Holiday Gatherings

I went to the neighborhood tea yesterday. It was good to see moms that I've known since the boys were in kindergarten. They seemed surprised that I appear so healthy but many of them see me run.

I wish the city would go back to salting tertiary roads. Aside from it impacting my running, it is dangerous. Several people reported sliding into the main road from our neighborhood streets.
They did plow a path along the river where Josh and I walked Sunny yesterday and I returned to run on it today though today, it had a dusting of new slippery snow,

We went to see the IMAX 3D version of Avatar. Predictable story but stellar special effects.
Later I went for Korean BBQ with my old labmates cooking on a hibachi that came out of the table. It was fun and good company.

Our phone is out of order but our DSL works. Argh! So if I don't appear to be answering my phone, call my cell.

Shanna et al is slowing inching her way on Rte 90 as I type. She will drive all night if she has the energy so they might be here real early tomorrow morning. Such a long drive with 2 little babies but they are hoping for the kids to sleep. We used to drive overnight to NYC when the older kids were toddlers so that Josh would sleep (Shanna usually wasn't much of a problem.

Solstice

I am not a fan of winter's long nights and short days. But for the next 6 months, each day will bring more and more light. Yay!

We don't have much snow here but since they have cut back on city services, no more salting and plowing of side streets so I have no clear path to run. I did run on top of the snow yesterday as there was no ice underneath it but the ice has had some time to form so I am out of luck. My Y membership is in limbo. I will take a long walk with my son and his German shepherd Sunny instead.

To keep me occupied, I have a few holiday parties to attend. Later today is our tea for Moms whose Sons Graduated from Huron in 2000 with a few moms whose sons graduated in 2003 thrown in for fun. We were originally mothers whose sons played on a neighborhood baseball team together. They were usually the worst team in the league but Josh insisted on playing with them as they were his friends (and many still are his friends). Since it wasn't much fun seeing them lose night after night, we'd go out for drinks or coffee afterwards. The baseball days eventually ended so we started meeting once a year to catch up.

Tomorrow, I'll go for a holiday dinner with some former co-workers and next week a party with yet another former co-worker. Wednesday Shanna and her family will be here. They start the long drive from Boston tomorrow. I will be looking at the weather map nervously until they are here.

Buche de Noel

The buche de Noel aka The Yule Log


The presents I wrapped 'for the moms' and the Buche


Our tree
Still isn't completely decorated. I am wearing my summer art fair purchase


Every year, our postpartum support group,'The Awesome Moms', has our holiday dinner. In January, we will have our 30th anniversary of our first meeting though I knew 2 of the moms before our group started. Between the 5 of us, we have 10 kids and 5 grandkids. Everyone goes all out to make the dinner special. My task is the dessert. Usually Naomi is around to help with the marzipan decorations but with the snow yesterday, I didn't want her driving. The buche de noel is a jellyroll made to look like a log. The hardest part is making the cake base that will hold up to rolling into a log. This year, my base was a flourless torte-big mistake as it was much too fragile for the rolling up part. (I am going back to a genoise base) It broke into several pieces and my jelly roll turned into more like a sandwich which I liberally covered with a fudge frosting that covered up most of the cosmetic defects. I filled it a whipped cream cherry filling. The frosting seemed too thin initially even though I beat it forever but soon as I put it on the cake, it set up like cement. So the cake wasn't as pretty as I hoped it would be but it tasted very good. Chocolate, almonds and cherries-how can you go wrong with that?

So caviar, cocktail shrimp, special salmon, great salads, brie covered with pear conserves, chambord-champagne cocktails, lots of wine, good company, beautiful decorations, carols, candles, presents... a nice night among old friends who have gone through so much together.

Ms. Naomi made an appearance Friday to help with the tree decorating but got bored after a short while. We have lots of ornaments (even more after last night). Some are looking pretty ragged after 33 years. I was in this craft making phase early in our marriage so we have lots of embroidered or needlepoint ornaments. Also we still have the kids' handmade ones. Our tree has scoliosis; the tree looks straight but there is a curve in the main trunk which makes balancing it a challenge. Hopefully it will hold up..I've lost so many ornaments to trees falling over.

Picking those apples...

I've written before how running is the perfect exercise for me as the equipment and skill requirements are low. Still I don't do it 'right' inviting critics to come out of the woodwork telling me what I am doing wrong. They usually comment about my excessive arm swing. About a mile into my run today, I hear someone gasping behind me wondering if she could give me a little advice as she sees me out here quite often.
Sure why not. To eliminate my arm swing, she said I should imagine that I am picking apples straight ahead on the road. I tried her method for a while and I think she's right that it helps eliminate my side to side motion but it was hard concentrating on that and I was especially tired today. I would do it 'her way' for short blocks of time especially going up hills. My advice to her-don't run so hard that you are sucking air.

My route should be retitled 'the deer graveyard'. At least 4 carcasses are along the side-one with its head missing.

My X-mas decorating is on hold until we can straighten out the light situation. Usually I'm very careful to only pack away 'the good lights' but I must have been too tired last year to pay attention. As it was, I was too tired due to chemo to even decorate the tree though my friends came and did it for me.

