The Assertive Cancer Patient

Writing to Citibank, an Exercise in Futility?

Since I last posted about Citibank on June 22, I've received FIVE more threatening letters, but they are all form letters. Not a single one addresses my application for help under Citibank's "Workable Solutions" program. 

I sent Citibank an application for help under this program on April 27 (See: Citimortgage Letter), and I've received two form letters telling me that I will hear from a Loan Mitigation Specialist within the month. The first of these form letters was dated May 6, and the other June 3.

So I've been waiting to hear from the loan specialist, and in the meantime, as I mentioned, five threatening letters have arrived--all of them computer-generated form letters. 

Does Citibank's left hand know what its right hand is doing?

It certainly doesn't appear so. 

But just to keep the ball in play, I will write to them again, today, and point out that I have applied for assistance and they have not responded. 

For more on this ridiculous dance with Citibank, see: Citibank

If you have a HELOC with Citibank and they've canceled your loan, please e-mail me and I can put you in contact with an attorney who is bringing a class-action suit against Citibank. jeanne.sather@gmail.com

@ Jeanne Sather 2009. 

Blogging By the Window in Frankfurt

Younger Son and I arrived in Germany on Friday morning, exhausted from the long flight--about 10 hours over the pole, with the plane in daylight the whole way--but excited to be here. 

Ute met us at the airport with her car, so then we came home and rested for most of that first day, having missed a night of sleep. Ute lives on the fifth floor in a charming old apartment building--five flights up with no elevator. Younger Son carried all the bags up, and I made it.

Now I'm blogging by the window in the apartment to catch a neighbor's WiFi, because my computer won't connect to Ute's DSL connection. To top that off, we bought adapters for our electronics before we left the U.S., but didn't open the package or read the instructions until we arrived, and they aren't the right ones to use with computers or digital cameras, so we may be running out of power quite soon. 

Yesterday, we bought train tickets to go to Munster so that Younger Son can visit the tank museum there (I'm going alone too, of course), and we are doing that today. On Tuesday we leave for Berlin, where we will stay with Gudrun, who has appeared on this blog several times in the past. Only two nights in Berlin, then back to Frankfurt and home on Friday. 

Our hosts: 

Ute

Gudrun

@ Jeanne Sather 2009. 

Another Letter to Citibank

July 9, 2009

Since I mailed my application to your Workable Solutions program on April 27, I have received two copies of a letter confirming that you have my application, one dated May 6 and the other June 3.

Both letters were identical, and both said that I would hear from a “Loan Mitigation Specialist” within 30 days.

I have not been contacted by this loan mitigation specialist, however, I have now received a total of five letters—all computer-generated form letters—threatening me with foreclosure.

Meanwhile, I am still waiting to hear from your loan mitigation specialist. Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing?

Please stop the collections phone calls to my home phone. All communications with me concerning my mortgage must be in writing.

As I said in my letter to the Workable Solutions program, I have advanced cancer and I am in bed much of the day. I do not answer the phone.  

The Gardening Report

The first hour of my day is usually the best hour, especially during the summer. 

That's because I spend that hour outside with my first cup of coffee--and my dog--puttering in my garden. This morning I grazed a little bit for food to go with my coffee: about a dozen ripe blueberries (the first of the season) three or four pea pods, and a handful of strawberries. 

Yum. 

Now that I have replaced my digital camera, I'll be taking photos of my garden again. It's looking good. The daisies are blooming, and the crocosmia are budding. Herbs are doing well--lavender, mint, basil ... I asked my friend Susan, who has a food blog as well as a cancer blog, for some suggestions for using fresh herbs, because I grow lots of herbs but very rarely eat them, except for the basil. 

Susan e-mailed me several great suggestions for easy dishes to make with fresh produce and herbs, and I'm going to try them. The one that sticks in my mind is to saute fresh mint with those pea pods--so if I could manage to curb my appetite for fresh snow peas right off the vine, I might be able to make this. 

