But I was amazed at the changes in the Boulder County Recycling Center when I visited it with a group from Boulder Media Women on April 25. I remember the processing center as a dinky place with a couple of conveyor belts where convicts stood sorting recyclables and enjoying a chance to have a smoke. Now it employs dozens of people, moving as fast as they can to sort plastic or pull items that can’t be recycled off the conveyor belt. The setup for processing single-stream recyclables is fun to watch, and I kept wanting to ask, “And what does that do? And that? And that?”

Our hosts were Eco-Cycle executive director Eric Lombardi and communications director Marty Matsch, both of whom have been working for the nonprofit for many years. As always, it’s easy to get caught up in Lombardi’s passion for recycling. If only more people in the world felt the same way and acted on it.

Lombardi gave us a tour of the Boulder County Recycling Center at 63rd and Arapahoe as well as the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials that is one big U-turn to the east behind the car dealership at 49th and Pearl.

At the end, we spent a couple of hours talking to Matsch about Eco-Cycle’s plans to develop a Zero Waste portal and to formalize their ongoing efforts abroad. Jody Berman, who organized the tour, suggested that if Matsch joined Boulder Media Women, she could use the group’s expertise in marketing to promote Eco-International and develop the portal into the go-to site for Zero Waste information on the Internet.

The thing that Matsch said that sticks in my mind is the assertion that Zero Waste practices promote peace. Why? Because Zero Waste saves resources—if you can make a bottle out of old glass, then you don’t have to make new glass. And that saves energy and water (industrial processes use a lot of water). The need for water already causes tension in the world—just look at the Colorado River Compact—and needs will only grow in the next few decades. So I believed her when she said that reusing, recycling, and repurposing up to 90 percent of our “trash” could reduce conflict.

That’s what Zero Waste really means—repurposing 90 percent of our current waste stream, and redesigning the rest so it can be used again.

***

Eco-Cycle offers a self-guided tour of the Boulder County Recycling Center. Go to the intersection of 63rd and Arapahoe, turn north, turn west into the recycling center, and park in the back. There are a few exhibits downstairs, but most of the information is upstairs.

Photo by Todd Bradley.

Unfortunately, the Colorado Cup didn’t draw more than a few hundred people this beautiful weekend. I think everyone else was out enjoying the weather after our snowy April.

It was too bad for the vendors and the skaters, some of whom came from as far away as Las Cruces, New Mexico. The roller derby was fun, especially the bouts between Grand Junction and Ark Valley (Salida) and between Crossroads City Derby and Fort Collins. But the rest of the time, I saw at a table and talked to perhaps 15 people about derby or photographs. I got a lot of compliments, and some people took my cards. But I made no sales.

I’ll chalk it up to marketing and hope the people who took my cards will find Beth Partin Photos.

Next up is finding a coffeehouse to display my photos. That means more expense for framing. Soon, I hope, I’ll be making some money to pay for all these supplies.

has successfully completed Phase I & II trials, and will soon undergo Phase III. The device itself is very non-invasive—a small box about the size of a pencil case with a spoon-like attachment. Patients turn it on, put the spoon into their mouths, and sit for an hour while it sends low-level electromagnetic waves through the body. Patients do this three times a day and experience virtually no side effects.

It’s not so easy for people living in the United States to join the trials for TheraBionic, however, as they have been conducted in Brazil. So my friends, with help from doctors at MD Anderson in Houston and Northwestern in Chicago and a patient advocate at the University of California at San Diego, applied to the Food and Drug Administration to use the device on a compassionate basis.

They started this process in December and just received approval. They gave me permission to publicize the device on this website.

I was not aware that individuals could set up their own trial with approval from the FDA. That’s good to know.

Here is some information from the website:

TheraBionic has solved a central problem in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma. Because most drugs are metabolized by the liver, many patients do not tolerate therapy for this disease as they have severely impaired liver function.  With current treatments on the market, patients with hepatocellular carcinoma have a very limited life expectancy, ranging from 6-12 months.

In contrast to current treatments, no significant side effects have been observed with the use of the TheraBionic device in the treatment of 41 study patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma and severely impaired liver function. TheraBionic treatment showed clear benefit in 20 of the 41 (49.8%) patients who experienced either significant tumor shrinkage (4) or stable disease for more than three months (16). Seven of the 11 (63.6%) patients who experienced pain prior to TheraBionic treatment initiation reported either complete or partial disappearance of pain. There were several very long-term responders to TheraBionic treatment, which suggests that TheraBionic treatment may offer control of advanced cancer for several years.

So, TheraBionic shrank the tumor in 4 out of 41 patients, and 16 others lived three months longer than they would have otherwise.

The overview page on the website also mentioned a 2012 Phase II trial for advanced breast cancer.

Claremont is a former industrial town that looks down on its luck. Perhaps the rainy weather that accompanied us from Burlington had something to do with it. Todd and I spent two days exploring the downtown and the cemetery. We discovered a down-home restaurant and a diner, a nice little library, and trees that made us forget the gray skies, even though they had not yet matched the brilliance of forests in the Adirondacks.

The thing about a town with a long history? It offers a lot to photographers.  All those industrial buildings practically begged to have their pictures taken. I squeezed in as much photography as I could in three days, wishing the entire time for a wider-angle lens. 

I have about 50 photos up there now, and I will be adding more as time goes on.

Park Hill is not a walkable neighborhood like Baker. I have seen people walking their dogs and people walking to and from the rec center, but most people drive. Two blocks on Kearney south of 23rd feature a liquor store; a bakery and café called Cake Crumbs; a cheese and small plates joint called Neighbors, where we had an intriguing concoction with eggplant crisps, tomato, and goat cheese; and gymnastics and martial arts studios. Farther west on 23rd is Spinelli’s, a famous Denver market that I recommend visiting; a bookstore; and the Cherry Tomato, which I have yet to try.

South of Martin Luther King Boulevard, where we are staying, is probably one-third white and two-thirds black and Latino, but north of MLK is less white. Since I moved away from Washington, DC, I’ve lived in mostly white neighborhoods. I’m enjoying this one, especially since we’ll be living in Boulder from now on, which pretty much rules out the possibility of an ethnically diverse living situation.

I’ve lived in so many different places since June 2011 that I like the idea of settling down, but all the same I can’t help feel a pang for Seattle or New York, which I just visited for the first time in decades, or Denver. Boulder has Todd’s employer and Pearl Street and the mountains, but it’s grown so rich and, well, pretty. I like a little more grit.

That’s why I’ve chosen to live across from the Table Mesa park and ride. That area can’t be accused of grit, and it’s not really walkable either, but at least I’ll have easy access to Boulder, Lafayette, and Denver by bus when Todd has the car. I can walk to Vic’s Espresso or take the bus to Cafe Solé or the library. And it was the cheapest option. We decided to stop traveling in order to replenish our savings; choosing this apartment was the responsible thing to do.

Perhaps my funk had something to do with the need to finish an editing job that had taken twice as long as I told the author it would take. I was stuck in the tiny hotel room a lot, while Todd was off shooting a roller derby regional tournament. I was able to bird Delta Park on Lake Champlain (an adventure in itself because of the confusing layout of that neighborhood and the Vermont habit of providing streets signs only for the roads you’re approaching) and Green Mountain Audubon Center, which was moderately birdy and very beautiful. The woods were mysterious, even if the fall colors were much less showy than what we’d seen in the Adirondacks. 

That Saturday in late September, I walked downtown to have dinner and use up the rest of my Macy’s gift certificate. As I strolled down the pedestrian mall, I noticed several bears that had been painted by local artists. It must be a trend: Denver has its painted cows, and Burlington has it bears.

At first I had difficulty choosing a restaurant. I didn’t want to be the middle-aged woman eating by herself in a restaurant full of undergraduates. I rejected two or three because they didn’t look single-friendly and instead settled on Mr. Crêpe, a fast-casual joint. It wasn’t very crowded, and I felt comfortable there. I ordered the Super Spinach, a larger crêpe filled with spinach, a little cheese, diced tomatoes, olives, and cilantro, along with two fried eggs. Although the filling wasn’t traditional, the vegetables tasted fresh, and I was happy that they were willing to fry the eggs (which are usually scrambled).

