Time to remember to forget

Hello wonderful readers!



It's been a while, and it's time for me to update you.Why?Because I feel like writing, that's why.




I think I (somewhat irresponsibly) left you all hanging in March 2012.Scott had had a recurrence, and was headed for surgery and chemo.The whole shebang was actually, and for once, a much smaller event than I had expected.The "surgery" was turned out to be laparoscopic cryosurgery, which from my perspective meant it was a day (and maybe just one overnight?) in the hospital, and he had just two (or was it three?) cigarette-sized puncture marks in various spots in his abdomen.It looked like he'd been bitten by a saber-toothed tiger in need of some serious orthodonture.I realize for many of you this sort of medical undertaking can't possibly qualify for the air quotes I put around this "surgery," but I've seen enough surgery on the man that this was definitely "surgery."Just like a root canal is "surgery" and a pug is a "guard dog," and just like one chocolate chip cookie is "dessert."



He got a month to heal.We cancelled plans to go to Yosemite over spring break, because my momma raised no fool, and I was not about to get myself that far afield with a postop surgery patient and a kid with a peanut allergy.San Francisco, the city proper, however, has excellent medical facilities all over it and is 45 minutes from home, so we went to the Cal Academy of Sciences for the day.I fell in love with Claude, the albino alligator there.Scott's scabs from the cryosurgery fell off; oddly, this reminded me of what happens to a newborn's umbilical cord, except here the action was in three separate non-belly-button places.After he healed, he got chemo, and the chemo was actually pretty boring.It was a butt-kicker because they all are - Xeloda, Oxaliplatin, and Avastin, with probably a few other random chemicals tossed in for good measure.But in three months - yes, folks, three short months! - the scan was clean!Three cheers for the "surgery" and the chemo (you'll notice the chemo gets no quotes - in my experience there is no such thing as "chemo," only chemo and Chemo and occasionally chemo.).



As the summer of 2012 dawned, Scott decided "enough" chemo was actually plenty, and decided to go completely off all chemo again.(He remained on blood thinners, and needed blood tests every two weeks, plus a variety of other "maintenance" medications, so it's not the sort of clean bill of health that lets you come back next year for a checkup, but relative to bimonthly chemo visits, monthly visits to the oncologist, various adjusting and readjusting of this and that, merely taking a handful of pills a day and getting vampired every two weeks for blood tests effectively counted as zero medical intervention.)



So it was July 2012, and with a "clean" bill of health, we were cleared for a summer of fun.I remained no fool and wasn't about to get within 20 miles of Yosemite in the summertime.The girls and I went back to Michigan to see my mom, and Scott joined us for a time.We returned to California two days before the start of school, which I thought was 24 more hours than strictly necessary.I did no back to school shopping and sent the kids to their first days of school with a pencil and a pad of paper apiece, "liberated" from my office.And with such an inauspicious beginning began Year 6 of our lives with cancer, and it was unexpectedly excellent.



Watching Scott come off of the chemo was not unlike watching somebody sober up.His energy returned, a little bit.Then the appetite came back.Then an extra pound, or three.Then a little more energy, because he was eating again.Then more pounds, and then a joke and a smile.Then there was the day when everybody in the house knew it was Tuesday, and when we were collectively able to plan more than two days in the future.



What to do with these riches of time and energy?I knew enough not to commit to too much of anything; this charmed life can turn on a dime.But I also knew enough to make hay while the sun was shining.I volunteered in the classroom at school, twice a week.I volunteered with the Girl Scouts to lead Elli's troop, and so loved my frothy Friday afternoons with the pre-teens that I want to do it again and again.On the morning of my 43rdbirthday, in the spring of 2013, I woke up in a tent in a fellow Scout's backyard, surrounded by eight fourth graders (and our trusty tag Maggie the second grader), and by eleven that morning had enjoyed a massive cup of coffee (thanks to the mom in whose backyard we camped) and a splendid breakfast (cooked by the troop).



