Steady as she goes
Cancer is funny because it brings a sense of urgency, and yet, there’s so much waiting. Time between scans, bloodwork, and check-in’s when other parts of life happen. Time between writing cancer blog updates.
Right now, things are relatively quiet cancer-wise for me. In my last blog post, I mentioned checking tumor markers that week. What a cliffhanger I left you all on! My tumor markers were stable (no growth, no shrinkage) and my TSH was back to where it “should” be, no change in levothyroxine dose for me!
I’ve said this before, but “stable” is very much a welcome state to be in cancer-wise, so here’s to hoping that things continue to be “stable” or “improving.” I’m still exploring new ways to balance my body, energy, and process emotions, all of which I believe will contribute to my overall wellness.
After starting autoimmune keto last month, I wanted to try incorporating nuts and seeds into my diet. It’s something I didn’t eat on autoimmune paleo and truthfully never tried in earnest to integrate back in. I didn’t miss eating them and it didn’t affect me very much. But with keto demanding high healthy fats, nuts and seeds are a delicious and easy way to get said healthy fats, as opposed to eating tablespoon upon tablespoon of olive oil for every meal.
I say “wanted to try” because boy did that not end well. At first I couldn’t pinpoint any glaring issues, but as the weeks went on (I ate them for about a month), I noticed it was impacting my digestion. Bummer, right? But the bigger bummer was after a meditation one day, I took my sweatshirt off and could barely touch my arm. It was painful to touch. I went to bed shortly thereafter thinking “if it still feels bad in the morning I can pop over to the doctor.” Welp, at 2am I woke up with my whole left arm in pain. It was sort of swollen and still hurt to touch the skin. Fun stuff in the middle of the night! I ended up falling asleep again, but in the morning when things still hadn’t improved, I decided to go to QuickCare to get it checked out. I wanted to be sure I didn’t have a blood clot.
QuickCare was an absolute bust. The doctor saw me for maybe 3 minutes and skeptically told me it was tendonitis. I will clarify that I have tendonitis in my right arm already from a childhood of softball and tennis and boy did this feel quite different. They basically told me it would feel better in a week and that’s that. Sheesh. Nothing like being poo-pooed by a doctor to make you hate Western medicine just a little bit more.
At risk of boring you with the rest of this story, what it really came down to was that my body was in what I’m calling an inflammation storm. It might have been a result of a movement I did, but more likely than not, as my body is undergoing ketosis and changing, it was a “weak” point. So the inflammation stormed! And I’m happy to report that over a week after I stopped eating nuts and seeds, I’m already feeling more normal. GO FIGURE that macadamia nuts could cause such a ruckus? I certainly didn’t.
Disappointingly, it means nuts and seeds are still off the table, so I’m going to have to get extra creative to pile on healthy fats. Never a dull moment over here.
That all being said, having time off of yoga and my usual day-to-day routine has actually been a wonderful time to reflect on my schedule and the routine I built. Examining whether it’s really still serving me or not. I’m using this time as I can get back to yoga to add practices into my daily routine and weekly care. Simple practices that I had trouble integrating because I was so deep in a groove. But now that I’m out of the grooves, pretty much everything is on the table to integrate. Funny how opportunities arise when you least expect them.
Speaking of opportunities, I started a Substack! I have been reflected so many times over to lean into creativity, and one of my favorite activities is writing. I appreciate all of the kind words from everyone reading these blog posts and emails, so I’m following that nudge and creating a bigger platform. The Substack is still evolving (what content is free, what’s paid, when do I post), but I hope that you will join me there if you are so called. I still intend to keep this blog as the main site for where my cancer updates will live and let the Substack encompass everything beyond the realm of my health updates. Of course I talk about cancer, but I also talk about all things life, death, and being human.
It feels like a season of change around here, from the Substack to consolidating some of my business efforts to exploring keto more, I’m really excited about what is to come, in life and in health. I so appreciate all of your support and hope you are finding this springtime a chance to renew your own life.
My next tumor marker check is in July, so don’t be surprised if that’s the next time I reach out here. In the meantime, assume no news is good news and I’m over here happily snacking on keto coconut butter cups and chopping veggies for dinners while listening to audiobooks.