Happy Thanksgivukkah!

It was the best of holidays.....

On Wednesday night we ate the first latkes fresh from the oil with N and K and lit the first Chanukah candles. I froze the rest of the latkes for the next day's big meal.

On Thursday I baked triple-chocolate pumpkin tarts adapted from a Martha recipe )....) and watched the Macy's parade. I still want to be a Rockette, even if I'm an inch shorter than I was and can no longer kick my legs that high.

We gathered at D's home at 4:30 or so. Then T and I stepped up to the cooking with D and A, and everyone else scattered to talk. D's turkey was delicious, T's brussels sprouts were fought over as usual, and I was the only one who ate any of my gravy (but it was VERY good!). I think everyone liked the latkes, because they disappeared.

We spent a long time cleaning up and talking. After an hour or two, we all headed over to our home for dessert. (Over the years we've found that breaking up the meal with movie, walk, etc. means everyone has more room for dessert.) A had baked her first apple pie -- it was so yummy! -- and we scarfed down some of the pumpkin tarts with whipped cream for both treats. (Dunava, those tarts are waiting in the freezer for you.) We lit the candles and ate and talked and ate and talked and sent photos far and wide via Facebook. The dogs hoovered the floor for edible bits of pie.

The Thanksgiving part is over but Chanukah continues for another six nights. I need to venture out of our cozy house to buy Chanukah candles.

It was the best of holidays...and I am so thankful that I was able to participate in the baking; cooking in the crowded kitchen elbow to elbow with friends; and talking the night away.

Mom, birthday, and more

My 86 year old mother visited last week. Between tasks for the synagogue and wanting to spend time with her, I found no spare moments in which to blog.

We took a shopping trip but found nothing; we ate a fantastic birthday dinner (her treat); we went to the grocery store and Costco; we had dinner twice with friends; and we talked a lot. It was such a treat to cuddle in her bed after Rik went to sleep and talk about everything and nothing. PBS had an amazing two part special on John F Kennedy, who my mother and grandmother really adored. That opened the door for talks on what kind of person he was, what kind of government he led, and her father's involvement in the Democratic party. While the henna on my hands and feet dried, we shmoozed in depth.

As to the birthday, I clearly can't do math. I turned 54 last Friday, which is three times 18. And 18 is a special Jewish number. In Hebrew, all letters have a corresponding numerical value. The word that makes up 18 is chai -- life. So I had a really special birthday this year, but it took my sister and my friend S to tell me about the triple chai part.

Shabbat Shazam!

To celebrate D and C hosted a marvelous dinner with some of my closest friends. Everyone brought delicious food (all my favorites), and C brought at least two slices of six different cakes from Bakery Nouveau (as well as a twice-baked almond croissant or two). It was a very festive evening, complete with "Shabbat Shazam!" from the Superman birthday candle. (Credit again to S, who is so brilliant.)

Mom left before the crack of dawn the next day, and although I got up to say goodbye, I couldn't make it out the door. Rik drove her and managed her through all the hurdles until her escort showed up. What a guy! He sure makes a great husband and sone-in-law. He came home and went back to sleep. At 9 AM I realized I should get up and go to synagogue for the aliyah I'd requested for my birthday, but I couldn't keep my eyes open. Instead I slept until 2:30 PM and made up for a week of missed naps.

I've finished round 11 of Xeloda and see Dr G tomorrow. More to report then.

Haven't blogged in a long time

I am a bad girl. It's just that when I feel well, I don't have so much to say about cancer. It's when I feel bad that I turn to vent on my blog. so it's safe to say I've felt well enough these past two weeks that I stayed away from blogging.

New dog Boychik had to be "vetted" by our vet (this was the day after my last blog post). He was generally healthy, although older than we were told (five instead of three) and had an ear infection, which is so common in cocker spaniels. It's those adorable floppy ears!

The next day was Dunava's concert. It wasn't as well attended as we'd hoped. We want  to raise money to travel to Bulgaria next summer. Most people were already  our followers. Now we have to build an audience that doesn't know us.