My vegetables are doing well: Tomatoes are popping out on the vines; ditto for peppers of various types and Japanese eggplants. One of my neighbors is going to water for me while we're in Germany. She's also a gardener, so I know she'll do a good job. 

Germany, Ho

Younger Son and I have been slowly working our way through our mutual to-do lists for the big trip. We leave on Thursday, and so far so good--we're not panicking yet, anyway. 

Constant, the Wonder Dog, is going to the dog ranch out in Snohomish County, where he will get to run free with the pack for the 10 days we will be gone. He loves it. They never kennel the dogs at this place, even at night the dogs sleep in a house that is apparently just for them. 

I just had a massage this afternoon, to help keep me from getting stiff during the long plane ride. We have a direct flight from Seattle to Frankfurt, but even so it is going to be long. And I have a bad back, so I'm careful about that. 

I will be blogging during the trip, assuming that I can find a WiFi spot every day, so tune in for my "postcards from Germany"!

This is my first trip to Germany, even though I am 1/4 German. My mother's father was the son of German immigrants. Younger Son did some research on this branch of the family several years ago for a school project, so I know more about my family than I would have otherwise, thanks to YS. 

We don't have any relatives in Germany, as far as I know, because the family went to Russia first and lived there for several generations (I believe) before coming to the United States. 

@ Jeanne Sather 2009. 

HELOC: Lawyer Suing Citibank

Recently I was contacted by a lawyer who is suing Citibank over the HELOC mess--people having their loans canceled illegally--so if you are in this situation and would like to talk to the attorney, shoot me an e-mail and I will give you his contact details.

I'm waiting to talk to him myself till after our Germany trip, but I will definitely be doing so in late July and I'll write a post about it. 

Don't know what I'm talking about? See: Blindsided by Citibank

@ Jeanne Sather 2009. 

Support This Blog, Please

ou may have noticed a "donate" button at the bottom of some posts on my blog. A button that looks like this:

The button is there because, with two small exceptions, I have decided to keep The Assertive Cancer Patient ad-free. The exceptions are a link to Amazon whenever I mention a book, and a Netflix ad on my Cancer Movies pages.

There are any number of ways to put ads on a blog. It's simple and easy. I tried this for a week or two when I first put my blog up. I used the ad service provided by Typepad, which hosts my blog.

But--and this is a huge BUT--most of the ads that popped up on my blog were for Web sites, products, and services that I personally couldn't endorse. And I didn't want them on my blog. An awful lot of them fell into the quacks category.

Cancer patients are fairly easy targets for exploitation--because we're sick, because we're afraid, because we'd like a magic cure that came with no side effects ... I don't want the exploitation of any cancer patient to start with an ad on my blog.

So there are none. But I still need to make some money from the blog, which takes the best hours and the best energy of my day.

The result? The donate button.

Thank you for any cash that you might be able to spare. I appreciate it more than you will ever know.

A special thanks to the cancer patients who have sent me donations, and then apologized for not being able to send more!

I know who my audience is, so I expected that if people were able to send a donation at all, it would be in the $10 to $20 range. Those $20 contributions are keeping me at the keyboard, blogging away.

If you want to read more about me, go to the About page.

A note about using PayPal: You can make a donation by clicking on the donate button and going through PayPal without setting up a PayPal account if you don't want one. There is an option to simply donate with a credit card.

@ Jeanne Sather 2009.

New Bracelets on 'Charmed Bracelets'

I have several new bracelets for sale on my Charmed Bracelets site, and will be adding more over the next few days before I leave on a trip to Germany.

The one-of-a-kind bracelet in the photo is jade and sterling silver, with an old abacus charm from Japan (@1940s-1950s) and an old silver Japanese coin made in Taisho 11, which was 1922, the year my father was born. 

