So as the title suggests, I have begun juicing.  My friend Young Ji suggested this to me to deal with some of my chronic ailments and I thought, what the hell- nothing else seems to be working at the moment and I still have to lose all of this weight before my surgery in June, I’ll give it a shot.  It is seriously cool.  The juicer itself is like a magical machine that liquifies everything into pure nutrients and although I know there are some who think the juice can taste less like the vegetables from whence it came and more like the dirt they were grown in, I in fact like the taste of the juice.  Today I drank a batch that included brussel sprouts, spinach, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, ginger, apples, grapes, cucumber and celery and it was pretty damn tasty.  With that said, I am drinking this juice as my breakfast and lunch, so god help you if you are in my path between four and six when hunger for dinner sets in and everyone around me becomes a steak with legs like in the old cartoons.  But I’m doing it, and then trying to stick to primarily protein in the evenings.  My physical therapist was concerned that because I’m working out six days a week and sometimes twice a day that the juice might not be enough calories, but so far it hasn’t seemed to be a problem.  The juicing is also incredibly time-consuming, mostly in terms of prep and clean up but I’m determined to stick with it for a month or so and see how my body responds- I’ll let you know.

In other news, my dad is recovering very well from the removal of his ureter and kidney.  He won’t have to have any follow-up chemo or radiation as far as he’s been told and he was home from the hospital three days after the procedure.  He looks exponentially better each time I see him and his co-workers bought him an AMAZING cake- kidney shaped with one of my dad’s writing lessons scrawled atop the cake “when in doubt, cut it out.”  Hard to top that as a get well gift. The relief that both he and my step mother are experiencing is palpable, while they both insist that they weren’t worried, the feeling that they’ve finally stopped holding their collective breath tells another story.  For the record, we are all breathing a bit easier now that he’s home and healing.

I am nearing the end of the two year clinical trial that I have been on for MS- it’s a bit nerve wracking because its completion dictates my surgery date so the shipment of my last batch of meds gave me pause.  May 28th will be my final day on the trial at which point they will ween me off of the trial meds- a pregnancy level dose of Estriol with a bit of progestin thrown in for good measure, and once it clears my system I am good to go for surgery- hence the date at the end of June.  This also means that I am counting down to the last period I will ever have.  If there is a silver lining folks, that is surely it.    Almost thirty years of this shit- it will not be missed in the slightest.

I think it’s safe to say that I don’t think about the surgery in the most concrete of terms.  I think about things like what state I’ll be in for my son to come and see me.  I think about who I will be comfortable having in my proximity once the procedure has been completed.  I don’t think about the pain or the changes to my body or even the cancers that I can’t address with these procedures.  With most of the other cancers, I can’t even get a true sense of what my odds are of developing them because the statistics never include both BRCA1 and BRCA2.  It isn’t that I’m in denial about any or all of these things, it’s just not where my mind leads me when I begin to think about the approaching date.  It is probably my built in ‘deny’ switch that has simply engaged on its own accord and intends to stay switched on until it is absolutely necessary that I switch to ‘reality’ mode and face the fear.  Maybe I’ll get lucky and stay in denial, but that has it’s own pitfalls.

For instance, besides eating, all I can think about is shopping, reading escapist novels and making out for hours on with men who are either unavailable or uninterested.  While relatively harmless pastimes, with the exception of the eating, I do feel a bit like a silly teenage as I drift into kissing fantasies briskly followed by sharing cake with said kisser.  So sad, I can’t even be sexy and smooth in my own fantasies- I require a made-up man who appreciates my smart ass sense of humor and my love of chocolate.  What- am I asking too much?  It’s my damn fantasy- and god knows, I’m entitled to tailor make it considering the real thing (meaning my life) certainly hasn’t turned out as I planned.  But I realize, because I’ve had enough therapy to do so, that the shopping and the eating and yes, even the kissing are all the barriers I’m building to avoid what is coming down the pike.  This surgery is big, and it’s long and I’m afraid of what my MS will have to say about it when all is said and done.  Either that or I really just like making out.

But for now, I’ll stick with the escapist novels.  I’m currently wrapped up in a trilogy about a family publishing house in England in the first part of the 20th century.  It doesn’t erase what has to be faced, but it sure makes it all go down easier.