is it truly a life of leisure? Do we take the kids to school and then proceed to lie about the house, swathed in togas, while one servant massages the feet, another the hands, a third anoints the head with oil, and the prettiest one of the lot peels us grape after grape?

Alas, dear readers, it's not quite like that. For one thing, grapes are a choking hazard, and in our house they must always be sliced in half, which makes peeling them nearly impossible.

For another, having cancer is actually approaching a full-time job.

Every four to six months Scott sees his surgeon. Every few months he sees his regular doctor. Every month or so he sees his oncologist. Every other week, there's chemo: Scott goes to Kaiser, gets hooked up, and waits while they pump him up, which alone takes up the day.

And every week, there is a weekly support group meeting (which takes up much of a morning in and of itself, and depending on how cheerful the subject was, can take much of the afternoon to recover from.)

Every week, he goes to acupuncture, which has been very good for his energy levels but with his easy bruising, even these tiny needles give him a bit of a Frankenstein-ish cast for a few days afterwards.

Every week there is also a blood test. Scott is on a blood thinner (thanks to that pesky little pulmonary embolism he had back in August), and Kaiser likes to monitor that closely, so every week, generally first thing Monday morning after he drops the kids off at school, he goes to get a blood test.

This may shock you, but the medical labs aren't exactly taking a lesson in operations management from McDonald's, nor are the most frequent types of lab customers always Type-A Donald Trump make-the-transaction-and-then-hit-the-Four-Seasons-for-lunch type of folks.

Think about it: the IRS may have a monopoly on your tax money, and the DMV a monopoly on your driving privilege. And you know how efficient they can be. But the lab has a monopoly on your very life itself, which means if you have to have a blood test before they'll give you tomorrow's chemo which is currently saving your life, and the lab is running a bit behind, you don't exactly pick up the complaint phone and say, "Hurry up or I'm switching myself to Blue Cross!"

No, the smart patient gets all patient all of a sudden, takes a number, and sits the h*ll down, to wait, patiently, among the rest of the folks there for tests, because he doesn't want his chemotherapy delayed because his blood pressure is too high. So he waits.

And he waits.

He waits behind the fellow in the wheelchair who is having trouble registering because his oxygen tank keeps getting in the way.

He waits behind the pregnant lady whose twins keep running all around the room as she vomits in the trash can.

He waits behind the dear old lady with tennis balls on the front of her walker and her grey hair showing beneath her elegant brown wig, who is (correctly) sure it is Monday but (incorrectly) sure it is 1988, and who is (sometimes correctly) sure that the younger woman who drove her there today is her caregiver Dolores.

He waits behind the stockbroker in his crisp business suit holding his crisper BlackBerry.

And he waits behind the chatty old retired guy who is looking for the one person in the waiting room whom he hasn't yet told about the bladder infection that he got after his hip replacement and how just when he thought an attractive young female nurse was going to put the Foley catheter in, she went off duty and instead he got the middle-aged male nurse with hair coming out of his nose to finish the job.

One of these things doesn't belong here. One of these things just isn't the same.

It's the stockbroker, in for a freak medical something or other. He's actually under the impression he should check this lab visit off his list and get the h*ll out of there and get back to doing something productive, like selling Google stock, and then Being Seen In The Office Working Hard, before Doing Cocktails and then Doing the Stairmaster. (I will refrain from commenting on whether he also wants to be seen Doing the Secretary - it really depends on exactly how friendly the admin staff is, and that appears to vary from brokerage to brokerage).

Everybody else in these labs has long ago figured out it's much easier to concentrate on "being" than on "doing," and they have learned to be where they are.

Which is in line.

And so Scott waits.

Every so often, the stars line up just right, and he has a doctor's appointment every single day of the week.

****************************************************************

And what, you ask, is my life like? Well, I will update you on a few threads here and there.

I actually talked myself into wearing pants to church, and let me tell you, it was just in time. With the warmer weather the rest of the congregation is now in T-shirts, shorts, and flip flops. Even the grannies. (You do not want to know what they will have to be wearing if I ever tell you I'm at church in a T-shirt and flip flops...)

I made it back to Harbin, my hippie vegetarian nudist colony, for another respite weekend.

I was solo this time, so I stayed in the dorms and packed just one (reusable cloth) bag of organic whole-grain locally grown vegetarian high-fiber low fat hippie food. For another glorious span of time, I abandoned all usage of cellphones, checking of email, wearing of clothing, eating of meat, drinking of alcohol, staying up late, getting up early, watching of clocks, and frying from stress.

I am still a sinner through and through, however.

The night before I went to Harbin, my mom took me to dinner at a lovely grill in Rutherford, just north of Napa. She had the Texas BBQ pork ribs, and I had the smoked salmon, both of which came in huge enough portions that we took half of them home. I asked the waitress for some (half-gnawed) beef ribs from the kitchen for my dog, which I put in the trunk of my car, figuring they would quietly age while I was at Harbin and be perfect for Lucky when I got home.

We were staying at my sister's swank and gloriously cancer-and-kid-free place; my poor sister was snowed in up at Lake Tahoe and so it was just Mom and me.

