LivingGood

Soak two cups of red lentils, rinse them until foamy water runs clear.   1 tsp of coconut oil    One small yellow onion   Two garlic cloves   A pinky nub of ginger & a nub of fresh turmeric root diced fine.  Sauté in a heavy cast iron dutch oven until the onion is almost transparent. Add the Lentils and Three cups of water and cook the beans until liquid is almost gone and Stir in   1 can of coconut milk   1Tbsp of gram masala spice Season with salt, pepper, and parsley leaf. I put the Dahl over rice and topped it with sautéed leek, squash, yellow peppers, and shrimp.

This year I am serving with AmeriCorps at the Regional Food Bank, and money has been really tight. This surprise disease, hello Breast Cancer, has added more stress to my already tight budget. I wasn't planning on diverting my small monthly stipend towards medical bills. I have all the bills and rent to pay.  Before I signed up for AmeriCorps, I cancelled all my extra expenses, no cable TV, radio subscriptions, fancy entertainment or going out to eat for me this year, I had intended to live frugally and commit my life to service for the year. well you know what they say; nobody ever expected the Spanish inquisition. Thankfully AmeriCorps offered me a decent insurance plan and I have been in a position to get food assistance to help with most of my nutritional needs. Its forecasted to be a painful road ahead, a road of surgery, treatments, and sickness. I'm open to whatever help is available so that I can make the ends meet. Before I was diagnosed I was working at temp ...

Friday was my first round of chemotherapy. Since Friday I’ve eaten bagels with avocado, mashed potatoes, and popcorn happily. My belly has been soured by most foods that I like to eat. I feel sickened and get a bad taste in the back of my tongue when I think about bread dough, I ate quiche on Friday following treatment, and the crust was buttery, like a good quiche crust should be right, nope. So, every time I think of bread I think of the buttery crust and am completely sickened. I was also drinking a Puer tea and I think that the tea enhanced the buttery taste in the quiche, so I’m also skeptical of tea.   I asked my sweet man, Jason to bring me some mashed potatoes on Sunday night on his way home from visiting with his friends. It was later than I had thought, and If I would have known the lengths he went to bring me tatters I would not have even asked. The thunderstorm started about 9pm and because it was Sunday in the bible belt all the usual mashed potato joints; Popeye’s....

My mother said that I had the most beautiful shaped head of all her daughters. Tomorrow I begin Chemo treatments to prevent the spread of breast cancer throughout my body. I was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in January. I was able to stop the spread by removing my breasts and about 27 lymph nodes living underneath my right arm. Now my right arm will be forever susceptible to circulation loss so I will be unable to use tourniquets or needles on the right side ever again. Having chemo treatments is another prophylactic treatment, like my decision to remove my left breast to reduce the risk of the cancer spreading throughout my body. I can reduce the risk from 60% to about 30% by having chemotherapy for the next four months. I hope my 36-year-old head is still as beautiful as my baby cranium was back in the day. I needed to remove the right breast to remove all of the cancer, I had her take the left too because how ridiculous would it look to have just the one size 36 H ti...

The night of our Family Hanukkah party I noticed a lump in my right breast. It was a strange solid rock under my nipple. I had never felt a lump like it before. My first thought, oh shit, I have cancer. It is astonishing how sure I was. I felt the same way the one and only time I missed a period and discovered that I was pregnant. I called Mom and asked her to look at my boob at her clinic the next day. The lump was taking up four inches under the skin in my right breast. I do not know how long it may have been growing inside me. I do wonder what change in my life may have made me vulnerable to the cancer. I eat good food, I’ve been health conscious for my entire adult life, I try to steer away from processed foods and heavy fats. I garden, stay away from pesticides, I shop organic and lean towards farmers markets, and I am a scratch cook, my diet is focused around whole foods. The biopsy at OU breast care center confirmed that it was infiltrating ductal carcinoma insitu. I have br...