Thoughts on the New Year

I almost forgot how to start a new post. At the Canoe Club on a beautiful day back in the summer, Donna said don’t stop the blog. I have to do what she says, as in “yours” in tennis, but I am only kidding about that and am giving it a try. 

Funny how things work out. 

I started this way back when Delta got worse, school for Nell was going to start, and Ben understandably didn’t want to take a chance with Cape trip #2. Joe also couldn’t come. So although we missed them, Diane, David, Katie and I had a lovely weekend. We went on the boat, which we might not have done if the whole crew was there. 

 My nose continues to be a pain. I had a skin cancer removed from the top of my head, and while I was lying there, at the Mohs Surgery Center in Jamaica Plain, the doctor said it (my nose) could use some dermabrasion and went after it with a sand papery thing. Now I am dealing with THAT healing. To finish it off, I apparently need laser. At 7 a.m. in Boston. At least I can get a little something out of these things. I wrote about how hard it is to bandage your nose, like so: Nose bandaging not my speciality.

It's funny, not ha ha funny, just strange, that as a blood cancer survivor I deal mostly with skin cancer, which I write about here.

It was also hard to bandage a wound on my head, as you can imagine. Boyfriend rigged something up with gauze, tape, and three hair clips. Donna and I made it to the US Open. That seems like so long ago. There was no bus, so I drove. Highlight of the drive might have been the pit stop on a sloping bank alongside the river just before we hit the Whitestone Bridge. Only kidding, I think. We navigated the grounds like pros, unlike in our first year, and saw women’s doubles up close, as well as men’s singles and a short trip to our nosebleed seats in Ashe, all the while juggling our Honey Deuce cocktail in the souvenir glass with the winners on it.

I did the Hot Chocolate Run for Safe Passage with my friend Amy Willard. We chatted most of the way and didn't do it for time. It was great to be with a group of runners again. Since it was outside, I wasn't worried about the virus. We kept our masks on except for the photo. It is so fun and festive and for a great cause.

I waited so long to finish this that now we are dealing with Omicron. I won't go backwards on some things, such as playing tennis indoors, which I wouldn't do last year when unvaccinated. Though I have to say that after having no problems playing all summer on the clay, my feet and to some little extent my right knee, are speaking to me with all of this playing on hard courts in Enfield and (still outside the other day in the cold) on the hard courts at the Canoe Club. 

On New Year's Day it is hard to know what to make of things. Someone I know asked on Twitter how it was possible to be optimistic about the coming year, what with climate change, the virus, and the anti-vaxxers giving the plague new ways of spreading. I agree that it is hard and infuriating. It is hard not to get my blood pressure up, when they parade around with signs along the lines of "don't tell me what to do with my body" yet will turn around and tell a woman what to do with her body. Big sigh.

But as for the positive: This time last year, we didn't have the vaccine. I couldn't let anyone in my house, and even when walking outside with Katie, I had to be careful not to wander into her pathway, as I am wont to do. This time last year, the grandkids couldn't have visited as they did the other day. We wouldn't have been able to play with the toys that I held onto from when my kids were young. We couldn't have had lunch. We might still have been able to take the "nature walk" that we took over at the college, but then we wouldn't have been able to come in and have hot chocolate and cookies.

In the old days back at the paper (s), I might not have interviewed my friends, but my sister/friend Margaret fit so will into the theme of pandemic pivots, which I wrote about for PBS's Next Avenue, that I had to feature her. I was honored that she used the photo on her Christmas card. 

Maddie is almost 15.  I remember when our dog Sam was this old and would be sleeping in the pool of light beneath the living room window, on the blue carpet, and we would check to see if he was breathing. Now I check her that way. She has mostly stopped playing with her toys but she really likes this snowman that Jane gave her for Christmas. As always, she seems annoyed when I take her photo. 

For starters, birthday kisses from the dog

The first words out of my mouth today (at the crack of dawn, as my father used to say) were, "Go away, it's my birthday," but when the dog who doesn't bark made her intense yelping sound, I got out of bed and got down on the floor for our morning routine.

My arm over her back, her paw over my arm. I rub her belly and back and we look into each others' eyes. That is my morning medicine. I tried to take a photo, as you can see, but she doesn't like it. She went across the room and I tried it again. The sexy attire I'm wearing is one of my father's T-shirts. I had a drawer full of them and gave a few away and now I think I gave away too many because I could wear this one down to shreds. I talk about my mother a lot, but a photo of him pops up at odd

Gray haired ladies

times when I'm looking for something so I believe he's around also. I think he would be (I mean, I think he is) proud of my serve. He was proud of everything I did but worried about my serve. He wanted me to take the racquet back further down my back. I think I finally figured it out, thanks, of course, to serving lessons with George. It's not that hard but I twisted it and put a little slice on it.