So we got into my sister's good champagne (she works at Domaine Chandon so she is beyond stocked with stuff that is beyond good). We stayed up until 1 am. I was roundly hung over and soundly asleep at 8 the next morning, when her little yippy dogs spotted a squirrel in the back yard. Game over; I was up and it was early.

I finished my smoked salmon for breakfast (grumpy me; did not share with Yip and Yap), and pulled into Harbin an hour later, counting myself a quadruple sinner: 1) I had been in the presence of pork consumption last night; 2) I had half-eaten beef ribs in my trunk still, 3) I was hung over this morning, and 4) I had salmon on my breath right now. (It got worse; at lunch the next day I noticed the seventh ingredient in the list on my spicy Thai noodle soup was something like hydrolized chicken fat, so I just chalked this one up to a total shorting out of hippiedom, and will absolutely try to purify myself better next time. If nothing else, it will be warmer next time I go, so what I can't do on the meat or alcohol or cellphone or email fronts, I will endeavor to make happen on the clothing one.)

And this cancer - is it a full time job for me too?

Surely, it is. It's not only a job; it's a lifestyle. All of Scott's treatments and doctor's visits don't exactly happen in a vaccuum.

There's a lot of thinking involved; I'm a compulsive planner and a catastrophe like this gives rise to plans, contingency plans, backup contingency plans, and planning about when I can sit down, uninterrupted, and make my next glorious plan.

And when I'm exhausted by my planning, I find my life is mostly like being an airline pilot: long periods of calm and boredom, punctuated by moments of terror.

They say the way to do this is to ride the wave of the present. Be where you are. If you're going to wash dishes, really feel the water; experience the suds, touch the sink. Don't stand there at the sink, fretting about a doctor's appointment in the past (you can't change it), or worrying about the plumber's appointment next week (he is not here yet).

Well, I gotta say, this is way harder than it looks. If one more person tells me I need to de-stress and take up meditation and deep breathing I am going to blow a gasket. (Some of you will read this and think I need more yoga; some will think I need more champagne, and a select few will think I need more hydrolyzed chicken fat. But really, what I need, is an entire week in which I get no bombs blowing raggedy-edged holes into the fabric of my life. And failing that, given the choice between yoga, champagne, and chicken fat, I'll take what's behind Door Number Two, please.)

For example, last Saturday I was in the kitchen, doing the dishes. We'd had a big day (swimming lessons for the kids in the morning, big lunch and a nap), and I was getting ready to have some dinner guests over. I was even beginning to tell myself to not fret over dinner plans, but to just feel the water in the sink. Then I told myself to feel my feet walking over to the kitchen table.

As I was clearing off the kitchen table, instead of feeling the cool rustle of the newspapers or touching the blond wood grain of the table, I noticed a little envelope with a familiar return address buried beneath the mess of newspaper. The mail often ends up tangled up in the debris of our lives, on the kitchen table.

The envelope was addressed to Scott, so I opened it. It was a letter from the Benefits Department at his work. I don't remember the exact wording, but it said something like, "We regret to inform you we made an accounting error and didn't take health insurance premiums out of your pension in November and December. You owe us $413.25 in back health insurance premiums; if we haven't received this amount from you within 30 days from the date of this notice, we will cancel your health insurance. If you have any questions please do not hesistate to call Jennie at ..."

My husband is going through thousands of dollars of chemotherapy every two weeks; he's my Six Million Dollar Man. His chemo brain is such that he can't find his checkbook (he had to reorder new checks last week and I won't share mine with him). He will quite possibly - with all the other doctor's appointments, acupuncture, pills, blood tests, lunch dates, naps, weigh-ins, and colostomy bag changes - not remember to make this payment happen on time. And his health is such that he's currently uninsurable on the open market. Not to mention the kids and I are currently covered through his retiree benefits.

This is not the time for me to feel the texture of the paper in my hand or to tune into the nausea in my stomach. This is the time for me to carefully, carefully dry my hands completely off, walk into the hallway to gingerly place this little bomb in my briefcase to take to the office tomorrow, call my office voicemail to remind myself that whatever else I do on Monday morning, taking care of this must be the VERY FIRST PRIORITY, check to make sure that I have my checkbook in my purse (and that I will be taking my purse to work tomorrow). I also have to make a little tickler to note in my calendar that if the check hasn't cleared in two weeks, to call them, and if it still hasn't cleared in three weeks, to take a new check down there by hand and (patiently) wait in line to give the check to Jennie and get the receipt and a letter saying they've received payment. This is all the more difficult because there is an entire Sunday full of distractions between us, here and now, and getting to take care of that little envelope.

And I must plan all of this while I have a four-year-old at my feet who is trying to empty the whipped cream onto the kitchen floor ("see! the doggie likes it!"), a two-year-old stripping off her diaper in the other room ("I'm potty trained, Mama!"), and a husband who is very much into living in the moment ("Bat Boy, The Musical is playing at Diablo Valley College - let's see if we can get a babysitter and go see it!")

I am actually getting much better at this whole business. Last fall, when the bad news was coming fast and furious, I had taken to getting dizzy and feeling like I was going to vomit as this stuff came at me.

