Tag: Yukon

Blog, labs

It’s Been Awhile

Jothi

Looks like I haven’t written anything for awhile. For no particular reason; I guess I just haven’t felt inspired. Hmm…. I wonder what has happened recently in my myeloma world.

I had a bone marrow biopsy (maybe in January?) to check my MRD status. I went up to 27 myeloma cells in a million. That was from about 1 in a million. So that was a bummer to see. MRD is pretty cutting edge. Nothing showed up on my blood tests, although the following round of blood tests showed my m-band moved to “detectable but not quantifiable”. BLAH, it would have been nice to hit MRD zero and stay there.

My oncologist didn’t want to make any changes based on MRD as most oncologist would follow. The myeloma specialist then spoke to the oncologist and then had a meeting with me to talk things over. He said that the numbers were not trending in the right direction, and what was the point of waiting until things significantly elevated. The specialist said he went through the list of drugs and wanted to add in a drug that “wasn’t going to do me harm”. He recommended adding back in Dara to punch the numbers back down.

I was on Dara prior to transplant, but Stanford stopped it because it was not working fast enough. Since it didn’t seem to give me any problems, I agreed to go back on it. If he was recommending something like cytoxan, I would have said no.

Well, as it turns out, side effects can change post transplant. I had my first dose of Dara with carfilzomib and it was rough. I turned into a 90-year old, with super fatigue. My skin on my torso also went hypersensitive and wearing a shirt was unpleasant. Too bad we were still in winter ❄️. That lasted for about a week. I had another round two weeks after the first, and the same thing happened again. The oncologist was baffled. We ran some blood tests, but nothing showed up. I’ve noticed that if something is out of the ordinary and not listed on a clinical trial, the oncologist is left bumbling his bottom lip and saying, “Good luck with that”.

Fortunately for me, by the third dose, my body was getting used to the drug and the symptoms significantly lessened. I didn’t have any of those symptoms by the fourth dose. So I’m back to being left with the few days of being miserable from the carfilzomib side effects. Maybe the cancer gods will show me some favor and things will get good enough to eventually drop the carfilzomib and just stay on the Dara.

But then again, at this point, I’m pretty sure the cancer gods don’t like me very much 😜. But then again again, they just updated all the five year cancer survival rates, and myeloma is now 59%. I’m going to hit 5 years soon. Not that I attribute that to the cancer gods, I’ll take the credit with my efforts.

I guess the other thing physically that happened was that, I developed a frozen shoulder. Possibly from the chemo, they aren’t actually sure what causes them. It’s quite bizarre. I can’t raise my right hand or arm above shoulder height or move it in an outward direction. I guess the tissue surrounding the “ball” of your arm, that goes into your socket, just seizes up. It can take 8 months to 2 years to “unfreeze”. Fortunately, it looks like I’m going through the stages at the faster rate. I’m sure the infrared sauna and turmeric are helping. Too bad my muscles didn’t freeze in a better spot 💪🏼. Imagine having your six pack be frozen and being ripped for 2 years.

Let’s see, I guess I have some blood numbers to share, here you go.

My medical provider made it a pain for me to transfer over my data, so that’s why I don’t post much about it (plus, I don’t have blood run much these days). Because of my weird side effects from the Dara, they did run a whole metabolic panel. My red blood cell numbers are still low. From the metabolic panel, they ran iron.

As you can see, my iron is quite well, from all those goji berries and beets. So my poor red blood cells are just quite beat up from the chemo. I thought that was interesting to see.

Well, I can tell your attention span is beginning to wane by this part of the post so I’ll be quick with the rest.

I made it to a succulent nursery, “Succulent Gardens”, down by Monterey, that I always wanted to go to. That was pretty awesome to visit. I’m a huge succulent fan, as you may have noticed from the pictures on my website. They supply plants to a lot of the other nurseries in California, so I was cool to visit the source. Here are some pictures.

