A wild goose chase

Posted: February 14, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Disclaimer: I’m not dogging Walgreens. I love Walgreens. I spend a lot of time there. I’m just reporting the facts.

My doc called me in a prescription of Tamiflu, and my Walgreens was all out of it. So the pharmacist, who I happen to know quite well by now, called a little before noon to tell me he was transferring it to the Walgreens at Highway 6 & Williams Trace, a few miles away, and that it would be ready in a couple of hours.

Meanwhile, I was dying a slow, painful, cough-ridden death, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I dragged my sorry carcass to the garage, got in the car, and drove to my Walgreens, to get the prescription and take it to the other Walgreens myself. I couldn’t wait another couple of hours. Remember me, the impatient patient?

It took an enormous amount of effort to accomplish this, and I shudder to think at how frightful I looked. I did change out of my jammies, but hadn’t brushed my hair in two days. Couldn’t care less. Just wanted to get the drugs into my ailing system as fast as humanly possible.

My buddy the pharmacist says, Oh I must have just missed you. I left a message on your answering machine at home to tell you we transferred the Tamiflu to the Walgreens at Lexington and 1092, not Williams Trace.

Good thing I didn’t head straight to Williams Trace.

He advised me to go straight to the Lexington store and look as pitiful as I did in his store. He thinks he’s pretty funny.

So I dragged myself back into the car, drove to the other store, and hauled my sorry self to the pharmacy counter, holding my breath in hopes that they did indeed have my drugs and that they were ready.

Have them, yes. Ready, no. That’s ok, because it gave me time to do a little Valentine’s Day shopping. By the time I stocked up on candy for my Valentines and Propel for myself, my drugs were ready, and I kid you not, I ripped into them right there at the counter (after I paid) and sucked the first dose down then and there. Kinda reminded me of when I dry-swallowed a Xanax at the Taylor Swift concert a few weeks after I had my mastectomy. True story.

Desperate times, and all.

I came home and crashed out for nap #3 (all in the same day, egads), and am only now starting to feel marginally better. I still have a fever, and the nagging cough is still nagging me. The body aches are better but the headache is still plaguing me, no doubt a result of the nagging cough.

Tomorrow will be better.

Repeat 1,000 times.

I’ve succumbed

Posted: February 13, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: food, tennis | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

After dodging germs and avoiding family members like they had the plague (well, actually, they did), it’s happened.

I’ve succumbed to their onslaught of germs.

I hate being sick.

I really, really hate it.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m a terrible patient. Not in the
sense that I’m high-maintenance, needing fresh-squeezed juice and cold compresses, but in the sense that I’m horribly impatient and will do just about anything to get better faster–vaseline slathered on the bottom of my feet? I’ll try it. Drinking tea made from crushed twigs and eye of newt? Brew it up, I’ll choke it down.

The one thing I am loathe to do, however, is get in bed. In the daytime. While the sun is shining. Can’t explain it, but that just seems wrong to me. It goes against my grain. Yet here I am, on a perfectly sunny day–the first nice day we’ve had in a while–in bed. In the middle of the day. Still in my jammies from last night.

I got up long enough to drink a cup of coffee and eat some peanut butter toast, and to hopefully shake off the fiery ball of phlegm I felt forming in my chest when I went to bed last night. No such luck. That fiery ball invited its friends over, and the overcrowding is making me cough. The coughing reignites the fiery ball and it burns, baby.

This was not part of my plan.

Sunday is my day to get things done and to get a jump-start on the week. I know, that’s backwards; most people use Sundays as a day of rest, to recharge from the week that’s passed. Not me, I prefer to charge ahead and get the week off to an early start. I usually kick off my Sundays with tennis, then once fortified with 3 sets and a couple of beers, continue on making lists, doing laundry, running errands, and cooking for the week ahead. Lately it’s been all about soup. It’s been cold, really cold (ok, cold for Texas; those of you reading this while enveloped by real winter can laugh at me, but it has been cold here), and for me that means it’s time to make soup.

My soup kick has been good but repetitive of late. I’ve made several pots of vegetable soup. I was inspired by my friend Amy who brought me some yummy vegetable soup a few weeks ago, and it was so good that I tried to recreate it. Her version was inspired by her sister’s housekeeper’s recipe, and it was good. The first version I made to replicate it was the best. I need to stick to that one instead of trying to change it up.

