The word from my oncologist was that if it shows [...]]]> The last time I was put through a PET scan machine this past November, the result was rather anxiety-inspiring… the tumor in my liver showed some new activity, just enough to raise suspicions and some fears. I thought we had killed that darn thing.

The word from my oncologist was that if it shows any more growth during my next PET scan, I’m back in chemo. Or I’m in radiation. Or both. We just don’t know at this point.

So I started reading up on my particular cancer and what seems to put one at lower risk of recurrence. My breast cancer is the most killer kind, so-called “triple negative” which happens in 15 percent of breast cancer cases. This kind of cancer simply does not give up easily.

At the same time, I noted something interesting. In more than one study, it has been noticed that triple negative breast cancer patients seems to have the lowest rates of Vitamin D. I used to live in the land of rain and clouds and very little sunshine, i.e. the Pacific Northwest. Could there be a causation to go with this correlation?

I decided heck, it won’t hurt to start myself on large doses of vitamin D3 for awhile. So I started taking 5000 IU every night. Strange things started happening during the first several days. I started having odd, vague pains at my original tumor site as well as in the lymph node areas in the armpit area nearby. Weird.

I also started having odd, less painful sensations in random areas in the rest of my body. Either something real was happening and changing, or my mind was playing tricks on me.

After a week or so, I started to feel a little better just generally. My ability to move around seemed to improve a little. I was walking like a painful old lady, now I found myself able to take a normal long stride for short distances.

Well I can’t argue with THAT small success…

So when I saw my oncologist this past Valentines day. I asked her: “Is this all just a placebo or is there actually a reduced cancer risk with an elevated intake of vitamin D?” She let me know that science has proven a valid reduced risk of breast cancer among those who take D. She also let me know that I need to reduce the dose to 2500 IU because otherwise there is a risk of kidney stones. Ooops… OK.

Someone gave me tumeric capsules awhile back as a way to reduce pain. Now I get to find that it also might have anti-cancer properties. Hmmmm… I had started taking the tumeric at the same time as I started taking the D… who knows?

The way I see it, if these nutritional supplements actually CAN help, then I might as well try to boost my own odds for my next PET scan however I can.

Small hopes are nice things. I’ll take my small hopes where-ever I can find them. Wish me luck on that next PET scan.

It’s mid-summer here in Vegas and the peak temperatures are reaching 113°. [...]]]> (Originally written July 25, 2010 for the Jumpgate blog. The few things that have changed since then is that now it’s wintertime and the fatigue has improved somewhat… though it seems I’ll never get back to the point where I wish I was.)

It’s mid-summer here in Vegas and the peak temperatures are reaching 113°. That kind of heat is pretty bad for anyone, but for a cancer patient, it’s REALLY tough.

Cancer treatment – especially for triple-negative metastatic stage 4 breast cancer like mine – causes severe, unpredictable fatigue. From January to around March, I was suffering some pretty severe fatigue. I could function something like a normal person a few hours a day – the problem was trying to plan for what hours or what day. It was completely unpredictable.

More recently, my oncologist was concerned over the nerve damage in my extremities (neropathy) caused by the nastier chemotherapy drugs that I have been taking. So at present, I am on a “chemo vacation” for a little while to help limit the nerve damage in my feet. I am currently on just Avastin until we have the results from my upcoming PET and bone scan as far as my tumors are concerned.

Chemotherapy also causes a debilitating condition colloquially known as “chemo brain.” Chemotherapy kill not just the cancer cells, it kills some of the healthy cells in the body as well. There is also some subtle, temporary neurological damage. So the cancer patient ends up with a nasty sense brain fog as as well as the severe, unpredictable fatigue.

Chemo brain seriously messes with one’s own awareness of how and when to take care of oneself. I have a friend who helps take care of me by asking me when it was I last ate a meal, or drank enough liquid to avoid dehydration or had enough sleep.

