Thursday, July 28, 2011

PARTY ROCKKKKKKK

Starting in 2009, I began a personal music awards ceremony in my head that takes place once a year; every summer, I chose a dance song to be named Song of the Summer--or rather, the song chooses me. It speaks to my soul and says "ME. Choose ME for this esteemed award, and I shall make you bounce dance in your car all summer long." In 2009 it was David Guetta (but really Kelly Rowland)'s "When Love Takes Over." It played at the gym Jenna and I stretched at all summer after college and followed me throughout the next 8 months. I remember driving through sleet to work one December morning when it came on the radio. "Song of the goddamn summer," I thought, shaking my head and taking a sip out of my Dunkin Donuts cup.

Summer 2010: I had returned home from a jaunt in the city and moved back in with my parents. I took a job picking up garbage at a state park-- a 19 year-old was my supervisor, and I let that be a sign that I should probably live the life of a junior in high school at that point in time. The man to soundtrack this startlingly refreshing summer? Enrique Iglesias, making his radio comeback with "I Like It." And, baby, did I like it. I liked it a lot, and I still do.

Ladies and Gentleman, you asked for it, you demanded it, you BEGGED ME TO TELL YOU who Song of the Summer 2011 goes to, so I will, even though I feel like I don't even have to answer. You already know. It's almost as if you've always known.

Song of the Summer 2011 goes toooooooooooooooo PARTYROCKERSINTHEHOUSETONIGHT officially known as "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO.

***The following is their performance on So You Think You Can Dance, which is IMPORTANT to keep in mind for later.


I just want to take a minute here and acknowledge how completely idiotically in love I am with this song. I literally mean idiotic--look at the last 50 words I just wrote (that I still really mean and am in no way undermining by calling them idiotic). It is probably a blessing in metallic leggings that I cannot physically drink this summer, as I am actually afraid to see the effect this song coming on at a bar would have on me if I were intoxicated.

I'd also like to express my special affection for the guy with the fro, who makes his grand lyrical entrance at 1:16. I'm just saying I would be proud to call him my boyfriend.

Ok so remember when I told you my reference to So You Think You Can Dance was important? All that time ago? It's because I've also been obsessively watching it throughout the summer. And since I've been watching So You Think You Can Dance...I think I can dance. I'm like, "Well if I wasn't going through chemo right now I'd so tooootally take like, a hip hop class somewhere and just release that talent I know is hiding in me and--" but that's false. I am really, tragically bad at group choreographed anything. I had to walk out of a hip hop class at the gym in Brooklyn a while back because I couldn't take the reflection of myself in the mirror, pathetically trying to get the steps. It's not that my limbs don't go the way I want them to, it's just that I can never remember the order of what they're supposed to do in time for them to do it.

I made a promise to someone that I'd never put myself through that kind of humiliation again. And do you know who that someone was? Me. And do you know who's breaking that promise? Also me, so I don't think it counts as a broken promise but more of like...I think I'll try one more time because the circumstances are so very grave! And what are they?? WELL it just so happens my favorite choreographers from SYTYCD, NappyTabs (a husband and wife duo) have made a routine to my Song of the Summer and put a how-to on youtube in honor of this National Dance Day marketing scheme thing that Fox Five and Six Flags have come up with.


There as universal forces at work compelling me to learn this routine, so there is literally no way that I can't, but I kind of also don't know if I can. I just know I must.


Friday, July 22, 2011

Watching the Food Network is almost like eating real food

Well, I mean, not really, but it's a good substitute when the thought of actual food doesn't seem as appealing as it should. Instead of looking at the delectably verdant combo of peas and mint that has cropped up on Giada at Home (twice) and The Barefoot Contessa as delicious, I'm deciding to look at it as... pretty and cooling during this bout of chemo and also the insane heat wave we're undergoing.

Yesterday before chemo I pulled myself together (albeit in the parking lot) and went inside for treatment. There's this responsibility I've found that came along with the Hodge that I touched on in the entry about Cody's grad party; I feel like I always need to be strong so that everyone else around me isn't worrying or I don't cause them pain. This doesn't necessarily pertain to those closest to me, like my family and best friends, who have seen me break down about 97 times over the past four months, but there was no way I was walking into my doctor's office with watery eyes. For one, the nurses have eagle vision, and another, I think literally every single patient in the infusion room has it worse than I do.

