(Old) Can You Hear that Cranberry "Schloop"? - A Thanksgiving MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

My late first wife lived 7 years after her Stage 4 BC diagnosis, and it was found rather late as Stage 4s go, so well-advanced. In her case the tumors were ER positive, so she spent a lot of time on estrogen blockers and alternated that every now and then with traditional chemo. Which could also be done rather gently. Plus spot radiation now and again on the few tumors sited where radiation was relevant.

There are many, many new and better estrogen blockers than the traditional tamoxifen which is pretty much a hormonal sledgehammer. Wife found most of those easy to take, unlike tamoxifen that gave her fits.

Breast cancer preferentially metastasizes to brain, bone, lungs, and liver. By the time my wife was done, she had had all 4. But bone was the first to be affected, and it’s a good bet an x-ray or CT saw something suspicious on your friend’s humerus that they want to know more about. Hence the biopsy.

By unhappy coincidence, today would have been her 68th birthday had she lived. I hope her memory plus my vague recollections and detailed notes of her long and varied treatment history can assist your friend somehow.

42

Afternoon all. And busily doing nothing and succeeding masterfully at it. Have done my last gambling for the trip (ended -$75 but well within the budget) and only packing out remains. Dinner in a couple of hours, will have steak to finish off the trip.

Have read all but brain is being unresponsive so yeas, boo, hugs, cheers and crossed appendages wherever they are needed.

43

There’s oral chemo, and immunotherapy, as well as hormone suppression. It might be supportive to ask to hear more about it.

44

shoe, corn pudding goes really well with roasted meat. It’s on my Thanksgiving menu.

Good luck niner

I learned a new station on the fly today. I was assigned to the offbear position for the Apkudo, but the sorter didn’t show up (she’s not the usual sorter, just filling in). I learned the sort / cartonization process, so will likely do that some more this week.

One and a half days left. :smiley:

Stay safe and healthy y’all!

45

Up from naptime, having burgers and fries before work.

Wait are you making a Cosmo or cranberry sauce? :wink:

Too late. :wink:

{{{{Pilot}}}}

Spot is smart, but he is also dog level cuddly. And I like the decor.

46

Happy woulda-been birthday to her. I’m sorry; there aren’t really good words for this.

She was a good woman who made you happy.

47

We are a Schloop free household. I gotta have my Grandma’s cranberry relish, with fresh cranberries, jello, celery, orange and nuts. I will be the one making it this year, as usual. Sorry for the drive by, but I’ll catch ya’ll up on the Days of Janis’ Lives soonish , I promise…

MWAH!!!

48

My day was calm & restful. Golf lesson was good, and soreness is much less of an issue than previous days. We’ll reconvene on Wed for the first time at an outdoor real driving range, not just a sim in the shop. Assuming weather cooperates, I’ll probably do the early morning driving range myself tomorrow.

Did a couple errands on the way home and got the car washed under bright blue skies. Then went into the groc store and came out to very light sprinkling on my new wash. Damn. Only a couple miles to home and I made it before the sprinkle became a downpour. The rest of the afternoon has been rainy, but it quit as day turned to twilight and has been dry since.

Scored some Halloween Reese’s PB pumpkins for 75 cents a bag, not the $4.95 each they were selling for a month ago. Was surprised anyone still had any leftover Halloween merch to get rid of, but at that price I was happy to help. Also resupplied eggnog so I’m ready for another week or so of that.

Tonight’s meal is next and although TBD right now will probably be snacky here at home. After last night’s gorge-fest I doubt Her Ladyship will want to eat much the rest of the week. Notwithstanding the big feast she’ll spend the next 2 days creating for everyone else.

49

My late Aunt Allie used to make this and I haven’t had it since she was still around and cooking.

50

What? Too many cranberries? Hmmmm, maybe you are right and I should cut back…

(Eat enough of my cranberry sauce and you won’t care that the gravy is lumpy and the turkey is overcooked.)

51

Howdy Y’all! Home from men’s night over to the church house. We had a good crowd, and as usual, solved all the world’s problems, but no one ever listens to us. Thus, the world will remain a mess until we gather again only to be ignored. How sad that is!

Niner appropriate/inappropriate appendages are crossed. There was a time I would have been all incensed at a tree bein’ up way early, but now, to each his/her own. Kitteh is purty!

Pearl do come back and regale us with tales.

Ummm… everyone else, I don’t remember stuff, so yays, boos, hugs, trouts, chitlins, noogies, and how you doin’s all around, as needed.

52

Thank you for the info and feedback! I asked my friend the names of the meds before I posted this morning. She couldn’t remember. To be fair, it was early, and she was at school… When she got home, she remembered the doc had written them on a whiteboard, and she’d taken a photo of that. Neither of us can remember what estrogen inhibitor she was on before, except that it wasn’t Tamoxifen.

I looked up the meds. She’s getting Foslodex (injection) and Exomestane (aromatase inhibitor). She’ll also start ribocyclib, an antineoplastic, which means it keeps cancer cells from growing and eventually destroys them. The side effects can be pretty severe, but my friend is good about NOT googling stuff like this, and if her oncologist thinks it’s the best option, I’m sure it is. Plus my friend is pretty tough. After all, she’s taught freshmen!

