Abdomen X-Ray

Another Rainy Day In The Hood!

Kisses For Jess

I tried to take a photo of both Emma and I smiling, but she kept trying to kiss me. That was the final shot of about 13. Kisses for Jess because she took Emma to the Green Lake library to renew Dan's book. Dogs are so easy to please.

The fast lasted until about six o'clock last night, a total of 24 hours, until my stomach started cramping so badly that I couldn't function. I had to eat something which, in our limited resources, consisted of raw broccoli and my homemade spinach and jalapeno humus (note to self: horrible combination on an empty stomach). I haven't been mentioning it on the blog (because I feel like it's TMI - for those out of the loop, that means too much information), but I've been dealing with a digestive problem for the past couple of months. It has gotten progressively worse so my doctor scheduled an x-ray for tomorrow.

Originally, my doctor was concerned about a lump in my lower left side, but she wanted to make sure that it wasn't just a hard bowel (GROSS). This digestive problem is my own fault, I've been a phantom pooper (thanks for the term Jessaca!) for years, which is very bad for your digestive system and your whole body. It has come to the point where girl friends joke that they're going to get me the book, Everyone Poops (it's for children). Anyway, to make a long story even longer, Dr P, my general practitioner didn't like the lump and put me on some sort of laxative for a week, telling me that if I didn't pooh every day she wanted to take a lower abdomen x-ray.

Well friends, that day has come and tomorrow we will find out what's going on. Dr P's biggest concern is that my diet is so full of vegetables, fruits, lentils, brown rice, etc. that I should be pooh-ing once, maybe even twice a day. Yikes. That seems like a lot, and is definitely not even close to my regular routine.

I'm nervous about the x-ray. As you all know, I despise radiation, but I need to know what's happening in my body. I want to have a healthy, functioning, happy system, and for some reason, things aren't working the way that they should be.

As always, I'll keep you posted. Unless it's just horrifically gross, in which case I might omit some details.

Empowering Books

I feel like a chicken with its' head cut off. I think it's pretty normal to go a bit crazy after a bad sickness, and I'm no exception. After 10 days of laying in bed, I went nuts yesterday and conquered too much. It was just so nice to be able to get up and goof around. I've not only started back up on my artemisinin pills, I also laced up and jogged the lake too. While I was jogging, I swung by the Green Lake Library to get a long over due library card (pun intended). While there I randomly picked up two amazing books.

About two weeks ago I realized that people survive cancer all the time, beating the odds and surprising doctors. It's something that I knew, peripherally, but somehow it hadn't completely sunk in, the concept just wasn't quite tangible. I started to think about it though, the other day. I wondered how people are doing it, how are they outsmarting their cancer? Ever since this diagnosis, I've been trying to find my way, slowly figuring out the way to win. Apparently, I'm not the only one who has looked to survivors for guidance. The first book I picked up at the library is called, Cancer: 50 Essential Things To Do, by Greg Anderson. This book, although I'm only a few pages deep, has completely changed my life. The author was diagnosed with a nasty metastasized lung cancer and given only 30 days to live. Crazy, huh. Anyway, Greg was pretty upset for a few days, but then he realized that people beat cancer all the time, and it became his mission to listen to other survivors, trying to figure out the common threads of action. I recommend it to anyone fighting cancer, and also for anyone in the inner circle of support. It's so well written, so real, and truly, it's an inspiration, a motivation, and I just can't say enough about it.

The other book I found is called, Brain Surgeon, A Doctor's Inspiring Encounters with Mortality and Miracles, by Keith Black, MD. It's a neurosurgeon, his life story, his surgeries and his perspective on things. A sentence in his book, in one instant, helped me realize that my brain is elegant (a word that I never would have used to describe my brain, yet fits perfectly). He is completely fascinated by the brain, and as he speaks about tumors and the brain, he helps me fall in love with the big grey squiggles upstairs. 


Both books are empowering and positive. I'm so grateful that I can read again. I still can't conquer books the way I used to, but hey, reading is reading no matter how slow. The recovery from the brain tumor is recent enough that I can imagine life without being able to read. I remember the frustration of not understanding the concepts written on paper. I remember the lack of understanding with dialog and accents. I'm SO HAPPY to be able to read and understand written word. I will never take that for granted again. It's amazing how much reading energizes my soul and catapults me to a whole new mental state. Once you read something, you're a changed person. You've evolved. I love evolving.