After dinner and shopping, I stopped by the Lake Champlain store for another round of chocolate indulgence (the day before, I had their peppermint hot chocolate). That and the Audubon Center were my favorites during my short visit to Vermont.

The first picture shows development on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Everyone said it was prettier, and I think they were right, but we didn’t want to go through customs. Considering the way the American customs agents behaved when we came back from Vancouver, I’m sure our compatriots would have pulled everything out of our clown-car Prius and poured out all our liquor. That would have made us cry.

Double-decker boats venture close to the bottom of Horseshoe Falls. Everyone on board is draped in cheap blue plastic to avoid getting soaked, but I think they do anyway. We didn’t want to pay for it, though it might be fun to do that someday, just to experience all the noise and vibration of the relentless water.

I tried to capture some bokeh and was moderately successful. In one or two shots the water looked nice, but the rocks and plants were never quite sharp enough. All my photos looked grainy, although none was taken at an ISO of greater than 400. Perhaps it was the mist in the air.

Todd and I made up pretty quickly, and here he is checking Facebook while I take pictures.

Right before we left, a rainbow appeared in front of American and Bridal Veil Falls. And yes, I did enhance it. It was nowhere near that bright.

Though dinner has a more extensive New American menu featuring dishes from arctic char  to rabbit terrine to rib-eye, lunch consists of bento boxes comprising a main dish and three sides. I chose the sunfish flown in from Hawaii, and it was seared to perfection, the crisp edges setting off the tender interior. The sweet chili glaze (next to the spinach salad) was the only truly spicy thing in the entire lunch, which leaned pretty far toward sweet.

After the fish, the spinach greens with cardamon-spiced nuts and red miso vinaigrette was the next most intriguing dish. I could taste the cardamon, and this salad, unlike the two others, maintained a balance of flavors. The papaya salad had a nice mix of crunch and softer ingredients. It was supposed to have a spicy coconut dressing, but I never tasted any coconut; it seemed more like thousand island dressing to me, and it had no heat whatsoever. The sweet orange and almond salad was refreshing. The three salads I chose all had nuts, so they began to seem too similar. There are plenty of other sides, including sticky rice, edamame, and udon noodles, as well as a cream-of-asparagus soup that my friends loved.

Texture was definitely the strong point in my lunch. If you go to Cerulean, try to avoid overtly sweet dishes, and enjoy some of the fish that’s flown in every day.

We couchsurfed with a couple and their daughter who live on the hill above downtown. I walked down the steps instead of taking the famous elevator, and then Todd drove me back, so I never did experience that tourist attraction. But I did walk down to the Mississippi and feel peaceful looking out over its vast expanse. I lived in Colorado for almost thirty years, and I know the Colorado carved the Grand Canyon. But whenever I see eastern rivers, I can’t help but think, “Now THAT’S a river.”

As I walked back downtown to watch the end of the roller derby tournament Todd was filming, the night was deepening. I’m not sure if the people who developed Dubuque over the decades really had views in mind, but I found great ones. I turned back toward the Mississippi to get this corn elevator. Below right is the highway I walked toward; the industry on the other side peeks over to the top. (I had fun lightening the color of the industrial buildings. If you enlarge the photo, you can see my boo-boos.) I went over the highway to get to the river (below left), but on the way back I went under it. When I cruised downtown again, I found this gold-domed building that looks like a state capitol but isn’t because that’s in Des Moines. I didn’t think to ask our hosts what went on in that building. And finally, here’s the clock tower, showing 7:15. Soon the dark will be descending on us by 6  or even 5 in the afternoon. It’s autumn, and the nights are eating into the days.

I liked living in Denver. Although I’d lived in the metro area for nearly three decades, I’d never lived in the city proper. For the first time since I lived in Washington, DC, I could walk just about everywhere I wanted to go.

I got settled there, and now I’m traveling again, and it’s unsettling me. I was feeling really stressed out last night as we couchsurfed (in a very nice bedroom). It wasn’t just the cute dog jumping on me in the middle of the night. It was all the change happening so fast.

The next week will be brutal in terms of driving. We have to get from Dubuque to Vermont by Thursday. After that, we’ll be spending several nights at a time in hotels or with friends. By then, I think the excitement of seeing the East Coast will have overcome my anxiety about finances and health.

It was rainy the day of her funeral, so they conducted the service inside, and we didn’t see the coffin lowered into the ground. For that reason, her death didn’t seem completely real to me until I went to Mount Moriah cemetery a year later. I was shocked and ashamed to discover that her gravestone was the most terrible thing I’d ever seen.

Shocked because I’d spent the past year in emotional upheaval, contending with the most intense anger I’d ever felt and waking up many mornings thinking, “My life is completely worthless.” I’d hoped I was done with the most difficult part of grieving. Ashamed because I asked myself, “How can I be so upset over my mother’s death—untimely though it was—when so many other people in the world lose children to starvation or most of their family in war?” I guess I expected myself to have a longer perspective, but I had none. I looked at her grave, went back to the car and howled.

After twenty years, I still miss my mother all the time, but my longing for her doesn’t take up so much space in my life. I sat on her grave and talked to her for a while. I pulled up some grass and dandelions so her gravestone was more visible. I didn’t realize that I could have pulled the vase up out of the ground and instead put the flowers on top of it. And I wondered why the grass over her coffin had died. Surely she wasn’t outgassing anymore, after twenty years? And that reminded me of how the priest at her funeral had called her “Shirley,” and none of us had corrected him.

Now my father is the one who’s heading out to sea. We’re about to close down the law firm he established when I was a teenager. We may even get the car sold this year. We hope he’ll consent before he gets another wild hair and takes a cab from assisted living to his old house to trying driving once again. The one time he did that, luckily, he decided it wasn’t such a good idea before he got in the car.

The day before Todd and I left Kansas City for Iowa, we took Dad to the Overland Park Arboretum to get him out in nature. It’s a beautiful place, and a little closer and more manageable than Powell Gardens. Several times he exclaimed about the beauty of the landscaping. Todd had to do most of the ambulating—Dad’s not strong enough to do the full tour with his walker or push himself up the inclines in his wheelchair. (I had been taking pictures on my BlackBerry in close-up mode, and I forgot to change it to another setting; that’s why this picture is so blurry.)

Here’s a view of one of the ecosystems at Overland Park Arboretum. When we got him back home, he was ready for dinner, and, most of all, he was ready to get himself there instead of having us do it. I watched through the window in the security door as he rolled away, and I thought, What if this is the last time I see him alive?

But it probably won’t be.

Thanks to Todd Bradley for taking the photographs of the radiation “treatment.” (He was not allowed in the room during my actual treatment, but the radiation therapists were kind enough to run the machine for us after my treatment.) All other photographs were taken by Beth Partin.

The equipment used in this reconstruction fascinates me. I wish I knew how to operate machines like the ones in pictures 3 and 4 below.

I’ve been taking pictures surreptitiously as the project has progressed. I’m half-afraid someone will see me taking pictures and get upset about it, even though I’m taking photos of what occurs on the street—which should be public.

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Black Pearl is an elegant space, and all the staff were attentive, though I wish our waiter had been a little less formal. 

We could have made a meal of our appetizers. The 6 Eagle Rock oysters from Washington State were silky and dressed in a tarragon mignonette, though I tasted more paprika than tarragon. They were delightfully tart and a little spicy. Todd ordered the grilled romaine salad, which was peppery and smoky and grilled just the right amount, which is to say that the greens still had some texture. The dressing was rich, perhaps even gooey, but it seemed appropriate. We couldn’t stop eating the truffle fries, which were encrusted with parmesan and were good even when cool, although the herb aioli was bland.

Todd loves scallops, so he couldn’t pass up that entree, which came with a sweet corn crème fraîche sauce, shaved snap peas, and black truffles. I tasted only the scallops, which were perfectly sautéed. My entree, the piquillo peppers stuffed with wild mushrooms and Gruyere, was more substantial, less pretty than Todd’s but more interesting. Overall it was smoky because of the poblano chili oil, and the stuffing was moist rather than cheesy, but the jalapeño added bite and both it and the cauliflower contributed some crispness—though not quite enough.