This brought tears to my eyes. They’ll help her because they’re helping me better understand, which will help me keep her perspective positive. Thank you so much! And from all you’ve said, your first wife was quite a woman. I salute her on this anniversary of her arrival here.

Whoosp! Instacart has arriveth with Thanksgiving ingredients!

53

You/she misspelled both but here they are:
Faslodex / Fulvestrant - Wikipedia
Exemestane - Wikipedia

My late wife was on that pair for quite awhile. Very easy on the body and highly effective. Until they aren’t. Needing to visit the clinic for just one shot per month was a real relief from other chemo regimens that were 3x/week. The shots themselves are medium unpleasant, a big bolus of thick goop into each butt cheek. If she’s on any pain meds that will help.

We had no experience with (misspelled again)
Ribociclib - Wikipedia

Good luck to her and you, and susan, and everybody else who’s been around this bush once and hopes to avoid a repeat engagement.


Leftover dinner & properly “improved” eggnog has been had. Expecting a quiet evening & good sleeping.

54

Also, I was watching the Thanksgiving version of Beat Bobby Flay, and the one chef used canned cranberry sauce. So pro chefs are Team Can when they compete against an Iron Chef.

: crosses fingers for your friend, nellie :

55

More for ME!!!
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

MIL is staying with us for the week - we hope she’ll get some good sleep and eat more. BIL came to the top of the apartment waiting list, so FCD will go over tomorrow with the POA and sign the lease, since BIL is still hospitalized. Fingers crossed that it all works out eventually, tho there’s still no discharge plan.

First thing tomorrow, I’m running to Food Lion for my last minute groceries. No way I want to go near a store on Weds. I hope.

56

It was the best I could do with the doc’s handwriting–printing, yet. Then I guess I didn’t notice it was spelled differently on the sites that came up.

Thanks so much for the perspective on the first two meds. When you said,

did you mean they stopped being easy on the body and being effective? I hope I’m not asking questions it’s painful to answer. If so, please ignore.

doggio, is this the malady that’s been hitting the canines in your area? Spooky.

57

The deal with any cancer med is that it will kill or slow the cancer. For awhile. Of course what’s going on microscopically is the meds are killing or disabling most of the cancer cells, not all. So the “weak” ones susceptible to the drug die and disappear, leaving a clear field for the survivors that are mostly or entirely unaffected by the drug. Who proceed to multiply merrily in the absence of so much competition. Eventually you will have bred a new strain of tumor in you for which that drug is now less effective or wholly ineffective.

As a separate matter, none of these meds are aspirin. Some of the primitive chemo’s do almost as much damage to the patient as they do to the tumor. These particular meds are not like that at all. But they are still wearing the patient down. And like all drugs they have side effects to which the body may become increasingly sensitized over time. So eventually the patient starts seeing reduced blood counts or irritating sores, or however / whatever that med manifests its side effects.

I suppose the big thing to recognize is that by the time somebody has diffuse stage 4 disease, this will kill them. Cure is off the table, we’re just playing for increased time with reasonable quality of life. The amount of increased time can be significant: multiple years or even a decade. And the quality of life can be good for much of that time. Some meds (though not these two) can have pretty crappy side effects and still beat the alternative.

Recalling that even for nominally healthy folks experiencing normal aging and normal health care can also be described as “playing for increased time with reasonable quality of life”.

58

Ma schloop est ta schloop. Apprécier!

(Translation, so I don’t get in trouble: My schloop is your schloop. Enjoy!)

59

Oops. I accidentally signed up for Amazon Prime, which the Spousal Unit already has. I’ll have to remember to cancel it in 29 days.

60

Morning, mumpers! It’s 8c/47f with a predicted high of 9c/49f and mostly cloudy. Weather app says “It’s fucking cloudy and milk. Let’s get crazy and get kitten tattoos we’ll probably fucking regret later.” Sounds like a good idea to me!

{{{{{Pilot}}}}} sounds like your late first wife was an amazing lady.

nellie I am glad your friend has someone so supportive in her corner, she’s lucky to have you.

Niner cool supervisor! And obstreperous is one of my favourite underused words :slight_smile:

VanGo fingers crossed for boat-building!

Pearl good to see you, albeit briefly. Come back with some good tales for us, 'kay?

Today’s my last irk-day before a week’s leave, which I am more than ready for. I had two meetings today, the first one’s been pushed into next week. It’s a regular catch-up with one of my minions, plus we need to do interim performance development reviews which is really no more than a box-ticking exercise to say we’ve discussed progress on the year’s objectives. Minion asked to move the meeting because he’s working at home today, he’s recently moved into a new house and he’s got both the flooring guys doing their thing, and the bathroom fitters doing theirs. Much noise, dust and disruption. It’s no big problem to move our meeting to next week, the university’s not going to crumble because we didn’t talk about stuff.

Today’s only other meeting is our Professional Services Forum which is a School meeting rather than a College one so only a small group of people. However, two of the Bigwigs are coming, and our Quality Manager is coming as well to talk to us about something so I suppose I’d better be there.

With any luck, 'im indoors is going to the gym later this morning and bringing home lunch from our favourite Indian place. Then after irk, I have to start packing for the week away, go to the supermarket to stock up on cat supplies for our absence, and whatever essentials we feel the need to take with us.

Time for a cuppa first though!