The second time I made it, I added tomato sauce and substituted tiny star-shaped pasta for the diced potato, thinking my kids might eat it. The stars were so cute and inviting, but the incredibly picky duo said nope, not intrigued nor even a little bit tempted.

The next time I made it, I used whole-grain gemelli pasta instead of stars. Oh, and I added okra, too, because I really like okra. I think it separates the men from the boys. After all this research, I’ve concluded that the potatoes are the best in this soup and the okra kinda gets lost among all the other veggies.

Sundays are usually bookended by tennis and soup, not sickness. Come on…I can’t make soup from bed.

A cast of characters, minus one

Posted: February 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer, drugs | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

I’ve had this snazzy little grouping of prescription drugs on my kitchen counter for months now. Yes, the lids are pink, because my Walgreens had them for the pinkwashing that comes every October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Cute, huh?

These are the drugs I take every day, like a little old lady. My old standbys. The usual cast of characters.

There are the two big stars sharing top billing, Bactrim and Minocycline. My darling antibiotics that course throughout my body twice a day, every day to kick some mycobacterium butt. I would be lost without them. Or perhaps I would lose the all-day morning sickness feeling without them, but that’s just wishful thinking. Maybe I’d be dead without them, who knows? There was a time when I was almost sure I was dying from them, but I got over that.

Next we have the Florastor, the one thing that besides coffee that keeps me upright every day. I’m forever indebted to Susan Christopherson for turning me onto this probiotic that helps restore peace and order in one’s digestive system after said system has been under attack by the slash & burn tactics of an antibiotic regime. There have been a few times over the last 6 months of living under this regime in which I’ve either forgotten or willingly neglected the Florastor, and I paid dearly for that mistake. It’s not a prescription, but is kept behind the pharmacy counter for some reason. I don’t have to show my driver’s license to buy it, though, so I guess you can’t make meth out of it.

There’s the Ferrex iron supplement, since I’m a bit anemic and because I need uber-healthy blood vessels to harvest during reconstruction. Because I don’t eat any meat, I need a little help getting my iron; I get some from all the dark, leafy greens I eat, but not as much as my carnivorous friends ingest. My sweet, Peruvian oncologist can’t for the life of himself understand why someone would willingly forego meat. He shakes his head and looks at me a little funny every time it comes up, and he tends to bring it up every time he sees me. I’m done expecting him to compliment me on my plant-based, cancer-fighting diet. It didn’t help much, anyway, so I guess everyone is free to go on ahead and eat a big-ass, nasty, extra-rare steak. Might as well add some fries, or a loaded baked potato. You can see how far the healthy eating thing got me. Harumph.

Then there’s Tamoxifen, my daily cancer-battling bad-ass. It makes sure that there’s no estrogen flowing to feed any remaining cancer cells. While the side effects are troublesome (early menopause, hot flashes, leg cramps, decreased fluid in the joints, to name a few), I like the idea of starving those bastards. Tamoxifen is my first line of defense against recurrence. It makes me feel like I’m doing something every day to keep this beast from re-entering my life. It’s a daily pill that I’ll take for 5 years, then reassess to determine if I should stay on it or switch to another, similar drug.

And today I stopped taking it.

Yikes.

That scares me. More than a little bit. But since Tamoxifen can promote blood clots, it’s counterindicated with surgery. So I stop taking it for 3 weeks and hope that nothing goes haywire with my bloodflow. No clots, no bloodletting, no drama. That sure would be nice for a change.

Although I’m subtracting one prescription from my snazzy little grouping, I still feel like a little old lady whose life revolves around her meds. Ya know the old wisecrack issued when someone asks what time it is, and someone else smarts off, “Why? Ya gotta take a pill?” In my case, the answer is yes, smart ass, more than one pill. So zip it and get me a big glass of water so I can choke these guys down. While my life may seem to revolve around my meds, I refuse–I mean, dig in my heels and refuse–to get a plastic pill organizer. I’m all about accessories, but not that. 

There’s not enough hand sanitizer in the world…

Posted: February 11, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: drugs, kids | Tags: , , , , | 6 Comments

Every person in my family is sick. But me. 

Trevor has some nagging cough/congestion/fever thing that’s been dragging on for 12 days. Payton has the same thing and has been home from school since Monday. We were already going through a lot of hand sanitizer (when Macy was tiny she insisted it was called “san hanitizer” and half the time I catch myself inadvertently calling it that).

