lentil casserole

Hello everyone

Well day 4 is going better. I did not take the steroids prior to this last treatment, as I thought since I had been through 4 without a reaction I did not need them. I did not have a reaction, but I had thought that the steroids were causing some of the gastrointestinal problems. Turns out, perhaps they were helping.  So took some yesterday and felt a lot better.

The other thing about the first few days after chemo is that I have insatiable appetite for protein. On Thursday night I went to a book club evening, and surveyed the food present and decided that chicken was it.......and then went on to eat the entire plate of chicken wings.  (ever heard of moderation?) (did I mention I was a vegetarian for the most part?)

Well I got a ride to the hospital ( I do not drive for the first few days after chemo because of some of the drugs I am taking, and I stay at the hospital in our camper van with Ken and the dogs when Ken is working in the ER), and had the most horrible night, heartburn, abdominal cramping and pain....and I thought back to the book club, the part where I said "I know I am going to regret this".

I wonder if by my 6th cycle of chemo I will have learned "moderation".

Last night I made a casserole and though I ate it all evening, I did it slowly, and it seemed to go down much better, so I decided to share it with you because it was so good.

The cool thing about this recipe is that you just dump everything in the pot and then put it in the oven. The other cool thing is that you can dump in whatever vegetables happen to be ready in your garden, or might soon be going bad in your fridge. I will include what I put in but feel free to "experiment"

Easy Lentil and Rice casserole.

2 2/3 cups of vegetable stock

3/4 cup of dry lentils

1/2 cup of brown rice

3/4 cup of celery (they suggest onions, but can't do onions now)

1/4 cup of white wine (sometimes I use red)

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp basil, (I used a half cup of fresh basil From My Garden FMG)

1/4 tsp thyme ( I used 1/4 cup FMG)

1/4 tsp oregano(I used 1/4 cup FMG)

5 cloves of garlic

pepper

Here is where I got creative

2 cups cremini mushrooms chopped

one small zucchini (FMG)chopped

one red pepper chopped

usually I add grated parmesiano reggiano cheese, but seem to be intolerant of 

cheese right now, but it tasted great with out it

So you basically dump all of those things in a big pot in the oven, with a lid, and cook at 375 for an hour and a half.....or a bit longer

Great recipe for using whats in the garden, or whats in the fridge. I would have also put in peas, but am fresh out and on the way to the market in old town this morning to get more peas.

Peace and love

Janet Bates

jankenb @ gmail.com

day 3...and so this is chemo..

Hello everyone 

Well day 3 of chemo and I feel awful, just awful. Totally nauseated, and having trouble getting off the couch.  Now does that sound more like chemo is supposed to be like that what I have been portraying it as?  I feel worse that I did on the first cycle. However it is OK, now knowing how close the end is. I will just try to make the best of all the drugs and get past this.

No pictures my face is all puffy and my eyebrows are becoming bleak once again.

Just a bad day, will make it through and tomorrow will be better.

Love and peace

jankenb @ gmail.com

janet bates

the final steps for a finished cd

Hello Everyone
Well day 2 is going well, the IV fluids make this so much easier, as I have a lot of abdominal cramping with everything I eat. (that is new)
Big day for the cd today, it was mastered yesterday, and today and last night I am downloading it. Usually a copy is sent to the artist to CHECK for errors etc, however the only other day the masteror can work on this is tomorrow, there was not time, so I am downloading. There are the official files so are not compressed like most music sent over the internet. Most music you can listen to are mp3s which are compressed and are not quite of the same quality as the actual wav type files which are what are on the actual cd.
For some reason the internet is slow yesterday and today, so it is taking forever. On the last song now. From here I will burn a cd and listen several times and figure whether this is the cd I want to go the the manufacturor. I will email them, and they will send a formal copy of the cd (a special kind of disk). The manufacturer actually presses that cd. which means they make a mold of it and use the mold to mass produce (well in my case I would not call it "mass" production), usually 1500 cds. The previous ones are taking up most of the shelf space in my garage.
ANYWAYS...
The other thing I am doing is proof reading the final booklet. It is mostly finished, except that they cannot finish it complelely until they get the actual song times from the mastering studio.
The mastering studio is where the song gets trimmed at the ends to make for smooth endings.
If all goes well Tracy Grammer, who has been doing the editing and more or less overseeing the cover production, will check everything over and it will get to manufacturer. From there they do a rough run print of the cover and send usp to me to check ( this step takes away another few days from the project and nowadays they will let you OK the colours etc online)
Then once everything is finalized at the manufacturor, there are 10 working days to get it done.
They will send 500 unsealed discs to me, for me to send to the radio station. I have a promotor helping me with this part. The rest I will stack, ......with the rest......in my garage, on the shelves.

