Thursday, July 18, 2013

peas and carrots

i think i'll write a little bit about my tumor.  

it's to the point now (size-wise) where i realized this morning just how difficult (if not impossible) it would have been for me to notice it before it jumped in size.  not impossible in the sense that i don't feel anything there.  but now i know what i'm looking for.  kind of.  see, i never had the hard, circular lump every girl is trained to look out for.  mine was definitely more of a "mass"-- and now that it's a much smaller, less defined mass, i know that at this point in its growth (when might that have been?  february? march?), i would have had to do a lot of investigative work to ever realize anything was wrong (seriously... beyond comparing one side to the other, multiple times, with lots of puzzled looks and shrugs, i would have had to go to the library and done extensive research, and even then it wouldn't have been clear, someone's description on a piece of paper in a book).  even if i had noticed that "it" was an "it", i don't think i would have called the doctor because all one ever hears about is pea-sized lumps.  

what is my point?  i don't necessarily have one.  i just felt like a not complete failure this morning upon realizing this.  but maybe i'm wondering what the solution is to 'problems' like mine.  routine, early mammograms i suppose, but then those pose their own problems (again, i'll refer you to this article) which, on a society-wide scale, probably outweigh the benefits of catching the few people like me.  i understand that and i don't even mind falling through the cracks in support of less overuse of fancy diagnostic tests for routine purposes.  maybe because i know i would have politely declined a mammogram at my age with a paucity of risk factors, had i been offered one for no (known) good reason.  even if i'd had a friend, just like me, who ended up with stage three breast cancer.  it still was out of the question that breast cancer was ever going to happen to me.  some other cancer, maybe.  but breast cancer?  no.  why not?  well... i don't know.  i don't buy skinny jeans the moment they become popular.  or smart phones either.  or read bestsellers the moment they become such.  and so in that sense, i don't get the most common invasive cancer in females worldwide.  ... but... now that i think about it... i did succumb to skinny jeans two months ago... and smart phones (well over a year ago now)... and i did read and love angela's ashes (in december 2000... 20 months after it was last on the bestseller list)... and i did, of course, as we all know, get breast cancer... though i can still count myself in the minority... i am one of the the "ones", of the one in eight u.s. women (neverminding that it was caught in denmark) who will get it ("it" being the invasive, not in situ type).  

so my thoughts?  my advice?  well, if you're a woman, and especially if you're a man, the odds are still with you that if you're thinking like i was, you're right... you will never get breast cancer.  so that's some good news right there.  it still feels like sort of a fluke that i ever got it.  but just know that it's not always going to feel like a little pea-sized lump.  it might feel like a mass of tissue, a little more solid than it feels on the other side.  green tea and flax seeds and omega-threes are not bad things to incorporate more regularly into your diet.  eat lots of vegetables with your meat, especially if you burned it on the grill.  eat more vegetables, period.  and less sugar.  why not?  and move.  just walk, for example, more frequently throughout the day.  and get your vitamin d.  and maybe try this water bottle instead of the plastic ones.  and i'll stop lecturing right now, but there's a lot we can do to make our lives healthier, even if the odds are, at least slightly with us that we won't get cancer.


Sunday, July 14, 2013

adventures

it does take the wind out of my sails just a bit to lose good pictures.  i thought i'd gotten them all uploaded, handed the phone to greg for his adventure out with william, henry, and william's friend, and told him to go ahead and delete the pictures, i'd put them all on the computer.  only i hadn't.  so there are many good pictures... poof! of the old grain mill, the mill stones, henry and greg peeking their heads out of the barn's second floor window, the picture william took of me, and the one i took of him.  well, we lose things.

but some did make it onto the computer... of our adventures on thursday and then greg, william, and henry's adventure yesterday... so we can enjoy those of course!


first, tadre mølle... an old preserved mill farm, not too far from us, but not easy to access using public transportation...







the garden... with greens and flower ringed beds...


bean pole... 


 the impetus for the visit... to catch something in nets... preferably crayfish and that sort of thing...


searching... 



waiting...


looking out at the countryside...


and back to their path toward the garden and their bridge to the woods...


onto the little wooded trail...


looking up to the tall trees...


and back to the fisherman...


trying this place and that...


in the end... he managed to catch a dead bug and rescue a live one... this though was just an unidentified bit of scruff...


and greg caught this rock... which had been the resting spot of a leech... though he'd escaped by the time i took the rock's photograph...


henry and me into the woods... up a tall hill...


better to crawl...


and over to the sheep, who were not interested in turning for the camera...


or for henry's 'baaa's'...


later, greg, henry, and i drove over to a peninsula off the fjord called bognæs.  a place we'd biked to last summer at some point-- probably our furthest bike ride with the burley.