Then last night Macy woke up vomiting at 3 a.m. with fever and sore throat.

Hang on a sec, let me find a mask. Hey, apparently there are lots of fashionable choices. Hooray!

This one is particularly fetching, especially for a guy.

This one might scare the germs away. I like that idea.

How about this one? For the pig-lovers in the world. Swine flu? No, thanks.

Or maybe this one. More scaring, fewer germs.

This one is kinda nice. Reminds me a bit of Eric Estrada in CHIPS.

But this one is my favorite. A peaceful, zen germ-fighter.

Hi-yah! I’m going to check into a hotel.

Another trip to the med center

Posted: February 10, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer, tennis | Tags: , , , , , , | 8 Comments

It was supposed to be the first match of the new tennis season. I was paired up with my running buddy, we the defenders of the Witches’ Open 2010 title, were scheduled to play at Houston Racquet Club, a beautiful club that is heavily wooded and shrouded in tennis tradition. It’s one of my favorite places to play an away match.

When I re-signed with my Alley Cats team for the spring season, I knew I probably wouldn’t get to play the entire season, since I need to get this reconstruction done. But for me, a few matches is better than no matches, and after my post-mastectomy, post-infection absence and convelescence last season, I’m happy to be upright and on the court. You hear people say that a bad day on the court is better than a good day in the office. True, but that adage rings even truer for those of us who have stared an ugly disease in the face. The fact that my game is better than ever is icing on the cake. Or fuzz on the yellow ball. Or whatever.

But alas, the weather gods conspired against me. We got another blast of Old Man Winter, and as if the frigid temps and gusty winds weren’t enough, it rained and sleeted, and the season stalled before it even began. This South Texas girl is tired of winter. “south Texas” and “winter” do not go together. And my tennis days are numbered–again. Barring any weather delays, I’ll play three matches before going under the knife in a few weeks. I don’t even want to think about how long I’ll be out–of the game or under anesthesia during surgery!–but I’m realistic enough to know that the season will be over before I’m ready to play again. Sigh.

So instead of playing tennis, I was a dutiful patient and headed to the medical center for more pre-op testing.

I hate going to the med center, and I hate testing.

Ok, let me rephrase: I appreciate that one of the world’s best medical facilities is a 20-minute drive, down a toll road no less, from my house, and that I have a vehicle that gets me there, cash in my pocket to valet park, pro-active and organized doctors who have a plan for me, and health insurance to cover the frightful expenses. And an added bonus, one of my BFFs works at Methodist in the med center, so I get to see her in her white coat and definitely in her element. That is very cool to see.

So while I hate going there and hate everything about the testing, I am grateful. That counts for something, right?

Everything about hospitals and testing bugs me. I’ve ranted about it before so won’t rehash but let’s suffice to say that everything from the smell to the idleness of waiting my turn just bugs me.

Today was relatively easy in the grand scheme of medical testing, though: just 7 vials of blood for lab work, an EKG, and a chest x-ray. The new Outpatient Services facility at Methodist is beautiful: spacious, well-lit with banks of windows showcasing stellar views, comfy chairs, quiet rooms for those of us with sensory overload, knowledgeable staff and supremely trained nurses and technicians. The phlebotomist who stuck me got the needle into the vein on the first try, something I very much appreciate.

I still hate it, though.

I was happy that I remembered to take Dr Spiegel’s orders with me, since I’ve had them for a couple of weeks.  I would have been really mad if I’d gotten all the way down there in the cold rain to be told I had to go home and get the orders. Score one for me.

I checked in and chose a soft beige leather chair. I barely had time to settle in and fire up my kindle before a tour guide called my  name and asked me to follow her to the business office to once again show proof of ID and insurance. After a quick “skim this, sign this,” it was into another waiting area, this time closer to the procedures area. It’s akin to moving from the waiting area to the exam room at the doctor’s office. Even if you have to wait awhile in the exam room, you’ve at least progressed along in your journey.

After again firing up my kindle and peeping out the room-long windows at the grey, misty cityscape, I settled in for yet another indeterminate wait. After about half an hour, an older couple came in and sat behind me. I could see them out of the corner of my eye and could hear murmers of their conversation.  I did not, however, make eye contact. I’ve learned the hard way to treat my fellow patients the way I treat fellow travelers on a plane: don’t look right at them or give any indication of interest in their life story.

