Kicking Cancer Ass - Version 2.0

(Before anything else, my apologies are given to all of you who have been waiting anxiously for news of how the surgery went. Unfortunately, computer access at the hospital is not as readily available as it is at the clinic and it hasn't been easy to find time to break away to search out a terminal. Thanks for your understanding.)

Sometimes, a new, unexpected detour must be taken on the journey you have planned. A detour can be a bit startling and unsettling at first if there is no signs alerting you that it is coming up ahead. But the brilliant thing about a proper detour is that it brings you to the original destination nonetheless.

Karen's cancer conquering journey had such a detour on Monday. None of us, including the surgeon, saw any signs alerting us to the detour, but when all was said and done, we're still on track. As Karen so appropriately told Dr. Boughey, "We kicked some cancer ass!"

The tumor was removed and Dr. Boughey is pleased that the second excision she made came back from Pathology with clean margins (cancer cell-free allowances around the tumor). Unfortunately, Karen's hope that the sentinel lymph nodes would be clean and thus allow her to keep her under arm lymph nodes was not realized. But what did come from the removal is that those cancer cells were removed from her body and do not have to be contended with any longer.

Removal of the lymph nodes meant the surgery was more involved and Karen was kept over night. It was difficult to manage her pain, and it required she be admitted a second night. After a team meeting though, we were able to coordinate a care plan to address the muscle tightness, pain and lack of continuous sleep. She had two, solid four-hour blocks of sleep Tuesday night into Wednesday morning and has done much, much better today. The doctor hopes to discharge her this evening.

We will stay in Rochester until tomorrow, just as a precaution. Then, Karen's friends Wendy and Chuck have graciously offered to have Karen in their home while she recuperates.

There are certainly more details I could relay, but I do want to get back up to the room. But I felt it important that I not delay this post any longer either. Oh, and I understand that some of you have had difficulty posting comments on the blog recently. I'm sorry for this. I think it may have something to do with trying to preview your comments before posting instead of just posting, but, if you'd rather just email Karen, feel free to send them to me at janiskelley at hot mail dot com and I'll print them out for her and forward them to her as well.

Thank you so much to all of you who have been sending your thoughts, prayers, support and positive energy. As a family, we continue to be touched by the depth and breadth of your kindness and love. Thank you hardly seems enough, but thank you.

On Top of Your "To Do" List for Today

October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.

In 1993, President Clinton proclaimed the third Friday of October to be National Mammography Day.

Chances for successful treatment and survival are greatly increased with early detection. It is therefore critical to have regular screenings.

Be proactive. Call today and simply schedule an appointment. Contact someone you care about and remind them too.

To find the nearest facility that offers mammography:
American Cancer Society: 800.227.2345 or visit http://www.cancer.org/
American College of Radiology: 800.227.5463 or visit http://www.acr.org/

It's about faith

As you may have inferred from the last post which included some of the beautiful art peppered throughout the Mayo buildings, we met with our beloved surgeon Dr. Boughey, pictured to the left, on Thursday afternoon to discuss the surgery that has now been scheduled for Monday October 22nd. We have such confidence in her and know that the surgery will go beautifully.

While it is true that the incredible shrinking spot was going to be removed eventually the plan was to complete the chemo sessions first. My oncologist Dr. P is concerned about the long-term effects of the neuropathy, numbness and tingling that effects the nerve endings, in my fingers and toes. In a pin test she did to check the level of sensitivity I didn't do as well as she would've liked. We discussed the options and decided to schedule the surgery for next Monday down at the Methodist Hospital in Rochester which is part of the Mayo system. It is an out-patient surgery and we will stay there that night and coming back later on Tuesday.

This is certainly one way to get a break from chemo for a while... hmmm, wait a minute- surgery?! Let me rethink this plan! But it will allow my feet and hands to regain feeling, let me get my strength back for the final sessions of chemo and provide some time to catch up on all those PBS shows I've taped over the last six months but haven't had time to watch. With another pledge drive around the corner I need to open up some more tape space...

The tentative plan going forward is that once I've recovered from surgery (three weeks) I'll resume chemo but at a lower dose for a longer time (six weeks of weekly sessions) with the radiation following (six weeks of daily doses M-F). This change in plans does lengthen the time for treatment but it's just a short term addition to the overall long term positive outcome. It's a plan we all feel very good about.

I will say that I have been none too thrilled about having to have surgery and really don't like the thought of being radiated- who would?! (It's not done to vegetables, milk or meat without some uproar!) But the thing with this darn cancer is that once your plan has been set you can't get any changes without huge penalty fees and paperwork galore. So, as much as I've been feeling that I don't want either surgery or radiation I will stick to the plan. And as long as I have to have surgery having Dr. B lead the team gives me great comfort.

