The holidays are over, all except for putting away the decorations and taking down the tree, always a little sad.
I left for Tucson on January 2 without taking care of this, so now I have it still to do, and next weekend I'm at the Team Survivor Northwest retreat.
@ Jeanne Sather 2008.
This e-mail landed in my mailbox on December 18, and while reading it contributed to my Long Weird Sad Day, I can't say I was sorry to receive it.
I was sad for this young man, whose wife has terminal liver cancer, and sad for her, especially to be so sick at such a young age, and a bit sorry for myself, that I don't have a man who loves me this much. (Hey, I never said I didn't have my selfish moments!)
Here's the e-mail:
I stumbled across your blog looking for Christmas ideas for my wife. She has terminal liver cancer at the age of 23 (we were the lucky winners of the “you have a 1 in 13 million type of cancer that has no real treatment options” sweepstakes) and in all likelihood this is probably her last Christmas.
She was diagnosed about one year ago today. We just got married on October 6th this year so jewelry is kind of a cliché’ thing for me to get her; I’d rather get her something more meaningful. As a woman and cancer survivor, do you have any suggestions for something I can do for her that’s thoughtful and sentimental? I just want to put a smile on her face.
Best of luck to you in the future.
And my reply:
Since you asked, I'll tell you: You have to ask her what she wants.
I know you probably want to surprise her, so in that case ask her for several suggestions of things she'd like, and then you can still surprise her.
The other thing you might think about is to give her an experience, rather than a thing--if she's well enough, take her to Hawaii, or some other beautiful place.
Also, let me say that she is very lucky to have you. Probably more spouses than not don't deal very well with a partner's cancer, some even walk away, and so your e-mail makes me very happy for both of
you. Although I am very sorry that she has this disease.
Take good care, and if you don't mind, send me an e-mail after Christmas and tell me what you got her.
And then his reply:
Thanks for the response - I actually just got back from the hospital. Her dad is staying with her tonight so I get a "break."
Appreciate the advice. We actually tried to make it to Vegas for New Year's as a gift to each other this year but it was just a bit too pricey and her tumors are becoming a hindrance to her being able to walk without a wheelchair. We instead got a cruise in Chicago (we live an hour away) so she'll get to wear a dress for it and everything, which is what she wanted. I'll find her a few stocking stuffers here and there.
It always makes me sad to hear about people being drawn away from relationships due to cancer. I don't think you can call yourself a man and walk away from a woman dealing with cancer. Never even crossed my mind; actually I think it drew us closer together in these past few months. I've been blessed to have an employer who lets me telecommute from 1,000 miles away and provides us with excellent insurance and benefits. My real job these last few months is just to make her life as enjoyable as possible.
I'll send you a photo or two and an update after Christmas. Sorry these e-mails are long but it's hard to find someone with cancer experience who "gets it." I have really really good friends who still are like "oh, she'll beat this, just watch!" when we know that this is most likely a less-than-6-months situation. I can almost tell right away when someone talks to me whether they are a cancer survivor or whether they've had to deal with a loved one with the disease or not. I'm not a pessimist but I have to be realistic.
Take care of your family during the holidays and keep posting to your blog - you probably reach out to more people than you think.
That e-mail was a lovely gift to me, even though it made me cry. I have nothing profound to add, no cute little wrap-up kicker to end this post.
Well, maybe one thing: It reminded me of Rose, who died of cancer in October, at age 20, and how so many people who posted to her blog kept urging her to keep fighting, saying, again, "You can beat it," when it was pretty clear that she wasn't going to beat it and maybe another kind of message would have been more appropriate.
Read more:
Surviving the Holidays: Christmas Shopping
@ Jeanne Sather 2007.
...Older Son is asleep upstairs in the Teenager Suite, where he still has a bed, and a trashed room, waiting for him to clean it up (ha!), although he's 23.
Older Son arrived home at 3:30 a.m. on Christmas morning, and woke me when he started the dogs barking. I caught him checking out the contents of the fridge (nothing new there). He came downstairs at about noon to open gifts, and said then that he had been awake all night: He played computer games and watched movies till it was time to get up.
After the gifts, he decided to try to cut his own hair, and then called on me to rescue him (and his hair!) when his efforts with the hedge-clippers didn't come out quite right. (No photo of that, sadly. I tried.)
And now he's sleeping.
... Younger Son fell asleep on the couch while watching over my shoulder as I uploaded our
snow photos to the blog.
I covered him with the quilt from my bed, which brought the cat out to sleep with him. After a few rounds of clawing and grabbing for covers, they have settled down again together in front of the fire.
Now it's getting dark, and still snowing, I think, and the only light is from the candles, the Christmas tree, and the fire--a very Christmasy mood.
The Back Story
The reason it's so amazing that I am awake while everyone else is snoozing is that I spent most of the past four days in bed, crashed, recovering from my latest round of radiation, which ended last Thursday.
I know that radiation continues to work even after the last zap, but this was awful. I felt like I had been poisoned. The worse part was the radiation to my T-spine (T-4 through T-7), which also burned the esophagus. As a result, I couldn't eat or drink much without getting sick.
