"NASTY, MEAN, FALSE! YOU STOLES IT! YOU STOLES OUR CATCHPHRASE!
Ok, Ok. Its "our" precious. (my wife made me type that.)
It is no small secret around my house that i have been in deep, deep smit with the iPad this year. While I was recovering from my surgery I spoke about how useful it would be to me. I made up excuses about how I could write this blog on it and other stuff, but no matter how much I lied to myself i couldnt really justify one. Long story short, I felt like the nintendo kid inside when I opened up that present chritmas morning and saw an Apple logo staring back at me. It was unexpected to say the least.
So how is it you might ask? It is everybit as glorious as everyone says it is. Seriously. In the words of Ferris Bueller, "It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up."
After having it for awhile now though, i have realized that a rift has started to form between my wife and I. She takes the laptop to work with her almost every day and its the only (working) computer in the house. Its only fair that I keep the ipad with me, right? To go along with the LOTR reference in the title up there, its turning me into the Gollum of our house hold. I wipe off finger prints almost as fast as I put them on and I cringe when other people handle it. Its really only a matter of time before I lose my hair and my eyes start to bug out of my head.
Anyhoo, I could write a lot more about how great it is and all that, but that would just exacerbate my already overwhelming smugness. Some time soon ill have to let my wife handle it, if only to save myself from it.
Sent from my iPad.
UPDATE: She has her own damn ipad now. So now she can keep her grubby hands off mine.
I know i haven't posted lately and I'm sorry for that. Life is getting back to normal for me and normal usually means that there isnt much to talk about. That being said, my medical issues continue to affect me day to day, so I felt like this was topical enough to share with all of you.
Like most places of business, my employer puts on a little get together at the end of the year. At the end of the function, everyone gets a "gift". I put that in quotes because its really just a way for us to clear out the closet where we cram all the promotional swag and press realease garbage that accumulates through out the year. Anyway, most of the things that come out of there are books and t-shirts. The book I ended up with was about cancer (it was a little awkward actually) but my friend hit the jackpot with her book.
Quack doesnt even BEGIN to cover it.
In writing "The Secret Language of Your Body: The Essential Guide to Health and Wellness", Inna Segal has put on her Zamfir's Greatest Hits Vol.1 CD, ignited a stick of her favorite incense and has gracefully placed a great, steaming pile of poop upon the chest of medical science.
This book has to be one of the dumbest, most irresponsible pieces of "medical" literature I have ever read. The entire premise of this book is that your emotional difficulties and hangups are physically manifesting themselves as disease. Im pretty sure I didnt get cancer because I "carry wounds from my past" or because my "guilt, grief and uncertainty are eating away at my body." It wasnt guilt eating away at my body it was the giant tumor in my throat. Oh, and by the way ladies, if you suffer from PMS just know that it is caused by feelings of "anger, confusion, anxiety, fear and self-doubt." It has absolutely nothing to do with hormones or biology or science. Mrs. Segal also writes that childhood diseases (vague) are brought on because the child "needs attention and love" yet is "feeling unworthy and undeserving of love and affection." Tell a 9 year old Leukemia patient's parents that cancer is killing their child because he's insecure, see how that goes over. What a bunch of crap.
Here's some more ailments with their supposed causes...
Alzheimer's Disease- Loss of power to deal with life.
AIDS- Feeling guilty, wronged, disappointed, dirty sexual shame.
Anal Bleeding- Pushing too hard. (HA! Sorry, I had to include this one.)
Blindness- Not wanting to see what is goin on around you.
Burns- Feeling burned out. (Really?!)
Coma- Not wanting to be here.
Drug Addiction- Inability to cope or get help .(this is getting stupid now.)
Insanity- Inability to deal with life or think straight .
Leukemia- Lack of joy, resistance to life. (just.....wow.)
Sore Throat- Not saying what you really feel.
Tapeworm- Feeling like people are sucking your life force away and controlling you. (You'd think it would be a tapeworm. You'd be wrong.)
Wounds- Self-critisism and judgement. (face palm.)
