October 4th long overdue posting.

Oh dear blog reader, you are one of the most neglected of all of God’s creatures.
I, your host on this humble board, feel ashamed that I do not put up more frequent entries, and I am quite surprised that any of you even bother to check anymore. You have my most sincere apologies. Except if there are any in my audience that come on here just to laugh at my plight and get some sick satisfaction from my suffering. Probably that animal does not exist here, but that is a glimpse into the paranoid side of my dark mind, not a side I show you often.
The shame of not posting more compounds itself as when I finally come to the point where I say to myself, “Self, you REALLY need to get on there and put up a posting. These people are kind enough and interested enough to take time out of their day to check if you have said anything lately, and you don’t have the decency to even provide fuel enough to quench their thirst for information.” So then I feel embarrassed and end up not wanting to face doing it so I put it off again.
I of course do have my list of excuses as to why I do not post, but I am sure I could squeeze out a little time and do more postings.
Anyway these last several weeks, have been tenuous at best. Has been a pretty hard road to travel, but I am soldiering on. What else can I do?
Here are some tidbits for you of the happenings since we last talked.
Everyday I have enough new stories I would want to share, that I could do a posting a day, but have to sort it down.

On 8/31
Having a really hard time today. I slept until 1:00 in the afternoon.
My stomach is about to burst, and I just had a drain Friday afternoon.
Not even 48 hours later, and I can even move.
It is pushing against my kidneys and everything.
Tomorrow will be a nightmare unless I get excellent results from my water pills overnight.
My electrolytes have been all out of whack according to the blood tests.
So I have been exhausted between the drains.

I did beef jerky today out of a London broil, it turned out fantastic. It only took 3 hours to dehydrate. Can you believe that?
The thicker slices I left in for 4 hours, but after that, all were completely done.
I plan on buying another one or maybe even two while they are on sale.
I always do my marinades from on the spot creation and inspiration.
This batch was made of:
For dry seasonings, onion powder, garlic salt, Lawry's seasoned salt, cumin, old bay and oregano.
Wet stuff, was A1 sauce and Soy sauce.
Whisked all together and then smush it into the meat in a Ziploc bag.
Marinate overnight, mixing it every few hours, to ensure good coating.
Much, much better than any store bought jerky on the market.
The worst batch I ever made was still better than any prepackaged jerky.

9/9
I am very weak and tired right now.
Have Chemo day 2 today.
My Dad is down babysitting me this week, and will be taking me to chemo.
My weight is down to 130 pounds.
I cannot seem to eat enough no matter how hard I try.
I get real nauseous after just a few bites.

I have trouble standing every time, and get dizzy to the point of having to grab on to something after a few steps. But that is how the cycle goes. I am not surprised.
It started going downhill Sunday while Tammy and Randy were here visiting, and has just progressed to a bed ridden state pretty much now.
It is nothing for anyone to worry about though. I have been through it before, I just limp my way down to the hospital and back everyday, then I can sleep again and that is exactly what I do.

During the weekend after chemo now and I am really trying to keep a good attitude, but it is really wearing me down.
I had a big cry session last night. I asked God why he had forsaken me, and if he was getting a big laugh out of my misery.
I know it was wrong, but I feel like there just has to be someone to blame, because I certainly never did anything bad enough to justify this hell.

I am having the shittyist time of my life right now, puking my damn guts out at every turn.
If I even think about food I throw up. Seriously, thinking about it has made me throw up at least twice, not kidding.
Terrible pain in my stomach from just the muscles being so stressed with the vomiting.
So weak and tired that I am having to use the walker in the house again to get to the bathroom and back.
I have terrible chemo induced diarrhea that kills my guts every time I go.
I cannot breathe half the time when throwing up.
Having a hard time swallowing, and on top of everything else have a sore throat because of a chemo side effect.
Headaches to beat the band, and the shot each night sends me into a screaming pain for 3 to 5 mins straight. I have to cry every time it seems. It absolutely kills me.
My ears are so sensitive it kills me to hear the dogs licking their feet even when they are in the other room. Every noise in the house puts my ears into a tailspin, and bores straight into my brain.
The effects of chemo are unbelievable and so numerous and ridiculous, you could never identify them all.
It is a terrible, terrible way to have to treat a disease. What a friggin mess. I hate it so bad; I could rip it to shreds with my bare hands if it were a tangible item.
I am just miserable. Want to die.
Cindy is being so good trying to comfort me, but it does not help. I love her so much it hurts to know she sees me in pain. I want to hide it from her. She gets upset sometimes because I suffer so much. But she is so strong there is no way I could survive without her support through this.
Don't worry, this is just the way things go after chemo round, sometimes it is worse than others.
This is a bad one.