Here's the link: Charmed Bracelets  

Photo: Monica Strasen

@ Jeanne Sather 2009. 

More Test Results--Not So Good This Time

I had an appointment at my cancer center yesterday, to see a doctor and to get treatment, and also to get the last couple sets of test results. 

Dr. Lee is out of town--in Ireland, I'm told--so I saw Dr. Tolman, whom I like quite well. 

He gave me the results of the "Lance Armstrong test" that I had at the UW a couple of weeks ago and also of the PET/CT from last week. 

The LA test results were fine, which is weird, because I've been so short of breath, but Dr. Tolman did have an explanation. He said the most likely thing--since we've done all these tests and scans to check my lungs and heart and it turns out they are both in excellent shape for a 54-year-old woman with metastatic cancer--is that my cancer itself is causing the shortness of breath. 

And he used the term "tumor load," which I've heard before, just not in connection with myself.

To back this up, my most recent tumor marker, the CEA, was at 27, up from about 11 last time we checked. So I definitely have more cancer activity. 

Then, from the PET/CT, he was able to tell me that some of my tumors, including the one in my right lung, are larger than they were in January, and there are also quite a number of new spots, most of them tiny, and all of them in the bone. 

To top it off, I think some of my lymph nodes are now involved--this is new and I didn't quite understand it, so I will ask Dr. Lee about it next time I see him, which is three weeks from today.

To quote from the test results: "There is a new hypermetabolic subcarinal lymph node on image 87 ... A new hypermetabolic 7-mm AP window lymph node on image 85 ..." 

You get the picture.

My only worry in all of this is that any of the tumors in my spine might be getting large enough to press on my spinal cord--we're talking paralysis here--and the PET/CT doesn't show that kind of thing all that clearly. So I probably need a bone scan after I get home from Germany. 

Also, I have no pain anywhere, so Dr. Tolman seemed to think that I could continue with the present "chemo light" regimen until there was a more compelling reason to do a heavier chemo. So, as long as I can live with the stress of knowing about all these tumors, I can continue until either I am in danger of a fracture or a threat to the spinal cord, or until my shortness of breath makes me think I'm ready for chemo. 

We also talked about a couple of new or new-to-me drugs, and I'll blog about those at another time. One is in clinical trials now, but may well be approved within the next six months, about the time I may need it. 

If you're wondering how I am, I'm fine. This news isn't really a shock, so I've had time to think about all the "what if"s, and I haven't changed my mind about putting quality of life ahead of quantity of life. 

Definition, from the NCI Web site:

tumor load 

Refers to the number of cancer cells, the size of a tumor, or the amount of cancer in the body. Also called tumor burden. @ Jeanne Sather 2009.

Flying into the Swine Flu?

I saw this headline this morning, and it made me wonder for the first time if Younger Son and I will be flying into the swine flu:

UK says 100,000 new flu cases and 40 dead per day by end of August

I guess I should google Germany and "swine flu" and see what pops up. I do think, based on what I've read about the swine flu so far, that Younger Son is at greater risk than I am, because he doesn't have much natural immunity like us older folks. And my blood counts are good, so my immunity should be pretty good. 

Maybe we'll take those masks I was collecting as I did my round of doctor's appointments in the past few months when the swine flu first hit Washington state ... 

Read the story: Britain Facing Swine Flu Upsurge

According to a recent story, Germany has almost 300 confirmed cases of swine flu:

Swine Flu in Germany

@ Jeanne Sather 2009. 

Vegetarians and Cancer

Vegetarians are less likely than meat eaters to develop some types of cancer, according to a report from the BBC.

The study, which was published in the British Journal of Cancer, found that vegetarians developed notably fewer cancers of the blood, bladder, and stomach. However, the study found no difference in cancer of the bowel, which I find rather surprising. 

The article from the BBC didn't mention breast cancer, so I don't know if the researchers didn't look at breast cancer in this study or if there was no difference. I would expect that vegetarians would have lower rates of breast cancer.