A year ago today, my hair all fell out. I was going to a party that day and still had about half of it left. I piled it under a cap and away I went. When I came back, I cut it to about 2 inches as the weight of it was tugging on my burning scalp. I still have that pile of hair. Most of that was gone by the next day.

Some funny puns my friend Nancy sent me:

A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The
stewardess looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion
allowed per passenger."

Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, "I've lost my
electron." The other says, "Are you sure?" The first
replies "Yes, I'm positive."

Cold, cold days

The past few days have been lazy ones. Since my Y membership ran out (I am waiting word on a partial scholarship), if I want to exercise, it has to be outside. Fortunately it has been dry for the last 3 days.I try to balance the wind versus the cold. It is colder the earlier it is but less windy very early in the morning. Still with the wind chill, it whas been around 7 degrees outside during my runs.

I've done a little X-mas shopping, the tree is up though not decorated and I haven't made anything special for X-mas. Shanna and her family will be here in less than a week. Naomi's last final was today. I've been helping her study for the past 3 nights. Hopefully she'll do OK. She'll seem like she understands her work then she makes careless mistakes on her tests.. I wish I could transfer some of my knowledge to her. She is still living with her boyfriend and the pregnant roommate has returned despite being kicked out a few weeks ago. Naomi has no job and seems to think the car will operate on fumes. She had to be rescued the other night with a gas can. But I'll get a 3 week break from worrying about her school.

We had lunch yesterday with Josh and Julia. Julia just lost her job due to the bad economy. Fortunately Josh's is doing well.

Sleeping has been difficult recently. I awake by 2 am and start thinking about stuff. I then try to read or do puzzles to stop thinking about negative things. Last night my rib hurt worrying me as I did nothing to it. The pain since has gone away so I assume it isn't bone mets (which would be constant pain getting worse as the tumor grows).

Anniversary

Pretty at night

The Kingsley Inn

Our whirlpool

Our room

Sunday was our 32nd wedding anniversary so we went to the western side of Michigan to Saugatuck, which is full of art galleries. We stayed in a little town nearby called Fennville. The jacuzzi made my sore muscles feel better. More and more of my muscles and joints now seem sore. I am assuming this is some sort of post-treatment neuralgia/myalgia caused by Taxol. Sometimes it seems like the bone itself seems sore, which makes me nervous but as it isn't getting any more painful as time goes on, I will assume it's not due to bone mets. There are some nice shops I like to visit in Saugatuck and now I have some very cool tops.



I've been slowing plowing through the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symp. abstracts. So much stuff! Lots of proteins identified that predict survival etc and which could possibly be targeted for treatment. My old company presented data on an oral drug for Her2 positive people. That would cut down on the once a month infusions needed now. Still see no cure for TNBC any time soon but maybe in the next 5-10 years.

San Antonio

Every year around this time, there is a conference in SA on advances in breast cancer research. It is still on-going and I haven't read the abstracts but so far I haven't seen any news specific to TNBC.

Interesting news for BC in general:
1) Oral bisphosphonates seem to reduce the incidence of breast cancer by some unknown mechanism. In general, women with HIGH bone density are at increased risk for breast cancer presumably due to their higher levels of estrogen, which is associated with higher risk of BC. These women are not likely to be taking bisphosphonates. But presumably the study took this into account and had women with similar bone densities divided into drug taking and non-drug taking groups and the drug taking ladies had 33% less BC. These bisphosphonates are not without risks: osteonecrosis of the jaw is just one side effect along with bone pain. I'm not sure how they convinced ladies with normal bone densities to be on this study (all were cancer free in the beginning of the study).

2) For Stage 4 her2+ ladies: Tykerb added to Herceptin extended their lifespans by 2 years. Herceptin latch onto the protein on the surface of the cancer cell whereas Tykerb attacks it within the call.
All cancer cells have human epidermal growth factors (HER) but HER2+ have extra copies(about 25% of BC). What I am wondering is what Herceptin would do to Her2 neg BC. I'm sure there are studies: I just haven't seen the results.

3) Also for Stage 4 her2+ BC. Generally Herceptin is given until the tumors start growing again as it is assumed that the drug stopped working. But in this study they kept on giving Herceptin resulting in extended lifetimes.

4)Zometa vs a monoclonal antibody for bone mets: just as effective with less side effects. Allegedly a double blind study but as one drug is given iv and the other sc, I'm wondering how 'blind' the study was. As expensive as Zometa is, I wonder how much more this monoclonal antibody product is.

5)and 6)Alcohol consumption and recurrence. Even as 25g of alcohol (1 oz or so)daily significantly increases recurrence significantly. Also increasing death in recurrences is having a BMI over 25. These authors surmise that the recurrence is discovered later in the big ladies leading to increased death rates.

It was sunny, calm but cold this morning for my run. I wore gloves for the first time (I only do if the temp 20 deg but I took them off after 2 miles). I have to stay off the dirt roads now as the ice doesn't melt on them as soon as the paved ones.

Tomorrow is Steve's and my anniversary so we are taking a minivacation. I see that there is freezing rain forecasted for the morning. Yuck.