Radiation and Anticancer

Happy Friday People!

I started radiation yesterday. See the pictures below of the span of skin they need to radiate (as designated by the blue sharpie) which is QUITE LARGE running from a couple inches above my belly button on the left side, all the way up to my neck and around the side and armpit just until they get to my back. It's a lot bigger than I thought. The good news is that the people who work in radiation at Ridley Tree could not be nicer AND the sessions are REALLY FAST. You get to pick your music, light, and ceiling graphic for your sessions to help you be as comfortable as possible. For my mock run through on Wednesday we listened to Sofi Tukker with blue ambient lighting and an aquarium on the ceiling.  I sort of have to hold my head in a weird position to accommodate the radiation beam so I can't really see the aquarium, but still, it's very peaceful and calming. Yesterday they had classic rock on, dim white light and I think a river, which was fine. Today I'm thinking David Grey with yellow light and maybe a beach scene?  Let me know if you have any amazing combos for me to consider. (LOL) 

In total, I'll have 33 sessions, every Monday through Friday, through February 3rd. My first session yesterday legit felt about 3 minutes long. I have to hold my breath for most of it to avoid having them graze my lungs (and maybe ribs?), and if I did it right, I only counted about 7 breaths total so I think they're quite efficient.  While 33/February 3rd seems like SO MUCH TIME,  it's really only 7 weeks compared with 21 weeks of chemo, so I think it is going to go by quickly. I am also stocked up on VERY RICH, DENSE lotions and balms, so hopefully I can manage to avoid any adverse skin impacts and just motor through the days. Wish me luck!

Outside of radiation, I continue to focus on health and sustainable changes I can make to my diet, stress management and physical activity.  Which brings to me the book I am still reading called Anticancer. I've realized that reading books ABOUT cancer while I am being treated FOR cancer doesn't really work for me. When I dive into the cancer books, I stall out quickly, which is why I haven't made much progress on this one. (And I haven't finished Heal yet either, and I have How Not to Die and Eat to Beat Disease in my queu still so that may take me into 2025...we'll see.)  Anyway - back to Anticancer. The sections I have read have helped me understand that the lifestyle changes being forced encouraged are not about my having done anything wrong or caused my cancer.  They are about giving the cancer invading my body AS DIFFICULT A TIME as possible to come back again, grow or spread. The general premise of the book is that people have natural defenses that exist in their body, the defenses that help wounds heal or fight infection (white blood cells, blood vessels, etc), and that within people who have cancer, the cancer has figured out a way to use those processes to feed itself and grow. The idea behind "lifestyle changes" is to replenish those processes naturally (focused on preventing inflammation) to overcome the power of the cancer, or the inclination of the processes to be led/influenced or overcome by the cancer. It's like creating as powerful an environment internally to combat the power of the cancer, which unfortunately is powerful, aggressive and pretty smart. So these are lifestyle things that really everyone should consider, but especially people who have had cancer or are at high risk of developing cancer because of genetics because their bodies have already learned to grow the cancer. That said, even with everything I do to optimize my health, there are no gurantees it will work, and in fact the man who wrote the book ended up dying of his brain cancer, but where they thought he would only live months, maybe 2 years max, I think he ended up living for 20 or so years longer, and even overcame a recurrence. So these changes (plus the modern miracle of medical cancer treatment) give me the best chance of living as long as possible (and hopefully cancer-free from here on out).  So, that is what I'm what I'm focused on and so far I have found the changes to be pretty pleasant. (I realize many of you may already be doing these things, or even more, so good on you. I feel that I am pretty healthy generally, so I consider these mostly adds and subtle tweeks, not an overhaul,) There are like 20 other possible things/ideas which I had to table for now, so I guess there will always be room for improvement.

Diet:

1. Reduced grains, when enjoying grains, focus on multigrains, nuts, seeds to cut the wheat.
2. More beans (at least one serving a day)
3. More berries, wider variety of sesaonal fruit rather then the standby fruits I eat everyday.
4. At least two cups of green tea daily, increase this to 3-6 on a regular basis
5. A tbsp of ground flaxseeds most days (when I can remember). Add turmeric to my diet.
6. Front load meals with water (not just when I wake up in the morning, but every meal)

Physical Activity:

1. Increase physical activity to at least 60 mins daily, working toward 90 mins daily.  (Work on endurance/duration, physical activity involving the whole body, and BUILDING MUSCLE MASS.)

Psychology:

1. Finding and RELISHING the joy of the every day, continue to work on meaningful connections with people (which is really hard during Covid). The idea here is that immune cells are sensitive to our emotions and respond favorably to to emotional states characterized by a sense of well being and a feeling we are connected to those round us. The also mobilize better when in service of a life objectively worth living.
2. Continue work on stress and anxiety management, assume this will be a lifelong struggle.

On the themes of daily joy and a life worth living, my oncology therapist also challenged me to do an exercise where I talked through what I would do with my time if I had five years to live, one year to live, or three months to live. Sort of surprising to me was the fact that my answer was not super different regardless of the time left, but sadly it was centered on spending my time with my family traveling and having new experiences, which again are not available at this time. So...our latest dream is that following radiation we will take a month and go live somewhere else, preferably in the snow (This is how our summer dream started and then it shrunk to 5 days in Pismo, so we'll see how this plays out). Right now we are looking at Idaho. but are also interested in Utah, Montana or Colorado. We need a new view. And some new activities...We'll bring our cat. We'll make memories.  As dull and uneventful as our time in Pismo was, our kids talk every week about how it was the BEST VACATION EVER bc I think it meant so much for them to see new scenery and just chill away from all the stress.

It also triggered me to start thinking more intentionally about goals across several aspects of my life, which I haven't ever formalized in the past. For me, the major categories I tend to think about my life within are health, family/friends/connection, travel/adventure/experiences, work, giving back and home improvement. For 2021, this is how I am thinking about goal setting. Not sure what I will do intentionally on connection or giving back yet, but I'm thinking about it!

• Health - obvious. Everything I stated before plus continue to scan with No Evidene of Disease (NED)
• I know we want at least two travel experiences/adventures even if it's just us driving to some random place within the state. 
• We have to have our pool resurfaced so that plus some related work in the backyard will be the home improvement goal. (as much as we NEED our kitchen redone, gonna hve to wait til post-Covid, sadly.)
• On the work front, I will need to make my way back into Sonos at some point in early 2021, and I need to find a way to find new meaning in my work AND to find ways to work that don't require me to be sitting in meetings for SO MANY hours every day.  I don't think I can go back to the back-to-back meeting grind so that is going to be an interest challenge.

Hmmmm, what else do I have to share????  Not much. I feel like these blog entries have become more and more boring as time wears on, and less philosophical and insightful.  I'm really tired and short-sighted at the moment, trying to just GET THROUGH RADIATION and continue to have clean scans, maybe that's why...or maybe I am kind of boring and I just never had enough down time to realize it?  I hope that's not it. I'm not sure.

So I guess that's it then.  Happy Holidays if I'm not back with any sort of update before next week.  Thanks for reading and for the continued support.

Sherri

PS - After I finished writing this, I remembered a family goal template I had screen captured from Big Life Journal on Instagram. I am including it below. It falls into the same general categories I listed bove except work. So maybe that is actually what triggered my brain or at least created the connection between the therapy exercise and goal-setting...Regardless, enjoy, hope you find it useful. (And again, many of you may already be doing this and if so, kudos to your superiority. LOL.)