My Great Breast Cancer Adventure

For Ms. K

My friend Ms.K in NYC has been requesting a photo of my new gray. I was reluctant to blog-reveal what is still a work-in-progress, part old dyed color (reddish brown tips), part new gray'ish white, and part natural dark brown/almost black around the face and nape of my neck. In other words, motley. Also very short again, since I had to go back down to the roots.

But what the heck. I figure I better show Ms. K now, in case I change my mind and plunge into 2007 as a mahogany, burgundy or deep honey auburn.

Gray River Rock

I think about not wearing makeup anymore, and trying to see my face as an aging stone, or a river or a tree or the trunk of a tree… or simply a landscape, ever-changing. Then I order $199.56 worth of Bare Escentuals  concealer, foundation, bronzer, brow liner, lipstick, lip liner and mineral veil.

I am bored and have no idea what to do about it. So I press my lips together tightly, like the thighs of a spinster, and think about Ray Charles, rivers, tides, art, music, fractals, time, smelly feet, splinters, cats, the fragrance of winter greenery.

I am terrified when I think about the possibilities in my life for loss, death, loneliness, depression, poverty, fear, and  physical pain. I hole up in bed with the cat, just the two of us, and sink into imagining other worlds or remembering past lives.

I want to reinvent myself again and again before the end, like a chunk of red zinc that trickles out from a gray river rock, turning itself into all sorts of surprising and interesting designs.

The Kids, The Tree, Christmas Eve

The kids from L to R: Blake, 25; Emerald, 21, Will, 23.

The Connection Between HRT and Breast Cancer

HRT: Recent Study Results In Perspective

You may have heard that the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study conclusively showed that women who took Prempro, a type of hormone replacement therapy, had an increased breast cancer risk and no reduced cardiovascular disease risk. A closer look suggests that differences between the women who did and did not take Prempro may be due to other causes, not Prempro.

The study found an exceedingly small difference in breast cancer risk between those who did and did not take Prempro – 8 in 10,000 women a year, or eight hundredths of one percent. Even this small difference is unlikely to be due to hormone use, however.

Most breast cancers are thought to take over eight years to be detected. Therefore, a breast cancer that started in the first year of the study, after a woman started taking Prempro, would probably not be found for eight or more years. The study followed women for only about five years, so all or most of the reported breast cancers were probably present, but undetected, before the study began.

It is unlikely that Prempro caused breast cancers to grow more rapidly and be detected sooner. A number of studies have found that women who were using hormones when their breast cancers were detected did not have larger or more rapidly dividing cancers than women who were not taking hormones when their breast cancer was found.

The very small annual differences in cardiovascular disease – 7 cases of heart disease and 8 of stroke per 10,000 women – are also unlikely to be due to Prempro. In this study, most women started taking Prempro at an average age of 63. Therefore, for ten or more years after menopause most were without the cardiovascular benefits of replacement hormones that other studies find. In these years, some may have developed cardiovascular disease which couldn’t be corrected by taking Prempro for an average of five years. The cardiovascular disease risks found in this study apply to women who start using hormones ten or more years after menopause, not to women who begin using hormones at menopause.

In the WHI study a woman’s risk was assessed as if she were taking Prempro throughout the study, even if she stopped using it. A whopping 42% discontinued Prempro use during the study.  Different risks may be found when calculations are based on a woman’s actual Prempro use, not a woman’s assigned use. 

Most importantly, women who used Prempro did NOT have a higher mortality than non-users.  In fact, by the end of the study, Prempro users began to have a lower mortality rate than non-users.

The Prempro regimen is one in which both a synthetic estrogen and a progestin are taken every day. The results of this study therefore do not apply to other, newer approaches in which more natural hormones are used and in which a progestin is taken only part of the time.

The results of this and previous studies suggest that if hormone replacement therapy increases breast cancer risk, it does so to a very small extent.

I received the handout above from:

Patricia T. Kelly, Ph.D.
Cancer Risk Assessment and Genetic Testing
510-527-8938      
Website: www.ptkelly.com

Storm Happy

Wasn't the storm great last night? I woke up at some unknown dark hour and listened, enraptured, to the arctic-like wind howling and moaning and banging against shutters and doors...and trees groaning...and trash cans clattering and rolling down the streets. . . and I thought it was just grand.