So while I'm not quite into the transcendental meditation non-reactive non-judgemental observational stage of it just yet, at least I'm functional enough that I catch these little envelopes as they sneak their way into our lives and haven't missed an important one yet.

Not, at least, to my knowledge.

Roundly Disqualified

2008-02-13T19:54:00.000-08:00

Hello lovely readers. Happy February!

Those of you with short attention spans want to know how Scott is doing. He is doing really well. Our last visit with the oncologist had her in such a good mood that she was nearly giddy. I had not even realized oncologists *could* get giddy; they seem to generally come with a cautious disposition and an inability to say anything definite, ever.

Scott's tumors are uniformly shrinking, all over. This is good news for the tumors in the liver, the lymph nodes, the colon, and the lone nodule in the lung.

So that's the health update. He feels good; he's plumping right on up, eating well and thankful to everybody who has taken him to lunch or otherwise contributed to his care and feeding.

In terms of side effects, probably the most noticeable one we've gotten lately is something called "chemo brain." I think it may have been building slowly over the past few months; chemo is a cumulative thing.

He's on oxaliplatin, which is a platinum derivative (and you thought the only time you'd ever get any platinum inside your system is if you accidentally swallowed your wedding ring. Don't bother; it won't protect you from colon cancer and may cause your early and unfortunate demise at the hands of an outraged spouse.) A tiny bit of this stuff somehow leaks across the blood-brain barrier. It's not a lot, but it turns out the brain is a delicate enough organ that even a tiny bit of toxic substance can have an effect.

Lack of sleep and too much alcohol are age-old ways to disrupt the brain's delicate chemistry; the 1960's discovered several others. This new millennium has found a class of drugs which manage to every so slightly tweak your consciousness without making you high, dizzy, ravenous, nauseous, sleepy, or hysterical. I'm not entirely sure this is completely a good development; many cancer patients (and some of the rest of us) would definitely benefit from a good old-fashioned buzz or high at various times (and some of us would benefit most of the time). If you're purely interested in modifying your brain chemistry, for price performance you can't beat beer. If you want to shrink a tumor or three while you're at it, you gotta invoke the oxaliplatin. So it's the oxaliplatin for Scott these days.

The "chemo brain" side effects that I notice most are that he generally has difficulty keeping track of appointments, time, calendars, remembering that it's Saturday and we have an appointment here at 10 am, and that sort of stuff.

If you're into evolution, I'd say it's the last few layers of brain cells that got stuck on the top - the sort that let humans think into the future, foresee consequences of actions, and make and keep a lunch appointment for a week from Thursday - that get the most fried from the oxaliplatin.

If you're into creationism, please say a prayer that the reminders from his Yahoo calendar will help compensate for this cognitive stoning, and that we won't miss any important oncology appointments because we got the appointment at 10 am on the 8th mixed up with the appointment at 8 am on the 10th.

And in any case, please don't take it personally if he books a lunch appointment with you a week from Thursday and then shows up at the restaurant this Wednesday, and then calls you to see where you are. When it's his turn to get the kids at daycare, I absolutely call him every single time at 5 pm, to ensure he's remembered to get them.

Having a little snafu at lunch? I would highly recommend calling him an hour or so before you are going to meet him anywhere, for anything, and just make sure his brain cells are firing in your general direction.

************************************************************************

And, now, some of you have just skipped the tumor writeup, and come down to here, to see if I have anything new or snarky to say about farting, poop, prurient interests, or nudity.

Alas, this week's topic is unsportsmanlike conduct in a house of worship, and the subtopic is suitable religious attire.

We go to church some Sundays. But first, some background on this.

It's an Episcopalian church in California in 2008, and I grew up in a Methodist Church in smallish-town Michigan in the 1970's.

To those of you not in the know, there is a world and a half of difference between the two, and I'm still getting over the culture shock. (Disclaimer: I haven't been back to Methodist services in Michigan for something like two decades now, so it's entirely possible they've replaced their marathon sermons with Pancake Races. If they have, I want to know.)

The Methodists in Michigan in the 1970's were just slightly more liberal than the folks putting Hester Prynne on the pillory in the 1600's. With that as a backdrop, the Episcopalians out in California look to me like a Bible-reading version of the Beach Boys.

Our church now has a fellow in the pulpit who answers to "Father Bruce," and Bruce happens to be his first name. People wear JEANS and TENNIS SHOES to services; kids wear T-SHIRTS, and women routinely have both knees and shoulders showing (the Michigan folks were more Arab in their religious clothing code for both men and women, but this could be more a function of climate than of full exposure.)

During cold and flu season, during communion we don't all drink from the same holy cup (thereby spreading biohazard along with the holy spirit); we considerately dunk these little chunks of (whole wheat, probably organic) bread into the big cup of wine (hopefully local Napa Valley stuff) and then eat the soaking square, thereby subordinating thousands of years of church habits to public health.