If I hadn’t been so full from all the rich, smoky food, I would have ordered the drunken pear and chocolate mousse. Or the lemon meringue tartlet with thyme chocolate ganache. Next time.

After that, I had a CT and four tiny black tattoos so the radiation technicians could decide exactly where the radiation beams should go. The doctor came in and pasted metal strips around my right breast; the laser can get through fabric but not metal. One of the techs showed me the picture, and I said, “Amazon!” It was impressive.

I will be having 6 weeks of radiation to the right breast around the incision, to part of the area where lymph nodes were removed under my right arm, and to my chest below the collarbone. Radiation is “local” therapy designed to destroy any remaining cancer cells, as opposed to the “systemic” therapy (chemo).

Next time I won’t be wearing a skirt and sandals. It was cold in that room.

Now I have 4 tattoos, 4 incisions of varying lengths, and one thick bruise the size of an egg in my right breast (no drain for lumpectomies, I guess, though I had a drain for the lymphectomy). My right arm is still pretty tight, but I’ve started physical therapy, and the exercises seem to help.

I wanted to show you the ON-Q Painbuster that was installed during surgery. I wore it for 6 days. See the length of tubing by the measuring tape? About 8–10 inches of that was inside my body. It functions like a drip line; the black areas dripped anesthetic into my right side. 

Todd had to pull it out. That was probably one of the more disgusting experiences of his life. It didn’t hurt me, but I bet it made him a little queasy.

I told Todd I worried that my hair might never grow back. It was thinning before my diagnosis; maybe the chemo just finished off those valiant but malnourished hair follicles.

“You’d be edgy,” he suggested.

“But I wouldn’t be Beth with beautiful hair,” I said, getting teary-eyed. (We’re talking Beth circa 1992 here.) I was surprised when he told me he wished he had beautiful hair. When I met Todd, his hair, although thick and curly, was already receding, and he had always told me he was used to it. But perhaps not completely.

The turkey legs looked good against the City and County Building, but we skipped them. We had red velvet cake and ice cream on a stick instead, and a huge cherry limeade. 

We skipped the vodka as well. Somewhere in Civic Center Park there was a wine tasting, which sounded tempting even at 10 in the morning. 

All in all, we spent about $30 on food at the People’s Fair, not to mention my new hat.

On our way to the 0 bus back to the Baker neighborhood, we saw this lovely fellow.

Yes, the trash bag blowing in the wind in American Beauty is a wonderful thing, but most of them cling to trees or barbed-wire fences, marring our landscape.

The second comes from Occupy Denver’s May Day event in Civic Center Park. Clearly, they need someone to set up zero waste events for them.

At least half the items on top could be recycled.

Read about Trash Walk 1 here.

I heard of the event from Dana Miller, GLC’s director (on the right), and also met Barbara Masoner (in the pink shirt) that night. There were several photographers and at least two videographers there. 

GLC has 14 garden plots in Denver that grow food for the hungry. If you already have a garden, you can Plant a Row for the Hungry at home.

More pictures from the planting at the Governor’s Mansion have been posted on Flickr.

I had been sitting in the park fronting the state Capitol building, on the low wall along Broadway. There were at least 50 people and their sleeping gear strung along Broadway and around the corner up 14th. Across 14th Street stands the new Ralph Carr Justice Center, proclaiming “Liberty and Justice for All.” State troopers patrolled, since this side is state property; Civic Center Park is city property. I chatted for a while with a friendly young man who said he spent a lot of time there. I didn’t know if he was an Occupier or not.

When I saw the march return, I crossed Broadway and made my way to the auditorium. A small group stood behind the mic where the emcee introduced the first speaker. I sat and listened for a while, but I was more interested in the signs. I’m always a sucker for spectacle.

The “99%” sign made its appearance and meandered over to the Statue of Liberty. 

Here is my favorite shot. I love the statue’s bug-eyed expression.

Eventually, the emcee brought up the teach-ins, the reason I was there in the first place. I was hoping to attend one in each of the two sessions. I headed toward the pink flag, passing the free food stand (where I got an orange) and getting a flyer from the Foreclosure Resistance Coalition.

University of Colorado philosophy professor Chad Kautzer spoke on the topic “Neoliberalism and Labor: The Struggle Today.” He contrasted neoliberalism, a politico-economic system in which the state supports but does not regulate capitalism, with the system in place after World War II, which he called “embedded capitalism.” Neoliberalism is a much less regulated form of capitalism, and since the 1970s, has become the dominant form of capitalism in the world, bringing us outsourcing and the resulting loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States, a weakened labor movement, and the financial crisis we experienced since 2008.

My favorite point? His assertion that debt is a tool used by the neoliberal state to keep citizens in line. People who have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt are reluctant to fight too hard for their rights. If they lose their jobs, who will pay the bills? Kautzer’s suggestion: eliminate your debt. Then you have more freedom of political movement.

After the first teach-in, I returned to the auditorium, where I listened to Live Animal play folk songs for a small crowd. I was feeling tired and hot. Only two hours, and I was fading. As I left, I heard the speaker saying:

We’ll be back next year, and the year after that . . .

Occupy movements may be small outside New York and Oakland, but they are tough and persistent. In addition to the people who sleep on the sidewalks and in the parks, they have committees organizing events and educators teaching people. They are engaging with politicians. They are learning and growing. Occupy Denver is here to stay.

I don’t want to go, but I’m doing it anyway—because I don’t want to be a quitter. Because I don’t want to reproach myself later if the cancer comes back. Because I don’t have the courage right now to say, “Chemotherapy is a very messed-up way to deal with an illness. I choose a different approach.”

Sometimes I think half the things I do in life, I do to avoid reproaching myself later. And I don’t really trust my own intuition.

But, as I’m telling myself this week, I can trust myself after this last treatment.

And then we will PARTAAAY! Well, maybe in about three weeks to a month … before the surgery and radiation … or maybe afterward …

Throughout my life, I’ve been blessed with good health and strength. I never needed a doctor other than my gynecologist until I was in my thirties and developed a repetitive motion injury. Now I’m pushing fifty and will be going to see doctors about triple-negative breast cancer for many years, if not the rest of my life, and yet I still don’t really believe I have it. All the disease ever did to me was enlarge my right armpit. The “cure” has afflicted me much worse than the disease.

I grew up with a mother who had rheumatoid arthritis that later destroyed her aorta and carotid arteries (in my opinion) and a father who was raised Christian Scientist and then converted to Catholicism. He had nothing against doctors; in fact, he convinced his mother to see one, I think about the congestive heart failure that killed her. He had polio when he was nine months old and always walked with a limp. He couldn’t jog, but he did learn to water-ski, and he rode his bike around our neighborhood. Once he even did a hundred, riding into the wind on the way out on some south Kansas City highway.

My mother didn’t talk much about her auto-immune illness, and I didn’t ask her about the effects I couldn’t see. Each of us wanted to be strong in our own ways, though I would ask her now, if I could. December 21 is the twentieth anniversary of her death. You learn, after the death of someone you love deeply, that grief doesn’t fade so much as shrink. In time, your life grows up around it but never completely obscures it.

Last night I thought of calling my father to tell him I have almost finished chemotherapy. But I told my siblings I wouldn’t talk to him about it anymore because it upsets him. He has Alzheimer’s and can’t remember certain things. The last time I mentioned it, he said he had forgotten, and I knew he felt bad about it.

Perhaps the next time I visit him, I will tell him about all the strange places I went because of cancer last winter and this spring and summer. I could say that the knowledge of it rose like a cold current in my body but very seldom spilled over. I could describe my rages and crying jags and the long drives to the infusion room.

But what was most unusual and wonderful, this year, was my acceptance of all the help I received. I remember a man long ago saying to me, after I paid him the exact amount he had lent me, “You don’t want to be obligated to anyone, do you?”