But that being said, I realize it's okay to admit when I'm upset or "goin through it" (I forget which friend of a friend uses that phrase, someone refresh my mind?) And that's why this blog is so essential to my well-being. It started out as a way to keep everyone abreast of what was going on without having to constantly be on the phone or emailing, and it has become so much more to me: my therapy, something I can easily do even when I'm not feeling well, and a motivating factor to really look for a job where I can write (hopefully in a manner not unlike this one) once I get my butt better and back to NYC.

Oh my God I haaaaate how Giada says "pancetta" and any other italian ingredients with her self-satisfied "This is how REAL italians say these words" attitude. (And also because I'm jealous that she is italiano and the only fun words us pollocks get to say is "kielbasa".)

Oh, not to bring this entry back down to the dumps, but I was very disturbed by a few things I found out at the doctor yesterday, the first and foremost being that there is a national shortage of one of the four drugs used in my cocktail, called Bleomycin. How my doctor explained it is that Bleomycin used to be how Advil is to Ibuprofen...a version of the generic drug. But then, and I don't know why, Bleo became THE generic, and pharmaceutical companies started to make less money off of it. So they shut down a ton of the plants that made it, creating the shortage. No one on LI who has Hodgkin's is able to get it right now, even though my doctor said he personally tried for days to get me some. I honestly couldn't have landed in better hands, all thanks to my dad.

My Dr. did say that if he had to drop one of the drugs, this would be it. It's also used to treat testicular cancer, and Lance Armstrong's doctors didn't use Bleo in his treatments because it can impair your long-term lung functions, and he's doin pretty well. And he also said there's a good chance I could have it for my next treatments. Of which there are only three.

We also talked a little bit about the side effects of radiation, because I read that it can cause your actual skin to burn. I almost wish I didn't ask about side effects (my usual MO is to get the bare minimum facts, then wait to see how I feel, THEN discuss side effects with my doctor so I know they're not psychosomatic. Also, it does wonders for worrying less.), because I learned after radiation I will be at a higher risk for breast cancer than I was since it's being done to my chest, and it could additionally completely destroy my thyroid gland.

But we're not going there just yet. Instead I am going to my couch to peruse Netflix for a few hours before settling on something I regret halfway through watching it.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

My resolve has melted

Not permanently, but there is literally nothing that won't turn to liquid in the heat wave we've been having.

I feel really down today. I have chemo in 43 minutes, and I can't even bring myself to get out of bed to brush my teeth. A few bad things, ranging from disappointing to actually tragic, have happened to me and people I love in the past couple weeks, and right now the act of staying positive feels as daunting as running a marathon barefoot with no water.

A friend's younger brother was killed in a car crash yesterday, and I can't stop crying when I think about it and his family and how much pain they must be in.

Everything feels surreal and extremely sharp simultaneously at this moment.


Tuesday, July 19, 2011

What a Hoot.

So I realize that many people read my blog to see how I'm doing with the whole Hodge thing, which may lead some of you to scratch your heads and say, "Why is this chick writing about baked clams all day? I just want the facts! SHOW ME THE MONEY." So for those folks, this post is for you--an update based (almost) solely on what the blog purports to be about.

I'm halfway done with chemo, (four down, four to go) which means it was time for the halfway point PET scan to see if the tumors are shrinking, which, um, hi, they better be. I stayed up really late last night reading Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald because my mom and I saw Woody Allen's new movie Midnight in Paris, which was so magical and enjoyable and now I'm entering a 1920's Paris phase of my life where I throw on knee-length skirts and cloche hats and pretend I'm Zelda Fitzgerald and have my mom take my picture by a tree in a park to text it to my friends who also appreciate fine literature and it's hard to stay on target right now. Point is, at 9:30 this morning I was a wretched, grumpy mess of a girl who was made more agitated by the freezing temperatures PET Scan rooms have to be at, and I didn't enjoy it.

The only other one of these I had had was diagnostic, and already that period (late March) is a touch foggy. I guess I was just really scared to get the results, even though this force in my body, something similar to intuition, told me that I definitely had cancer. Either way, being back on that machine and battling a strong desire to fidget brought me back to the beginning of all of this for the duration of the test. And there's also the familiar anxiety of waiting for the results, but this time I'm waiting to hear something positive, so there's that.

After some corn beef hash, my mom and I went to my regular blood check and shot appointment at my oncologist's, where we discussed the rest of the timeline.

ACTUALLY wait. Before that, we saw on the TV in the waiting room that planking (google it) is soo over and owling is actually the new cool thing to do. Look, even the Washington Post says so.

