Puppy video try again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxhi-Amygmo&sns=em

Ok the last link I posted failed so let's see if this one works!!!

Dogs everywhere

Laura is feeling pretty good

Since this is supposed to inform you all about Laura instead of Louis I thought I should give a quick update on her.

The last chemo hit her hard.  She said it was exponentially worst than the others.  Luckily that was a couple weeks ago and she is feeling pretty good now. 

One great thing is she has found a Facebook groups only for women with stage 4 Brest cancer.  It has probably helped her more than anything.  There are all kinds of good and sad stories.  She can post things and get fifty posts of people who are going through the same thing or advice.  It's great.  

Also she goes to yoga six days a week at a yoga studio over the Columbia river.  She said she heard the water lapping under the building.   

She has scans next Friday aug 1 so we are starting to have a bit of scanziety...  If the ct scan shows the cancer is smaller she will then have her fourth chemo the following Monday.    

New puppy position

The baby crawled up onto a tiny ledge so he could wrap himself around her mommys neck!

Just a day at the beach!

We want to the beach with Susanne and sunny along with Ani and Mia.   Louis had to stay home with Tim since he doesn't have all his shots yet!

Mia and Louis are really starting to play!  After 24 hours of sulking Mia has started to like Louis!!!

More puppy pics

He loves Ani.  

Louis Zaperini our new dog!!

The healing powers of a puppy are amazing!!!  Laura has always wanted a Havanese and our twentieth wedding anniversary is coming up in September so we splerged on a full breed puppy!  He is pretty amazing!

Mia and him have played some and Mia has growled at him a lot and even bitten him once but they are doing pretty well!  Last night, he slept in a crate in our room.  He whined and whimpered for about a minute until Mia jumped off the bed and growled at him and then he didn't make a sound!!!  Laura took him out at 630 in the morning and then he slept with us until 740.  Mia was not impressed by that either.  

Name by morning!

Mia loves timy tennis balls!  She actually wants to play with the puppy and has pranced up to him but he is too nervous right now.  Ani squealed and squealed

Our new baby boy!

Here is our new 9 week old Havanese puppy!

Ani's comment

Ani says the spelling is so bad on my blog that she finds it painful to read!  Sorry to the other two people looking at this blog...  

Alderbrook beach

Mia said this was the best walk ever!  We walked from our house to a little hidden lagoon beach.  I wish I could say everything was great but it's just hard...  At least the weather and landscape are amazing.  

Keiko's wedding

Keiko was Ani and then Tim's first regular babysitter.  She lived a couple houses down from us at our Knappa house.  She is getting married today!

Just in case you missed the dog...

Girls

Oh one more pic

Hobbit sighting???

So this is Ani dressed up in buckskins and moccosins of the Lewis and Clark era at fort Clatsop.  We think she is more hobbit that l&c!!!

Sweet potato "cookies"

One of the foods Laura eats and liles are sweet potato cookies.  They are deli osu for everyone chemo or not!  Cut sweet potatoes or yams about a half an inch thick and bake on a tray oiled with olive oil at 400 f for 15 to 20 min and then turn over for another 15 minutes!!

Eat hot and then put in the fridge and warm up for days on end!!  They are so yummy!

Chemo

Chemo is really kicking Laura this this around.  As you know, she had chemo on Monday.  Wed. Night she didn't sleep much and felt wretched all day Thursday. The effects of chemo are cumulative so she continues to feel worste with each treatment.  In two weeks she will get a set of scans so that will be stressful but hopefully good news!  I just hope the chemo is kicking the cancers ass!  Still beautiful weather on the Oregon coast though!

The cousins

Mia really like Ann-Dee up until she started to clip Mia's toe nails!   Mia even spent some morning cuddle time with Ann-Dee!

Ann-Dee is visiting

Laura's cousin Ann-Dee is here for a visit from Seattle.  We had a good day yesterday. Laura the dog and Ann-Dee went for the three mile loop walk we do and Laura did hard yoga in the morning.  By about 3 pm chemo effects were definately kicking in.  Laura is just tired with a bad taste in her mouth and such.  

Ann-Dee got to our house on Tuesday just as we were starting to think about lunch.  She brought in a cooler filled with food!  All vegan glutton free with norefied sugar!   I won't remember it all but here goes a list: chard pie(basically a giant stuffed grape leaf) chocolate zucchini bread brownies artichoke dip red pepper dip olive mushroom dip and beet dip!  

We had it all for lunch and again for dinner along with the super yummy tamale pies our friend Rachel brought over to feed us after chemo on Monday!   We are being well taken care of!

At chemo

We are waiting for the infusion meds.  Laura's blood panels all look good. Liver function is good. Her medical oncologist could not feel any cancer at all which is good.  Last time a little cancer was still able to be felt under her collar bone but no longer which is good.  She will have ct scans in Astoria in 3 weeks and the oncologist assumes 3 more chemo treatments for a total of 6 every three weeks.  

As long as she gets more chemotherapy she will then continue on the two biologicals, herceptin and projeta, for a little over a year longer for a total of at least 18 months.  