Well, no. When I was sixteen, I told my parents I was “completely independent.” Somehow they managed to restrain themselves from pointing out the food they provided and their car that I drove (and wrecked) and their house where I lived.

I have never felt so cared for in my life as I do now. Thank you.

But it’s weird to feel so much gratitude and so much cognitive dissonance at the same time.

Since November, I have been wondering about the messages we’re given after our diagnosis:

• If you undergo these tests, we can tell you what’s wrong with you.
• You can beat this with the right regimen. Hey, chemo sucks! But it will heal you.
• You can beat this if you stay positive. Negativity and anger are toxic. Forgive!

Why is cancer so personal? Why is cancer all about what I do? What if I’m not a positive person? What if I’m a pessimist? All of us know pessimists. Clearly, not all of them have died.

The only solution, for me, is to be grateful for the health I’ve had and the help I received and to assist others by researching the politics of cancer treatment. There’s something creepy about Amgen paying for almost all the cost of my pricey Neulasta shot. There is also something creepy about pharmaceutical companies funding National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Why is so little attention paid to the causes of cancer, such as the toxins we absorb from conception on? Why work so hard to defeat something when it could be prevented?

Note: This post was inspired, in part, by Andi O’Conor’s tales of rebuilding her house, which burned down in the Four Mile Canyon Fire in 2010, especially “Life on the Edge.”

Then I remembered: It’s 4/20. The day to smoke pot in public places. “Won’t they get arrested?” I asked the woman sitting next to me. “No,” she said, “there are too many of them, and they might have permits. I have a permit.” Maybe my question marks me as a goody two-shoes—except I never was such a thing. I was just oblivious to anything trendy.

At this point the bus driver announced, “For those of you who care, it’s officially 4:20.”

I got out and circled the park toward the City and County Building, grousing to myself that it was OK for a bunch of teenage stoners to use Civic Center Park (and even get a row of port-a-potties), but not Occupy Denver. It’s OK to smoke pot in the park, but it’s not OK to camp.

I found my way to Traffic Court, announced in a funny nasal voice by a small, skinny man wearing a red tie. I entered Room 105A, at one end of a long, marble-lined hallway, and saw Todd sitting in the back row. He told me I had to wait outside, and just at that moment one of the court officials announced that children were not allowed in traffic court. I went outside and waited on the same bench as a tattooed man with his black hair pulled back into a ponytail and then braided. Like many other people waiting on the benches for their friends and family in the court, he eventually got up to get a drink of water and lost his seat.

I followed his lead after a while and waited out in the long hallway until Todd came out. Today was his (and 95 other people’s) arraignment. He pleaded not guilty, and his court date is June 20. I told him I was sorry it had turned out to be such a hassle. I hope it’s worth it.

After I kissed Todd goodbye, I passed the guards’ desk on my way to the exit. I could have sworn I heard one of them say, “What is that weird woman still doing here?” Or maybe he just said “woman.” I was tempted to go back and flash him my scalp. (You think this wig is weird, officer? Well, feel my head!) But no. I’m too polite. And I really wanted something to eat.

On my first visit to Sketch, in mid-January, the small restaurant was packed. We sat at the back by the only bathroom, where it was quieter. My friend Ruth Tobias was interviewing the man who was redoing the wine list, and we were well attended to. I had a refreshing Prosecco with pear, and she ordered a couple of the spicier red wines, a taste we share. We sampled two cheeses, one of which, the Gouda with nettles, had an intriguing herbal flavor. And then we had homemade pasta in a crimini mushroom sauce. The dish featured a light, flavorful mushroom sauce with slivers of zucchini and parmesan, and I was pleased that the chef gave me a small portion. I get tired of the huge amounts of pasta served at some restaurants.  

It was much quieter at Sketch the second time I ate there, on Tuesday. R2 and I would have sat on the patio, but the sun was too blinding at 5 pm, so we went inside to the bar. She tried to order a Roederer sparkling wine but was handed a glass of red wine. When it turned out that the bottle of wine she really wanted had gone flat and they didn’t have one on ice, she got the Segura Viudas Brut Rose Cava instead. I saw “blood orange soda” on the menu and ordered that, made by Rième, a French company that was new to me. I took home the bottle because (1) it was all curvy and (2) Sketch doesn’t recycle.

R2 ordered the pasta with mushrooms, and it looked pretty much the same as the one I had, although she got a larger serving and there were no long slivers of vegetables across the pasta.

The warm brussels sprouts salad was pleasing enough, and simple enough, that I thought I’d try to make it at home. Its base, mixed greens in balsamic vinaigrette, was softened by the addition of butternut squash cubes and figs and contrasted with the firmer brussels sprouts leaves. (You can find a few of them in the picture, around the edges. There weren’t as many as I expected.) The last three ingredients were sautéed with something spicy and tossed with the greens and caramelized onions and toasted hazelnuts. I liked the mixture of warm and cool, sweet and spicy and sour, crunchy and silky.

We paid up and walked down Broadway to Delite because one restaurant just wasn’t enough. By then the sun had gone behind the buildings on Broadway, so we could sit in the garage door–style window and watch passersby stare at us.  I ordered a rather dull Gruet sparkling wine to go with the mac and cheese, and R2 got spicy edamame and a glass of Clean Slate riesling. We sat by the DJ and listened to 1980s tunes. You’d think the salad from Sketch would have filled me up, especially after the stomach shrinkage caused by 4 chemo treatments, but the mac, served in a small cast iron pan, had a creamy truffle sauce that I couldn’t resist. I liked it much more than Sputnik’s version, which was rather dry.

When I saw the article I’m linking to today, I was tempted to send it to her and see if a second try would be successful. But then I felt childish. I knew that I really wanted her to say, “You’re right, Beth. Walmart is a terrible company, and I will never shop there again.” It wasn’t so much the desire to provide information as my pride that motivated me.

So I’m sharing it with you. The crux of the article is that Walmart has brought outsourcing back to America. In the process, it makes it nearly impossible for workers to unionize and it protects itself from allegations that it abuses its workers. Why? Because they’re not Walmart’s employees. They’re two times removed.

The New Blue Collar: Temporary Work, Lasting Poverty, and the American Warehouse, by David Jamieson

I couldn’t help but notice that this article was published by HuffPost. You know, the company that Ariana Huffington built by getting a lot of people to write for her for free? The one she sold for $300 million? Walmart isn’t the only one who knows how to make money by screwing other people.

What should we call this new phenomenon? In-sourcing? Back-sourcing?

During this cycle of chemo (the third), I was a little later getting to the rec center than last cycle. I took some walks and did some yoga and Pilates, but I didn’t get to the rec center until last Thursday and then Saturday. I did a workout at home in between, and by Saturday I was pretty tired.

I’ve been trying to maintain my strength throughout chemo, but today was the first day I managed to ride the recumbent bike for 30 minutes, and that was only on level 3. Now, I’ve never ridden the bike at a level higher than 5, but 3 seems pretty wimpy. After about 15 minutes, I went down to level 2 because my legs were tired. I tried to keep my heart rate around 140.

Afterward, I did some resistance training: sitting row, hip abduction and adduction, leg extension. I would have done 3 sets of dead lifts at 40 pounds (including the bar), but there were too many people in the weight room. Maybe I can do those next time. I think they’re good for my back.

After my workout, I stretched in the basketball gym while a man practiced 3-point shots. Then I walked closer to the murals at the back of the gym. According to the woman at the front desk, the athletes in the mural were modeled after various people from the community in 1979. I wonder if they were excited to see themselves immortalized that way. She said the mural had never been touched up, and it looks great (except for the football player who’s positioned so as to kick the boxer in the crotch).

There’s another mural in the pool area, which includes a couple of figures and various solar bodies. It’s a different style than the mural in the gym, but apparently two of the artists were the same.

Bending down to pick up the trash over and over took a little bit of effort, but it wasn’t too bad. I wasn’t as feverish or as tired as I was on Sunday.

In 6 blocks total, I filled my bag with trash. 

Next time I think I will wear gloves, and I will carry two bags so that I don’t have to sort through all the dirt to get to the recyclables.

Oh, and I won’t wear white pants.

