That's What She Said

Beth Gallagher said:
There are a few people out there who have managed to avoid it. My sister lives in the boonies and has never had internet, nor cable TV. They never had any interest in it, though they were forced to a cellphone when Verizon started removing land-line service in their area.

Oddly enough, about a year ago her banking information was compromised and someone forged a check on her account. The bank restored her money but she had to go through all the aggravation of getting a new account, moving auto-pay stuff, etc. So as it turns out, no one is safe from the scammers.
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The same thing happened to us a year ago. banks, credit cards nothing safe anymore.
Somebody bought $459 worth of plane tickets on ours.
Like George Carlon said, 'minus the f word every other word' " its a club and you ain't in it".
 
The original area I used had an work area for gardening with light stand, storage cabinet, workbench, and a handy water faucet for watering plants.

I had my computer, scanner and printer in another area.

finally a workbench for doing everything else.

I had these setups in the basement.

After the fire the house was cleaned out, a lot of stuff was tossed because of smoke or fire damage, but a lot was cleaned and boxed by a crew of about 30 people. We had boxes stored in the garage, the barn, they couldn't all fit, so the remainder was put in storage. Most of the stuff was housewares dishes, knifes, corningware etc. When the house was finish, the insurance co. didn't want to continue playing storage cost, so all the carton were returned to us. The only place we had to store these 120 cartons was the basement. We also had the 2 mobile homes we lived in fully equipped with similar stuff. So it was like 3 houses of housewares. We started cleaning out the cartons in the basement we are now about half way through. So far we've donated 2 vans full of goodies. It's slow going my wife and I find it hard carrying the cartons up the stairs. My daughter does help but she's not got a lot of time.

I know it's a long story to say the basement isn't available to recreate what I had before. Honestly I don't think I want to go up and down the staircase to the basement anymore.

I will start some plants soon, I do have a sunny window I can use.
 
Tony Page said:
The original area I used had an work area for gardening with light stand, storage cabinet, workbench, and a handy water faucet for watering plants.

I had my computer, scanner and printer in another area.

finally a workbench for doing everything else.

I had these setups in the basement.

After the fire the house was cleaned out, a lot of stuff was tossed because of smoke or fire damage, but a lot was cleaned and boxed by a crew of about 30 people. We had boxes stored in the garage, the barn, they couldn't all fit, so the remainder was put in storage. Most of the stuff was housewares dishes, knifes, corningware etc. When the house was finish, the insurance co. didn't want to continue playing storage cost, so all the carton were returned to us. The only place we had to store these 120 cartons was the basement. We also had the 2 mobile homes we lived in fully equipped with similar stuff. So it was like 3 houses of housewares. We started cleaning out the cartons in the basement we are now about half way through. So far we've donated 2 vans full of goodies. It's slow going my wife and I find it hard carrying the cartons up the stairs. My daughter does help but she's not got a lot of time.

I know it's a long story to say the basement isn't available to recreate what I had before. Honestly I don't think I want to go up and down the staircase to the basement anymore.

I will start some plants soon, I do have a sunny window I can use.
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Tony isn't it always something? We're still cleaning up from the hurricane here and it was a couple years ago.
I also got a few bad cuts, from picking up tree limbs and Jake got his head busted open when one popped him in the head, blood spurted across the ground from his forehead.
Our kids live hindreds of miles away so not much help from them anymore.
 
Marie Mallory said:
Tony isn't it always something? We're still cleaning up from the hurricane here and it was a couple years ago.
I also got a few bad cuts, from picking up tree limbs and Jake got his head busted open when one popped him in the head, blood spurted across the ground from his forehead.
Our kids live hindreds of miles away so not much help from them anymore.
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Unless you live through any kind of disaster, it's hard to believe how long it takes to try to duplicate what you had before, and most times you can't.
 
Yesterday was our youngest granddaughter's birthday; she is 13!! It doesn't seem possible that she is a teenager and playing saxophone in the school marching band. Our youngest grandson is 8 which seems equally impossible. I guess I will be "great-grandma" before I know it.

Last night I decided to check the Breast Cancer Forum, having recently "celebrated" my 5 year milestone since diagnosis. I haven't participated there much in the past couple of years; it is a very depressing place for the most part. That said, I met a lot of wonderful people on that forum and they were a big part of my life while I was in treatment.

