This entry is an edited repost from my updates on LotsaHelpingHands Community December site for those of you reading that.

We are now at week 2 of cycle 1, and I feel pretty good. The known side effects are old friends and we have a rhythm to our relationship now. I hate them, they love me. I have never thought and talked about puke and poop as fervently and matter-of-factly as I have the past week. But boy do we have some new chemo side effects vying for the crown, and the theme is “you really don’t wanna eat that, right?” I have lost much of taste except bitter and spicy, that is, everything is bitter or very spicy. Sweet is now so sickeningly sweet which is saddest of all. Basically, I’ve lost the ability to recognize delicious. I’ve now, as I knew would happen, developed mouth and throat sores (doubly fun). I also have developed a tingling and sensitivity on my lips and the my tongue. Because of this I can’t really respond when my loving community offers to make food, bring food, buy food. My company gifted me with a generous doordash gift certificate which comes in super handy for getting quickly whatever maybe sounds good at a given time. I did order in some fast food the other night. Too bad I didn’t even have the guilty pleasure of eating it which sucks the joy out of eating food that’s bad for you. For relief of my current affliction, I’ve been doing a baking soda + salt + water gargle nearly every hour. I also have peroxyl mouthwash and may throw in some biotene mouthwash in there too. It’s desperate times. I miss the days when food is delicious! I am so gonna eat everything when this is over and it’s all going to be glorious!

Some folks have asked how they can help in kind since I’m far away. I am really lucky that I have access to everything so easily, but I’ll go ahead and share that I have an amazon shopping list that my non-local family has mostly bought from sorting by priority. None are in desperate need at the moment since we’ve whittled it down a lot in prep for chemo. I imagine when surgery comes around the list will be built up again. https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/YTD5ZD99SIXU?ref_=wl_share

But please, please, please do not feel like you have to get me anything at all! I mean that. Just your notes and thoughts mean the WORLD to me. This is why I created a community on the lotsahelpinghands website to get help in kind and offload some of the tasks that have fallen on my niece, Mikayla. I truly appreciate the team that has formed around me and there is no way I can sufficiently express how grateful I am.

One of the things I have been doing lately is listing down good things about this cancer and as it turns out coming up with this list isn’t that hard to do. On the top of the list is experiencing this outpouring of love and support. It’s really truly quite something. I’ll have to share that list with you soon.

Also, this weekend we adopted a kitten from the SF SPCA. I did check with my health team and they say it’s a wonderful idea. Just don’t empty out the litter box yourself, they said. No scooping cat poop for me. Doctors’ orders. (File that under positive things about the big C. There is a “card” you get to play apparently to get out of chores. Not that I ever do…no, no.) The kitten was 1.9 kg and 3.75 month old at adoption and we actually fell in love with her from her profile picture. We visited her and found her to be very sweet and affectionate and will present her belly to you to be rubbed. This creature will last not one day in the wild — or the city streets of San Francisco where we live — which is kind of the same thing, I guess. She came to us being named Milkshake but we’re slowly letting the name we will ultimately call her come to us. For now we call her cat and her middle name is meow (she responds to neither).