Parental recap

[Chocolate break complete. Although I reserve the right to take another one...]

Lorien has volunteered to do all of the cleanup tonite (thank you!), leaving me a bit of time to catch up on blogging.

Chemo round 2 began last Wednesday. The first round had been in the hospital, and I was a bit whiny about how long it took and the fact that it was in the middle of the night. The second round was on an outpatient basis at my oncologist's office, and was a lot quicker and actually fairly uneventful. My plan had been to blog during it, but everything went fast enough that I didn't end up having the time for it. Snoopy was, of course, present.

[Aborted] blogging during chemo

I used to practice yoga regularly.  I find it has a certain addictive quality -- if you don't do it, you may not feel that you need it, but once you get in they rhythm of doing it regularly, it's difficult to not do it.  For me at least, it really does help my body and my overall sense of well being.  Sadly, the inertia to keep doing it can be overcome, and starting up again has its own inertia.  I kind of stopped when Dylan was born.  I kept meaning to get back into it, but then I got sick, and that was yet another hurdle to overcome.  Even when my work started offering free weekly classes just across the street, I wasn't sure if I was well enough.  Finally I decided to just give it a shot, but unfortunately on days that I did yoga I felt worse rather than better, so I stopped.  In retrospect, I can imagine how having a big tumor in the middle of my chest got in the way for all sorts of poses.

Lately my body has been craving it again.  The cancer center in Berkeley offers free weekly yoga for cancer patients, so last Thursday I gave it a try.  No, there's no cancer ID card that they check at the door -- I suppose most people aren't about to game the system by seeking out free yoga classes in hospitals.  With one possible exception of someone who I suppose might have been close to my age, just about everyone was much older.  I guess that's the reality of cancer.  It was by far the slowest, and least challenging, of any yoga class I've ever been to.  A couple of years ago I would have found it mind numbingly boring.  Right now, it was exactly what I needed.  I do hope to continue with at least some form of yoga some of the time, when I'm feeling up to it.  I even have an offer for private classes, which is awesome.

Riding the big slide at Totland

Also on the physical rehab front, I rode my bike a couple of times again around town on errands.  I was again a bit winded on even the most minor of hills, but it was great to get back on the bike again.  I don't think I'm yet up for a full blown ride up into the hills, but I am curious to get on my racing bike and see how it goes.  (These rides so far have been on my commuting bike, which is an old mountain bike with thinner tires, lights, a rack, a milk crate for storage, etc., and it's a bit heavier and bulkier.)  We're also thinking of heading out somewhere again as a family with the bike trailer, although for now Lorien will probably have to be the one towing Dylan.

Dylan excited about Little Farm

I had been surprised with how many compliments I had gotten on my quickie $15 haircut.  And although I was kind of shocked with its shortness initially, it was starting to grow on me [no pun intented].  Lorien thoughtfully pointed out that I shouldn't get too attached to it.  Indeed, right on schedule, my hair started to fall out in a serious way this past week.  There were two huge days of it, which I think we're centered precisely 3 weeks after the first round of chemo, which is what I was told to expect.  The initial signs were hair collecting on the pillow, but the true floodgates were opened by showering.  It was actually kind of annoying.  I'm standing there under the water, running my hands through my hair, and each time clumps and clumps of hair just came out.  The first day I said I was going to stop when I could run my hands through and not have them covered in hair.  But that just kept not happening, so I gave up.  It was kind of dramatic how suddenly it all happened.  I got out of the shower and took a look at myself with shorter hair, and I thought I kind of looked a little bit like Brendan.  I was going to take a picture and send it to him, except that by the afternoon, I had lost enough more hair that I no longer looked like Brendan.  After two days of this, things have settled down a bit.  I'm still left with some whispy remnants of hair on my head, moreso on the top than the sides.  I thought about just shaving it all off, but it's not all that bad, so for now I'm just keeping it as is.  Besides, it's easier to do nothing.  One bit of good news is that I don't actually look as bad (I think) as I had worried.  I think there are some men who look good with an exposed head, and some who don't; and my prediction was that I'd be in the not category.  But it looks better than I had thought.  (Or am I not worthy of an unbiased opinion?)  Nevertheless, I'm glad I got the new hat.  I mean, regardless, it's an awesome hat.  [Do I use the word awesome too much?  Whatever.]

