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Showing posts from July, 2014

Knitting Blog: A Most Successful Sweater

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Knitting a sweater to completion becomes more daunting as the years go by. The reason: My standards for success keep becoming more refined. There are so very many ways to screw up a sweater, all of which may result in an unflattering, poorly fitting, or uncomfortable item of clothing on which you have spent a long time, and probably a substantial amount of money. Yarn does not come cheap. I think many knitters have thought, while wandering through racks of sweaters in a clothing store, “I could knit that for twice the price!” I started this project with one strike against it: I could not make gauge in my trial swatches. The yarn I wanted to use was Reynolds Coco, a discontinued yarn purchased at a bargain price years ago from a yarn store that has been long closed. The yarn was just a wee bit finer than the yarn used to create the original sample for the pattern, so the fabric that felt and looked right had slightly more stitches and rows per 4 inches than the specified gauge. I did s

My World Turned Upside Down

A month ago, my life changed forever at an 8:45 AM doctor visit. I had been “doctoring” for several weeks, trying to solve persistent constipation that was accompanied by a slight difficulty in breathing. After a variety of interventions had failed to solve the problem, my doctor ordered a CT scan of my abdomen and a blood test that flags lung problems. When the blood test results came back with very high markers, I received an urgent call from my doctor’s office, telling me to go back to the hospital stat for a CT scan of my chest. This scan confirmed that I had a large pleural effusion, or build-up of liquid in the pleural cavity of my left lung. A lung specialist drained my lung in the emergency room and sent a sample off for analysis. There were cancer cells in that fluid. So what do you do when you learn on a Monday morning that you have lung cancer? You say ungraceful things. You cry. You discuss the best options for care with your doctor, and follow his recommendati

Please support the EGFR Resisters Research Fund!

To help improve outcomes for people like me with EGFR mutated lung cancer, please donate to the EGFR Resisters' Research Fund. All donations are tax deductible and are in a restricted fund with the Bonnie Addario Lung Cancer Foundation, a four-star rated charity. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!