Last year, a few days before my birthday, I received a card.
It wasn’t a birthday card.
More of a membership card.
To a club nobody wants to join.
And I couldn’t send it back.
At first, I was scared, then sad, then angry. It was a panic to tell my family and close friends. I cycled and re-cycled thru all the stages of grief.
But, from the very first hour, there were ideas, tips, and strategies shared. Things I could do to improve my health, lessen the burden on my body, and see glimmers of hope.
I’m so grateful for the suggestions and support I’ve received all along from my loved ones. One year later, I do feel healthier and more in control of things.
The purpose of this blog is to share the knowledge I’ve gained and the positive steps I’ve taken in the hope that it can help someone else. Welcome!
As a person who has worked in an online/virtual format for many years, I long ago recognized the need to balance it out with real, tangible work – work that yields real product you can touch.
Years ago, I read about how grieving women tend to find relief in repetitive tasks such as knitting, crocheting, gardening, saying the rosary, etc. Little movements, over and over, with beautiful and useful results. This repetition helps us process grief and life’s upheavals.
The person doing it is awake, aware, engaged… but the mind can wander too.
It’s a form of meditation.
The mind enters a sort of “dream” state, and in it, ideas and thoughts can pop up. Some good, some bad. The right brainwave environment for a person to sort out their feelings and get comfortable with uncomfortable stuff.
I learned how to sew as a kid but didn’t do it too often. But in 2020, suddenly everyone needed a mask. I pulled out the old Kenmore and went to work.
Some of the early ones were sewn really poorly, but to my amazement, people kept asking for them and even paying for them! And I started to see them “out in the wild.” And then my awesome friend Megan sent me a ton of fabric from her studio in Washington. And I kept going.
I gave myself permission to practice and get better. And I also started learning how to crochet, using YouTube as my school.
So anyway, along the way, I made a little patchwork denim bag, and my daughter’s friends went crazy! They each wanted one… and then I got the opportunity to put my bags at Melo Coffee Kitchen as artwork! Whaaaatttt???
I think I read that on a Valentine’s Day card… probably in grade school.
Anyway, friends, I wanted to share this awesome organic lettuce we’ve been buying from Aldi.
The box is crammed with organic lettuce varieties like red and green leaf lettuce, red and green oak, red and green chard, Lolla Rosa, tango, spinach, arugula, beet greens, frisee, radicchio, mizuna, kale, red mustard greens, tatsoi, and collards. I’ve never even heard of some of these.
It’s prewashed, and its a full pound.
It’s a good deal, though I can’t tell you the exact price I paid. #worthit
This is the most charming love story ❤️. Imagine falling in love with someone who is suffering (and I mean that in the true sense of the word “suffering”) from bipolar disorder and bouts of psychosis, doing research on your own to find a possible solution, experimenting and then finding a durable cure. Imagine that!
And it all comes down to poo 💩.
It is truly fascinating, and I urge you to watch for yourself:
Queuosine is a rare micronutrient crucial for brain health, memory, stress response, and cancer defense. It is “a vitamin-like micronutrient that we can’t make ourselves but can only get from food and our gut bacteria.”
“For over 30 years, scientists have suspected that there had to be a transporter for this nutrient, but no one could find it,” said Valérie de Crécy-Lagard, a UF/IFAS microbiology and cell science distinguished professor and department associate chair, as well as one of the study’s principal investigators. “We’ve been hunting for it for a long time. This discovery opens up a whole new chapter in understanding how the microbiome and our diet can influence the translation of our genes.”
Very iteresting! We are starting to map the microbiota.
Yesterday, my husband and daughter went to an outdoor event during the heat of the day. A conversation about sunscreen popped up, and so I pulled out my Yuka app to check our choices.
Here’s the first choice:
Here’s the second choice. After seeing the score, I threw it in the trash! And that’s a shame because it was pricey.
Here’s the third choice. Winner winner chicken dinner!
CLL brings with it a higher than average risk of skin cancer, so I did the research a while back (that is, I stood in Target and scanned all the choices with Yuka). Native had the best ratings that I could find.
For the record, hats and shirts are my preferred “sunscreen.”
After a couple rounds in the dishwasher, this jar still smells like pickles!
Just wanted to share. Bubbie’s is a brand of fermented foods, and we have tried a couple of their products. They taste great and are fermented so you get a little probiotic boost.
I was thinking the other day that, if every deli and hamburger joint in America started using Bubbie’s pickles, what an improvement we would have in our overall gut health.
Just finished watching the Netflix series American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden with my husband. It’s a very interesting and well-made recounting of our CIA operations in the years after the 9-11 attack.
In episode 3, you meet and get to know William McRaven, a Navy SEAL who has CLL. He looks like he is in the peak of health, both in the recent interviews and in the photos from 2011.
He talks about being diagnosed in 2010 and how he used CLL as a reason to fly back to DC from Afghanistan when he was brought into this secret plan.
The Cancer Canary 