Has spring finally arrived?

It was a beautiful spring weekend in the northeast! The sky was mostly clear, the sun was bright, and it may even be fair to assume we have seen the last of winter. I was probably a bit too optimistic as I packed clothes for our trip up to Sharon, taking lighter cotton sweaters instead of the heavier wool ones. It’s funny how the clothes that look so nice in October suddenly seem so tired by the end of April. It is not that the new clothes I had bought last fall are not wearing well; quite to the contrary I have been quite pleased with everything I purchased. It is that I have just grown tired of looking at them. I am definitely ready to move on to spring. And as we are on the eve of the month of May, I am feeling very optimistic.

Unfortunately, although the weather did not disappoint, Simmie called us first thing Friday morning to say that little Maya had woken up with a fever. Our plan for last weekend was that we were all to have dinner on Friday evening at Simmie and Ronen’s house, with Barry bringing steaks to barbeque from New York and Simmie preparing a vegetarian dish. But even though I am many months past chemotherapy, I still have my long-time pulmonary disease, so I have to be as vigilant as I can in exposure to respiratory pathogens. So, we decided that the barbeque would be moved to Dina and Aaron’s house, and Simmie would stay home with Maya while Ronen and Eliana came to join us there. Barry and I had prepared Sabbath lunch for Simmie and family, so we divided the food and brought half to Ronen while we served the remainder at our apartment. Ronen stayed home with Maya, who slept most of the day. After we ate we headed over to Dina’s house. We should have noticed that Eliana was rather lethargic, even dozing off for a bit after lunch. We chalked it up to the fact that she had slept over at Ella’s house on Friday night and they were apparently up giggling until 10 pm. By Saturday evening it became clear that she was following in her sister’s footsteps with this virus, and by Sunday morning she, too, had fever. So now Maya is back in the swing of things and poor Eliana is home sick. This was particularly disappointing for Eliana because yesterday was a minor holiday on the Jewish calendar and the school had planned a lot of fun activities for today.

First thing Sunday morning, Dina left for an educational conference taking place over the next few days. We watched Joshua playing with his little league team, and then Joshua, Ella, Aaron, Barry, and I headed off to the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence. I remember they had been doing a lot of construction and much of the new space has now opened and is very nice. It will be even better once the weather gets warmer, because there is a nice water play area. We came back to Sharon where there was a barbeque co-sponsored by all the synagogues and various other Jewish groups in Sharon. There were a huge number of people there!

I continue to find myself somewhat overwhelmed in such settings. I simply cannot take in and process too much input at one time, so I can almost feel myself shutting down a bit. I am reasonably fine just chatting one-on-one, although sometimes things come out of my mouth that even confuse me! But once there is a large group I quickly find myself feeling lost. It seems to me that an important piece of the cognitive therapy is to learn to do things even when other things are vying for my attention. A number of the Lumosity games contain specific distractors, and I am hopeful that over time my ability to handle this will improve.

With my newfound knowledge of how to insert videos into the blog, I feel compelled to put something in here, lest I forget how to do it. Here is the last of the Mozart symphonies, #40 in G minor. We learned about this one in the music class. But actually I am extremely familiar with it, because when I first met Barry during his sophomore year (my freshman year) at the University of Rochester, he told me about a music course he had taken the year before in which they had studied this symphony, and the instructor had given them a little trick to remember the tune:

It’s a bird,

It’s a plane,

No it’s Mozart!

I can’t say I remember all that much from my early college years, but this has stuck with me!

Have a wonderful week!

Love,

Rebecca

Very excited

I just finally figured out how to provide links to the videos I’ve been including here in the blog. This may seem like a small thing but I am just so excited whenever I have reason to believe that some of the neurons are connecting again!

I have to go run off now for my cognitive therapy and then my writing class. But I just had to post this!

Have a great day,

Love,

Rebecca

Routine stuff

Among the many things that have to be pushed to the sidelines during the period of chemotherapy are routine medical and dental tests and procedures. Little by little over the past few months I have managed to catch up with most of them. And today I went for my annual (although it has been closer to two years) mammography and pelvic ultrasound. The latter has been part of the annual ritual since a minor finding some years ago. For many years I have been having this done by a group on Madison Avenue in the 50s, so have gotten to know my two doctors there. Needless to say they were both stunned by my update. I wish I could have gotten them together in the same room rather than having to tell the story twice; I felt a bit like Arlo Guthrie recounting the Alice’s Restaurant “Massacree” in two part harmony, complete with the 27 8x10 glossy photos…. (if you’re not familiar with this and have 20 minutes to spare, here it is)

It was only this morning that it occurred to me to think about what I would do if…..I just cannot even imagine the idea of having to deal with this. So I will cut to the chase: everything looked fine! Of course losing 25% of your body weight means that the breast imaging looks different, but she assured me that everything is absolutely normal. And it appears I have some gallstones but they may never cause any problems; I am only writing about it here to help me remember. If I should happen to wake up one morning with a lot of pain in my abdomen, you can all remind me.

