Friday, February 27, 2009

Moving In

Most of you have followed my journey long enough to know that as part of my divorce I am selling my house in the hope that I can start a new life and move forward. Unfortunately, as the housing market continues to crash I am near the point now where I can no longer sell it for what the mortgage is. To help me keep my house my parents will be moving in with me this weekend and we will begin to share expenses in the hope that I can save enough money to be able to pay the mortgage when Ted stops. Of course all of this is a bitter pill to swallow. I had so many hopes and dreams that I would be able to start over and even maybe begin to live my dream of being a professor. Unfortunately, without the sale of my house those things will not happen. That I now have to have my parents move in with me in order to hopefully keep a house I don’t want and avoid financial ruin is difficult. The hardest part of this is probably the fact that if the house had been finished soon after things began the market was so hot then we could have easily sold it and even made a profit.

Of course, Tiger Lily and I will make the best of it and I am blessed to have parents who are willing to live with me in order to keep us in the house. I think Babe is probably even happier since she loves my dad!

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Let's go Caps! 1 and 2

We're off to a hockey game tonight with some friends and we're very excited!!! I got tickets pretty close to center ice, but several rows up since I'm such a puck magnet (no comments!!!). This will be Tiger Lily's first hockey game but hopefully not the last. I promise to take pictures and will post them....

Let's go Caps and a rousing "he shoots, he scores, hey goalie you *#!K" for old times sake. Only the Ice Cats fans out there know that one but....

More later.

Part 2
Figured I'd just add to this post rather than start a new one. We had a great time and will be going again. We had great seats, the game was a good one (two fights!), the Caps look good and Tiger Lily is hoarse from shouting.

I do want to say thank you to my anonymous friend that is always encouraging me to rediscover all the fun things I used to do.

Have a good weekend everybody.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

How to measure success

A couple postings ago I wrote about using your mind well and I touched on what makes someone successful. I recently had a conversation with a friend who is a teacher. She works with at risk kids and she was very proud of the fact that several of her students who had never earned any other grade besides an F were now earning Bs and Cs. She was also disillusioned by the fact that she received a poor performance review because her supervisor felt that she did not have “proper classroom control” with students sitting in a row being quiet. It made me think about how we measure success in our jobs and our lives. For my friend, success was helping her students earn good grades, for her supervisor it is keeping the students under control. Whose measure is correct?

We all measure success differently, for some having lots of money, toys, a job with a fancy title and a house that others envy is the only measure of success. Although this is a perfectly good measure of success I’m not sure that how others perceive me is the measuring stick I want to use to determine how successful my life is. As I travel along the journey to rediscover myself I want to be more like my friend who measures her success by how she positively impacts the lives of those around her. I consider myself to be a successful parent because my child is such a joy to have in my life and the lives of others. The next step for me is to figure out how else I can be successful…

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Weekend Fun

As you can see from the picture Tiger Lily and I spent Saturday getting our hair done. I, hopefully, have lost the blond streak that has taken over my life and Tiger Lily is expressing her fun side!! We had fun together and she is absolutely thrilled at how great the highlights turned out. She kept her eyes closed the whole time so that she would have a great "reveal" when it was done and I wish I had taken a picture then!!

We spent Saturday night curled up in bed watching "Grease" and being girls. Still one of our favorite movies. It's snowing today so we watched "Pride and Prejudice" this morning (the one with Kiera Knightly). It still amazes me how a woman who lived 200 years ago could write 3 books that are the basis of 90% of the romance novels and movies that are still being written/produced today. Of course, everyone wants to meet their very own Mr. Darcy.... We are going to watch Madagascar 2 and the race this afternoon and enjoy the fact that we don't have to be anywhere!

Hope everyone has a great week.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

ASCO Update

I promised to give a brief summary of the ASCO meeting from December but was so busy being a single again it sort of got pushed down the list, sorry.

I’m only going to talk about the news for premenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, sorry a little self centered but if you want to know about postmenopausal or receptor negative let me know.

Still the only hormone treatment for premenopausal women is Tamoxifen, there is a lot of exciting research into aromatase inhibitors (AIs) but these are only for postmenopausal women. These are superior to Tamoxifen but I’m still premenopausal so no luck.