The nursery services are haphazard at best and children, even semi-noisy ones, are welcome during the actual service itself because the nursery is closed so often. The sermon is only about 20 minutes, and the actual worship is rather aerobic, with lots of up and down, walk around, love-your-neighbor-so-much-you-go-hug-them sorts of behavior going on. You don't even need to bring your purse or wallet; you can put the church on autopay through your bank or the website (this has been a literal Godsend to me; I'm generally challenged to keep track of two children and one diaper bag, so being able to dispense with the purse is just lovely).

And they serve cookies outdoors in the courtyard after church, and when my girls stuff one cookie in each hand and a third in their mouths and then sprint around, shrieking in the weak February sun, the general attitude seems to be one of tolerance. It even leans towards "feed the kid, she's skinny," rather than the "children should be seen and not heard, and toddlers should never pull their dresses up with sticky chocolate chip fingers and show the rector their diapers and belly buttons."

And, as the observant Christians among you know, it's currently Lent. To some of you this means giving up a favorite food or drink. I think to some others, it might involve doing something with candles, fish, incense, and/or their VISA cards.

To those of us living with chemo brain it means we already missed Ash Wednesday (and possibly Mardi Gras? Maybe the SuperBowl? Surely we haven't already missed Groundhog Day?). We chemo-brain folks are are trying to remember if we gave up alcohol for chemotherapy-related reasons, religious reasons, budgetary reasons, slenderizing reasons, or if we didn't give it up after all and can go ahead and pour ourselves a good stiff one tonight after the kids are in bed.

To the good folks at the Episcopal Church, Lent means it's time for the 2008 Pancake Races.

*********************************************************************************

Our family was actually technically disqualified for the Pancake Races a good two weeks before they occurred.

How, you may ask, is such a feat possible? And what, you may ask, exactly is a Pancake Race?

Easy question first. A Pancake Race is a three-runner relay, run around Church grounds on the Sunday before all the Lenten hooting and hollering starts up. Each runner wears a kerchief around the head, an apron around the waist, a road-race style number, and carries a frying pan with a pancake in it. At the far end of the church grounds, the runner must stop, flip the pancake, and then race back. The full regalia (including kerchief and apron) must be transferred to the next runner before the next leg of the relay can begin. The winning team is the one which crosses the finish line first. (For some of you, the light bulb is beginning to go on, and you are beginning to see why some people might wear tennis shoes to church, at least on this one special day.)

And now the hard question. How could we have disqualified ourselves two weeks early?

There was a one-page printout given at services in January, inviting signups for the pancake races; upon it were written the Eleven Commandents of Pancake Racing. (You may recall Moses only got Ten Commandments, so one could argue that technically Pancake Racing is more fully restrictive than the Old Testament in terms of allowable behavior and the like).

Pancake Racing Commandment Number One was "Each team must contain two adults and one child. The age cutoff for a child is 13 years old." I signed us up under my name, fully intending to include myself, Scott, and Elli (two adults, and one child safely under the age 13 cutoff). As I signed up, I realized that there was no way we were going to be able to run a three-person pancake relay race without including our two-year-old, Maggie, as well.

We were Team 108, and scheduled for the first heat (there were three heats, plus a championship heat consisting of the victors of the first three). And while I am plenty Californian enough to go to a coed hippie nudist colony and meditate in the hot water pools, I am not yet Californian enough to allow myself to wear jeans or tennis shoes to church and let my kids see their Mama thusly attired in a house of worship.

So I had worn a very long flowing skirt (to keep the knees suitably covered in case of excessive wind while allowing freedom of movement for the sprint at the end). I wore my most nimble dress shoes (no, they didn't match the skirt, but I have been wearing mismatched clothing to church and plenty of other places for decades, and have no hangups whatsoever about wearing brown shoes with a predominantly black skirt).

I had the green kerchief tied on my head, backwards, like a professional wrestler; the other teams all had it tied under the chin, like a babushka.

I had the apron on top of my raincoat (it was fifty degrees out). I had our racing number pinned to the apron (we could just transfer the entire garment at once that way).

I had the pancake in the pan in front of me.

"Mama! Pick me up!"

I soon also had a 28-lb toddler on my right hip. (Tandem Pancake Racing, in which one racer carries another, is actually such a novel innovation that the rulebook did not address it, so I assumed I was safe from disqualification on this particular technicality. One could even argue that this configuration would take us back to a three-person team, thereby saving us from our two-week four-person disqualification stint and restore us to three-person glory, allowing us to once again rejoin the running for the Golden Pancake Trophy.)

Father Bruce stood in his long black orthodox dress, arms crossed, giving a stern referee presence to the starting line.

We four runners lined up. The other three runners in my heat were in tennis shoes and jeans all, two lithe teenage boys and one sturdy gentleman in a goatee. My long skirt whipped furiously in the wind but my knees stayed covered. (You have probably already guessed this, but the raincoats provide beyond superior upper body coverage, so my inner prude was fully satisfied on this account.)

Maggie stuck her finger up my nose.

"Let the races begin! May the best team win!"

Maggie was leaning forward. The other racers were leaning forward.

"On your mark!"

Maggie was leaning even further forward, to the point I thought she was going to fall. She bent at the waist, and with a final heroic lurch, caught my pancake pan, pulled it towards her with one hand and snagged the pancake out of it with the other.

