Everything Happens for a Reason

I was raised with the belief that everything happens for a reason. That no matter how bad a situation seems there will be something good that comes of it. Now, I know not everyone feels this way, but that’s just how my family operates.

So, having said this, I’ve got to fill some folks in on something important that’s been going on ‘round here, something that has changed the lives of my family members and our friends. In January, during a routine colonoscopy for zapping polyps, the doctor discovered that mom had a mass in her rectum. It was, he was certain, cancer. With this news, we did what we always do as a family, circled the wagons and made a game plan which included great team of doctors. The decision was made to have the mass removed without taking any of the lymph nodes (to avoid the whole colostomy bag thing unless it was absolutely necessary), and to send mom in for six weeks of chemoradiation. The chemo will come in the form of a chemo fanny pack (she’ll look like an 80s American tourist in Europe) that will get hooked up on Mondays when she goes in for her radiation and unhooked on Fridays (so she can PAR-TAY all weekend). The chemo is a low dose treatment that has very few side effects and is complimentary to the radiation.

An aside: Mom’s surgeon is Lucian Newman, III. He is a young doctor from a long line of doctors, and he performed mom’s lumpectomy over seventeen years ago as well as my sister’s mastectomy over five years ago. Three, as we call him, is a towering, strapping surgeon who loves to snow ski, golf and hunt. He is also missing one arm, which he lost in a hunting accident several years ago. So, he doesn’t really give you the chance to ever feel sorry for yourself ‘cause he’s just so full of self-confidence and so darn sure that whatever it is you’ve got, he can take it out and leave you better for it. He always shoots it straight, giving you worst and best case scenarios so that you won’t be surprised either way, and he makes you feel like you WILL be fine (you just may feel like hell a bit while you heal). We pretty much like everything about him…

So Three removed mom’s mass a little over a month ago. She did great during and after the surgery, only having to spend one night in the hospital. She was doing so well, she started trying to do too much and ended up NOT feeling so great for a couple of days. After the first post-op meeting with Three (about a week after the surgery), mom was able to get into a routine of butt-care-best-practices, and she’s improved drastically ever since. At the second post-op meeting, Three told us that Mom’s margins were clear from the surgery, and that she retained great rectal function, so he granted her a reprieve from the chemoradiation treatments until after she had healed a bit more. We will meet with him again next week to make the final plans…in the meantime, butt jokes are de rigueur…

Something great that has come out of this (besides the obvious fact that mom is doing well): Mom and dad have gotten real interested in the food they eat, specifically in the fiber they consume. They have been taking recommendations from me and Vicki, adding more fruits, vegetables and whole grains to their diet. And I’ve been adding additional whole grains to my diet as well, which has let to me feeling, well, pretty darn awful. I've had stomach trouble since I was a child, and was diagnosed with IBS years ago when I lived in Denver, so I’ve always been careful about what I eat. But I can’t recall a time in my life when I’ve ever experienced the things that I’ve been experiencing lately (out of modesty, and out of fear of sharing too much information, I will spare you all the details). So, I’ve been keeping track of what I eat, what symptoms I have, and when those symptoms crop up…and I suspect that I have a gluten intolerance. After feeling like hammered dog poo all day Wednesday at work (and eating my usual granola breakfast, hummus with pita chips lunch, guacamole on fiber bar dinner), and almost not making it to Ash Wednesday services at the church because I thought my stomach was going to explode, and fearing that once I got to church, that I was going to have to dash away from the prayer bench while knocking clergy and congregants out of the way so that I could get to the bathroom during services, I decided to take matters into my own hands and have a gluten-free Thursday to see if there was ANY relationship between whole grain goodness and hammered dog poo (or feeling like hammered dog poo).

If you don’t want to read a mundane passage about what I ate yesterday, then you may want to just skip to the next paragraph…Yesterday, I ate oatmeal for breakfast. I had a grilled chicken salad on a bed of field greens for lunch. I ate some cashews from the vending machine for onesies (which is very much like the hobbit snack time elevensies. Sister and I believe in elevensies, twelvsies, onesies, twosies...you get the picture. We like snack time, so we'll turn whatever time we need a snack into snack time). And I had great northern beans with tuna and rosemary for dinner. I didn’t eat anything at the Red Cross benefit concert last night at Blackstone because they didn’t have anything on the menu that was gluten-free. I did, however, watch Brandy, Dave and Slim eat some of that decadent white cheese dip with chips and toasted bread (I was salivating like Niagra Falls the whole time, but I was fine…really I was FINE). And I felt fine all day yesterday.

So, this morning I feel more energetic than yesterday (really, I feel more energetic than I have in awhile). I ate oatmeal again for breakfast (a double serving because I got so hungry yesterday). I am planning on eating another chicken salad on field greens again for lunch. And I’ll eat something non-gluten-y for dinner. I am going to continue my gluten-free crusade to see if I continue to feel better. And I am going to Apple-A-Day today to buy some almond flour so that Slim can make pizza dough for Saturday Night Supper Club at the Catoes (or what I am going to start calling Saturday Night Bison Hunt with a Leap of Leopards)…pizza dough that I can eat without blowing my whole food experiment. To be continued…