Chag Sameach

I hope everyone had as nice a seder as I did last night. We had our friend Frank P. from Maryland and two new friends from here that we met. Mark led, and as always, he did a great job. Tonight we will do it all over again, sans our other friends. It will just be the three of us. To mix it up a little bit, Mark is going to use a different hagaddah tonight and some different songs and tunes. That should keep it fun.

We sure did miss our kids, though. It's been a lot of years since Evey attended a seder with us because she was in Boston in school and now in California. It's been several years since Lowell attended with us at the Oresky house. Last year we were on the cruise, so we had no family members. I always had this dream of a big dining room with a huge table and lots of family and friends around it. Oh, yes, that's just like the Oresky house at seder! I envy them all their family, including their children, attending the seder. Our friends the Kopelmans in Buffalo even have their daughter and her family driving in from Massachusetts for the seder. I know our kids don't have time off and live far away, so I know that realistically it's not an option for them to join us for seders. At least not right now, but it doesn't make me less envious of my friends who can have their children with them at the holidays. And now I have that big dining room with the big table! Still, it was lovely having three friends join the two of us last night.

It's Tuesday, so naturally I have to report my weight. Sadly I regained the three pounds I lost last week, back to 249. I have not been behaving myself in restaurants. I ordered dessert virtually every time we ate out, and we ate out a lot of times. Now it's Passover, which is synonymous with eating carbs. I'm going to do my best to keep the calories reasonable at home, and there will NO eating out for the entire week of Passover. I also need to walk everyday. That's the single most important thing I need to do for weight loss, but I have not done it. Two years ago when I was desperately trying to get the weight off for the hernia surgery, I walked every day without fail. I need to get that "desperate to lose weight" feeling back. You would think that needing to fit into the Mother-of-the-Bride dress would make me desperate, but sadly it has not worked yet.

Time to head out to shul for Passover services. When I come back, after a quick lunch, I will head up for radiation #32, the next to the last one, the penultimate one. I also meet with the doctor today, so I have many questions for him. I am going to write them down today so I don't forget any. I need to know when I get back to the pool and hot tubs and sunshine. I need to know when I can start taking my vitamin D again. I need to know how long I need to continue putting the prescription steroid cream and aloe gel on my skin. I need to know how and when I follow up to be sure I stay cancer free.

I am getting excited that my treatment phase is coming to an end. Last summer getting this diagnosis made me feel like life as I knew it was over. That is still true, but now it's a new life that's better than ever. I have heard from several people as well as read about it online that there is a normal feeling of depression that sometimes overcomes patients when the treatment phase ends. Suddenly they feel abandoned and scared because they are not being seen by a doctor as frequently as when they were in active treatment. I don't think I'm going to feel that way, but I'll wait to report on that for sure until Thursday or later when I'm not going back to the cancer center every afternoon. I hope that I'll continue to be excited and happy about being out of treatment and ready to pursue my own life on my own terms.