My body is still reacting as if I’m still going through the tougher chemo, though there has been a slight improvement in recent weeks. I have a few hours of functionality every day when I wake up. Sometimes I have a low level of low, semi-constant energy to do things slowly and methodically. Sometimes I have a short burst of energy that somewhat resembles the hyper-creative level that used to be my normal level of functioning. At those times I must remember to conserve that energy as much as possible. If I don’t, I end up with a crash that feels just like someone who was up for a straight 72 hours and then drank a gallon of coffee. Extremely frantic and extremely tired at the same time.

I am constantly compelled to always try to do some organizing every day. I try to do some housework and I try to accomplish computer and graphics work as much as I possibly can. I get pretty upset if I am way too fatigued or brain-fogged to do anything except to sleep or stare at some Discovery Channel show. I WANT to work. I WANT to accomplish things. It’s upsetting to me that can never put in a proud 8 hours per day of work and build a better future.

So I must do what I can for management of the fatigue and the “chemo brain”. Now that I am off of the nastier chemo drugs for awhile, I find I can function OK if can do some intense things like shopping and errands one day and plan on resting the next day.

Another way to manage the fatigue is to really watch what I eat. For some reason, if I have a meal consisting of some chunk of a land animal, I feel a lot more brain-fogged the next day. I have no idea why. If I eat seafood or a lot of vegetables, I can function a little better the next day. I also have found out that if I eat high-fat foods such as anything deep-fried, the next day I pay the price bigtime with intense, intestinal pain. So now I am on a low-fat semi-vegetarian diet with just fish for animal-based protein.

Worrying about my health means getting more anxiety and insomnia than I can handle. So my oncologist gave me Xanax to deal with the anxiety. Taking a whole Xanax pill in the morning turned me into a completely brain-fogged zombie. So I tried taking it at night to handle my insomnia. That worked, but the next day I would end up as a half-zombie. I finally found a winning combination with taking half a Xanax and a melatonin tablet at night. Despite having a broken down bed that hurts me when I sleep (damn is it painful to get up in the morning!) I can now finally get enough sleep to at least get by.

Working on the jumpgate pins web page as well as this blog takes a level of energy and clear cognitive thinking that is a bit hard to achieve on a consistent basis. It is like if my brain were a five-story building and doing the Pin work meant I had to be able to work as high as the 5th floor.

I’ve been consistently existing at most on the second or third floor. It’s hard on my poor chemo-affected brain when the goal is for me to get enough energy try to reach the fifth floor of functioning when I normally exist on the second or third floor on a daily basis.

In order to reach the fifth floor in order to do concentrated work, I have to remember to eat right, remember to drink enough fluids, remember to take my sleep meds early enough and to schedule a full day of rest first. Then I get to have a few hours the next day of being able to use my higher brain functions for things like writing this blog post and working with the pin inventory.

So one day I might do errands out of the heat in the morning. Then I have some rest and maybe later that afternoon, I will actually be able to force my brain up a notch enough to take care of my own basic needs. The next day I stay home, rest and see if I can reach that metaphorical fifth floor for things like working on Pins and the website.

Just gotta keep trying. That’s what it’s all about.

My oncologist says she will wait to see the results of the upcoming scans in early February to confirm the growth. [...]]]> Long story short: My last cancer-detection scans in late November showed that there is some new activity in the tumor that had spread to my liver. I thought we had killed that sucker.

My oncologist says she will wait to see the results of the upcoming scans in early February to confirm the growth. (I am thankful that she seems to be approaching this situation with slow caution.) If it’s confirmed as still growing by then, I’m most likely to end up back in chemo.

Again.

I’ve already been through it twice.

Wish me luck, my friends.

Most people [...]]]> “I live in a city with two personalities. It’s like getting to know two twin brothers, one who is an extreme extrovert, one who is a real introvert. Everyone gets to know the extrovert at the party, while the introvert gets eclipsed and is mostly ignored by the rest of the world.

Most people don’t realize that the Strip is just one crazy street and that there’s a whole other, nuanced, quieter dimension to discover in the city where I live.

I love the hidden, introverted side of Las Vegas. From the sound of laughter from children at the local neighborhood schoolgrounds, to the quiet, winged beauty of egrets and herons taking off into the sky at Clark County Wetlands Park, to the multi-dimensional present and past history of the local valley as showcased at Springs Preserve to the ancient desert secrets to be learned at Red Rock Canyon to the last surviving farm/orchard in the area… and so much more.