And, I mean, who am I to miss a golden opportunity? Personally, I think this photo reads a bit more "gargoyle," but... (Also plz ignore my stupid 10 year old's face but plz notice the ballin' scarf my friend Ari got me from Ireland.)


So right, the rest of my timeline--last chemo treatment is Sept 1st, followed by 2-4 weeks in which I "chill out" (ummmmmmm can I elect to donate that time to my parents because I've been mooching off them all summer? Or Andrew because he drives me everywhere? Or my doctor because he is curing me?) because my bone marrow needs to regenerate. Then comes radiation, which is 5 days a week for a month. It's like I'll have a job! Apparently, physically it's a lot less taxing than chemo. And GUESS WHAT? I get to get a tattoo during this whole process after all.

Well, not really. But the way radiation works is that they take the original PET Scan, the one I picture as a Rorschach test composed of tumors, and map out where they're going to zap you. In my case it's my chest, so once they pinpoint their spots, they actually pinpoint ME--they tattoo tiny blue dots on you as an outline that lasers supposedly line up with. They're no bigger than a pen mark, but they don't go away. Kinda cool, but I'm still going for multiple real tat ideas once I got the go ahead.

So it's looking like maybe Halloween, which I have long ago deemed myself the mayor of, could signal my release back into the wild. This costume better blow the rest of them out of the water. Oh my god, the pressure is enough to keep me awake for the rest of the night.

Monday, July 18, 2011

A clam by any other name...


...would still taste delicious.

As a Sunday afternoon pleasantry, my father went clamming yesterday in the harbor of St. James. (You give the guy a day off and he does what I deem to be work. Go figure.) He returned as the sky was dark enough to warrant a "WHERE ARE YOU DID YOU GET SUCKED INTO THE MUD" phone call from my mom with 93 clams that I counted while a gargantuan June bug terrorized me by dive-bombing my head.

"Tomorrow is the day you learn to make clams." My mom said as we climbed the stairs to go to bed.

Anyone who has been at a Kieltyka family party or simply been lucky enough to stop by when we decided to have them knows that my mother's clams are a thing to behold. If we have them at a party, never mind the pool, the drinks, the music; the clams are the event. At Cody's graduation party, I walked in to hear the waitresses we hired pausing for a break as they put another tray into the oven to brown.

"I literally have never seen anything like this in my life," she said. "They're going insane for these clams."

"I know!" the other one said, wiping sweat off her forehead. "A table actually just paid me to bring them some when this batch comes out. What's in those clams? Gold chips?"

Well, no, because that would taste pretty bad and also what, are we made of money? What actually goes in them is...

Haha nope. Like I'd write the secret recipe on here. (My mom has gotten over being written about in here but literally threatened me should I put the recipe out there. So...you're just... reading a story about clams. Let that sink in, go check Facebook again, but come back when you get tired of seeing pictures of people getting wasted on boats.)

What's actually funny is that the recipe isn't even that secret, on account that most of my mother's side of the family knows it...and there's 9 billion of them. (In actuality, she's one of 9.) My grandfather, whom we call Pop was the harbor cop--

"Pop was not the harbor cop. There is no such thing as a harbor cop. He was a policeman, then became harbor master when he retired. You know, you can't just give people jobs that don't exist in your stories." This is what happens when I write in the kitchen and allow my mom access before everything is written.

So anyway, my mom's family grew up a short walk away from the harbor, and they all clammed to make money. My mom actually put herself through college by selling clams to the Three Village Inn in Stonybrook. I long for a time when a college education could be attained with shellfish.

According to my mom, her brother, Larry, the eldest of the kids, attained the first version of the recipe from one of the cooks at the Inn, and it has since been adapted to "taste much better, much better." After years of watching my mom do all the work and reaping the benefits with a fork, today I got my hands dirty (literally, they were full of clam poop) and made my first batch.

In the vain of how to lists that are, in practice, useless, but this time with pictures:

How to Make Baked Clams on A Humid Monday Morning But Without the Recipe, Sorry.

Step 1: Wake up at 11 am, chuckle to yourself at the thought of all your friends who've been at work for 2 or 3 hours already, the suckers. Remember you're broke and immediately stop laughing.

Step 2: Walk downstairs and cater to your dog's enthusiastic greeting since you're the only person you know whose dog holds a grudge against you for going away for the weekend and she's finally over it.

Step 3: Go outside to hose all the sand off the clams. Take notice of the oppressive heat and be thankful that if you had to lose all your hair, you lost it in the summer. Bring the clams inside and bask in the air conditioning. But not too long, you lazy slug.