The only exciting news for women in my category is the addition of Zometa ® which is used for the treatment of cancer-related hypercalcemia (high levels of calcium in the blood) and of bone metastases in patients with advanced cancers. Zometa has been found to have anticancer effects and also prevents bone loss which is a side effect of using anti- estrogen therapies. The current clinical trial is in its fourth year and so far women that were treated with tamoxifen and Zometa had a 94% disease-free survival rate compared with 90% disease free survival for women who received hormonal therapy alone. The trial is still ongoing but an increase of 4% can mean a lot. The results are even more promising for women with later stage disease.

There wasn’t much discussion about tamoxifen resistance except that they are developing tests to detect it in women taking the drug. They do know that tamoxifen loses its effect over time which means that more research needs to be done to find other treatments for premenopausal women.

So, not a lot of exciting news for women in my category but, we have such a high survival rate I think the research and the money is going to the patients who aren’t as lucky, as it should be.

If anyone wants to hear about other news from the meeting let me know….

Monday, February 16, 2009

Weekend is officially over

Well, Tiger Lily is home after her long weekend—I missed her terribly as always. I don’t think that will ever stop.

We had a great time at the DC101 Daytona party and I hopefully will post a picture of two of us at the party. The party was hosted by Miller Lite so we got a few gifts for a racing buddy that is a Miller Lite fan. We met a lot of people and enjoyed the crowd. The race wasn’t so great and luckily none of us are Jr. fans since he was definitely not the most popular guy there. It was fun to stick my toe in the water the big question now is, do I return a phone call or not?

Back to work tomorrow—since I was there most of the weekend it always makes the work week longer but I did get a lot accomplished. My paper is probably delayed again as we now have more experiments to do to prove our point. It never ends and this is what I really love about science!

Have a great week.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Use Your Mind Well

Rene Descartes once said “It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.”

Someone asked me the other day what is the most important quality someone should possess if they want to get a PhD in science. I can’t really say there is any one in particular but I have seen people who aren’t brilliant get a PhD simply because they have the perseverance to keep looking until they find the answer that they know is right. Perhaps that is the best quality to have. I would never say that I am a brilliant scientist, I love what I do and I love science which is important. What got me through grad school was probably more perseverance than anything else. Anyone who has worked with me as a scientist knows that I will sometimes repeat the same experiment many times if I get an answer I don’t believe—most of the time the answer is just too good to be true which is why I’ll repeat it. Anyone who knows me outside of science knows that I will not stop until I have the full story and completely understand why, how and when and if I can’t get resolution I’ll just keep asking until I find what I need to know. So to answer my friend’s question, to get a PhD in science you must be stubborn, curious, love to solve things, and above all use your mind well.

What does this have to do with my journey, nothing but I did say I was going to sometimes just blog about off the wall stuff. If in the end it starts a discussion about what people think it takes to be successful so be it, if not well….at least I answered my friend’s question. My personality quirks are all my own, but I do not give up until I know the answer which is just me.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Good News

I had what I think will be the final appointment with the dermatologist today! My breast is clearing and they are now convinced the problems are due to radiation damage so NO BIOPSY. As such I will now just have to wait for my skin and breast to regenerate which will take around a year. I’m relieved, happy and just elated that it wasn’t a recurrence.

Tiger Lily is away with her father and his family for a long weekend out of town so I’m really a single woman this weekend. I have a lot of work to do still from last fall and will probably spend most of the weekend working. I am going out with friends for margaritas tonight and on Sunday I think we are going to the DC101 Daytona 500 party downtown. This is one of those things I have always wanted to do and now I can.

Hope everyone enjoys the holiday weekend.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

February is half over????

I was reminded today that I never updated everyone on whether or not I achieved my goals for January.

No trips to the emergency room for me--still don't walk like a supermodel but I'm getting better.... I didn't sign up for a yoga class but I did start back on the treadmill. I would like to run a 10K this summer and running increases my appetite so maybe I'll also gain weight. I didn't finish my paper but it's interesting how you can spend months looking at data and think it's all junk until you start writing what you think will be a negative paper. We now realize that if you interfere with the pain receptor we work with it is harmful if you look at survival during sepsis. The main reason this is so interesting is one of the drugs that we are using to interfere with the receptor is going to be used in the clinic (yippee, this is the goal of everyone at NIH) and we now know that special care needs to be taken to avoid sepsis in these patients. Unfortunately, I'm not sure why yet. I guess that's the next paper.

