My Great Breast Cancer Adventure

Beer, Lantern, Warm Night

Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

I suppose my three or four readers have given up on me lately, given my lack of posts. But I'm almost able to see the light at the end of my latest work crunch, and by the middle of next week I'll be moving into my "reduced" (regular) work phase as opposed to the "accelerated" phase that comes four times a year, two months prior to each new Writing Salon session. Wahoo!

Last night at around 7:30 p.m. Jack insisted that I close the laptop lid, turn off the drone of the TV that I wasn't even really watching, and go sit on the porch looking out onto the backyard. He said it was still warm outside, with no wind whatsoever, and that the moon would be coming up soon. I doubted that it was still warm out (I hadn't set foot outside all day and had no sense of the weather), but I semi-reluctantly acquiesced. He poured us some beer,  lit a candle in a lantern, and lo, it WAS still warm... and still, and the waning moon did rise up, almost full, a lovely ivory with a hint of yellow.

We chatted and sipped, Olivia sat at our feet, and we could hear the summery voices of people passing by, just beyond the fence. I felt the urge to run back upstairs and get my camera and try to take a few night shots, maybe some that included Jack, but in the end I just stayed put. There will be other evenings for exploring night photography (as opposed to my usual daylight shots of, say,  beautiful brick walls — the kind that we come up against almost every day).

Traces

Traces
Originally uploaded by 4mul8

The very nice man (known as "4mul8" on Flickr) — who took a photo of Will performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (which I stumbled across by pure accident on Flickr) has since posted four more lovely photos of Will and/or his co-performers. He sent me an email to let me know this, and also to say that he and his wife thought the show, "Traces," was "amazing." (He also mentioned that before moving to Edinburgh, he and his wife lived in the Bay Area and are now on the verge of returning; isn't it a small world?)

In this photo you can see Will's hunky back, upon which a game of tic-tac-toe is being played.

Oh, and here's the latest email from Will, which I got yesterday:

The festival is going great. We are a huge hit. We have been sold out every night, 600 seats, for two weeks now. Just 3 more shows to do! Nassib is here, and he is getting more offers from producers than he can handle.

Val [Will's sweetie, who is currently studying at L'Ecole Nationale du Cirque, from which Will graduated two years ago] came for 12 days, and we had a great time. She left yesterday to go back to school.. .boring. I am seeing at least one show a day. There is so much to see... dance, theater, music, stand up, street shows, hypnotists, and weird stuff you have to see to believe, some good, some just weird. The month went by really fast and it looks like I will be back in Montreal on the 28th. Talk to you soon.
Love you mom.
Will

Traces

Traces
Originally uploaded by 4mul8

There's Will standing at the base of the pole, with his knee bent, looking especially muscular.

Traces

Traces
Originally uploaded by 4mul8

That's Will at the very top. I"m not sure who is below him...maybe Francisco?

Olivia Daydreaming

Olivia Daydreaming
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

I love my dog. I urge you, too, to love my dog. As Baby I is to the Great Plotnik, so Olivia is to the Great Moi. I am of the belief that one can never post enough photos of one's dog or one's children (I would post more of my child if he were here for me to take pictures of! Alas, I believe he is still in Edinburgh.

What more can I say? Not much. I am engulfed in scheduling new classes for the Fall Session of the Writing Salon...and turning the Summer website into the Fall website. 'Tis a tedious and time-consuming task. One's eyes blur, one's lower back aches, one's brain becomes addled by things like html codes and proofreading and editing and linking and saving and re-saving, ad nauseum.

Romantic young writers who come here to take classes often exclaim that I have such a cool job, to be able to run the Writing Salon. They think I'm lolling about with other writers all day and night, having artsy intellectual fascinating conversations about characterization and plot and vivid imagery, I guess. Their naivete makes me feel ridiculously wise.

Door to Nowhere

Door to Nowhere
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Yet another reason for loving Bernal Heights. I've tried walking around upper Noe Valley a couple of times in the last couple of months, but even though it's fancier over there, it's also less interesting. It lacks the funky and often mysterious idiocyncracies of Bernal. Of course, Bernal is changing rapidly now, and I rue the day it becomes as gentrified as Noe Valley. They're already paving the last of the "secret" little dirt roads we used to meander along up by Bernal Hill, feeling like we were out in the country. Also adding sidewalks and flights of stairs where once there were only dirt paths.