Mean? Maybe. But I’ve never claimed to be Miss Compassion, and while I’m sure there are sob stories that are sobbier than mine, I don’t want to hear them. I have no room in my life for the problems of strangers. Now, before you write me off as aloof and uncaring, let me state for the record that I will render aid if necessary. If an elderly woman walks off without her sweater or umbrella, I will chase her down and return her belongings. If the granny with a double knee replacement drops her pen while filling out yet another medical form, I’ll reach it for her. I’ll hold the elevator for young mothers with strollers and errant toddlers. But don’t ask me to take an interest in and listen to your sob story. Not gonna do it.

I was trying my best to tune out this couple behind me in holding pen #2 but despite my efforts, I noticed the man becoming more and more agitated about how long he was going to have to wait. I was tempted to advise him to pipe down and settle in, since he just arrived, and really it was only 9:15 a.m. He was upset about not knowing exactly how long this was going to take. Outpatient Services is first-come, first-served. Open from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. Come early and be prepared to wait. Duh.

Does anyone ever know how long “this” is going to take, whatever “this” happens to be? If you’re at the med center for outpatient testing, you’d better plan on being there awhile. Looking around, I noticed that everyone else had a book, magazine, soduku puzzle, knitting, laptop, and even a portable DVD player to pass the time. Everyone but the man behind me, who coincidentally was the only one asking how long “this” would take.

His wife tried to shush him, and I tried to tune him out, but he got louder and more upset. He tried to talk his wife into leaving, telling her he didn’t think he could stay any longer for the procedure.

Then he started to cry.

Yes, a grown man started to cry about having to wait for a medical procedure. I don’t know what he was having done, but I do know that they don’t even do anything scary there: cardiology testing, x-ray, and lab work. I know for a fact that other floors contain other scary options, but the 17th floor is pretty tame.

His wife tried to shush him some more in a way that made me think of little kids being told to stop their crying before they were given something to really cry about. She told him to dry it up, he told her he couldn’t, and she told him that yes he certainly could. After they went back and forth a bit, she hollared at him: “James Langston, you stop that right now!” And he did. Tough love in action. Right on!

Mr. Langston coerced his wife into asking one of the tour guides who walked by how many people were ahead of him for testing. She took his name and went to check. He blubbered a bit more, then she came back to report that there were three people ahead of him (one of which was me, thank you very much). That set him off anew, and he was caterwaling pretty good by this point. The tour guide shuffled off to straighten the magazines or restock the pamphlets or something, anything, to get away from James Langston and his weeping.

I’ve spent more than my fair share in doctor’s offices, hospitals, and outpatient testing areas lately, and no matter which facility I happen to be in, I can’t help but notice that every other patient is a lot older than me. As in, there’s no way they still have small kids at home, and I’m almost certain they aren’t juggling the kinds of things I am. Packing lunches? Nope. Overseeing homework assignments’ completion? Don’t think so. Ferrying kids to and fro, from school to sports to lessons to playdates? Uh, no. Worrying about getting out of there in time to not be last in line for carpool pick-up? Not today. Rushing to the store to pick up juice boxes and Fruit by the Foot? Negative. I’m betting these geezers don’t even remember that they ever did such things. (Ok, that was harsh, but it felt good to get it out. I’m done.) It’s just one of the many things that sucks about being a resident of Cancerland, and being a young resident blows especially hard.

Still in holding pen #2, I read the same page of my book 15 times without comprehending a word. I wasn’t trying to be nosey but I couldn’t help but wonder what James Langston was so afraid of, and why no one had thought to give him a Xanax. James Langston could have used one, for sure. If I were a more compassionate person, I might have offered him one of mine. But I’m not, and I guard my stash very carefully.

Just as I was about to start to feel a wee bit sorry for him, though, he grabbed a nurse and begged her to take him next.

And she did.

Crybaby James Langston leapfrogged to the front of the line, leaving the rest of us in his dust. He’s either the biggest baby or the shrewdest patient. I have no idea which.



Front-page news

Posted: February 9, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer, drugs, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

An article on the front page of the Houston Chronicle today says that big changes are in store for the breast surgery required for cancer treatment. A new study from our own local attraction, M.D. Anderson, found that women with early stage breast cancer don’t need to have their lymph nodes removed, even if the nodes are cancerous.