Her suggested remedies to all these issues are only slightly less stupid than the causes. I would go into greater detail about this, but as it turns out, pretty much everything can be cured by giving your afflicted body parts little daily affirmations. Seriously, just tell them how good they make you feel and that you appreciate them. After you have finished kissing your asses ass, make sure to ask the "divine healing intelligence" to cure what ails you. Do you have breast cancer? Simply tell your boobs how great they are and you'll be all fixed! Do you have tennis elbow? Ask the "divine healing intelligence" to disolve stagnation, stiffness and everything else thats wrong with it, but be sure to say "thank you" (Politeness must be observed.) There is also some drivel about the healing power of certain colors, but since my crazy train had already left the station, I didn't really read that part.
Look, I can't lie and tell you I've read this entire book because I haven't, but what I HAVE read is all snake oil and lies. And before you say it, yes I am making a judgement on a partial reading, and no, reading the rest will not change my mind. It already makes me want to find a baby seal, name it Inna Segal and then punch it in the throat.
I get that modern medicine has its issues. I also get that some people get to a point in their illness that fear and hoplessness set in. This isnt the answer though. I feel like this woman preys upon that same fear and hopelessness and desperation to make a buck. (The same woman sells thereputic massage music for rodents on her website. I couldnt make this crap up!) I honestly feel bad for the people who are feel they need to look for something like this. Chances are that if you have picked up this book and find yourself agreeing with anything said in it....you need more help than this book can offer.
Wow, that got all serious at the end there. Thats about it for me, see you all next time.
Saturday at the Austin City Limits Music Festival. Copyright All rights reserved by ACL Festival
Before I get too far into this post, I want to take the time to thank everyone (both inside and outside the US) for sticking with me and reading my little blog here. It blows my mind to think that people outside of the US are reading this blog. Hell, it’s just sort of weird to think that anyone reads this thing at all. Thanks again to all of you!
In case you haven’t noticed, I have added some little features around the page. To make things easier for my international folks, here is a little tab just to the right side of the page that will allow you to translate this blog of awesomeness into any language you want. I also added a little rating widget at the bottom also. You can give me 1-5 stars. There is really no point to the rating thing other than to feed my ego. Lastly, you can always leave a comment if you want. Now that’s out of the way, on to why I’m here....
The wife and I spent the day at the Austin City Limits Music Festival today for the first time. We have both lived here a long time and yet neither one of us has ever been to ACL before. It was an awesome time and i look forward to going back next year.
I already know this is going to be a long post, so I have broken it up into a couple parts for you. You can either read it straight through, or just the pieces you want. Cheers!
P.S. I would have supplied my own pictures for this post, but my phone battery magically drained itself after being off the charger for about 20 minutes. By the time i got inside the fest, it was completely dead. I grabbed some of the pictures in this post from the ACL flickr page, and you can find more of them here: ACL Pics!
After a long and difficult walk from the car (that whole cancer, stamina thing...whatever.) we made it just in time to catch the start of the Two Door Cinema Club set. To be honest, I can’t say that i SAW the show since i was sitting down for the majority of it, but they really did sound good. They seemed like three fairly unassuming guys from Ireland who were just happy to be there. I chuckled when they said they were surprised to see so many people showed up to see them.
I find it hard to describe the music but i think that Two Door Cinema Club music is happy...in a way. When i asked my wife how she would describe it she told me that the music was upbeat. Kind of like hipster happy but not "walking on sunshine" happy. Yeah, let’s go with that. Either way i was impressed that they sounded like their record and I thought they did a great set. I was sad to see them go after just an hour. I didn’t recognize all the songs they did since they are a relatively new find for me, but i liked them all. Below, i have posted the video for what i think is their most recent single. Click. Enjoy hipster happy.
After the TDCC show we had a short break and humped it across the park to try to catch the Silversun Pickups. (HA! I said "humped". Military terms are funny.) On the way to the Pickups show we walked past the Black Lips performing. If i remember correctly, the write up in the program said something about them sounding like "a 15 year old with a firecracker." We stopped just for a couple of minutes to see if we could figure out what that meant. We couldn't.
We walked on.
The Silversun Pickups are kind of hit or miss for me but i enjoyed what i saw. I have to admit that i still find the guys voice a little weird, but maybe i just haven' t listened to them enough for the music to grow on me. I wouldn’t really get the chance to bond with the music this time since the other folks we were with decided they weren't into it. Oh well. So after a short listen again we tramped across the park to catch the Temper Trap show. If you want, you can check out a video from the Silversun Pickups here.