At 8 a.m. Jack and I and Olivia bundled up and paid a visit to Bernal Hill, where we were almost blown off our feet and over various edges several times. I brilliantly wore, however, a hooded jacket, tied cozily round my neck, and thus did not have Jack's annoying little problem of having to chase his ball cap across the hill, twice. Others were losing their hats, too. One man bent down to pet Olivia, his cap blew off, and our storm-happy daffy doggie girl ran and fetched it for him.

I loved all the excitment and drama of pouring rain and wild, whipping winds. We stayed up on the wind-crazed hill with our wind-crazed dog for a good hour, and all the wind craziness was crazy wonderful.

Later we took Jack's daughter Emerald to see Traces - her first time, our third. I plan to go a fourth time, too, before it ends on Monday.

Now I'm on the couch at 9 p.m. with my glass of beet kvass, taking good care of my liver so that it will take good care of ME. Mmmmmmm.

Memories of Puppy Class II

 
Olivia goes wild in our final Puppy Class II.

And then, sadly, we must go home.

But Puppy Class III is coming up in 2007. In the meantime, we're practicing "Wait!" and "Heel" and "Come!" (outside, from a distance - a tricky one if she's busy and having fun elsewhere, i.e. playing with her friends up on Bernal Hill.) But progress is being made. Yesterday when we were down on the road that goes around the hill, she took off UP the side of the hill, a vertical route that we could not follow. She disappeared over the top of the hill. Gone.

We called her. Nothing. We called again. Nothing. We called again, and her little head appeared, peeping over the edge and down at us from afar. "OLIVIA! COME! COME, OLIVIA!!!!"

She thought about it for a few seconds, and then WHOOSH, down the steep incline she came, at top speed, her ears flying back, her eyes focused on US. What a gloriously triumphant puppy training moment! 

Lenore Goes Gray

Dying her hair was a luxury Lenore could no longer afford. Besides, she wanted to know how she would look with gray hair. She'd been dying it since the first few strands of silver had started to appear fifteen years ago. Even so, she had to fight the urge to make another appointment at the salon. Vacillation. Maybe she should color it as if it were feathers, turn her plumage into a rainbow of colors. Incessant vacillation.

She longed for the shape of an egg, or the shape of a heart etched in stone. On a wall. In a cave. Her longings made no sense. She wandered upstairs, sat at her desk, the dog at her feet, her hair waiting, just that thin line between the color gray and the color of deception, camouflage, denial, vanity, disguise.

Not that she felt she had been lying for all those years. Not really. So why? Why now? Why this need to allow the supposed truth of her hair? Did it have something to do with the end of the world as she had known it? Could she sustain her determination to remain gray, washed out, a pale ghost of her former, darker self with such a lovely hint of auburn underglow? She'd had a secret, out of sight of everyone. Now it had been revealed..

She wandered downstairs to heat her morning broth and refrained from looking at herself in the hallway mirror. Concentrate, she thought, on the meadow in your mind's eye. Or no, wait, look how the shadows in the ceiling have gone crazy! Sip from the yellow cup. When the sun shines just so, note that it casts the most beautiful colors on the old, worn linoleum. She'd had a secret, out of sight of everyone. Now it had been revealed. Such a simple thing but, even so, now a trying exercise in perception.

What was it, what was it that made it worth the risk? There was no evidence to prove that what she had done would work, but the dice had been thrown. Her father stood in the doorway lecturing, pontificating, refusing to let her pass. Now he was dead in the dirt, she had spent what he'd left behind, and was on her own.

Had she made a mistake when she sold the yellow Rambler convertible, replaced it with a Plymouth hardtop and a pregnancy? She missed the vodkas, the nasty pelvic dancing, all the other banished sins and their down low harmonicas. Now she drove a Volkswagen Golf. Now her son was grown and gone.

She wanted back the lecherous liars and triple decker sandwiches, yet here she was nibbling on apples and basil, hungry for a fight with Jack in the aisles of Costco. Where was Paul at this very second? And what about Tom? And Frank? And whatever had happened to long ago Ted? She most missed the ones who had also been her friends. They kept showing up.

Her knees ached against the billowing comforter, her ears rang against the sound of the early morning furnace blare, her gray hair went on challenging, punishing, casting doubts right and left. Meanwhile, her left breast continued to do its twinge and ache routine.

She spent more and more time in the past, burning up, sucked into the sky of it, until one day she walked into the back yard and the automatic sprinkler came on, and she went back into the living room wet, picked up her cup of chamomile tea and a cigarette, lowered herself into the armchair next to the couch, and formally began to rearrange her molecules.