I see the writing on the wall. Where will we move to when Bernal has been buffed and polished to too high of a sheen? Rumor has it that the Bayview District may be the next frontier.

After the MOMA

Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

We went to see the Matisse exhibit yesterday, and I have to say that I pretty much hate Matisse's sculptures. I don't care about all the high falutin' analyses about "what the artist intended, blah blah blah." I think he makes the female form look grotesque and ugly, period. But I still love his brilliant still life compositions and joyful colors; I always will.

My favorite part of our excursion, though, was the Modern Photography exhibit. As a novice photographer, I can choose to either  be grossly intimidated and depressed by the gap between my own ABC/123 efforts. . . and the work of masters. . . or I can be inspired.

I choose inspired. To that end, after we got back home I asked Jack what he liked best of the shots I took over the last couple of days. He chose the one above, of a porch at the corner of Ogden and Andover.

Optical Illusion and a Life Lesson

Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Today's "shadow play" photo makes me smile partly because it makes me think again of Marta Becket, the "American treasure" who lives in the almost-ghost-town of Death Valley Junction, CA, and who refers to her life as an artist as her "world of illusion." (See yesterday's post.)

I snapped this over in the Great Plotnik's neck of the woods, after forcing myself to leave Bernal Heights and venture aaalllllll the way over to the Glen Park/Edge of Noe Valley area, where Olivia and I mosied (moseyed?) up and down such streets as Whitney, Harper, Laidley and Chenery, and I did my usual thing of focusing (why are we drawn to what we're drawn to? who knows?) mostly on brick, cement, decay, fences, little bits of architecture, and the occasional flower.

In the last few weeks of this GPO of mine (Great Photography Obsession), I've learned something BIG: You find the time to do what you really want to do. You find it because you make it. You make it because something drives you to make it.

I've spent a huge amount of time on this photography thing lately, and it's time I never knew I had to spare. I certainly did NOT have it to spare for my writing, apparently... nor for exercising, cooking, housecleaning or working any harder at my Writing Salon endeavors.

This is an epiphany for me. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it or about it, but I can't ignore it. It seems like it might be one of my biggest life lessons, ever.

Memories of Amargosa

USA06_DV_01_DeathValleyJunction_14
Originally uploaded by FriedrichB

My last post was about the Atacama desert, which made me think about the trip that Jack and I took, five years ago, to Death Valley. The reason we went was because I had seen a documentary on KQED about the life of dancer Marta Becket, who lives in Amargosa, and I was so moved and amazed by this video, I just HAD to go there, myself. I had to see Marta Becket perform, and I had to see this desert . . . and this town of Death Valley Junction in Amargosa.

Following through on the urge to make that trip happen was one of the absolute best things I've ever done, EVER. What an experience.

I just discovered that this documentary is now (finally) available on Netflix, so I rented it and oh my god, I love it as much now as I did the first time. I want to own it and watch it whenever I need to.

If you are someone for whom creativity, art and individuality are high priorities, rent this movie!!! It will inspire you to no end.

The photo above is one I found on Flickr, of the painting that Marta Becket did on the wall of the room that Jack and I stayed in at the Amargosa Hotel. There are many more great photos of Death Valley, Death Valley Junction, Amargosa. and Marta Becket on Flickr. They make me want to go back.

Atacama

Atacama: a Múmia
Originally uploaded by Andrecx

I armchair traveled to the Atacama desert this morning. Since I love deserts but knew nothing about the Atacama (except for the eight Flickr photos I was looking at, taken by a Brazilian man who added me to his list of "Flickr contacts") I looked it up on Google. In the very first article I came to (a National Geographic excerpt), I learned a few facts:

Stretching 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from Peru's southern border into northern Chile, the Atacama Desert rises from a thin coastal shelf to the pampas—virtually lifeless plains that dip down to river gorges layered with mineral sediments from the Andes. . .