I appreciate my city’s quieter, more introspective side that the tourists on the Strip would never understand, satisfied that I still have much to discover and learn from the many hidden, more thoughtful aspects of this multidimensional desert valley.

I also want to let everyone know that this city also features a future real-life spaceport. (I wish I had an “in” with that company so I could hang out for a day with their engineers.)

I’ll be providing links to the above-mentioned places at a later date. Stay tuned.

Welcome to the home page of Dreamcircle. I am Elana (no last name needed here). This is going to be my new home of quite [...]]]> Here is the first draft of text that I wrote for the opening of my website on Christmas Day 2011 – complete with typos and half-thoughts – saved for posterity:

Welcome to the home page of Dreamcircle. I am Elana (no last name needed here). This is going to be my new home of quite a few, different, multiple, creative projects over time. As each page is filled with something interesting and new, look to this home page to find out the latest news.

A short history of dreamcircle.com: I originally bought this domain over 10 years ago, tossed up a hopelessly mid-90′s design as a placeholder – and then didn’t do much with it. Now that I am dealing with advanced breast cancer, I decided I’d rather let the world know about some of the interesting things I have thought about and done over the years. I want to leave behind a creative legacy as well as see what I can create to raise funds to pay medical bills. Expect several blank pages on many of my links until I fill them up, one by one. (The “HOW TO HELP” link already has some useful info.)

To start things off, my first project is called “Beyond The Jumpgate.” Back in the ’90′s I had access to some excellent, specialized metalworking equipment. So I used that access to make awesome so-called “Jumpgate Pins” (actually brooches) for fans of a science fiction show I’ll simply call “B5″ here. I got to work in various metals, from stainless steel to mainly brushed and polished brass. High quality stuff.

Those Pins were a huge hit. I’ve finally sold nearly out all the Jumpgate Pins now. Only a handful are left as the Jumpgate Pins fade slowly into history.

That meant that my first creative challenge of Dreamcircle would be to find a way to make new brooches out of a completely different material. I’ve found my new medium.

See this book? Believe it or not, that artwork you see on the front is made out of CLAY. Not just ANY clay, but an amazing, advanced, very artistic medium called “Polymer Clay.” It comes in dozens of colors and types, from liquid to nearly solid, from earth shades to sparkling metallics, from opaque to translucent and more.

This special, artistic clay is NOT kids’ stuff. With enough talent, you can make beautiful artworks out of this special material which would worthy of a New York upscale art gallery. You sculpt it, you mold it, then you bake it at 275 degrees for around 20 minutes to harden it. From there, the creative possibilities are limited to your own imagination.

I started with the polymer clay late last July. It’s December now as I write this. I guess I should be proud to know that I progressed from being confused and squishing a white ball of clay around to making honestly beautiful, pro-looking brooches in about 5-6 months. That’s gotta be something, considering I deal with a whole lot of chemo-induced fatigue. (Before the cancer, I think I could have done that in about 2 months. Oh well.)

Anyway, the sparkling, colorful science-fiction-in-joke brooches seen on that “Beyond The Jumpgate” page are THE crowning example of my progress so far as of this writing. My goal was to have a transition project to help me travel -creatively speaking – from JumpgatePins.com to Dreamcircle. I’m glad to now say this has been accomplished.

Hand in hand with the “Beyond The Jumpgate” project is my new “Astronomy Brooches and Pendants” project for space fans. No longer confined to just the old “jumpgate” design, I can now create a brooch featuring nearly ANY astronomy image you can throw at me, along with any border color you specify.

The only constraint is my time. I can only do maybe 10 brooches a week at the most, due to ye olde chemo fatigue, but I am up for the challenge. If you ask me to make you a custom brooch, I will keep you updated as to my progress and send you pics for your approval before I ship them to you. Email me via the info on the Contact Page to learn how you can order an astronomy brooch. (Pendants are scheduled to come to this website later.)

Thanks for visiting! Please visit often to see what I have been doing lately and to see my new “circle of dreams” evolve over time.

Sincerely…

-Elana