Here is where faith comes in, not that it hasn't been a part of this process all along but it has been one of the more challenging pieces for me in the fatigued-state-of-late. I have assured Dr. B that there is no cancer left, that in the lumpectomy she will remove that darn breast cancer marker which marks where the cancer was along with some sacrificial cells and the sentinel nodes- that is all.

The doubt that arises in my brain when it's tired and worn out is what's hard to deal with. It's easy to be positive when you're well rested. And to that end I would like to thank my Aunt Verlinda and Uncle Rich for sending such a beautiful and uncannily well-timed card that I received Saturday. The quote is from Hebrews 11:1 and reads: 'What is faith? It is the confident assurance that something we want is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it up ahead.'

It's the 'cannot see it up ahead' part that's been tripping me up these last days but as I get farther from the last chemo session my strength and energy are returning. It's such a boost to see how quickly that happens and that just reinforces to me that I am strong and healthy.

For those of you tracking the progress of the 'ultimate in comb-overs', news on the northern front is the hair is getting thinner (how is that even possible?!) In these last five days I've had a profusion of hairs come out. Now, keep in mind there was not a profusion to start with but comparison to what remains it's still substantial.

In light of this recent exodus I may just shave my head for Halloween and be done with it. My only concern is that those few hairs do provide some R-value, however scant, and with the cold winter winds right around the corner keeping the remaining few hairs is appealing. Though with the beautiful new winter caps my dear friends Lori, Sandy and Beth have knit for me and with the ever-so-sprightly knit hat my sister had made for me I will be in good stead against those brisk breezes. Thank you to all of you for your thoughtfulness!

Many requests for pictures of the new sassy wig have been elicited from folks outside the metro area, including from those as far away as Blaine, MN which is pretty much on the way to Duluth. The wig really is charming and more styling than I'd ever do on my own. It's so easy to wear- just shake and go- try one and you'll never want to go back to the hassle of having all those hair products cluttering up the bathroom! (Back me up on this, Terry and Dave!) A hearty thank you to my Mom and Dad for making it all possible. So here it is, the state of the hair:

A photo my Dad took of Janis and me on the day my hair started to fall out in the car ride down to treatment number two. At the suggestion of my friend Maria I had just cut my hair short in case it start to come out.

These are photos from my 40th birthday/the wig preview party. Chuck and Wendy hosted the festivities at their beautiful home. They made the party for twenty plus people seem like a little intimate affair. Many thanks to them!

Mom and Dad came up for the party which was lovely. Mom said they were there for the first one and wanted to be there for the fortieth one as well. Having my family and friends around me was such a delight!

Thank you to all of you for your continued support. I have been wrapping your blanket of love and support around me and take such comfort in it. I would welcome your extra support right now and ask for your best thoughts and prayers on Monday morning for the highest and best outcome possible, a beautiful, minimally invasive surgery and a gentle recovery. Thank you!

Time on our hands

Hello everyone!

I am writing this post from the 10th floor lobby of the Gonda building at Mayo Clinic. There has been yet another change in Karen's chemo schedule this week. After meeting with Dr. Peethambraham this morning, the doctor determined that the neuropathy Karen was having in her hands and feet was too significant and that a third dose of Taxol today was not a good idea. She provided Karen with several options for how to proceed from here and I will have Karen tell you about those. However, Dr. P did recommend we meet with the surgeon this afternoon, so we have some time to kill before our 1:30 meeting with Dr. Boughey.


What does one do at the Mayo when one has time on one's hands?

There is certainly no shortage of medical information at your disposal. There are jigsaw puzzles to complete, internet access, live piano music with sing-alongs, and guided tours of the campus with the history of the Mayo Clinic. Lastly, there are daily guided art tours as well as recorded audio tours you can check out from the front desk.

Mayo is reknowned for its medical care, but its modern art collection is quietly on par with any small museum. I doubt most patients ever notice who the artist is, but there is no overlooking the amount of art throughout the campus. At first I wondered why it was all modern art, but then it occured to me that modern art reinforces that modern things take place here. Would a paintings and sculptures by Old World masters send a subliminal message of cutting edge technology and scientific breakthroughs?

Not surprisingly, the majority of the art is donated. It goes to show that this facility has touched so many others as it has us. We won't be able to donate a Picasso, but the amazing people here have our gratitude and appreciate all the same. What I can do is show off a bit of their amazing collection to some of you who will hopefully never have a chance to see it in person.