I, of course, was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 43 and with melanoma in my early 50s, and I have been an ovo-lacto vegetarian since age 15. Younger Son is also a vegetarian.  

Read the article: Vegetarians 'Avoid More Cancers'

@ Jeanne Sather 2009. 

Test Results

I've written several times recently about all the tests and scans I was getting during the past month or so, but I haven't yet said much on my blog about the results. 

One of my readers, someone who is fairly new to my blog, reminded me today in the most gentle fashion that she (and probably other readers) was a bit worried about me because I hadn't said anything. 

So, apologies for that. The news, what news I've gotten, is mostly good. I don't have the results from the PET/CT I had on Thursday, and I don't have the results from the exercise test I had at the UW a couple of weeks ago, because that doctor, the lung specialist, was out of town all last week and no one else in her office seemed able to give me the results. 

That's a bit annoying, but at the same time it is so "business as usual" when you're in the cancer world that I just don't let it get to me anymore. 

But the other tests and scans, when lumped all together, showed that both my heart and my lungs were in pretty good shape, in excellent shape considering that I've been poisoning myself on a regular basis for 10 years straight with chemo and radiation both. 

I do have some gastric reflux, aggravated (probably) by recent radiation to the spine and also by the Tykerb, which makes me nauseous. I'm trying "behavioral changes" as a first step to get that under control. That was my choice. I said no to the endoscopy Dr. Lee wanted, at least for now. 

And the CT I had of my chest and abdomen showed that my cancer was behaving itself pretty well--the bone mets were read as stable, and the met in my lung has grown slightly, which I am refusing to worry about. 

So that's it so far. I feel like it was a lot of my time and energy--and my insurance companies' money--to find out so little, but when I think about it a bit more, less is more in my case. 

I'll call tomorrow or Tuesday to try to get the last two sets of results, and if nothing much shows up there, the only thing left on my cancer radar screen in the near future is to decide what treatment I am going to do next. Not that I'm not getting treatment now, but I declined any more conventional chemo drugs, so Dr. Lee and I need to come up with a new plan. It's not likely that the Herceptin, zometa, and Tykerb will keep my cancer in check for long. 

Now, I can focus on my next adventure, which is a trip to Germany with Younger Son. We're calling it The Military History Tour, Part II. 

Because about four years ago, when YS was 14, I took him to Japan for a week and I let him choose all the places we visited, and they were, with one exception, all places that had something to do with Japan's military history. I was fine with that, because my goals were to spend time in Japan with Younger Son--and also to see some old friends there--and I didn't care all that much what we actually did. 

So we went to Yasukuni Shrine (which has a fantastic military history museum), Himeiji Castle (samurai era history), and Hiroshima (WWII). And one day when I was taking a rest day on the couch, Younger Son and the friend we were visiting, a military history nut herself, went to the Japanese Self-Defense Forces PR Center. That was a highlight of our visit for both of them. 

The only place we went that was non-military was Meiji-mura, an outdoor museum that covers acres of land and has a collection of Meiji Period (1868 to about 1912) buildings that were moved to the site from all over the world. It is amazing. My favorite is still the prison, and I don't even worry too much about what that says about me. Oh, and the Emperor Meiji's personal train car. That's also pretty amazing. Plush. Rich red velvet and lots of gold everywhere. 

Those of you who have been readers of this blog for awhile will recall that Younger Son and I took a train trip together last year. It makes me very happy that YS still likes to travel with me, and we do have a good time together. 

Older Son, on the other hand, hasn't wanted to travel with his brother and me since he was about 16, and there's not much I can do about that. The other night, he was acting like he felt a bit left out, but the reality is if I offered to buy him a ticket, he'd refuse. So I have to be OK with that, and I mostly am. 

Here's the link to last year's Mother/Son Adventure: Home Again, Home Again

@ Jeanne Sather 2009.