Low battery (cont'd)

Now that I've FINALLY finished my chemo treatments (EUREKA!!!) maybe my hair will quit falling like raindrops on my neck and shoulders. Ugh. (Plus, that tickles.)

And I guess, now that it's done (minus the lingering fatigue and immunosuppression of the next few weeks) my brain is finally allowing itself to freak out: I woke up this morning (early, @ 7am on a Sunday, which is just so WRONG) from oddly jumbled dreams mixing multiple limb amputations --of another Asian woman -- and discount bra shopping for me. (I told you it was weird.)

I'm going to leave the limb chopping dream alone (ick!) but the bra shopping is easily explained: between my weight gain from the chemo, and the upcoming radiation treatment (where I've been warned by the radiation oncologist that I should buy a larger size due to the irritation from the treatments) I sense bra shopping in my near future.

And unlike the odd but amusing scientific studies sometimes published where you think, "Someone gave you FUNDING to study that?!" there was finally an article on chemo brain in last week's New York Times where it was acknowledged that yes, chemo does affect neurochemistry (or something, anyway) and that it wasn't just the patient's imagination, or fatigue, so that concentration and multitasking become somewhat challenging. Imagine having senior moments constantly. Yeah, like that. Lovely, eh?

At least I may or may not recover from that eventually, but I found out last night that one of my college friends -- whom I met even before Freshman Week! that's like... almost 25 years ago! EEK! -- has had to leave his job due to permanent memory/concentration effects from a stroke a few years ago, similar but nowhere as severe as the Guy Pearce character in Memento. (However, when you are a lawyer, finely tuned concentration skills are a must.) He is currently fighting with the disability insurance folks over that issue, so really, I really, REALLY mean it when I say that I don't have it too bad (for one thing, my health and disability insurance did not argue with me about any of my treatments or diagnoses -- the drug plan people suck, but that's fortunately, a relatively small matter in my case, financially).

Therefore, when people sometime say that I have a remarkably positive/low-key attitude about my breast cancer (e.g., "oh yeah, I have chemo on the 24th so I can't meet you that weekend... *shrug*), I honestly feel like I don't have such a horrendous burden. Okay, I'm not saying I'd WANT to have this if I had a choice, but it could really be so much worse: I could have had to have a single or double mastectomy if it had been found later... (and besides the psychological issues involved there, that is major frakkin' surgery! that goes on for over a year!!)... I could have lost all my hair... I could have been laid off while dealing with this... all sorts of stuff come to mind, so I am not just mouthing off when I say I am very lucky.

I am also lucky that I didn't turn off my phone yesterday morning, despite the low battery beeps, since that is how my college friend got in touch with me unexpectedly: he normally lives in San Francisco, but was in town for the week. So he came over and I made dinner. See the pretty lilies he brought me? (waaaay up at the top of the post)

Having somewhat limited energy this weekend, I decided that I would prioritize cooking over cleaning (hey, he's known me for over 2 decades -- he knows I ain't Felix Unger) and so I made sausage pasta bake, based on a 2005 Cooking Light recipe, and a gigantic salad. In fact that photo to the left is of the LEFTOVER salad. Oops.

Yes, between the fact that most recipes are portioned for 6-8 servings (!) and my inherent (and apparently inherited) tendency to keep throwing stuff in until I have a kitchen sink dish, I -- ah -- have a lot of leftovers. See below?

And I did alter the pasta recipe quite a bit, since I discovered that I didn't have penne (I used a combo of rotini and macaroni), didn't have enough diced tomatoes (I subbed crushed tomatoes and extra tomato paste), and had extra sausage (so I threw in extra green and red bell peppers). Well, I guess the dish is like those TV movies of the week: "(extremely loosely) based upon the strue story of..."

And I have this weird quirk about HATING to smell food in the apartment the morning after, or even -- if regarding my bedroom -- the evening OF a dinner. (Unless it's baking -- those smells can hang around as long as they like, but unfortunately, they seem to dissipate rather quickly.) So I close the bedroom door while cooking, and have discovered a cheap, homemade version of using Oust or Febreze candles (which are not cheap and which I can go through rather quickly).

Instead, I boil a pot of water on the stove which has large amounts of ginger powder mixed in -- it's been boiling away for the past hour this morning. I find the ginger smell pleasant, although (alas) like most baking-related smells, rather fleeting.

Okay, I'd better start getting ready to head off to CT. It's time for baby Lillian's very first birthday party, where I will FINALLY have finished a baby sweater early enough to giftwrap it (!) instead of frantically weaving in ends after dinner. HA!

Come to think of it, it's birthday weekend, since my engineer is off visiting his parents down in Toms River because it's his dad's birthday this coming week.

And now, just for fun, and for no particular reason except the fact that I think it's neat, I leave you with a link to an Audi TV commercial using human pixelation. (You know, like those crowd-held flip cards during the Beijing Olympics.) Ciao!