Round

I have a plan for this week, and it’s to enjoy myself.

I want to take a bubblebath.

I want to go back to the pool and swim (which I haven’t done in many months).

I want to watch a few movies, and listen to some music, and drink good tea & light a few candles, and generally just slow down and enjoy life.   I’d like to meditate more regularly this week too.

I’d also like to cook some this week, as I’ve gotten out of the habit recently with all the travel.  I now enjoy cooking, and miss it when I don’t do it.  After being away all last week, we ate out every night this weekend (including Sat), sampling French bistro fare, Morrocan, Greek & Japanese.  But I miss home.  Yesterday I hit the market & got stocked up & also planned menus for the week.  I’m also home for the week, and that really helps.

I’m planning to stay the course on my diet, keep up the regular exercise & generally keep on the good path.  That approach seemed to work last week - my weight is back down the 1 pound it was up, so the plateau is still officially here but I think on it’s way out.

But although I’ll do all the right “weight loss” things, I really want to focus on the “Low Stress” aspect right now.

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On an unrelated note, does anyone know someone who can design logos and stuff like that in Illustrator or whatever the heck software is used for that?  I have a little project with even less money to put towards it (I can pay, but not much…), and my circle of friends has come up empty on the desktop designer front - so if you or someone you know has the skills, please let me know!

I’m largely back to my usual self.  This year has been a hard one, the endometrial cancer dominating everything else, but it’s also been a year of learning.  I’m still learning.

When you read about people getting news of a major life change or getting a scary diagnosis you sometimes see reference to it as a ‘life changing event’ in that people will talk about their time before the event, and after.  I’m pretty sure my experiences with endometrial cancer this year will fall into this pattern.

Every day I see that my priorities & attitudes have shifted.  Some of the shifts are slight, some are major.  I am more tolerant, more compassionate, less easily annoyed with human foibles (slow cashiers, unfriendly people, etc).  At the same time, I have more appreciation for everyday life - a nice cup of tea, a walk around town, time spent with a friend.  I also am less willing to spend my time & my energy on things that are draining for me.  I suspect this will have some impact on my professional life when I head back to work next week — I just don’t care very much about corporate politics or corporate goals.  I’m happy to have a job (and one that I like) but I also know that the job is not my life, and I won’t give it that kind of energy.

I had lunch yesterday with a friend of mine from the States who has moved back to Switzerland.  I haven’t seen her for several years, and haven’t been in touch much these past few years either, but for several years before I moved to France I had dinner w her & her husband every few weeks, and I worked closely with her husband for several years.  Seeing her was nice - especially since they’re back in Europe & hopefully we’ll manage to see more of each other.  I was looking forward to talking to her, to see how I could handle talking about what I’ve been though this year without it becoming a pity party but merely part of the ups & downs of life.

When she asked how I was (saying she could tell by our brief phone conversation something was up) she thought it was my marriage that was the problem.  I had my heart beating hard, as I said “no, that’s been the rock for me this year”.  I am so grateful I found this man, pushed myself to open up to him, and that I’ve managed to build such a solid relationship with him.  We’ve had some hard moments this year - but a lot of those hard moments have brought us closer.

This friend married later in life, like I did.  She’s about 10 years older than I am, never had children.  I suspected talking to her would be helpful & I was right.  I told her what had happened, and she was very nice about it but also not dramatizing it (nor was I).  That was nice, and gave me good practice for explaining some of the situation to my work colleagues & direct reports when I head back into professional mode over the next weeks.  We talked about a lot of stuff, but the work conversations which had always been a big part, were gone — both her & her husband are now retired (him 6 years ago, her earlier this year), and the importance of my career in my life has been on a steady downward trend for several years now — and of course right now I have zero interest in it.