I spent the next days recovering from the concert and doing little projects around the house in preparation for the painting of our bedroom. Over the summer Rik noticed water damage over our bed, which we had repaired -- at the price of a new roof! Pete the painter fixed the water damage, cover the entire ceiling with dry wall, and painted our bedroom. The walls are a beautiful teal blue; the ceiling is a lighter shade, and the trim is cream colored. We left the picture rail cream colored as well, so that it would showcase the ceiling color, which extends down to the picture rail. We are very happy with our "aquarium," as Pete calls it.

I saw another ophthalmologist who specializes on cataract surgery. Turns out I developed cataracts from chemotherapy and they have been interfering with my eyesight for several years. My optometrist had told me this story: "When we treat an elderly patient with cataract surgery and s/he dies a few months later, we don't say, oh too bad, he died just after being able to see well. Instead we say, thank goodness his vision was so great during the last few months of his life!" So I will talk with Dr G about cataract surgery next time I see him.

I've started round 11 of Xeloda. More soon!

Quickly - new dog

Dr G approved one more round of Xeloda and is giving me an additional week off, because the hand-foot syndrome is still annoyingly painful. Other than continuing fatigue, I am healthy!

Here are photos of Bobka and Boychik (he's the new one, the cocker spaniel).

Catching up

I realize I haven't been blogging lately. The last bit of Xeloda round 9 really got to my hands and feet. For round 10 I reduced the dose again, but my hands have still not completely recovered. The skin on the tips of my finger is peeling and has little sensation or pain, depending on what I'm trying to do. For instance, for about a week I couldn't turn on a lamp because holding the switch to turn it was so painful. Rik had to cook for a couple of days too, when I found it painful to hold a knife. Fatigue played a role too, and I had a couple of days of diarrhea.

Last week we had painters in the house to fix the bedroom ceiling where water had leaked. We had the roof re-done during the summer, but the painter wasn't available until now. So every day I woke up when Rik left the house, about 6:45 AM, which is very tough on me. The painters arrived around 8 AM every day, but didn't always stay the whole day as things were drying. The result, aside from my fatigue, is a beautiful teal blue color on the walls, a warm cream color on the trim, and a lovely lighter teal on the ceiling. I bought drapes in brown with a teal, green and yellow pattern.

We moved the furniture back in (having slept on the sleeper sofa during the week) and friend L came over and reconnected the dealing fixture. All that's left is to rehang the art, a small mirror, and the Japanese haori jacket S gave me. It's purple with teal trim, so it will look beautiful on the teal blue wall.

More later about our new rescue dog!

End of round ten

I've had ten cycles of Xeloda and am apparently still doing well, although my hands and feet are very bad right now. My hands have that burning sensation and it's hard to use them for anything in small motions, like chopping food with a knife. The webbing between the thumb and forefinger is particularly painful.

My feet are, by turns, either or both numb from neuropathy and painful from hand-foot syndrome. It's hard to walk when I first get out of bed, then it eases up, but after only a couple of hours I can't stand any longer.

I don't mean to only complain in this post, but these side effects are the realities of living with metastatic breast cancer.

Another loss

My support group friend D went into the hospital last week and began comfort care over the weekend. He died today at 3:45 pm, just as we in group had finished talking about him.

Cancer, this terrible disease, strikes too many people at too young an age. D was diagnosed less than a year ago. He came to group filled with anger at his diagnosis and unsure how to react to it. Over the few months I knew him, he moved from anger and frustration to acceptance and focused on living his life with cancer. I am sure going to group helped him to learn coping skills. Meeting other people with advanced cancer also played a big part in his acceptance of his situation.

D was a gentleman in every sense. When B and I needed rides every week this  summer, because Rik was working and he needed our car, D came though week after week. We three developed a deeper relationship during our weekly commutes and even on our last ride, we benefited from one another's wisdom.

D leaves behind a wife and teenage children, as well and many other family and friends. Zichrono l'vracha -- May his memory be for a blessing to all who knew him.

