in the garden

If you have been reading this blog or getting "health update" emails from me, you know that I initially asked everyone to visualize me well and in the garden. I learned the power of visualization during my friend Emily's journey through cancer, and I quickly took up what wisdom I gleaned from her and applied it to my own experience. I knew immediately that I not only wanted to ask people to pray, meditate, and send healing energy, but I also wanted to ask for a focused vision of myself enjoying the vibrancy of life found in a growing garden.
Garden chicken compliments of Beth B.

Having asked for a large group of people to imagine me in the garden has certainly enhanced and informed the depth of meaning I have found in our garden this spring. We have worked in the garden just about every day. For a while I was heading to the garden first thing every morning as a type of zen practice. Stringing the pea trellis and turning the soil in our beds, became important healing practices for me. And, another lovely result of the request for visualization was that friends and family sent us seeds and offered to help with the garden in many ways. The healing effects of the garden run deep, including the literal nourishment of our bodies. If all goes well the garden will provide us with the majority of our vegetable needs for the year.

Our garden is growing like mad, providing us daily food, and soon to hit that stage of wild growth characterized by mid-summer. The garden and my yoga mat are the two places I feel most certain that I am held up by love, support, and the abundant energy of the universe.

This garden is a collective effort (although the top-gardener award certainly goes to Rhonda).

Here is a quick, early-summer tour:

The salad bed (alternating rows of speckled romaine and arugula). We have been eating a salad a day as well as giving lots away. My mom planted some of the lettuce seeds when she was with us in March







The pea trellis. Hollis helped to make these frames and plant the seeds when she was in town in April. They started flowering yesterday!








The broccoli rabe seeds were sent by Jessica!

The long view which includes (in small hills at the bottom left) the zucchini seeds sent by my cousin Emily.

Health Update, 2/9/10

Dear friends and family,

As promised, I am writing with an update. The past (almost) two weeks have involved a lot of doctors’ appointments and phone consultations, and even more waiting. We have been buoyed by all of the love and prayers, food, cards, gifts, and general well wishes. While I have not been able to respond to every note, please know that I appreciate hearing from folks, and the messages mean a lot. Thank you.

So, now the details… I will have outpatient surgery this Thursday – there will be two surgeries performed over the course of the day. The first is called a sentinel node biopsy, and it is essentially the mapping and then removal of lymph nodes. Until the initial mapping is done (using more nuclear medicine – woo hoo!) we will not know how many lymph nodes need to be removed. The area of focus is the left side of my neck, under the tumor site. After that diagnostic and biopsy is performed, I will then have a wide excision of my tumor site. This is going to involve the removal of my lower left ear lobe. Dr. Lee, the plastic surgeon, will initially do a skin graft, and we will do reconstruction once I have begun to heal.

As I mentioned, this is outpatient surgery. We will check in at 5:30am, and we should be home by 5pm or so. (And many thanks to the various friends who have volunteered to watch Buddy, house us in GB the night before, and keep Rhonda company in the hospital all day!)

The other update is that I am currently scheduled for a second opinion at Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York City on March 2nd. While we were initially exploring Midwestern options, it was actually my insurance company that encouraged me to seek out a second opinion at MSK – one of the top-two melanoma clinics in the country. Although I feel as though I might jinx myself by saying this, we were very surprised to learn that my insurance will be paying for airfare and a hotel, as well as the cost of the consultation. While we initially thought that the second opinion should come before surgery, we soon learned that they require the pathology from the sentinel node biopsy.

We are still gathering information, and the ultimate treatment plan is still to be determined. The pathology reports from Thursday’s surgery will be important to a clear understanding of where the cancer has spread in my body. The more long-term (and still very tentative) plan is that I may have to have an additional surgery in later March, followed by the beginning of treatment once I have adequately healed. Although this might change after the second opinion, the standard course of treatment for melanoma is interferon, not chemotherapy.

I would like to ask for continued prayers, visualizations, or whatever form of positive energy works for you. In addition to imagining me well (and in the garden), I would like to ask you to please keep Rhonda and I, as well as and my surgeons – Dr. Cindy Geocaris and Dr. James Lee – in your thoughts on Thursday. Finally, as one goal of Thursday’s procedure is to get more details on how far the cancer has spread, feel free to imagine that it hasn’t spread very far at all! In addition, we hope for a clear margin around the tumor – in other words, imagine that Dr. Lee gets all of the cancerous tissue.

With hope,

Amy