Vitamin D Linked to Breast Cancer Survival Rates

This is not actually news - the association has already been made - but it contributes to mounting evidence that helps warrant more research on the topic. The study does not imply that low Vitamin D can cause breast cancer but there does seem to be an association between breast cancer and low Vitamin D and, as they say in this article, it's something oncologists should be paying attention to. It has been my experience at our Saskatoon Cancer Centre that oncologists are not interested in our Vitamin D levels. The only reason mine was tested was because my Naturopath requested it and because I, after all my research into breast cancer, felt it was important to optimize my Vitamin D levels as well. It surprises me that the Cancer Centre doesn't pay more attention to Vitamin D levels in patients.  My previous doctor never tested my Vitamin D levels during annual physicals and only, after my diagnosis, had it tested at the request of my Naturopath.  That said, I think my new GP is more likely to test my Vitamin D as a standard practice.

A couple of other points are that many studies I've read about say it matters more what your Vitamin D levels are at the time of diagnosis, suggesting that it might not make much difference to one's prognosis to bring your Vitamin D levels up after you've been diagnosed.  On the other hand, I don't think it's known for sure, so I have aimed at maintaining an optimal level of Vitamin D just in case it does help prevent a recurrence. It's a bonus that there are many other health reasons to aim for optimal in terms of Vitamin D and not to settle for what our department of health proclaims to be the "normal range".  "Optimal" is considerably higher than what has been determined as "normal".  

11 June 2012

A new study published in Carcinogenesis found vitamin D levels are linked to breast cancer survival rates.  The researchers found that out of 1,800 women, participants with vitamin D levels above 30ng/mL were about half as likely to die within 5 years of diagnosis compared to women with levels below 30ng/mL. 

With every 10ng/mL increase, survival past 5 years increased by 20%. The results were still significant when the researchers adjusted for weight and age. 

Also, women with higher vitamin D levels during the study were more likely to have smaller tumors. 

The authors recognize that the study implies association, not a cause-effect relationship. Regardless, vitamin D is definitely something oncologists should pay attention to. 

Via: Vitamin D Council > News:

Vitamin D Linked to Breast Cancer Survival Rates

Quilting Instead of Weeding

And this is another reason why I wasn't helping Kevin with the garden this weekend. I spent Sunday doing the quilting I should have done last Sunday but didn't.

I'm really happy with how it's turning out. It came together so much better than I thought it would. It's not too wonky at all. Not everything matches up 100% and, after having to trim my squares, I knew they wouldn't but things match so much better than I had even dared hope! Yeah! Here's some close-ups of squares where you can see that my points matched up quite nicely for the most part.

And there are some, such as these, that didn't match quite so nicely in placed but still, not too bad. Not too bad at all! By the time it's all quilted and snuggly, those little mismatches will hardly show at all!

After I finished this part I had to decide if I would simply quilt and bind it as it is or whether I would add borders to make the quilt bigger. After laying it out on the bed, I decided to add some borders, which I did this evening. I added a 3" tan border all the way around and next I'm going to put together another narrower border using bits of all the patterned fabrics in the quilt. That will make it a bed-sized quilt.  This has turned out to be a very good learning experience.

And here's the "stained glass" shot of the quilt top. Pretty!

Quilting Instead of Weeding

Pat's Fiat Compliments of the Government of Canada

Here's a better photo of Pat's new Fiat and her funny license plate.

Pat would want me to explain that she wouldn't normally be wearing orange shoes (they clash with her car) but, in keeping with the theme of Alyssa's bridal shower, we were to wear something orange or pink.

Pat's Fiat Compliments of the Government of Canada

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Happy 27th anniversary to us! Kevin brought me flowers! And what did we do to celebrate? It was a perfect day for rooftop dining so we went to the Yard and Flagon on Broadway and snagged a table in the sunshine. Then, we were both so exhausted ... it being Friday ... that we both fell asleep in the family room and were out for the count from 8:00 until 11:00. Then we watched a movie and went to bed.

Our colds are still taking the wind out of our sails. While we're much better than we were, we're not out of the woods yet. I'm back to being toast on Friday nights after enjoying a couple of months of uncommon energy and verve. It seems that my cold is trying sneaking back up on me. I think I needed either a stronger/different antibiotic or I needed a 10 day prescription instead of 7. I'll give it a few more days and hope I improve before going back to the doctor.

I laughed at this sign in front of a house on 10th very close to Broadway. It would appear they have trouble with people blocking their driveway. Ha!

I love seeing the life coming back to our yard! Kevin worked in the yard all weekend. I didn't.

I was busy doing more important things like attending Alyssa's bridal shower! She was positively aglow!  It was a perfect day for a garden party!

