Fabulous fall day!

The weather was gorgeous - sunny and mild - so the Chief and I drove out to a favorite farm stand some 35 or so miles away.  The excuse was so I could buy myself a pumpkin or two for baking.  We also ended up coming home with a butternut squash, a couple of jars of preserves, a scarecrow doll, 2 of the biggest carrots I’ve ever seen (the Chief joked they were baseball bats), and a couple of pies.

The trees were turning, the farmland was beautiful - all in all, it was a perfect day for a drive in the countryside. What a treat!

Found an LID recipe that's a keeper

Tonight I tried a third recipe from the LID cookbook.  The first 2 were just kinda meh, but tonight's dinner - chicken w/ apricot sauce - is a keeper.  It's not as sweet as it sounds, because the recipe calls for ginger with the apricot, and I also added a dash of cumin.  It was easy, too - I cooked some chicken thighs in olive oil, then cooked a shredded onion in the drippings, added the apricot preserves (Bonne Maman in this case, because the commissary didn't have Polaner), ginger and cumin, poured the sauce over the chicken, and there ya go.  Was really good over couscous and with roasted fresh asparagus.

My system is confused.

It seems that getting your thyroid out messes up your hormones or lymphatic system or something.  I find myself getting occasional hot flashes (I thought I was past that!) and my ankles are quite swollen.  My PCP has ruled out gout and the OT I saw today doesn't think it's lymphedema, though that's what she put in my chart so that Kaiser will pay for compression socks.  I see a podiatrist on Monday; maybe he'll be able to figure out what's going on.  Mine aren't as swollen as in the photo but sometimes they do feel that big.

That's Day 1 of 12.

Yesterday wasn't too bad - oatmeal for breakfast, ratatouille ragu for lunch, and a slightly disappointing pork chop recipe for dinner.  (The apricot sauce was good but runny and the pork chops on the dry side.)  I missed my yogurt smoothie; the "no dairy" restriction may be the hardest part of this diet.

My veggie-beef soup recipe can be LID-friendly as long as I use no-salt-added tomatoes. I'll have to omit my mushroom stock and the tomato paste because of the probably iodized salt, but that's not a big deal.  I'll just use kosher salt and maybe some other seasonings from my collection.

And so it begins…

Today I start the low-iodine diet (LID) to prep for the radioactive iodine I’ll get next week.   It's not exactly off to a great start, as I managed to ruin some perfectly good homemade turkey soup by putting too much kosher salt in it.😥  Lesson learned - a little of that goes a long way.

Lunch will be some of the ratatouille ragu I made and froze in individual portions, and dinner will be pork chops in an apricot sauce.  That latter recipe I got from a cookbook put together by a thyroid cancer survivors organization.  It’s going to be helpful as I try to figure out what I can eat for the next couple of weeks.

Getting ready, mentally, for quarantine

Now that Macbeth is on its feet and I don't need to do anything more for them, my focus turns to this LID, which starts Monday and runs nearly two weeks (Oct. 26 thru Nov. 7).  That's this week.  Next week is chockablock - Monday: mammo, podiatry, and first pre-nuc injection.  Tuesday: 2nd pre-nuc injection and an imagery dose.  Wednesday:  pre-dose body scan, radioactive iodine (RAI) dose, then home and into isolation for a week.

I'll be spending my quarantine in our bedroom and using the back bathroom.  The Chief will be moving into the spare BR for the duration and using the front BA.  The "quarantine zone" will include a trash bag, a laundry basket, a TV table (for eating and for my laptop), my electronica and their chargers, and a big bag of lemon drops for the dry mouth I've been warned can come with the treatment.

At least having my electronics means I can videochat with people, even if in-person visits won't be safe.

That's my last show for the year on its feet

Macbeth opened tonight.  This show hasn't been particularly demanding and everyone with wigs or special makeup now knows how to get themselves ready or has someone to assist.  To paraphrase our director, all my little birds are now ready to fly, so I went home shortly before intermission in hopes of getting to bed before midnight for the first time all week.  It'll be nice to have dinner at home with the Chief instead of eating backstage after I finish helping folks get ready.

But don't "my" witches look nice & spooky?

I don't plan to pick up another show this year.  My medical "adventures" will keep me busy, and tired, for the next few weeks, and December is pretty well booked, between a wedding and Christmas.

Good for my humility :)

I'm designing hair & makeup for a production of Macbeth that opens this Friday.  This is a very active production - lots of sword fighting with real swords, not plastic or wooden ones, and the witches have some pretty creepy movement when they're not playing Messenger #1, Lady's Maid #2, etc.  All this means that, for example, fight call takes a lot of time because there's so much to rehearse.  (Fight call is when the performers go through their fight choreography, first at half speed, then at full speed.  This is a very important safety procedure.)

Our costumers are still putting finishing touches on the players' armor, cloaks, etc., and the lighting and sound are still being tweaked.  All this to say that our director has a LOT of pieces to look at and make decisions on.  So far, I've gotten only one note, on the first version of Witch #1's wig.  Just finding the time to ask her a question when she doesn't look like her brain will explode serves to remind me that, while not unimportant, hair & makeup is well down most directors' list of things that they need to render a decision on.  In fact, one of the cast told me that this is the first production she's been in that even had a hair & makeup person.

Bottom line:  It's important to me because that's where my focus is.  Other people, however, have a LOT more things competing for their attention, so my priority and theirs don't align.  I'm not whining, just laughing ruefully at myself.

(My witches won't look like this but I liked the photo.)