I have been looking forward to the Temper Trap show ever since my wife turned me on to them a while ago. Out of the bands that we had seen so far, this is the one i was most familiar with. I really like these guys. For me this is the kind of music that i would put on and listen to with a mixed drink in my hand. Or put in a car commercial. Either way, it’s chill out music for me. Once again, i was really impressed that they sounded just like their record (does that make me lame?) and the cool evening weather along with a good crowd made for a great show experience. I would go see these guys again. Since I’m feeling link happy, here’s the video for the song "Love Lost." It's the awesomesauce.
After a great show we grabbed some food (more on that below) and headed over to the catch the end of LCD Soundsystem and to claim our little piece of ground for Muse later that night.
Like the Silversun Pickups, LCD Soundsystem is kind of hit or miss for me and like Silversun i suspect it’s because i haven’t given them much of a chance. A word of advice: when going to see an LCD Soundsystem show, bring ear plugs. I don’t know why, but they seemed louder than everyone else that day. Like uncomfortable loud. Maybe I’m getting too old, but i don’t like my music to hurt. Mercifully, they were done about 15 or so minutes after we arrived. Like i said before, i don’t like all of their music but some of it is alright. Watch a really cool video by them Here.
While waiting for Muse, we got to see a somewhat long distance performance by a DJ called Deadmau5. (Its pronounced "dead mouse". I looked it up.) In short he plays techno/trance/house music. Whatever, I’m not good with genres. Anyway, it was a pretty crazy show and from what we could see. For about an hour he turned Zilker Park into the biggest rave I’ve ever been to.
Just after it got really dark, Muse took the stage and killed it.
What can i say about Muse? They flat out, rocked my face off. They played for an hour and a half, but i could have watched all night. It was that good to me. Anyway, i could sit here and gush about it, but either you like them or you don't. This show made the whole day worth it. It was awesome.
Upon arriving at Zilker Park it really hit me that i was going to have to spend an extended amount of time around an extended amount of people. I love me some people watching and since my phone decided to go tits up before i could get there, i went old school and actually jotted down some things. Like, on pen and paper. Weird. Anyway, here's what i wrote down:
If you just got a text from your hipster/stoner/sorority friends telling you where they are, don't be a dick and knock over my chairs and stomp all over my little area to get to them. If you feel you must, at least have the decency to say "excuse me" or something. Seriously, you almost made me spill my 7 dollar beer. And while I’m at it, why is it that college age girls insist on traveling via conga line? Ladies, it’s not necessary to be physically attached to the girl in front of you. No one likes being stuck behind your ridiculous, half-drunk, giggle train.
It's like this only with shorter shorts and more squealing
No matter where i stand or sit, people will always feel like they need to walk in front of, or around me to get where they are going. In related news....
Doesn't a blanket on the ground sort of denote your personal space? That’s a real thing right? Why is it that mine seems to be invisible?
Apparently i have personal space issues.
How can you be a hipster if you look like everyone else?
Look, i applaud the free thinkers and free spirits in this town. The ones who try hard to go their own way and all that. I like the spirit of it, but some of these folks need to take it down a notch. Honestly, how original are you if every other person in a half mile radius is wearing the same little straw fedora, skinny jeans and white rim sunglasses as you? You aren't. You have managed to look and talk and act just like everyone else in your wacky little counter-culture. Congratulations, that makes you an unoriginal, consumerist, conformist sheep. Oh, and one more thing, get off of your fixed gear bike and shave that freaking beard. It smells like stale Parliaments and PBR.
While I’m on the subject.....
Is anyone familiar with this whole hoopster trend? I had read about them on someone’s blog, but i didn’t really think they were real. I was wrong. They are basically a hipster off-shoot with a basketball jersey on. And it’s not like they were wearing something current like a Kobe jersey or a maybe a Tony Parker jersey. (the Spurs play just an hour away) No, It’s usually some tiny white guy rocking a semi throw back jersey with the name of a b level player from the early 90's like Dan Majerle, or John Starks. As far as i can tell, they are essentially like regular hipsters yet somehow way more obnoxious.
What a hoopster might look like.
ACL bag checkers suck. I’ve seen at least one of every single banned item on their list of stuff you can’t have. Including my vodka.