I caught a ride to the shower with Pat who got a new car! Isn't it cute?  I want one. I really do! It's a Fiat and I had just been telling Kevin it's what I would like. Look at Pat's license plate! If you can't read it in the photo, it says, "I 'heart' CPP". Hilarious! Now that she's retired and about to celebrate a "special birthday", she said the government bought her a new car!

What a beautiful weekend!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Learning Curves and Quilting Challenges

I've learned over and over again since starting quilting that nothing as easy as it looks.

See this interesting little pile of trimmings? This is what we amateurs have to do if we don't sew with adequate precision. That would be me. I put this soft, little pile of trimmings on a stump in our backyard hoping the birds night use the bits to feather their nests. Wouldn't that be cool? And pretty?

After putting together all those squares with the diagonal strips of print fabric and the neutral corners, I noticed that despite the care I took to sew with accuracy (which was apparently not accurate enough), my squares weren't quite square. After much deliberating, I decided I would have to trim them ... "square them up" ... which would not only take a long time doing diddly work but was also challenging me mathematically. You see, with trimming all four sides and with each square being just slightly wonky in a different way, I knew that increasingly the odds of my seams meeting up properly were decreasing. Natch! So I trimmed minimally - just one quarter of an inch smaller so when my seams are off, it will be not quite so noticeable.

And then I took all those neatly trimmed squares and sewed them together into 4-somes as best as I could into these X-squares. The seams don't quite match up very often but it's not TOO bad and once the whole thing is quilted and scrunchy, I'm hoping it won't be too obvious. And if it is, well, what the heck. It will show that it's been handmade by an amateur and will be a reminder to someone that it could only have made with great love because who else would carry on making such a beautiful mess?!

So now I have to sew all my X-squares together knowing full well that things are only going to get wonkier as I go. C'est la vie!  I undoubtedly have some creative bridges to cross still but ... all in good time.

I also took the advice of a quilting friend and sewed all those little triangle trimmings together while they were neatly stacked. This photo only shows some of them. Sewing them together involved a lot of very satisfying chain piecing using my new quarter-inch sewing foot (with the little guide), which I just LOVE! It is so helpful in the accuracy department!  Now I just have to open them all up and press them into little half square triangles, which I will probably have to trim. Another diddly project. I don't yet know what I'll do with them but I know they'll come in handy for either this quilt or for another project.

So, this Sunday will be sewing day. I'll sew all my X-squares together to form X's and O'x (Hugs and Kisses) ... wonky be damned!

Learning Curves and Quilting Challenges

The Best of Times / The Worst of Times

The traditional Acton family tequila and lime shot!

Hannah and Dani

Hannah Matt Dani

Some Ford Tough Babes with my new-to-me Explorer.

Matt making provolone cheese taco shells!

I will make these for sure!

Welcome Home Cake for Hannah and Luke

Myles, Evan, Luke - Moustache Party

Just 2 Wild and Crazy Guys!

Hannah concocting in the kitchen!

Okay. "Worst" might be a bit of an exaggeration but May 2012 turned out to be a month full of wonderful events, as anticipated, but what was unanticipated and pretty sucky is that Kevin and I had such nasty colds for almost the whole month!  I had 11 days of feeling really bloody awful before finally resorting to antibiotics and slowly, slowly feeling some improvements. Kevin, too. We got sick just before Hannah got home and despite her efforts to avoid it, she caught our cold though was able to prevent it from getting so bad as ours. We all lost our voices. right at the beginning of May and even now Kevin's still sounds off and mine is just starting to sound normal. TOTAL DRAG!  It meant we weren't able to do many of the things we'd hoped to do while Hannah was here for just over 2 weeks.

So, to keep things concise, the disappointments in May were:

1. Our nasty colds
2. Hannah catching our nasty cold - though a less severe version
3. Having to cancel the big multi-generational party we had planned
4. Having to cancel the Acton family event planned for Mother's Day
5. Not seeing Jim, Graham, and Allan while Hannah was home
6. Not seeing Gillian, Marissa, Tarah, Katelyn, Mike ... though we did get to see Kayla (bonus)
7. Not seeing Matty while he was here from Calgary
8. Only one dining out experience
9. Our fridge having "technical issues"
10. Feeling too crappy to do much of anything

The great things about May were:

1. Hannah coming home from her 5 months of travels (Paris, Berlin, Scotland, Uruguay, Buenos Ares)
2. Luke coming home for the summer
3. Matt, Hannah's boyfriend, driving here from Vancouver to stay for a while and then road trip back with Hannah
4. Dani, Hannah's good friend, surprising Hannah with her first visit to Saskatoon. They met in Vancouver but Dani moved to New York about 4 years ago.
5. A whirlwind family trip (Matt and Dani included) that, in less than 24 hours, took in Clearwater Lake, Kyle, the farm, dinner at White Bear bar, the drive-in, a traditional Kerr family game of hand and foot (canasta), and a jigsaw puzzle ... all with Mom, Gary, Darrel, Lynn, Jack, Jodi, Meghan, and Dawson. Awesome!
6. We drove home from Kyle just in time to change our clothes and get to a proper Acton family gathering at Don and Syl's to celebrate a multitude of things over one of Don and Syl's famous meals. Cheryl, RJ, and Mikael were there, too. We missed seeing Alexa, who was on her way home from a school trip to New York.
7. Hannah and Matt's cooking. Guinness Stew. Soups. Matt's cheese taco shells and apple and ginger parmesan empanadas. Hannah's many interesting salads and sides and cooking lessons. Hannah and Matt taught me how to take the bite out of over-powered red onions (chop, sprinkle with sea salt, and let sit in boiling water for a little while ... great tip!).
8. Dani's treats - Our favourite New York artisan chocolate - the salted one, chocolate covered salted caramels, rugelah from "THE PLACE" to get rugelah in New York, and ... olive oil from Frankie's - our favourite.
9. Hannah's concoctions and cures - medicinal teas, which I've learned to enjoy and a mix of apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons of cayenne pepper, and a bit of honey which magically provides some relief from laryngitis.
10. We had a small barbeque event when Luke got home. A bunch of his friends and Kayla were here. So nice to see them all!  We had planned on another bigger event but couldn't pull that off with our STUPID COLDS!
11. Phillip Phillips winning American Idol. I picked him out from those first auditions. It's the first time I've ever picked the winner so early. 

So yes, the best and the worst. All in May. The best outshines the worst, though. It was so wonderful to have both Hannah and Luke here at the same time in summer ... something that rarely happens.

Dani left Tuesday this week and Hannah and Matt left Wednesday. We get to keep Luke for the summer. And now I need to get some quilting done. And maybe I should do something with our house, which looks like a bomb went off in it!

The Best of Times / The Worst of Times

The Latest Quilt Project

I'm still quite new to this quilting business and it's a good thing I don't have any real sense of how long the steps take. If I did, I might never have started!

After fabric selection I pressed everything. That took a long time.

Then I cut. And cut. And cut. In addition to these 200 6" squares I cut 400 3.5" tan squares. That took a long time.

The next step was to draw a diagonal line on each of the 400 tan squares. That took a long time.

Then I pinned two tan squared onto each of the 200 print squares. That took a long time.

Then, after a bit of a Sunday melt down when I couldn't get my bobbin winder to work, I eventually got all the tan squares sewed to the print squares.  Thank you, Jo, for coming to my rescue!  I bought this machine from Jo and so, in desperation I called her for help and she came right over. She saved the day. This was the first time I'd used my machine since having it serviced and I was afraid something had gone horribly wrong. It was just a little glitch and Jo the Pro knew what to do.

The sewing was the fastest part.

After that, I spent quite a bit of time trimming all the corners and more time pressing seams open. I still have a lot of pressing to do. It takes a long time.

Then I'll have to play with the layout and see if I have enough squares for what I want to do. I still have other squares in reserve and ready for sewing if I decide I want more.

I wonder what to do with all those little triangles I made by trimming the corners? There's a lot of them ...   an equal mix of tan and pink/orange/purple prints.  Do people really throw those away?  I see them being made into little half square triangles. Pretty diddly stuff for a beginner like me and I have so many other projects to finish (who am I kidding ... projects to START). Wouldn't a border of little half square triangles be cute?  Maaan. That would take me a LOT of time.  Just watch. I'll do something with them. Eventually. Any ideas are welcome!

So, after I get a satisfactory layout, it will be time to sew all the squares together and try to match points as much as possible. That will take a long time.

Did I mention that this quilting stuff takes a LONG time?!  Good thing I enjoy it!

The Latest Quilt Project

Hand Quilting - Slow Progress

But it looks so pretty!  This is going to take me a while. I've finished hand quilting the hankie that's mostly in the middle of the hoop and have started on the grey/mauve one above it. I'm just using a regular weight thread and little stitches and since none of what I'm doing is in a straight line, it's rather slow going. That's okay, though. I like it.

In this photo you can kind of tell where I've stitched along the outer white line framing the hankie. Since this picture was taken, I've quilted around the pink flowers, too.

There are 12 hankies. I think I should be able to get one done in a week. Maybe. It's good to have a goal.