As we were gathering our things to leave the waiting area, I looked up and saw a former Pfizer colleague. She had left Pfizer some years ago and we had not been in touch for some time, but she immediately recognized me. She has struggled with her own illness for many years, and it is encouraging to see that she is still going strong.

It was unfortunate that we had to spend so much time indoors on this beautiful day. But all in all, it was a good one, and we can’t ask for more than that.

Love,

Rebecca

A little less sun......

We awoke to the news that Richie Havens died yesterday. We saw him just a few years ago, or maybe it was more than just a few, but this video is how he was at that show.

He will always bring a smile to my face.

Relief and sadness

Barry taught his class on Friday morning and then we took off for Sharon. There was a small part of me that pondered the irony of driving towards Boston at this very painful time. And sure enough, shortly after entering Connecticut, the traffic on the Merritt Parkway came to a standstill. Although our car has a built-in GPS system, it is an older model that does not provide any traffic reports. We had bought a Garmin GPS some months back for use in rental cars; the car rental agencies charge so much to rent one that, after just two times, it pays for itself. The Garmin provides traffic reports but of course we did not remember to put it in the car, so we had no way of knowing whether there was a shutdown due to a gunman on the loose or a traffic accident. I pulled out my trusty maps (I am an old fashioned girl, after all) and we got off the next exit, from which I navigated our way back over to I-95. And from there on it was smooth sailing, with quite light traffic, presumably due to the fact that we were headed towards Boston.

We started Sabbath early, before the capture of the remaining gunman, so we did not hear the news until we saw the Saturday morning headlines in the NY Times, for which we have a weekend subscription in Sharon. The tremendous sense of relief quickly gave way to a flood of emotions, and as Rabbi Sendor said a few words about the horrific events I found myself in tears, and I was not alone. Many people seem to be anxious to learn why these young men committed these heinous acts. Unfortunately, this knowledge is only useful if it could prevent such carnage in the future; I am just not certain we can ever achieve such a goal. And this is not a time to let our guards down. The local news is now saying that there is increasing evidence that these two brothers were part of a larger group operating in the Boston area.

We had a lovely Sabbath lunch at the home of some long-time Sharon friends along with two other couples we were meeting for the first time. It was a wonderful and relaxing afternoon with great food, fascinating conversation, and much warmth. We then headed over to Simmie and Ronen’s house. Simmie and Dina went to a class at the synagogue, while we sat on the new lawn chairs…oh, my, I forgot to write about those. A few weeks ago, Barry and I purchased four chaise lounges, two for each of our children’s yards, so we could sit outside more comfortably to watch the children playing. Let’s face it, we’re getting old and we need comfortable chairs! Although we did not spend a fortune on these chairs (which is not hard to do, we learned), we are quite pleased with them. The really funny part is that Barry and I, the old people who need the chairs, were sitting out there in our heavy coats and gloves while the children were running around barefoot in short sleeves. Oh, my, we really are getting old! In my defense, I believe my internal thermostat has been lowered quite a bit over this past year, and I hear this is not an uncommon experience for cancer patients. It will serve me well during the summer, right? Anyway, it was great to be able to be right there sitting comfortably in the middle of their fun.

Sunday was a busy day. We had arranged to spend the morning with Ella. We picked her up and headed over to a local store to buy some new Lego sets to build. Then we made a quick detour up to the L.L.Bean store to exchange a couple of items I had ordered on-line, and returned to our apartment to play with the new Legos. We did that for a while, and then made Ella some macaroni and cheese for lunch. Then Eliana and Maya came over to spend some time while their parents went out shopping for some new luggage they need for travel they are planning for this summer. We played with their recently arrived Chanukah gifts we had ordered: an adorable and soft stuffed seal for Maya, along with a book about seals, and the American Girl bathtub and shower for Eliana’s dolls.   

We also played a few rounds of Rush Hour, a game that Heidi and Anna introduced to my therapy. I told Barry about it and Amazon Prime delivered it to our door within 24 hours! This is a nifty little game. There is a grid and a bunch of different colored cars and trucks, including one red car. The game includes 40 or so traffic configurations, and the idea is to set up a configuration and then move the cars and trucks around until you can get the red car across the grid and out the other side. It turns out that the children were familiar with this game (there is also a junior version), and Joshua, not surprisingly, is very good at it. The girls also did surprisingly well, and even Maya was able to do the first level with minimal coaching. When I play this during my therapy sessions the rules are a bit more stringent: I have to talk through what I plan to do before doing it, a few steps at a time, rather just randomly moving cars around until I stumble on the right configuration. It can be exasperating but it is actually quite fun. Anna was quite pleased with my performance on it last week, and while I know she is just trying to be kind, it doesn’t hurt to hear that positive reinforcement.