After our nice lunch & lingering over tea, we parted, but I was very happy to be able to see that I am living a good life.  I braved the rainy weather & walked home, wandering through neighborhoods I don’t know so well & ducking into shops from time to time.  I spent about 2 hours heading home (normally would have been a 40 minute walk) and found a book I’d been looking for & some ingredients from a specialized grocer.  I listened to a book on tape. I took a few pics of this pretty city.  I appreciated my life.

Well, this weekend I will try to take advantage of as much fun time as I can before going into the hospital on Monday evening.  Most everything i wanted to get done & wrapped up has been done (one more thing to do, might or might not get done).

This weekend should be fun - fancy restaurant w hubby tonight (just the 2 of us, thank goodness), Saturday : massage, mom arrives, opera & then out to dinner w friends.  Sunday : brunch at our house w the whole family (including my sister & her family who are still in Paris one more week, but mercifully left my house this morning), theatre in the evening.  Monday have a work thing that will keep my mind occupied & out of the worry cycle for a good chunk of the day before I come home to get ready for the hospital.  Surgery is first thing Tuesday morning.

I am surprised that I don’t have the desire to become a crazy carb-inhaling person these next few days, but I don’t.  I’ll probably slip a bit off the straight and narrow tonight at dinner, but otherwise should be fine.

I feel ready and okay for this.  It feels like it’s going to be fine, I’m going to come out of the surgery cancer free and in good shape.

Let’s all keep our fingers crossed that this feeling becomes my reality!

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I think I had mentioned on this blog that I’ve spent a good amount of time these past few months working on a bathroom art project (it’s a very small, cramped powder room).  I finally finished it last night - here are some pics :

Detail of the circles (cut out of magazines while I recovered from the first surgery in June) :

If you have to go to an oncologist, it’s not so bad if his office is just a few steps away from this view of the Eiffel Tower, right?

If you have to have a hysterectomy when you wanted to be having a baby, it’s not so bad that it’s because they found a condition very early and it means you’ll be safe from further disease, right?

If you have to have a hysterectomy and still want to have a baby, it’s not so bad that there are very good fertility doctors that can find ways to maximize your chances of doing so, while not putting your health at risk, right?

If you have to be in this situation, it’s not bad to have a great husband, who is amazingly supportive and calm.

If you have to go through all this - endometrial cancer, IVF, gestational surrogacy, etc, it’s not bad to have an understanding boss and a financial situation that makes these kinds of things possible (although it’s a BIG stretch for us for money and for my job).

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I had an appointment today with the gynecologic oncologist who booked a new surgery day and wrote the letter giving me the clearance for the IVF.  He was very nice, laughed a bit at the US litigation fears (the reason behind the letter), and was very grateful that I had already prepared the letter in English so that he could just insert the date of the surgery and sign it (I was worried he’d find it too presumptuous).

Walking out of his office I went out of my way to get a good glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, since his office is near to it.  I also got to stroll down some of the prettiest streets of Paris, walk by several nice shops, and enjoy the pretty weather.

Some days I feel that the life circumstances that have brought me here are just so unfair, and some days I feel like I’m just finding my path - and accepting that my path is not the easiest one — but it’s MINE.  And I need to stop an enjoy the sights, the architecture and all the views I have along the way.

I am sticking with the carb-restricted eating for the coming weeks (no bread, pasta, potatoes, sugars etc) and I’m starting — gently — back to exercise. But over the coming weeks I’m going through IVF and will be pumped full of hormones so I am not going to freak out about the numbers too much, since I can’t control them.

And they are really insignificant next to everything important in life.

These days I do everything I can to reduce stress in my life and to put myself first.

The big shock of the unexpected endometrial cancer diagnosis is behind me, as are (most) of the sleepness nights associated with it.  But the medical road is just at a cruising area now, not done by any means, and in a few weeks I’ll be pumped to the gills with hormones that will make me battier than ever as we harvest eggs before the hysterectomy.