When the tea began to rust, she forced a smile, and a tiny avalanche of ashes broke off the end of the cigarette, fell onto the coffee table. Her lips cracked as they parted. She couldn't stop thinking about how she'd met him — and him and him and him —  at the party, at the auto repair shop, at the bookstore, in the restaurant, on the grass, on the sidewalk, through a personals ad, and so on down the line.

At 9:19 p.m. she heard a thump. At 9:26 p.m. she thought she heard his — or his or his — footsteps on the stairs, but she was wrong. At 9:28 p.m. she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, rocked herself back and forth, and thought she heard him say her name, but she was wrong again.

Everything was out of order, and she was being eaten alive. By housework. By routines. By the mundane. So she went alone — why bring anyone else along? — down a road that led toward what appeared to be an impossibly dead end. She went on foot. Wearing a sweater that looked ridiculous — too young, too tight.

There had been men who said she had a nice voice, who had applauded her confidence in bed, and it had been true at the time. She had been so on, so hot, so perfect a sexual creature, really.

She hoisted the sturdy new brown backpack up onto her shoulders and walked down the street looking for a clock. She had one hour left on the meter. Every time she saw her reflection in a store window, her hair gave her a shock. She had assured herself that the gray would be interesting, a statement of fearlessness, acceptance and even rebellion. 

Her dreams in the past week had been vividly erotic, every night a different man from her past would appear to haunt and taunt her. First Frank, then Paul, then Ted, then Tom, then Nate. Who would come next, and why?

She was old enough to be a grandmother now. The gray would have been fine in a  culture less vain, less obsessed with surfaces. She thought of Paul, how every time they had been together they had undressed within the first ten minutes — how wonderful that had been at first, and how horrible it had become, at last. What was this gray all about? What was this sad little sojourn that pushed her further down the lane into the land of spoiled milk and dirty laundry? Was it about lymph nodes and metastasis and angels? Or was it about lazy ceiling fans rotating above her head, slowing her down into some kind of final, balmy nakedness?

What was it, what was it that made it worth the risk?

Traces

Someone from the SF Circus Center recently mentioned to me that I could see a video snippet of Will (scroll down) and his hand-to-hand partner, Heloise Bourgeois, doing the piece that they performed in Montreal last year during their graduation show (graduation from L'Ecole Nationale de Cirque). Those who saw him in "Traces" may wonder why he looks so different in this snippet. Hint: Everyone in that coolly bizarre show wore a black, Beatles-like wig (and white underwear).

Also, I've neglected to announce the fact that Will's show (Traces, at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater through June 1st) was a big hit with everyone I've talked to who has seen it. Will says it's getting better every day, as they get more and more into the groove and vibe of being back here performing in their own hometown after a year of galavanting through England, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, Australia, etc. etc.

Here's the promo video for "Traces" taken when they were performing in Berlin, I think. Or maybe Montreal. It still gives me the shivers.

Honky Moosey, Salmon, Etc.

Tonight we're doing a Christmas Eve dinner for five: me, Jack, his two grown children, Emerald and Blake, and my Will. Last year, in lieu of singing carols, we played poker after dinner, and we might do the same this year. Practical presents for our children will be slipped into unwrapped envelopes.

Dinner, per my adamant, semi-scroogey request, will be simply a hybrid Thanksgiving/Christmas/Non-Holiday combo: ordinary run-of-the-mill appetizers (crackers, dip, little carrots from Good Life), organic red and white wines, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans with royal trumpet mushrooms, stuffing made from Three Stone Hearth cornbread stuffing mix and artisan bread, cranberry sauce also made by Three Stone Hearth, SALMON in a tarragon/butter sauce, instead of ham, roast, turkey or goose, and gingerbread cookies (from pre-made cookie dough also from Three Stone Hearth) with vanilla ice cream.

The potatoes and vegetables will be slathered with delicious and healthy cultured butter from Vermont, and seasoned with mineral rich Celtic sea salt.

I've also agreed to a small Christmas tree that will have to be hung from the ceiling, however, because Olivia has a strong penchant for ripping the bottom branches off of any plants she can get her mouth on. Yesterday it was a branch from the large lavender bush in the back yard. And I've already given Ms. Livvy B. an early Christmas present - an adorable stuffed moose, about a foot long and quite fat, that has squeakers in all four legs and a loud, loud honker in the middle.