If you must know, this is such an amazingly wholesome contrast to my 40th birthday that I should just lay that one out for you.My 40th birthday I was angry, so amazingly angry - there had been another recurrence, a bad one - and I had been so good for so long that I wanted to do Something Bad.But I had a really sick husband and two little kids, and no money, and a blue floral minivan in the suburbs, so all the usual behaviors were out.I had to misbehave for free and at 25 mph.My solution - as with so many solutions in my life - came from Michigan: in this case, Eminem.I checked out one of his albums from the library and drove sedately around the suburbs, from gymnastics to swim team practice, with nutritious environmentally friendly organic snacks betwixt the seats, with Eminem's most vile lyrics blasting from my minivan speakers.I kept that album for two weeks, and while I didn't learn many of the lyrics, I did feel deliciously - and cheaply - bad.I even returned it to the library, LATE.And Maggie, as a kindergartener, learned to say "what the f**k."



But 2012 was not a "what the f**k year." If I were to put it to music, it started with Taylor Swift and moved towards One Dimension (they are the latest boy band, for those of you without teeny-boppers handy.)



I upgraded us to warm dinners - no more cold noodles, cold rice and beans with shredded cheese.I didn't quite make it to actually preparing a fresh dinner on a school night, but I took the time to microwave the shredded cheese over the rice and beans.We had fresh vegetables I chopped, homemade salad dressing, and family dinners.People had beverages and napkins.The TV was off at mealtime, so I felt we earned double bonus points in the "Upright, Virtuous, Moral, and Good" subcategories in the general Family Values sweepstakes.



Lest you think I am getting so twee here that you feel queasy, let me assure you no upgrade goes unpunished.The kids were so used to cold noodles with Parmesan cheese that they wouldn't eat warm food for quite some time.Maggie took six months to eat chicken that was actually cooked at home instead of that Nuggetized by a fast food emporium.The kids still won't eat hot dogs (too complex, too foreign), or meat loaf (too unusual), or casseroles (too slimy), but I do have them eating hard boiled eggs, cheese sliced from a block (as opposed to a cheese stick), and quesadillas, as well as buckwheat soba noodles, tofu, avocados, Fiber One, soy milk, soy nut butter, and stone fruits like peaches and nectarines. Thanks to my mom's good Midwestern cooking, Elli will also eat steak and potatoes, but Maggie remains wildly suspicious of any meat-and-potatoes meal, especially those hot out of any oven.



Scott, on the other hand, once he got some of the chemo out of his system, stepped up to the plate like a champ.Weird looking hot dog with sourdough bread wrapped around it instead of a proper bun?No problem.Chicken roasted and presented in parts instead of whole, like it's "supposed" to be?He was up for it.Ranch salad dressing in a squeeze bottle instead of a pour bottle?He could cope, even when it was put over spring mix instead of the usual organic baby spinach.He ate sausage casserole.He ate frozen peas while warm (both kids will still only eat those while still frozen).He put butter on his corn on the cob and ate that too. He certainly ate steak and potatoes.He even began to eat some of the strongly flavored fringe elements which nauseate the chemo patient:smoked salmon, tuna, and curry.



With all this eating taking place, I began to gain some real confidence in the kitchen, so much so that I bought a little crock pot and began to actually follow a recipe now and then.(Don't worry; I'm not getting dangerously domestic.This spring, several of my friends were debating the merits of the different brands of mixers, and I found myself thinking, "You know, that's exactly the same price as a year's membership to the Cal Academy of Sciences in SF."It was the week of my birthday and Mothers' Day, and so naturally it was time to treat myself.No new kitchen mixers around here.Instead, we now visit Claude the albino alligator every chance we get on our family membership.)



Maggie and Elli, visiting Claude (on rock in background).

We do this instead of mixing banana-nut muffins in a freestanding kitchen mixer.