We’ve made good progress on the gestational carrier (new-fangled term for ’surrogate’) front - we selected the lawyer this week, and will start to work out contract terms with our GC this weekend.  I’m working on ways to reassure her about our involvement in the pregnancy (not easy since we’re in Paris and I will want to put most of my time off from work after the baby comes).  All in all, although it’s a complex and detailed process (and expensive - did I mention Expen$ive?), it is manageable, and all 3 of us have a good feeling about this (me, my husband, and our GC).

I’ve been getting a lot of niggly projects out of the way and doing the minimal required for work.  Thank goodness my boss is an angel and has kept things easy for me and agreed to no travel.

I even went back to the gym, first on Saturday and then again yesterday, and now plan to try to go 3 times a week.   No big pressure - just trying to do things to reduce stress.  I also want to go back to meditating (well, I didn’t ever do it regularly enough to call it ‘going back to’ but maybe I could say ‘go back to exploring’?).

It has felt like the number 199 has been avoiding me on the scale.  This week I’ve seen 198 and even 197 (okay, I admit, it was 197.6), but 199? Nope.  I’ve also seen 200, and 201, but really wanted to break out of the 200s again this week, and this time for good.

But did the scale cooperate this morning? Nope, showed at 200.2 first thing.  But I suffered, didn’t eat breakfast, and a few hours later finally saw the 199 I was waiting for, and now THAT is going to be my official weigh in for the week.  Goodbye 200s (even if a little itsy bitsy cheating was involved).

I think that 199 thinks it’s my goal, and therefore it’s been eluding me.  But in fact 199 is just a passing point for me — my goals don’t involve 199 for more than a blink of an eye, so it can relax.

Being back solidly in the 19xs will be a big thing for me - I was able to stabilize in this range for many years and in fact have several boxes of clothes that have “195″ written on them - that I plan to get down and try on once my weight is below that number.  It’s still a ways off - this isn’t happening fast, but that’s okay.

Just relax, 199, you are not my target.  You are above my target.  I plan to let you go next week and let some other person try to hunt you down, while I cosy up to your friends lower in the 190’s for the next month or so.

I am enjoying my summer so far.  Despite this stupid endometrial cancer thing.

The days are sunny and warm.  I am loving my sunbathing, although I am adding back sunscreen to my face (no need to look old before my time, and I’ve read the face is such a small percentage of our skin to make vitamin D that protection makes sense).

Our backyard is great, full of flowers and plants and greenery, eating out there is pure pleasure.  The hibiscus tree is in bloom.

I am working from home and my boss is being an angel about work - she basically said she’s going to run my team for me until after summer vacation, and she’ll keep me in the loop but out of responsiblity, which is exactly what I needed.  I’ll be able to put some of my mental energy into some of the longer-term researching projects that I never have time for, because the day to day will be managed by her.  Best for my team, especially as I can’t make any firm committments right now since doctors appointments must and do come first.  Our conversation today really took a big load off my mind.

I LOVED my weekend - gosh, it was wonderful.  I got back in a pool (that’s been TOO LONG), and had all these great spa treatments (the best was the modelage sous affusion, heavenly), drank their herbal teas and laid in the sun between treatments, reading my book.  The food was quite good and aside from a few bites of my husband’s desserts and one crepe for lunch (no choice, salad wasn’t available), I kept completely on the low-carb thing without any difficulty.  I’ll need to make sure I have my 99% chocolate with me in the US, because those bites of dessert were mainly because I didn’t have MY treat, so I need to make sure that doesn’t happen for 3 weeks.   We went on a bike ride (uh, I bonked, but it was good while it lasted), a really long walk on a gorgeous coast, then another shorter walk the day before we left.

Here is a picture of the hotel where we were - our room looked directly out on this bay - gorgeous!

I think it’s a good idea for me to make a list of the various things I do (or can do) to reduce stress.