I took a mushroom propagating class at a local collage. I sort of knew how to grow mushrooms from books and the internet, but I wanted some hands on training. So I know how to do that now. I have mushrooms growing inside the kitchen cupboards now. Hopefully at some point I’ll have a bigger space to really get into it.

Preparing mushroom growing media.

Finally, spring has sprung. Here are my irises that I planted last year. They had a year to grow and be undisturbed, so they are happy. Yukon likes to eat the grass around the pot.

Blog

My Hidden Superpower

Jothi

I was walking my dog Yukon the other day. We go for a walk every day, for my benefit and his. Most days, Yukon needs to have a bowel movement along the way, much to my chagrin. But hey, it’s part of nature, and I’ve let go of my timing preferences.

His perfect moment for this day was way at the other end of our street, in front of a deaf guy’s house. Yukon was doing his business, not in the guy’s yard but in front. Suddenly, the door flies open, and the guy starts yelling at me in a way that I couldn’t understand, since he was deaf. But it was pretty easy to tell he was not happy about Yukon’s choice.

“I’m cleaning it up” I said.

He kept yelling, not hearing what I said. Obviously, out of habit I spoke, since I don’t have much experience communicating with a deaf person.

I showed him the dog poop bags, he understood that, waved and slammed his door.

Now, I’ve never left a mess behind, anytime or anywhere, from my dog. I hate stepping in dog poo and it’s a lame move to let your dog poop in someone’s yard and leave it. His reaction would have been fully justified in my mind if that’s what I did. But I didn’t. He must have been having a bad day and this was the last straw.

Lucky me, it’s not like I can control my dog’s bowel movements. OR CAN I??? It’s something that I’ve wished for more than a couple of times.

REALLY?!?!

You are going here?

I have to carry this now for 2.5 miles, back to a garbage can!?!

It would be a super handy, but super lame super power.

Recently, I was standing in a circle in my superhero group. You see, an Alien race was starting to invade, and it looked like the end for humanity. We were its last hope.

“Let’s review everyone’s powers before we head out” Colossal man said.

“I have super strength and speed” one said.

“I can teleport” said another.

“I don’t have a superpower, but I’m really rich and can make gadgets” said the third.

“I can create and control fire” chimed another.

It was my turn and everyone turned to me.

“I can control my dog’s bowel movements”, I said.

Invincible Woman turned to me and said, “I’m so jealous of your power.”

“I know right, it’s pretty awesome” I replied. 😜

Oh well….. I guess I can cross off getting scolded by a deaf man off my bucket list.

Nutrition

The Thing Is… About Sauerkraut

Jothi

I was eating some sauerkraut with my dinner last week. It’s part of my bacteria quest that I wrote about a little while ago. I was sitting there thinking to myself,

“Boy, this is great. I’m eating this food to help out my good bacteria population and maybe help heal my gut and who knows what else!”

Then an image popped into my head, of my grandmother canning up her soup in mason jars from years ago. I remember it taking heat to cause those lids to pop down and seal.

Hmmm….. heat kills bacteria 🤔. This store bought organic sauerkraut is from a sealed jar. Is there any other ways of sealing a jar other than from heat?

Probably not?

A quick internet search about sauerkraut and the sealing process. Son of a gun! Most store sold sauerkraut is pasteurized and thus killing off all the bacteria! Grrrrr….. I’ve been eating all this pickled cabbage without getting the benefit of the bacteria! The things you don’t know about until you do a little digging (or thinking).

Everyone is constantly scared about bacteria!

Fortunately, making sauerkraut is not very hard to do. I received a little birthday money as a gift and bought some sauerkraut making mason jar lids (stainless steel, I hate plastic, I avoid it as much as possible). I started channeling my inner Ukrainian.

Yukon loves cabbage! He was quite excited about the process and quickly gobbled up any cabbage spills.