I also began to really work.I began to consistently log the hours I needed to work in the office to stay current, professional, and well connected.I was getting to bed on time at night, instead of randomly panicking about weird symptoms or staggering around doing the laundry.With a consistent bedtime, I found I could put in a stint on the computer from 5-7 am before school, work while kids were in school, and put in another quickie shift at night.And I could still pick up from school, and take care of the various needy items in our lives.Kids, dog, and Scott would all sleep in on Saturday mornings and then could be bribed to loll about and watch TV till noon, so I could sneak into the office from 7 am till lunchtime on most Saturday mornings too. With all this diligence, I wasn't amazingly behind on my email anymore.



Time for a little tooting of my own horn.I got pretty good at teaching my beloved nerdly engineering courses online - I'm a Blackboard and a Moodle *diva* now.I can write an auto-generated random quiz which will give each of 25 (or 50, or 200) students a different series of questions on the EOQ formula or revenue management, and I can look at the quiz statistics to see which questions were good ones as defined by statistical differentiation between my A's and my B's.I can automatically invite all my C students to resubmit. I got my macro thing going on in both Visual Basic and SPSS.I played with Google Drive and set up survey forms, databases, and even wrote one script (can't let VBA have all the fun.)I am starting to play with SQL (semi-boring to date) and a programming language called Python (way fun.)At my consulting practice, I did some righteous data mining, on some data sets which were over a million records apiece.(For those of you wondering, no, in my opinion one million records is not "big data," and I did not use Hadoop.Just CHAID trees...)



I even got myself onto a few professional committees (too nerdly for words), and took two multi-day business trips.Now, I realize some of you readers hold professional, "50% or 100% travel" jobs for which ten days of business travel, amortized over six years, would effectively round off to a "zero travel" position.However, for me, this was huge.The kids were a bit bigger, and Scott was a bit healthier, and that magic combination gave me the freedom to leave my zip code for a few highbrow, cerebral days.



And so, on this luxurious routine of relatively unlimited time, amazingly complex warm dinners, community volunteerism, and computer science, we had the summer of 2013.We visited my mom in Michigan again, and in keeping with my top-of-creation mentality, returned this time an entire week before the start of school.This year was the year I was going to actually show up in cute on-trend colored pants.



So here's how it actually went.



It was the last Tuesday in August, and I was feeling downright brilliant.I had a plan for the day - work till noon, then go home for some good family time.I also had a bothersome feeling that I was forgetting something.But no matter, because I was supremely confident that I had it all under control.Scott and the kids were sleeping in, and I snuck out of the house in the predawn grey in my trusty work uniform:Crocs, cargo shorts, and a tie-dyed T-shirt.My mother had been on a protein kick that summer, so I had packed myself a high-protein breakfast:high-fiber tortilla with Wow Butter (faux-peanut butter) and McDonald's jam (from Bad Axe, Michigan), in part so I could pretend I was still on vacation. No pedestrian peanut butter and jelly sandwich for me:my singular "predawn organic vegan wrap" sat in a (compostable) paper towel on the seat of my minivan.Not only would I be brilliant and confident and in charge, I would also have made a good start on the day's requirement of fiber AND protein, all before 7 am.The Army used to advertise something about doing more by 9 am than most people do all day, so I was now officially two hours better than the boys in blue.And considerably more environmentally conscious.



Forget the meditation gurus and their strange calm.I was feeling downright triumphant.I was large and in charge.I had had so many autumns, so many back to schools in which we had had major catastrophe after massive problem after difficult issue, that this one felt really in control and really good.No new schools.No surgeries.Not even a crisis at work.I could even button my pants.Perhaps I was delusional.So much was not done - no back to school shopping, no school supplies, no school clothes.We had been away for two months.The girls had grown and now they both cared what they wore.I had a lot of mail held at the post office for me and when it was delivered, it would surely be a deluge.I did have a small to-do list written on a note card, which contained items like "order groceries" and "restart newspaper subscription" and "heartworm pill for Lucky."We had very little food in the house.(On the plus side, we had no pantry moths, rats, or ants, all of which we have had had in the past.They generally wait till we have a surgery, a new school, or work crisis before they move in.)