that is the story of my cd as it sits today.
Day 2 is usually a pretty good day as far as fatigue, so lots to get done before tomorrow, which is not always a good day for fatigue.

Love and peace
Janet Bates
jankenb @ gmail.com

5/6 chemos

Hi Everyone

I passed the test! Second time around.

My bloodwork just squeezed through this time. So I am getting my infusion right now.  I have been thinking of how similar chemo is to going on a flight. We book it in advance, we bring along movies, books and crossword puzzles. It seems to take the better part of a day.  You always feel worse when you leave than when you arrived.  Going to the bathroom is DIFFICULT. (on the plane you have to crawl over people, in chemo you have to haul all your stuff along)

It is expensive, you cannot get your money back. You sit around all day.  And oh by the way you feel worse when you leave than when you arrived.  They have little blankets to put on your little lap. You are limited to where you can go, in chemo you cannot leave the room (because if the drugs for some reason spills on a carpet, it destroys the carpet)....on a plane, well that is obvious.  Makes you wonder how your veins can tolerate something that destroys carpets.

Believe it or not I am sitting here munching on a bag of cheetos. Why? ??? 

I have NO idea. They taste great, and I know I will regret it. To the Canadians reading this, cheetos are similar but not quite the same as cheesies.  Does this remind you of a flight, eating something you know you shouldn't but it is there. One significant difference..... my steward is MUCH cuter than on any flight......Ken...and more attentive!

The really BIG news is that my cd is being mastered today in New York today.   Mastering is the final stage of a cd, prior to sending it to be manufactured. Although I do know what it means, I really cannot explain it, so I defer to Wikipedia

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_mastering.

So once I download what is being done today, and approve it, then the mastering technician will send it to the manufacturer.  From there 10 business days to sending it out to me.

So pretty darn exciting.  Getting this cd and starting to get it off radio stations will likely fill the void that ending chemo will leave in my life.

I hope everyone recognized Obama's birthday yesterday.

Love and peace

janet bates

jankenb @ gmail.com

"Makayla" at Bullards beach

Hi Everyone

Ken and I are on our way to Eugene.  I guess it has been an interesting spring and summer, but one of the good bits is that Ken and I have basically been joined at the hip for months now. Not that we are not always close, but we do almost everything together now and it is wonderful.  He is absolutely the best mate for this kind of thing. He seems to just know always what to do and how to be.  When I am upset he is quiet and listens, when I am really upset he cries too, and then when I cheer up he cheers up just as fast. He is always trying to find ways to make the difficult bits easier, and gets frustrated for the things he cannot fix for me. When we had the fire, he said the only other time he had felt so impotent was with my cancer. He could not do a thing about the problem, just work away at the edges.

I am so looking forward to go off on a trip that has nothing to do with my health.  In some ways today seems a bit like that because this is just a sort of routine follow up visit and no other commitments or things to stress about.

We did go and find a ton of large lobster mushrooms, though I am not giving the particulars here, but we did celebrate my birthday, and were able to share the cake with fellow mushroom hunters. Could not have been a better birthday.

We got home a little late to make my favourite pizza, as I had not premade the dough. So we went to Rays, bought a pizza, took all the stuff off of it and made my favourite pizza, Shrimp, rosemary and capers.

I have decided that for future birthdays, to look at them differently. Instead of celebrating them, I envision a  very quiet "thank you" moment......to whomever, and whatever has allowed this body to keep "living" for another year.

