Month: January 2016

Bacon and bourbon cured my cancer

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

That headline is a lie, of course. My cancer will never be cured. But apparently it CAN be beaten back so much that I have NO EVIDENCE OF DISEASE!!! ALL CAPS FREAK OUT!!!

I had a PET scan on Monday with results due at an appointment with #bestdocever on Friday. Then Holley Kitchen died on Tuesday. If you missed her video that went viral, go watch it. She had such a beautiful spirit, and it gutted me when she died, leaving behind two boys, the youngest a 4 year old…just like The Girl. So, I texted #bestdocever and said “Holley Kitchen died today, her youngest is 4. Tell me that won’t be me.” And he texted back, “Naw, I have good news for you on Friday.” 

So, Friday comes around, and I go to the appointment. And we talk about my conversation with Joan Lunden, and the meeting I had the day before at The Hutch with other breast cancer advocates, and he gives me my check up and asks about my side effects from Xeloda, which at this point are fatigue (my constant companion) and looking tanned and freckled. So, pretty minimal.

Then #bestdocever says “I guess we should talk about your PET report. You know, unless you don’t want to.” And I said, “Well, you said it was good news.” And he said, “It’s OK.” And I was like, “Oh. So, just sort of good news, then.” And he said, “I’m kidding, it’s amazing.”

And we went through the report section by section, and each one said things like “metastatic lesions resolved” and “no longer any pathological FDG uptake.” In fact, my bone tumors aren’t just dead, the bones appear to be healing. And he carefully went through the liver section of the report, and said that he’d spoken in detail with the radiologist because he wanted to say I was NED, but wanted to make sure the spots on my liver really aren’t cancerous anymore. And the radiologist assured him that they weren’t. At this point the word “NED” was swimming in my brain…and as we got to the end of the report, I said, “So I’m NED?” And he said “Yep, you’re NED.”

As I was leaving, I told #bestdocever I was especially surprised about my liver because I’d been on a cruise the week before and frankly, I drank a lot, way more than usual. And he wisecracked, “Well that bourbon must be working, keep it up.” I also ate a lot of bacon. So I’m going with the theory that eating a lot of bacon and drinking a lot of bourbon will cure cancer. It’s as good a theory as black salve, drinking breast milk, or eating a lot of curry, amiright?

I honestly never thought I’d get there. #bestdocever had said at the start of this shitshow that NED was his goal for me, but I really didn’t think it would happen, especially after all that progression last spring. I’m still in shock. I knew Xeloda is a drug that people can have exceptional responses to, but I never believed I’d have THIS exceptional of a response. I feel like I’ve climbed back up the cliff a bit. It’s both thrilling and terrifying. But mostly thrilling. And it’s the first time since I was diagnosed that I’ve truly seen The Hubs happy, which makes my heart sing.

How long do I get to dance with NED? There’s no way to know. NED means my cancer is too small to see on a scan, but it doesn’t mean it’s totally gone. Someday it’ll come roaring back. But not today. Not today. Today we dance.

Peaches come in a can

Posted on by Beth Caldwell

This post is not about cancer. This is a classic Cult of Perfect Motherhood deprogramming post. It’s about my grandmother, who happened to have breast cancer, but that’s not what this story is about. It’s about peaches. Canned peaches, to be specific. 

Recently, I tweeted while having a blood transfusion that I had canned peaches with my hospital food brunch, and that they reminded me of my paternal grandmother, and then I thought, I should tell you all this story because it explains a lot about the sense of humor I’ve inherited from my family. And it also gives us a lesson that will help us all do a little deprogramming.

So, my grandmother was your typical 1950’s style housewife living in a small town in Oregon, and every year, she’d can her own peaches. She’d go get a bushel of them from the local growers, and do all the work that’s involved in canning peaches. Which is a lot of work, but since my grandfather loved them, she made them.

Then one year, my grandmother missed the peach harvest. You know, because she was busy raising four kids. So, she went down to the local grocery store and bought canned peaches, you know, like, the cheap store brand ones. And she brought them home, and she hid them in the cellar. And anytime my grandfather said, “Honey, how about some peaches with dinner” she’d say “Sure thing, I’ll go get them from the cellar.”

Then she’d go down to the cellar, open a can of peaches, dump them in a mason jar, screw the lid on, and bring them upstairs and say “Honey, can you open the lid for me, it’s so tight.” And my grandfather would open the jar, and they’d eat the peaches, and my grandfather would say, “Sweetheart, nobody cans peaches like you do, these are the best peaches ever.”

So, now my grandmother knew that her husband couldn’t tell the difference between her peaches and the cheap store brand canned peaches. So she was like “The fuck I’m gonna do all that work anymore.” (Except, she NEVER would have sworn, but you get the idea.) But, she also wasn’t going to tell my grandfather she wasn’t doing all this work and lose all the compliments about the peaches. So she just bought the peaches at the store that come in a can because they were put there by a man in a factory downtown. And she kept putting them in mason jars and fooling my grandfather. For, like, 30 years.

The only person who knew this was going on was my aunt, who was sworn to secrecy. My grandmother made my aunt promise not to tell anyone until she was dead. So, my grandmother passes away in her 80’s (not from breast cancer, from regular old age stuff) and like five minutes later, my aunt’s like “Dad, there’s something you need to know about your wife.” And she tells him about the peaches, and he thinks it’s the FUNNIEST THING EVER. Literally the next time I saw him, he was like, “OMG I have the best story about your grandmother.” (Except he didn’t say OMG, but you get the idea.)

When my grandfather died, my local BFF left a can of peaches on my doorstep, which made me smile. And every time I eat canned peaches, I think of my grandmother, and what a sassy, awesome woman she was. And I think, “What peaches thing am I doing because I think it matters to my family, but really they don’t give a shit?” What peaches thing are YOU doing right now?