Step 4: Get a big roasting pan. Like, a big ass roasting pan, and fill it with some water and stick it on the stove. Put as many clams in there as you can without overflowing the pan, turn up the heat, and stick a cover on it.

Step 5: Suddenly realize with horror that at this very moment, depending on the temperature of the water, that for all of those clams, this is it. They are dying before your very eyes. Let the horror wain when you remember they are shellfish. But then panic for a sec as you remember the lyrics to "Colors of the Wind."

Step 6: Shrug and make a cup of coffee.

Step 7: Wait for the steam to pry the clams open for you. They should open all of the way, like so:


Step 8: If you didn't feel like "murderer" worked for you, try "home wrecker" on for size, since you will literally be tearing the clam's house in half with the flick of the wrist. Then pry the soft body of the clam out of the shell with reckless abandon.



Step 9: Clean and wash the shells, arrange them on trays so that similar sized ones are grouped together, but ONLY put them on a tablecloth you got from Marshall's the other day.



Step 10: Now you will be squeezing the contents of the clam's stomach out of it. That sentence alone should warn you that it's disgusting, but if you're not quite convinced, please check out probably the only video I'll ever put on youtube:



Step 10: Pick a side of the argument: "It's just vegetative matter" versus "BLECH."

Step 11: Get the same kind of gross satisfaction from squeezing the clams as you might a pimple, if um, you're into that because I'm tooooootally not. Nope. Not me.

Step 12: Chop up the clams in a food processor while wearing a green polo shirt.


This next part gets a little confusing because, well, I'm not going to tell you what to put in them, so...

Step 13: Mush up all the ____ and the ____ and a dash of ___ with your hands. Lose feeling in a few fingers from the numbing chill of the mixture. Assume this is atonement for sending 93 souls to their graves in a vat of boiling liquid.


Step 14: Use your sniffer to make sure the mixture is correct, then load up a test clam, because you have to make sure they are perfect or else this will all have been in absolute vain.

Step 15: Set your oven to 350 degrees and pop that sucker in there. Wait until it's brown and bubbly, then take it out and scald your mouth because your newfound patience doesn't extend to food that you want to eat.


Step 16: Share it with someone you love. Show them by your generous example that it's wrong to be a bitch for no reason, unless of course that someone is, in fact, a female dog. In that case, give her a bite just to ensure that she really isn't mad anymore.




Monday, July 11, 2011

David Sedaris, genius

"In America, people kept telling me how dark the stories were, but I just don't get it. What other people call dark and despairing, I call funny."

read dis

Friday, July 8, 2011

So tired, but must post

I have much to say and little capacity to make my fingers move over my keyboard, so here's the best news I've gotten in a while:

Last chemo day is september 1st, NOT the 24th. I was accidentally scheduled beyond when I needed to be. It's only 21 days, but when you're living your life in 2 week increments, that's huuuuuuuge.

Also, unrelated: just watched Apollo 13 in honor of the last space shuttle launch and am almost as freaked out about space as I was when I watched Armageddon. Damnit.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Coming to you live from the chemo room!

Thought I'd try a little something new and write a post with a needle in my chest!

Cody and I are going on hour three of residency here, and emotions are running rampant here in the infusion room. Or maybe I'm confusing my eyes tearing because I'm tired with actual tears. But I am sitting next to one of the nurses who did one of my pre surgical interviews way back when. She has breast cancer and today is her last treatment! I'm so happy for her. Oh, also today is my halfway point, holler back now.

We were talking about how we were diagnosed when the woman sitting next to her chimed in. She has had cancer in her left breast, right, then left again, then liver, had her liver REMOVED and got cancer again in the part that was growing back. (I think I have that straight, but I also don't entirely think livers grow back so I may have misheard her.) And what's more hard to believe than all that is how bright her outlook is. Talk about resilient. She makes me feel like my treatment is to float through a meadow on the wings of a sparkly butterfly.

Cody is reading this book about the founders of the most successful Internet startups (gmail, craigslist, our faithful old blogger.com) and it's super interesting. I read a bit yesterday about Steve Wozniak, who started Apple with Steve Jobs, and he was talking about how he was building computers in 1973. I think he would be happy to know that 40 years later, a normal 24 year old lady was using her pointer fingers to tap out some feelings on a computer the size and width of a magazine, but that's just a guess.

