It's Not Cancer

The relief I feel is palpable. It's not cancer.

My gynecologist called me when -- get this -- I was in a timeshare presentation in Hawaii, the Big Island. I excused myself, walked outside and walked on the grass next to the ocean. What an ironically beautiful place to take such a phone call, I thought.

I didn't understand most of what Dr P tried to explain to me -- after all, in stressful times like this, I only picked up on two terms ("there's no cancer" and "you'll need an operation"), but I did pick up that there's definitely abnormal activity going on in the endometrial wall. So much so that Dr P told me that she advocated for a complete hysterectomy. When she asked me how I felt about that, I said I was all for it.

Imagine being in paradise but unable to go in the water because you're on a perpetual bleeding cycle. One that won't quit. This operation will finally take care of that.

She did add in the conversation that she'll set up an oncologist to be on call during my operation, a Dr. Stern. Dr Stern will advise Dr P during the hysterectomy if more tissue or lymph nodes should be removed.

Stacy, the scheduling maven, called me later to advise me to call Dr Stern's office tomorrow to be scheduled for his end of the operation.

And so it begins.

The Biopsy Is Over

My in-hospital but out-patient biopsy was done yesterday. It took all day.

But gosh, it was pain-free for the most part, except for the tech who tried to stick the needle in my hand over and over. I took two little pills -- actually, they rested between my cheek and teeth and just dissolved. They opened up my cervix to make it easier to insert the camera through the cervix to the uterus. So I felt some cramping from that, a little disturbing until I remembered where it was coming from. My doctor, Dr. Vineela Paddatoori, had prepared me well.

The object of this surgical procedure was to do a biopsy of several parts of the uterine wall while using an inserted camera to see where the best samples might be. And to do a PAP smear. I haven't had a biopsy since 1978. And have never had a PAP smear.



I was too far out of it to remember Dr. P's visit with me, but she explained to my partner, Ruth, that the lighter parts of the picture are the parts about which we should be concerned. The parts which may indicate uterine cancer.

She took 11 camera shots of the lining of the wall. It looks quite disturbing. We won't know the official results for another week or so. And, really, we won't know the results until Dr. P. interprets it all for us.

Right now, I feel great. Post-op has been really easy. For now, we wait. However, I'm 90% convinced that a hysterectomy is in my near future, as the signs don't look healthy.

Setting Up Appointments, otherwise known as, Shoot Me Now...

I don't know how sick people do this. Sit through seven phone calls, trying to figure out what your appointments will be, and how to get back to people who don't answer their phone.

I got a call back from the Surgical Scheduler (you gotta love that moniker) for my gynecologist, who told me to call her back. Only she doesn't answer the phone. I finally reach her -- by accident, she picked up the phone, or so it seemed -- and she told me she wasn't ready for me. This is after she had called ME.

So I waited for her to call me back. This is a stressful time for me. I want to set this up so that I can behave like I'm supposed to, and actually go through with this surgical procedure. But this is one obstacle on the way. 24 hours later, literally, she called me back. But then I found out why it takes so long.

She has to clear times with the doctor, and she has to clear surgical times with the hospital. She has to set up a pre-op appointment with me and the GYN, with me and the hospital people (most likely the anesthesiologist), which is usually two days before the surgery, and then the actual surgery. And then she sets up a follow-up appointment with me and the GYN, again. AND I have to have my doctor send in an approval slip, a "clearance note," to her. That last part didn't make any sense to Dr. Miller (another tough person to get a hold of), but I think I talked the Surgical Scheduler into faxing my doc a note about it. Whew.

So I'm all scheduled for the actual surgery on December 15th, with pre-op appointments prior to that. You know, after this part of the dance, I think the actual procedure is going to be a piece of cake.

Just Don't Add Sugar to That Turkey...

One way I have to not overeat at Thanksgiving, and, more importantly, not eat a lot of sugar during the holiday, is to control some of the dishes myself.

