Food and chemo - A love/hate relationship

For about 5 - 7 days after a chemo injection, I end up with pretty decent nausea. It's not so bad the day of chemo because the first drug they put in you is some steroid anti-nausea stuff which helps you get through the rest of the day. The next 3 - 4 days are spent just trying to get a regular amount of food down. If I even *start* to get hungry and don't eat immediately, I become very sick and uncomfortable. Trouble is, when I'm hungry, thinking about food makes me nauseous. If I even get the littlest taste of something, meaning that if I can conjure the taste in my mouth before I eat it, I immediately don't want it- it makes me sick to think about it. So I can't really ever think about what I want to eat. When I get hungry, I have to decide on a food and then immediately put it out of my mind or I wont want it. If that wasn't bad enough, most of the time I'll get through a few bites of something and then I don't want any more of it. That's not to say that I'm full or don't need more food, it's just that it starts to taste gross. 

Oh wait, it gets better. And by better, I mean worse. 

As you all know by now, chemo destroys rapidly growing cells. Those aren't just cancer cells, those are also hair follicles and cells in your mouth. Ever eaten a piece of toast or a chip and felt it scratch your mouth in some way? Or suck on some sweet sugar coated candy and have your mouth feel a little raw afterwards? Fortunately, your mouth heals very quickly from that. Mine doesn't heal at all. Well, not until almost the end of my treatment cycle, so just before I get another treatment. So basically I can eat soft foods like bread or liquids with minimal discomfort but anything else I end up paying for. They say you're supposed to rinse many times throughout the day with a salt-water rinse which does help a little bit but it definitely doesn't heal the owies, it's more preventative than anything else.

This coming Friday is my last type of this kind of chemo (unless I skip it since the lastest side effect of chemo is total hearing loss- more to come on that...) and my oncologist says that the next type of chemo has different side effects but nausea isn't one of them. Stay tuned!

xoxo Ry

Busiest. Week. Ever.

I'm sure you're all wondering what we've been up to the past week so let me tell you! It's been an epic week of chaos.

Last Tuesday morning we went to Duluth for a work conference where we got to see Chris Heeter and Tuu Weh. We got back from Duluth late on Thursday night where we finished packing and got a little bit of sleep. Friday morning I went off to chemo while William, Amy and Steve started on our great move to St. Paul. Trevor joined us later and helped during the last leg of the move.

 Saturday morning in the midst of all the unpacking, we picked up a kitty from Amy and Steve that we're fostering. His name is Botzy and he's totally a teenage boy.

Random pics of the move. Late Saturday night we worked the merch table for the last Culture Cry Wolf  show which meant we didn't get home until nearly 3 am. We were so pooped.





Sunday we had to run back out to the storage locker to get pieces of the bed frame that we were missing and it was my mom's birthday so we stopped by for a quick visit followed by book group for Confronting Animal Exploitation. As you can tell, we're exhausted and there's no letting up yet. Wednesday is William's birthday and this weekend is the benefit which we're totally stoked for.

Here are the totals for the head shaving contest as we enter the last week. We're so close to meeting our goal - less than $200 to go!

Chelsea $975
Snorine $515
Shell $316
Amy $310
Al $90

Hope to see you all on Sunday at Salon Ori!

xoxo Ry

A Lovely Shaped Melon - A Head Shaving Photo Post

Waiting, with hair

Clogging the sink!

Here we go!

Switching clippers

All finished!

Our Toxic World

A woman's risk of having breast cancer in her lifetime:

1960: 1 in 20

Today: 1 in 8

Women living in Industrialized countries have a higher risk of breast cancer than those in unindustrialized countries. (1)

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Please try to tell me that the way we live, the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe aren't causing cancer along with a slough of other diseases. 

I'm not at all upset about where Ryan and I are in our lives. I'm the happiest I've ever been despite the fact that we're dealing with cancer.

Here's what I am pissed off about though.. The consumer lifestyle fed to us by large corporations and a complex globalized world doesn't care about people living healthy fulfilling lives, but only about what is going to make more money.

My degree is in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management and throughout the course of the program I honestly just became increasingly depressed about the state of the world and what we can actually do to stop long term global climate issues. We can however do what we can to at least contribute as little as possible to the problem and escape the world of profit by any means.