Ugh, I have to use the facilities (you would to if you had four bags of liquid pumped into you) but every time I have to go, I have to unplug the machine my medicine is hooked up to and walk it with me to the bathroom, which I dislike for two reasons: one, it beeps incessantly when it's unplugged, and two, it makes me feel like an old lady with an oxygen tank.

Woo just heard from my nurse that I just have to wait for the saline bag to finish and I'm done. Four down, four to go.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

lazy update

I don't know how articulate any of the following sentences will be because homegirl is exhausted. And also somewhat frustrated.

This past weekend felt like a week was packed into every hour. Saturday we had Cody's grad party at our house. The wig made its wide public debut but was quickly replaced by a hat when I realized having a bunch of what is essentially long strands of plastic on your head when it's 80 degrees out and you don't have to is silly.

I'm trying to think of how to write what I mean to say next without offending anyone, and I think it may just have to be something I get off the hook for for having cancer? Maybe? I just kind of underestimated how daunting it would be to see that many of my family members and friends in one place at one time and have to maintain a somewhat sunny disposition. I mean, in general I am doing really great, I'm not lying when I tell people that. I said to Andrew the other day, aside from having the hodge, this summer has been amazing, stemming from a lot of different sources of happiness. It just got extremely emotionally exhausting to remain talkative and gracious, and I don't think I did a very good job. (And if I did manage it then, I'm outing myself now as a grump.) It's actually the first time that happened; usually I'm good to gab about anything, cancer included (I have a freaking blog about it, hello), but maybe not 20 times in one afternoon. It's funny though, I've met two types of people throughout this experience: those who can talk about it, and those who ignore it. And believe me, the latter type is the harder to deal with internally.

That being said, it was definitely a party to remember. About 20 something of Cody's BC friends showed up, along with Smithtown kids, and by the time night fell, the backyard was swarming with people. At one point in the evening, one of my friends turned to me and said, "Your brother has a lot more friends than you do." I pouted at first, but then looking around, realized it's true. Quality not quantity, though, right? RIGHT?

Sunday will live in infamy as the day I watched Burlesque and...really enjoyed it. There's a part where Christina (I said enjoyed it, but not enough to remember the name of the character she plays, ok?) goes into her dressing room, which is overflowing with boas and sequins and prop machine guns that shoot glitter, and all I could think about was being in that room, which lead directly to make-a-wish foundation jokes.

Monday was my friends' second annual 4th of July jaunt to Fire Island. The fog fooled everyone into thinking they weren't getting any color for most of the day. Consequently, I took a ferry home with a few talking lobsters and some striped bass. (My milky-skinned friend Thea fell asleep on her side and now has a nice full-body crimson line running vertically.)

When I read back my account of those three days, it reminds me of a normal weekend I used to have before the hodge, with less drinking and dancing to be had, yet I feel ten times more exhausted than I used to and want to. I watched True Grit with my parents last night and after literally understanding half of what Matt Damon said and almost none of what mouth-full-of- marbles Jeff Bridges said, had to turn on the captions. That's how tired I was. And it's just frustrating to pay for having so much fun. And what's stranger is that I feel like my mind has been going 10 thousands times faster than it used to and in a thousand different directions even as my body slows down, which doesn't do much for resting effectively. This past weekend made me feel like a racehorse chomping at the bit to get better and be active. Girl needs to start doing some yoga, stat.

But that has to wait until I get whatever is going on with my feet sorted out. A few days ago I noticed pain in both feet, across the tops and along the sides, but I attributed it to walking around the city in flip flops. By Sunday a black and blue bloomed along the ball and across the top of my left foot, which has kind of left me hobbling. After a doctor's visit today, it was decided one of the chemo drugs will be pulled this next treatment to try and stop the symptoms, which could be signs of something called neuropathy.

Chemotherapy-induced (chemo-induced) peripheral neuropathy may be called CIPN for short. It is a set of symptoms caused by damage to the nerves that are further away from the brain and spinal cord. These distant nerves are called peripheral nerves. They carry sensations (feeling) to the brain and control the movement of our arms and legs. They also control the bladder and bowel, though these nerves are affected less often. Chemo-induced peripheral neuropathy can be a disabling side effect of cancer treatment. It is caused by some of the chemotherapy drugs used to treat cancer.

Thank you, google.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disconcerted by that. I've learned (to attempt) not to worry before there's cause to, but what could've caused a spontaneous bruise? I guess all that's left for me to do is take it in stride and go watch True Grit again before it expires on my IO.