"Get set!"

Maggie paused a minute to grasp the pancake in both of her chubby little hands. She squealed victoriously. And she bit squarely into the pancake.

Pancake Racing Commandment Number Seven was "The pancake must survive the race more or less intact. Finishing the race with only crumbs in the fry pan, or only a small part of the pancake left, will be grounds for disqualification."

So we were, after all, noisily disqualified before the race began. No way was she going to put that thing back in the pan long enough for me to run even half the relay lap with it.

"Go!"

Father Bruce hadn't seen Maggie take the bite. I decided not to let a few technicalities stand between us and glory. I ran the first part of the lap carrying a frying pan without a pancake and a toddler with the pancake. She started off sitting on my hip and by the flipping station was in a sort of butt-first fireman's carry, holding onto the tattered pancake for all she was worth.

"Mama! Put me down! I like to walk now! I do it myself!"

And so I put her down and followed her, kerchief sliding off my head, empty frying pan oh-so-light without the pancake, as she sprinted towards the shiny stuff left unattended at the altar with my precious pancake in her hands.

During the next several minutes, we violated Pancake Racing Commandment Numbers Three ("Racers must stay within the race course at all times during their lap") and Five ("at a flipping station, the racer must stop and flip the pancake out of and back into the fry pan").

We and I finally made it back to the relay hand-off, where we gave the kerchief, apron, frying pan, and about 1/3 of a pancake to four-year-old Elli. We were all alone in our handoff; the second runners of the three other teams had all reached the flipping station at the far end of the parking lot. Elli ran about five steps out and then turned around and ran back. This put us wildly ahead in the race, but also squarely in violation also of Pancake Racing Commandment Number Two ("one entire lap must be run, unassisted, by each team member").

And now it was Scott's turn. He wore the kerchief and apron like a man. He had on pants (khakis; I am way too constipated in the religious wardrobe department to condone my husband wearing jeans to church unless I can wear them too, and I'm obviously not there yet). He had a competitive advantage in that his frying pan was 66% lighter than that of the competition, because Maggie had eaten quite a bit of the pancake by that time. And he completed our anchor lap like a true champion, apron strings flying in the wind.

We did, however, end up losing the Golden Pancake Trophy to a team of three lean muscular Boy Scouts, who ran wearing their Boy Scout uniforms under the brand "United Pancake Service."

There was, of course, a pancake brunch at church after these races. At our table there was a jovial new fellow. We introduced ourselves.

"Hi. I'm Steven. I'm the new youth minister."

"Nice to meet you." I am getting old, because he looks far too young to actually be in any position of responsibility here.

He looked at us. "I was admiring your technique, running this race with the baby in your arms. I was a little bit concerned, though, when I saw you were having trouble juggling both the baby and the pancake."

I smiled. "I'll work on it. Next year, for sure."

He smiled back. "For sure. Get those priorities straight. Drop the baby if you must, but keep that pancake intact at all costs!"

I am not entirely sure he is joking.

The Naked Truth: Part 1

2008-01-23T22:32:00.000-08:00

Greetings, faithful readers, and happy belated new year. I trust that the January hangover is not too excessive, and that between New Year’s Resolutions and Valentine’s Day plans you are keeping good and busy.

You may be reading this to get your Scott update. This time, we sort of have no news, which is very good news. He’s been on Avastin + regular chemo for over a month now, and is tolerating it well with no undue side effects. The major side effect is upon the consistency of the stuff in his bowels; because he has a colostomy bag (a designer one with a charcoal filter, to allow him to fart discreetly) he gets to see the texture of his output more clearly than many of us ever view our taxes. I won’t elaborate too too much, but you can look it up under “side effects” for Avastin, and I will give you a little hint: we’ve had both the “too much” and the “not enough” versions.

He continues to put on weight, and we want to extend our thanks to the Lunch Brigade – you all are taking over and feeding him well, so well. Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, American; hot and cold; sticky and gooey; messy and neat – it’s all good so long as it is fattening.

Some of you have asked me how our holidays were. We emerged from them with a Barbie dollhouse, a Disney Royal Talking Vanity, several new clothes for the girls, a lovely Christmas meal with my mother at the helm, some great pictures of Scott and the girls, and a rather hard time for me.

I don’t care how you slice it; it is difficult to be the mother of small children during the holidays. Add into that the whole pressure of “is this Daddy’s last Christmas?” and “will the kids remember this?” and it really threw me for quite a loop.

You probably don’t want to know the full details, but if you have any friends with seriously ill spouses, small children, jobs, and dogs who need dental work along with bathtubs which need the orange bubble bath cleaned from the drain, a crashing stock market, and a kids’ birthday present to come up with, you can probably approximate the stress level.

You might not be surprised, then, to hear that I fled the house for a few days, naked, screaming, and tearing my hair out.

This is actually not strictly true. I did flee the house, but did it in relative silence. I waited until I got there to disrobe, and waited until I returned to tear my hair out.

