30 vegetable and fruits

October 2024

Thank you for reading this blog.   It is Thursday again, chemo day.  As I walk in to the cancer hospital, I am reminded of the truth of my life. Today I notice women my own age in wheelchairs.  I feel so lucky to be able to walk.  It is a beautiful day.  I feel immense privilege to be able to go to the hair salon for a trim.  To be able to visit my favorite lawyer before she starts her new job.  Immense privilege. 

"I'm so scared, so terribly scared" I hear a woman say into her phone.  We are all scared.  We are just one blood test away from a major paradigm shift in our outlook, perspective, dreams.  We smile with our headscarves and wigs and skinny legs and masks, but we are all scared. 

I'm often surprised at how few people are here, waiting, alone.  I often feel like approaching caregivers and telling them how much I admire them, giving their time, their soul, their health to take care of another person.  There are heroes everywhere around me. 

Thank you for reading this.  Today you are my caregiver. 

I recently read Dr. Urvi Shah's presentation about using diet to help supplement medicine in cancer care.  No surprise there was much focus on a plant based diet.  Her recommendation is to eat 30 different fruits and vegetables in a week.  Nuts don't count. What a humbling challenge. I have been trying so hard to get to 30 and I am only at 20 since Saturday. Silver lining of extra long times at MSK, the fruit salad added 5 fruits to my list...

Good luck today.  Thank you for being here. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Osteo Necrosis of the Jaw

I am a sensitive person, physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically.  I can feel a 1 degree change in indoor temperature. I don't wear clothes with tags.   No wool.  Ever.  I am allergic to virtually all animals, foods, trees, grasses, dusts, scents, etc.  Always have been. When I was younger, I would feel things in my body, Google them, make an appointment with a doctor, spend a sleepless night planning my end of life,  then learn from my doctor that I did not have any serious affliction.  Beginning in November 2021, everything changed.  Since then, most everything I fear actually warrants fear.  The pain in my back is dreadful but at least it's not cancer.   It's cancer.  The type of Myeloma I have can't be high risk.  It's high risk.  At least I'm not neutropenic.  Of course I am. Hypogammaglobulenemia? Yes. At least I don't have Osteo Necrosis of the Jaw.   You don't need to be a student of Latin...
Read more

Carpe Diem

My once strong, fun and beautiful mother sits up in her peach nightgown and declares "I think that the best years of my life were at the lake."  My parents came home one 1980 s weekend and announced that they had purchased a house on a lake near Middlebury, VT.  I grew up in a town with a beach and I did not understand the value of a lake.   This house was a wonderfully exciting way to learn.  It was an annex to an inn, so it had six bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms overlooking the biggest lake within Vermont's borders.  We each had our own rooms and when we walked into that house all of the stress generated by city life evaporated.    The centerpiece of the lake, that looks and feels very much like Lake Como to me, is Neshobe Island, the summer camp of the literati of the 1920s Algonquin Round Table.  Rumors of Dorothy Parker,  Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, and Edna Ferber running naked on the island made adults laugh and children...
Read more

Humility and Compassion

It is Chemo Tuesday.  I'm back at the place where I remember I have Myeloma but I am lucky to come in on my own two feet, with all of my hair intact.  This is about the many divides in this country. It causes such profound stress that it may compromise my health.  This is why I am writing about this here. If you are surprised about any of this, you will not want to read what I have to say.  Stop now. I called in to my Congressman's Town Hall last night.  He was eloquent and for an hour there was a verbal tennis match of educated Fairfield County patriots expressing wonder and frustration and the Congressman's lobbed back measured and thoughtful responses.   Of discussion was the $880 m that the richest man in the world was trying to cut from Medicaid;  money that kept poor and sick people able to go to the doctor despite the dearth of tips earned at Starbucks.   Discussion of the shocking, pathetic minor league interaction on Signal. Hon...
Read more