***

This trash pickup was inspired by It Starts with Me.

First of all, I have to explain that it’s been very difficult for me to cry about this diagnosis. At times I would have liked to sob for a few hours, just to release some tension, but it doesn’t happen. Except, I guess, when I watch sad love stories.

And, of course, in Bright Star, John Keats is dying of tuberculosis, a loathsome disease. (That same disease has just been found in a school in Longmont, by the way.)

I started thinking about the disgusting nature of chemotherapy. How it follows this insidious path in my body. How the effects make me feel less than human and certainly not female anymore. Something more like a test case. I’m not sure why the weakness, the stomach upset, the hair loss, and the brain fog produce this reaction. It’s just that they all feel so wrong for a person who prided herself on her health and her ability to get by without medicine.

When I was a teenager, I did a few drugs. I smoked cigarettes, I drank a lot of coffee with milk and sugar, I smoked pot, and I did mushrooms once. In the 1980s, I did coke a few times. Finally, in my thirties, I realized what should have been obvious: I don’t like being drunk or stoned. I don’t like smoking. I don’t really like altering my body’s natural functioning at all.

And now I’m on these drugs, supposedly to save my life, that are trashing my body, far worse than the cancer has until this point. Setting aside the certainty of what cancer would have done in the long run, I want to talk about the perverse nature of chemotherapy. Why is it that the medical establishment chose this route to cure cancer instead of a more natural approach?

I think it happened because of the postwar mindset. Because we were high on creating new chemicals that could fix our world for us, solve all our conflicts with nature.

Have you ever noticed that since World War II, poisons have worked themselves into every corner of our lives, thanks to corporations? Some 80,000 new chemicals have been created since that time. They’re used in agriculture and industry and cosmetics. But are the pharmaceuticals in use today part of that group of 80,000 chemicals? After a very small amount of surfing, I would say that chemo drugs are in those ranks.

Here’s the quote I love best from the second link: “With advances in technology that improved the ability to detect and quantify these chemicals, we can now begin to identify what effects, if any, these chemicals have on human and environmental health.”

Yep, I am a guinea pig. And so are you and your kids. Because most of these new chemicals haven’t been tested. Why? Because it’s just not important to the US government to understand the health effects of all those chemicals. That might restrict corporations’ ability to sell them.

I’ve spent the last 15 years of my life trying to avoid chemicals. I cleaned my house without them. I managed without bleach (yes, chlorine is a poison). I ate organic food. And so on. My main lapse was to use Roundup on my yard, but even that involved using smaller amounts of chemicals than if I’d used Weed and Feed every season.

And still I got cancer. For all I know, it may have been caused by smoking in high school. Or by not having children. But the presence of 80,000 new chemicals in the world, mixing together in our bodies in ways we don’t understand, certainly does raise hard questions.

And now I’m using more chemicals to clean up the mess in my body.

It’s insidious, don’t you see?

So here’s my pledge: I am never doing this again. If my cancer recurs (and triple-negative breast cancer is more likely to recur than other subtypes), I won’t do chemo again. I hate it.

Last Friday I had my third infusion out of six. The needle hurt going in, and I’m beginning to suspect it has something to do with the nurse who installs it. Perhaps a little less vigor next time?

I ate lunch, as usual. Afterward we went to the Pearl Street Mall to visit the chocolate store opened by a former yoga teacher of ours.

One thing that surprised me about the second cycle was how quickly my sweet cravings came back. Every day for 12 days, I had donuts or ice cream or chocolate or something similar. It was a little eerie, watching it happen. Then on the Wednesday before chemo, I went to a potluck with members of Boulder Media Women, and Linda Spangle gave me 100 Days of Weight Loss: The Secret to Being Successful on Any Diet Plan. She said she takes a copy of one of her books to gatherings and always finds someone who needs it. And she was right—I do need a book like that. I’m planning to use it this cycle to avoid acting like such a sweets addict.

The very first daily motivator goes this way: “I used to be that way, but now I’m different!”

If I could just convince myself of that—convince myself that I don’t need to eat every sugary thang that crosses my path—it would do wonders for my health and self-esteem.

But, when I have a sour stomach, desserts do sound good. Although I should be grateful I have only a “sour stomach” instead of nausea and vomiting, I’m not. I just want it to go away.

In two or three days, it will subside. I know that, so I’m trying to distract myself by keeping busy.

During the second chemo cycle, a new symptom emerged—muscle twitches, coldness, and weakness—and it’s back, in my face and arms and legs. The nurse practitioner suggested I take L-glutamine and alpha-lipoic acid, which I haven’t yet bought, and a friend suggested acupuncture. So tomorrow Todd will take me to the walk-in acupuncture clinic in Boulder, and I’ll see if that does anything.

At times I rejoice that I’ve made it through 3 cycles, but then at other times the remaining 3 sound so endless.

The tumor in my right armpit is disappearing. It’s just a little nubbin now.

And there is the new book, which gives me hope that one day I won’t be a slave to sugar.

It’s warm and sunny outside. I think I’ll go for a walk before tomorrow’s cold descends.

This song, “I Swear,” is  a great introduction to their sound. I would say the style is rockabilly, but her voice is so piercing and interesting to me.

Here a link to all my Bumbershoot 2011 photos.

I’ve always loved it when the moon appears to be swinging from a star, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how to photograph the wintry trees in the Baker neighborhood.* So I stared at the sky for a while and then went inside and got my tripod and my camera. I don’t have a ball head on my tripod, which makes it difficult to take a vertical shot with the camera on a tripod. But I managed. This is a 10-second exposure, and it looks pretty sharp to me. I haven’t tried to print it to an 8 by 10 yet, but I think I will to see if the sharpness is good enough for that size print.

The original shot showed the cars parked on the street, but they were fairly bright, and I thought they diverted attention away from the sky.

*Given how early it was in the evening, the “star” was probably a planet.

My most recent post on this blog was written January 27, the last time he was seen alive by the door-people at his apartment in Kansas City. By February 3, Todd and I were in Kansas City, helping my siblings dispose of Matt’s belongings.

I learned a lot about my brother that week. First of all, I saw his apartment, and I took pictures of it, which I still need to edit and send to my family. My brother was an intensely private person—so much so that none of his family had ever seen his apartment before he died—so I won’t post those photos here. To do so, in my opinion, would violate his privacy. He would dislike the fact that I’m writing about him, but I justify it by telling myself that his death is part of my life, too.

Matt lived in a library. Every available bit of wall in his two-bedroom apartment had a bookshelf, filled to the brim with books and magazines containing articles on the same subject as the books. He had a large fiction section, including many mysteries; 4 shelves of art books; and many nonfiction titles. We estimated he had 7,000 books. I did a little figuring in my head, and decided if he started collecting these books 30 years ago, he would have had to read 1 book every 2 days for the past 30 years.

I couldn’t help but look for my own novel. It wasn’t there. I know I sent it to him in 1998, so I can only conclude it was culled to make room for other books.

The area on and around his large desk contained the research he had been doing for a book about Harry Truman’s early years in Kansas City, a subject on which I knew him to be an expert.

That was the second thing I learned about Matt: that he had written a book proposal and was getting ready to send it out. Matt saved his check-out slips from the library, and I found one from January 2012 with such titles as “How to Get a Literary Agent” and “Making the Perfect Pitch.”

It’s hard to express how sad that slip of paper made me feel. I have had my own struggles with publishing, but I know why I’ve written 3 books and published only 1: definitely a lack of follow-through, and partly a lack of desire. I might have turned the novel and short-story collection into publishable books if I had spent more time revising them. But I got tired, possibly because I had no critique group to nudge me. So to learn that Matt had been working on a book for 8 years, had been so close to finishing it, and then had died really hurt.  He spent most of his life as a lawyer when he should have been an academic. If he had gone back to school for his PhD when he wanted to, in the early 1990s, he might have already published this book.

I decided one of my jobs that week would be to box up all of Matt’s research and save it until I could figure out what to do with it. I thought 10 boxes might do it, but we filled about 20 boxes with his black binders full of microfilm printouts. He had 7 such binders on the police, with articles from Kansas City newspapers dating from around 1918 to the 1940s.