I've decided that no one looks cool when they sneeze.
No matter how big or small the act is, no matter how many people are watching or not watching, there's always that one person dancing. They are usually alone and it’s usually a barefoot girl with pale skin and a homemade skirt.
But it’s funnier if it’s a dude.
You would think that getting around with 100,000 people in close proximity would be difficult. You would be wrong. We really had no problem getting around or using any of the services that were available to us. The food lines were (relatively) fast and easy to navigate, there were free water stations in every corner of the park and bar stands were so plentiful that i never waited to get a beer. My hat goes off to the many folks who planned this thing.
Austin cuisine was well represented with booths by many local favs such as The Saltlick, Hyde Park bar and grill, P.Terry's and a slew of others. Really, the food choices were amazing and for an event of this size the prices were reasonable. I opted for a taco from the Torchy's Taco booth. (For those of you not from Austin, if you ever find yourself here, you owe it to yourself to find a Torchy's and partake. Good stuff.)
Well, i think that’s it......oh, so you are wondering about the whole "voice of god" thing huh? OK, thats a quick one. After we left the grounds, we had to get gas and we stopped at a Rudy's barbecue. (Rudy's is also a gas station for those of you who have never been to one.) Since i hurt all over, my wife was nice enough to pump the gas. With out warning an unnecessarily loud voice boomed from down from above telling us that the gas station was closed and that we were being watched. It was a little terrifying.
So, That was my awesome day with my awesome wife and some awesome friends. I say for my first ACL it was a total success. At the end of the day i was totally exhausted, had two sore shins and chafing in places i would rather not talk about. I can't wait to do it again next year!
Sorry 'bout that. Its just that I have been waiting for the results of my full body scan. Ive been waiting for over a week now and I just got them in the mail. Apparently I'm an idiot for thinking that my doc would actually want to talk to me about the results. See, I called his office a couple of times last week thinking that he might want to talk about the scan results and whats gonna happen to me from this point forward. I figured since this is kind of the theoretical finish line to this whole thing, that maybe he would want to talk to me about it. The only callback I got was from his nurse telling me to stop calling (sort of). She said that if I had a question for the doctor that I needed to make an appointment, that the doctors don't do phone consultations. What I heard was "pay up, sucker!" I couldn't help but feel like I had suddenly hit some sort of unspoken phone call quota. That kind of pissed me off since he had explicitly told me that I could call if I had a quick question so that I wouldn't have to pay the $50 copay to talk to him for 5 minutes. I understand that he doesn't work for free, but again, this is sort of the end of this whole thing, right? Seems like he would want to actually talk.
Whatever.
They told me that they mailed the scan result which I got about a week later. According to the scan, things are as good as they can be I guess. The iodine only absorbed in "the thyroid bed" which was to be expected since thats where the cancer was known to be. There was no evidence of the cancer anywhere else so thats a good thing. As far as I know at this point, the cancer will continue to die off and the next issue to deal with is regulating my synthroid levels (synthetic thyroid hormone.) I'll let you know more as I find it out.
So, where do I go from here?
The short answer is....not very far. I say that because, while I have made a lot of progress in healing from the surgery and all of the crap that came along with it, (the recovery, the diet and radiation etc...) I still have a long way to go. I find that I still get tired easily, especially if I'm doing anything very active. Becky and I spent the weekend putting the living room back to normal and after moving some light furniture and folding some blankets, I was drained. (For those of you who don't know, my family had set up a little recovery area in the living room complete with a bed and tables so I wouldn't have to go up and down stairs after surgery.) I just don't have the stamina to do very much for very long. I know it will come back eventually, but right now I find I still tire fairly easily. Anyway, I'm getting better everyday, but I'm not back to 100%
Well, I have really enjoyed writing this blog, but I'm not really sure what to talk about without a semi-serious disease making my life difficult. I do have plans to lose a bunch of weight since my doc told me (again) that it would help me out. Now that I am finally getting some energy back i'll try harder to do that. It would be nice to not look like a manatee when i go to the pool at the gym... As far as other medical concerns go, I'm supposed to have a sleep study done soon. I'm told they do it at my house. Not sure how thats all gonna work out so, I'll let you know how that goes. Anyway, thanks again to everyone for your support and love. It really helped me get through a tough little stretch there.
my nickname around the house, thanks to my brother-in-law
So, I had this plan that I was going to be keeping a live journal of sorts for the Radioactive Iodine. Then I realized just how boring it was. In a nutshell, here's how my last 4 days have been.