Hi Dad!

You don't want to use the word torture for things that aren't really torturous, in light of all the horrible things in the world. Taking it down a level, in the past couple of days, people found different ways to "torture" me. First, on Thursday, when I checked in at Dana-Farber for my checkup with Melissa, the intake guy asked if I wanted them to leave the needle in, after the blood draw, so that it could be used at my next procedure, at 4 p.m., the ECP at the Kraft Family Blood Donor Center. Nobody ever asked me that before, but I said sure. Tina, a nurse who became my friend during my first year or so of ECP, had changed jobs and was doing the blood draws on Yawkey Two. She came over and explained the required needle to the nurse. The nurse got all FARBLUNGET.  Instead of putting in the required bigger needle, she did the usual one and slapped a bandaid on. This was after Tina had called my nurse Deb at the Kraft Center to confirm what I would need. Later when I got there and she asked if nurse number 1 had left a needle in and I said she hadn't, she said, sarcastically, "Of course she didn't."

So I got stuck three times instead of two.

My appointment with Melissa was mostly about dermatology. She said she would try to straighten out the confused state of affairs having to do with three dermatologists telling me three different things to do about my skin. Especially my hands, with each of them contradicting the other on how to deal with the pointillist canvas of pre-cancers and who knows what. But I don't want to ruin the day by getting too much into that.

My numbers were great. My platelets were normal, yay! I used to get the printout but I don't anymore. I know that normal platelet range starts at 160, and when I heard 190-something that was all I needed to hear. If you search the blog for "platelet," you'll see that I've always had a platelet problem.

Dr. Marty came in with a new doc on the block. We gave each other a hug. He explained to the new doc how we go way back. We laughed about what happened at last year's US Open when I had a crazy, itchy, burning rash and cold sores around and on my lips having to do with a "perfect storm" of decreasing Valtrex, an antiviral, and using Efudex, the chemotherapy cream. I wrote him and Melissa, and almost as soon as I sent it, he replied, "Get a selfie with Nadal," because I said that's who I was watching from the nosebleed seats. I wrote back that he was too far, and he said something along the lines of tell him to come up to you. As for the lips, I think he said to go back up on the Valtrex and use Vaseline. He had already given me some good medicine by replying so quickly and making me laugh.

Oh I almost forgot the other "torture."

At occupational therapy, Karen, the therapist, made me a hand brace to open up my left hand while I sleep. I sleep with my hands curled up into fists underneath my chin. Now I won't be able to do it. Together with hand exercises (when I do them), my hand is hopefully going to be able to flatten out in yoga (or any other time I want it to) and my hands will hopefully be able to get into "prayer position," the inability to do so having to do with graft vs. host of the skin affecting my fascia. In general, we don't want it to turn into a claw. I texted the photo to the kids and Katie said that looking on the bright side (if I can sleep) I'll be able to do a better down dog, which is just what I was thinking also.

I was walking around with the backyard birthday photos, at 77 Coronado St., Atlantic Beach, with Jane and Michael Kass in them and now I can't find them. They seem to have morphed into other beach photos. They'll turn up next time I'm looking for something else. They're such good memories. One of these days maybe I'll recreate something alone the lines of what my Vassar classmate, Amy Drake and I, did after college, driving down the coast (all the way from Portland, Oregon!) to LA. Now I should stop and get ready for a little trip to Fairfield for a little celebration to see some of my favorite people and talk to others.

I'm ether 65 or 10. Who knew?

Feeling a little under the weather

Drinks at the Aqua Bar with Diane

As my parents used to say when they didn't feel well, I'm not 100 percent, not really sick but not great.

At first I thought I was tired from running around: great birthday dinner in Needham, extended celebration in Wellfleet, then drive home and get stuck in traffic Sunday although I had planned to stay in Newton that night. But I got a call to sub in an 8:30 a.m. tennis game Monday, and when tennis calls, some of us run. The inevitable letdown of coming back was magnified due to the time of day, but I didn't want to miss a chance to play an extra time.

However it turns out that another person who needed a sub had forgotten to confirm, meaning three of us spent about half an hour making phone calls before we gave up and played Canadian. I told them the way I learned to keep score — singles person gets two points for winning a game, and doubles each get one — so we played a round of that and got some exercise and that was that. This being a big time First World Problem, although I was disappointed I didn't complain. 

I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before because I got home late and couldn't go right to sleep.  Luckily we were near Starbucks so I went over and caffeinated and talked to some of my Longmeadow Starbucks friends who I hadn't seen in a while because I stay around here in the summer after I play at the Canoe Club.