Here is just a little of what you will see from wandering around the buildings. I never took art history, so the information provided below the photos on the artist/work is coming from the posted placards.

Thanks again everyone for checking in on the blog and sending your supportive thoughts to Karen!





These are my favorite pieces - five wall size originals by Joan Miro - located in the lab where Karen gets her blood drawn before every appointment. I just love the titles.





Joan Miro, L'Halterophile (Dumb Bell Wielder)
La Folle Au Piment Rageur (The Mad Woman with Ill-tempered Pimento)
La Guerriere de Cents Aus (The Warrior of a Hundred Years)
Le Meneuse de Lune (The Moon Driver)
Le Grande Ecaillere (The Big Oyster Woman)

Joan Miro is a Spanish painter, sculptor and printmaker. His work, exploring worlds of fantasy and imagination, have made him one of the most important and best-known artists of the twentieth century.
Miro's bright colors and playful images earned him the epithets "childlike" and "primitive." Actually he is a Surrealist artist, attempting to capture primary human experience in a direct and forceful manner. Miro draws his subject matter from memories and irrational fantasies. The images embodied in his paintings often represent women, stars, birds, or mythical animals. Subject matter varies from figural compositions to the totally abstract.

These are in a hallway across from a cafeteria:

Andy Warhol, Flower Series, Silk Screens, 36 x 26 inches, 1970

An important development in American art, which became well known in the 1960s, was called Pop Art. Many "Pop" artists used common, everyday commercial illustrations or objects as the basis of their subject matter. Andy Warhol is one of Pop Art's most famous practitioners. He began his career in the 1950s as a commercial artist. His first Pop Art classics, overscaled sculptures of Campbell soup cans and Brillo boxes, were his attempt to take the mystery out of art. While showing the influence of the machine and of commercial products on art, Warhol believed that art could be reproduced by a machine and even called his studio, The Factory.

This is in the main lobby of the Gonda building:


Jennifer Bartlett, Four Houses, Oil on Canvas, 2001

Jennifer Barlett is an artist whose probing imagination has brought her into the ranks of today's finest painters. Her work is versatile, thoughtful and energetic. It has undergone a dramatic evolution from the hightly controlled abstract pieces of the early 1970s to the realism of her later work. To a certain extent, her career is a continual rearrangement of a limited set of motifs= the house being the most common and recognizable. Her penchant for juxtaposing images, media and points of view allows the viewer to create a whole by piece in together the many parts. In Four Houses, we see a house motif at different times of the day; morning, noon, dusk and night. We have placed this painting near the entrance of Mayo Clinic as a way to welcome patients and visitors; "Our house is your house."

These are also in the main lobby:


Dale Chihuly, Untitled, 2001
(I don't have the placard notes for this, but I have seen exhibits by Dale Chihuly whose work is truly phenomenal. This is an enormous display - perhaps 13-14 constructions that are easily 6 feet in diameter each. I can't even begin to imagine what the cost was for the single donor (!) who had them commissioned especially for this space when the Gonda building opened six years ago.)



Alexander Calder, Untitled, Lithograph
American artist Alexander Calder (1898-1976) was born into a family of artists. He received an engineering degree in 1919. He worked as an engineer and took art classes in New York before he went to Paris in 1926.
In Paris, Calder made paintings and toys. Encouraged, he turned to wire as a medium, creating portraits of celebrated people of the day as well as his friends. This was a new medium with no precedent. The wire sculptures, described as three-dimensional line drawings, brought him notoriety and recognition in Europe before America.
Under the influence of Mondrian and the Constructivists, Calder's work becomes more abstract and geometric. Calder was the inventor of the mobile, which he created as moving sculptures. He also began making stabiles, stationary works made of large sheets of metal connected by bolts.

What does one of these "mobiles" look like, you ask? Well, go to the lobby of the original Mayo building and lo and behold, you'll find one:


Alexander Calder, Fish, Painted metal and wire, 60 x 30 inches

Here's another piece in the lobby of the Mayo building:


Zophia Butrymowicz, Autumn, Wool tapestry, 8 x 13 feet, 1983
Autumn by Zophia Butrymowicz is one of the finest tapestries in the Mayo collection. Woven in wool, the warm spectrum of colors seems to glow from within, suggesting the shimmering play of sunlight on a tree-colored hillside in the fall. Subtle variations in hue and value indicate various levels of space and the interplay of light and shadow.
The tapestry Autumn was originally commissioned to conceal a weather map that used to operate in the Mayo Building lobby.