I am not known for my cooking. (Somewhere, my mother, father, and entire family are laughing at me upon reading that...)
But there are some things that I've learned I can do, and do well. For instance, I am known far and wide (okay, within the immediate family) for my pumpkin pie. What they don't know is that I use reduced sugar in the recipe.

Instead of 1 cup of sugar, I use a mixed blend of Splenda and sugar, the kind you can buy in a bag at Safeway. I could use 100% Splenda, and I have, but the lack of sugar plays with the consistency. So I just reduce.

I also have taken over the cranberry relish. I used to hate the jellied mess my mom would plop out of the can onto the set table for Thanksgiving. Ugh! Now, I take 1 quart of water in a saucepan, add 1 cup of Splenda, boil the mixture, take it off the heat, add fresh or frozen cranberries plus 1 teaspoon of orange zest, bring it back to a boil, reduce heat and let simmer for 10 minutes. I then take it off the heat, let the mixture cool, put it in a container, cover it, and refrigerate it until ready to serve. Voila! No added sugar.

The rest of Thanksgiving consists of turkey (or, in our case, brisket as well as the turkey), stuffing and biscuits. Plenty of food. But no sugar to give me trouble later.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Inside the Uterus.... Well, Not Yet...

I went to see a female gynecologist in Berkeley. My own doctor, Dr. Miller, had told me that she had met Dr. Poddatoori, and found her to be kind and sensitive. She's also young, but I actually find that encouraging. It means she knows the latest breakthroughs in her specialty.

Due to the advocacy of my partner, Dr. Poddatoori decided not to do a pelvic exam. Instead, and she said this is the latest standard of care going on in gynecology regarding biopsies of the uterine wall, she's going to hospitalize me, insert a camera so that she can see what area of the uterine wall she's sampling for the biopsy, and then take the sample. While there, she will also do a PAP smear. All the while I will be completely out.

No one wants to wait a month or two to schedule this. She said they'd call me in a couple of days. However, Thanksgiving week interferes with office schedules, and I might not get a call until early December.

The earlier the better. I'm ready to get on with this. I found a doctor I can work with, one who explains things -- she took quite a bit of time with me -- and someone who doesn't want to hurt her patients unnecessarily.

It looks like progesterone pills are in my future, but first we determine if I have cancer.

Not a Good Sign(s)

Two symptoms. I have two symptoms. I thought I only had one.

A 63-year-old woman should not be menstruating. But I am. Well, they don't call it that. They call it "abnormal bleeding." Hell, any bleeding would be abnormal.

That's one strike. My doctor finally talked me into seeing a gynecologist. And that's after an ultrasound. (I've had two.) The latest ultrasound, I found out yesterday, showed a thickening of the uterine wall. That's the second symptom.

I didn't think much of Dr. Miller's comment -- and the fact that she interceded for me and got a closer appointment. But a few hours later, I found myself wondering. Worrying. Cancer may be back. It would probably be endometrial cancer in this case. I'll have to research it.

My GYN appointment is Thanksgiving week. I'm sure they'll do an endometrial biopsy. We'll see what happens.

Light Drinking Linked to Breast Cancer Risk

The L.A. Times reported this morning that "drinking as few as three to six glasses of wine a week may increase a woman's lifetime risk of breast cancer by 15%, according to an analysis by Harvard University researchers."

But, of course, if you're a heavy drinker of alcohol, your risk goes way up. Damned if you do, damned if you do a little.

"'Alcohol is a real risk factor, and the more you drink the higher your risk," said Dr. Steven A. Narod, a professor and breast cancer researcher at the University of Toronto..."

But preventive experts still say, "Whether women should consider abstaining from even light alcohol consumption... is not easily answered."

And, remember, previous experts in the field have noted that "having a few drinks a week has been found to lower the incidence of heart disease by 25% to 40%. The average woman's lifetime risk for heart disease is 1 in 2," while the average woman's risk for breast cancer is 1 in 8 over her lifetime.