Caution: Kitchen detour ahead.

Sunday of weekend after Chemo.
Ok guys here was Cindy's special cocktail waiting at the end of her lawn mowing adventure this weekend. I dragged myself to the kitchen, propped myself up on the counter, while she was mowing and made her a Frozen Lemon Drop.

1 part ginger/lemon/or regular simple syrup
1 part vodka 1 part lemon juice1 part sweet and sour mix 6 parts ice Lemon wedges, for garnish Country time mix for rim for garnish if wanted

Add liquid ingredients and ice to blender and blend until smooth. Pour into margarita glasses and garnish with lemon slice. For my own special Greg touch, line the rim with Country time lemon aid mix like you would salt a margarita rim. Excellent finishing touch!

I try to do something like this for her at least once a week to let her know I love a appreciate her.
Try it for your special someone, you and they will really enjoy this tradition.
Nothing else adventurous going on the kitchen this weekend as I was coming off of a Chemo round Friday and cant stand for more than a min or two at a time.


Thursday of recovery week.
Had a hell of a time the last two days with pain and such.
I am having diarrhea literally 12 to 15 times a day. And gas to the moon.
I can let one go for like 15 seconds at a time and do it every couple mins.
I could power an automobile if you hooked me up to one.
It is crazy. I hurt from all the vibration, like a trumpeters lips after a long solo.
I am not kidding.
Cindy and I just both shake our heads in amazement at it all. I am putting out about 3 to 4 times the quantity of what I am eating.
So I guess this is all the dead cells that the chemo is killing.

Did nothing but sleep all day today, other than do a great meatball dish in the slow cooker.
You would love it, and it is so easy it’s ridiculous.

They make a great meal served over rice with the sauce I add, or for appetizers for a party (assuming your guests eat meat).

Caution: Kitchen detour ahead.

Sweet and Sour Meatballs:
1/2 cup of preserves, Apricot are suggested but this last round I did, I used 1/4 cup grape jelly and 1/4 cup Apricot preserves, any flavor will do. Apricot just seems to go good with the rest of the oriental flavorings in this.
1/4 cup of Hoisin sauce, if you don't have this or don't want to shuck out the bucks for it, since it is rarely used, use sweet and sour sauce. But Hoisin in certainly the best choice, it really makes the dish.
1/4 cup Rice Vinegar
1/8th teaspoon Cayenne pepper
1/2 of a bell pepper cut into 1 inch chunks
1/2 medium yellow or white onion cut into 1 inch pieces
1 lb of frozen prepared meatballs, or make your own.

Add pre-cooked frozen meatballs or you own cooled meatballs to slow cooker with all other ingredients, mix until sauce ingredients are thoroughly combined and meatballs are coated.
Bring up to medium heat for first half hour to 45 mins, then reduce heat to low and just let em soak it all up in the hot bath. Stir about every 30 mins or hour, to keep the balls coated and moist on all sides. Let it go and fill your house with the great smell for several hours until you cant stand it anymore. What a smell!!!! Do at least 3 hours on low.

How is that for simple?
If you do the pre-made meatballs, it is like 5 mins of prep to put the ingredients together and have all swimming in the slow cooker.
Start it on Sunday morning when you wake up while you are waiting for the bacon to fry. By lunchtime it will be done and your house will smell fantastic. Serve over white rice, or in a hot dog bun as a meatball sandwich.

I did not really get UP for the day until 4 pm and I did sleep all night except for getting up to go to the bathroom every hour and a half. I hate it, so tired I can barely walk today, and then only for a min or two. Though I would be getting more energy by now, but I actually had a better day Wednesday than Thursday.

During this week, Cindy’s parents, Larry and Ellen sent me a list of cancer fighting food and vitamins they downloaded from some site and I noticed that Cindy had already identified all of these and discussed them with me and the Dr. when all this first started. She did a great job on researching cancer foods and drugs that would fight it when we first got into this mess.
So if anything this validates the stuff she was telling me.
Larry and Ellen are always trying to help us with my condition, and I know they feel there is nothing they can do, but just me knowing that they care is a mountain of good to me.
So to them: Can’t thank you enough and I could have never even dreamed of having in-laws as great as you two.
My other friends and co-workers always have complaints about in-laws, I just smile and laugh. I have complete support from you as if you were my own parents. You have treated me just like one of your real kids since we were married.
Thank you for being you.
Cindy does not let you know how much she appreciates how great of parents you are too, but I wanted to let you know that she thinks it. Sometimes I have to remind her to contact you, or keep up with you. But she does love and appreciate you, she just needs a little push to express it sometimes. You know, she does not bear her emotions as flagrantly as I do. And you all know I do everything with zeal and emotion. Once again she is the stoic ying, to my flamboyant yang.
That is what makes us such a great couple, Variety. (The neighbors might say it makes for a noisy house, ha ha ha.)