This is big news. Breast surgeons are calling it “practice-changing” and proof of the old adage that “less is more.” Dr Kelly Hunt, surgery professor at Anderson, says, “The study shows that we don’t have to take out huge swaths of tissue, that we can avoid aggressive surgery without any effect on outcome.” Personally, I’m a fan of anything that avoids removing huge swaths of tissue. Ick. Ugh. Yuck. Been there, done that. More than once.

This new study pokes holes in the century-old belief that a surgeon’s job was to cut out every bit of the cancer, and found that removing the lymph nodes didn’t give women any benefit over radiation and drug therapy alone. The prevailing science has been that removing lymph nodes helps prevent the cancer from spreading and/or recurring.

Removing the lymph nodes from the armpit area is a hot mess waiting to happen. You’ve got the cosmetic issue of ending up with a concaved surface. You’ve got the potential for infection (ahem). You’ve got the risk of lymphedema, which is painful swelling in the arm that cannot be cured. Anyone who has ever seen a photo of a limb swollen to multiple times its normal size because of lymphedema knows to fear this condition. I’ve met several breast cancer survivors on the tennis court since I returned to the game post-mastectomy and post-infection, and more than one of them played with a compression sleeve (a form-fitting garment that goes from wrist to shoulder) to stave off lymphedema. Tammy, my dear lymphedema specialist, made me take one of those bloody things home to keep in my drawer, “just in case,” because the really stinky thing about lymphedema — aside from the fact that there’s no cure — is that it can come on at any time. Women have gotten it years after a mastectomy, with no prior symptoms.

If you want all the nitty-gritty details of the study, you can read the New York Times article, which goes into a little more detail than the Chronicle’s story. The Chronicle does get credit for providing more info about Anderson’s role in the study. We like to root for the local team. Seems 100 of the 891 patients in this study were from Anderson, and the researchers originally planned to expand the study to include 1,900 women, but shut down the study before that happened because the results were so overwhelmingly conclusive.

I like overwhelmingly conclusive results. You don’t find a lot of them in medicine. I’ve learned that the hard way in my “cancer journey.” I’m a black & white, just-the-facts-ma’am kind of girl, and I found myself smacking my head against a wall more than once in pursuit of a concrete, yes-or-no type answer. In medicine, precious few of those exist. I suspect that’s why it’s referred to as “practicing” medicine.

In fact, Dr Grimes, my infectious disease doctor, has spoken of practicing the art of medicine as much as the science of medicine. I really like the way that sounds, as if it’s so very civilized and full of aesthetic value. In reality, it’s a balancing act of drug therapy vs side effects; of benefit vs cost; of how far can we push the body yet still maintain the integral strength necessary to fight the disease.

In other words, there is no overwhelmingly conclusive answer. And sometimes the doctors don’t know themselves what the right answer is. That’s why it’s so nice when a study comes along that says, yes, for sure this is the right thing to do.

I’m super happy about this big news. I hope it lives up to its potential to make life easier for the 200,000 women a year diagnosed with this breast cancer. And I really hope that it’s just a teaser of what big breakthroughs in breast cancer research are yet to come.

I heard the news today, oh boy

Posted: February 8, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: baseball, kids | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

It started around age 2, I guess. The baseball obsession. From his earliest days, Payton was a baseball fanatic.

He’s probably not even 2 years old here, but he’s already at the plate, ready to swing for the fences. 

That original swing morphed into this —

and even in 2nd grade, it was game on.

The Red Sox obsession started when he was around 4 years old, maybe even earlier. He has a lot of Sox jerseys and t-shirts. He even had a shirt way back then that says “Yankees Stink” and when he wore it to Fenway Park one year, he was a rock star among Sox fans. He wore it to an Astros game and was featured on the Jumbo-Tron screens. Sweet.

He wears Sox shirts for all occasions, both important and everyday. And not just at the ballpark, either. He wears them pretty much every day, no matter where he’s going.

From playing in the driveway in our Durham house, where we lived for two years, to the first day of kindergarten, Payton wore Sox apparel. Always a Sox shirt, and usually a cap, too.

If they allowed ballcaps at school, he’d wear a Sox cap every day. At one point, we had to clean out the closet because there were so many Sox caps. Every color combination of red, white & blue, and a green one, too. Eventually he got a red one with black flames. There was a green camo one, too, but it disappeared before we had any photos of it. 

Here he is in a Sox cap at his Little League team party in 1st grade, I think. All the other boys on the team wore the team cap, but this die-hard Sox fan had other plans.