The weather in Wellfleet, that little piece of paradise, was perfect. I don't remember the ocean ever being that warm or that calm, and I even went in. In town on Saturday we discovered it was Porchfest, with acoustic music on 15 porches in town. The magical day ended with drinks in Provincetown at the Aqua Bar, overlooking the harbor, followed by fish and chips at The Canteen. 

You can see why I might have been tired but yesterday my stomach and head started hurting, so I realized it was more than that. I had gotten the day off from ECP today because I wanted to go to the volunteer appreciation day that the Literacy Project was planning at the Smith College Art Museum. But when I woke up and needed to go to sleep on the couch, I knew it was not to be. 

Well I saw more of the early rounds of the US Open than I would have, and in between doing that and falling asleep, I followed up on a pitch that I had sent and got a yes and worked on another story I'm doing. That gives me three stories to write, and one awaiting publication. Almost like my old job.

My main concern is that I have been looking forward to going to the US Open Friday on the bus from the Enfield Tennis Club. I better be better by then.

Terrific day at the Open, bad night in my dreams

Donna, me, and Lori

I had a fantastic day at the US Open yesterday, my third year on the bus from the Enfield Tennis Club with my friend Donna Young and the second in which our former teammate Lori Chase was also on board.

All those years living in New York, I never once went to the Open. I don't regret that, because our family had our own tradition of watching it in the comfort of our house in Atlantic Beach, with the breeze coming in from the ocean and my mother making tuna fish and egg salad sandwiches that we ate on stack tables in front of the TV.

Donna and I have gotten it down to a science. Instead of making a last-minute decision to watch a match in the general-admission Armstrong seats as we did the first year, when the line was too long for us to wait, we went straight there yesterday to watch defending champion Marin Cilic. We had no idea the match would be so riveting.

Our seats were so close that we could hear the balls on the racquets; we must have been the envy of many who came in later looking for seats as the stadium filled up.

We didn't mean to stay as long as we did – more than three hours – but we got so into this intense, rollercoaster five-setter that we couldn't possibly leave. After lunch, we sat closer to the court than our assigned nose-bleed seats in Arthur Ashe, which you can do this early, and saw Novak Djokovic beat Andreas Seppi in three sets.

We got our own exercise sprinting to our bus, having gotten stuck in the crowd exiting the stadium. We probably should have left earlier, but we wanted see Djokovic do his victory dance. The traditional US Open bus trip brownies were the usual treat.

After such a fun day you would think tennis balls would dance in my head all night, but instead, the flip side of the shiny coin revealed itself.

In my nightmare, I was diagnosed with kidney or stomach cancer, I can't remember which. My doctors said I had only three or four months to live. It was so advanced they could not offer any treatment. I didn't know how to tell my children. I thought maybe they had it wrong, but just in case they didn't, I had to figure out how to face my own death. This obviously stems from the real life issues that thankfully have not done me in.

But in the dream I realized that if I died, I would probably see my parents.

I don't know if this is a good dream or a bad dream.

Well, at least I woke up to find out that none of that was true. I had Donna to call on the phone to go over our day and things to do that were all good, including Justine's class at Serenity Yoga, which was a good balance to yesterday's hectic pace.

I skipped my own tennis today to give my skin a break, following the strongly worded advice of Ellen, the physician's assistant at ECP, who, when I pointed out to her suspicious spots on my skin, reminded me that the procedure makes your sun super sensitive.

It would have taken more than heat and humidity for us to relinquish our seats, reminding me of that feeling you have when you find a perfect parking place in New York and you don't want to leave.

It was fun to watch Cilic play the crowd afterwards when hitting balls into the stands. He looked so fearsome doing his job, but when he went out to hit the balls he had a big smile on his face as he turned to each section to see which one would clap loudest, therefore earning a ball.

Sadly, we did not prevail.

The world is a disaster. My problems seem small.

It is hard to blog about certain things when the image of a masked terrorist holding a knife to an American journalist on his knees in the desert is seared into your mind. And now there is another, and they even took a video of it.

It is hard to read and watch and listen to the news, and hard not to, and hard to avoid it anyway because the headlines pop up wherever you look.  It is hard to know that while we live in relative comfort, parts of the world are in the middle ages, and hard to know that we are not so safe as we think we are and that the very city (Minneapolis) where my daughter is teaching ESL (now ELL) to  Somali children is the same city where a Somali neighborhood is a breeding ground for ISIS recruitment of disaffected young people, as reported on NBC Nightly News.

It is hard to hear our once-passionate president say blandly that  "we don't have a strategy yet" for dealing with Islamic extremists in Syria, and to hear him say that "not doing stupid stuff" is an accomplishment, and also to hear him say, as we seek more urgency and reassurance, "The world has always been messy," while as Frank Bruni put it in an op-ed piece  in yesterday's New York Times, "'Messy' is my kitchen at the end of a long weekend. What's happening in much of Syria and Iraq is monstrous."