Todd and my brother Russ and my sisters helped so much.

I don’t know how to get this material to researchers. Even if all the copies were good copies (some are barely legible), I assume posting a bunch of old newspaper articles online may violate copyright. Maybe they’re all in the public domain. But then the question becomes, “Who is going to do all the work of scanning 20 boxes’ worth of newspaper articles?”

Me? Some graduate student in history?

Here is a short excerpt from my brother’s book proposal:

…the biographies and other works about Truman have the history of his time in Kansas City politics backwards. In fact, the history was actually put backwards in the 1930s–1940s. That was done by frustrated election opponents of Truman and other Democrats, by an equally frustrated and virulently Republican Kansas City Star, and by William Reddig, a Star editor and the author of Tom’s Town: Kansas City and the Pendergast Legend. Reddig’s book was a campaign attack-history aimed at helping prevent Truman’s reelection in 1948, by implicitly portraying him as a knowing and willing beneficiary of the corruption, crime, electoral fraud and violence which, according to Reddig, pervaded and sustained the local Democratic coalition. Spread widely by biographers, who mistook Tom’s Town for a true history of Truman’s part in Kansas City politics, Reddig’s stories have kept that history backwards for decades. My book will put that history back around to straight forward.

Pretty bold claim, isn’t it?

I am no historian. I can’t write my brother’s book for him, based on his research, even if I wanted to. The best I can do is put his book proposal and research on the Internet, where Truman historians could access it to support their own work. I’d love to see this book proposal cause some controversy among historians, make them rethink their research. I think that was what Matt wanted. But first I have to get it out there. Any ideas?

***

A third thing I learned about Matt: he had at least one close friend in a man who worked at his apartment complex. George told my sister that he knew Matt had a father but didn’t know he had any siblings. Unfortunately, George wasn’t at work when I dropped off the funeral notice, so he didn’t get to attend my brother’s service, though another staff member did attend.

If he had other friends, I didn’t find them when I took his obituary to the UMKC Law Library and the Plaza branch of the KC Public Library. People there said they recognized him, but as one woman at UMKC said, “He didn’t need a lot of help.” She meant he was self-sufficient. But I think Matt did need more support than he got in life. I just wish I could have figured out how to break through his reserve. I would have loved to discuss mysteries with him or hear his progress on his book, but I never asked the right questions.

My siblings have hired a company to auction Matt’s books and his 350-or-so model car kits and his furniture. It frightens me to see how easy it is to dismantle a life. I didn’t feel that way after my mother’s death because my father kept most of her possessions—in fact, her books and household goods are still in my father’s house, even though he doesn’t live there. But Matt didn’t have a spouse to keep his possessions after his death, and he didn’t make a will. Perhaps he couldn’t bear the thought of giving away all the things he collected, so instead he concentrated on his new obsession: the book he was writing.

Not that losing hair is new to me. My hair has been falling out for fifteen years (Thanks, Grandpa!), and I got a buzz cut last year just to see how I liked it. I have to say, it wasn’t my favorite ’do—I didn’t like the look of the top, which was longer than the rest—but I could live with it. Especially in places like Seattle or Portland, where I saw a lot of women walking around with extremely short hair.

Todd was nonplussed by my insistence on a barbershop. He didn’t understand my desire for a haircut involving hot towels and a straight razor. For a while, I considered going to Proper Barbershop in Denver, but then I decided that a cold PBR and vintage Playboys weren’t that important to me. Neither was gender integration of that particular haven for men. I left it to the boys this time.

Instead I chose Al’s Barbershop, which has a location on the Hill in Boulder convenient to my appointment with the oncologist late that afternoon. The first thing I noticed upon my entrance was that all the pictures of fabulous hair featured men. Judith, my certified barber (Al won’t let you use a straight razor on customers until you’re certified), decided she would use scissors and a comb to shorten my hair, instead of a trimmer. So she divided it into sections and got to work. 

She was amazingly quick. In no time at all, I was under half an inch all over my head. It was relaxing to have the comb scraped (gently) up and down my scalp. Then came the real treat: hot foam and a neck shave. 

Judith didn’t have any reason to use hot towels on me, but she did promise I could come back when my hair got patchy and have my head properly shaved. Then, she said, she would use hot towels and polish my scalp until it shone.

I’m still not sure if I want that.

I got there by crossing the Ballard Locks and moseying through the neighborhood. It was a long walk, but worth it. On the way to the center, I stopped at this sign, feeling torn. “Land’s End” always sounds so enticing. 

But I chose the detour instead. When I was done exploring the center, I entered the forest remnant nearby and had a green, peaceful hike back to the road. I love finding havens in cities that make you forget the city exists.

This pond was lush with reeds and ferns. The latter were a treat, since I have seldom visited places abounding in ferns.In September, it was still coated with green algae that made it resemble pavement.

Alas, all good illusions must end, as mine did when I found this extremely un-primeval landmark. 

Maybe Prednisone works that way, but the Dexamethasone didn’t do it for me. It’s prescribed primarily to stave off side effects, and I will say that I had very low levels of nausea over the weekend.

I went in Friday, January 13, met with my doctor, and had chemo for several hours. First the nurse stabbed me in the chest with a wicked-looking needle that has a slight curve. That hurt, but only when she stabbed me. (Having this port in my chest freaks me out.) After the anti-nausea drugs and more steroids, she pushed Adriamycin in over 10 minutes, and when she was done, she hooked me up to the Cytoxan, I think, and let it drip. The Taxotere came last. Or maybe it was the other way around.

When I unplugged my chemo dispenser and dragged it to the bathroom, I discovered the Adriamycin had turned my urine pink. That lasted for a couple of days.

Todd and I ran errands in Broomfield after we finished chemo and then headed back to Boulder, where we were staying with a friend. I had to get a Neulasta shot on Saturday morning to support my body’s production of neutrophils (a type of white blood cell), so it was best to spend the night in Boulder instead of driving back and forth to Denver on Saturday.

Todd and I had made plans to attend a banked-track roller derby bout in Colorado Springs. We had lunch first with friends, and then I fell asleep on the way to the venue—a sign of things to come. After we arrived, Todd ran around doing video things, and I edited photographs, but the brain fog and light sensitivity that had crept up the night before got worse. I slept through the second half of the bout and all the way home to Denver. Todd said I took 4 naps on Sunday. I don’t remember.

On Monday night, we went to watch a movie with some friends. I was feeling very uncomfortable in any position, and my jeans seemed to bind my knees. It occurred to me the next day that I was experiencing the achiness associated with Neulasta, and I should have taken Claritin the day of the shot and the next day. I made it through the movie Monday night, but it was a physical struggle.

As I said, I had very little nausea, probably because I took Compazine (Prochlorperazine) until Monday or so. But it made my head feel swollen. I kept wanting to massage my temples, and the drug seemed to thicken the fog that surrounded me. I tried to do productive things, but the most I could manage was to edit a few photographs.

On Tuesday, I felt much less tired, but I needed to figure out how to manage my heartburn. I didn’t want to take more Compazine, but when I got up in the morning, feeling hungry, and ate something, my stomach hurt. I took a nurse’s advice and tried Prilosec, but so far it hasn’t helped all that much.

My tendency to eat when my stomach bothers me didn’t help matters. I couldn’t resist a frozen dinner with Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes for lunch, but the first bite fell into my stomach like a rock. Saltines helped calm things down, but then I allowed Todd to persuade me to eat at Go Fish, where I avoided raw fish and ate gyoza and tempura vegetables. I began to feel my GI tract was a distant galaxy where stars were forming. I started taking a Senna laxative, but because I took only 1 at a time, at first I felt more discomfort.

Wednesday was the worst day for stomach problems, and something was waking me up at night, so I wasn’t getting much sleep. I walked to K-Mart to buy pajamas, and my stomach was tender. Once I got home, Saltines came to my rescue. I felt so good that I agreed to meet a friend for dinner, where we ate cheese and a light pasta dish and drank wine. It was great food—especially the Gouda with nettles—and great company, but my stomach winced at each new bite.