On the Sunday after recovery week.
I went to about 6 places today as we did stuff.
Farmers market, Costco, Monroe brakes to get the Blue van new brakes, the grocery store, and another store.
I did it all with just the walker except for using the little go carts in 1/2 of Costco, since the battery died, and the grocery store.
I was unable to go anywhere all this week without being pushed in the wheelchair, so this was a major victory.
Was out from 10:30 to 5:30.
And plan on doing the same tomorrow, I have 19 stores on my list to visit, not kidding; we are going to try to get the 13 in North Charleston done tomorrow. Cindy and I are breaking up the list and she is going to be able to take 3 of them off my plate, then she wants to go look for furniture (a low buffet type table to go under the windows in the kitchenette) so we can store appliances and stuff in the cabinets below.

I got some great stuff at the farmers market, had about 10 items.
Should be making some great eats this week and in the near future using my great fresh ingredients.

Last night I made my first banana pudding, you know with wafers, and bananas, and pudding and whipped cream.
Tonight I did homemade chicken salad, both turned out great.

To occupy my prison sentence time here at the house, I have started wrapping Christmas presents this week while I could not sleep in the night. Up to 58 wrapped already. Seems like I have not scratched the surface yet though. Cindy wakes up and it looks like a village of elves snuck in overnight and wrapped all this stuff.
She is so not into Christmas, and I am a complete Christmas junkie. I buy and wrap every gift we have given since we started going out 15 years ago. She does not even know what she is giving people half the time until they open it and say "Thanks Cindy" she goes, “oh yes, do you like it?” Then looks at me like, good job or what the hell did you get them that for. I do all the Christmas stuff start to finish, including all the decorating. Cindy normally just takes the holiday off. But she will have to help me with the physical stuff. You know like lifting tissue paper to put in a box to be wrapped. I am so weak a flea could beat me at arm wrestling. No way can I put up a tree by myself. I would need a crane and a catapult.
I want to get a jump on it this year as things have been very unpredictable and I never know when I will be sick, or if the winter months are going to be impossible for me to do it.
I have to take everything so slow these days I do not want to get caught up in a no win situation.
I never know what is around the next corner.
Speaking of the next corner: I get CT scan results on Oct. 6th.

One of the things I got at the farmers market was Muscadine and Scuppernong grapes. Oh god are they great. I ate 1/2 half a pound the night I got them. At another booth they had Muscadine cider. It was great in the taste test so I got a 1 liter bottle, it was 7 dollars whew. But if I sip it, and savor it, I will be able to stretch the value.
Ginny, my Dad’s mother in law has vines in her old backyard. I asked him to go pick all he can for me. I am a complete junky for these things.
My mom actually has some vines in her backyard that I had forgotten about. So when they came to visit, they brought a huge zip lock bag full of them, must have been over 5 pounds. I am halfway through that already.

Caution: Kitchen detour ahead.

I made a surprise dinner for Cindy.
Grilled Fresh Eggplant Curry steaks, Homemade Cucumber and Yogurt dip (tzazaki sauce) with home baked Pita chips, Golden raisin and cashew basmati rice and a frozen Peach smoothie cocktail.
The Pita Chips and Eggplant and Rice came out great, ,so did the peach cocktail, but my homemade tzazaki was a flop. You can’t win them all. Actually Cindy says she is extremely happy if she gets a 20% success rate on new recipes, so 4 out of 5 or 80% of the recipes she would want again, makes me feel pretty good. The cooking ended up taking nearly 3 hours, I had only planned for an hour and a half, so she busted me and the surprise was not ready, but helped me for the last half of the time and we finally ate.

Oh I did a sun brewed Iced tea last week. Fantastic of course, goes without saying. Sun brewing gives it such a different flavor. Left it for 6 hours in the 90 degree sun then mixed the sugar and after dissolution, added Ice and 1 sliced lemon, let it chill for 2 hours in the fridge, and then jumped on it. Finished the whole gallon in 3 days by myself.