Quilting and work aside, I'm feeling good. Not fantastic, like I did all through March, but good, which is still GREAT in my world. I'm still taking greens and I have a protein shake every week-day to up my protein intake. I bought a Brita water filter jug for the office - I can't remember who suggested it, but thank you whoever you are - and now I'm drinking more water during the day. We don't have filtered water at work and even though I drank some water during the day it bothered me because I'm used to filtered water at home and, of course, I'm too lazy to take water from home every day. The Brita is an easy answer. I wish I would have thought of it myself a lot earlier. I feel so much better about drinking water at work now.

So, I don't have quite the abundance of energy and light that I was feeling before but I still feel so much better than I was before that. Before greens. I'm still very aware of how much better my brain feels. Even when I'm tired, my mind is still noticeably more alert, more agile ... concentration comes easier. Multitasking is much easier. It makes such a difference to my days and to what I'm able to accomplish.

Also still better and what makes me grin is having feeling in my feet and toes again. Every day I wiggle my toes just to make sure the feeling is still there. And it is. Yeah!  My joints, too, are so much better. I wonder if that's just improvement with time or whether it's from the greens, too?  I think it's the greens. Several of the improvements I've experienced, I think, might be because whatever is in the greens perhaps reduces inner inflammation and improves circulation and the flow of oxygen, etc. Just my guess. Whatever it is, I'm very happy. I walk faster and with more ease. I know it's not just in my mind because a few people have commented. I used to be the last to leave a room. I would stand slowly and give myself time to let my joints settle by gathering my belongings, putting on jacket. And then taking slow steps, letting everyone else go first. I don't think anyone would have noticed that my joints were a problem for me. I'd learned to hide it. I'd adapted. Now I notice that I don't frankenwalk for the first 12 feet of the hall at work when I get up from sitting. I can usually go easily from sitting to walking now.

A friend I met for lunch and who hadn't seen me for a while commented that I'm so much more animated than I had been. She said I was a bit "frozen" before - I didn't move much and when I did I moved slowly. That's because I'm a hummingbird now!

For some reason unknown to me I've had especially bad hot flashes the past few days. I don't know why. It can't be the weather because I had fewer hot flashes when it was warmer. Hot flashes are draining. I know I'm supposed to be happy to have them because it means the Tamoxifen is working, but still. 

It will be so great to feel better for when our kids get home -- Hannah this Sunday and Luke next Sunday. I'm giddy with excitement. And I have much to do!

Hand Quilting - Slow Progress

Green Tea Slows Development Of Tamoxifen Resistance

Green Tea Polyphenol EGCG Slows Development Of Tamoxifen Resistance - Food for Breast Cancer:

" ... a new study has reported that EGCG [from green tea] can slow the development of tamoxifen resistance in hormone receptor positive breast cancer cells."

Note to self: Make green tea. Drink it. Even if you don't like it very much. Do it. Some finger wagging going on here.

Green Tea Slows Development Of Tamoxifen Resistance

I'm Ever Thankful for Greens!

I still marvel every day at the effect of these greens products! Honestly! It's been amazing. 

I was a little disheartened after that colonoscopy and it seemed that I'd sunk back into my pre-greens life even though I was still taking greens. And then slowly, a week later, I could feel my energy returning and I was just hoping ... hoping ... that I could get back to how I felt through all of March ... trying not to get too hopeful. Then, just as things were improving, early this week I had some kind of stomach thing happening. I lost my appetite, felt crappy and unsettled, and didn't dare put anything but toast, banana, and egg on my sensitive stomach. So no greens for three days. I could hardly drag myself out of bed and then getting through the days was tough, too.  On Wednesday morning my stomach felt more settled so I dared to chug down a dose of greens. Two hours later I noticed I was feeling actually pretty good. Not too tired. And it got better from there.  Was it the greens. I can't say for sure. Maybe it was just timing. But I think it was the greens.

In addition, I've gone a whole week without a decent sleep. That's longer than usual for me. The fact that I've felt good the past couple of days despite not getting even near adequate sleep, is freaking crazy!  I can hardly believe it!  What if I'd been getting good sleep?  How would I feel then?  WOW!  

Another unexepected bonus from greens is that I no longer feel I need a diet coke in the afternoons to get through the day. I've hated relying on pop and the caffeine in it to get me through my day but since I don't drink coffee, it's the ony think I've known (until I discovered greens) that helps me keep my eyes open in the afternoon. When I'm tired and need to stay awake, it's been what I've reached for.  Since I've started greens, I hardly ever think of coke. I don't need it. That a big bonus in my world. 

So, yes, I'm feeling good again and I hope I can get some good sleep in this weekend and maybe feel even BETTER!

I've included here a few more truisms from Xeni. Love that pinata metaphor. I can't help but visualize it. Xeni nails it!

I'm Ever Thankful for Greens!