Feeding the animals

We had various plans to do various things when my Dad was here, but in retrospect we didn't really *do* all that much.  Which I think is fine.  Mostly it was about having my parents visit all of us, and with a toddler, just about anything can be entertaining.  Why spend money going to a museum, when Dylan can be amused with something as simple as just watching trucks drive by?  At least for right now, it was easier not to have to deal with the logistics of a bunch of grandiose excursions.  So we spent plenty of time just playing around the house, taking walks, and going to various parks.  We did go to the Little Farm in Tilden Park once, where Dylan got to see all the animals.  It's his 4th visit there -- he seems to like it a lot.  As well as animals in general.  And he no longer refers to every non-human creature as either "cat" or "duck".  Okay, maybe he doesn't know anything else besides "dog" and "cow", but it's a start...  It was great to have Dylan be able to interact to such a level with my parents in person, and not just as talking heads on Skype.  This morning he was asking for them.

As I mentioned before, it was a somewhat tough week for me emotionally.  Part of that included sitting around pondering how things are going, and how I want to be spending my time right now.  When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I had decided to postpone a decision about work.  I was going to fully take time off for the first round of chemo, then see how things were going.  After thinking it over, I've decided to continue to completely take time off and not work at all.  I think it will be much less stressful this way, I probably wouldn't actually be all that productive at work, and I'd really like the opportunity to physically and emotionally concentrate on my recovery.  Maybe I'll change my mind later, but it's the right decision for me for now.  And as much as I'm trying to concentrate on the positive, and I genuinely do believe that I will get better, I do have to accept the possibility that that is not certain, and there is the chance that I could die.  And frankly, if that does happen, I would much rather have spent the remaining time enjoying life and the outdoors and being with my family, rather than spending too much of it sitting in front of a computer screen typing.  Yes, I realize the irony of that statement, given what I'm doing right now.  But this is truly beneficial to me.  I considered various types of therapy during the depths of my emotional lows last week.  While I don't discount the benefits of those; for me, this is my therapy.  It is extremely helpful for me to blog about what's going on and get out what's on my mind, both the good and the bad.

Moving on to a brighter note, while I was feeling well, not to mention having a bit of the munchies for sweet foods, I decided to hold a group thank you for the various people that have helped us out by baking a chocolate cake.  I was thinking just your basic traditional American cake, nothing too fancy.  More Martha Stewart than David Leibovitz.  Yet somehow after browsing around both online and in cookbooks, I ended up back at David Leibovitz, who once again did not disappoint me.  I'd never made anything like this before, and I even had to go out and buy cake pans for it.  (Which I'd been planning on doing for a while now, but had postponed when I started having problems eating.)  I had been hoping to find the time to decorate the top of the cake with a "#fuckcancer" hashtag, but I didn't get the time for that.  Nevertheless, cakes are meant to be eaten, not looked at.  And while it did look pretty good, the taste was amazing, if I must say so myself.

Mmm....  chocolate....

The recipe is here.  For the cake, I used water instead of coffee (I'm usually not a huge fan of coffee in my sweets).  For the frosting, I used cream instead of water.  As David recommends, I used Valrhona cocao powder for the cake.  It is somewhat absurdly expensive, but I think it's worth it.  I also used Scharffen Berger for the frosting, but not for the reasons he does.  I just happen to think it's a good (but not great) chocolate and it comes in convenient baking sized bars and is often what I use for baking.  (There are imho better chocolates for nibbling.)  After tasting the relative lack of sweetness in the batter, I decided to use semisweet chocolate for the frosting rather than bittersweet.  Next time I'll have to get a little bit more prepared with respect to equipment -- a bunch of the guests ended up not being able to make it due to kids getting sick, so the cake didn't all get finished that day, which meant I had to improvise a cake dome.  Oh yeah, there was also homemade vanilla ice cream, although I'm starting to feel that while I in general love both cake and ice cream, I think in most cases I like them separately rather than together.

I guess one good side of gaining weight at a measured pace, rather than a whole bunch at once, is that I have this blanket license for satisfying my sweet tooth.  Hopefully I'll continue to feel well enough to practice being a patissier.  And hopefully enough of my local audience will be willing to help me enjoy the results.