Geneen Roth & Chocolate Sundaes

My favorite author on the topic of women's relationship to food and compulsive eating, Geneen Roth, just wrote a new book called, "Women, Food & God". I watched the video of her reading an excerpt on http://womenfoodandgodbooktour.com/ and one of the lines really hit me. It was something like, "We think we want a chocolate fudge sundae, when what we really want is for our lives to be a chocolate fudge sundae."

Her premise is that we go to food for reasons other than being physically hungry. Then our lives revolve around the drama with food, weight, body size. The reason that we went to food in the first place when we weren't hungry, never gets addressed. We have a hunger for something and it's not really for food... Instead of beating ourselves up about compulsive eating, she directs us toward self-love, compassion and the discovery of what can really soothe the emotional & spiritual hunger in a way that food just can't...making our lives the chocolate fudge sundae.

Since my confrontation with losing my life to cancer, I've been turning my life into a chocolate fudge sundae. These are the things I've done:
* I'm discovering work that I love
* I'm taking anti-depressants that are helping me to stop feeling insecure about myself
* I am taking something to help me sleep at night
* I am repairing relationships with my husband and kids
* I am learning to limit myself to only what feels good to me and so decreasing my stress levels
* I am exercising & eating more veggies
* I am saying "no" more
* I found something to take that prevents my migraines
* I am sharing my feelings with a therapist and friends
* I am reading detective novels, and I am watching TV, and remembering to give myself downtime.
* I am noticing the small enjoyments in life: getting a green light, getting a red light, music, nature, people, everything can be a joy.

I still crave cookies though and Geoff has been getting the ones from Pacific Cookie company. Yummy! I need to get baking so I have on hand some of my sugar free goodies or my blood sugar will skyrocket and produce inflammation and cancer! Aaaaahhhhhh!!!!!

Sometimes, I have no cravings at all. What is that? Am I just calmer? Is my life more like a chocolate sundae at those times? Right now I'm feeling the craving so I'm wondering if it's because all I really want to do is sit down and read my detective novel. So why am I wasting my time on the computer?

When I worked, before I had kids, I would go on walks along the strand in Hermosa Beach. Every time I passed a person or couple who I thought were retirees, I would envy them. I constantly felt like I just wanted to sit in front of the TV and have nothing to do all day. The thought of having a baby filled my mind with the dreams I had of "downtime". Little did I know I left my job to go home to a new job that required me to work 24/7 with no bathroom breaks!

I craved "retirement"....hmmm...do I just need to sit down and watch TV or read right now instead of craving a cookie? It's taken me a long time to slow down and figure out how to make my life feel like what "retirement" meant to me back in Hermosa Beach. It took being forced to stay in bed for days on end with nothing else I could do but sleep and watch TV. It took being committed to going through the worst things my body could tolerate in order to save my life. It took being face-to-face with the possibility of losing my life for me to do what I needed to do to make my life into a chocolate fudge sundae. It also opened up my eyes to the chocolate fudge sundae that surrounded me and that was inside my very being.

Have you heard the song, "Live Like We're Dying", by Kris Allen? It's become my mantra.

I had to start a new estrogen blocker a couple of weeks ago because the 2nd one I tried, Aromasin, gave me mouth sores that wouldn't go away. So I'm on to "Femara", and hope for the best. I like the name - it's "fem"-inine and hints of a to-"marro"w. If it doesn't sit well inside me though, I've only got one more to try, "Arimidex".

If that doesn't work, it's on to broccoli sprouts, though I'm eating them now anyway! And they don't taste like a cookie or a chocolate fudge sundae....

Shlumpy to Gorgeous

"There Is World

By Tzvi Freeman

here are three things to always remember:

The One Above, yourself below, and the world in between.

Abandon any one of those and you will stumble and fall.

Even those who grasp for G–d alone, they do not build, but desolate.

To reach G–d, you must deal with the reality of your world and redeem it.

—from a talk, spring of '91 (Iyar 5751)"

By Tzvi Freeman
From the wisdom of the Lubavitcher Rebbe , of righteous memory; words and condensation by Tzvi Freeman . To order Tzvi's book, "Bringing Heaven Down to Earth, click here. Rabbi Freeman is available for public speaking and workshops. Read more on his bio page.

