Finis

Round last. Day last.

And so it ends.  This is the night I would have taken my steroids. Instead I had a party to celebrate my birthday and my last day of chemo. Tomorrow I would have gone to the hospital, parked in the cancer centre, weighed in, and had my infusion. Instead, Melissa and I will take a walk in the hills and talk about our lives. I have put away my steroids, my anti-nausea medicine, my antihistamines. I have put away the thermometer, the salt water mouth rinse next to the sink. I have put away the pitcher with the orange water that is the only thing I can taste during those days when my mouth feels carpeted. I have put away the chemotherapy.

 

I have pictured this day for so long. I have imagined the thrill of having this chapter closed and the next chapter opening. I feel a little surge of delight at the thought of it, butterflies in my stomach. Tomorrow the chemo ward will be filled with people—frightened, sick, putting on a brave face. But not me. Tomorrow night people will come home sick, take to their beds, hope for a gentle round. But not me. I am awash in gratitude for the grace of passing time.

 

Now I have finished. I am standing at the top of this big climb, looking back at the pathway. Chemo was not what I expected it to be.  In the appointments before I began, the doctor and then Debbie took a long time to walk their way through the list of side effects. As I listened to them I remember thinking, “I do not think I can bear this if these things happen to me.” Then, at my last chemo, I told the nurse I had been doing really well, although that third round was brutal. She pulled out the side effect list to see which ones I’d gotten. Yes yes yes yes yes. Other than the genuinely horrific (the ones that require hospitalization or blood transfusions), I had gotten each of the side effects—plus extra ones. But none of them had been so debilitating or stayed for so long or been so frightening as I had once imagined. Living through it, I didn’t (often) have the sense that I couldn’t bear it.  Perhaps that is how our sense of future pain always is—something we think we couldn’t bear until we live it step by step. And then we do bear it, because really what other choice is there? The sun rises and sets, the tide comes in and out, and we face our pain and terror and move through it.

 

But just as I once thought I couldn’t bear this, I also thought I would come through it to a different place. I looked forward to 15 June as the day when all my side effects would be gone, when I would walk into the new chapter with chemo fully behind me and the way ahead clear. Instead I struggle with the throbbing pain in my fingers as my nails threaten to fall off, and I watch as my eyelashes and eyebrows continue to thin perilously. I believed that the chemo time would be a contemplative space where I would come to understand the person I would be next. I knew that I was confused and disoriented as I headed into chemo, and I thought that on this day I would be oriented and clear. I was wrong.

This morning Carolyn and Melissa and I climbed up the big hill at dawn. We braved the winter winds and the threatening rain and chattered our way up up up the hill, distant mountains shimmering. I was weary on the climb, the fatigue from this round still hanging around even though the chemo is officially gone. But I made it to the top (for a while following some sheep on the path), as I suppose we tend to do. We arrived home to a house redolent of garlic with a cheerful Michael cooking away for my party. Soon there were four of us in the kitchen, and then the house began to fill up with friends and laughter.  We ate chili and cornbread and sang over polka dotted cheesecake and flourless chocolate cake (I baked with real sugar…). I do not know what happens next. I do not know who I’ll be next. But I do know that tomorrow will be my favourite Monday in as long as I can remember.

And so the next chapter begins.

Here is my very favourite healthy cookie. Enjoy!

These butter shortbread cookies are crispy buttery deliciousness.

Adapted from Detoxinista.com

Ingredients

(I always make a double recipe of these because I love them so much, but you can start with this much…)

• 1 cup almond flour
• 2 oz butter, melted
• 1½ Tablespoons maple syrup
• healthy pinch of sea salt
• 1/4 tsp. vanilla

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 150 C
2. Mix all the ingredients in a small bowl until a batter forms. I like the cookies about a teaspoon big, and I roll them with wet hands into a ball and flatten them.  I gently flattened my cookies using a fork. Thinner cookies will be more crisp
3. Bake cookies for 20-25 minutes, watching closely to ensure they don't get too brown.
4. Remove cookies from the oven when they are lightly golden brown. I like them best once they are cool and crisp all the way through.

Yogic blessings

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Day 74 ; Round 4, day 11.