I have included a video of our show at Bullards Wednesday night, joining us are Mark Dievendorf on drums and Jamie Sterling on violin

Love and peace

Janet Bates

jankenb @ gmail.com

chemo cancelled

Hello everyone

Ken and I got up and packed for a day of chemo, computers movies, snacks, crossword puzzles etc, and..... my blood counts were too low, so I was unable to get chemo today. My absolute neutrophil count was 1200 and the lowest they will give chemo is at 1500. My blood count has been this low and lower, but not on the day of chemo, so this is the first time they have had to cancel. We are rescheduled for Wednesday and I am certain it will be fine then. 

You see the monocyte count on todays bloodwork was high, but that is not what they are looking for, however the monocyte count goes up the day before the neutrophil count goes up, so it will be up soon.

So I guess Ken and I will just go picking chantarelles for the day instead. This will make the appointment in Eugene tomorrow much better.

I guess I was afraid that this would happen. Ken and I have a big trip planned up to Canada at the end of chemo. I have worked it out that we could leave about 3 weeks after last chemo. We have Ken's ER shifts organized and my hospitalist schedule organized, so it would be a real pain if we have any more delays.

I made a birthday cake to bring in today, it is basically zucchini bread/cake with turmeric and ginger. I wrote on it "and many more......"

So I guess we will just eat it.  

Anyways it is a disapointment, but it was inevitable that at least one would likely be delayed.

love and peace

Janet Bates 

jankenb @ gmail.com

PS I am going to post a video of the concert the other night here when Ken gets around to reducing it to a size that fits on blogspot

pre chemo

Hello everyone

Getting ready for chemo tomorrow. Forgot all about the ginger, and so have no sugared ginger today. The only place that sells it in Bandon is closed today. So just went down to grocery store and bought some ginger root and cut it up and put it in a smoothie. Tasted great.

Although I am afraid to say it for fear of being wrong, I think my wounds are pretty much healed.

I have been extremely dilligent on the open wounds on my perineum, with cleaning and protecting.

These wounds have been there now for 3 months. 

Essentially an open wound is where the top layer of skin is gone and the underlying tissue are exposed. At the end of radiation when the wounds were the largest, I would say that the total size would have been 3 cm squared.  Over the first couple of weeks after radiation  they fairly quickly went down to 1.5cm x 1 cm, and this one lesion has been the persistant one.  This whole problem has been adjacent to the rectum, so quite obviously a hard area to keep really really clean.  I initially had used watered down hibiclense which had been suggested by radiation clinic.  When the wounds did not seem to be healing I consulted my "wound care guru" in Portland who said that hibiclense destroyed the cell membranes, thereby "preventing" wounds from healing.  She suggested Aloe Vesta foam, which I have been using for about 6 weeks now.

Initially  when I started radiation, they suggested to stop using toilet paper and to use baby wipes to be gentler. This was in anticipation of the diarrhea from radiation. I did not really get the diarrhea, but the whole area broke down from the radiation towards the end. I went to costco and bought one of those party packs of facecloths. The really soft ones (pack of 20)

What I have been doing for a few months now is to cleanse the area several times a day with the aloe vesta foam and soft facecloths, and then I put  Aquaphor ointment on the area to protect it.

When I was worried about infection I used clindamycin gel as well. The area had almost healed before I started chemo last time, then opened up again.

Hope it will not do that this time.

The only part that is not healed is an area of what we call in medicine "hypergranulation tissue", otherwise known as "proud flesh". It is often seen when wounds heal slowly like this and there is essentially an area of underlying tissue that ends up "on the outside".  This will need to be removed and that is not usually a big deal, I will just have to find out how to do that in this area. In other parts of the body, I usually use silver nitrate sticks to get rid of the hypergranulation.

On Tuesday Ken and I are going to Eugene, I have appointment to see Dr Dotters, who is my surgeon. I have not seen her since a few weeks after the surgery. I guess she will examine me, and set up some sort of schedule for followup for the next few years.

Peace and love

jankenb @ gmail.com