I've been enjoying working on my world lately. I get so much more of a reward out of the good work I do with my family if I compare it to the work I do with my paying job. And I've been remembering how good I really am at my non-paying job as wife and mother, daughter, sister and friend, though, of course, I can always do better.

Walking with Geoff in the morning is key. Otherwise, we just don't make the time to talk. Maybe one day I'll even get him to walk in the trees with me instead of always being on West Cliff. My new name for him is "savant" because of his incredibly quick mind.

Making more time for my kids and focusing on what needs to be done better in that department really feels good. Especially since I was so absent last year and they had to go through fears of losing me, it's important for me to show them I'm still here. I get up in the morning with them when they have breakfast and I told Geoff this morning that I want to pick up Aimee from school from now on.

There are other more personal things I am doing for each of my family members that has improved our relationships and dissolved some of my own stress too. I just want to protect them, so I can't go into them here. But my usual method of running away from difficulties has transformed into realizing how much I get from going through them and getting to the other side.

My job outside of the home is a great distraction and mostly I feel energized after a day of working, unless I just overbook myself which is easy for me to do. But it gives me a sense of power and self-worth when I know that at every moment with a client, I am just doing my best. That way, I can let go of old thoughts and worries about the problems of others that I can't solve for them. My therapist reminds me that my clients tend to come back, so I must be doing something right!

I've paid off all of the scam this month!! So I'm going to start paying my friend in April to rent the beautiful office she so graciously allowed me to use for free.

I can now see the "reason" for the scam. It's Higher Purpose was to help me commit more to a job that pays me well and that I do well. I've always had so many doubts about it and my ability and fears around whether I really wanted to get into all that again. It's been 10 years of trying to find another way of making an income. I needed that scam to stop me from trying to find an easy way out. And the cancer to make me fear I wouldn't be able to work just when I had started back up again. So the scam also forced me to not run away, but instead, move forward through to the other side of the difficulties.

I also was worried I wouldn't be able to find a way through my latest setback with the Tamoxifen but now I see the light at the end of the tunnel. With the Wellbutrin, I've gone through the uncomfortable parts of starting a new med and it's working better inside of me now. And I'm not afraid to take a tiny amount of Lunesta every night. It's so nice to not have to suffer from insomnia when there's a solution for it that works better than anything else natural that I've ever tried.

This week I've been looking at my insane desire to eat cookies. I really don't want to put sugar into my system because it feeds those bad cells. My question for myself this week has been - what else gives me pleasure? What else could be a treat for me? So I've reintroduced myself to a different, healthier addiction, crime novels. TV is one of my unhealthy addictions and I don't want to spend so much time watching TV so it's been fun to have the energy to get back into reading without falling asleep from it.

But I still watch Law and Order and now love the shows Medium and Cold Case. I allow myself to watch TV in moderation and remember hearing somewhere a long time ago that TV's the modern form of meditation. My favorite new show is one that Aimee turned me on to: "What Not to Wear". I watch it with a smile on my face the entire time. Aimee was imitating my face while watching it and we laughed so hard. I love seeing the transformation from shlumpy to gorgeous!

I think that's the Jewish purpose for life - to turn our world from shlumpy to gorgeous!

Taxes & Reminiscing

I've been working on our taxes today and feel really resistant. It seemed easier to do this last year when I was going through chemo! I wanted to get the hard stuff over first. So it's interesting that the first thing I tackled was going over our medical expenses from last year. But I didn't realize how I would feel seeing all those medication receipts. They brought me right back.

I've been feeling lately like I'm being pulled back into all the sadness about the situation I went through, that my family's had to go through. I haven't cried, but I have touched into that sadness. I do feel sorry for myself and my body. I thought the treatment part would end one day, so I just needed to get through it and then I'd be done. But I'm not done. And we're all still healing from this past year yet, still it all continues.

My dad's coming to visit me! That's one good thing that's come out of this latest setback. He'll be here tomorrow through Saturday. Yay!