"I Wake up" I say that in quotes because even though my eyes are open, it take a couple of hours for me to actually wake up. Literally.
Eat a piece of candy I have to keep my salivary glands stimulated so as not to damage them with the radiation. Your salivary glands use iodine also. Eat a piece of candy Eat a piece of candy
I eat foodNothing much more to say about that.
Eat a piece of candy Eat a piece of candy
I watch tv/movie or play video games. I would read a book, but that would involve physical movement. Im still so hypo I dont even want to turn pages. Nor do I want to be mentally taxed by reading a book. Daytime tv is mindless enough.
Eat a piece of candy Eat a piece of candy Eat a piece of candy
Eat a piece of candy Eat a piece of candy Eat a piece of candy Eat a piece of candy
I eat food again.
brush my teeth.
consider throwing up from all the candy
I try to convince myself that im sleepy enough to actually sleep.Since im so tired from being so hypo its quite hard for me to actually fall asleep. That and the fact that I have enough sugar coursing through me to kill a diabetic with just my breath. For instance, its 2am now and I want to sleep...but its not happening right now.
So, if you are seven years old thats an awesome schedule. I however, am not seven years old. (My wife says I act like im 15) There is also lots of water and lots of time spent in the bathroom, but you dont need to hear about that. The good part is that I have had very few side effects and the ones I have had have been minimal. I didnt have much throat pain or any other localized pains really. They tell you that you could have throat pain because the radiation is killing off your thyroid but since mine was removed completely, all I have now is an empty space that I use as storage for chewy beef snacks. I was hoping to have some pains around my collar bone areas since my doc said I might still have some infected lymphnodes in that area but I dont think it hurt there. I had a bit of a head ache on day one, but not much more than that. The hardest part about all of this has been trying to avoid my wife. Literally. I have to stay atleast 6 feet away from her until about day 5. There is good news however....
Today was is my last day on the LID diet and come kick off (im a rabid LSU football fan) i will drowning myself in a bowl of piping hot queso and chips. I also get to go back on my hormone tomorrow which is arguably the more exciting part. im not sure what my TSH number (in a nutshell its a gauge for how hypothyridic one is) is anymore, the lady at the radiology place said she had never seen a number so high in her 15 years. (it was high enough that the scale either broke or the scale stopped counting. im not sure which.) Im so ready to have energy again.
Thats about it. I just wanted to write something short for a change to let everyone know whats been up. I sound like a broken record when i say this, but thank you. To all of my friends and family and anyone else who has said an encouraging word to me, it means the world to me to think that your thinking of me. It really is overwhelming to me.
Until next time, just let your SOOOUULLLLL GLOOOWWWW yall.
Some of my friends with more discerning palettes than I, have made the suggestion that I use this LID diet as an opportunity to travel down culinary roads that were previously unknown to me. That I should finally end the feud between my sense of taste and the produce aisle. I told them i would think about it. And I did.
For about a second.
Then I put on my best Rex Kwon Do pants and roundhouse kicked that notion in the face!!
Starla would have been proud of me.
Anyway, I really did consider eating more veggies and if I ever have to repeat this whole process, I might actually go through with it. However, there are a couple of things that stand in my way. The first is the fact that I don't really like many of them, the second is that I don't know the first thing about preparing them. Also, I promised an LID junk food blog.
As a fat guy, you know i loves me some junk food. It has been said that I have yet to meet a partially hydrogenated processed food stuff that I didn't like. If you have been reading this blog though, you already know that the LID will not suffer such fare as it tends to be crammed to the brim with potentially iodized salt/sea salt or soy and dairy and pretty much everything else I'm not allowed to eat. If you are a newly diagnosed Thyca patient, then chances are you will have to do this diet at some point. Don't freak out though, seriously, you're above that. Instead, I'm gonna show you some stuff that I have found that has made my life over the last 19 days a little easier.