I am off to luc lac our favorate vietnemese restraint for a take out!  More later!  

Mia gets her own pillow

Mia loves the pillows on the bench that Laura brought into the kitchen to lounge on!!!

Girls tatoos

Here are Laura and Ani's new tatoos!!  They both got bear paws so mama bear can always look over her baby girl!  And Ani said that bears are vicious too!   Laura also added a sprig of yarrow because she has always loved yarrow.  Pretty sweet tats as far as I am concerned!

Watching semi finals

Laura and Mia watching Argentina v Netherlands 

Laura wrote this...

Now and again Laura is posting on her old blog from the last cancer... 

 laurasnyderupdates.blogspot.com

Laura writes:

The thing is, I do not feel all that sick.  Chemo makes me sick for a week and a half to two weeks each go-round, but this week I almost feel normal.  Aside from the bald, sweaty head.  So how can I be so sick?  But I am, terminally, desperately sick.  The first time I was treated in 2012, I thought it was mentally challenging to have neoadjuvant chemotherapy, traipsing around with my cancerous breast until surgery, at which time I hoped to have all of the cancer lopped off.  This time, there is cancer in all kinds of places, and I realized quicky that there is no lopping off or taking out, no resection, no -ectomy (surgical removal) of any kind.  How to love, accept, and be kind to my polluted body?

This is difficult, but my answer with an epic six weeks or so of practice, is three-fold.  It helps that Jon simply does not seem to care whether I am bald, whether I have nipples or breasts (real ones, that is), whether I have eyebrows or feel disgusting.  He seems to just love and accept me anyway.  (One day I made a comment that if I don't stop incessantly grinding my teeth I will have none left.  His comment, without taking the blink of an eye to think, was "then I would feed you like a mother bird.").  Secondly, devotion to yoga, almost daily.  And third, swims, preferably the outdoor kind, which feel so incredibly purifying and cleansing. Oh, and fourth, I am attempting and mostly succeeding in feeding my body a much more chemo-friendly diet.  Since I stopped eating refined sugar, cow dairy, coffee, and most meats, I have not had the cloying, nasty, metallic taste in my mouth, no canker sores, and generally better energy.  Duh, I guess, but it has taken this to eat the way I should.  I drink several cups of green tea each day and have started having a cup of turmeric milk each day.  What is this, you ask?  Put 2 cups coconut or almond milk in a saucepan, add 1 tsp turmeric, 1/4 tsp black pepper, and an inch of fresh ginger, sliced.  Heat on medium until simmering and turn down to maintain gentle simmer.  Simmer five minutes or more, strain out the ginger.  Enjoy.  It makes two servings.  Turmeric has many healing properties that are accessible when cooked with ginger and black pepper, as Indian cooks have intuitively known for eons.  Many more foods taste
good to me now - sweet potatoes, avocadoes, whole grains, many vegetables.  Again, duh...

So this is where I'm at.  Trying to accept my body which has betrayed me again.  Trying to quiet my mind and its insistence on blaming myself for this trouble, and all the stress and sadness it is causing my family.  Oddly, mixed up in all this is the reality of a pretty nice summer.

All good in mid July

It's been a while since I made a post.  Watching Germany destroy braz I thought old put up some phtots of what Ive been up to. 

Laura is well.  Feeling good and chemo isn't until next Monday July 14 so that is great.  She continues to go to yoga in a space over the Columbia river.  

I have been keeping myself busy: installed a floor upstairs, gardening, riding my bike and I even fixed a hole in the garage roof and cleaned the garage a bit.  

This is the salad we had for lunch: tuna from Lars and fresh lettus flowers peas and kale from our garden along with avacodo and goat cheese

On the right is a row of scarlet runner beans and favs beans mixed together.  The seeds for both are from our friend Julie. 

Mia is velcroed to Laura today

Mia is attached to Laura watching Brazil v Colombia. 

Sunset last night

Food Laura will eat

A few people have asked for a list of what Laura will and won't eat.  

Gluten free- no wheat barley or rye

Vegetarian 

But she does eat fish and shell fish

Dairy free

But she does eat eggs and goat cheese

No refined sugar

She is avaloiding soy but will have a little if pressed...

So it's basically something close to macrobiotic.  Lots of veggies beans legumes and the like.  Hope that is helpful. 

One day at a time

We are taking things one day at a time.  I am off for the summer which is inc readable in many ways.   I get up with the kids and then do my 13 mile bike loop and then watch soccer with Laura and Mia.  The World Cup has been amazing to watch and cheer as a family!

Laura has such a burden to carry both physically and emotionally.  Knowing that cancer will do her in- unless the perverbial bus comes along and mows her down- is very hard.  She gets tired walking down to the mail box and back. Is it the cancer in her lungs? Is it the chemo? Is it a combination and or psychological??  She tends to nap and or rest every day around 3 till dinner. We have been enjoying time together and I think we are doing pretty well as a family right now.  Kids like their manual work for the parks service but Ani was complaining about the strange tan lines she is getting whering work gloves!