another nap...


and lots of deer.  this was a little guy.  he seemed too little to be away from his mom, but other than sensing us in the distance, he seemed to be pretty confident...


more tall trees...


as close as we got to the water on this day...


and yesterday, greg, william, and henry's adventure to stevns klint... cliffs on the island we live on... to the south of us...

ice cream goes hand in hand with a beach day for these boys...











greg trying to get a picture of henry, or maybe henry trying to get a picture of greg...





exploring the museum...








and having fun at the park...


my own little update... is that i had my easiest day of chemo this time around, but my most laid-out-on-the-couch weekend directly following chemo... so the rhyme or reason to it is not entirely clear, but it seems that the cumulative effects of chemo, at least with regard to this weekend, seem to be making their presence felt.  the amount of nausea (minimal) has held steady however, so i can't complain about that.

well, take care for now!

Friday, July 12, 2013

patchwork

this post is destined to be the least chronological post in history (in the history of 3YID that is).  

the present

i just finished round three of chemo.  woot!  so that means a third of my chemo treatments are behind me, though the effects of this third one will linger for a few days.   i suppose i felt something between chemo #1 and chemo #2 directly afterward: good enough (as in not too tired, but no "high") like after treatment 1 to go out to lunch afterward... not good enough to shop around after lunch... and tired, bone tired now... tired in my chest, my eyes, everywhere i suppose.  feeling like i've had one too many drinks, but not relegated to the bed quite yet (though perhaps a pillow on the couch is essentially the same thing).  

before chemo i met with an oncologist to check my progress.  a different oncologist than the one i'd seen the first time.  when he asked me how i thought things were progressing i told him i thought the tumor had changed a little.  then he checked and said, "a little?  or a lot?"  "well... maybe a lot," i said.  i had that feeling of going into a test, or into court... with a strong urge to keep any over-confidence in check, at least until discovering it was warranted.  "well," he said, "from what i can tell, in comparing it to how it's been described before chemo, i would say it's shrunk by about half."   

okay! cool!  i like a tumor, HALF its original size, TWICE as much.  

so, now a little of the recent past... in pictures... in some kind of order that has very little to do with time... 

recent past: 

down at the harbor, before a boat trip on the fjord... maybe... last saturday? 


our monkey man...


the big brother...


even more recent past: 

on vacation now... we went to the northern part of the sjælland, the island we live on... the town tisvildeleje was our destination thanks to the great recommendation from our friend (and now (sob) old) neighbor emily and the generous car loan from our friends siyi and andreas...

day two, a trip to some castle ruins from the 1100's.







and on a long walk into the surrounding forest...













to the remains of an old, what we translated to be, farming village from around the 13 or 1400's...


the trees surely came later...





an ant hill... a huge, ant covered ant hill...


t. rex...


william led us down this path, which brought us, somewhat inadvertently on a long path back to the beach (which you haven't seen yet, but which we had been to the previous day)...


"carry you, carry you, dada."


to the beach...


a pause...


a nap...


nearly there...


up the hill with william... he always looks so big to me these days, but occasionally it strikes me what a little guy he still is...


and down...


a long nap...


and later a circus...


with popcorn and apple juice and great big lollipops...


whoops... back home now... eating wild strawberries from the backyard...


father's day... way back when...


down at the schoolyard...


biking home with grandpa woof...


chive picking and eating...


and now back to the semi-present... lunch out in town on mom's second or third day in denmark...


riding down to the fjord... a couple days after the second chemo treatment...


a few pictures from a day trip to copenhagen a couple weeks ago...





at kastellet (a starred fortress whose beginnings date to the 1600's)...


lunch at nyhavn (that place you see in all the copenhagen postcards that i haven't sent you but always meant to)...


home again, home again, jiggety jig... see what nice meals you get to eat for lunch when your mom comes to town to take care of you...


there cannot be too many pictures of my little lovely guys...


william wanted to make a lego roller coaster, so together we did this...


okay, back on vacation now... pizza at the red tomato... if you come to denmark for pizza (which, in general, you shouldn't do) then go here in tisvildeleje... we did... twice...


from our rented house... a view of the neighbors grass and wildflower roof being watered....


our home for a few days... if you go to tisvildeleje, you can stay near the town, here....




on vacation... checking out the thrift stores...


and finally... a couple pictures of the beach... how did we get such gorgeous weather?


little h. working...


well, there it is.  did it all make sense?  not two beach vacations, but one.  not two visits (yet) from greg's dad, but one.  and 5:00 now and still not in bed, and maybe even able to eat a little dinner this time around... (albeit on the couch).