Lessons learned:

• Take Claritin before and after Neulasta, and take two Senna each night, starting the night of chemo.
• Stop taking Compazine as soon as possible and switch to Prilosec or something else that reduces stomach acid.
• Drink lots of broth and eat lots of bread. Tame the mouth monster that wants constant stimulation, and feed the body instead.
• Avoid social engagements until the fifth day after chemo (and the period will get longer as I get to the later treatments).
• Be aware that as my stomach begins to feel better, my white blood cell counts are dropping. Stay away from crowded places where I might pick up an infection.
• Save the restaurants for the 10-day mark or later.

Tonight I’m taking Ativan (Lorazepam) to help me sleep. Maybe it will soothe my stomach as well.

***

Slept like a baby, and woke up to spotting. I think chemo-induced menopause has begun.

When I was doing my third year at the University of Sussex, I got such a major crick in my neck that I walked around for at least a day with my head tilted to the side. One of my professors wanted to know why I was holding my head that way. I felt that way today, talking to a friend who stopped by to drop off baked ziti and salad and bread. (I think it’s about time for a second serving.)

It was a comedy of errors this morning at the Department of Interventional Radiology. When I was in the pre/post room, being attended to by three different nurses, a handsome young man with bed head approached me. I asked if he was the surgeon, and he replied, “I’m one of them.” (UCH is a teaching hospital, after all.) He said they were going to put the port on the right side.

“The same side as the tumor?” I asked. “Shouldn’t it be on the other side?” I knew there was a good reason for my question, though I was far too sleepy to think of it. He said they would discuss it in the OR, explained the procedure, and left.

Once in the OR, I was hooked up to various machines. There was a bank of 8 monitors, 6 of which had my name on them. I found that life-affirming, or at least ego-affirming.

The man with the goatee set up a tray for the surgery and then had to redo it because he hadn’t realized I was allergic to latex. (I’m not sure I really am allergic to latex, for that matter. After one dive trip, I got a rash that lasted for a few days. I attributed it to wearing my latex dive suit for 4 days straight, but who knows? It could have been anything.)

The next step was to help me get my right arm out of the gown so he could clean my shoulder. By this time, I had asked two or three people whether the port should be on the left side. He explained to me that it’s easier to put the port on the right because the vein into which the tube is inserted makes a little jog on the left side.

Then he swabbed my shoulder with an icy substance that left a blue residue and proceeded to cover me artistically with blue drapes. (Does anyone else think “Two by two, hands of blue” from Firefly/Serenity when they see those new hospital gloves? Creepy. Can’t get it out of my head.)

Just as I was almost tented in, a woman whose name/rank/serial number I never caught snuck under the drapes and informed me that, yes, the port should be on the left. If they put it on the right side, it would make post-surgery radiation more difficult. This was the “Time Out” that I had been told would happen, so they could make sure they got everything right.

Right arm back in the gown. Left shoulder out. Icy wash again. I hoped I didn’t flash the man with the goatee, but I didn’t really care either. Tenting on the other side, and all I could think was, “Are they going to recycle all that plastic? Reuse it?”

I asked the man with the goatee if he was doing all right. I thought he was frustrated because he had to keep redoing all his prep work. I hope it didn’t come across as snotty, because I didn’t really mean it that way. It might have been his fault that he didn’t catch my so-called allergy, but it certainly wasn’t his problem that the doctors hadn’t “done rounds” and didn’t know where my port should go. Especially since I had brought it up with one of them almost an hour before I went to the OR.

The last thing I remembered before surgery was the (fourth) nurse telling me she was giving me sedatives now. When I woke up, someone on the other side of the blue drape was tugging at my chest. I think it was one of the surgeons finishing the sutures.

For the rest of the day, all I did was get crabby with Todd about all the traffic on Colfax (which he controls because he has his own galaxy) and lie around and, finally, eat a real meal. Now I’m having blueberries for dessert.

How appropriate.

Sitting on her bedding at 8:30 in the morning, she packs her small troupe of possessions for the day.

Where does she go until the evening? Why does she choose this street busy with restaurants?

Mandalay is a small restaurant and seems to be popular, but we didn’t have to wait long for a table. The three of us squeezed around a table meant for two along one side of the restaurant.

Todd and I started with some frou-frou drinks: in his case, coconut juice sipped from a peeled coconut, and in my case, a refreshing nonalcoholic drink flavored with ginger and cilantro.

There were several dishes with tea leaves on the menu, including the Tea Leaf Salad. The three of us eventually settled on the Ginger Salad, which is similar. The pickled ginger is in the middle, surrounded by peanuts and jalapeños, soy nuts (the menu listed lentils), sesame seeds, fried garlic, and tomatoes. The server brought it to the table this way and mixed it for us. This dish doesn’t really match the American vision of a salad, but the ginger and peppers added a bit of garden freshness to the crunchiness of the other ingredients.At my cousin’s recommendation, we ordered the Mandalay Special Noodle with chicken, which you see here after it had been mixed (my apologies for the blurry BlackBerry photo). The chicken is hiding in the middle under the fried narrow noodles, surrounded by wide noodles, cilantro, onion, and yellow peas powder (at the bottom). It was delicious, but I tried not to hog it all for myself. Our final dish was the Smoked Tea Duck. I wanted to try at least one dish with tea leaves, since that seemed to be an important aspect of Burmese cuisine, and the duck was wonderfully tender and lightly smoked. But I have to admit I didn’t notice a distinct flavor of tea leaves. It was a little awkward to divide this entree among three people, but we managed.

I just got the results from the biopsy of the mass in my right breast. Now I officially have breast cancer. Not that there was much doubt after the biopsy of the lymph nodes in November, but, as one doctor said, “It’s always a little disappointing when it comes true.” I’ve chosen a surgeon in Denver and an oncologist in Boulder, from different groups. I sometimes ask myself, “Beth, why can’t you do things the easy way? Pick one group or another?” But I didn’t. I picked the doctors who talked to me in a way I could understand. And I picked the surgeon, especially, because she was the only one of three who mentioned that she tries to minimize the trauma under the arm, where the lymph nodes are removed.

But now the holidays have come down like a pack of Dementors, and it’s cold and everyone is trying to get away. (Can you tell I’ve been watching Harry Potter movies?)

I knew I should have taken that 700-page editing job! Then I would have something to keep me busy, something other than looking for a place to live, editing the thousands of photos I took in the last 6 months during 12 Cities, 1 Year, or starting a photography business.

The truth is, the only thing I want to be busy at right now is treatment. But it’s not happening yet.

Cancer has made me into a patient, but it will never make me patient.

Sentences like that one make people hate to learn English.

What an adventure I had planned to go on in 12 Cities, 1 Year. I wanted to have everything with me, everything we could possibly need. No matter that bringing along all this stuff contradicted the spirit of the digital nomad lifestyle. I was going to protect myself with balls of twine (I think there are two in there) and dried sweet onions and a glove for getting things out of the oven. No telling when I might have to pick up something hot.

Yet I always knew I would forget something essential on this trip. And I realized what it was on November 21, three days before Thanksgiving.

That evening I learned I had cancer. I was standing on a sidewalk in San Francisco outside Ramen Dojo, talking to my gynecologist about the results of a biopsy. “It’s not good news,” she said. And it wasn’t. In a way I pitied her. It can’t be fun to spend your evenings calling patients about breast cancer.

And if I could think about her, then I didn’t have to think about myself.

I went back inside the crowded restaurant and told my husband we would talk about it later. Then we ate our garlic ramen, wonderfully rich but a little too spicy. I couldn’t finish mine, but the diagnosis didn’t stop me. I was able to eat mochi for dessert, after all.

We turned down the sidewalk toward our car. I wanted to speak. I breathed carefully. I wanted to tell him, but we walked a block before the words came out of my mouth. “I have cancer,” I said. I often find it difficult to say what I have to say, but this time the words seemed to be pulling up so much fear with them.

That evening I remembered what I forgot to bring on our 12 Cities, 1 Year trip: my health. I was so accustomed to my health, so used to having it with me, that I didn’t think to bring any extra.