Source: L.A. Times, November 2, 2011

My Greatest Weakness

Food. I love it. I'm addicted to it. But not the leafy, green, healthy stuff. More like the meat n' potatoes stuff, bread, the stuff I grew up on.

But you'd know that if you had paying any attention. I don't like to try "diets." I have this fear of winding up like Karen Carpenter. Besides, who likes to struggle and starve?

So I tried Nutrisystem. This is the system where they send you food. I ordered too much food -- one mistake I made -- and ran out of room to put the entrees, the desserts, and the snacks. I think another mistake I made was checking "diabetic," which meant that the food was mainly, well, bland. Boring. You have the option of selecting several things they will NOT send you, and while I found that valuable, there were too many for their lists. The best part is that they have a marvelous tracking system online. But in the end, the food was too bland, too cardboardy, to eat.

I then tried Bistro M.D., which looked like an upscale version of Nutrisystem. These meals you actually put in the freezer, and then pull them out, microwave them (all a standard 2.7 minutes, I learned after practice), and then keep track of what you eat. The tracking system online is non-existent, which was too bad. And I ran out of freezer space very quickly. In the end, however, the food was too bland, not interesting enough.

I am now on a modified Visalus shake system. I like the shake system as long as cherries are in season. You can use orange juice (which has a lot of sugar for my diet), non-fat milk, and fruit to spice it up. It has a very pleasant, slight vanilla taste. Cherries make a fanTAStic shake. But strawberries? Too bland.

I'm still experimenting with this. I like the idea of the shake, because I don't have to cook, I don't have to wander out to a diner, and I know it's good for me. But I've got to find some better fruit to put in the shake.

October Is Health Month

Pardon me for saying this, but I dislike October. The health part. Not the birthday part or the Halloween part, which I love.

For some odd reason, October is often when health issues start calling. I just got a call from my clinic: It's flu shot season. Certainly I signed up for it. (I will take any shot for almost anything. If it means not getting the creeping crud and there's a shot for it, that's a no-brainer decision.)

I got a letter yesterday about my regularly scheduled mammogram. It said I was "overdue" for the check-up. They even stated when I had had the last mammogram: 11 months ago! How often do I have to be prodded and x-rayed? That benign cyst they found in my right breast several years ago keeps paying back dividends, I suppose. It was benign, though. What's the big deal?

At this point, I'm going through everything they request. There are certain things I won't do, I don't want to do and refuse to do. These things are not in that narrow realm.

You know, come to think of it, I think it's time for my every-three-year colonoscopy. Crap.

The F.B.I.

You won't believe this. This latest medical problem I have isn't related to cancer. Or diabetes. Or even getting older, which is my latest "issue."

I call it the F.B.I. The Foul Ball Incident.

In July, I got hit with a foul ball, right in the chest. To be specific, right in the right breast. It took my breath away, as you can imagine. What made me mad about the whole thing was that I didn't get the foul ball. It fell into the seat in front of me (at the Oakland Coliseum, there are a lot of empty seats all around me). I was too stunned to reach for it. A 20-something guy ran by and got it, and then ran away. I felt cheated.

My right breast was black and blue -- actually, more like changing colors of blue -- for the next 45 days. Nothing was broken. I had reached up my hands to catch it, and the ball came right through them as if they weren't there and hit my body with a loud thump. Probably a good thing. Otherwise, I'd have broken fingers. Or a broken clavicle. Things could've been far worse, and that was my attitude. But I was still simmering.

But a few days ago, I got another chance. I was irritated with the guy sitting next to me, so I was about to leave my aisle seat at the A's vs. the Tigers game, crouching down to get my bag under my seat, when another foul ball came flying past me to the section next to me. It bounced and rolled over to me, and I put my hand on it. But right then a guy jumped on me. He started wrestling me for the ball.

