Thursday, September 17, 2020

Add Water

As I was working at the castle this week, it struck me how easy my work has been made by the people who make plaster and mortar mixes. As I walked into the upstairs hall today, I took note of  the five different products sitting there waiting their turn to be used. I have plaster, sheetrock joint compound, mortar of two types (one for tile and one for tuck pointing stone), and grout.

To get each to a workable state, I just add water.

It gives me great respect for the craftsmen of yore. They had to know what they were doing in order to get the mixes right. This much sand, this much lime, this much cement to mix mortar. Leave out the lime, mix properly, and you get grout. This much lime or gypsum, cement and sand, viola, plaster. Lime and talcum powder (and other optional stuff) renders joint compound.

Me, I'd have no idea where to go to gather the correct materials, let alone properly mix them to get the desired goop. Probably, the separate components can still be purchased, but I'm pretty sure there aren't many left around who'd have any clue of what the proper mortar recipe might be. We've forgotten how to mix the ingredients to come up with a compound that will hold a wall together instead of crumbling into a pile of sand as soon as it dries.

And then my mind wandered to the everyday miracle elixir we call water; the 'just add water' part. Let the seed of a plant have access to air and water, and it will begin to grow. Add a cup of hot and a cup of cold water to jello mix, and you get a favorite childhood treat of mine. I drink several bottles of water each day, turning on the faucet and refilling my container without conscious thought. On the hot days of summer just past, I'd have not gotten in more than an hour or two of work each day without it. I can tap a few buttons on my phone, turn on the sprinkler system and water the yard - the water will cost me just a few dollars, and it will keep the grass alive. Take it away from most plants for more than a couple of weeks, from people for more than a few days, and life ends.

Where I live, tap water is clear, free of toxins, tasty. I don't have to walk to a well to draw a container full and sloshily carry it home to have something to drink. It's so easy for me to take it for granted - I appreciate the reminder, wherever it came from, that this is a huge blessing, a luxury.

So, let me raise a metaphorical glass to the brilliant people who measured and tested and came up with foolproof recipes for all kinds of things to which we can just add water. They've made my life better, and for this, I am grateful.

Friday, September 11, 2020

No More Drugs

To increase my chances of keeping my cancer at bay, I'd been taking Tamoxifen for the past eight years. I'd done pretty well on it, but since I've officially reached menopause, it was no longer an effective deterrent, so my oncologist switched me to Arimidex, one of the aromatase inhibitors, several months ago.

It was not a happy switch. There's a long list of negative side effects with the drugs, and before long, I was experiencing a lot of them. Swollen and achy joints, unhappy digestive system, uneasy sleep, almost daily migraines (mild ones, but still!). The worst part was the depression. I've struggled with it for years, but have learned some great coping tools and usually manage to keep it more-or-less under control. Not this time. I went down, down and down some more. Enough so, that when I went in to see the doc for a checkup, I planned to ask her for an antidepressant prescription.

When I got to my appointment, she asked how I was, and I responded, "Whiny." I then proceeded to go through my list of woes, hoping she'd have some options to help alleviate the worst of the side effects. To my surprise, when I'd finished, rather than telling me to keep bucking up, she said, "I think you've had enough. You've stayed on the drugs for eight years. While ten is the gold standard, few of my patients ever make it past seven. You've reached your toxicity tipping point."

And with that, I was done.

While I'm thrilled to begin to see what life is like without drugs whacking out my hormones, I also find myself a bit apprehensive. The drugs were the magic potion that kept my cancer away. If I no longer take them, does that mean my cancer will come back?

It might. And, I might get hit by the margarita truck tomorrow.

Today is the only day I have; I will do my best to make it a good one.

It's been a couple of weeks since I stopped taking the drugs, and I have already seen some improvements. My poor little sausage fingers are much better, sometimes I can actually curl them into a fist again. My digestive system is slowly recovering its equilibrium, and my appetite is returning. The headaches have largely abated (whew!). Sadly, I'm still not sleeping well, but this is where I pause and give thanks I no longer need to get up at a certain time to get to work each day. I'm still struggling to climb out of my depression hole, but at least I've managed to halt the downward spiral.

It'll take another month or two (at least) for my body to regain its balance. It'll be interesting to see where I land. I know it won't be back where I started - eight years is a long time, and I have a feeling that I'll discover that some of the things I'd been blaming the drugs for will actually turn out to be normal signs of aging. 

Despite everything, I still can't quite manage to think of myself as a cancer survivor. Rather, I give thanks each day I finish NED, with No Evidence of the Disease. So far, so good.