One Year Remission

Jase asked me a month or so ago, "How long will you be keto?" "Forever," I replied. He was a little surprised, as his nine-year-old mind had processed nutritional ketosis through a therapeutic lens, and he'd come to view it similarly to medicine or chemotherapy: it's something you do when you need it, and then when you're better,  you stop. So we talked about the value of healthy lifestyles and choices, about using the information available to make choices for your life. It makes sense when it comes to education - you pursue the best education you can, and when you find better options you make use of them. It makes sense when it comes to relationships, physical activity, and spiritual health. However, it's easy to forget that the same approach applies to nutrition. We had a good discussion.

The other day, Facebook cheerfully shared a "memory" with me. The image was of a post I'd made from the parking lot after the oncologist finally conceded to use the word "remission". (It's not as though I still had cancer and I'd coerced him into saying I didn't. He was just oddly reluctant to use that term. He'd say, "You're all clear," and, "You're good to go," and even, "There's nothing there. You're good." He did not want, however, to just say the one word I, personally, wanted to hear out of his mouth. I suspect he's had patients misinterpret the term, perhaps? Probably similar to knowing that there's a reason hair dryers have warnings not to use them in the tub. Something happened at some point, and now everybody has to watch what they say. However, I needed the psychological response of hearing the word, so that's the direction I dragged the conversation.)

One year.

Really? That's it? I feel like it was a lifetime ago. Considering I only just dealt two weeks ago with the active realization that it's been two years since diagnosis, this should not have been surprising. A quick recap of events bears it out. However, it's been two years of learning by immersion, by means of drinking from a fire hose; two years of integral study and application in tandem; two years of reading abstracts and papers, of compiling collected data and interpreting anecdotal content. Let's face it, it's been a very busy two years.

It also explains why this past year has been such a logistical nightmare for me to keep up with, mentally -- both because it really has been just-barely-over, and also because I have expected my mental function to be that of a 24 year old with only two children to keep track of instead of the 40-something year old with five children, one graduating, home renovations, and just-barely-post-chemo that I am. There you go, then. Poor perception and unrealistic expectations make for a weird year. They also make it feel a bit longer than a year.

Through it all, I've maintained a low-carb lifestyle and nutritional profile. I need to round up the material I used to come to the conclusions I did so that you'll understand why I am so enthusiastic about this. Why I encourage anyone to consider low-carb, fasting, hydration (always with the hydration), and supplementation when they're facing chemotherapy. It's not enough to offer anecdotes, from the oncology nurses who couldn't believe how few side effects I had, to the oncologist who was surprised to see how strong I was in spite of what the labs and scans revealed;  how my lipid profile has remained excellent in spite of a diet that flies firmly in the face of appropriate authority; how I'm stronger now, healthier now; how even getting dressed is literally effortless (a feat many take for granted), being down 50 pounds and agile as can be. It's not magic, or voodoo. A ketogenic diet can be a significant support to traditional cancer therapies.

This is so much a part of my daily study and interaction that I forget that it was a cancer diagnosis that drove me from Paleoesque into nutritional ketosis and a thorough understanding of what I'm asking of my body and how to treat it in the process. It would be good to share the processes that brought me to that point, and by it, through to the other side.

Be encouraged!

~ Dy

Repurposed Failure

I got a wild hair the other day and tried to make some keto peanut butter cups. I didn't pay attention to the chocolate recipe I was using and ended up adding exponentially too much coconut cream to the mixture. When I realized what I'd done, I added more unsweetened baking chocolate to try to offset it, but didn't really add enough (that would have made a lot of chocolate). They taste OK (needed more nut butter, actually), but they never set up properly. We've nibbled at them, but they are neither delicious nor satisfying, so, eh. Tonight, I was feeling bummed at the thought of wasting it when it hit me...

Can I put one in my coffee?

Why, yes! Yes, I can!

They will not go to waste, now.

I love coming up with solutions. Sometimes. Sometimes I am tired and do not want to think them up, but that's probably another blog post, entirely. What I really love is a little serendipitous brainstorm, especially when it involves chocolate and coffee!