The Angels have been good enough to put together a respite weekend for me. A respite – a real respite – so I won’t have to just go sleep at my sister’s elegant apartment. And I finally took them up on it. I went to Harbin Hot Springs, which is a “clothing optional” resort a few hours north of San Francisco and has been doing business since well before the hippie days. And I took my friend Robin with me.

We planned to leave for the weekend on Friday.

“Robin, I think I’ll be ready to go by about 2 pm.”

“I don’t think I can make it; I’ve got a meeting with a co-worker that afternoon and the earliest I can get out is five.” She is a scientist.

At 1 pm Friday she left me a voicemail. “My co-worker has to take off early to go to a funeral. I can be at your house at 2 pm.”

She drove up to my house and asked, “I left you a message earlier. So why didn’t you pick up the phone? Where were you?”

I said, “Funeral.” Another spousal death in my cancer spouse support group.

She said, “F**king hell.”

There is supposed to be a burgeoning population problem on Planet Earth, but the way things are looking around here, I’m not entirely convinced any more.

Robin had printed some Google directions. I found a ratty California map in my car. We put on a CD of Ravi Shankar playing the sitar and pointed the car north. She drove; I navigated.

It was forty-two degrees and I was wearing a turtleneck, a Cal sweatshirt, jeans, socks, tennis shoes, and was considering putting on yet another layer of clothing (a raincoat) that I had stashed in the trunk.

“Don’t worry,” Robin said. “I brought my cappuccino maker.”

What, exactly does one pack to go to a nudist colony in January? I can start with what you do not need to pack. There’s no need, really, for any change of underwear. You won’t wear it much. You should bring a towel, a flashlight, footwear, a warm coat (just because you *can* be naked does not mean it is fully advisable under all weather conditions), your purse/wallet (just because they are nudists doesn’t mean they can’t run a VISA charge with the best of them), and your groceries.

I am inordinately proud of the fact that at very last minute notice, I was able to put together a very hippie bag of groceries. It is a reusable green Whole Foods shopping bag – reduce, reuse, recycle, baby! It has been six days since my last grocery shopping trip, and several very hungry people eat out of my kitchen all the time, and STILL I am able to produce organic soy milk, organic whole wheat egg noodles, high fiber tortillas, high fiber organic cereal, a pound of free-trade organic freshly ground coffee under the Fogbuster brand, and one half-eaten block of industrially processed, horomone-ridden, conventionally packaged Swiss cheese wrapped in not one but TWO nonbiodegradable baggies. We may be exposing lots of our various bits to lots of various people, but it is clear from the outset that this shameful piece of cheese must be hidden at all times, and it will really be best all round if we can get rid of the commercially printed plastic label ASAP.

We passed a KFC in St. Helena. Forty-five minutes left to go.

“Last opportunity for trans fats!”

Instead, we stop at the Calistoga grocery and buy some suitably organic cheese – a gooey Brie and a bright orange cheddar wedge with flecks of bleu cheese mold in it. We also buy a few bottles of wine, 2% milk for the cappuccino maker, one zero-fiber conventional white-flour Torpedo Bun (the sort people put seven meatballs on and call it a grinder), and two slices of cappuccino fudge cake.

“Can I eat the Torpedo Bun in your car?” I feel it is best if I do not show up with any refined white flour anywhere in my baggage.

We have finished Ravi Shankar and I put in my next CD: MTV’s The Grind, from 1997.

We drive in, park, and unload our luggage in our room, a tiny double in the Azalea Building (there is also the Manzanita Building, a dormitory, and, further back, free camping.) There are no hallways; the bathrooms are a few doors down the porch, and they are coed.

The first thing I notice is that my room key comes with a plastic wrist bracelet – of course! No pants, no pockets, and one must have a place to keep one’s room key. The second thing I notice is that there is really no reason to avoid getting dressed or undressed immediately beside the windows of your room, even at nighttime.

We take our food to the kitchen, all except for Robin’s stash of Trader Joe’s chocolate truffles, which we keep in the room in case of emergency.

There is a huge sign on the door: “By order of the CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, CLOTHING MUST BE WORN in the kitchen!!!”

People do observe the letter of the law, if not the spirit.

It is an industrial strength kitchen, with twelve burners, glassware from all sorts of Goodwill stores, a juicer, a pasta maker, three sinks, two ovens, one cutting board, and three communal picnic tables for dining. It is a purely vegetarian kitchen – I do believe the waiver I signed when I entered had me promise something along these lines upon pain of expulsion.

There is a large gentleman standing in front of a cast iron frying pan. He is wearing combat boots, a vest (open at the front, of course) and a hot pink/leopard print sarong, tied high up on his left hip. He is tremendously obviously not wearing anything else. He sees us. “Hi, I’m Paul! Would you like a hug?”

I am starving. In the past two hours I have eaten a Torpedo Bun and my slice of cappuccino cake, but I don’t eat well at funerals and looking back on it I haven’t had anything substantial since breakfast.

Robin and I start to cook our whole wheat noodles. She has brought Tasty Bite, which are Indian food stored in these little space-age metal pouch type thingies, and they are great for camping and travel. Heat and eat. They are vegan even! We get double bonus points! We are the dietary nobles of this hour!