After what seemed like my 27th pound of trail mix, I decided that the the "salty, crunchy" button in my brain wasn't being pushed. Like any good junkfoodie, my first instinct went to potato chips. Since I was already in full on LID mode, I decided that I was going to have to make them on my own. It made sense (to my increasingly hypo brain) and the core ingredients are LID safe, so why not? Well...it didn't work out like I hoped. Long story short, I only succeeded in making flat round french fries and narrowly avoiding 3rd degree burns after my pot of hot oil boiled over. The end result was still deep fried potatoes (or sweet potatoes in this case) and they were tasty but didn't keep well.
Later that week, after one of my many blood tests, I found myself walking around Sprouts. For those of you who don't have a Sprouts, it's kind of like Whole Foods, only the people watching isn't nearly as good and I feel like I can shop there without being a self-conscious tool bag. I didn't think I would ever find a pre-processed potato chip that was LID safe, but as luck would have it I did find these:
Overall, they aren't too bad. A little bland maybe, but doable. It occurred to me that I could apply my own iodine free salt later on and that would perk them up a bit. It wasn't until much later that I realized I could season the chips however I wanted. My current favorite is salt and chipotle pepper powder. I may never buy normal potato chips again. I am Bob Ross and these chips are my own crunchy little blank flavor canvases.
Screw the trees, I'm making happy little chips!
There are going to be times that you want to switch it up though, and if you live anywhere south of the mason-dixon line and west of the mississippi river, tortilla chips are arguably the more important chip. They are indeed, the ultimate vehicle for the topping of your choice. For whatever reason though, I had it in my head that tortilla chips are a flour product, (wrong) so I was delighted to find out that they are in fact, made of corn. After scouring the chip aisle I found these:
I should mention that this particular brand of chips is very local to me here. They are produced about 15 miles away from where I live and I don't know how widely distributed they are. However, should you be able to buy these chips, you should do it. I bought two big bags for around 5 bucks. Seriously, only jerks who hate money and use it to set fire to orphans wouldn't buy these.
As much as I like these particular chips, it annoys me that I cant bathe them in my favorite chip dressing, queso. (that's cheese dip for you folks in places that get snow) I'm sure some of you are asking why I don't just season them like the chips above or pair them with a freshly made salt free salsa or something like that. I would respond by saying that my brain is mostly mush and just the simple act of existing is tiring at times to me now. To remedy this situation my wife and I emptied about half a bag onto a baking sheet, juiced a lemon lime all over them and then dashed them with kosher salt. Bake them until things start to get brown and crispy on the edges, and you have an awesome little snack. My point here is these chips are legal to eat on the LID right out of the bag. I find that after a quick toasting I dont really need anything else, but if you are on the LID (and also if you aren't) feel free to top them however you want.
So good I forgot to snap a pic until they were almost all eaten
Happy that I had the stuff to meet my chip quota, I made my way to the front of the store and stumbled upon a snack-ish food that i had not really ever considered, sesame sticks. They look like something you might put on or in an asian style salad or something like that, or as my friend put it, "looks like a bag of turds." (Yup, those are my friends.) I turned my attention to the labels and found an unsalted variety that fit my prerequisites and was cheap enough to take a gamble on. As it turns out they were pretty good, though they give me heart burn if I'm not careful with them. Again I took License to ill season these to my tastes, that being No Salt Tony Chachere's. I snapped a pic of the sesame label for you:
These little things really are quite decent (if you like turd shaped sesame) and I plan on trying out the flavored versions as a football gameday food this fall. A pound of this stuff goes a really long way, and at $4.00 per lb its hard to beat.
So at this point you are probably saying, "Wow Nick, thats awesome that you have spent so much time on a food that provides so many empty calories! But, I'm bored with chips. What other kinds of junkfood alternatives have you wasted invested time and money in?"
Im glad you asked.
Again, if you have to be on the LID it can be quite easy to read the "what not to eat" part of the diet and get hung up on it. I know i did for awhile but thats because "going hypo" makes you a tad bit, um, testy. (Read: assholish) When I decided to read the "allowed foods" part I discovered that on can have diet colas! Which is good because I live smack dab in the middle of Dr. Pepper country and I do enjoy one from time to time. Be mindful of colas or dark sodas (or "pop" for you yanks)because even though you can have them, the diet prefers you to have ones without caramel coloring in them. You can also have candy (as long as there is no Red Dye #3 in it) such as gummy bears or marshmallows. So if you are a candy person, have fun with that.