If we were paying for the actual cost of what we eat, the products we consume, and the electricity that powers our homes, the common conveniences would be a lot more expensive. 

This blog post will be focused on food and I'll follow it up with more about air and water quality.

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The average American spends $150 per week on food (2) - $7,800 annually, or $624,000 in their lifetime assuming an 80 year lifespan.

Courtesy of Komen

We found out just over a month ago that Ryan has cancer and the actual cost of everything so far is quickly converging on $100,000. I have no doubt that by the end of this year we will be over the $600,000 mark. I would much rather pay marginally more for healthy food than pay the pharmaceutical companies for their poison.

An indirectly related but fun coincidence - the CEO of the Susan G. Komen foundation, which only used 15% of its donations for research last year, received a salary of $685,000, a 60% increase over the previous year.

Back on point though. What I'm getting at is that the cost of food is grossly underpriced. If you had to pay for all of the costs associated with the normal processed garbage that we eat every time you checked out at the supermarket, you would likely be paying at least double.

Yet, that's not the case. Large corporations such as Cargill, Monsanto, PepsiCo, etc., control the food market and keep prices for processed, mass produced, nutrient poor, pesticide and chemical laden crap artificially low. It makes the decision to buy organic, locally grown, healthy food an extremely difficult one.

Yet, it is such an important one! I consider myself to be pretty thrifty. I live a fairly simple life. The one thing I don't mind spending money on more than anything else though is food. Putting good food into your body is the one environmental health factors you can actually control. You have no immediate control over the air you breathe or the water you drink.

Our Breakfast This Morning

Consider this example of why you might want to buy organic vegetables. Eli Lily, the pharmaceutical company that produces the cancer drug Tamoxifen, also produces widely used estrogen mimicking pesticides that were banned in Europe. It should be noted that their profits from Tamoxifen are through the roof, as they continue to help cause and treat cancer.

I could write hundreds of pages on the links between the everyday food in the standard american omnivore diet, but I'm going to cut it off here. I'll let Ryan speak to the links between  animal proteins and cancer if she feels so compelled to do so later, as she knows much more about the subject. 

I hope this inspires at least someone to look at their diet a little more closely and think about what it is that the recently gigantic food corporations are doing to us in the long term. I know that it's definitely made my decisions easier every time I go to the store.

~ William Veldt

The Tides of Chemo

If you read the last blog post, A Day in the Life of Chemotherapy, you know that the end of Friday was not a bright shining moment in my life. I felt pretty crappy and slept on and off most of the evening. 

Saturday picked up a little bit. We tried to go to a pancake breffis. Well, we succeeded in going there but the pancakes weren't vegan and our friend wasn't there. Then we tried to go to the farmers' market. We also succeeded marginally in that we bought some interesting lemony leafy greens, parsley and a few other greens, but we didn't really get anything else because it was all just resellers. Then we had a super fun visit with SNorine and her smooshers. We'll just let the video speak for itself:

We had lunch at Ecopolitan with William's dad and went for a walk. I didn't have a whole lot in me after that. My energy came and went a little bit but we spent the remainder of the evening at home. We watched an interesting documentary called Pink Ribbons, Inc. It's pretty slow going but about halfway through it gets into some pretty interesting stuff about what I already suspected to be true of the large breast cancer fundraising organizations.

Sunday was like a brand new day. We went to early lunch at Namaste with Amy and Steve. They made us enchiladas and Amy got to help pull out some of my hairs, which I'm sure was super fun for her! Next we went out with my family for early mothers' day brunch where the following pictures ensued! After that we drove out to Baker for long boarding and bike riding with Kristin and Gabe. It turned out to be a really great afternoon for that. We went to the coop, received a really great phone call from a far away friend, rested back home for a couple minutes and then met them back up at Common Roots along with Jackie. I started to feel pretty wiped out by the middle of the evening but it was still really nice to feel sort of back to normal.  

Now please enjoy this short clip of us being able to enjoy spring:

A Day in the Life of Chemotherapy

Mom in the waiting room

Deb trying to pick my nose in the chemo pod

The morning started off totally normal. I felt as good as I did before the first chemo appt. I got in a few hours of work and then went to my chemo appointment where my Mom and my Aunt Deb were joining me.