I also had no coffee at the office, which was a crisis of greater immediacy.In the early morning cool, I stopped at Peet's downtown, and bought myself a large.I also bought a pound of fair trade coffee to take home.I felt powerful, in control.I cradled my big cardboard cup of smarts and wobbled up the steps to the office.It was fair trade coffee, so I felt doubly virtuous.Here I was, at the office early, and saving the planet to boot.



At the office, I sure did love that coffee, but I now couldn't find my breakfast anywhere.Did somebody steal it from the front seat of the minivan?This actually caused a minor rip in my brash canvas of confidence.I was behind enough already; one stop at Peet's for the coffee was already pushing the time limits.I really should be home by noon - good mamas didn't let their kids lounge on the couch in front of the TV, scrounging the crumbs from empty bags of Doritos, at least not all day long.If I was going to get anything done at the office, and make it home for lunch, I really didn't have enough time to go back to Peet's and ask them if I left my "pre-dawn organic vegan wrap" there.Would I look like a fool if I asked the barista if he saw who stole my wrap?If I went back there and my wrap wasn't there, I might buy something else from their pastry counter instead.Should I be so easily put off of a high-protein Midwestern breakfast and cave to the beckoning of the California chocolate brioche at the pastry counter?



If I just skipped my breakfast wrap, I would still be on schedule, and therefore still in control.The British have tea and call it a meal.My coffee today would function the same way.Knuckles a little whiter on the controls, but I was still in charge.



First order of business:I called somebody two time zones away about a missing airfare expense reimbursement check.They had sent it, but my mail was forwarded/held/backed up for the summer, so the check bounced back.Could they just hold it another week and try to re-send?(Note to self:check to see whether payment for my invoices can make it through this postal service blockade?Sixteen ounces into my Peet's coffee, I am now colossally omnipotent, but most consulting practices nevertheless operate better when they can receive their receivables.)



I had a strong surge of caffeine.I had a small sense of being robbed of my breakfast.There was that nagging feeling that I was forgetting something.In such cases, especially if it's before 8 am, and there's no actual physical mail to open, there's often only one other satisfactory option:read the email inbox.



Turns out I felt like deleting emails, so here's a small sampling of what I deleted.



The PTA needs help.I didn't even bother to read what it was.Despite my current lavish lifestyle, to include warm dinner and Saturday afternoons off of work, I didn't have anything near the availability it takes to attend a meeting at, say, 7 pm on a Thursday.That's usually when I'm grading Quiz 4.



I need to get re-fingerprinted to stay a volunteer with the Girl Scouts.I deleted that too, because I didn't want to cope with the bother of fingerprinting now, and I knew they'd send me another one in a week. Delete.



Consider sitting for the Certified Analytics Professional exam - it's like the CPA for geekwads - in San Francisco in November.Early bird discount.Don't these people know I can't plan that far ahead?Plus I help with the exam committee, so they will email me again.Delete.



Publish my online syllabus for the class I'm teaching this fall.I deleted this because (see above notes about being on top of things at work) I already did it.Hooray for me. Delete.



Holiday Inn Express survey.Did we like our recent stay?I deleted this because I felt like deleting something.Delete.Even though yes, we did like it very much, and they did offer lots of lovely protein at breakfast.



Email from our house sitter expressing concern/regret about plants that may have died.Enough plants survive that I didn't notice.Delete.



LoJack for Laptops was going to auto renew.Ack!



Now it was time to get proactive.That particular LoJack was for a computer I hadn't had for two years, and it turned out I'd been paying for it this whole time.It took a few minutes, and a lot of energy, but I was halfway through my Peet's, and I had found some old Girl Scout cookies in the supply closet at the office, so I was up for it.I discontinued the LoJack service and saved myself $70 per year.Take that, forces of irresponsible chaos!



Then I bought a new Dell online, which tipped the balance sheet right back the other way, but boy did that website let me boss it around.And it had been four years since I'd upgraded computers, which in this industry is quite the epoch.My new computer would arrive in about 10 days, and I should have figured out the incoming mail situation in the interim.Was it printer ink that I was forgetting?