I have to admit to being a bit bummed out when I read that I was not supposed to have chocolate, but my homie and fellow Thyca superstar Radioactive Girl dropped a little tip on me. She said that if I could find a substance called "pareve" that I could indeed have chocolate. Being the uneducated gentile that I am, I admit that i thought that pareve or parev (both seem to be acceptable spellings) was a kosher chocolate of some kind. This is not necessarily true. Pareve seems to be a label for a certain class of kosher foods. They contain neither meat nor dairy. It was with no small amount of excitment that I found this on the kosher part of the shelf at my local mega grocery store.
After eating one of these delectable little cookies, I imagined that a Kit Kat and one of those really cheap sugar wafer cookies (the kind that you probably only had at your grandmas house) had a sordid love affair that was both passionate and yet doomed to fail. It would never work between the two confections. On was a fairly major celebrity, the other spent its time attracting ants in the bargain bin of the local drug store. I have to think both parents were a little dismayed when they discovered they were having a child. In the end they decided to turn the kid loose to fend for itself and what we ended up with is what happens when we let children name themselves. A really sweet kid with a really stupid name.
Never let a child name itself
So there you have it. Those are some of the things that I have been eating to help keep my stomach sane while the rest of my brain and body go on walkabout. There have been a whole list of other foods that i have enjoyed and I'll be sure to share all of that with you once I see the light at the end of this particular tunnel.
speaking of, by the time you read this i should know whether all this worked, or was for naught. I had my blood test to measure my TSH level today and i should know by tomorrow if I am all set for my RAI treatment. Ill be sure to keep everyone updated on that. Thanks again for reading and supporting me. I greatly appreciate all the comments Iv'e been getting on here and in person when I see people.
It's at this point I want to say thanks again to Radioactive girl for her support and advice. If you are a Thyca patient/survivor or even if you aren't, you owe it to yourselves to become familiar with her story. You can read her blog HERE.
By the way, in case you missed it at the top, this is what Roshambo means.
Your move LID.
[EDITORS NOTE: feel free to click the text links that are embedded in the text. The are meant to help explain something I feel might need clarification. They are not ads.]
If your response to watching the Tin Man perform horrific surgery on Santa Claus, while Billy Mays tries to sell him a magic lamp, is to see how long you can balance a book on your head...perhaps you need to seek another line of work.
I'm 12 days into the LID diet while im typing this, and unfortunately there may be no end in sight. As the title implies, I screwed up. I have been taking a medication called Liothyronine which is a thyroid hormone. As far as i know, its different from the hormone that I will take regularly (Synthroid) once i get past the RAI. (In case you are just joining us, RAI=Radioactive Iodine.) Im pretty sure my doc told me that the Liothyronine is much faster acting, and to be used as a way to alleviate some of the symptoms that i would have after going off my main hormone. That should mean it gets in and out of my system faster right? That's how i understood it anyway, i could be wrong about it. Geeze, hows that for an opening paragraph? Im sure it was both compelling AND rich, right? Ugh.
Are you still with me?
Good. Anyway, my stupid rookie cancer patient mistake came when I discovered that I was supposed to stop taking it when I started my diet and as I said at the beginning, I'm 12 days into it. I don't know how far it will set me back but I feel like a total dweeb for screwing that up. I'm supposed to take a blood test later this week, so ill be able to see what the damage was.
What a total dweeb might look like.
As far as the diet goes, I'm getting better at it. As in I'm getting better at figuring out how to make up some fried goodies to eat. I'll expound on that more in a minute, but first I need to crack open my dome and let out some of the things that have been swirling around in there.
I want some of you to try to balance a book on your noggin' while you read this...