I went to bed with two thick books about the Tudors and canceled our holiday party. Didn't go to our friends' Christmas Eve dinner, which I had really been looking forward to. Also had to give the boys IOUs for some of their gifts, since I didn't go shopping on the 23rd, as I had planned.
I don't want to dwell too much on how sick I was, now that it's over, but it is really frightening to feel so bad. I didn't think I needed a doctor. I had talked to my doctor on the phone on Friday, and found out that he was on call over the past weekend, so if I needed him, I could have gotten in touch, and it made me feel better to know that.
Younger Son performed waaaay beyond the call of duty and took care of me, and the pets, with very few complaints. I was grateful for that.
But feeling so helpless was scary, as I said, and also made me understand a blogging friend of mine, a single parent like me, but with even younger kids, who was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. After one round of chemo, which landed him in the hospital, he has decided to refuse treatment.
I don't want him to do this, but I completely understand why he would make that choice. When you're the adult in the family, and you can't cope, who takes over?
I have a couple of friends who I know I can call, day or night, if I need rescuing, and one of them came over yesterday and brought me the first solid food I'd had in more than two days--Japanese-style rice gruel. It may sound awful, but it tasted great, and the love and friendship that went into her doing that for me on Christmas Eve, when she had plenty of things to do for her own family, made me feel like getting out of bed.
More on all of this soon.
@ Jeanne Sather 2007.
Connie, the Wonder Dog, playing catch on Christmas.
This is how Younger Son dresses to walk the dogs when it's all of 32 degrees out!
We NEVER have white Christmases in Seattle (the last one I remember was 17 years ago, so ALMOST never), but we did today!
After opening gifts and then losing a couple of vicious rounds of Yatzhee to Younger Son, the two of us took the dogs out to play in the snow.
See also:
@ Jeanne Sather 2007.
--As I write that headline, I realize that I haven't had my HappyLight on today, so I jumped up and turned it on. Can't hurt, and maybe it will help make this long, weird, sad, rainy day just a bit better.--
I went in to radiation at the wrong time this morning, my bad. I didn't check my calendar carefully, and I'm not scheduled at the same time every day, so at 9:30, when I should have been under the machine, I was still at home, in the shower.
Then, when I got there, the machine went down, so not only did the techs have to squeeze me in, but they were running almost an hour behind for everyone.
No one complained or bitched, certainly not me, and it turned out to be one of those warm, "partners in adversity" kinds of things, with all of us sitting around in our cotton gowns and blankets talking and sharing stories.
At Swedish, where I get my radiation, patients change into cotton gowns as soon as they arrive, and then wait to be called in the "Gowned Waiting Area." The receptionist, Diane, offers warm blankets to anyone who looks like they need one.
Usually, we're friendly, but don't have much time to talk because we don't wait very long.
Yesterday, a 17-year-old patient brought his new (9 weeks old) Husky puppy in to treatment with him. Everyone crowded around, playing with the puppy and telling dog stories. Diane showed us a photo of her dog that I had never seen before, and I've had treatment there three times in the past year.
But what made me sad, in part, anyway, was seeing patients with their family members. There was a young Hispanic woman with her mom, and the young woman was kind of grumpy, but her mom just let it roll off her, like mothers do.
And there were two sisters, 60ish. One of the sisters is being treated for lung cancer, getting chemo and radiation at the same time and having a hard time with it. Her sister had come up from Arizona to stay with her during the weeks and weeks of treatment. No one in my family ever did that for me, or offered to. The sisters showed me the son's wedding photos on a digital camera. They were cracking jokes and telling stories, and I just loved them.
The teenager with the puppy had his uncle with him.
But even worse was the two young mothers in for treatment. Neither one looked any older than 30. One is mom to a girl not quite 2, and the other has two children, one 3 and one a baby less than a year old.
My sons were 13 and 8 when I was diagnosed, and that was bad enough, but these women have babies! I really feel for them, and am just hoping everything goes well.
After that long morning, I had another medical appointment, this one with one of my therapists. Just realized this moment that I forgot to ask her to write me a prescription that I need. Argh.
It was that kind of day.
Now I need to call and ask her to phone in a prescription. Don't want to run out of meds at the holidays.
We talked about how to handle gatekeepers, which was useful. I'll be blogging about that soon.
Came home to a full e-mail box, including a sad, but interesting message from Amy about the photo she used for her family Christmas card. The photo of the kids was taken when her husband was in the hospital for a transplant, and Amy got all sorts of negative reactions from family members for sending out that photo with her Christmas cards.
Personally, I'm amazed she even sent cards this year, because I know how much time and energy it takes. But then to get that kind of reaction: Like she should pretend that her family's experiences during the past year or so since her husband was diagnosed with cancer didn't happen?
The relatives don't want to hear about it? It was in bad taste to remind folks (although that wasn't her intention, she was just looking for a good photo of the kids to send) that there are sick people out here?
I am seriously behind on my holiday preparations, not to mention bill-paying (for December!) and student-paper-reading (promised I'd finish them last weekend--what was I thinking?). The tree is sitting on the front porch in a bucket of water. The ornaments are still in the basement. And the e-mail is getting very intense:
Not only did I get e-mail from a quack, suggesting that I drink my own urine as a cure for cancer, but I got a sweet e-mail from a man who said his young (23) wife has a very serious cancer, that this will probably be her last Christmas, and what did I suggest he buy her for Christmas?
