The Assertive Cancer Patient

Kitten Face

Do you know how hard it is to take a photo of a two and a half week old kitten? With a digital camera (between the time you click the shutter and the camera fires, the kitten has turned its head ...)?

It took two of us (you can't tell unless you look closely, but my friend is holding the kitten in a head lock--the kind of move that would be illegal in wrestling), and even so only one of the three shots I snapped was useable.

The foster kittens are growing, eating, sleeping, purring, and one of them is up walking on his legs. The other three are still doing the kitten crawl, with their fat little tummies on the ground.

Zoe, Dubutaunt's daughter, has naming rights. Except for one, which was named by the kids I teach Japanese to at First Place School. They named him Kuro-neko-chan, which means "little black cat." Very appropriate. If I have a favorite, it's that little guy. But really, my favorite is whichever one I'm holding at the time.

@ Jeanne Sather 2008.

Rerun: The Assertive Cancer Patient: Feels Surprisingly Happy

I originally posted this in August of 2006, one of the first posts to this blog. As I reread it, I realize how true it has been for me.

There are a number of clichés in the English language that link the words “healthy” and “happy.” We say, “As long as my children are healthy and happy …” Or, “As long as I have my health …” The underlying assumption is that you can’t be very happy if you have a serious illness.

Well, that has not been my experience. The years I have been living with cancer have certainly included some of the worse moments in my life, but they have also included some of the best. I don’t think I would have experienced life during the past few years with the same degree of intensity and joy if I had not been diagnosed with cancer. I am not alone in this. A number of cancer patients and cancer survivors have told me the same thing.

Recent research, published in February 2005 in The Journal of Experimental Psychology, confirms our experience. The study found that healthy people are not necessarily happier than seriously ill ones. In addition, the healthy participants in the study greatly overestimated how unhappy sick individuals would be, while the sick ones overestimated how happy the healthy ones were.

This doesn’t mean that you won’t have bad days, of course you will, but you will probably have more good days than bad.

I'll write more about some of the things that make me happy and help me cope with my cancer.

@ Jeanne Sather, 2006-2008.

John Jumps In: Health and Happiness

John, the blogger from Indiana who has oral cancer, has joined in with a post on health and happiness.

John writes: When I climbed out of that poor, poor me stage and looked at all that I had, I never felt better nor happier than I did at that moment. I find myself very happy and healthy despite any cancer or other shortcoming.

Read John's post:

Find Your Health and Happiness Despite Cancer

Read the original health and happiness posts:

Cancer Bloggers Join Forces Again: Health and Happiness

OK, John, so what are your other shortcomings? Spill.

@ Jeanne Sather 2008.

Color

Color makes me happy. It's as simple as that.

So when I was out running errands the other day, I bought several bunches of tulips at Whole Foods, one of our neighborhood groceries.

I put the pink and purple ones together in one vase, and set it on the living room window seat.

The other tulips, which are cream, are in a deep-blue vase against the pumpkin-colored walls of my dining room.

I can't believe I waited so long to paint the main rooms of my house a strong color. When I bought the house, the walls throughout were a nice safe off-white. Boring. Safe, but boring.

But I was afraid of making a mistake with color, so I thought about it for a long time. First, I painted a couple of small rooms--the inside back porch where the cat has his food and litter box and the boys' upstairs bathroom were the first. I painted them a beautiful clear Robin's egg blue.

Then the guest room on the first floor. My friend Pat helped me with that, and we painted it a rich brick red. It's wonderful. That was two years ago.

Then finally, I got up enought nerve to tackle the living room and dining room, and, as I said, I can't believe I waited this long. We painted these (Pat and I) last fall, and all winter my house felt like a warm cave.

The tulips are gorgeous against these walls, and everytime I look at them, I feel happy.

@ Jeanne Sather 2008.

Pushing Spring

One way I get through the final few dreary weeks of winter is by “pushing spring.”

I do this by starting to work in the yard as soon as my fingers can take the temperature outside. There’s always lots of cleaning up to do, even if it’s too early to put in plants.

I uncover bulbs—crocuses, tulips, daffodils, a few lilies, crocosmia, and irises—then I weed and add fresh mulch.

I put used coffee grounds around the new shoots to keep slugs and snails away. We have a heavy snail infestation in this part of Seattle.

My onions and garlic have wintered over, and I added a few more onion starts to the bed from a big bag that I bought last fall and kept outside.

Today’s job is to choose my seeds for the year. I like to grow vegetables and fruit (strawberries, blueberries, Japanese nashi, and this year I have a new fig tree). Starting seeds inside in February makes me feel like spring is just around the corner.

Last year I had great success with multi-colored carrots, tomatoes of various types, potatoes, green beans, peas, and zucchini. Also the onions and garlic.

Less successful were beets and pumpkins. Also melons—didn’t get a single fruit.

I have quite a few seeds left from past years, so I’ll start with those.

I need to buy green beans, climbing peas, and seed potatoes.

I have a few potatoes left in the ground from last fall that should start growing soon, but I need more. We never seem to have enough potatoes. Potato salad made with small homegrown potatoes and homegrown green onions is beyond delicious. Eat it warm.

On the flower side, I usually grow sweet peas on the front porch for the fragrance, and this year I want to try hollyhocks. They grow really tall, so if I put them in the ground in front of the porch, I figure they will grow to just the right height to enjoy when I’m sitting on the porch next summer.

I also want a couple more honeysuckles (I have two now) for the hummingbirds, and a couple more fuschia if the ones I left in the ground over the winter don’t come back. Hummingbirds like these too.

I have quite a few different lavender plants in my front beds, but I could always use more. There’s a lavender festival over in Sequim in mid-summer. Sequim is a ferry-ride away on the Olympic Peninsula. I think I’ll round up a couple of friends to make a day trip over there to buy more plants.