I was still seated, mind you, and watching in disbelief as this 40-something man tried to wrest the ball out of my hand, attempting to pry my fingers loose. After several agonizing seconds, I leaned into him, into his face which was THIS far away from me, and yelled, "Let go!" He did.

I felt a strange sense of vindication as several gray-haired women high-fived me in the section.

Let's do the math. I've gone to an average of, say, 45 games a year from about 1993 to the present. Before that, I probably went to maybe 15 games a year, mostly at Dodger Stadium until I moved to Oakland in 1989. In my calculator, that comes to about 1,000 major league baseball games I've attended in my lifetime. And not ONCE did a foul ball ever come very close to me at all. So, what are the odds that a foul ball would touch me twice within three months in one summer? Astronomical? Or, in other words, as much as beating cancer?

I broke a nail in the wrestling match. 24 hours later, I discovered I had a muscle pull on my right side, no doubt caused by wrestling some grown man for a ball that I could easily have bought at the A's store for $10. And yet, I feel like that ball holds all my strength, my ambition, my will to survive. It's hard to explain, but it's a symbol. I think I'll hold onto it for awhile.

Remember that Cancer You Used to Have?

I went in to see Dr. Miller today for my regularly scheduled quarterly appointment.

I had no idea why I was there. I had nothing to complain about for once. But, as Dr. Miller reminded me, they like to see me every three months just to make sure things are going well.

There's a lot to go wrong. My cholesterol. My diabetes, for sure. Testing problems, testing materials. Problems renewing my prescriptions. All of that will go wrong and has gone wrong within the past year.

But today was different. Things were going well (except for my diet, which has been tending toward the sugar).

She told me in passing, though, that Alta Bates had sent a questionnaire for her, a routine thing, just to keep up with their former cancer patients. She would fill it out, send it back, and report that everything was going fine. No recurrence, no signs of recurrence.

It's been 8 years since the 2003 colon surgery. I think that's called a colonectomy. At least, that's what I call it. I had almost forgotten about it, except when I run my fingertips along the scar on my abdomen. It's a solid memory. Or I remember it when somebody talks about their hospital experience. I have only been in the hospital twice, and that was one of them.

At this point, it's a good memory, good in that the result, so far, is good. And good for Alta Bates for running these studies. I hope to continue to be on their "inactive" list.

The Shingles Vaccination

On a cruise to Alaska last summer, my partner discovered immediately as we were settling into our cabin that she was missing some medication. We decided to look for the medication at our first stop, Ketchikan.

A little internet research revealed that the only pharmacy in town was in the local Safeway -- yes, the only Safeway in town. So we found one of the taxis at the port and he drove us to that Safeway early that morning. We had to wait an hour for the pharmacy to open, and were met with a very friendly female pharmacist.

The pharmacy had a huge sign saying, "SHINGLES SHOTS HERE!" so I thought I'd take them up on that. After all, I'd been searching local East Bay pharmacies for the vaccine over the past year, only to be told that they were all out and didn't know when to expect the next shipment. Alas, the friendly pharmacist said the same thing: she had hoped for another shipment in a few months from then.

I found the same sort of sign at a Rite Aid in Montclair last month. I filled out the paperwork they gave me, but the pharmacist was out to lunch, so I decided to come back the next day. Unfortunately, I caught a cold before I could return. They won't give you the shot if you're sick at all.

That cold lingered for a month, but the day I was sure I was over it, I was back in that Rite Aid pharmacy again. The pharmacist ascertained that I was over the age of 50, collected $140 (!), $20 of which went to the pharmacy, and got the shot in the flab under my left arm. A peculiar place, I thought, as he put the needle in. I barely felt it.

The pharmacist told me that they were running out again. I felt fortunate. When I complained about the cost, not covered by my insurance, to my son, the son who had contracted shingles two years ago and still has the scars, he had one thing to say to me: "It's worth it!"