He’s wearing a Sox shirt and cap in this photo, taken in his room six months after we moved back to Houston from North Carolina. This kid is (and no doubt will be) a Sox fan no matter where he lives.

His blue Sox cap was with him at the rodeo. He’s not wearing a Sox shirt, though.

I probably made him wear a Longhorns shirt, since it was the most Western-y thing he had to wear to the rodeo. (And yes, I see the expression on Macy’s face. Classic.)

He’s probably still mad about it, too.

For a while, Macy was in on it, too. This is one of my all-time favorite pics of my kids. In New Orleans, on the way home from Fort Meyers, FL, at spring break for, what else? Red Sox spring training.

Of course he wore a Sox jersey for the first day of school in 1st grade, just like he had done on the first day of school in kindergarten. He’s got a Sox backpack, too.

We got a lot of wear from the original jersey, a Nomar Garciaparra #5 authentic MLB version. He wore that one for a couple of years, and I still have it. I keep thinking I’ll do something special with it, like put it in a shadowbox with other memorabilia to preserve the Sox legacy. For now, it’s hanging in the laundry room, and every time I see it, I smile at how tiny it is, and how the tiniest jersey was worn by the biggest fan.

Here he is at Fenway Park in jersey and rally cap, showing off his newly-toothless grin. He had just turned 6, and was already a veteran traveler to Boston and Fenway Park.

Guess what he wore to his 6th birthday party? Yep, a Sox shirt. He loved the shirt, but wasn’t too happy about having to pose for a photo.

He looks a little happier here, celebrating Ed’s birthday in, what else? a Sox jersey. 

Here he is before the birthday bash, in yet another Sox shirt. He and Ed are smiling so big because they love the Red Sox! In fact, it was Ed who first brainwashed Payton into becoming part of Red Sox Nation. Thanks, Ed! I’ve never been more proud than I was during a game at Fenway when Pay was little (4 or 5 years old at most) and quickly established himself among our seasoned seat-mates as a real fan. He knew who was next in the batting order, and who made the last out. It wasn’t long before the men around us were asking Pay questions about the roster, and he knew the answer every time.

Riding the T after a game at Fenway, happy with a Fenway Frank or two in his tummy and a pennant in his hand. This boy loves baseball, and to him, baseball means the Red Sox.

This was his face when he came home from school one day in the 1st grade to find his room contained new bunk beds. I love the look on his face almost as much as the fact that he’s wearing yet another Sox shirt.

He’s all dressed up here for Mother’s Day.

And for YaYa’s birthday. Well, as dressed up as Pay gets. Which is fine with me. If he’s not wearing a Sox shirt, something seems just the slightest bit off.

In 3rd grade, he wore Sox shirts on the first day of school: and the last day of school. He got an award at the end of the year from Mrs. Spearman, probably for being the biggest Sox fan.

It was more of the same for the first day of 4th grade.

Hanging out with Snoopy, in a jersey of course.

She’s a Sox fan, too.

After the Nomar jersey came the Veritek version. Then Youklis. Then Beckett. 

I’m sure there were more, but they all sorta run together after all these years.

We’re really lucky to be able to go to Boston every summer and stay with our dear friends-who-are-now-family. The trip is the highlight of the year for all of us, and getting to go to Fenway as well as hang out for a couple of weeks on the shore, is the best.

At the airport on one of those trips when the kids were really little, Pay was decked out in Sox championship apparel. People traveling from Houston to Boston on that flight with us knew where that kid was headed. First stop, Yawkey Way. 

Catching some z’s on the beach in Salisbury, north of Boston. Notice the cap?

Wearing one of my favorite Sox shirts at Markey’s Lobster Pound, one of the best places on Earth. This shirt says, “It’s obvious you wish you were part of Red Sox Nation.”

Indeed.

Another Sox ensemble while enjoying another delicacy at the shore: Blink’s Fried Doe. Payton prefers chocolate frosting and chocolate sprinkles. Only they call them jimmies at the shore.

One year we went back to the shore for Thanksgiving. It was cold on the beach, but we took a walk. Pay wore a Sox shirt, and no coat.

Back at home, we buy the MLB extended cable package so we can watch every Sox game. 

Payton always gets new Sox shirts for Christmas, which makes him smile. Santa knows what that kid wants most. 

Fuzzy dice to go with the new shirts. Good stuff.