The last time I went, two years ago, I paid about $2 a plant for some really beautiful lavenders—one with white flowers, and two with pink—and we ate lavender ice cream and lavender cookies. Both were surprisingly tasty.

@ Jeanne Sather 2008.

The First Crocus of Spring

As far as I am concerned, spring begins when the first crocus blooms.

I took this photo last Sunday--a gorgeous day, "Corvair weather"--in my front garden. If you look closely you can see a bee in one of the blossoms.

It's another gorgeous day today--and time for me to get off the computer and outside to enjoy the sun. Connie and I are going to take his frisbee to the park and then walk through my neighborhood. Connie needs more socialization with people of all kinds, and ages. He's too rough with little kids.

Now that's it's spring, it's also time for me to get out my seeds and decide what I want to plant. I always start seeds inside and then transplant them outdoors later. That's the only way to get a jump on Seattle's wonderful, but brief, growing season.

To read more: Gardening

Click on the above link and then scroll down.

@ Jeanne Sather 2008.

Beach Photos

I just downloaded about 30 photos from my digital camera, and I'm wondering what it means that I have more photos of the dog, Constant, than I do of Younger Son?

Younger Son's dog, GB the golden retriever, didn't make it into the frame at all.

And my attempts to capture bats in flight resulted in a series of black rectangles. Rats. Or, maybe, "Bats!"
[Bad pun alert.]

Connie and me on the deck of our hotel room.

Younger Son spent his time reading (The Iliad), eating, playing Risk against himself, running, eating, walking his dog, eating ... more eating.

Younger Son, the red speck, coming back from a run on the beach.

Connie against the landscape.

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.

Gone Beyond the Reach of E-Mail, Cell Phones, and Noise

If you're trying to reach me, I have gone beyond the reach of e-mail, cell phones, and other means of contact for a week.

Leave me a voice mail or an e-mail, and I'll get back to you when I return to Seattle next week.

Gudrun Weighs in: Health and Happiness

My friend Gudrun, who lives in Germany, just sent me her contribution to the "health and happiness" blogging effort.

Don't know what I'm talking about? Read: Cancer Bloggers Join Forces Again: Health and Happiness

Here's the link to her post:

Health and Happiness

And the German version:

Gesundheit und Glück

(I just learned what "gesundheit" means. My family always says that when someone sneezes ... but I never knew it meant "health." Thanks, Gudrun.)

We'll be doing a couple more of these joint blogging efforts soon, so if you'd like to join in, send me an e-mail.

jeanne.sather@gmail.com

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.

Cancer Bloggers Join Forces Again: Health and Happiness

Back in late April, I had what I thought was a brilliant idea: What if all my favorite cancer bloggers and I joined forces and blogged on the same topic at the same time?

That would give our readers a half dozen different takes on the same topic, and give us some synergy (hate that word, but what can you do?) in our isolated blogging lives.

The first topic I suggested was "meltdowns," and the results were pretty fantastic. See Cancer Bloggers Join Forces.

I was sitting here today after a tough morning (an MRI to my right upper arm to see if there is a tumor growing there—no results till tomorrow … argh) and feeling the need for that same kind of mind meld with my favorite fellow bloggers. So I sent out an e-mail to half a dozen of the same bloggers, plus one more, to see if they were interested.

The topic I proposed was "health and happiness"—because in most people’s minds they are linked like peanut butter and jelly: If you have your health, you can be happy. And if you aren’t healthy, that cliché would imply, how could you possibly be happy?

They were SO interested, that one blogger actually got her post up before I’d written this one.

Jeanne’s Take on Health and Happiness
There are a number of clichés in the English language that link the words “healthy” and “happy.” We say, “As long as my children are healthy and happy …” Or, “As long as I have my health …” The underlying assumption is that you can’t be very happy if you have a serious illness.

Well, that has not been my experience. The years I have been living with cancer have certainly included some of the worse moments in my life, but they have also included some of the best. I don’t think I would have experienced life during the past few years with the same degree of intensity and joy if I had not been diagnosed with cancer. I am not alone in this. A number of cancer patients and cancer survivors have told me the same thing.

Research, published in February 2005 in The Journal of Experimental Psychology confirms our experience. The study found that healthy people are not necessarily happier than seriously ill ones. In addition, the healthy participants in the study greatly overestimated how unhappy sick individuals would be, while the sick ones overestimated how happy the healthy ones were.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t have bad days, of course I do, but I certainly have more good days than bad.

The times that I am unhappy, depressed, and prone to meltdowns, are usually the times that I feel rotten physically. But I usually feel rotten because of side effects of my TREATMENT, not because of my cancer—one of those little ironies about living with cancer.

The things that make me happy are the simple things—mostly the same things that made me happy before I got cancer, but somehow my happiness in these things is more intense now. My children. My animals. My garden. Sunshine. Rain. Writing. And the Red Corvair.

From My Blogging Friends

Happy Days

After you read Jennifer's post (above), then read this one:

An End-of-Life Spending Spree Has a Surprise Ending

From Jill, one of the happiest people I know:

Health and Happiness

And from Lisa, a doctor who has cancer:

The Jar of Rocks

From Teri (AKA Teresa), Nebraska's Cheeky Librarian:

Can you have cancer and be happy? You betcha!

While you're at Teri's blog, check out the Ninja Librarian:

Beware the Ninja Librarian

Sara had me laughing and crying with this post, all about gardening and love, growing peas (with a surprise ending that she captures in a great photo), and baking brownies, fabulous brownies:

This One's for Jeanne

From Gudrun, in Germany:

Health and Happiness

And the German version:

Gesundheit und Glück

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.