Made a great Chicken dish while my Mom and Gene were visiting for the afternoon. It was, Cindy's Bacon Wrapped Creamy Chicken Breasts

Ingredients:
Boneless skinless chicken breasts or large tenders, one to two per person (you are gonna want seconds!)
1 8 oz Philadelphia soft cream cheese with chives.
Turkey bacon, suggest Butterball.
¼ Stick of Butter.
Salt.
Fresh cracked pepper.
Fresh chives, or scallions, or parsley for garnish if you feel like it.

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Tenderize and flatten the breasts with a mallet a little bit if you like.
Liberally spread a thick layer of the cream cheese on one side of the breast like jelly on toast. Leave out what is left of the cream cheese to soften more, we will use this later.
Wrap the breasts into a spiral. Wrap the outside of the chicken with the bacon as much as you can fit on it without overlapping. Coat the bottom of a glass or Pyrex deep bowl with very thin layer of butter. This will sizzle the bacon, and keep them from sticking.
Top each breast with small pat of butter to crisp up the tops of the bacon and get a good sauce started when it melts to the bottom of the pan. Add the rest of the cream cheese (as much as you want) around the breasts in the bottom of the pan, so they will simmer in it. Bake for 30 to 35 mins, or until the center of the biggest breast reaches at least 165 with a meat thermometer, and the tops are a nice golden brown. Or just slice into the center of the thickest one and make sure there is no pink in the middle. I just don't want anybody getting sick, so I tend to overcompensate. Turn it up to broil at the end for another 5 mins to brown and crisp the bacon and breast tops. When you are satisfied with the doneness, remove from oven and let sit to cool for 5 mins before serving.
When plating, pour the rest of the butter/cream sauce from the pan over the breasts. Sprinkle your garnish over them for a nice visual effect. I suggest you serve with rice, risotto, or potatoes of your choice for a nice complete meal.

This is so good it was Cindy's absolute favorite dish before she went veggie on us. Mom said it was the single greatest thing she ever put in her mouth, after the meal.

Today during our errands, since it was 65 degrees, I wore a t-shirt, a long sleeve oxford, a knit sweater and my leather jacket up top.
Gloves, two pairs of socks, a diaper, thermal underwear, and khaki pants. Only got cold twice during the day on just on my head, would have worn my toboggan, but it was in the Van and we were in the middle of the farmers market. So I was pretty much eskimoed up. Do not know what the hell I am going to do when it get below freezing this year. I don't think I can leave the house. I need to get a winter home in Key West. If they have a good Cancer clinic there, I might just move there.

I made my soup last week, slow cooked it for about 5 hours.
It really took forever, I used homemade chicken stock that I made from the left over rib bones and meat from our breasts, and various spices.
After that I still probably spent 1 and 1/2 hours working on it, not just letting it cook.
It made 3, 32 oz containers.
And I had it for dinner, of course it was perfect.
I might sell the recipe to the Greek place, it is a ton better than theirs was, and theirs was the reason I even considered making it in the first place, because that was so good, I fell in love with it.
Have gone through 1 quart in less than 24 hours though.
Had it for both Breakfast and Dinner the next day.
It is just fantastic, the whole time I am eating it, I am groaning out "mmmm" and "oh man this is good".
Must be driving Cindy crazy.


I got no sleep again last that night, maybe an hour and a half and no nap the next day.
I try to sleep while Cindy watches some boring junk that I can fall asleep to.
But I want to be in here with her.
Have not seen her at all that day, she had to take Lucy to the vet aright after work, so she did not get back here and settled until almost 7 pm.

Slept good that night, and went into the office for 4 hours or more today.
So I will probably be good and sick tomorrow.
Have my CT scan and then a drain fright after.
Won’t be able to eat as my scan has to be clear, so should be really screwed up by the end of the day sick, exhausted, and starving.
Sounds like a pass out waiting to happen, when you mix that with weak legs that can barely support my weight.

October3rd:
The shot was easy as pie the last night for some reason.
Really tired, as I did not get but 1 and 1/2 hours sleep the night before.
Got my soup, in the middle of the night. I eat at every opportunity I can.

Two nights in a row the shot did not only go in good, but we had no after effects like we normally do for the next 5 mins with the fire spreading down my leg.
It was fantastic. If each night was like that I would never say a word.
You guys would never even know I had to take a shot, because it would be a non issue. Just like any other pill.

That pretty much brings you up to date. Sorry it is so much to sort through, but read what you want and skip the rest. It is there if you want it.
Need to make some food now, have been working on this enormous posting for hours. Maybe I will come back and add pictures later of the dishes I made.

Love to all,
Greg