I don’t remember what we were celebrating here, but I’m sure it was fun. And the Pedroia shirt means it was a special occasion. Or a Tuesday. Either one.

When Pay broke his wrist in the 5th grade and had to get a cast, he got a red one. While wearing a Sox shirt, natch. Then he tried to scratch inside the cast with a mechanical pencil, and the eraser got stuck and he had to get another red cast. Three days after the first one. I told him that if he did it again, the third cast would be pink.

There was no third cast.

This past summer, Pay had to go to Fenway without me. I was home recovering from the latest bout with the post-mastectomy infection and wasn’t fit to travel.

He brought me a get-well gift. Guess what it was: a new Sox shirt of my very own. My favorite player had changed his number, so I needed an updated shirt. Sweet boy.

Red Sox apparel is such a big part of Payton’s life, and his wardrobe. Our family has logged lots of hours at Fenway and spent even more time camped out in front of the TV watching games from home. We check the box scores in the morning paper, and on any given day during the MLB season Pay can tell you exactly how many games ahead or back the Sox are in the playoff pursuit. We’ve had fun seeing the Sox at our home ballpark, Minute Maid Park, during interleague play, and at Camden Yards while visiting friends in D.C. When the Sox were playing the Rockies in Colorado en route to the World Series, we were ready to pack up and drive there, but the quick sweep made it a moot point.

My baseball-loving son doesn’t have a lot to say; he’s a pretty quiet kid. But get him talking about the Sox, and you’d better settle in because it may take awhile. We’ve bonded over good games and bad, big hits and strike-outs, bad calls and triumphant victories, opportunities lost and capitalized upon. We are a Red Sox family.

And as another Little Season is upon us, Payton, the biggest Sox fan of all, just got drafted by the Yankees. Worst. Thing. Ever. (in his mind, anyway.) This happened once before, a few seasons back, and he was pretty upset. He handled it like a pro, though, saying he would wear the dreaded navy blue jersey, but with a Sox shirt underneath, close to his heart. And when he “lost” his Yankees hat a few days into the season and needed to wear a navy blue Sox hat, I didn’t question him. He decided he would play hard while on the field, because that’s part of being on a team, but would take off the Yankees jersey as soon as the games ended. I admit, it was pretty weird to see him in Yankees gear. Wonder if he can still fit into his shirt that says “Yankees Stink?”

Update on my guardian angels

Posted: February 7, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Remember these three lovely ladies? If not, read this. I wrote about my guardian angels and their unfortunate accident in which they flew off the shelf and crashed onto the floor.

They’ve been repaired and restored to their shelf in the kitchen, where they can watch over my family and me. I think they’re recovered from their trauma, but are likely wary of another episode and probably watch over me with a worried eye, thinking, “There she goes, crashing around the kitchen again like a crazy person. It’s only a matter of time before she bustles over here to grab a cookbook off our shelf, and down we go, smashed into bits on the hard porcelain tile.”

Or something along those lines. I have no idea what Willow Tree angels’ conversations actually sound like, but that’s how I imagine this one. 

All three angels went to Ed’s magical workshop for repairs. They may want to ask about a frequent customer card, as they’ve been there before, and will probably end up there again. His rates are very reasonable, he does outstanding work, and he always manages to work in the casualties resulting from my carelessness.

This angel sustained the most extensive yet least noticeable damage. She pretty much snapped in half, suffering internal injuries but held it together cosmetically. You can see that she now has a long scar all the way across her middle, which is prescient as that’s what I too will have after reconstruction, since they’re gonna cut me hip-to-hip to harvest the skin & flesh to rebuild me up top. Ick. I wish I could manage as serene an expression as this Angel of the Heart in the face of my trauma, injuries, and recovery.

The Angel of Hope needed limb restoration, but thankfully she managed to escape the accident with her right arm intact, since it holds her lantern that she uses to watch over her careless charges. A single amputee is bad enough; a double would have been really tragic. She also lost part of her ponytail, but as we all know, hair loss is temporary, and hers did magically grow back at the workshop, and her scars are barely noticeable.

Sustaining the most overall damage was the Guardian Angel and her young companion. The decapitation was especially devastating, and sadly his head was never found. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Harry the eating machine found it and devoured it before he realized it wasn’t actually food. She also lost her head, but I found it and it, along with her hand, were restored to their previous state.

