Round The Clock

So this morning I was supposed to go see WATCHMEN with my friend Sam, during the 11:00am show, for we are cheap, and decline to pay $12 to see a movie, when we can pay $6 to see a weekend show which starts before 12:00. (AMC has this bargain matinee gimmick in Manhattan, but because it's become so popular, especially with the cratering of the economy, they've cut down the number of shows before noon, sometimes eliminating them altogether.)

But at 10:00am, I still felt like roadkill, so I called Sam, bailed, and promptly fell asleep for another 3 hours, resulting in a 12 hour round of snoozing. Yay!

This spectacular demonstration of lethargy is in direct contrast to the zippy boat ride photo sent to me by my sweetie last week. He was in one of these boats, taking a long tail boat tour on the river in Bangkok, when the driver of his boat got into a race with the driver of this boat. Considering the amount of traffic on the river, this thrilled him not at all, poor fella.

You can get a sense of the speed from this photo, and this You Tube video, and you can get a sense of the amount of traffic (!) from this You Tube video.

And now we bring you back to our regularly scheduled medical tours of me: no-no foods for the duration of chemo. Due to the interactions between the chemicals (i.e., targeted toxins coursing through your body, but toxins nonetheless) and various antioxidants, enzymes, and multivitamins, I have been instructed to basically eat like a pregnant woman (i.e., avoid all things which could make me sick) but hopefully without gaining the tonnage associated with pregnancy.

AVOID:

• raw sushi (noooo...not SUSHI!)
  
• deli salad bars
• grapefruit (oranges I can skip, but I love grapefruit!)
• multivitamins
• cranberry extract
• vitamins C, E, and B+ (folic acide)
• restaurant salads (homemade, by people you know, salads are OK)
• flaxseed
• pomegranate
• street food
• unpasteurized foods (mmm...raw cheeses...sigh)
• ibuprofen
• NSAIDs (Aleve, etc.)
• aspirin (Excedrin, etc.) -- only Tylenol is on my foreseeable future
  
• protein/granola basr with "soy protein isolate"
  (goodbye beloved Kashi bars! aloha Nutri-grain berry & nut bars! the Nutrigrain cereal bars, I hate anyway)
  

MINIMIZE:

• soy/tofu - scraps in say, an occasional order of tofu chow fun, is okay; an entree of braised bean curd = no
• 1 serving of wine/week, max
• dried cranberries
• red meat - an if any, then well done only
  

In short, any uninvited parasites which your body can normally shrug off is not such a simple case when your immunity is down. We'll see what the MSKCC dietitian has to say when I meet with her on Thursday. For all I know, there are ven MORE contraband items. And then of course, I haven't even finished reading the MSKCC pamphlets, and have to re-read some other breast cancer nutrition ones from God's Love We Deliver.

But right now, I can't believe that I am so exhausted that I am going to go back to bed. I've been awake for all of 2 hours!