I'm still trying to get my medications right for my mental state. Last week I went to a psychiatrist and tried something (Abilify) for 3 days, then switched to something else (Wellbutrin) because someone told me bad stories about the first thing. OY! And now I'm on the Wellbutrin and feeling more energy - actually like I've drank a lot of coffee but I'm more tense, anxious and unable to fall asleep... It does take away my appetite though which is a good thing.

I went to my acupuncturist and felt safer. She told me she's glad I'm on Aromasin instead of Tamoxifen because the T can turn on you. She also suggested a urine test which shows me the type of estrogen I'm creating. There is a good type of estrogen. And if I can't take Aromasin, there's a supplement that's concentrated good stuff from broccoli.

It's scary to not take some kind of hormone regulator since it cuts recurrence in half...but I'm getting fearful of taking medications. Still, I feel I have to give it a chance - try to make it work. If it doesn't, then I can give up.

I also went to see that medium/psychic again. She gave me some good information on my continued healing. Mostly, she told me to refocus myself away from work and onto my family. I realized how much I use work as a distraction and a possible addiction. I can avoid problems of my own while I'm busy working. No wonder I worked throughout my chemo. I need to focus on my family for my healing - not work.

Here's something that she told me that may deeply touch a few of you. I asked her about the medium stuff she does and if people who've passed on will come to her as we have the reading. She told me "No", that I have to come in for that specifically, if I want that. Then she said, "but there's a grandma here with you. When I told you 'No', your grandma shouted, 'wait! I'm here!"

The other funny thing was she asked if Geoff has a sister. I said, "No." Then she said, "well, does he have a cousin he's close to?" I said, "well, he talks to a cousin who lives back east." She said, "Her name starts with "N". OH! Then I knew who she was talking about!!!! There is a very good friend who's a female who he talks to every day and whose name starts with N.

So, that's all I have for now. I've already taken a library break, a lunch break, a cookie break, and now a carepages break. I need to get back to my taxes.

A is for Aromasin

I felt really great once I got off of the Tamoxifen. Didn't realize how bad I'd been feeling.

Then I got scared about not having that protection.
So I spoke to my role models: one a breast cancer survivor for over 10 years who didn't take any Tamoxifen or other anti-estrogen med. The other was a different kind of cancer survivor who was told by her oncologist she'd die and the oncologist died instead. My friend's now in the best shape of her life over 10 years later.

After talking to these women, the job I had in front of me looked like: if you don't get back on an anti-estrogen pill, you have to get yourself in the very best shape of your life including diet, exercise, stress, emotions, thoughts, etc., etc. or you'll have a recurrence. I really didn't feel up to the challenge.

Then I went to my oncologist, Dr. Wu, and he suggested I try the Tamoxifen again. I didn't like that idea. I wanted to try the other med for post-menopausal women. There are many of those. All the same form of the same thing, slightly different so they could patent it. All have a danger of causing osteoporosis. But Tamoxifen can cause blood clots and uterine cancer so...

I asked which was the best and he said, it's a crap shoot. So I had to decide which form of this med to choose. Femara? Aromasin? Arimedex? I chose Aromasin because it sounds like Allison. How's that for good medical practice? Now that I was back on something - even something that blocks your adrenals from producing estrogen - I felt safer. That night, I woke up a few times. The next morning I didn't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to exercise. I don't really want to be writing right now. I find I can push myself through this overwhelming overwhelm but it takes a lot of energy to ignore it.

I'm going to try it for a week and in the meantime, see my acupuncturist who may have some ideas for me to deal with these drugs. And I'm getting an appointment with a psychiatrist to explore the possibility of something that will carry me through not having estrogen. Celexa just isn't cutting it.

So I'll keep you posted. It's really a drag not to get to just be done with treatment and run off into the sunshine of my new boob-free life. I keep getting pulled back into dealing with this. I keep wondering what it is in G-d's plan for me to keep revisiting these things just when I thought I'd nailed them down.