It's hard for me personally because my friend Patricia is gone. We were blogging partners, often writing on the same topic; one would lob a ball into the other's court and then it would return with something comforting or funny or just the words,  "I know how you feel."

That is basically why I have not written much in the last couple of weeks.

So. I think I see another tiny squamous cell cancer on the back of my hand – just a little raised freckle that looks odd to me – and I will have to make an appointment to go to Boston to have it checked out and probably get another punch biopsy. Ouch, but still.

So. I watch the US Open. I go to USopen.org and watch the press conferences and recaps. I read about Roger Federer's wife Mirka and look at all the family pictures. I watch him float around the court and I remember years ago when I was in the hospital around this time of year and my sister said  that for a good distraction from leukemia and chemotherapy, I should turn on the Open "and watch Roger Federer who does not sweat."

It worked then, and it works now. For a while.

A good day at the US Open

With Donna Young and Lori Chase.

What a difference a year makes.

Donna and I thoroughly enjoyed the trip we took Friday to the US Open on the bus from the Enfield Tennis Club, where we met up with our friend Lori Chase. It was much better than last year because, (a) we knew the ropes, and (b) I wasn't just a month out of surgery like I was the year before.

Knowing the ropes meant going straight to one of the field courts, Court 7, and watching a good women's doubles match instead of wandering around, and then when we went to our seats in the nosebleed section of Arthur Ashe, following the lead of other carpetbaggers who did not go all the way up. You can do this earlier in the tournament and if someone comes, you just move back a little. Hence we had a good view of a three-set battle between Venus Williams and Sara Errani and were able to get in on the excitement by cheering Venus on. (She lost in the third set tie-break.)

After lunch we had good seats on Court 17 where we saw Roberto Bautista Agut win the match that will pit him against Roger Federer next.

It is just amazing to sit so close and see how hard they hit the ball.

Happy on the bus.

The other good news is that I did not get totally dehydrated in the heat and then proceed to drink two vodka lemonades made in a special glass with a list of the Open champions on it, and that I did not proceed to feel very sick in this scene that Donna and I can laugh about now: We needed half an hour to get back to the bus (scheduled to leave at 6:30), but we left too late, and our friend Deb Doner was walking at a very fast clip ahead of us and telling us to get a move on or we would miss the bus. Deb even wanted to get a pedicab for me, but all were full. Donna, who had stayed back with me, called ahead, "I can't pick her up!"

The bus of course did not leave without us. But let's just say that when I got on I did not feel well enough to eat the walnut chocolate chip brownies that the organizer of the trip brings every year.

This year we left plenty of time and even had a chance to wait on the grass and enjoy the day for a few more minutes.

I had my brownie, covered myself with my jacket and fell asleep, visions of tennis balls dancing in my head.

Pittsburgh weekend: Food, fun and friendship

Emily, me and Susan in Hidden Valley, Pa.

I came back late Tuesday from a wonderful long weekend outside of Pittsburgh with my friends from high school (and for life) Emily and Susan and Emily's husband, Mike, a talented cook and great guy extraordinaire.

I flew to Pittsburgh, where Emily picked me up. We then drove about an hour and half to their country house in Hidden Valley; Mike met us there, and Susan drove from Washington.

When you are with people you've known for a long time, so many things are in context. That makes it very comfortable, because you don't have to fill in the blanks. We laughed a lot, ate a lot of Mike's great cooking and, of course, talked a lot. We also watched a couple of movies and ate too many peanut M&M's.

On Saturday, four of us (Susan, me, Emily and a friend of hers) biked about 18 miles round-trip along part of the 141-mile-long Allegheny Rail Trail. The section we were on ran alongside the Casselman River; it was flat enough that we rode in twos and talked along the way while enjoying the scenery.

Rain was forecast for Sunday afternoon, so we got our exercise in during the morning, hiking three miles through the woods. This path had some (admittedly little) hills, so the distance we went was plenty for me.

We watched some of the US Open, and I studied the players swings' in awe, taking note of their
lightening-quick follow-throughs and constantly moving feet.

Back home I have really wanted to play, but my clinic and my doubles game (like some of the Open) was canceled due to rain.

That's OK, because out on the court after watching a championship, I often play worse than before.

"Move your feet!" my inner coach says.

I reply, "They're too heavy. I'm doing the best I can."

And then from my inner coach again, "Don't direct the ball, follow through! You saw how they do it."

Me: "Duh, I know what I should be doing. My arm won't go that fast."

I'm sure I'll end up playing – and watching more of the US Open – this weekend.

It will be fun, as it always is. But I kind of liked sitting on the couch in Hidden Valley, just watching the tennis, eating M&M's and talking to friends with no thoughts of going out to play while I was there.