William had to work because he doesn't have much PTO, and is trying to save it up for when things are a bit rougher. 

I just accidentally licked my moms hair

I met with Katie, my super nice nurse, and found out that my tumor has already decreased in size a tiny bit!! I couldn't ask for better news after just one treatment! Unfortunately, even very quick progress won't change my treatment schedule at all as they have to make sure everything is gone even beyond what they can functionally measure.

Everything went fairly smoothly aside from the May 3rd snow storm that I'm now fairly certain I caused. Seriously... There has been significant snowfall every single time we've been into the oncology office for any type of appointment. Sorry Minnesota.. Looks like you're all going to have to suffer with me.

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Adriamycin injection 

Chemo is bizarre. You can feel it. You can taste it. It's just weird.This time I felt it a lot more immediately than before. It wasn't awful by any means during the treatment, but I could definitely tell it was instantly impacting my body.

Totally took a selfie

The chemo pod is the place to be. It's kind of like a spa, except that instead of activities that help you remove toxins from your body, you're directly injecting toxins into it. The lovely red Adriamycin on the left is fondly known as the "red devil". In addition to contributing to nausea and whatever this fuzziness feeling is, it turns my pee reddish and makes almost all of my bodily fluids toxic to others.

I do have to give them some credit at Abbott Northwestern though, because with the chemo you at least get warmed blankets, fully reclining massage and heating chairs, and snacks. You even get to roll around your little IV stand and take silly selfie pictures of yourself in the bathroom mirror. I've never done that before so I figured I could get away with it. 

I felt ok for awhile after the appointment. I stopped by the grocery store and caught up with a couple people on the phone. Then it happened! Finally! My hair started coming out in tiny bits!

I've been checking it for the last several days to see if I was losing it yet, and aside from the really weird prickly feeling, it stubbornly remained attached. Not today. I was wondering if I might be able to keep it until our head shaving benefit, but I got my answer today.

It was our friend boy Ryan's birthday today, so we went out and met up with them at Pizza Lucé. It wasn't really til then that the chemo fade really set in. Nausea and chemo brain got the best of me. We ordered early, got our check quickly, and went home to rest.

Me and 3 of 4 Harle Von Hansmeyers

Here is a short little video that William took of me. It's bizarre more than anything else. It's certainly a feeling I've never experienced before. Hopefully it doesn't last too long during this cycle...

xoxo Ry and William

Post Chemo from One Year Love Affair With Cancer on Vimeo.

Being the One Without Cancer

When we found out that Ryan had cancer I was very calm. I was a surprised definitely, but we didn't know the extent of it yet and worrying wasn't going to help anything.

Two days after that we had an appointment with the surgeon, Dr. Anderson. We found out that she was going to go through a year of chemo, have a double mastectomy, hormone replacement... the works. I didn't shed a tear in the room with Ryan.

Dr. Anderson then wanted to see Ryan on her own for a bit, so her Mom and I went out to the waiting room. I sat down, started to take a breath, and was then completely overcome with more emotion than I've ever experienced in that way. I bawled like crazy for about a minute, choked back the tears, and pulled myself together. We went back into the patient room with Ryan shortly after and we met each other with the smiles of happiness that two people in love share.

While sitting in that waiting room I didn't know whether or not I was going to lose the person I'd just fallen madly in love with. I suppose you never really know how long you or anyone you love has on this earth, but knowing that if Ryan didn't get serious medical help she would likely die soon was terrifying. I'm not all that afraid of death, but I certainly don't want to live without her.

There have been a few points since then where I've shed a few tears, but I'm not all that scared. Her prognosis is good and we're going to be amazing together through this and on the other side it.

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Being the loved one of someone with cancer is a weird position to be in. I'm sure it's an entirely different experience for everyone, but this is what it's like for me:

I'm not that upset. Sometimes I think it's weird that I'm not that upset given the circumstances, but I can honestly handle anything together with Ms. Veldt. When I went back into that patient room I wasn't feigning confidence. There's something about being with Ryan that makes everything incredible.