I was sad to find that two more women that I met on there both died last summer. One of them had been in remission for 13 years and we all thought she had beaten it. Sadly, it was found to have metastasized to her bones last January and she was gone by June. The other woman had progressed to Stage 4 and never got done with treatment; she was still trying new chemo drugs when she died in July. ☹️😢

One other woman who had IBC (like me), has had a metastasis to her brain and had her 3rd brain surgery a couple of weeks ago. So far she is hanging in there, but what a heavy load to carry.

So I was awake half the night, busy "what iffing" myself again. I will always remember what one BC poster said, "Cancer is like having a mafia hit on you. You may get away from it once but you never stop looking over your shoulder."
 
Beth Gallagher said:
Yesterday was our youngest granddaughter's birthday; she is 13!! It doesn't seem possible that she is a teenager and playing saxophone in the school marching band. Our youngest grandson is 8 which seems equally impossible. I guess I will be "great-grandma" before I know it.

Last night I decided to check the Breast Cancer Forum, having recently "celebrated" my 5 year milestone since diagnosis. I haven't participated there much in the past couple of years; it is a very depressing place for the most part. That said, I met a lot of wonderful people on that forum and they were a big part of my life while I was in treatment.

I was sad to find that two more women that I met on there both died last summer. One of them had been in remission for 13 years and we all thought she had beaten it. Sadly, it was found to have metastasized to her bones last January and she was gone by June. The other woman had progressed to Stage 4 and never got done with treatment; she was still trying new chemo drugs when she died in July. ☹️😢

One other woman who had IBC (like me), has had a metastasis to her brain and had her 3rd brain surgery a couple of weeks ago. So far she is hanging in there, but what a heavy load to carry.

So I was awake half the night, busy "what iffing" myself again. I will always remember what one BC poster said, "Cancer is like having a mafia hit on you. You may get away from it once but you never stop looking over your shoulder."
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I know what you mean. Every new pain I get I think maybe it's returned. The problem with me is I really don't care to find out. I don't want to know, at my age I'm not interested in fighting it, unless there's a magic pill.
 
@Tony Page and @Beth Gallagher that is why I was touting that "metastasis/recurrence blood test". I have attended conferences where it was talked about in very hopeful terms, but as pure research has fallen to "drug research", the project may have lost its funding as diagnostics always take a back seat to pharmaceuticals. The premise behind the test was that your individual tumor would have a series of antibodies developed against it using current technology. That information would b stored indefinitely, and blood would be drawn at intervals and tested for the presence of that tumor material. It worked well in animals. The test would not detect NEW cancer, but it was very sensitive against previously existing tumors. It would supersede older tumor marker tests, such as CEA, AFP, etc. as well as various scans when monitoring past cancers for recurrence or metastasis, although changes in the antigen/epitope structure of previous cancers would probably be missed unless some type of percentage equation were developed.
 
Tony Page said:
I know what you mean. Every new pain I get I think maybe it's returned. The problem with me is I really don't care to find out. I don't want to know, at my age I'm not interested in fighting it, unless there's a magic pill.
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I feel the same as you, Tony. I won't go through chemo/radiation again. It was just too harsh and I'm 5 years older now. I will choose palliative care/hospice and hope that I can live out the time in peace.
The woman I mentioned above who was a 13 year survivor tried a few treatments and was so sick from it that she stopped her treatment and went into palliative care, and then to hospice. Her recurrence was so widespread that treatment might only have given her a few months, and those months would have been miserable.
 
Don Alaska said:
@Tony Page and @Beth Gallagher that is why I was touting that "metastasis/recurrence blood test". I have attended conferences where it was talked about in very hopeful terms, but as pure research has fallen to "drug research", the project may have lost its funding as diagnostics always take a back seat to pharmaceuticals. The premise behind the test was that your individual tumor would have a series of antibodies developed against it using current technology. That information would b stored indefinitely, and blood would be drawn at intervals and tested for the presence of that tumor material. It worked well in animals. The test would not detect NEW cancer, but it was very sensitive against previously existing tumors. It would supersede older tumor marker tests, such as CEA, AFP, etc. as well as various scans when monitoring past cancers for recurrence or metastasis, although changes in the antigen/epitope structure of previous cancers would probably be missed unless some type of percentage equation were developed.
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There is currently a Signatera test that is given to some breast cancer patients.