I'm just trying to remember that I am being supported through all of this and get my answers in magical ways. Briefly I'll tell you about the psychic/medium I ran into who helped me know that it was the Tamoxifen that was the problem when I had been thinking instead that my anti-depressant just didn't work anymore. "There's something you're taking that picks you up and another that shuts you down...Yes, the 'T' one is the problem. If you go to a naturopath, maybe you can find something to take with it so it's not a problem." Next day I broke out in the rash. Her website: http://lesanne.com/

BTW, Happy Tu B'Shevat!!! I saw pink blossoms on the trees today. May this turn of events for me be just another blossoming. Hope you have a great weekend and a good Shabbos too.

Tamoxifen

For the last couple of months, my energy has been low. I was more tired than usual and didn't want to do anything but sit in bed and watch TV. My memory got worse too - to the point of finding myself driving somewhere and forgetting where I was going.

Then for the past couple of weeks, the migraines started again and I wanted to die. Literally. I was so afraid that all my symptoms were coming back. I found myself dwelling on all the things that have gone wrong in my life and asking, why, why, why. It didn't help that my hard drive also crashed around the same time.

I had a dream that some woman had sliced me down the middle of my body and I wasn't dead but was going to die. While I was still alive she was still in my house. I told Geoff how inappropriate it was to have her here after what she did to me. He didn't get it. I thought, well, if he's not going to care if someone killed me than what will he listen to?

This dream is very meaningful to me because I look at all the players in the dream as parts of me. How do I split myself in two? How is that killing me? How am I not listening to that? There's a part of me who just doesn't care.

The day I realized that these symptoms I'm having could just be due to the Tamoxifen, I was relieved. That night I dreamed of my breasts growing back. It was a miracle. Someone told me I was just hallucinating. Other people said, yes, they are really there again!

I've always seen myself as someone who gets along easily with everyone and brings different people together. That may just be because I am able to always see both sides of every issue. I can understand others and tend to see their good intentions. People like that but then they don't understand how I can turn around and understand someone who holds a completely opposite view.

It confuses me too when I do that. It makes me wonder what the truth of everything really is. It makes me over analyze and second guess just about everything I do. It cuts me in two and is possibly killing me. It makes me wonder if I'm just hallucinating or am seeing something that's really there.

Self-trust is a big problem when you can see both sides of any issue. Making decisions is really hard too. Standing by yourself in any argument can be impossible. Asserting your needs, wants and desires - or even knowing what you want yourself is a huge challenge. I become invisible when I see all sides. I lose myself.

There are two side of the taking Tamoxifen:
1. It cuts the recurrence rate in half.
2. It can trigger migraines, depression and insomnia (the 3 things I've finally gotten a handle on for the first time in 30 years).

So my oncologist took me off the Tamoxifen when I broke out in a hot, itchy rash all over my face, arms, chest and back. I've been off of it for two days now and am taking benedryl to see if it gets rid of the rash. If it doesn't, then on to a steroid. Or maybe this thing is a virus that just needs to run its course and I need to see an infectious disease specialist.

All I know right now is that I haven't had a headache since taking immitrex at 4am two nights ago. My tongue sore is finally gone. My depression is not as strong and I've slept well for the past couple nights. I still want to snuggle up in bed and do nothing.

Luckily I've got lots of new clients that I enjoy and that gets me out of bed and the house and brings me contentment. I love this office I'm sitting in writing you this. My new home office with all the windows is my favorite place to be now, if not in bed. It's been fun watching the storm this past week.

So rather than cut myself in half worrying about what my next step is with Tamoxifen, all I can do over the weekend and next week is see if this rash goes away. I will then have another discussion with the oncologist. He told me he's seen 80 - 90% have a difficult time with Tamoxifen or with any of the drugs that shut off estrogen. 15% of these can't handle the side effects and have to go off of it...

I fear a decision is coming soon.

Back From Hawaii

"Menachem Av 27, 5769 · August 17, 2009
Faith in the Dark

Do you only believe when you can see with your eyes? When your prayers are answered and miracles carry you on their wings? Or do you also believe when circumstances fly in your face?

If it touches you to the core, if it is a belief you truly own, if it is as real to you as life itself, then it does not change.

And if it does not change, then you are bound up with the true essence of the One who does not change."