. . . At its center, a place climatologists call absolute desert, the Atacama is known as the driest place on Earth. There are sterile, intimidating stretches where rain has never been recorded, at least as long as humans have measured it. You won't see a blade of grass or cactus stump, not a lizard, not a gnat. But you will see the remains of most everything left behind. The desert may be a heartless killer, but it's a sympathetic conservator. Without moisture, nothing rots. Everything turns into artifacts. Even little children.

It is a shock then to learn that more than a million people live in the Atacama today. They crowd into coastal cities, mining compounds, fishing villages, and oasis towns. International teams of astronomers—perched in observatories on the Atacama's coastal range—probe the cosmos through perfectly clear skies. Determined farmers in the far north grow olives, tomatoes, and cucumbers with drip-irrigation systems, culling scarce water from aquifers. In the altiplano, the descendants of the region's pre-Columbian natives (mostly Aymara and Atacama Indians) herd llamas and alpacas and grow crops with water from snowmelt streams. . . .

That's as far as the excerpt went. To read the rest, we have to bite the bullet and subscribe to National Geographic.

The part that stood out for me was: "Without moisture, nothing rots. Everything turns into artifacts. Even little children."

That makes you stop and think, doesn't it? The whole world is endlessly fascinating. We're so fortunate to live in it, even with all the misery that we generate. It's enough to make you walk around in a constant state of simultaneously laughing with profound joy and crying with profound grief.

Happenstance!

Traces
Originally uploaded by 4mul8

I was flitting around on Flickr this morning, checking out photos that I liked. Saw one of a sad clown and decided to add it to my growing list of favorites. Then I noticed that it had been taken at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and I thought, "Gee, I wonder if anyone has taken a photo from Will's show and put it in Flickr." So I did a search, and within a few seconds this photo popped up!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go back and see if I can find any more.

Huddled in the Corner

Huddled in the Corner
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

I was briskly walking the last block home (my return trip from a once-around of Bernal Hill) when I looked down to my right and noticed this mysterious huddled form. I stopped to wonder how many times I had passed by but never seen it before. Many, I am sure. Too many.

It really got to me.
 

Huddled in the Corner, Closer

Huddled in the Corner, Closer
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Another View of Sweet Olivia Bouchet

Olivia
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Isn't her curled up backside adorable as an abstract? As a study in texture and light?

Click on the photo, then click on the link at the bottom of the photo to view her on black. (I just learned how to do the black background thing; a nice person on Flickr showed me.)

Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Bus stop, 30th and Mission.

Dizzy in Walgreen's

Dizzy in Walgreen's
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Five years ago I began to go through menopause and was hit hard by many of the worst symptoms: hot flashes day and night, loss of libido, severe insomnia, night sweats, bladder problems (i.e. I pee'd fifty times a day), and all the other problems that come when you aren't sleeping enough - inability to think clearly (fog brain, "cotton brain"), anxiety, stress, grouchiness, etc. Life became hell.

I put up with it as long as I could, trying to just go the "natural," and "accepting" route...and trying to believe those who were saying (doctors, the media) that this was all "natural" and I shouldn't fight it but rather should attempt to go as gracefully through it as I could (albeit maybe with the help of herbs or meditation or antidepressants - anything but hormones).

What a load of crap. I couldn't FUNCTION. Fortunately, a friend referred me to a doctor who got me on HRT (hormone replacement therapy). I did this even though the WHI study was all over the news at the time; I decided to ignore it because: a) my doctor told me all the reasons why the study was flawed, and said that the media was getting it all wrong, and b) I did some research on my own, which made me question the validity of that study, which had caused droves of women to stop taking HRT.

After I'd been on HRT for a couple of years (time to really get it all balanced and adjusted), I was diagnosed with breast cancer. The first thing every oncologist told me (I went to four, all highly recommended) was that I'd have stop my HRT, as soon as possible. A couple of them even told me that they wouldn't take me as a patient unless I stopped it, first).

I was aghast. How could I go back to the state I'd been in before, ESPECIALLY when I was about to plunge into having to deal with BREAST CANCER decisions and treatments? My god.