I am tracking these daily somewhere else, but I like the idea of having them all in one place, although they are in no particular order :

• Cook something yummy
• Trimming the rosebushes
• Doing art projects
• Taking sunbaths!
• Having a clean house - and sometimes the act of getting it that way
• Not having piles of clutter
• Being on top of projects and paperwork
• Doing things that are supposed to be healthy for me, like drinking green tea
• Drinking a nice black or herbal tea (don’t yet enjoy the green stuff as much)
• Playing sudoku
• Playing Brain Challenge or Tetris on the Nintendo DS
• Reading stupid trashy magazines (but this is less fun than it used to be)
• Reading good books
• Going to the market to buy fresh dairy products, fruits, veg & fish
• Listening to good music
• Short and simple guided meditations
• Nice scents - aromatherapy, perfumes, essential oils
• Watch a movie
• Read or watch something to make me laugh
• Exercise
• Walking around town, exploring
• Swimming - but I want a waterproof iPod
• Getting good nutrition
• Having some chocolate flavinoids (cocoa powder mixed into marscapone, or 99% chocolate)
• Beautiful flowers in my house
• Keeping in touch with friends and family
• Getting a drawer or shelf or corner of my computer cleaned out and organized
• Getting rid of stuff I don’t need
• Finding ways to share my experiences and what I’m learning with others
• A nice warm bubblebath
• Cuddling w my husband

So I found a treatment that I really like - sunbaths!

With my new diagnosis of vitamin D deficiency (on top of the much scarier recent diagnosis of endometrial cancer), both my doc and my dad (who is also a doc) recommended daily sunbathing of 15-20 minutes in addition to prescription supplements.

So my hubby moved the car and put the lounge chair in the most sun-soaked part of our garden and yesterday I started my ‘treatment’.  How fun.  I am not wearing sunscreen anymore (except a stick I am putting on my nose and lips), and I go out there between 12 and 2 with a pitcher of iced green tea, a stack of magazines or a book, and my iPhone.  I set the timer for 15 minutes and depending on how I’m feeling and if it’s cloudy or sunny I might stay a little longer.  Today I looked up several recipies for this week and also read 3 issues of the New Yorker (weekly magazines always feel like such pressure to me, with the New Yorker as the only exception, because it matters much less if you fall behind).

And the fridge is full of high-antioxidant and yummy foods - avocados, mushrooms, zucchini, blueberries, cauliflower, tomatoes, etc.

Luckily for me I’m working from home most of the week so my sunbaths will be able to continue.  It’s nice to have a good and relaxing treatment to mix in with all the others these days.  I think I’ll need to go across town to the office twice this week (my Blackberry broke and can only be repaired through the company contract) but I can still schedule that around peak sun exposure hours.

Things w my husband are much better.  What’s hard is when we are out of sync in terms of being able to give support and need support.  I’m a sinkhole of need these days, and he’s crushed with work (made much worse this past month by the number of things he pushed off to be with me during the diagnosis phase and my surgery).  Plus he has his own emotional issues related to my illness to work through.  I didn’t see my counselor last week due to scheduling conflicts, and I suspect that added to my neediness, so I’m not only making sure I’m booked with her consistently, I’m also thinking of changing to someone else (recommended by my GP).

I have come to realize that I need to find a way to make sure that every day I am reducing stress.  I will count healthy cooking, exercise, meditation, artistic projects, organisation/decluttering and attacking old projects as part of the ways I am doing this.  Don’t worry, I won’t do all of that every day!

Yesterday is when I came up with the idea to track this - because for several months now I’ve been using the “gold star on a calendar” approach to getting some exercise in.  No kidding.  An old school paper calendar and some even older school litte star stickers.  Works like a charm.  Every month I want MORE. When I look at several days without stars I am sad.  I was excited because I’d been noticing that since surgery there were no stars, and yesterday I earned one (I did an easy 30 min on the elliptical at the gym).

So I thought, I should keep positive track of some of the ways I’m reducing the stress too - so here we are.

Wednesday, July 1st :

• 30 min elliptical
• 1 hour art project
• Decluttered one shelf
• Organized medical files for bringing to doctors
• Watched “Stripes” on my iPhone - funny, I love Bill Murrray