Be encouraged!

~Dy

Wedding Attire and Projects

We've got a wedding this month! I'm so excited for the young couple - they're a great team, and I think they're in for being an unbeatable duo.

That said, now I've got to find something to wear. I tried browsing online for wedding fashion 2017 and it seems this year everyone's wearing slips and hankies. I'm... um... well, now I feel old. Also, I'm starting to understand old ladies and pant suits. Although that's not gonna happen this year, it does at least make a little sense. Give me a few more years and I might be buying celery green shoes and earrings to match my linen slacks. But I'm not ready to go there, yet. So, back to browsing for ideas.

The SpaceAppsChallenge sounds like it was really interesting. The competition was stiff, and the boys enjoyed working in a focused, fast-paced environment. Although their team did not win anything in the high school category, they came away from the experience with some good insight tucked into their belts and some good stories. James kind of wants to keep working on their project and get it working. Might be a fun Summer project.

It's time to get serious about the party planning and Summertime plans! WOOHOO! I'm actually rather excited about that.

Next up, beadboard ceilings? Maybe? The oak caterpillar-like debris has finally abated and the green pollen dust is down, so this might just be the year we get that ceiling in! It sounds like there's competition from the back porch, which also would be lovely. If we could magically get both done by graduation... Ohhh, I won't know what to do with myself other than have more company! Oh, my goodness, what will it be like to live in a finished house? *swoon*

Also, I desperately need a better system for time management. It's been cat herding central here, lately, but they're all large jungle cats and harder to herd than mere bobcats or Siamese. I'm flailing terribly. We clearly need more work and more projects - this tail end of the crew has no idea what it's like to DO things like the older kids did at the same age, and honestly, I don't think it's been for the better. So we're going to fix that. That's one nice thing about Life - if what you're doing isn't working, do something different. Figuring out what to do differently can be a bit of a challenge, but you can try one thing and if that doesn't work, try something else. (It sounds significantly less exhausting in print than it is in real life, I realize that. Still, it's exciting to know we aren't without options.)

And, that's about all I've got this lovely Monday morning. But it's good.

Be encouraged!

~ Dy

Busy Days and Lazy Days, The Homeschooler's Schedule

A friend commented recently, "I love Almost-May! Everything is next year!" The rest of us laughed and nodded. In the homeschool calendar, that's pretty much it. August is, "Oh. We should probably start soon." September and October are mostly just happy sounds backed by cool weather and fresh books. November is, "Mmm, let's regroup and see what we can finish by December." January is just long, followed by February, which is "Wow, we should have looked more seriously into boarding school." March is another hopeful regrouping, "No, we can do this. Surely by August we'll have ironed out whatever-this-is-that's-tripping-us-up-right-now." (We won't - it's February that tripped us up. It happens every year.) That's followed by April, when everyone takes a deep breath, shoulders down, charge ahead, "We can do this! We're almost done!" Then comes May...

Next year, we're going to use the learning journals more regularly.

Next year, we're going to rock this time management plan I just found in the back of the bookshelf.

Next year, I'm hiring out as much as possible.

Next year, I'm going to do it all in-house, back to basics.

Next year, we're just going to subsist on water and museum memberships. It'll be FUN!

Even when we know better, there's a cathartic, comforting aspect to Next Year. It gets us through to June, which is the pay-off, the re-calibration, the re-centering:

"Huh. This was actually a pretty fantastic year. Look at you go! You learned a lot... I should probably give us all a little more credit next February."

It's good to know the rhythms of your year, lean in, embrace them. Come May, you can indulge in all the changes you're going to make Next Year!

Be encouraged!

~ Dy

Flailing Across the Finish Line

So, y'all. Yesterday. Oh, my word. I was out cold on the couch with a good book by eight o'clock and that still wasn't early enough!