Our little huntress loves galloping across long distances to fetch her moosey, then shaking it with EXTREME, NECK-BREAKING FORCE from side to side, then making it squeak and honk many times, then proudly, prancingly bringing it back to be thrown again. One of its fuzzy, saliva-encrusted ears, alas, now lies on the kitchen shelf.

 

In the Land of Uncertainty

Many times a day Lenore swallowed Chinese herbal extracts, cod liver oil, Vitamin D, Wheat germ oil, vitamin B, CO Q10, iodine, testosterone, Super Eff, Immuplex, black Spanish radish, mammary PMG, glucosamine sulfate, curcumin, probiotics, melatonin, beet kvass, kombucha tea, homemade broths, sauerkraut and other fermented vegetable condiments, raw butter, raw cream, kefir, yogurt, grass-fed beef, free-range poultry, nitrate-free bacon, wild salmon, organ meats, naturally leavened sourdough bread, coconut oil, coconut water, coconut juice, coconut butter, olive oil, grapeseed oil, crispy almonds, crispy walnuts, crispy cashews, goji berries, whey-soaked grains, sprouted seeds, celtic sea salt, Stevia powder instead of sugar, cruciferous organic vegetables at least twice a day, antioxidant fruits, minimal carbohydrates, decaffeinated coffee, and the occasional glass of sulfite-free, organic wine.

That was some of what she swallowed. Not all, but some.

She took this list as evidence of her will to live, metastasis to her lymph nodes bedamned. She had not run out of options. Options tumbled out from under her feet, floated in midair, lectured at her from the kitchen. Pots and pans used the stove as their podium. The beet kvass glared at her with dark red sternness; it was as if it could see right through her skin, with some kind of x-ray vision, into her bones and liver and kidneys. Drink me at least twice a day, it commanded. Detoxify.

The joints in her ankles and knees were suddenly killing her. Malfunctioning. Disintegrating. Walking the dog was more difficult now. What did it signify? Another possible sign of death creeping up too close, too fast? Or simply a long-term, chronic side effect of the last medication that she had stopped after only three weeks because it made her feel so awful?

She spent whole nights listening to mysterious clunkings, or wandering lost and unenrolled on college campuses, or running from nasty tidal waves. Every morning she struggled to swim up from the murky bottom, to get herself back into the light of coffee. Who knew? Death and disease had the whole world stumped. Her breast continued to twinkle with twinges and aches, unidentifiable prickles, stinging sensations that came and went without rhyme or reason.

They'd created machines to monitor the state of her mammary glands, but her faith in them was limited. False positives, false negatives, useless diagnostic and prognostic pronouncements leading to what? Sweatier palms? More hidden staircases leading to more doors leading to the land of continuing uncertainty? More destinationless prayers? If her coastline was indeed being eaten away, would it really help to know the rate at which she was disappearing?

Jack's huge dark green couch was much too big for their small living room. The overstuffed pillows that came with the couch also took up too much space. There weren't enough big windows, either. The dining room was depressingly dark. Between her back and the window was a pillow, the background of which they had used to help them pick out wall colors for the office. Pale green and amber. Later she'd  find ways to add splashes of pinot noir red, and a bit of blue, to match the abstract wisps of flower designs. Ah well, someday. There were plans in the making. But would she live long enough to see them come to fruition? Underneath all her diet changes and dreams of coconut oil miracles, this question remained to gnaw, hour after hour, at her days. Where had  the last 54 years gone? A boring and unoriginal question, she knew. But, given the situation, she was allowed.

One cloudy Friday she bought a hand-knit scarf that looked like a beautiful, crazy rainstorm. It suited her perfectly, because every few minutes her life felt like a tree meant to be torn apart by wind and electricity. She could go back to the hospital, pay for more blood tests and imaging, radioactive injections and fancy scans. She could climb inside big machines, count for hundreds of seconds, then wait on needles and pins for inconclusive interpretations.

Or she could wait and see.

Olivia Visits the Water

Yesterday I took a couple of hours off from work (yes, working on Sunday, trying to finish the Writing Salon website for the next session of classes) to go with Jack and Olivia to check out McLaren Park's dog play area which, we'd heard, offers a swimming pond for the doggies. The only large water Olivia has ever seen is the ocean at Fort Funston. She did go into it, fearless and crazily, when she was only five months old, because she was trying to follow the big labs who KNEW how to swim. I don't think Olivia actually SWAM, though. She just got carried out and then back in by the wave, and then we got nervous that she might get swept away by the undertow, so we forbade further wild ocean play until she became older and wiser.

