Moving toward better health...

Thank goodness for the Internet - it certainly saves a lot of effort when one becomes a full-time researcher. On this snowy St. Patrick's Day I spent virtually all day researching nutrition, wigs, and clinical trials, plus sending and responding to a few emails.

I met with Heidi Ganzer, registered dietitian with MOHPA, on Friday morning. She was a wealth of good information and my head is still spinning trying to figure out how to apply it all! It will require some fairly significant life style changes in terms of shopping, cooking, and eating, but all that will bring better health now and down the road (to me and my family). I won't go into all the details, but her first two comments were 1) you should never eat (choke down) something that just doesn't taste good to you, no matter how healthy it is (goodbye yogurt!) and 2) never eat something bigger than your head (a Chipolte burrito was an example). Along with many specifics (like greens and beans), the recommendations were many that we should all be doing anyway, such as daily exercise, lots of water, 9-13 servings of fruits & veggies daily, lots of good, lean protein. I'm thinking Trader Joe's is going to become a new favorite. I stopped there right after my appointment and picked up some steel cut oatmeal and flax seed, among other things.

I did hear from the oncologists' office today that my ER/PR/HER2 results remained negative after additional pathology testing. I had been praying much about this and I was very happy to hear the HER2 results. When that is positive, I understand that is an unfavorable prognostic factor.

The USPS was so kind as to deliver my Amazon.com order of 2 Leslie Sansone "Walking" exercise DVDs today. So, I paused my research and tried out a mile of each one (they go up to 3 miles each). I think these will work great for getting in the 30-90 minutes of "activity" on most days, as was recommended. It felt good to "move" more, with just some soreness yet on my left side. I'll have to start that healing process over again after surgery on Thursday, but I'll be able to get a couple of days in.

I still have some phone calls to make regarding wigs, but I do have a few leads on good ones. I also need to check on insurance to see if they cover certain expenses that may occur in the clinical trial. And I'm waiting to hear from my 3M short-term disability case worker to make sure we have all the paperwork ready that we need. I have a lot a resources and assistance, which does make this a little bit easier.

I'm so thankful for all of you. It's great to be able to pick up the phone and bounce new (sometimes scary) information and questions and ideas off someone I can trust. Your prayers continue to be so important and such a blessing to me and my family. I've learned about several others facing and fighting different cancers in the last few days. Nothing is more essential than the prayers and positive and encouraging thoughts and words.