You just have to chop up the cabbage. Add a tablespoon of salt per 2 pounds of cabbage. Massage it in a bowl until it’s soft, and the juices are released. Put it all in a jar, with all the cabbage under the fluid (our kit has a spring to hold it down), and in a month, you have fresh sauerkraut full of good BACTERIA!

The only problem is I have to wait a month for it to be ready. But I suppose, if that’s one of my complaints, I’m doing alright.

Blog

Yukon’s Pose

Jothi

Yukon is taking a break from a nap and striking up his regal pose, showing off his manly chest hair.

He says, “I’ve been working hard on my chest hair. It was cold this winter, so it grew extra long. I make sure to get lots of chest rubs, to get hand oil on it and it exfoliates my skin. I make sure to get extra exercise by stealing the human’s slippers and try and get them to chase me. My goal for next year is to keep working on it, and hopefully it will be black and curly. Doggone, I’m a manly!”

Blog

Joaquin Miller Park

Jothi

We went hiking the other day in Joaquin Miller Park in the Oakland hills. We had been there before, but the park is so large, we decided to go to another entrance, which ended up being a completely different experience due to the park’s size.

We have a big rainstorm hitting California at the moment, but we managed to get a hike in, in between the rain. The Bay Area fog did roll in though, which made it really COLD. Now, I do realize that it wasn’t actually cold compared to other places, but sitting around having a picnic before the hike at 39 degrees felt pretty frosty 🥶.

While hiking, we stumbled upon some reddish orange mushrooms that were pretty cool. There is nothing like moisture and decaying plant matter to spawn mushrooms! I think they are Red Russula mushrooms, but I’m definitely not a mushroom expert. Probably quite poisonous, judging by that they were still there and not collected by someone already. Apparently most red mushrooms are poisonous. We also came across some version of turkey tail mushrooms, which are always cool to see.

Hiking in the foggy redwoods was also a pretty awesome experience. I think redwoods are my favorite kind of tree, with Japanese maples being my second. Redwood trees are definitely an entity and walking in between them, you can feel their presence. These redwoods are second or third generation, as the first was logged for building materials for San Francisco over 100 years ago. So they are big, but not that big when it comes to redwoods.

There is a small grove of untouched redwoods at Henry Cowell State park in the Santa Cruz mountains. There is a tree there that is about 277 feet tall and around 1,500 years old. Can you imagine, with this being the year 2023, this tree started growing in the year 500? Just to give you an idea how large it is, it’s so wide, that it takes 16 adults hand to hand to hug the tree. And this one is still not as big as the trees near Yosemite or in Humboldt up north. They are quite something to see in person. Thinking about my previous post on gifts, these trees are a gift by just being.

And of course, Yukon thought it was the best day ever, that boy loves to hike 😊.

Blog

The Yukon Fan Club

Jothi

This is our family dog, Yukon. He is a 2 year old English cream Labrador retriever. He was born on a winery in Napa of all places. There was an English gentleman, who had 2 English creams as pets and were also his trademark for his wine. One was a boy and the other was a girl. Nature happened and Yukon came into this world.

He is a mellow, easy going guy. I wanted to get a dog for my children, to increase the happiness in our household. They have wanted to get a dog for a long while and I always resisted. No time like the present is how I find myself living more and more.

For some reason, beyond my reasoning, he decided that I am his favorite person. I don’t dislike dogs but the the rest of my family all liked dogs better than I. Go figure. I must need it more???

He is a goofy boy. His hobbies include loving anyone he can, watching squirrels, eating almond butter and popcorn, chasing the leaf blower, marking the neighborhood, playing, breathing in my face and helping me do whatever I do, no matter what.

This includes helping me: go for walks, eat my meals, garden, qigong, meditate, cook, vacuum, write (he’s under the table right now helping write this), take a nap, do laundry, get changed, take the garbage cans down the road and clipping my toe nails. We have nicknamed him, my shadow. As far as he is concerned, wherever I go, he goes.

