Naked glory

Monday, November 2, 2015

A neighbor was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

This kind of news always comes as a shock. Certainly for me, but more for her; there are so many changes ahead. Whether she likes it or not, she’ll be thrust into a world where the landscape stays the same but everything looks, feels, and even tastes different. She’ll visit waiting rooms painted every shade of tan; flip through the office copy of “Prevention” magazine. Mostly, she’ll find it hard to focus so she’ll revert to her strange new habit of staring at the wall, emotionless, wondering what will become of her life.

There are many lessons that I’d like to share but don’t. She’ll learn these things as she goes, I suppose. She’ll question every one of her past behaviors, wondering if she’s somehow at fault. She’ll ask “why me?” and then move on, self-pity isn’t good for the soul.

And she will move forward, that I know. One baby step at a time.

But often for every step forward there are two steps back. Cancer is thorny like that. It can morph and change, give you false hope, slip through the safety nets that you’ve so doggedly put in place.

It’s like fighting an army where every soldier is armed with a different weapon. You fight back with whatever tools are at your disposal, never knowing when the arsenal will run dry.

The age-old battle analogy…but, does it help or does it hinder? Catherine Poole, who runs the Melanoma International Foundation, talks about “fighting” words in a recent blog post. She refers to the unnecessary pressure that it puts on the patient. Do you lose the battle if you haven’t fought hard enough?

There is evidence that suggests that rather than adopting a “fighting spirit”, patients should cultivate a “will to live”. It keeps your body off the defensive and focuses your energy on the positive outcome – life itself – not the negative distractions: the enemies, mutations, and malignancies that are as much a part of your body as your own hands.

Reflecting on my own experience with cancer, it’s been deeply internal; more mental than physical. While you endure physical pain as part of the healing process, you’d be surprised by how comfortable you become with the endless battery of hospital gowns, IV drips, fevers and barium milkshakes.

But mentally – that’s where cancer really thrives. It stretches its legs and buries itself in the sanctuary of your pliable mind, teasing you with one new challenge after the next. It delights in your uncertainty and sits back to watch you squirm. Sometimes you’re tearful, morose even, but often you’re enthusiastic, filled with energy, pen and paper in hand.

You try to hold on to these good moments; in fact you feel guilty for thinking otherwise. The guilt is enhanced by the emails and texts that reassure that “you’ll be fine! I know it!”

Which should empower you further, but the truth is, these encouragements feel permeable, like the softest, most buoyant cloud which lets the sun shine through but doesn’t make each day, each baby step, any easier.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who can, with any accuracy, predict the future. So while it’s nice for friends and family to say that in their heart of hearts things will be fine, the comfort in that phrase is often more for their benefit than it is for mine.

As the patient, you know the statistics, you can recite them backwards with one eye closed. You’re both dreamer and realist; hopeful for long-term remission, but cognizant that your future is anything but certain.

This “will to live” though, is powerful. You can choose to fall prey to the numbers and live in fear. Or, you can choose to ignore them and live your life with hope, squeezing as many droplets of happiness as you can from each stone.

50 comments

Family

The unpredictable curveball + UPDATE

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

kids_lake

“I’ll have the wild blueberry please.”

“Your lunch looks so heavy this morning! Did you pack some for me?”

“Sam I forgot to bring your socks again, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what it means. I’m scared.”

“It’s likely metastatic.”

Lines from recent conversations. Lines from different moments on different days, all of which brought me to tears.

I debated whether to say anything online. This place is usually filled with happy self-deprecation and a deep love for local food. But when you fall apart ordering a blueberry donut, it’s time to admit that life has thrown you one of its wildly unpredictable curveballs.

I called a friend to tell her the news.

“You should say something.”

Openness is both my strength and my weakness. Anyone with a pair of ears has heard about the times when I’ve burnt my food, failed a test, or had too much to drink.

I admit to my faults, and there are many. But I don’t like to tell stories that aren’t remotely funny. They stay deep, dark and buried until the skies are once again clear. When I can talk about them in the past tense. Make light of the situation.

“Remember the time when I walked to the hospital with a cockroach in my shoe? That was funny.”

Health issues – present tense – are never funny.

Cancer isn’t funny.

Particularly when it shows up 14 years after it went into remission.

Too much has happened since then. A husband. An apartment. A dog. Three beautiful kids. A lake house.