There is one young fellow walking around in a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and a bathrobe tied none too enthusiastically.

The conversation swirls around me, and this is exactly what I need. No worries about assembling the Barbie doll house. No thoughts about Christmas stockings, or 1099 forms, or FOLFOX/Avastin chemo side effects, or whether we need extra underwear for Elli at daycare tomorrow, or whether next time we’ll actually be able to cut Maggie’s hair.

No, sir, it is very difficult to think of any of that when I am in this kitchen, feeling simultaneously 1) horridly overdressed 2) too cold to consider removing any layers and 3) ravenous.

I eavesdrop.

“Yes, little Flower is about four now.”
“They’re expecting again!”
“Really? That’s wonderful!”
“It’s another girl. Same surrogate mother, different donor egg.”
“So how old is she anyways?”
“Sixty-one.”

“What’s your name?”“Amber. And you?”
“Lotus. I was born a Jennifer, but now I am Lotus.”

“And what is it that you do back in the Bay Area?”
“I’m a psychotherapist. You know, I can’t say enough about good mothering...”

“What is that in your pan? Swiss chard?”
“No!!!!!! It’s KALE!!!!!!!!”

The Naked Truth: Part 2

2008-01-23T22:31:00.000-08:00

We eat, wash our dishes, dry and put away many other people’s dishes (this is, after all, a communal effort), and prepare to go soak in the hot pools. The dressing room has lockers but not a Men’s and a Women’s; under the red heat lamps we take a deep breath, strip off our clothes, tuck them into a locker, try to keep our eyes only where the strictly belong, and, room keys dangling from bracelets around our pale wrists, walk out into the starkly cold night.

The mineral baths have a Code of Conduct, which is roughly reproduced for you here:
Our pools are for quiet meditating and soaking, not washing. Please shower before entering.
The following are forbidden:
Conversation
Sexual contact
Alcohol or drugs
Cellphones
Pets

It is interesting that they consider cellphones only slightly less obnoxious than alcohol, and that the biggest no-no is conversation.

So, there are surely those of you with a little prurient interest here. There are surely those wanting me to tell you exactly what one sees at the nudie springs. And there are surely those of you who already know exactly what is possible to see here.

Well, my armchair voyeurs, I will tell you exactly what one sees here. One sees bouncing, springing, jiggling, drooping, rippling, sitting down and standing up, floating, climbing, dripping, curling, bending, stretching, and, of course, meditating.

If you catch the timing just right, you see it trotting back up the hill to the sundeck to do some yoga or tai chi.

If it’s headed for the kitchen it often wobbles into a bathrobe, a salwar kameez, or a sarong before getting a hug from Paul.

If it’s headed for one of the common areas, it might tie one bandanna on its head and another on its left bicep, follow the “less is more” philosophy and leave the outfit at that.

And one sees body art – oooooh the body art. Tattoos! Piercings! Double piercings! Complementary tattoos on complementary partners. Some of them are very usual sizes and in very discreet places, and for all we know these good folks are the investment bankers of San Francisco, the elementary school teachers of the Gold Coast, or the Caltrans workers of Sacramento, because these usual tattoos fit tidily beneath the usual costumes for any of these jobs.

In addition to the mundane tigers and dragons and yin/yang and peace signs, I see a striking young woman with a shaved head and large lightning bolts tattooed down either side of her abdomen. (Some of you may want to know: if her head was shaved, how am I so sure she’s a woman? Well, I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses but this sort of determination does not exactly require detailed analysis…)

What you will not see: the unerring body beautiful.

The population here is slightly less obese than California at large, but still plenty large enough to cause a righteous overflow in the warm pool when somebody new comes in to sit.

The average weight per person is probably spot on the California average, though, because what they are lacking in fat they are making up for in hair. The hair, the hair, in every crevice and orifice, in every configuration. The hair is everywhere.

Do not bother shaving or waxing anything before you come here; instead, invest the time in your groceries. Better to be shaggy and in proud open possession of a brick of firm-pressed organic tofu than to be fully denuded yet forced to skulk around the kitchen, waiting until the dead of night so you can fry up your contraband stash of nitrate-laden bacon.

The population here is generally thirty to sixtysomething; when you’re much younger than thirty, in general, you are not in need of a meditative retreat.

When much older than sixty, the whole generation gap thing kicks in and those folks do not seem to find it fun to climb around cold dark arthritic hill paths by flashlight in the buff while being denied all forms of meat and alcohol. Sixty-plus, by and large, seems to take the outside cabin on the inside passage and go on that cruise to Alaska, where, alas, you do have to keep your drawers on (and are unlikely to get a hug from Paul) but at least you can have a steak and a glass of wine.

It is in the full-length mirror in the coed Harbin dressing room that I discover, to my horror, that I have SIX WHITE HAIRS on my head. I did not even get the chance to go grey gracefully. I did not pass go; I did not collect $200; I did not go grey; I went straight from brown to white this past six months, probably at the rate of one hair per month.

I did not think it was possible to eat vegetarian food, hike the hills, meditate in the pools, walk around underdressed, and still be shallow enough to be so worried about a few white hairs. Beneath it all, however, I am still an unmistakably vain creature.

