Today the tapestries are woven with golden threads

Auntie A:  Thank you so much for the care package!  It is greatly appreciated!  The girls and I are enjoying the goodies.   

I returned home on Saturday afternoon to a healthy family and a disinfected house.  Everyone has stayed healthy since, including me.  Go team and huzzah! 

Since then I have been doing some major healing in my tapestry-filled healing palace.  My guts are moving with gusto.  After a weekend of bizarre gut twitching and moderate gut movement that did start to provide some physical relief, I think today I finally birthed the food baby that my ileal-cecal valve has been previously reluctant to let go.  I think that this improved my workout, because for the first time since this whole business of Lloyd-killing and recovery started, I felt STRONGER today.  Just a tad, guys, just a tad, but it's an inspired and beautiful direction.  Now I'm wiped out, lol, but also excited because I know that tomorrow I'll feel another inspired bump forward, and then the next tomorrow, too, and it'll hopefully keep going steadily forward until I'm back to hbomb status.  Huzzah!!!!!  I could kiss the oncological nutritionist right now--so very very helpful!  I wish it had been the protocol to meet with her it order to get discharged following the ileus diagnosis.  In hindsight, it seems ridiculous to have sent me home with so little dietary guidance.  But oh well.  I'm on the right track now. 

While I work so, so hard on my healing, I think that my spoon is filled with oil.  I'm not doing too many tasks, because although it's hard to admit my brain really doesn't like to do tasks or to visit or to listen or to think about anything really, but I do find small ways to keep the oil in my spoon.  I don't let people wait on me, and I've found some new recipes for my current diet and cooked them for the family.  Today I found a recipe for a risotto made hearty with ground cashews.  I went ahead and used butter and milk (I'm to eat soy products sparingly because soy is an estrogen analog, and goodness knows I don't need to be selecting for estrogen-related cancers in my body), I skipped the wine for the kids (not worried about the alcohol, they just don't like the taste when we cook with wine), and I put the herbs in the rice instead of the topping.  The risotto was very tasty, and even the kids liked it!  For the mushroom topping, I added chopped fresh spinach to the mushroom and sundried tomato mixture, and served it with a splash of lemon juice.  The kids didn't eat the mushroom mixture, which I had predicted, so I sauteed them some green beans.  The meat eaters had sliced-up brats, because why not.  Chicken probably would have gone better with the risotto, but oh well.  ;) 

I still spend my afternoons resting/napping (the dinner preparation happens while I make my lunch--today it was gingered carrots and a peach cup and a grilled PBJ [with 2 Tbsp of peanut butter! counting protein is hard work and terribly filling!! and with homemade jam that I made with my friend K on a lovely evening in August, eating pizza and drinking wine, and our kids playing together.  Let's do that again!!] )  I still spend my evenings with the family and participating in dinner clean-up, etc.  Then I do my digesting, then yoga and leg lifts, then a bit of wakeful resting (crocheting or something), then bed.  It is a rigorous healing schedule.  I am very, very busy in my tapestry-filled healing palace. 

Did I tell you that I'm down to three steroids each day?  The pressure in my brain is holding steady, so I'm going to stick with the three 'roids for now.  As soon as I have a day or two with less brain pressure, I'll cut my lunch steroid.  That'll be a great day!  Getting off the steroids will help with my digestion, and relieve my stiff, puffy joints, and all sorts of other side effects. 

Today's bonus is that it was a beautiful, albeit dangerous, snowy day.  Thor and I enjoyed watching the snowfall from the safety of the living room.  Yesterday the spouse and kids bought him a smelly new treat--a goat horn--so he chewed his stinky goat horn during the snowfall as I rubbed his belly.  I hope you all stayed safe out there!