I am halfway through the final round. I have not had the belly shot, not had the flu-like symptoms that come from the belly shot, nor the bone pain. I have not (yet?) gotten the rash. Or as many headaches. Or as much eye sensitivity.  My fingernails ache but they are not yet falling off.  The last of my eyelashes have not gone yet (I am grateful each day for the ones that hang on--I am very nearly at full naked mole rat status).  I am peering through the edge of the dark woods and can glimpse the meadow in the distance. I am nearly through.

I want to stop, before I’m out of the dark forest, to look around at the (yew?) trees around me and pay tribute to some of the companions that have brought me through.  One important companion that I haven’t written about is Atmabhava, my yoga teacher.  Early on, Melissa took on the job of finding the right instructor for me to come to my house once or twice a week to give us a private lesson. And so, for the last 12 weeks, Atmabhava has arrived as we’ve been clearing away the living room furniture, and he has taught yoga to us and to whichever guests happened to be here. We have done sun salutations in the sunshine with Dad and Jamie, battled for downward dog space with Dolce and Perry (who think head-butting dog is more fun), practiced tree pose with Laurie, and pushed around prana with Wendy. It has been an anchor of my experience and a key part of what has kept me whole and happy.

I have done yoga in probably ten countries and with maybe 50 different teachers. I have loved Michael in Sydney who does yoga for accountants, and I have hated hot yoga in Seattle and the peppy yoga instructor who loudly cheered us on (there is no cheering in yoga). Atmabhava has us think about yoga in a totally different way than any of those others, and it has been exactly what I’ve needed. His focus is always on the prana, the energy, the breath. We practice with our eyes closed so there is no careful mimicking of the teacher’s perfect pose, no checking out what the beautiful woman next to me can do that I can’t. It’s just my body and my breath and his voice, gently telling me what to do next. And while in the past I have expected yoga to be something of a workout, now I really understand the importance of three different components: the poses, the work with the breath, the deep relaxation.  I don’t honestly know what alternate nostril breathing does for my system, but I know that there has never been a time when I haven’t felt more relaxed and alive after Atmabhava’s yoga than I did before he got here.

This then, is one of the cancer gifts. When I think of this chemo time, my mind will sometimes drift to some of the horrors of it. I think that will be the smallest part of my memory, though. The lingering remnants of this time will be a friend delivering a meal for my family to eat that night. The excited arrival of another beautiful person from somewhere in the world who has come to hold my hand (and usually lament about the weather). Opening another one of Mark’s poems on a new day and feeling the words flow through me. The feel of the sun on my face as I lie in shavasana after a particularly tiring boat pose. When I hold my arms out to capture the gifts, they heap and pile and scatter around me, so many treasures I can’t contain them.

So for you today, one of my favourite recipes. One of the pieces of me I’ve lost to cancer so far is Jennifer-the-baker (although I baked a hell of a birthday cake this week).  White flour and sugar are two ingredients that might be bad for me, but are awfully good for cookies and cakes. I have thrown out endless varieties of healthy cookies (the joke around my house now is that it would be faster if we just put the dough in the compost without baking it to save a step). But these brownies—while not as healthy as some of my baking—are keepers. The darker the chocolate, the better for you, so splurge.

Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Blondies

Adapted from: Detoxinista.com

Ingredients

• 1 cup natural creamy peanut butter (preferably organic)
• ⅓ cup agave syrup
• 1 whole egg
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• ¼ teaspoon sea salt
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ cup dark chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F and grease an 8" square pan with butter or coconut oil.
2. In a small bowl, mix the peanut butter, agave, egg, vanilla, salt and baking soda until well combined, then fold in the chocolate chips.
3. Pour the batter into the greased pan, and use wet hands to smooth the top.
4. Bake at 350F for 17-20 minutes, or until the top is a light golden brown.
5. Let cool, then cut into squares and serve!

Recipe adapted from Detoxinista at http://detoxinista.com/2011/12/flourless-peanut-butter-chocolate-chip-blondies/

 (PICTURES TODAY: My chemo meds card, warming the house now that it has finished its job; a walk near the house that Michael and I took on my birthday; me and a cake loaded with sugar and flour. It was delicious)