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ok.
i'm not quitting, but as of this past friday, i've fulfilled my quota for the year. after an upcoming CT scan and a couple of doctor's visits, i'll be free to leave nyc for a break in california, at least, temporarily. i'm still waiting on approval from medicaid, ah bureaucracy, but for now, my belly is full, i'm feelin' the love, and i have plenty of hats for my drafty head.
to commemorate the end of phase I...
hooked up, but perusing a menu, of course.
ack! chemo in action.
i left home without my eyebrows.
sharing my morning with liza. if you look closely at my head, you can see the remnants of a recent henna encounter.
the end, for now...
in an effort to keep myself out of trouble between hot flashes and pill-popping, i will be officially blogging for a food website called the hungry? city guides. finally, i can direct my love of food toward the all-inclusive abyss that is the internet. i won't be getting rich off of this, at least not yet, in fact, money won't be involved at all, only the joy of life experience. (for example, most of the photos on the home page are mine.)
now, this is where you come in. since i can't keep reviewing the same places within a 3 block radius of my apartment, i need restaurant suggestions. i'm not looking for anything fancy or highbrow, just good grub at reasonable prices. maybe you know of a fantastic bakery whose cupcakes bring you to tears, or a hole-in-the-wall with out-of-this-world pad thai, or a mom and pop place that has crazy delicious fried chicken. whether it be a diner, a taco truck, or a bistro that reminds you of that trip to paris, send me the names of eateries that you hold near and dear to your heart and stomach, and i will visit as many as i can. (i'm primarily looking for places in new york city, but am also open to your own hometown favorites for when i visit you!)
now, close your eyes, think of food, and send me your suggestions...
eating heavenly risotto in a previous life.
so yesterday, i got a letter from the california dmv saying that it's time to renew my driver's license. the good news is that i get to retake my photo. i had shown up for that last renewal thinking that my hair was finally going to be just right. i had spent a fair amount of time working hard to make my hair look free and easy, naturally curly without being too wacky. when i received the license in the mail, i was disappointed to see that my giant moon face was surrounded by an unbecoming 'fro that was smashed on one side.
the bad news about the upcoming renewal is that i'll be bald for the new photo.
sigh.
as i sit here with what feels like a combination of jetlag, post-traumatic syndrome, and a hangover, i wonder where we went wrong. surely, there must've been an easier way to get to this point.
yesterday, we cleaned out the cabinet underneath the sink, only to discover that the DDR (damned dirty rat) has been hording food and stockpiling it there. we also found his gateway from the nether world, the hole in the sheetrock through which he gained entrance. disgusted, we cleared out the cabinet and set a trap with a tantalizing morsel of chicken.
at 1:30 am, the trap was triggered, but instead of blessed quiet, there was a great thrashing about, punctuated with rodent screams.
this was upsetting.
we dared not open the doors to the cabinet when clearly the DDR was not dead, and in fact, sounded quite fired up. i called the city, who referred me to a website which offered us rat data for nyc, but didn't mention who to call in the middle of the night when you have a live rat caught in a trap. by this time, it was very late, and hoping that perhaps it was a mortal injury and that the DDR would be dead by morning, we went to bed exhausted. i don't want rats where i live, but i also don't want to torture them, so it was difficult knowing that the Deed was not yet done.
unfortunately, as i lay in bed in the dark, i could hear the DDR battle with the trap. i slept off and on for a while, mostly off. a few brief hours later, i was up because i had i heard what sounded like something being dragged across the kitchen floor. i discovered that the DDR had pushed it's way out of the cabinet, crawled across the kitchen floor dragging the trap that was clamped onto a rear leg, and made its way up into a hole underneath another cabinet. but the trap wouldn't fit and the DDR couldn't go any further. it would've been so easy for me to reach down and release him and go back to bed hoping that we'd catch him another day, but i didn't. i couldn't stand that this wasn't a quick kill, but that DDR must die.
i woke ej. we decided that we would pull the trap with the DDR out of the hole, drop him into a long cardboard box and take him downstairs to the basement to make him an offer he couldn't refuse. (i didn't tell ej, but i was hoping to bow out of the proceedings right after the drop into the cardboard box.) with long bbq tongs, ej pulled on the trap.
squeal!! squeal!!
holy crap.
i wasn't prepared for the volume, or the intensity, or the general freakiness of it all. the DDR wouldn't come out. ej let go of the trap. i steeled myself and ej tried again.
squeal!! squeal!!!
jeeeezus!
this was giving me the heebie-jeebies. there was ej using the tongs to pull on a trap that was clamped onto a rat which was holding on for dear life to a hole in our cabinet. i could see the trapped leg, the back half of the DDR stretched out, but that determined rodent wouldn't come out. ej let go. he said he would try one last time, but that if that failed, we needed to call an exterminator. i agreed. one last time, ej pulled.
squealsquealsqueal!!!
i wanted to scream too.
the DDR wouldn't budge. ej let go and i ended up going down the street to where we'd seen an exterminator sign. they sent someone in about an hour and i was so relieved to hand over the rodent reins, i nearly hugged him.