Thanks to everyone who wrote, called, or emailed with concern and support about these lovely ladies. Let’s hope they stay in one piece for a while.

Shameless plug

Posted: February 6, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Is it a shameless plug if it doesn’t benefit me personally? Is it even a plug? Or shameless? These are the questions that fill up my brain and try and distract me from the task at hand, which is to get out the vote.

Meet Alexis. Or at least meet three-quarters of her face. Yes, her eyes really are that blue. No, she doesn’t wear colored contacts. She’s 16 and entered in a contest to win scholarship money for college. She wants to go to TCU and the tuition is quite dear, as our British friends would say.

She’s funny and loyal and responsible. She coaches little kids’ swim team and basketball teams. She babysits and never loses her patience. She genuinely likes little kids. She thinks it would be cool to counsel people in drug or alcohol rehab (hmmmm, she may be seeing me in her future!).

She loves animals. A lot. She got a bunny named Henry for Christmas. Adopted him from the SPCA (yes! They do have bunnies there), because while she wanted a bunny, she also wanted to be responsible and do the right thing and make a difference, and all that. She assumes full responsibility for him: feeds him, cuddles him, cleans up his messes, and spends her babysitting money on timothy hay and chew toys.

So do me a favor and vote for her. She’s funny, responsible, caring, forward-thinking, and kind. How many teenagers do you know who fit that description? Hopefully lots. Being the silly girl that I am, I believe that good things happen to deserving people. Don’t you?

Vote for Alexis!

A month of soup

Posted: February 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: food | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

With it being so bitter cold in my neck of the woods, I want soup. And a can of Campbells just won’t do. I was raised on homemade soup, and when the weather turns or a nasty cold invades my system or a surgery is imminent, homemade soup is what I crave. I toyed with the idea of making a different soup every day for a month, but that may be the cold weather talking (seriously, 27 degrees in Houston?? Egads). Then I realized that I don’t even have a month between now and my reconstruction, and once I have the surgery, it’ll be quite a while before I’m able to cook again.

When I am able to cook again, I’ll be making soup. The weather will have warmed up by then; in fact, we may even be trending toward summer. But I’ll still want homemade soup. It must be genetic. My mom made soup. Well, actually she made everything, but soup for sure. She had many specialities, but her broccoli soup was my favorite. I’m not a big fan of broccoli (I eat it because it’s good for me and packed with important things like cartenoids, vitamin C, calcium, beta-carotene, lutein, and phytochemicals); but I love my mom’s broccoli soup. She knew the recipe by heart, but I have to look it up. Luckily for me, the cookbook falls open to the broccoli soup page every time. 

When I was a kid, my mom helped run a cooking school with a friend of hers, Mary Gubser. Mary is a bread and soup guru. She wrote a few cookbooks and taught cooking classes out of her home for suburban women who wanted to learn how to put a yummy and nutritious meal on the table.

I remember one time I was probably younger than Macy, and I was sick on a cooking school day. My mom bundled me up with a bag full of activities (no PSPs or iTouches back then) and took me with her. I settled on Miss Mary’s couch and listened to the women chattering as they went through the lesson: herbed vegetable soup and meunster cheese bread. My mom brought me a piece of baguette, warm from the oven, with real butter, and it remains to this day one of the best things I’ve ever tasted.

Maybe that’s why I love food so much: because memories of meals are so interwoven with memories of my mom. Food is such a powerful force, and it does way more than provide fuel for our bodies and sustain us through the day.

Soup has always been comfort food for me. You can have your mashed potatoes & gravy, your mac & cheese, your pot roast. I’ll take soup. But it’s gotta be homemade.

I got the love of soup from my mom, and Payton & Macy got it from me. In fact, Macy takes a thermos of homemade chicken noodle soup in her lunch every day. She’s vegetarian, but some things, like my chicken noodle soup and PF Chang’s honey-seared chicken, don’t count as meat in her mind.

Every week, I make a big pot of chicken noodle soup. For me, there is security in routine. Making soup for my kids every week is a ritual, and when chopping onions, celery, and carrots, I fall into an easy rhythm. Sauteeing the veggies in glistening green olive oil and with a few garlic cloves fills the kitchen with a smell of innate goodness that fills me up. Anyone can open a can of Campbells, but making what I consider real soup is a different thing entirely. It’s a labor of love, which I hope fuels and sustains my kids and weaves a delicate yet tangible ribbon of connection between them and me.

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