Special Christmas greetings to all!
After a pre-Christmas wedding that we attended in upstate New York (see photo), Christmas in our house was a rather damped affair this year. Gita came down with a cold on Christmas Eve, so as we opened our presents on Christmas morning we placed an air filter between us. Otherwise, she spent several days holed up in her room, alternating between resting and knitting. So far neither Anand nor I have gotten the cold, but we may have been fighting it, as we both joined Gita in feeling pretty washed out and unambitious for several days. I did manage to make the desserts on Christmas Day, though.
 |
| Attending a Christmas-season wedding |
In general, I continue to get tired very easily these days. Luckily, I enjoy reading, so I have something to do when I'm lying around. Usually I read fiction, but lately I've been reading about cancer. Last winter, when my diagnosis was new, I would not have done this: it was too sore a subject. But somehow things are different now. Thus I recently read Theresa Brown's Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient, the memoir of a breast cancer survivor, and now I'm in the middle of Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. The former contained a lot of feelings and experiences I could relate to as well as a number of things I couldn't. For one thing, Brown speaks of a post-cancer life, something I can no longer easily imagine. I guess I am adjusting to my new normal. Mukherjee's book is a detailed look at efforts to understand and battle cancer. I'm at about the year 2005 in the story, and the tide is turning. Targeted therapies are coming along, which target cancer cells specifically rather than poisoning all cells indiscriminately as older forms of chemotherapy did. The checkpoint inhibitors (the kind of immunotherapy I'm on) are a few chapters in the future still, I think. It reminds me that I am very glad not to have gotten cancer any earlier. These are the days of miracles, as Paul Simon says.
On the gardening front, my cousin sent me a sprout-growing kit and some broccoli seeds. It turns out that broccoli (especially in sprout form) is full of cancer-fighting compounds. So I am happily growing things and tending my health at the same time. How's that for win–win?
I loved nothing more than growing vegetables in my indoor hydroponic garden during the first long COVID winter! With a thick blanket of snow on the ground in Massachusetts, my little pepper seedlings were happily growing in the eternal sunshine of my basement :-) And my wife can tell you that I found enormous peace and comfort sitting there just watching their daily progress. If that sounds fun to you, I have a list of everything you'll need and lots of advice to share!
ReplyDeleteI have a small hydroponic system too, currently resting. I'm going to start some lettuce soon, though.
DeleteHope the cold has fizzled out with the start of the new year! Nothing like the holidays for sharing germs. Give us a review of the "Maladies" book when you've finished - it's already on my read-someday list, but I'm curious about your personal take.
ReplyDelete