"Signatera for breast cancer is a personalized circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) blood test by Natera that detects molecular residual disease (MRD) to monitor for cancer recurrence, guide treatment, and assess therapy effectiveness, offering earlier detection than traditional imaging for high-risk patients."

I think those are given to patients who did not have a good outcome with traditional protocol and had residual cancer after treatment.

Since I had a pCR (pathologic complete response) to chemo, MDA did not recommend any followup treatment/scans unless I developed "suspicious symptoms." Since my cancer was triple negative, there were no other treatment options available to me.
 
Beth Gallagher said:
There is currently a Signatera test that is given to some breast cancer patients.

"Signatera for breast cancer is a personalized circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) blood test by Natera that detects molecular residual disease (MRD) to monitor for cancer recurrence, guide treatment, and assess therapy effectiveness, offering earlier detection than traditional imaging for high-risk patients."

I think those are given to patients who did not have a good outcome with traditional protocol and had residual cancer after treatment.

Since I had a pCR (pathologic complete response) to chemo, MDA did not recommend any followup treatment/scans unless I developed "suspicious symptoms." Since my cancer was triple negative, there were no other treatment options available to me.
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If I was going to do anything it would have to be along the lines of a natural treatment. I remember a story that was told on one of the talk shows many years ago by a lady who was giving up by the doctors as terminal. She was actually sent home from the hospital and given a short time to live. The cancer was throughout her body. She researched for any natural and available food that had some sucess with cancer to make a drink concoction that she drank large quantities daily. After a few months she went back to the doctor to be checked out and to his amazement the cancer had decreased or was gone completely.
I remember buying her book on this story I wish I had it today I don't remember what the name of it was but it was very interesting.
I do remember one of the primary Foods in her drink was broccoli.
 
The Better Half and I spent most of the morning assembling the 8'x 8' portable greenhouse to move the outdoor tropical plants into. We are expecting 3 days of temps in the teens so it's time to move the plants into a protected area. We used to move them into the garage but the plants are really big and heavy, and we aren't as spry as we used to be.

Of course putting the greenhouse together and then moving all the plants was still quite an undertaking for us. All of the big plants are in planters with wheels so it was rolling them around for the most part. Here are a couple of pictures of the finished project.

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I'm expecting the small (300W - 1500W) greenhouse heater to be delivered today, so everything should be set to go for the cold temps on Saturday.

We aren't expecting this winter storm to be as bad as the storm of 2021 where power was out for several days, but we are much more prepared this time. We have our portable generator ready just in case.
 
We have been puttering around, preparing for the hard freeze this weekend. We drained the garden hoses, got the pool prepped, charged our Halo battery packs and flash lights, checked the candle supply. I got all the laundry caught up, too.

I baked some hamburger buns and a loaf of bread. We have plenty of bottled water and food so if the power is out for a few days we will be fine.

I'm sure that all these advanced preparations will mean that the whole "winter storm" is a total non-event.
 
Beth Gallagher said:
We have been puttering around, preparing for the hard freeze this weekend. We drained the garden hoses, got the pool prepped, charged our Halo battery packs and flash lights, checked the candle supply. I got all the laundry caught up, too.

I baked some hamburger buns and a loaf of bread. We have plenty of bottled water and food so if the power is out for a few days we will be fine.

I'm sure that all these advanced preparations will mean that the whole "winter storm" is a total non-event.
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We're expecting a deep freeze this weekend also here on Long Island. I think we're prepped as well as we can be food, water, batteries, rechargeables are all charged.
I can't remember when we had a major storm coming our way like this it's been a long time, hopefully it'll move so we're not a Direct Hit.
 
Tony Page said:
We're expecting a deep freeze this weekend also here on Long Island. I think we're prepped as well as we can be food, water, batteries, rechargeables are all charged.
I can't remember when we had a major storm coming our way like this it's been a long time, hopefully it'll move so we're not a Direct Hit.
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Here's hoping that it's not too bad, Tony. I hope y'all stay safe and warm.
 
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