But how about a docile pond?

Well, she was extremely interested and eager to DRINK the water, first of all. She ran like a maniac onto the slippery rocks, where she began to wobble and fall, her chin hitting rocks, her legs splayed willy nilly. She stuck her paws into the water several times, but always pulled them back out when she  encountered NO FLOOR. Huh?

Finally she got three-quarters of her body wet, but then turned chicken again. Such vacillation!

Then there were the ducks. Ah, the ducks. So much to see!!!

Sun on water, self's own face in water, a fluffy new friend with whom to share all the sparkling reflections...yes, the whole wonderful water shebang (except for the swimming part...she couldn't quite muster up enough courage. But I think it's just a matter of time, and maybe a buoyant hot dog floating out there for her to go after). Or maybe I can persuade Jack to get in the water and coax her out. Or maybe we'll get her a little doggie life jacket, for starters. The Internet is full of advice if you type in a search for: how to teach your dog to swim.

Mussy-Haired Acrobat Boy

Here he is, just in from a long plane flight from Montreal, on Sunday.

Today he's rehearsing, then resting up for the big American Premiere of his show, "Traces," (produced by the Montreal circus, Les Septs Doigts De La Main) running at the Palace of Fine Arts from Dec. 13th through Jan. 2nd.

Please order your tickets if you haven't already! It's a "nouveau cirque" show for all ages. You'll love it, plus you'll be supporting the work of young, innovative circus artists who get very little if any funding in the U.S. and too often end up doing nothing but boring corporate gigs. That's why they all end up moving to Canada or Europe, where circus (way beyond Barnum &  Baily) is much more appreciated, especially smaller circus troupes that may not be as huge as Cirque du Soleil but often have just as talented of performers.

View from My Hill, Friday Morning

Took little Livvy B. out for a romp this morning before starting my work day. God do I ever love Bernal Hill.

Lime Mousse and More

Monday afternoon, just back from taking Ms. Olivia Bouchet for a play-time at St. Mary's Rec Center dog run. Actually, the dog run was closed due to this terrible beautiful sunny weather, so the sign said. Apparently the grassy field was shoddily created over an old tennis court, so when the rainy season comes, the field doesn't drain properly, and even though it hasn't rained for a few days, what's under the green grass remains soggy.

Fortunately, however, another lone dog owner was sitting on the baseball field bleachers, saw us crossing the baseball diamond (not the same as the dog run area), and called out, "Wanna let your dog play with my dog?" The person was sort of an iffy looking guy with a pit bull, but Oliva was chomping at the bit, I wanted her to have some fun, and the guy said, "Don't worry. Q-Tip is six years old, neutered and as gentle as they come."

I took a chance, and Olivia and Q-Tip had the time of their lives rolling wildly over and over in the grass and play-biting at each other's necks, nonstop, for a good solid thirty minutes. At one point Olivia led Q-Tip on a merry chase all around the field, and a good time was had by all.

Last night Oliva stayed home while Jack and I went to another Full Moon Feast made by the folks at Three Stone Hearth Community Kitchen. The theme for this repast was "forbidden foods," and included things like raw cheese and homemade sasparilla. Our salad was sprinkled with delicious sweet pomegranate seeds, the pork loin and scalloped potatoes were hearty, and the melt-in-your mouth creamy luscious lime mousse dessert was my favorite.

After dinner we listened to a talk by Sandor Ellix Katz, author of  a book I actually happen to own, Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition and Craft of Live-Culture Foods, with a forward by Sally Fallon, author of my favorite cookbook ever, Nourishing Traditions (both books are already in my sidebar, by the way, if you want to order one through Amazon.com). Ellix has just written a new book, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, and he'll be giving another talk tonight at Modern Times Bookstore on Valencia (info. here).

When Jack and I got home, we heard a resounding thump upstairs, as Oliva leaped off of Jack's bed, which she is forbidden to be on unless we are with her AND she is on her special blanket. But we forgave her this transgression because we had forgotten to put HER bed, which she loves . . .

. . .back down onto the floor after we'd washed it. What else was she supposed to do? Sleep on the CARPET?  Heavens to Mergatroid!  The poor darling pup had no choice but civil disobedience.