I ordered another $400 of groceries at Safeway - this year if I do it right I won't set foot in a grocery store at all.This took about three minutes, because I just located my last $400+ order, pressed the "repeat this order" button, and told them to bring it by the house on Thursday night.It was wonderfully reckless, amazingly satisfying to presume that what I ordered last spring was most excellent, so a repeat of that order would be perfection itself. No need to read a boring old grocery list. That left me with just 36 hours during which I needed to feed people in the house out of existing stores.Thank goodness they now (sort of) eat tuna.



At this point the "you're forgetting something" itch became a bit more powerful.I had to check my to-do list.Surely there was an important thing on there - maybe to do with Maggie's epi-pen for her peanut allergy?



I'll never know, because I had by that point now also lost my to-do list.(Perhaps it ran off with my high-fiber wrap.)



Never fear - the office had pencils and paper galore, so I made a new list.This list contained more interesting items:



Need haircut



Dye grey roots



Go to gym



Make sure I also delete all Back to School Night emails and also purge from trash so won't be tempted to try to go



Make a doctor's appointment for my left foot (massive case of tendonitis, so in addition to being forgetful and out of food, I am limping and foot is so swollen it can only fit Crocs.That is why I wobbled to the office.Can one still be omnipotent if one limps?)



Call school and arrange to take Maggie's epi-pen to the office (there!Was that what I was forgetting?I knew it was important.)



My coffee was serving me well.It was now 9 am, so school should be open. I called, and it turned out they needed an epi-pen form, signed by Maggie's pediatrician.This is the third year we've needed it, so it shouldn't have exactly been a surprise, but I still didn't have it.I drove home, found the form atop the fridge where I had set it last spring, drove it down to the pediatrician, and thereupon learned from the receptionist that they couldn't fill it out until Maggie had a well-kid check, which was several months overdue.Did I want to make an appointment?Today was Tuesday, and they had an opening Thursday afternoon.Um, yes, I wanted it.I would bring the form.



I drove back to the office and entered the well-kid appointment into my Thursday calendar.Thursday was a gloriously open day - just the 4:15 doctor's appointment for Maggie, and the 7 pm grocery delivery.I would try to get into the office early and get a lot done then too.After all, these days I am the one who is all on top of everything.No more feeble efforts from me. These days, I get s**t done.



My cell phone rang.It was the Moodle tech support guy calling me back!(Moodle is an online education platform used for some of the classes I teach online.)I ask him a question on how to put students in groups.He walks me through the screens.This is the kind of stuff I am good at, and it restores any confidence the whole epi-pen/well-kid checkup eroded.



He is flattering me:"Wow, you're really good at this.Most professors take a little more time to get the whole online student grouping thing down, but you got that really fast."



Me (beaming):"Thanks.I've worked on other platforms before, so Moodle's not exactly my first rodeo."



Him:"That's for sure, beyond a shadow of a doubt."



Shadow.Damn.



It's not Mr. Tech Support I'm swearing at.As Johnny Cash would say, I forgot to remember to forget.



I hang up on Mr. Tech Support and promptly forget how to do the Student Groupings for my second section.



It's no matter.Scott had a CAT scan over the summer, and while I was away in Michigan, he had called and told me there was a "shadow" on his liver, and that they wanted to do a PET scan when we were all back in California.



Maggie's pediatrician appointment and Safeway's grocery delivery weren't the only things on our family calendar.Thursday Scott would have the PET scan, which would give a closer look at all things cancer.



He had the scan.We waited.Generally good news comes slowly, in a paper envelope in the mailbox, in 7-10 days, which says something like "Your scan appears normal."Generally bad news sneaks in by phone, in a day or two, and lands its barbs into the family with a voicemail that says, "This is Dr. X.Please call me as soon as possible to discuss the results of your scan."



The first day of school came - we got the kids up and dressed, and even took pictures out in front of the house.We are so cute there.No voicemail yet.Time was when I would have felt like a total hypocrite smiling for that camera - how dare I smile in a back to school picture when my husband may be getting really awful medical news?



Me with girls, first days of third and fifth grade.

