A beautiful start to May

May has arrived and the weather cooperated beautifully! So instead of sitting at home and keeping up with my blog, I hope you will all forgive me for separating myself from the computer for a couple of days.

On Wednesday afternoon we returned to our beloved New York Botanical Gardens. We are anxious to explore all the gardens we glossed over last year during the Monet exhibit. When you arrive they tell you what is in bloom, so we made a point to see the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tulips in every color you can imagine. From there we just kept going and we saw many parts of the grounds we never remember seeing before, each one more magnificent than the last. We are hoping to keep up our visits as the different flowers bloom. This week the new Native Plant Garden is scheduled to open; it looks really lovely. There are also some special exhibits planned for this summer, including one called "Wild Medicine, Healing Plants Around the World," that is being presented by Pfizer. For those of you who live in New York or are planning a visit this summer, here is a link to the information about this exhibit:

http://www.nybg.org/exhibitions/2013/wild-medicine/index.php

Thursday was another magnificent day. Unfortunately I had to spend a fair amount of it indoors. I had a routine and, as always, enjoyable visit with my pulmonologist, Dr. Maria Padilla, first thing in the morning. Well, to be honest, I enjoy seeing her but I do not especially enjoy the pulmonary function tests (PFTs) that leave me coughing and exhausted. I truly believe that if anyone was able to do something to improve my pulmonary function, she would be that person. But in the meantime, just having her monitoring me and knowing she is there if I need her is of tremendous value.

There was then a gap before my neuropsych session, so we took the opportunity to have our lunch outside near Mount Sinai. Although the temperature was in the 60s, we sat in the sun and after a while I was even able to take off my jacket. It was a wonderful taste of the warmer weather that is sure to come.

We are up in Sharon now, looking forward to a nice Sabbath. We are having dinner with Dina and family this evening, and tomorrow we are hosting two couples, long-time friends, for a grown-ups-only lunch. Much as we love being with the children, we cherish these friendships and it is relaxing to spend time with adults only every now and then. On Sunday, Barry, Joshua, and I are going to a Pawsox (minor league team for the Boston Red Sox) game, and we brought up some steaks and burgers (and of course, veggie burgers for Simmie and me) to barbeque at Simmie and Ronen’s house with the whole family on Sunday evening. All in all we have a great weekend planned!

If you are on the East Coast and have not been able to get outside for the past couple of days, then you must do so this weekend. It is so inspiring to see the bright sun and all the plant life reawakening. We appreciate this so much more this year than we could have ever done in the past, and although it sounds a bit corny, I want to shout it from the rooftops!

Love,

Rebecca

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