We had the pest control company out again yesterday to spray for fleas. Again. Still. Always. I suspect he's feeding them and has begun to think of us as his personal, off-site aquarium. When this contract is up, we're done. One year is ample time to get rid of fleas when you're working with a family that is all about the vacuuming and treating and keeping debris away from the house, setting light traps and not living like animals. Really? If that's not enough support for the flea treatments to get rid of these bad boys, then we need to consider contacting the CDC or just fire bombing the house and moving.

Also, although I do enjoy a clean house, we're all a little tired of stacking all our belongings atop the furniture every couple of weeks. It's to clear the floor so he can get everything, but it feels like a weird religious ritual at this point, and it's clearly not appeasing the blood gods, or whoever its meant to appease.

Ballroom was canceled for the older boys (their instructor had surgery and wasn't quite recovered yet), and that meant that there were seven of us to hustle out of the house instead of five. We decided we'd take the cars to the car wash and give them a thorough debriding. That's always good for an hour and a half, plus it's quite a workout.

We hit Mike's Merchandise, which is sort of a random overstock, discontinued, slightly-damaged things outlet. Also good for another hour and a half. Then we stopped in at John's work for ice cream and to visit with his coworkers. (I don't know if they appreciated that, but they're very kind. It's a good group of kids who work there. And the owner is a joy.) That gave enough time for the boys to head to class and the rest of us to start hauling Jacob to ballet.

Jacob had gotten up early and thrown in a load of wash (which, when you're 13, is pretty danged insightful). Unfortunately, it was a load he neeeeded for ballet that day. And we had to evacuate the house an hour before the wash would be done (which, when you're 13, you just don't think about timing - heck, at forty-something, I still get sideswiped by timing - it happens). We had scrambled a new plan that would allow us to give the treatment the maximum time to dry while allowing us to slip in and grab the clothes from the machine on our way to ballet. It was a brilliant plan.

Except that the water inlet valve on the washing machine died (a hero's death, truly) while we were out of the house. We came home to a washing machine full of water, a flooded basement, and wet clothes for ballet. The machine started spraying water into the hallway when Jacob opened the door.

If you've ever wondered if you can dry clothes on your way somewhere by holding them out the window as you drive, you can. It's a little awkward, particularly as you get into town, but if your drive is long enough it works surprisingly well.

Unfortunately, we were late for his first class. About a mile from the school, he realized that in the upheaval of finding buckets and towels and ringing out the wet clothes, he'd forgotten his bag. Bag has shoes. You can't attend class without your shoes. So we turned around and headed home. He was so sweet about the whole thing, and he really wanted to make his second class (he missed last week because he had a concussion). We decided to see what time it was when we pulled up and make the call from there.

Hey, we can make it! (I may have cried a little. Not from joy. He was joyful. I was tired. It's a 40 minute drive each way.) He grabbed his bag and we headed back out. I tagged Z to pick him up after class, dropped him off, and headed back to the house, where we finished dealing with the washer mess, vacuumed the couch and the rooms, made dinner, and read. *poof* Out cold.

I ordered some Fleabusters RX from Amazon and am considering installing misters filled with it throughout the house at ankle level to keep people from tracking fleas from one room to the next. I ordered a new inlet valve from Amazon and briefly considered checking to see if I could put it on Subscribe and Save. (The earliest we could get it in is May 2. Why is there not overnight shipping available for things like washing machine parts? If you see us at any point over the next week, please remember this is a mechanical failure not a lifestyle choice.)

Today, I've no idea what we're going to do, but I truly hope it doesn't involve driving. Or bugs.

Be encouraged!
~ Dy

Anniversaries

I've never been good about remembering significant dates. Birthdays, anniversaries, even some of the major holidays... they sneak up on me. It's not that I don't care about people. It's all dates, even mine. A few years ago, Z and I spent an entire day doing our thing - he took the Aunts out visiting museums, I had one of the Littles with me, painting the house. Sometime in the evening, I checked my phone for something and saw the calendar: Happy Anniversary. Oh. Hey Babe, it's our anniversary. Love you.

