This past week we had the bank holiday to honor veterans, both those who have served in the military and those who have been to war. Close to 40,000,000 US soldiers have served during war time, and over 580,000 U.S. soldiers are estimated to have died as a result of armed conflict since our nation was founded….
Category: Cancer
Honoring Birds & Día de los Muertos
Birds “Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Only a life lived for others is worth living.” –Albert Einstein We have a game we play each day when we go for our walk-…
Busy Signals
I have been very busy these last few weeks. Tuesday while traveling into Portland for appointments I was thinking about time and phones. When I hold a cell phone with my left hand, and usually when I try holding one to my head, it looses reception. Full bars to zip in an instant. For…
Harmony
We just got back from a blessed adventure. Wednesday through Friday we attended a family retreat at Harmony Hill, a beautiful healing center near Hood Canal, a little more that 3 hours north east of Astoria. This has been a wonderful week. We all feel so lucky to have been able to attend the retreat. To be together- separate from…
Camo for Amazons
I have been learning how to tie beaded necklaces lately. This serves several purposes, by using my fingers for fine motor skills I am improving my hand neuropathy. It also gives me something productive to do while supine in the nest-the one sunny place to lay down in our house. This feels especially important when I am not the…
Chicago
A little more than a week ago I heard the sobering news that a friend who is about a year ahead of me on this whole cancer-ing trip is experiencing a reoccurrence- with metastasis to lungs and liver. This time around it is about more than her breasts. She is so beloved by her wonderful family and intimate…
Bali Ha’i
Bali Ha’i may call you, Any night, any day, In your heart, you’ll hear it call you: “Come away…Come away.” Bali Ha’i will whisper On the wind of the sea: “Here am I, your special island! Come to me, come to me!” Sometime in January I started to have hot flashes. Micro bursts of temperature…
On the other hand . . .
When I look down at my right hand, I see the progression of my treatments visually etched into my nails. Stripes mark the 3-week intervals. The discolored areas that separated from the nail bed, due to the toxins in the yew-based chemo, are now nearly grown out, while the pale stripes marking the Herceptin continue. I…
You say Placebo, and I say Nocebo.
pla·ce·bo (pləˈsēbō) a. A substance containing no medication and prescribed or given to reinforce a patient’s expectation to get well. b. An inactive substance or preparation used as a control in an experiment or test to determine the effectiveness of a medicinal drug. no·ce·bo (nəˈsēbō) A detrimental effect on health produced by psychological or psychosomatic…
Radiation
“There’s radiation on my windshield Paranoia in my mind and my heart is weighted down with the mistakes of my own kind.” Joanne Rand Back a few weeks ago when I was declared to be at stage 0, I decided to forgo radiation treatments. On Friday morning I received an upsetting call from the Radiation…
The Cure for Cowbirds
Yesterday on my walk with Joe, we saw one of the little yellow warblers flitting amongst the branches of a blooming scotch broom. They are so beautiful, with a quick cheerfulness and a loopy small-bird flight pattern – as if they are always skipping or dancing. We also happened upon a courtship routine of a few brown-headed…
On being a modified radical.
By many accounts I was a radical before any of this cancer-ing journey began – starting a worker cooperative is enough for that title. Plus I believe in lots of “radical” notions, like universal health care, environmental stewardship, self education and homebirth. I believe in a loving creative god, the consciousness of the entire universe, which doesn’t smite…
Riding the Pooka 