Look, I know that I should be taking the opportunity to broaden my culinary horizons by trying out new foods. Bravely sailing my grocery cart into the uncharted aisles of the produce section or some such nonsense, but let's get real for a moment. Let's all remember that I've gone through a relatively crappy couple of months. I'm sorry, but at this point, I don't really need or want to embrace another major change in my life. It probably sounds like I am whining and overreacting a little bit and that might prove to be true, but at this point these are the feelings I have. Rationally, I know that the diet is only temporary and that soon enough I'll be able to drown myself in delicious cheeseburgers, or slide down a smokey river of brisket and sausage and barbecue sauce if I want. However, it seems like one more stupid thing I have to and deal with, and frankly, I'm running out of patience and energy for this shit. (Pardon my français)
It's been hard enough coming to terms with my cancer and the effects it has had on my life in the past and how it will continue to effect me in the future. Making approximations of familiar foods keeps me happy. Making my house smell like fried potatoes is not only fun, but helps to keep that little Maslow button in my brain pushed. Once I put some distance between me and my surgery and recovery, ill try to get back into a regular diet and exercise. I feel like i have to because, I've recently read that my type of cancer recurs in 20%-30% of folks who get it once. That's terrifying to me. (Sigh) I currently have youth on my side even though the lease is running out on it. I still have time to rectify most of my lifestyle mistakes. It's hard though, to suddenly change gears in the middle of a life that is already on cruise control. In previous posts I've mentioned the Body For Life diet and i plan to return to it once I'm able. In fact, I'm kind of excited about it because I anticipate much better results once my hormone situation is back on track.
In a lot of ways I am still trying to wrap my noodle around my current situation. It has been both good and bad talking to other Thyca survivors/patients. It's been good because you finally realize that there actually other people who have been through what you are going through, people who can validate your feelings, both physical and emotional. If you are a newly diagnosed patient, or if you are a family member of one, please seek out as much help like this as possible. I know it sounds cliche, and it is, but other patients are your best resource as far as what to expect on your road ahead. Those of you who have helped me, and manage to read this, I want to say thanks to you. You have been great and I hope one day to pay forward the help and support and knowledge that you have given me.
On the other hand, it's been scary to talk to these people because I am seeing for the first time just how big a deal this thyroid cancer thing really is. Its like my job.
Er, that sounded bad. let me explain.
For those of you who don't know, I work at a local television station and I told some of the folks that I work with that it's like the first time you realize that hundreds of thousands of people see the work we do. That the shows we do actually manage to escape outside of the walls of our building. Every time I screw up, a boat load of people see it. If I stop to think about that, it can be paralyzing. That's the kind of thing I felt when I realized how widespread thyroid cancer is. It suddenly ceased being a local/nick problem and I felt simultaneously empowered with new and better information yet, had become much smaller, and in some ways much more powerless against such a beast. I can only imagine how other folks with worse cancers handle this. Its hard to imagine that you can beat such an animal when so many others have struggled so greatly with it.
Even Debbie Downer thinks I need to lighten up.
You know, after re-reading that last paragraph it seems like I might be a little defeated, but I'm trying to keep my head up. Despite the severity of my cancer, I still have a great prognosis. My doctors say that there is no reason that I shouldn't recover fully from this and and at this point, I have to trust them. I have to trust their remedies and solutions to my particular problems. I have to keep in mind that for as much that has gone wrong, there has been a lot that has gone right for me:
The surgery went fairly well. There were some complications and the recovery was hard but considering the complexity and sheer length of the surgery I say it was a win.
I still have all my structures and functions that run through my neck. I can shrug my shoulders and my face doesn't look like Sloth from "The Goonies. That means no nerve damage. Yay for not looking like Sloth.
I can still talk. This is a biggie, considering that my right vocal chord was encased in tumor. (i read the surgical notes the other day, and that's the word he used.) It has been a long time coming back, but I can say that I have seen great improvement in the last couple of days. I finally sound a little more like myself.
A large part of the cancer is gone. Hopefully. My doc says that he is going to hit me with a fairly heavy dose of RAI which will hopefully (again) kill of the rest of my thyroid tissue/cancer in my body. There's a lot of hope goin on here.
I have a great support system. This is arguably the best thing for a cancer patient to have, and I'm blessed. I have had the greatest support from friends and family. I get a little overwhelemed when i think about it too much. Once again, to to all of you I offer an extremely heart felt thanks. I know it seems like I do this at the end of every blog post, but I cant say it enough.
Wow, this post really got away from where I wanted to go....
Enough said.
Alrighty then, now that I got all that off my plate I feel better. I was planning on making this a post about the ways I've discovered to make and eat LID safe junkfood, but it turned into this. I'll post that next time.