And I am 37. That is TOO YOUNG to have ANY white hairs.

On our second day there I wander through the Harbin General Store. They have:

Lovely gems danging in the window, catching the sun, $60.

Pesticide-free Brazil nuts, price unknown.

Organic sugar lollipops, 25 cents apiece.

Tattoo sleeves, $49. (For the tattoo newbies, these are fishnet-stocking-like things that go over your arms, and have roses and other “tattoos” embroidered in them. Essential not so much for the bare-hippie look but for the industrial-goth look.)

Hair ties, 50 cents. (These have GOT to be one of their big sellers).

Yogi Tea in six flavors, pricing uncertain.

Succanat and whole grain, by the pound. (Warning: do not try to cook whole grain quickly. It is at least an hour and probably overnight to get this stuff edible.)

Spelt tortillas, $3.69 a packet.

Frozen lasagna, $5.09 a box.

The retreat is lovely. We soak in the pools. We write in our journals. Robin does tai chi and makes us pots of cappuccino. We are cold; we are occasionally naked; we are at all times fully caffeinated and generally chocolized as well. I break out the one-pound Trader Joe’s Belgian Chocolate bar at breakfast and share some with the psychotherapist (who is delighted to discover I am a mother). We ate most of Robin’s truffles the first night in the room.

I have a choice of two morning newspapers: the San Francisco Chronicle (which reports that Citibank has apparently lost $10 billion and that a tiger from the zoo has for sure killed somebody) and the North Bay Bohemian (which reports on spiritual activism, the 2005 grape glut in Napa, and a new book titled “The Myth of Depression.”)

I read the Bohemian.

Too soon, it is Sunday at 2 pm: time to go back home.

In our final minutes here, we sit on the deck, fully clothed because it is once again forty-two degrees out. Robin is even wearing a hat – gratuitous clothing if I’ve ever seen any. She has fired up her wondrous cappuccino pot several times in succession. I am on my fourth cappuccino of the morning and she made it a double.

We drive back. We put my third CD into the CD Player: Sweet Honey in the Rock, a gospel band which I thought was out of Harlem but turns out to be Californian.

We make it as far as Vacaville (1.5 hours) before we have to stop so I can pee. That is almost exactly 25 minutes per cappuccino. We stop at a McDonald’s.

After the weekend of organic vegan this and antioxidant that, the Value Menu looks beyond tasty. I order a cheeseburger and small fries ($2.16), and Robin gets the double ($1.08). It feels strange to have a purse over my shoulder and keys in my pocket; I am used to having a credit card on file and a key tied to my wrist. It also feels strange to be at McDonald’s without my kids; this is the first time in years I have gotten by without ordering two Happy Meals “with identical toddler toys please.”

Robin points to a table. “We are going to sit here and eat this. I do NOT want to read on that blog that you ate any meals in a moving vehicle on my watch. We are going to eat this in a civilized fashion.” (This is coming from a woman who has just recently donated her naked a** to the effort of getting me a bit relaxed; I sit down and eat.)

Another patron is yelling at the McDonald’s cashier, and the manager is threatening to call the police. I am still so zen that I don’t really care. The fries are gloriously salty; I think we had to have lost at least some vital body salts in all that steaming, soaking, and drying off.

We are back in cellphone range and my little electronic buddy is waking up; I have seven voicemails accumulated over 2.5 days. There is a problem with my latest babysitting coop request – I have evidently requested a sit for Saturday February 29th, which does not exist this year (nor next, I fear, and I need a babysitter long before next year).

For the last hour of the ride home, we are truly desperate and break out my fourth CD: Boxcar Willie’s “Truck Driving Favorites.” This stellar piece of hobo country includes songs such as Freightline Fever, Phantom 309, Truck Drivin Son of a Gun, Six Days on the Road, and the perennial favorite, How Fast Them Trucks Will Go.

Robin is a die-hard Nine Inch Nails and Alanis Morissette fan. She can take only a very limited amount of Boxcar Willie (“I got my diesel wound up and she's rollin' like a-never before…There's a speed zone ahead, all right, but I don't see a cop in sight…Six days on the road and I'm a-gonna make it home tonight…”). We switch to the radio for the final bit home.

And when we pull up to the house, reality settles back in. Scott is out getting a pizza for dinner tonight. I do a few dishes, open a few envelopes, stash the bills somewhere I won’t lose them, and then find the babysitter’s address to go get my girls, and we do the dance of pizza – tea party – bath with Mommy– stories with Daddy – bed.

Somehow I was not as relaxed during the toddler/preschooler bath as I had been the previous weekend. I did manage, however, to find some tweezers in the bathroom, and I plucked those six offensive white hairs off of my head. So I am respectably thirtysomething once again.

Those of you who are following this down this far will be delighted to know that with the Angels’ money, in addition to covering the weekend retreat, I bought a year’s membership to Harbin.

I promise I will take my tense little self up there periodically this entire year, and meditate in the hot pool, admire the body hair of my fellow retreatees, drink the Yogi tea and, once the weather clears, camp out.

A HUGE thanks to the Angels for this!