It's been that kind of day.
Read:
@ Jeanne Sather 2007.
Another one of my holiday traditions is to spend an afternoon making candles with my friends Linda and Megan.
This year was, I think, the third year we've done this, and we always have a great time. The candles we produce have that funky, homemade charm.
Past Years
When my sons were little, we always spent at least a day, sometimes two or three, making holiday ornaments and gifts together. Both my boys enjoyed art projects, and were talented in this regard, so we had a good time and produced some pretty cool gifts. We still have many of their handmade ornaments on our tree, like most families.
I wanted them to learn about giving gifts from an early age, because for kids Christmas can be a bad lesson in GREED.
Have they learned this lesson? It's too early to tell (they are 23 and 17), but I like to think so.
In any case, they are no longer interested in helping me with the Christmas projects, so now I do this with friends. (Younger Son has volunteered to help with the fudge making and cookie baking, though--I wonder why? And he will help me get the tree and put it up and decorate it. Older Son is MIA while these activities are going on--not that he wasn't invited.)
Candle-Making Supplies
Linda and Megan and I are still working off the same huge block of paraffin that I bought three years ago.
Our other supplies include: wicks, color chips (two shades of green, red, and gold--next year we are going to get blue and make blue and silver candles), glitter, stickers, and plain white candles of various shapes for dipping. We also have a star-shaped mold to make poured candles.
Our favorite technique involves melting the paraffin in a double boiler (I bought a special metal pitcher to melt wax in so I wouldn't destroy any of my limited supply of pots and pans), adding color chips, and then dipping white candles into the colored wax. This year, we added glitter while the wax was still soft.
In fact, I think we went a little crazy with the glitter; I'm still finding it all over the house, but I don't care.
Another technique was to put stickers on a white candle, and then dip it quickly into golden yellow wax. These turned out really well, and we decided to get some Christmas-themed stickers next year and do more of these.
We each make eight or 10 candles, and I'll give some of mine away and use the others to decorate the mantle.
@ Jeanne Sather 2007.
Back in October, when I was making Prostate Cancer Ken and Benign Girl, I found some really cute little teddy bears at Uwajimaya, the Asian grocery store in Seattle's International District.
I gave Ken and Benign Girl each a teddy, because people ALWAYS seem to give teddy bears to people who are newly diagnosed with cancer. Even then, in the back of my mind, I was thinking that I wanted to get more of the bears to give away as Christmas presents.
So just last week, I headed back to Uwajimaya, and got another nine or 10 bears, all different colors. The fabric used to make the bears is a traditional Japanese print, and I like them for that reason, and also because they are just so cute.
Then I had the bright idea of attaching the bears to a Christmas wreath for our front door. So yesterday, on my way home from my massage, I stopped by the Christmas tree lot where we always go (they have a reindeer, enough said), and bought a wreath.
I laid it out on the counter and attached the bears with twisty ties, with Younger Son advising on placement, and added a gold bow. Then YS and I hung in on the front door, on the nail that was waiting from past years.
When friends come to our holiday party next Sunday, I'll invite them to choose a bear to take home.
@ Jeanne Sather 2007.
For the past week or so, I've been busy working on my Christmas gifts.
I'm knitting the second of two scarves, and have started carrying my knitting with me, to work on in waiting rooms, in order to get it done in time.
The only problem with taking my knitting out in public is that there is always someone who wants to ask me about it, and that means very little knitting actually gets done. When I was at Northwest on Friday, waiting to see Dr. Tolman and then get my zometa, a woman came over and asked me how you increase a stitch.
So I showed her. That was nice, I'm not saying it isn't, but I end up talking instead of knitting.
One interesting side benefit of knitting in the waiting room: Both my blood pressure and my pulse were lower than usual (i.e., nice and low, right where we want them).
Like many cancer patients, I suffer from "white coat syndrome," and my blood pressure and pulse are often quite high when I'm at the cancer center. So I check them at home every once in awhile, to get a more typical reading.
The scarf I'm making now has a subtle diagonal stripe in soft browns and greens. It's for an old friend from Tokyo days who now lives in San Francisco.
I've also committed to making two more: a black one with a silver thread in it for Jacqueline, and a gorgeous blue and green, also with a metallic thread, for Laurie. I don't have to have these done before Christmas, though.
I'm going to see Jacqueline in New York in March, so I want to have hers done by then.
Christmas Jam
Last Thursday, inbetween radiation therapy appointments and a meeting at the University, I made a batch of strawberry jam. This has become a tradition, and my close friends and family expect to receive a jar of homemade jam on Christmas. Usually I make it with my homegrown strawberries (frozen till I need them), but I ran out of berries this year, and had to use a combination of homegrown and store-bought organic berries.
I think it tastes the same.
For several days, the house was filled with a thick cloud: the smell of sugar and strawberries boiling. It's gone now, until I next open a jar of jam.
@ Jeanne Sather 2007.