theodore the exterminator surveyed the situation. he assured me that he would end the DDR's life as quickly and humanely as possible. my mom had joined me by this time and we left the apartment while theo did his job. i did not want to hear any more squealing, so i waited out on the sidewalk in front of our building. and waited. and waited. what could be taking so long? i found out that theo was also unable to pull the DDR out of the hole. he said he's done hundreds of rat removals, but he's never seen a situation like this. great. he calls anthony, a co-worker, to assist him and explains that they'll pump "tracking powder", a very potent poison, up into the crawl space and onto the rat to kill him first, that way they should be able to remove him more easily. they figured he would be dead within half an hour so we all left and came back over 30 minutes later only to find that this DDR, this king of the rats, was still very much alive. what the hell kind of horror movie creatures are these new york rats???
the exterminators shook their heads. plan c was to pry off the piece of cabinet that was helping to hold the rat in place. i was downstairs having a nice sit-down at this point. i heard them wrenching wood, i heard the DDR squealing, i heard the men yelling things like "get him!", "suffocate him!", and "hit him with the hammer!". then pound!pound!pound!, a scuffling of boots, more squealing and pounding. then quiet. that's when i went back upstairs.
i half expected blood to be splattered everywhere, but instead tools and pried moulding and a dusting of tracking powder covered the floor. the refrigerator was standing in the middle of the kitchen and the men were standing proudly, though wearily, with what appeared to be a touch of shell shock. the Deed was finally done.
what i saw when i got out of bed.
before the Deed: theo and anthony formulate the plan of attack.
after the Deed: catching their breath.
kitchen in disarray, theo collects the dead damned dirty rat.
nasty
anthony and theo: the heroes of third avenue.
one of the daily pills i take is a fabulous, immune-boosting supplement called astragalus. i just looked it up on wikipedia and learned that it's also known as locoweed or milk-vetch.
locoweed sounds like something i'd hear gabby hayes babble about as he does a little jig in an old western, and milk-vetch sounds like a yiddish dairy complaint. for some reason, that just makes my day.
holy crap.
are you even kidding me??
living in new york, i've come to accept that life may be grittier than it had been in my previous life in california. part of that grit is the occasional mouse in the house. we refer to each one as "murray". sometimes we go months with no sign of murray. other times, a little murray will scurry along the wall at night. silent and, i confess, a little cute. if i could magically transport all the murrays from this building to a mousey sanctuary where they could frolick freely in their mousey-ness, i would. instead, traps have been set, and a murray was killed last week. i haven't seen murray since.
last night, i learned that i do not have the same feelings toward all rodents. sadly, a rat has made its presence known. a tenacious, hungry, and i'm sure ugly rat. during the six years that i've lived in this apartment, this is the first possibility of mano-a-mano with a rat. this creature is stronger and has better climbing abilities than murray. i've not seen him (ej has), but as i was laying in bed pre-dawn today, i could hear that damned dirty rat getting into something in the kitchen. i got so angry that i had visions of me sitting in the dark, baseball bat in hand, waiting to brain that nasty creature with one sure stroke. instead, i got out of bed and added an irresistibly creamy dab of peanut butter to the already loaded rat trap. i disposed of the bag of tainted danish wafers that sat on the kitchen floor. i found a wafer, alone and partially chewed in front of the fridge. i sanitized the kitchen table and baker's rack. the sun still wasn't up, so i waited. and hoped. nothing yet.
to my friends and family who will be visiting for thanksgiving (if indeed, they haven't had a sudden change of plans), i expect to have very good news regarding the rodent situation in the next 24 hours. it has helped that my mom is completely freaked out about this invasion because it makes me calmer. and focused. and ready to wage war.rattus rigor mortis will be his name!
well, today i sat in a recliner from 10:30 to 3:30 while toxic drugs were pumped into my system. this scenario is getting old for me and i've only had to do it five times, so far. it went smoothly so i shouldn't complain, but i will because i'm learning that my mounting mental resistance to accepting chemical crap is just as difficult as the physical side effects to it.
my oncologist came by while i was doing this intravenous tango and it looks like there will probably be a hysterectomy in my future. january. after ej and i return from a holiday excursion to the west coast. (january. the month i turn 43. perhaps he can do a little liposuction while he's in there as a birthday present to me. or will the lack of all those potentially problematic innards automatically flatten my belly?)
if i have a hysterectomy, it sounds like he's leaning toward performing the surgery old school style, one big vertical incision in the middle of my abdomen as opposed to the less invasive laparoscopic surgery. he says that the big cut would enable him to manually feel what's going on inside and he'll have a better view of my inner world. he'll also be able to use his hands to help remove the undesirable bits, instead of depending on only the tools of laparoscopic surgery, and through a small incision no less. if the surgery reveals even one tiny cell of cancer, i will return to the exact same course of chemo that i'm doing right now. ack. if no cancer is found, then i will probably have "maintenance" chemo, less drugs, less often (once a month, but for a year). hmm.
laparoscopic hysterectomy recovery time = approx 2 weeks.
old school hysterectomy recovery time = approx 6-8 weeks.
hmm, again.
another option is to do nothing and simply keep tabs on what's going on in my body. meh. i'm not so into waiting around hoping nothing appears.
at any rate, nothing has been decided yet. and i still have a full body scan to look forward to at the beginning of december. i'm eager to see what effect the current chemo has had on those nasty cancer nodules that they found in my lungs.
on the lighter side,
we have a fabulous president-elect who has foresight and can put together an intelligent sentence,
ej and i are going to take another cooking class a week from sunday,
wonderful friends and family will be visiting during thanksgiving week,
and i took a chi gong class at gilda's club that i absolutely love.
there. life is good.