We will be heading back to New York tomorrow morning. I’ve got a busy week ahead, with some routine medical appointments and an extended final session of the writing class. But I will check in soon.

Stay safe and have a good week.

Love,

Rebecca

Doing the math, keeping the faith

Like Caring Bridge, Blogger tracks the number of times users have viewed the blog. As of this morning, I see

Pageviews today

54

Pageviews yesterday

17

Pageviews last month

514

Pageviews all time history

1,969

Almost 2000 views since my first posting on Blogger in January, a little over three months ago! That is an average of 73 views for each of the 27 posts. I send e-mail notices to a list of approximately 100 addresses. Either you are a group of very avid readers, or some unknown individuals are reading my blog, though heaven knows why anyone would.

This is a whole lot easier to ponder than why anyone would detonate explosives at the Boston Marathon. Your kindness helps me keep my faith in humanity even through the darkest of times.

Love,

Rebecca

A difficult ending to a good week

I am not quite sure where the time has flown in the week since I last sat down to post! I wish I could say that I have found cures for illness, poverty, and political oppression, but unfortunately I have had to be satisfied busying myself with much less weighty matters.

Last Wednesday evening Barry and I had dinner at Candle 79, an organic vegan restaurant on the Upper East Side, with one of his former residents in radiation oncology. He had joined the Mount Sinai faculty after finishing the residency, treating patients and conducting research in Barry's laboratory, before joining a large, multisite private radiation oncology practice, and is now spending most of his time on the business end of that group. It is a long way from basic radiation biology, but we still found quite a bit to discuss. He and his family (wife and 3 children a bit older than our grandchildren) are now living in Florida, where Disney World has almost become their backyard playground. So he is quite the expert, and we had fun learning more about the rides and things to do. He and Barry did take some time to chat about research and caught up on news of former colleagues, and of course we talked a bit about my illness. It was a very nice evening.

I also called an old friend I had been thinking about because this month was the 10^th anniversary of her husband’s untimely and sudden death. I have tried every year to call her before the fall holidays and before Passover, but obviously missed an entire cycle this past year, so when her name just popped into my head I had to call her. She has relocated and we no longer share any common friends, hence she had no way of knowing that I had been ill.  We had a wonderful chat, catching up on our children and grandchildren (she has two sons and 9 grandchildren).

On Thursday our writing class met. We had three in-class assignments, three topics for which we were given 15 minutes each to write. We then took turns sharing what we had written. The first topic was friends, the second was an early memory, and the third was radio. The idea here is to just let your mind guide you, but then to use these pieces as springboards for more outside of class. Unfortunately I keep getting sidetracked with other activities so I have not “done my homework” as conscientiously as I should be. This week Barry has a very long day of work on Wednesday so I plan to use the time trying to write. I’ll see how that goes.

On Friday we headed back up to Sharon. Early that morning I had seen an e-mail message from the Rabbi of the synagogue telling that there had been smoke in the building; fortunately not a full-blown fire, but the fire department was summoned and the students at the day school, which is housed in the synagogue building, were evacuated into the cold for over a half hour. This is the school in which our younger daughter teaches and our three older grandchildren are students. Fortunately no one was hurt. But because of a lingering smoke smell and my pulmonary problems, we all agreed it would be best for me to sit out services on Saturday. We had made plans to have the whole family at our apartment for lunch, so I knew we would all see each other. It was the first time Barry and I hosted lunch for the whole gang since before my illness, and we had a wonderful time. Saturday night, Eliana and Maya slept over at our apartment while their parents went to a party. We had fun with Maya making pancakes for breakfast while Eliana watched “ET” for a second time.

Sunday was a “ladies day out shopping.” Simmie, Dina, Eliana, Gabriella, and I headed off to the Wrentham Village outlet mall not far from Sharon. Barry spent the day with Joshua, much of it playing with hex bugs and baseballs. Ronen stayed with Maya, who is a bit too young to be as enthused about shopping for clothes as the older girls are, but we did buy her some things and she liked the nightgowns and headbands we selected. We had a great time and the girls bought some adorable clothing for the spring. And of course we had ice cream! We came back to Simmie and Ronen’s house, where Ronen had prepared a barbeque for the whole gang. It was an exhausting but very nice day.

Having just been in the Boston area, we have been glued to the television coverage of the horrible events at the Boston Marathon today. Once again, we are left asking ourselves what good can possibly come from such a heinous act.

Everyone please stay safe!