From the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe; rendered by Tzvi Freeman. To order the Daily Thoughts in book form, go here: http://www.judaism.com/display.asp?cdo=chabad.org&etn=CAIJJ
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I've been tired since we came back from Hawaii. The first few days I was there I was tired too, so I think it might be jet lag. But I napped there and got over it quick but I've been running around here. I saw 5 clients yesterday and on Friday, we went to get Aimee's ear's pierced in between my therapy and my acupuncture. (I discovered that I could do something for her without sacrificing what I needed to do for myself - she sat in 2 waiting rooms watching a DVD.)

The fires and breathing in smoke every day since returning home hasn't been the best thing for my health. I wake up with a bloody nose every morning. I've also started the Tamoxifen and felt a slight headache this morning so I'm a bit worried about how blocking my estrogen is going to effect me even though it does make me feel more secure taking it.

Hawaii was beautiful and not too hot and I didn't get any mosquito bites and my arms didn't blow up with lymphodema in the airplane and I didn't get a thrombosis from sitting too long on the plane. These were all the things I was worried about that didn't happen. I was blown away about the mosquitoes because they usually love me so I think that they just weren't interested in my chemo blood.

I felt extremely lucky that we had made the reservations prior to getting diagnosed because I don't think we'd have gone otherwise after the year we've had. Plus, I feel so lucky to have finished my treatment in time to go and have the party before I went. If you want to see a photo essay about the place we traveled to, Geoff wrote a great blog on it: http://www.sunrisesantacruz.com/blog/2009/08/hawaii-did-my-camera-have-to-break/

I also uploaded some photos here.

My highlights:
*Aimee holding me in the water.
*Jason body surfing.
*Good talks with Geoff.
*The Hawaiian butterfish dinner Aimee and I made.
*Napping on the deck (lanai).
*Reading, "The Street Lawyer" by Grisham.
*Aimee's pina colada smoothie.

I did run into some challenges that I didn't realize I'd have. Mostly around the body image stuff. I discovered that I look good in my bathing suit no matter what I think! (Aimee told me to write that, looking over my shoulder as I'm writing this!) And I discovered that my hair looks good all messy or curly and sticking out all over. So that's how I've been wearing it lately. (thank you Aimee for the cognitive therapy - but I do still want to go into the darkness for a moment)

Getting into a bathing suit has been a challenge my entire life. Being in Hawaii, even though 30 lbs lighter, I was still uncomfortable in my body. This discomfort was made more obvious to me because I also had no boobs. When this cute guy came to fix our bed (the frame was falling down), it was apparent to me that I used to depend on those things on my chest somehow to flirt. I never realized that until they were gone.

So as Tzvi Freeman writes, I still believe even when circumstances fly in my face, so I use those uncomfortable feelings about my body as clues to where I still need to heal my psyche. There is a way that I really ignore my body and purposely don't look in mirrors because it's too painful. I don't like to see myself growing old and I don't like to see myself fat and I don't like to see my chest deformed.

There's a part of me that would be so incredibly happy to have some plastic surgeon take my droopy belly and make boobs out of it. More to get rid of the belly than to even get the boobs. I don't really want fake ones with tatoos for nipples. But having a flat stomach for the first time in my entire life would satisfy me just fine.

Better still, if I could practice every day to look in the mirror naked and simply love my body, that would heal me on a much deeper level. And so that is what I intend to do. I believe that is the Higher Plan for me in all of this: Loving my body and treating it with kindness and feeding it with healthy food and fun exercise. And if after trying all that natural treatment for awhile, I still feel awful in my own skin, I will look into plastic surgery because why suffer?

I've been Israeli-dancing-up-a-storm in preparation for a couple of classes I'm teaching at PCS during the first week of school. I love Israeli folk-dancing since it's a wonderful way to physically express my love for my heritage and my people. I can't wait to research it online and print something out for the kids. Their dance teacher is out on maternity leave and asked for volunteers so now all I have to do is narrow down all the dances I have to share.

Life goes on and I need to schedule another ct scan. Yipes! Looking forward to getting a clean bill of health, right?