So, my goals for February (even though it's half over) is to be able to run a 10 minute mile, finish my paper and take a Zumba class.

Stay tuned...

Sunday, February 8, 2009

breast cancer site

I did promise that I would continue to keep posting any updates on breast cancer and here's a link to a site that has compiled a bunch of the literature out there as to what are the highest risks factors associated with breast cancer.

http://sciencereview.silentspring.org/index.cfm

It's interesting to see what things you can control for and the factors you can't control for.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Dinner Out

First off, thanks to Anon for the suggestions of where to eat and Bonefish Grill made it to the finals. The Rainforest Cafe is now in Colombia Mall and we didn't want to drive far.

We ended up going to The Melting Pot. It's one of those places I've always wanted to go to and I was happy that Tiger Lily wanted to try it. She said it was the best place she had ever been to and wants to go again next week. For those of you that don't know it's a fondue place. The waitress even gave Tiger Lily a special gift in honor of her amazing report card. We were so full when we finished that we came home and just sat on the couch.

She is having a slumber party tonight and has been making plans all week for a scavenger hunt, movie fest and all night gab session. It will be a fun evening for all, the three girls she invited over are all fabulous friends.

There is some improvement for me and I'm getting very hopeful that we may be at the end of this. Keep your fingers crossed.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Report cards

Tiger Lily got her report card yesterday and she continues to do amazing in school. She got all A’s and O’s with one exception, an S in Music. She is bummed that she won’t get to go to the “All A’s party” but I am still so very very proud of her. She has worked so hard this year to be organized, do her homework on time and study for all her tests.

We are planning a special evening on Friday, dinner and what ever else she wants to do in order to celebrate. Any suggestions on where to eat would be greatly appreciated!

Hugs and kisses

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

News and Me

So, we have had some computer problems at home and I’m sorry for the delay in the updates—I’m trying to post using my Blackberry, we’ll see how it goes.

Tiger Lily did not get the part in the play. She was disappointed for about 10 minutes and then decided to try again. That’s my girl!!! There is no progress for me, we are trying one last ditch effort and if there is no improvement I will have a biopsy. They still do not know what the cause is but the general consensus is simply radiation damage and not cancer again.

Every once in awhile I’ll probably just spend some time here talking about me which is perhaps a little self centered but I sometimes forget about me in my rush to be so much else. Everyone wants me to start dating as if this will somehow heal me and make me feel better about everything that happened. A friend asked me the other day what I would look for this time around when I reach the point where I feel I’ve done enough emotional house cleaning to put myself out there. I don’t know what I want, I know what I don’t want which I guess is a start. There is a father in Tiger Lily’s group that has made it clear he would like to get to know me better and it is nice to know that at least someone noticed. Stop jumping up and down everyone, group is over.

I would like to remind everyone that beating up Ted and his friend (she was never ever my friend) doesn’t do much good. I am the one in August that said enough is enough and you need to either be prepared to dedicate yourself to helping us or you must leave. Before you start to comment etc. please remember that he played a pivotal role in the discovery of my cancer and I never would have discovered it as early. The hopes and dreams that he would want to stay with us were all on my side, he was honest even during the times when I thought that maybe we were trying to reconcile that he didn’t want to change his mind. He had already begun his new life and had been sharing dances and his soul with someone else, in my heart I knew that all along. That being said, we have tried very hard to be friends, we even exchanged Christmas presents and I used mine the other day when I installed new locks on the doors (we’ve had a few strange incidents lately where I’m sure someone has been in the house and everyone knows the code so…). He knows that friendship does not mean forgiveness, we just feel this will be better for Tiger Lily and as everyone knows, she is worth a few sacrifices along the way. So I will now say in defense of my friend that enough is enough, please.

I’ve had a few rough weeks lately while I continue to adjust to being alone but it is all part of the process. Tiger Lily and I will be fine. If anyone knows a single guy that is intelligent (let’s face it, I’m smart and I refuse to dumb down my conversation), loves children, doesn’t mind a few scars, will go to a NASCAR race and the theater (and fits in at both) and has the proverbial sense of humor, well send him my way. I guess I do know where I want to start.

Moving forward with baby steps everyday.