I tried to do more research and discovered that there was some controversy about whether HRT really did cause or exacerbate breast cancer, and I wanted to examine my findings more closely, but I was terrified, and every single conventional doctor made me feel that I was under the gun and didn't have time to mess around with my silly ideas.

So I stopped it, and then I spent the next year drowning in the resurgence all those awful side effects WHILE  at the same time attempting to make serious, serious decisions, and take all sorts of actions that would directly affect my chances of survival.

Finally, after going through all the stuff that you can read about in this blog, if you want to go back two years, I came to the conclusion that I never should have stopped HRT in the first place, and that stopping it had most likely contributed to a decrease in my overall chances of survival.

So I went back on it, and here's a YouTube video that I think every woman should watch. It's 10 minutes long, validates my decision, and could possibly change your life if you are suffering from menopause and think there's no way out (whether you do or don't have breast cancer).

Oh, and today's photo isn't high art, but it fits this post because I took it while waiting to get my refill for estradiol (bioidentical) and progesterone (bioidentical). I also take testosterone (a cream, not a patch, even though in Europe women can get patches). Listen to the video!

Inside the Machine

Inside the Machine
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

It's 10 p.m. on Friday night, which means my 23-year-old son is probably just beginning to perform...or ending a performance and about to go out on the town (which would be Edinburgh, Scotland right now). He sent me a CD that arrived today, one with photostreams and music and video movies of his recent travels and "Traces" shows in Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Seoul, etc. I sat on the couch pushing Play and grinning and then crying (did you hear that Ms. Mush?). Couldn't help myself, I was just so proud of him and amazed by him and thrilled and delighted and of course still attached by the invisible umbilical cord that never got cut.

But I am so un-wild tonight, so ready for bed. It's all I can do to post this pic, which I know you've always wanted to see: one look at part of the the insides of a bulldozer. I had to keep giving Olivia little treats, so that she'd wait without whining, as I tried to figure out how to get a good bulldozer photo. Since I started taking all these photos, she's actually getting much better at waiting! And then I return the favor, waiting without whining while she sniffs for forever at various trees and corners. We're sympatico.

Today's View from My Office

Today's View from My Office
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Another chilly, sun-less August day in San Francisco. . . but hey, at least we have our gorgeous hills, views and magical neighborhoods such as my beloved Bernal Heights. We must never take them for granted, because they are exquisite.

JackTells It Like It Is

JackTells It Like It Is
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

"You wanna pass your contractor's license exam? Okay, listen up. ..here's how you do it."

Yep, Jackie has been studying like a fiend for the last month or so, and it all paid off. He just took and passed his exam for his contractor's license. So I took him out to celebrate last night. We went to the new Peruvian restaurant (forgot the name of it) on the corner of Cortland and Gates. It's not cheap but we were both quite happy with our feast.

The next two pics are of WHAT I ATE. I forgot to run around to Jack's side of the table to snap shots of what HE ate, which was a plate full of shrimp, clam and mussell, followed by some sort of dreamily pale, ethereal looking "caramel merengue" dessert.

These pics are my way of paying homage to the Great Plotnik (see my sidebar if you want to visit his blog), who is the master of taking food photos that make you want to go on a diet just from looking at them.

Peruvian Quinoa Crusted Salmon in Red Curry Sauce with. . .

Peruvian Quinoa Crusted Salmon in Red Curry Sauce with. . .
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Peruvian Chocolate Cake with Lucuma Ice Cream and Caramel Sauce

Peruvian Chocolate Cake with Lucuma Ice Cream and Caramel Sauce
Originally uploaded by my.third.eye

Obsessions Are Fun

Buried within the overall category of "My Current Photography Obsession" are numerous subcategories of obsessions, one of them being "Fences."

So. . . since I haven't felt much like writing lately, here's a link to my "Fence Poems" set. Every fence has a history, a psyche, a story, a need to express itself. Or so I like to think.

P.S. - On another note, here's a link to a post I did a year ago, one that I hope could be helpful to any woman who wants to be more informed about breast cancer and its treatment options.