Honestly... Going through cancer feels like an incredible part of our journey together, because it's something we're doing together.

While I can't take the physical burden from her, I will certainly be by her side every step of the way. The only times that have been really rough have been when we're apart.

I'm also absolutely overcome by the support from everyone. To everyone taking the time to read this, everyone who donated, everyone who has been a part of our life... Thank You!!!  I can't tell you enough how much your support has meant to us both emotionally and logistically.

~ The Incredibly Grateful Mr. Veldt

Being vegan doesn't make you immortal!?

Several people have responded to my cancer diagnosis with “But you’re vegan!” as if somehow that meant I was invincible to any and all maladies. I’ve been vegan for almost four years now and if this had happened three years ago, I would have had the same response.

I consider myself someone who knows quite a bit about nutrition. More, in fact, than most doctors. I’ve been studying vegan nutrition for years and I know all the many health benefits of a vegan diet- a diet free from saturated fat, dietary cholesterol and carcinogenic animal-based proteins. I know that plant based nutrients and vitamins like Liopein, Beta-carotene, Calcium, Vitamin B12, etc. all play an important role in preventative bodily maintenance. But knowing what foods make a person healthy is not the same as consuming those foods, much to my dismay.

Pre-diagnosis, William and I ate more healthful foods than the SAD (Standard American Diet), certainly. We ate a reasonable amount of quinoa with vegetables and vegetable proteins. The problem was that we also ate a LOT of fat and refined sugar. We would make a pan of vegan mac n cheese and finish it off in one sitting. Delicious? Mos def. A cup of olive oil, vegan shredded cheese, vegan butter? You bet! This is not to say that fats are bad for you AT ALL. Especially fats from avocados and the like. But there’s a line between a healthy amount of fat and a ridiculous amount of fat and we blew ridiculous out of the water.

Upon my cancer diagnosis, we did a little dietary overhauling, but not much. Made smoothies more often. Cooked with a *little* less oil. But I keep hearing and reading about the dangers of excessive fat and refined sugar in cancer patients (and everyone)and we’re taking it to heart. Most recently, a co-worker brought in some articles about cancer. One of particular interest from Experience Life Magazine called Integrative Oncology informs at length on the need for lots of plant food intervention and how fats and sugars fuel cancers.

This information is so important, yet so surprisingly unknown. During my second visit with my oncologist, he offered me a handful of miniature Snickers and Milky Ways! And we aren’t at some cut-rate clinic- we’re at one of the top hospitals in the state for oncology. Even more surprising of his offer, my oncologist has had cancer himself! Surely he did some research into the inflammatory properties of certain foods…

I really hope that some of you (well, all of you) reading this will consider how important good nutrition is, especially my vegan friends that follow similar diets to mine. A full bag of potato chips is not a meal (thanks for trying to warn me, Chelsea), and it’s always better to eat your nutrition than supplement it.

xoxo, Ry

Fundraiser Madness

It's been just over a day since we put together our fundraiser, and we're already over 10% of the way to our goal! Thank you so much to everyone involved!!

We have to give a very special thank you to Amy Leinen, Shell Russell, Chelsea Hassler, and Al Nowatzki for helping us raise money by shaving their heads. That takes a lot of courage and we can't tell you enough how much it means to us.

And since they're all obviously doing it for the prize, we have to give an update on the standings so far!

• With a quick jump to the lead, Chelsea has raised $150.
• Shell and Amy are tied for second at $50 each.
• Al really just joined in this morning and is expected to be a very tough competitor.

If you want to sponsor any of our friends please visit our donation page at www.youcaring.com/veldt

If you want to participate in the head shaving madness that is going to happen please let us know. We would be honored to be bald with you. Also, if you have anything to donate for the silent auction happening during the head shaving party on May 26th please let us know.

If you donated and we haven't reached out to you yet, we certainly will soon. We took advantage of the warmth we had left yesterday and spent as much time as possible outside.

Again, the overwhelming support so far has meant so much to us!! We are so honored to have such amazing friends and family!

Also stay tuned to hear more about our journey. Ryan has chemo round 2 on Friday, so we'll be sure to give you an update on how everything goes.