This tapestry is in the elevator bay on 10 Gonda:

Chilkat Ceremonial Dancing Blanket, Goat hair, cedar bark and wool, Circa 1870s, Tlingit Tribe, North America

The men furnished the pelt of the mountain goat, the cedar bark, the frame, the painted pattern board, and the few tools required. The women prepared and wove the materials. The finished blanket was used as a ceremonial robe by the wealthy and every chief or prominent Tlingit possessed one or more. They were used at ceremonies and dances, worn over one or, generally, both shoulders, and secured by thongs sewved to the head (top) of the blanket. Blankets might be given to the more honored guests at potlatches or ceremonial feasts.




David Hockney, Red Wire Plant, Etching, 30 x 36 inches, Edition 8/35, 1998
Chair with Book on Red Carpet, Etching, 38 x 30 inches, Edition 18/35, 1998

David Hockney is one of the most revered artists working today. For a contemporary artist of serious aesthetic purpose, he enjoys immense public visibility. Hockney's success was so rapid that he became independent very soon after leaving the Royal College of Art in London and did not have to rely on teaching in order to make a living. In 1963 he moved to Los Angeles where the lifestyle and landscape of the city became important features of his work.

Hockney's vision ranges from the grandiose to the intimate, often embracing both at the same time. His drawings, paintings, and prints are readily accessible and reflect the scope of his talents and his ebullient personality. They are brightly colored and fun to look at. Hockney's art reflects his need to communicate directly with the viewer. It is his need to be heard plainly and understood clearly that is the basis for his phenomenal popularity.



Jim Dine, Red Etching Robe, Etching 29/36, 42 x 30 inches, 1976
The Sky & Lillies, Intaglio and silkscreen with hand-coloring, 40 x 30 inches, Edition 25/25, 1998
Brite Tulips, Intaglio and silkscreen with hand-coloring, 41 x 29 inches, Edition of 25, PP, 1998

From its avant-garde beginnings in the late 1950's, Jim Dine's work has become firmly rooted in tradition. He has produced more than 3,500 works in an astonishing range of mediums - above all in painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking and photography but with occasional excursions into performance, state design, book design, poetry and even music.

He is a keen observer of nature for whom draftsmanship serves as the most precise tool of expression. The depth of expression and precision are reflected in his botanical drawings and paintings. Major decisions about the direction of his work are made subjectively rather than rationally. Dine emphasizes that his art is an expression of his sense of self, a desire to reach a profound understanding, through his own experience, of what it is to be human.

In another elevator bay:

Embroidery (suzani), Silk, Early 19th Century, Lakai, Uzbekistan

This type of Uzbek embroidery is called suzani, which comes from the Persian word for needle. Suzani can take many forms, from large decorative wall hangings and curtains to small functional household items such as bags to hold tea or spices.

For weddings, pieces of embroidery formed a particularly significant part of the dowry. Tradition defined the number and type of embroideries needed for a bride's dowry. A mother began to embroider soon after she had given birth to a girl in order to finish a set of suzani in time for the daughter's wedding. When the daughter was four to six years old she learned to stitch from her mother. Eventually the daughter took over what the mother had started and went on embroidering nearly until her wedding day. The pieces she created then revealed her diligence and skillfulness as well as the wealth of the family. A small section of the suzani was traditionally left unfinished. This area represented "never-ending marriage, never-ending life, and never-ending joy."

Schedule change

I am feeling very good heading into this weekend pre-chemo: these are the good days for energy and for fewer side effects. Today my energy isn't as threadbare as it was earlier in the week and I'm intereseted to see how much of the finger and toe numbness will go away over the weekend. I sure won't miss it when it's gone!

It's a beautiful weekend here so I'm going to get out and enjoy it with my dear friends Sarah and Marcus (and their dog Suzi, who I love to bring special treats to) at their home overlooking an apple tree valley in Red Wing. Whenever I'm with them it's always a treat. They both know so much about this amazing world around us. Every trip to visit them is an adventure: Lady Slippers on a hidden hill, migrating Scarlet Tangers in the tree canopy, bird watching at their picnic table. Look out nature: here I come!

Please mark your calendars for a change in my chemo schedule: I was not able to get on Dr. P's schedule for Monday (what do you mean you're seeing other people?!?) and am now on for Thursday this coming week. Not ever having had chemo before I thought the only way the date would change was if my blood counts weren't good enough but that's just not so. Many people want to see Dr. P and who can blame them. I know she's one of the people at the top of my list!

So, I'll enjoy an extra three days off this session. Please keep me in your thoughts this Thursday as the count down to completion continues... only two left to go!