5.31.2006
Well, now that our family knows, I'm ready to go ahead and write about it here: we found out last Thursday that Mom has uterine cancer. What a shock, to say the least. We are kind of taking things one day at a time. She was supposed to have an appointment with the gynecologic oncologist this Friday, but unfortunately the appointment got pushed back to Thursday of next week. However, today she was able to speak to the gynecologist who did the D&C and found out a couple of things... it's adenocarcinoma (which is a more common type) and is a grade 1. Grade 1 means the cancer cells are not too different from normal cells and that the cancer is likely to be slow-growing. This is a relief, as the main thing we have been worried about is spread. If it has not spread, a hysterectomy should take care of it and we can hopefully put this behind us. If it has, well, that's a whole 'nother ballgame alltogether.
I actually met the GYN oncologist by chance the Friday before her D&C. He gave a talk at Grand Rounds on gynecological cancers. That has proved to be very helpful for me as a knowledge base for understanding what we're dealing with here. I can't stand to be in the dark in a situation like this... the more information I have, the better. Prayers and/or good thoughts appreciated. One thing's for sure, I am SO GLAD we are in Roanoke. I can't imagine how helpless and frustrated I would feel if this were going on and I was living 4 hours away.
I actually met the GYN oncologist by chance the Friday before her D&C. He gave a talk at Grand Rounds on gynecological cancers. That has proved to be very helpful for me as a knowledge base for understanding what we're dealing with here. I can't stand to be in the dark in a situation like this... the more information I have, the better. Prayers and/or good thoughts appreciated. One thing's for sure, I am SO GLAD we are in Roanoke. I can't imagine how helpless and frustrated I would feel if this were going on and I was living 4 hours away.
5.15.2006
In nearly 15 years of driving, I have never hit anything larger than a bug with my car. Until this morning. What a sickening feeling. RIP, squirrel. I hope I can go at least another 15 years before it happens again.
I had a nice Mother's Day. We went to Red Lobster for an early dinner with Mom and Dad, followed by dessert back at their house. Strawberry pie, one of my all-time favorites. My mom is such a great cook. :)
I made black bean soup on Saturday and we are having it again tonight. I am already looking forward to it. I find that I alternate between craving chickpeas and black beans. There are always some in my pantry - in fact there are canned and dried, though I'm not so good at using the dried. I don't know if my body is trying to tell me something about its protein needs or if it's just the taste I crave. Anyway, I'm planning to make a loaf of feta black pepper bread before dinner. It goes so well with the soup, and it's one of the Fast Bake recipes for my bread machine, so it only takes an hour.
I got some good running in this weekend... 10 miles on Saturday and 7 yesterday. Saturday's run was beautiful and sunny and the perfect temperature. Sunday's run... well, it was sprinkling when I headed out and about halfway through the skies opened up. It amuses me that when you run in the rain, your front is soaking and your back is relatively dry. Also, I'm wondering if rainwater is softer than our public water (which is the definition of hard), because I am pretty sure those were detergent suds forming on my shorts by the end of the run. Wonder if I could market this as a new time-saving laundry strategy?
Anyway, that made 33 miles for last week, and that's what I'm shooting for this week. Next week I'll bump it up to 36. I'm aiming for 50.
I had a nice Mother's Day. We went to Red Lobster for an early dinner with Mom and Dad, followed by dessert back at their house. Strawberry pie, one of my all-time favorites. My mom is such a great cook. :)
I made black bean soup on Saturday and we are having it again tonight. I am already looking forward to it. I find that I alternate between craving chickpeas and black beans. There are always some in my pantry - in fact there are canned and dried, though I'm not so good at using the dried. I don't know if my body is trying to tell me something about its protein needs or if it's just the taste I crave. Anyway, I'm planning to make a loaf of feta black pepper bread before dinner. It goes so well with the soup, and it's one of the Fast Bake recipes for my bread machine, so it only takes an hour.
I got some good running in this weekend... 10 miles on Saturday and 7 yesterday. Saturday's run was beautiful and sunny and the perfect temperature. Sunday's run... well, it was sprinkling when I headed out and about halfway through the skies opened up. It amuses me that when you run in the rain, your front is soaking and your back is relatively dry. Also, I'm wondering if rainwater is softer than our public water (which is the definition of hard), because I am pretty sure those were detergent suds forming on my shorts by the end of the run. Wonder if I could market this as a new time-saving laundry strategy?
Anyway, that made 33 miles for last week, and that's what I'm shooting for this week. Next week I'll bump it up to 36. I'm aiming for 50.
5.01.2006
If you take a look to the left, you'll notice that I've decided to join modern technology by adding Flickr to the blog. I am still managing to take photos, but I've been terrible about sharing them. Over the weekend, in addition to creating a Flickr account, I finally bit the bullet and learned how to use actions in Photoshop to automate tasks. Now I can click the mouse a few times and then walk away while Photoshop resizes and compresses all the photos in a given folder on my hard drive. This will make my life much easier, and hopefully it will mean you'll get to see more pictures.