It seems unfair. But what is unfair?

Is it fair when another person gets sick? Your co-worker’s child? Your friend’s mother? Your brother? Your sister?

Cancer is a numbers game. There are things that you can do to better or worsen your odds, but in the end, it strikes randomly, and has nothing to do with fairness. It has everything to do with bad luck.

So you try to be upbeat.

You distract yourself. You work. You take the kids to school and drop them off at tennis.

You listen to the conversations happening around you. “Sophie isn’t being challenged. You’d think that after all of these lessons she’d know how to hold a racquet.”

You try hard to forget the news that you were delivered. That more likely than not, you have stage IV melanoma.

I’ve been writing for two years about what life is like on the other side of cancer. It’s full of healthy food, birthday cakes, love, frustration and joy.

It would be inauthentic for me to disappear into thin air, or to provide vague information. “Checking out with some health issues guys, see you in a few weeks.”

I wanted to finish telling the story about that incredible trip through New Mexico with my Mum.

And now I’m giving myself permission to rest. To focus on my health and spend quality time with my family.

Tomorrow I’m going to the hospital for surgery and I look forward to hearing these words when I wake up: “We removed it, follow-up treatment is…, your prognosis is good.”

There’s no reason to believe that I’ll hear otherwise. My doctors have told me that I’m going to be OK. I believe that I’m going to be OK. After a week that involved tearful phone calls, depression and isolation, a strange thing happened. I started to take pleasure in old routines – making myself a nice meal, taking the kids to the museum, reading a book at night. I wish that I could say that I willed myself to this place, but it happened organically. And although I’m anticipating bumps in the road ahead, I know that I have the mental strength to get myself through this challenge.

I promise to update this page as soon as I have my energy back. And I look forward to returning with great news. There is so much good coming our way – another summer at the lake, boxes of CSA vegetables from the Hudson Valley, a recently-planted herb garden that’s already in full bloom. Summer camp for the kids, swim team, trips to the neighboring blueberry farm.

Life is happening around every corner.

Whatever is thrown my way, I’m ready for it.

—————————————————————————————

UPDATE

It’s been a week since my surgery and recovery, although slow, is going well. As much as we’d hoped that it wasn’t cancer, here we are, stage IV melanoma. Treatment is still undecided, but we’ll learn more in the coming weeks.

I’m in good spirits though. Food has once again become my beacon. It’s my comfort blanket, my shield. There’s “healthy eating”, the kind of eating that I’ve embraced for the past 14 years: joyful eating, everything from scratch, wholesome ingredients, mountains of vegetables, nothing processed.

And then we have its reclusive, tough, and oh-so empowering cousin: “HEALTHY EATING” – no white flour, no sugar, no red meat, no dairy, no regrets.

I don’t look at my list of antiangiogenic foods and think about restrictions. I look at this list and see 150+ ways to beat cancer.

Hippocrates once said “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

So I’m gearing up for battle; building my arsenal with weapons such as blackberries, ginger, whole grains and leafy greens.

If you’d like to see the TED talk that inspired this dietary shift, you can find the link here.

For now, you can picture me exactly where I am most days: on the couch, Lauren’s “High School Musical” blanket keeping me warm; Jackson on his back by my side, paws in the air; bowl of kale salad in my lap; ginger tea at arm’s length; kids in costume, making a mess, performing a show…surrounding myself with every inspirational anti-cancer book written since the beginning of time.

There are worse places to be in life.

See you guys back here soon.

63 comments

Family

Days of love and endless snow

Monday, February 9, 2015

If you’ve read my recent post about Valentine’s Day, you’ll know that I’ve vowed to keep things PG-13 this year. And let me clarify before you get any ideas about this blog – I’m still talking food and beverage.

There will be no mass consumption of alcohol, no next-day apologies…no questions as to whether I’m still technically part of the family.

I’ve pledged to do more of the Valentine’s Day activities that you’d expect from a mother of three. Baking? Check. Handwritten cards? Check. Chocolate? Yes, please, all of it.

This’ll be a new thing for me. I’m never one to pre-plan for Valentine’s Day. Christmas? Different story. I once ordered presents in August, just to get a jump start on my wrapping. A summer babysitter once innocently asked what all the boxes were for, and when I responded “Christmas”, I could see furtive glances towards the nearest exit.