Last catch up

Since we've been back in Seattle I've bought lots of groceries, ran some errands, and taken down my part of the sukkah. We had a sunny afternoon yesterday, and I spent a hour or two taking down the decorations, throwing the s'chach (greenery) off the top of the sukkah, and sweeping the needles and green bits off the deck. (The next day was compost, recycling and garbage day.) I checked all the electric lights before packing them up, and have some of the decorations drying on the table while the rest of the stuff went straight into the storage box.

I made dinner for a shul family needing support, and have two other meals to make on Thursday and Friday. I sure hope no one gets tired of sesame cold noodles!

More catching up

Rik and I went to Vancouver BC for the bar mitzvah of the son of close friends. It was also the first time we took the all-electric Leaf on a road trip...

There are several high-speed charging stations on the highway from Seattle to the Canadian border. We headed for the first one north of us, about 65 miles away. We arrived there basically on "fumes," with only two miles remaining on the car's electric charge. It takes about 30 minutes for the car to charge about 80%.

We then drove to the next charging station, about 20 miles away, and charged again to 80% of maximum. Then we waited about 40 minutes to cross the border. We arrived at our hotel with 12 miles left on the charge. Luckily the hotel has an underground garage with electric outlets scattered throughout. We found the perfect parking spot and plugged in our portable 110 volt cord, and by the next morning the battery was fully charged.

This whole experiment took almost six hours, instead of the usual 2 1/2 plus the wait at the border. We were freaked out as well each time the car battery registered too low, wondering if we were going to make it to the next charging station. We have decided that the Leaf is great for driving in town, but that it sucks as a road trip vehicle.

Otherwise we had a great time. The bar mitzvah boy did extremely well with his singing and his Hebrew. His speech, on Cain and Abel, was insightful. As a younger brother, he brought a lot of personal experiences to his talk. The rabbi did something unusual. For each aliyah, he called up first the out of town guests, then the in-town guests, next family members and lastly the parents and the bar mitzvah boy. It was a most unusual way to involve everyone in the room in the service. And it was the boy's grandfather's birthday, so we sang Happy Birthday to him (and he was extremely pleased).

After a bounteous lunch, we headed back to the hotel and I took a long nap while Rik caught up on Canadian news. We joined our friends and their family and other guests for dinner at an Indian restaurant. Upstairs was a private room, decorated in a traditional manner. The food was yummy and spicy, a three piece jazz combo (two guitars and a bass) played mellow music, and everyone talked.

We met my cousins for breakfast on Sunday morning. It's been great to see them more frequently since they live so close to us, and to get to know their children as they grow up.

The drive home was just like the drive to Vancouver, expect that the border wait took an hour. We were again fried from the stress of not having enough electric charge to make it home, and luckily found an open Nissan dealer with a high-speed charger to get us enough juice to get home. What we would have done at night, I don't know. Probably called the Nissan help line and gotten a ride to a charger. But it would have been terrible to run out of charge on the highway. So no more road trips for the Blue Pumpkin.

So much to catch up on

Let's see ... Our synagogue honored me on Simchat Torah, we drove the Leaf to Vancouver BC to spend the weekend at a bar mitzvah, I took down most of the sukkah, and we might adopt a second dog. Whew!

Every year Beth Shalom honors two members on the holiday of Simchat Torah, when we finish reading the Torah and start it all over again. All the chairs were moved out of the center of the sanctuary, and people were singing and dancing with the Torah scrolls. When it came time to honor us and read the Torah, everyone formed two lines facing each other, and E and I were carried through the lines sitting on chairs. It was very exciting to be so surrounded by our community.

A congregant spoke about both E and I. In her case, the speaker was a woman who is basically her "adopted" daughter and a great teacher. In my case, it was a friend who's known me for a long time. They both said lovely, truthful and thoughtful things about us.

We each received an aliyah to the Torah. I think I received the last aliyah because of details having to do with my Kohen status, but who knows? It could just as easily been age first (E is a senior). At any rate, I looked over the shoulder of the Torah reader to see the beginning of Genesis in its original Hebrew.

After services we ate a good lunch, and then Rik and I headed north to Vancouver BC. See the next post for details.