Love,

Rebecca

Very sweet indeed

Some months ago I wrote about a fascinating and heartwarming documentary we had seen called “Searching for Sugarman.” The film went on to win the Academy Award for best documentary earlier this year. And last night, the musician whose amazing and fascinating story is told in the movie, performed in New York City at The Beacon Theater (the New York City home of The Allman Brothers Band, as I wrote last month). Try as they did, the ushers were unable to completely eliminate all those cell phone videos, so a couple of clips made it to youtube.

The show was AMAZING! The audience was clearly quite devoted to this man and his music. He is not young - he said he is 70, and it is clear that his eyesight is poor: he needed assistance coming on and off stage. But when he strums his guitar and opens his mouth he is completely ageless, his voice is impressively strong and clear, and he exudes a sweetness that is incredibly sincere and touching, sharing his insights , like "be careful with your anger" in little quips between songs. He performed many of his own compositions along with covers of "Blue Suede Shoes" and one of the best covers I have ever heard of Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," a song that would seem to have special meaning for him:

How does it feel ?
How does it feel ?
To be on your own ?
With no direction home ?
A complete unknown ?
Like a rolling stone ?

We can only hope that Rodriguez will continue in good health on his very long tour and beyond. You can check him out at

http://www.rodriguez-music.com/

We also saw the new film “The Company You Keep,” loosely based on a group of anti-Vietnam War activists in the late 1960s. The film has a large and stellar cast, including Robert Redford, Julie Christie, and Susan Sarandon, and was so good that, although it was over 2 hours long, I was completely awake the entire time! I highly recommend this one; the trailer can be found here:

We had hoped to visit the Botanical Gardens yesterday, before the orchid exhibit ends, but when we arrived there were cars lined up around the block! So we hope to squeeze in an hour sometime during the week when things are quieter there.

Have a good week, all!

Love, 

Rebecca

Moving along.....

The last days of Passover were enjoyable. The only fly in the ointment was that our granddaughter Ella developed a fever. The whole family was together at Dina and Aaron’s house on Sunday evening, and it was clear that Ella wasn’t feeling well, her usual bright smile and joyful character having given way to sitting in the corner looking close to tears, and going off to bed long before dinner was over. Now the respiratory symptoms have set in, but we are hoping she will be able to return to school and her usual energetic self next week.

We put our apartment back together and, following a teleconference for Barry, headed back to New York on Wednesday morning. Then there were the usual mundane matters: mail, shopping for groceries, catching up on laundry. We have already managed to partake of both pizza and Indian food in the couple of days since the end of Passover. Much as I enjoy the Passover foods, I rarely if ever eat matzah aside from that one week. I have always felt that these foods magically become special during the week of Passover, but the minute the restrictions on leavened products end, none of it is at all appetizing. So those extra matzah balls will likely sit in the freezer for a long time. Note: for those of you who may be wondering how vegetarians are eating matzah balls, which are usually served in chicken soup, we eat matzah balls in “Not Chicken Soup,” the Mollie Katzen recipe with our own adjustments over the years.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you have probably noticed that I spend a good deal of time talking about food. As my energy has returned, albeit rather slowly, so has my appetite. Now the challenge will be to keep off the weight I have lost. I have continued to try to make sure I am eating fruits and vegetables every day, and I still cannot eat very much at a time. These are all good things, even if they started from adversity.

Yesterday I had my cognitive therapy session. We have been playing with a set of Memory cards with foods on them – how appropriate! She selects, say, six or eight pairs of foods and lays them out on a grid. We talk about patterns in the grid to help me remember where the different foods are located. Then she will turn them all over so that the picture side is down and will ask me to locate one of the pieces of pie, and the like. I am pretty good at this “game” so it is fun to play, but any of my grandchildren can do this much better than I can. I have continued with Lumosity, and have broken through to the next level on a number of the games, but am unable to break through to the next level of Playing Koi. Yesterday Anna (who works with Heidi) told me that she is actually very pleased that I can routinely track 6 fish well, and 7 fish about 50% of the time. But when you get all 7, the next round is 8, and I have never been able to do 8. I am hoping that when Heidi returns (she has been away the past few weeks) we can move on to some other games.

Our writing class met yesterday. I was relieved to see that I was not the only person who struggled to find time to write over the Passover holiday. But we have some assignments and I want to start spending more time working on them and see where it all takes me.

We will be staying in New York this weekend. They are predicting sunny although somewhat cool weather tomorrow, so we should be able to attend synagogue in the morning. It looks like the temperature is heading upward on Sunday, so we may try to get over to the Botanical Gardens to catch the Orchid exhibit a second time before it closes.

As always, I cannot thank you enough for continuing to read and to write to me. With reading still slow, some days I have a hard time keeping up with all the email – but the value of your words and thoughts make it a good and valuable struggle.

Love,

Rebecca