Doing things makes me feel better. So I went back to our hotel room in San Francisco, and wrote out an email to my friends and family. I’m not that fond of talking on the phone. I’m much more comfortable with email. And the kind, loving responses started rolling in: sorrow, comfort, recommendations for doctors, offers to help.

The first time I talked about my diagnosis to someone besides Todd, in person, I felt so cold and tight inside. I thought I might start shivering, right there at the Thanksgiving table, over chocolate cake and pumpkin pie. I worried that I might be giving the cancer more power by admitting to it, as if it were some kind of cellular Lord Voldemort.

Every time I talk about the cancer, or listen to a surgeon tell me which body parts I’ll lose, it both relieves and exhausts me. Having a clinical discussion about cancer is easier than crying about it, but both let that cold fear rise a little closer to the surface.

The other night, I watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which Professor Lupin compliments Harry on being more afraid of the Dementors than of Voldemort. It shows, Lupin said, that Harry was afraid of being afraid. Lupin thought that wise.

I hate being afraid. Thinking about this cancer is like looking over the edge of a pit. There’s a staircase twirling down into it, one of those black metal dealies that you can see through, all the way to the bottom. I dislike heights, and I know that I’ll be terrified walking all the way down that staircase, and all the way back up.

But I also hate waiting. If I stop looking and step down, at least I’ll be doing something.

Today I had lunch with a high school friend whom I haven’t seen in 30 years. She’s fighting the good fight as a civil rights attorney for the Department of Education. I’m impressed by what she’s accomplished, but I’m also glad I’m not supervising 10 people. I’m glad I work for myself. As I told her, I never really liked having a job.

One of the great gifts this year keeps giving me is introspection. With each new city, each new exploration, I get to find out more about myself and what I really want. Some days it seems I’m still living the old life, still exploring and blogging about it, still copyediting. Other days, life seems completely different than it did six months ago.

My last weekend in Portland, I could resist no longer. After I listened to Ursula K. Le Guin read her long poem “The Conference” at Wordstock 2011, I crossed the Steel Bridge and walked from NW Portland to downtown. I went into one French restaurant, only to be told they were serving brunch and nothing but that day. I kept going.

I found Occupy Portland and watched their decisionmaking process for a while, but when the group split and went off in two different directions, I headed for Brasserie Montmartre.

I wasn’t the only one to show less-than-perfect dedication. 

It was 2 pm on a Sunday, and Brasserie Montmartre was having happy hour. I had a Croque Madame and a green salad and left a generous tip, all for about $12. Although I was a woman dining alone (WDA), the service was excellent.

After I ordered the sandwich, the waiter warned me I wouldn’t be able to eat it with my hands. You can see why.

The innards? Pork belly and Gruyère on brioche. Outside, a fried egg and Mornay sauce on top. All soft and warm and creamy, and the bread was toasted and, I think, brushed with butter. Because there’s not enough dairy in this sandwich.

One of the themes of the 12 Cities, 1 Year tour is conquering fear: of not being settled, of living in all these different places, of not having a steady job. And, for me, minimizing my fear of heights. I don’t have any ambitions to conquer it; I’d rather go to the bottom of the ocean than the top of a mountain. But I do want to wrestle with the fear a little.

In Portland, Todd and I lived in the SE neighborhood, and if I wanted to get to the credit union, I had to cross the railroad. There were two bridges I could take; the one pictured below was definitely in need of renovation. It leaned to one side, and some of the boards were rotting. It wasn’t in any danger of falling down, but I wouldn’t want to jump up and down on it. As I crossed it, I was breathing hard, saying out loud, “You can do this.” Luckily for me, a train didn’t pass by underneath while I was crossing.

On the North Steel Bridge near Portland’s Rose Quarter, it was a different story. A much sturdier bridge than the one shown above, the Steel Bridge has lanes for walking and biking, driving cars and riding buses, and riding the light rail. From the Rose Quarter side, it looked intimidating to me. But once I got out over the water, I felt rather protected by all the concrete. Walking across didn’t bother me too much, at least not until I reached the middle section, made of metal. For some reason that unnerved me.The railroad ran underneath on its way to who-knows-where.North Steel Bridge had a different vibration depending on what was crossing it at any given time. But the view from it was spectacular, even on a cloudy day. That day I was thinking my fear of heights masks a desire to leap off the bridge and see how long it will take to hit the water and how it will feel. I always feel safer walking above water than walking above land. I guess my brain figures water is softer, but of course that depends on how far above it I am!The Broadway Bridge crosses the Willamette River to the north, and on the other side of the river from the Rose Quarter is this marina, serving some riverside development in NW Portland. I tried to get a picture of every kind of transport crossing the Steel Bridge, but I was most interested in the light rail. Here two trains, going in opposite directions, pass each other. The pedestrian/cyclist lane is wider than it looks here, but nevertheless I kept checking behind me to see that no cyclists were trying to get by.And here, at the NW end of the bridge, I saw the tail end of the Portland Marathon.

I don’t honestly know how much of an effect these experiments have on my fear of heights. It has definitely worsened with age, but I find that when I do confront it in some small way, I can “Keep Calm and Carry On” through the fear. Sometimes it isn’t so bad, sort of like a fizzing in my stomach, and sometimes I feel quite lightheaded.

In any case, I dislike being afraid, so I will go on challenging myself in these small ways. Don’t expect me to start climbing mountains or building high-rises, though.

What’s important is what I left out of the picture: the young man who came bounding into my camera frame, begging me to take a picture of him and “send it to my Mom.” I don’t know whether he was serious about that, but he did his best to charm me into photographing him. I wouldn’t relent, though. By God, I was going to take a photo of a landmark, and no random resident of Portland was going to get in the shot! Finally, he gave up and walked away.

Later I wished I had humored him. I regretted being so rigid. After all, didn’t I set out on the 12 Cities, 1 Year trip to meet new people and learn new ways of doing things?

I have to remind myself, sometimes, that it’s okay to change direction in mid-course. To plan things one way and have them turn out entirely different. Sometimes I am far too committed to consistency. But, then, what else would you expect of a copyeditor?

I’ve posted a lot of pictures from the 12 Cities tour on Flickr. Go check them out. I’d love to have your comments.

We ate a lot of good food in Seattle and didn’t even scratch the surface of Ballard in a month, let alone the entire city. Most restaurants we visited only once, and many of them didn’t seem to warrant a full review after so little experience, but there were memorable meals along the way.

Blackberry brambles were everywhere in Seattle. Sometimes I picked berries from the side of the road.

There must have been 10 coffee shops within easy walking distance of our apartment in Ballard. This vegan doughnut came from Café Mox, which is attached to a game store.

The Counter, located in Ballard Blocks, is definitely worth visiting. The build-your-own burger Todd ordered was fabulous. You could order a burger patty on a salad, so I tried that with a veggie burger topped with pineapple, but the idea was more interesting than the reality.

Hi-Life was located along NW Market Street and was always packed. We intended to go there some Sunday for the fried chicken but ended up at brunch with this obscenely thick French toast.

I had oysters several times in Seattle. Here: Penn Cove. The server at Emmet Watson's Oyster Bar in Pike Place Market (not where I got this one) explained that August and September may not be the best months to eat oysters because they're spawning and they may taste funny. After I left Seattle, I read about several people getting sick from Washington oysters. I was lucky.

Salted cod with ajilimojili sauce from La Isla, the Puerto Rican restaurant in Ballard. Lovely fried fish.

Todd had the pernil, a pork dish. This restaurant had tasty sauces; I believe the red sauce is mojito sauce. It also had a waiter who wasn't comfortable looking at me, for some reason, even though I was paying.

Portage Bay, a large cafe near Ballard Locks, offered a toppings bar with French toast and such. Here it is.

The great thing about Portage Bay's toppings bar was that you could order just the toppings for $6, so I did.

I began with berries and I’ve ended with berries. There are berry brambles fruiting in Portland right now, but they’re not ripe yet. I think it’s so cool to be able to pluck berries as I’m walking along. I’ve never before lived in a city where that was possible.