Cancer Survivor, writing about Health and Fitness as you age

Is "chemobrain" real? Yes, yes it is. And the research? Well, there's the thing. But first, what is chemobrain? Cancer patients who have had chemotherapy often report mental fog, inability to think, difficulty focusing and generally increased forgetfulness - cognitive impairment. For a long time, doctors treated patients' claims about chemobrain as a temporary thing, brought on by the stress of cancer diagnosis and treatment. Now, there is growing recognition that the toxicity of chemo drugs may actually cause damage to the brain (of course survivors have known all along we were not crazy). And I'm only now blogging about this? I've taken you into the infusion room , and showed my baldness , but there is a reason I have not blogged about chemobrain before in these past 5 years - I continued to work. I could not have said to my colleagues "Hold on, my brain's not working right. Give me a moment or two or twelve."  Brain on chemo ...

See what I did there? I just pulled you in with a sensational headline.    Sensationalism. It seems all too common now. A friend was talking about the dramatic headline some time ago regarding batteries that could cause a house fire. So instead of immediately saying in the headline, that  "Batteries improperly stored could cause a house fire",  the news lead with the headline that something everybody has in their home could cause a fire. It's the way news works now and even unfortunately in medical reporting. It's called sensationalism. I am sure that if you did not know that before, the ongoing political coverage has helped you to understand that  term very well. For example, Women's Health Magazine ran an article "The Scary Mental Health Risks of Going Meatless" based on 2 studies and some anecdotal evidence. According to the Health Letter from the Center for Science in the Public Health (April 2016), one study couldn't be foun...

  Information Overload Oh My God! On my list of 50 things to do this year , I decided I would experiment with social media (#13). Oh My God!! There is a flood of tweets coming my way and I have no clue what to do with them! I am only following about 40 people, but I know some who are following thousands, THOUSANDS! What tools and how many assistants do they have? 9 things I've learnt about Twitter People follow you based on what you list as interests in your profile and you may or may not follow them back. It is used as a marketing and promotions tool by many people (for example, authors promote their books, giveaways, and good reviews on Amazon or Goodreads) . It is a great way for people to communicate with fans and any others who share their interests. Rick Riordan who tweets @camphalfblood has great interaction with his fans. You can choose to have Twitter promote specific tweets for you. You get some useful analytics, for example my top tweet showed up more t...

My Cholesterol Numbers When last I blogged about diet I was very optimistic about impacting my vitiligo with my new diet, and talked about it here .  However, on a recent trip to the doctor, I've realized I have to defer working on my vitiligo yet again for a bit. Last year, my cholesterol was high, so I made some dietary changes (reduced the red meat, cut the amount of eggs, etc.). My cholesterol dropped 33 points. For the last 3 months I've made even more changes. I've cut dairy, bread and pasta and I've had maybe 3 servings of cheese and red meat in as many months, increased fish and lean quality meat; gave up added sugar so dessert was fresh or dried fruit. However, despite all of this a recent retest showed my cholesterol has dropped only 2 more points and is still high. I don't often vent and rant, but I feel defeated. I even gave up chocolate, 85% (cocoa) dark chocolate!  It took a lot out of me to be disciplined about this, so after I got the results, ...

Teatime! I enjoy teas. I grew up going with my mom to various bazaars in Trinidad where one attraction was always a tent with afternoon tea for the ladies, although men could drink tea too!  In Trinidad a bazaar is usually an open air event with games, concession stands, and... tea. I get a feeling of warmth, camaraderie and friendship when I have tea and it is a throwback to times I've spent with friends and family back in Trinidad. Late last year I decided to spend my last pay cheque on a proper tea set and then kicked off a series of teas with my friends. This is a picture from March tea. I hope the afternoons of friendship, laughter have filled you with warmth and joy, as they have me.

Fire Flames from Public Domain Image We do fire drills to practice what to do in case of a fire, so we are not floundering around in the event a fire does break out. I got the idea for this post when I did the STOP blog post. In my experience many people don't have the language tools in their toolbox that they can readily pull out when the situation arises. So from my STOP post, it is easy to say, "de-personalize it" but how exactly to do that? What words to use? What does it mean to ask for data? Set boundaries? Wouldn't it be great if we had a script or sample scripts that we could pull out as the situation demands? I am sure you all are familiar with "I should have said..". I know I have done quite a bit of that "hindsight" discussion as I thought through all the possible responses I could have made to something someone said, and my actual (lacking) response. If only I had more time to think it through or a chance to practice! Scri...

This year marks 5 years since I was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer AND I have the opportunity to stay home with my kids for a bit. I am grateful to be alive and I have enjoyed making memories with my family and friends these past few years. I've decided that maybe I should get around to doing some of the things that I've been thinking about doing, and if you know me, you know it starts with a list. This year is about: Being purposeful Experimenting. Why 50? Well 100 seemed to be setting myself up for failure (I mean, there must be a reason I haven't gotten around to the list before, and now I want to put 100 of them together? In one year?), and 40 seemed to be a little wimpy. Hence, my list of 50. These are not really bucket list items. My bucket list items are bigger and longer term, but some on my 50-list represent a step towards a bucket list item. For example, writing a draft of a story this year is on my list of 50, and the bucket list item is...