But it's not just the happy dates that I can't remember. The more somber dates? Oy. No clue. I'm not callous, or uncaring. I remember the sorrow, feel the loss, mourn with those who do remember, who do observe individual days of loss. But the specific days don't linger in my mind. They don't become anchor points or mile stones that point to the passage of time. I don't know, for instance, off the top of my head, when my parents died, when I lost a baby, when bad things happened... I know they did. They were awful. But the dates don't stick. (I recognize that this is different than so many people I love and cherish, and mentioned to Z once that I worried about it. He suggested that it's probably a relatively healthy mechanism that's kept me from losing my mind - there was a lot of death in my life, growing up. I love him for that perspective.)

So it came as a bit of a surprise tonight, as we shared a little of our backstories in a group I'm in (lots of new members, and it's always easier to know how to support or encourage someone if you know where they're coming from and what their goals are, so we did a short introduction thread), and it hit me that it's been almost exactly two years since I first heard the doctor say, It's cancer. And that hit hard, which was weird.

Two years, with 15 months in remission. I give thanks for that every day. But I don't remember the day.

Only six months of chemo. Special thanks for that - that it's available, and that it wasn't longer. But I don't remember the dates.

The port still irritates me and catches on things, but I'm clumsy at the best of times, and I still maintain that is one brilliant invention. But I couldn't tell you when I had it put in.

Getting dressed yesterday, I was taken aback by how easily my body moves and does what I ask it to. I gave thanks. But I don't know when it had stopped, or when it started again.

Tonight, recalling dates as I tried to reconstruct a timeline, it just struck a resonant chord when I realized we are right at the scene of Z and I sitting at the restaurant, quietly eating while we processed the news.

"I don't want cancer. This is stupid," I muttered. Like I'm six and someone has made beans and cornbread, right? But we respond the way we respond. A friend of mine, upon being told she had cancer, replied, "Oh, no. You must be mistaken. In my family, we get heart disease." God love her, I get it. The human brain is one of the most magnificent mysteries in all creation.

And I realize it may come back.

A dear pastor here in town is fighting a recurrence of it right now.

The kids' godmother is fighting it right now.

Friends' kids, nephews, parents, friends... all fighting. Right now.

I won't remember specific dates. But I will be right there, to celebrate, to mourn, to rage, or just be there. Because in the end, that's the part that really matters.

Just as it's the life lived between anniversaries that makes the marriage, more than the mile marker we pass each lap around the sun.

But to someone who lives like this, it's still weird to pass one of the more somber ones and recognize it on the way by.

However you note, or forget, dates, remember to let the ones you love know you love them -- so if you forget an anniversary, they won't think you've forgotten them.

Be encouraged!

~ Dy

Always With The Tone of Surprise

I am so in love with this house right now.

I am in love with it every time we do a deep clean and a general decluttering.

And I am caught completely off guard every time.

This really is the perfect home for a small family with a few big toys and a ton of books. It's really working hard to hold a medium-sized family with a billion divergent interests and a ton of books. It pulls it off, but with time the debris accumulates higher and higher, eventually eradicating the very things we love about it (the open spaces, the natural light, the outside room to roam). Twice a year, we double down on knocking it back, and twice a year I am in awe of what a truly adorable little place this is.

I kind of hope the kids will one day pool their resources and get me a cleaning service for a year as a Christmas or birthday gift. Actually, now that I think of it, I'm totally putting that in my Amazon wish list. Of course, that'll probably be when they decide to get the "Come Back With A Warrant" mat, which wouldn't be nearly as funny when I'm 80 and no longer homeschooling... Or maybe it would? Hmm.

We all have terrible Spring Fever right now. This is normally when we'd dial back the academics and go play before it gets hot, but they all have outside classes this Spring, and those run on a traditional school schedule... so we're stuck, and getting twitchy. We want to go somewhere and do something! The South is a gorgeous place in the Spring. There's something to love about every place, and at least one season to love about it. Spring and Fall here are pretty fantastic.

And now, I must awaken the Kraken and make them air out their lairs. The last step in the process! (Also, notably, one of my favorites! I love a freshly aired lair!)

Be encouraged!

~ Dy