He’s always ready for an adventure, no matter what it is. He likes to suck on the heads of teddy bears to calm down, I guess it’s like a pacifier for him? We also have a cat, Sherlock, who is 10 years old. Sherlock treats Yukon like an annoying little brother. Sherlock tolerates Yukon, but when he is in pissy cat mode, Yukon becomes a punchy bag. Yukon does find that entertaining though and gets to practice his boxing sidestepping moves.
He still thinks he a lap dog

An interesting thing I noticed about Yukon, is that he is always legitimately really happy to see everyone, all the time, no matter who it is.

Everyday is the best day, even if we just take out the garbage. Maybe the world would be a better place if we were all like dogs?

Blog

149 Years of Possessions

Jothi

I’ve been thinking about possessions lately. I take our dog Yukon for a couple mile walk everyday around the neighborhood. He need the exercise and so do I.

The next block over, there is a thin man in his 70’s with white hair and one of those great walrus mustaches. He’s probably a widow and lives in an old house painted kind of a puke green. He has a dog as well, an older golden retriever that Yukon likes to gawk at every time he sees her.

He recently put his house on the market to sell. It’s very much a fixer upper, with siding falling off in certain places and mold growing on parts of the walls.

Being what the housing market is currently in California, it sold within a month and half, for way more than it should of. But, hats off to the guy, I’m happy for him for getting a lot for his house, and hopefully he will live happily ever after.

He did get to live in the house for about 2 months after it sold, so my dog and I still got to gawk at his house and his dog. He had a garage sale a week and a half ago for the pre move purge. A whole garage driveway full of stuff.

He sold what he could, but the next day there was a whole driveway full of stuff that was now a free pile. We stopped on our way past, to see if there was anything we wanted. I looked over the hoard and didn’t see anything that would benefit our lives and we kept walking.

I got to thinking, as I typically do while I walk, since my only company is more interested in peeing on things. This guy has a whole driveway full of stuff he doesn’t want. He tried to sell it and there is still a whole driveway full of stuff no one wanted to buy. It’s now been a week and a half since the free pile started and there is still a whole driveway full of stuff he can’t give away!

Wow, that’s crazy to think that he had all of these possessions that no one wants for I don’t know how many years. That’s some baggage.

Of course that got me thinking about my own family’s possessions. Let me tell you, we have STUFF. Having 4 kids with their combined 62 years of collecting. Add that to the 87 years of my wife’s and my collecting and that’s a whopping 149 years of possessions!

Fortunately we have had to move a few times, as recently as a couple of years ago. Nothing like moving to get you to pull out your things and look at them. We continue to purge, we seem to always have a bag or two that accumulates over a couple of months for Salvation Army’s thrift shop.

I’ve personally gotten extra fussy since the cancer diagnosis, about getting things that only benefit me or my families lives. Who wants to deal with a pile of extra stuff in the case of my untimely departure. If something doesn’t give me happiness, I don’t want it.

When you look at a item, does it fulfill a purpose or does it give you happiness that you own it? If it doesn’t, maybe you shouldn’t own it anymore. Of course when you bought the item, you were happy and excited about it. Toys are the best example of that. My kids darn near exploded 🤩 with excitement every birthday or Christmas (I’m a little jealous that’s adults loose that, I’m try to get that back a bit).

After the excitement fades, are you still happy you own it?

Long term storage cracks me up. Sure it has its uses, especially for people in between homes or business use. But if it’s used for people who just have so much stuff that they can’t fit into their homes and can’t part with, it’s just crazy. Paying hundreds of dollars a month to keep owning something that you don’t want to look at. America at its best.

It’s also funny, when you sell or give away a possession, you feel so much better and lighter now that’s its out of your life. In this case, less is more!

To have a better life, better your everyday life just a little. One way of doing that is to be not bogged down by your possessions.

Eat your vegetables!

Yukon