But Valentine’s Day always surprises me. It takes up a small amount of brain space during the month of February – in the form of “I think it’s coming up soon.” And then, one day, the kids’ backpacks come home with a bulky mound of candy and Hallmark-emblazoned paper with rickety signatures, and gosh darnit, you’ve missed it again.

In an effort not to be the Valentine curmudgeon of years past, I visited our neighborhood Michael’s to pick up some supplies. By the way, have you been to Michael’s? I know that the prospect of visiting a big box retailer may be less thrilling for those of you living in suburban areas, but they just opened one up in Chelsea and it’s like Disneyland. For crafters. I’m definitely not a crafter, but I can get sucked into the moment if I’m in the right place.

There were multiple aisles of Valentine’s day gear from stickers, to heart-stamped tape, paisley-printed cardboard, and plastic jewels to tack onto your love notes. I’m embarrassed to say how much I spent, but I’m comforted by the fact that we’ll have Valentine’s Day crafting materials until my youngest reaches Middle school.

So that’s what we did this weekend. For 15 minutes. Just until the novelty wore off, prompting me to subtly remind {nag} my kids for the rest of the weekend that each child in the class needs a card, not just close friends.

And those reminders were just for the girls. Sam took one look at the heap of pink and red construction paper and decided that he’d prefer to build Ninja stars.

Apologies, friends of Sam. There won’t be Valentine’s Day cards this year. I hope that you’ll forgive me; it wasn’t for lack of effort.

45 comments

Blog

Ramping it up in the kitchen

Sunday, May 18, 2014

It’s that time of year when all rational behavior falls by the wayside. Ramps are here. Home cooks and chefs alike elbow each other out of the way in order to return from the market with a few bunches of these highly prized vegetables, triumphant.

They’re delicious.

Black truffle delicious? Pork belly delicious?

I don’t know if I’d go that far. But they’re pretty fantastic, owing in part to the fact that they’re only around for a brief window in the Spring. Then they’re gone, hidden from view until they can serve as next year’s bright indication that that Spring is back, and that Winter has been banished for 9 more glorious months.

Some of you may be scratching your heads at this point, either never having heard of a ramp, and/or reflecting on your extreme distaste for pork belly. Let’s focus on the first issue, which is the topic of this post. Pork belly will be saved for another occasion when I muster up the confidence to cook it at home.

If I’m to use my Instagram account as a laboratory of sorts, there seems to be a lot of confusion about ramps.

Are they overpublicized and overpriced?

Or are they unsung heroes, with iffy recognition at best? The kind of fame often reserved for cultish authors, who slip by unrecognized by the masses but are adored by a passionate few.

Here are a few of the comments that led to my confusion after I posted a few dishes that contained ramps.

First, there is a large and vocal group of ramp lovers….

“RAMPS, my fave!”
“Ramps!!!!” (inclusive of a bright green leaf emoji)

Second, there seems to be a strange sleeper cell of ramp haters….

“I’m suffering from ramps overload”
“#savetheramps”

Lastly, there are those, with whom many reading this post will identify, who have never laid eyes on a ramp:

“Wait, what’s a ramp?”
“Are those ramps?”
“How have I never heard of these?”

Because educating the ramp unaware population is far more critical than appeasing the (likely) minority of (ornery) ramp haters, here we go: a short tutorial on where to find ramps, and what you can do with them. I’ve tried to make this visual so that you can see for yourself how versatile this simple green root can be….

Sourcing:

For some reason, I have never seen ramps in a Whole Foods or for that matter, any store with four walls and a ceiling.

The only place I’ve found ramps is at the farmers’ market, where you can find them in bunches, looking like this:

Season:

Although it depends on seasonal temps, ramp season (in the Northeast) runs from late April into early June.

Preparation:

Use them just as you would any fresh herb, or if you want a milder flavor, give them a quick sautee or grill.

Just go easy on them at first – their flavor packs a punch.

Here are some suggested uses:

1. Snip them raw like chives over anything that loves oniony things – omelettes, ricotta cheese on toast, or as my kids like to do, just eat the leaves plain.

(That was, for the record, ramps scattered over homemade labneh; harass me about writing a post on labneh because it’s ridiculously easy and so delicious)

2. Sautee them and add them to baked foods, like fritatta…