How to Stop Grinding Your Teeth

A friend of mine gave me some advice a few months ago about grinding my teeth while I sleep. She advised that there are some new mouth inserts out there that have been reengineered to be smaller but effective in stopping your teeth from grinding. i promised I'd try some/

I had tried some mouth inserts a few years ago, and couldn't sleep while they were in. I was doubtful.

I bought a new product -- Plackers Grind-No-More Dental Night Protector. I ran out of excuses last night -- you know, I have a cold, I have to get enough sleep for an early meeting tomorrow, etc. -- and finally tried one. Wouldn't you know, it worked.

There are 12 in package. Each one is good for about 3 nights, and then you throw it away and get another one. Each of is plastic, and is really just a little rope with two wings. The wings fit in between your teeth. It's that simple. And it's so small, you barely feel it.

The teeth grinding, I don't need to tell you, was detrimental to my health: it wears down your teeth, it exacerbated my TMJ, the tightness of my jaws, and the grinding woke me often throughout the night. How do you know you"re grinding yourm teeth? the telltale sign: the inside of your mouth is sore where you've bitten your cheek in your sleep.

i just bought some more of the Plackers protectors at drugstore.com. it cost $25.99 at that site. Divided by 14 in a box, and each being used 3 times, that comes to about 65 cents a night.

I'm looking forward to laying in a supply of these protectors and getting some good sleep.

The Rejuvenating Benefit of Cherries

I was reading rather perfunctorily the latest health newsletter I had just received, and it spent quite a bit of time on cherries. The catch line was, sick of blueberries? Try cherries.

The newsletter is Bottom Line Health, April 2011.

Research shows that tart cherry juice "eases post exercise muscle soreness," and points out that the New York Rangers hockey team drinks cherry juice regularly.

In a study reported by the Journal of Nutrition, "18 healthy men and women who supplemented their daily diets with just over two cups of Bing cherries daily for 28 days reduced their level of C-reactive protein, an inflammatory marker in the blood that can signal plaque formation, by 25%."

I have been trying to work blueberries into a normal breakfast routine with my cereal. However, blueberries aren't all that tasteful to my mind. Cherries, on the other hand, seem like a wicked pleasure. I'll have to work cherries into my daily diet.

Writing Class for Cancer Survivors

Margo Rivera-Weiss from the Women's Cancer Resource Center (on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland) reports the following:

I’m happy to let you know that WCRC’s writing class will be meeting again. It will remain at the same time, 4th Sundays of each month (except for occasional changes – e.g. in June) from 2 -4 PM. I’m very excited to invite Leah be part of the wonderful panel of instructors offering their skills at WCRC. Information about the class and the instructor follow.

The class will meet the following dates in the next scheduling period: March 27, April 24, May 22, June 19 (note this is the 3d Sunday), July 24 and Aug. 28.

If you are interested in attending please register on the WCRC website.

Body Stories: a monthly writing workshop for women (and gender nonconforming folks) dancing with cancer and other health issues

Lead by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Come to this supportive space to write down the stories your body is holding: the good, the bad, the amazing, the resilient, the difficult and complicated of living with cancer or other illness. This writing workshop is open to all, and no experience is necessary. We'll build a community of trust where we can write our uncensored truths, experiment with new kinds of writing and share the stories only we know how to tell.

Facilitator bio: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer Sri Lankan writer, performer and teacher who lives with chronic illness. The author of Consensual Genocide, her writing has been widely anthologized, including in Colonize This!, Without a Net, We Don't Need Another Wave, and Persistence: Still Butch and Femme. She is a lead artist with Sins Invalid, the Bay Area's performance project on disability and sexuality and has taught writing at UC Berkeley's June Jordan's Poetry for the People Program, Toronto's Asian Arts Freedom School and many colleges and community-based arts spaces across North America. She believes that writing can be a tool to liberate and heal.