Despite forgetting much, I am on-trend in my cute colored capri pants.



Scott with girls, first days of third and fifth grade.

He is always on trend in his khaki shorts.



But now I think, how dare I not smile when it's back to school?If I spent every minute giving the cancer the "proper" amount of doom and gloom, I would long ago have melted into the sewers.People ask, how is it that you can volunteer with the Girl Scouts when your husband is so sick?And the answer comes in bits and pieces, but in general, it is this:there came a time in this illness when it was better for me to iron scout patches onto uniforms late at night.I had done my time drinking all the wine I could hold and it didn't help.I had cried, procrastinated, obsessively researched cancer on Google, picked fights with just about anybody nearby, sworn at the dog, cleaned and messed up the house.And none of those things made a bit of difference in my husband's health status, not early in the morning and not late at night.So at some point, it was time to iron the Girl Scout patches on the bright green sash.And apologize to the dog, which is most legitimately done not in words but in bacon.



The first day of school went - I picked the kids up.Glowing, rosy, wriggling, healthy, and alive.The entire schoolyard is a joyous assertion of disorderly expansive hot sweaty life.So unlike the carefully air-conditioned chemo ward, where everybody wears soft-soled shoes and forgoes the perfume, and even the nurses whisper lest they disturb the inmates.I stride under the passionate California August sun and find my own loud wriggly stinky kids.(I'm not sure if it's the loud, the wriggle, or the stink, but kids are definitely not allowed in oncology.Even if they wear soft-soled shoes.)



Maggie loves her third grade teacher because the lady has long blonde hair, wears high heels, and has a classroom pet snake named Herman.Elli loves her fifth grade class because many of her friends are there.Bless them all, even Herman.



We came home for a snack.No paper envelope in the mailbox with happy scan news.The kids were watching TV (no homework yet) and Scott was hanging out, playing a video game.I grabbed my laptop and logged into the office.My phone rang and it was a Kaiser number.



"Hello?"I thought it might be about Maggie's epi-pen refill.



"Hello, Caroline?This is Dr. L."It was Scott's oncologist, the lovely Chinese lady.I know that accent, that voice, anywhere.I actually didn't need to know any more; the Beast was back.



She actually made a few minutes of small talk with me - how was our vacation, how was the family - and I can't remember what I said to her.Why was she calling me?



"I have been trying to reach Scott.I need to speak to him right away.Is he there?"She was professional yet concerned.



As a matter of fact, lady, he was in the other room.I carefully put the laptop down, and walked across the hallway to give him my phone.



I waited until I heard him say "Hello?" and then I gently closed the door and walked back out.



This time, the recurrence is in his liver.Only his liver.So yes, it's still Stage IV (metastatic) colon cancer.It's been Stage IV for six years now.It's in the same spot in the liver it's been in the past, sort of up near the blood vessels and the other interesting bits.(Rumor has it there's a part of the liver way out on one side which is evidently easy to surgically resect, and of course his recurrence did not take up housekeeping over there.)



The recommendation is for about three months of chemo (two weeks on, one week off, times four) and then, just in time for the holidays, a surgical re-evaluation to see if they can operate on it.



Will this surgery cure it?Probably not - from the get-go they have told us this condition is not curable.



Why do I put this in here now?Not out of a sense of doom and gloom, but simply because over the past six years we've met new people, made new friends, and gotten new neighbors, and not all of you newbies know the full situation.



We'll be revising our Lotsa Helping Hands site with new requests as we need them (see the link on the left).You all can help, definitely, but we need bizarre things and not always what people think.Please, no casseroles or meal deliveries.



I did find my first to-do list; it was in the drawer of my office desk.I also found my first breakfast wrap; it was in the office fridge.The bad news there:the fridge had been unplugged all summer.The good news:I found the wrap before it grew legs and went off exploring the spa or the tax accountant downstairs from me.



I'm going to be spending my evenings home, waiting for the Safeway truck, and ironing badges onto Girl Scout uniforms.



It's my turn to remember to forget.
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