10: Bad news, good news: the food and drink edition

Hair

Bad news: My hair started falling out last week. Not in big clumps or anything, but enough to be alarming and I’m hoping that it slows down sooner rather than later. The weird thing is after going through all my medication paperwork combing (see what I did there??) through the side effects, all I could find was “excessive hair growth” as a possibility with cyclosporine. One person I talked to (in her 70s) said she had to start shaving her legs again. But my doc thinks it’s probably from the combination of low blood counts on all levels and for such an extended time.

Good news: At first it was a shock, but after being around so many chemo patients on the Cancer Center 2^nd floor it’s actually a pretty normal sight there, and interesting to see how many different ways people are dealing with it. I know I don’t have the facial bone structure to pull off a classy look, so I may have to just go for wild and crazy if that time comes – we’ll see. We had a woman at work a long time ago who lost her gorgeous long tresses, and chose to go with purple, pink and shiny silver wigs until her natural hair grew back.

Blood counts

Bad news: CBC (complete blood count) and CMP (complete metabolic panel) results were rather poor, so I ended up getting 2 units of platelets, 1 unit of whole blood and 1 unit of magnesium.

Good news: Joel sat with me through the longest infusion and we re-learned how to play backgammon (he won 2 of 3 games), and finished my third book of the month. These are all things I never took the time to do before the diagnosis.

Chicken Soup redux

Bad news: well, there just isn’t any bad news when it comes to chicken soup!

Good news: Back in post #8 I mentioned a high school friend, Patti, whose mom brought me chicken soup one time when I was sick. I’m friends with Patti on facebook, but we’ve had no direct communication for 49 years – seriously! When our mutual friend, Anne, told her what was going on with me, Patti read the blog and insisted on making and sending me her chicken soup – all the way from NJ! So last Sunday she spent all day cooking, and on Monday morning shipped off the frozen soup on dry ice. We just had it last night and holy smokes, it was the best chicken soup I’ve ever had! So, I firmly believe that today’s slightly better blood test results (no infusion needed) were the result of Patti’s “Jewish penicillin.” She made enough for us to have 2 more meals of it, so I’ll be conducting a non-scientific study to see if that theory continues to hold true.

Patti's chicken soup with Joel's inaugural loaf of sourdough
 (more on that in the next update)

More non-alcoholic alternatives

Bad news: I know that Dry January ends tomorrow but looks like we’re going to have a dry 2024 from the sound of things. With that in mind, we continue to explore alternatives. Our attempts to find decent de-alcoholized wines have not yet borne fruit. So far, we’ve tried a rose and sauvignon blanc from Giesen Group Winery of New Zealand. We still have a Merlot to try, but I’m not holding my breath. Maybe it’s my taste buds that are messed up from all the medications, but to me the sauvignon blanc tasted more like lemon juice than wine. (I ended up using it in a recipe that called for both dry white wine and lemon juice.) The rose was slightly more passable, but I could only drink it while eating a very strong, soft cheese at the same time. Joel was a bit less critical, but still – nothing beats a good wine! On the other hand, my friend Lisa understands my love of both good wine AND Star Trek and suggested this, though definitely not non-alcoholic:

Klingon blood wine
available here

Good news: At the risk of sounding like a couple of alcoholics, we also love good tequilas. So, when we heard good things about Danny Trejo’s tequila alternative, we ordered a bottle from California. The first thing we noticed was the aroma – definitely nothing like tequila. Then I mixed up a small batch of margarita mix, added the “tequila” and still, all we could smell was that odd smell, completely destroying the concept of a margarita. Luckily, while buying NA beers at Wilbur’s in Fort Collins, an employee pointed us to Ritual – Zero Proof Tequila Alternative. It lists its ingredients as, “blue agave flower, Mexican lime, tropical guava, cracked sea salt, black peppercorns, capsicum fruit, prickly ash, green bell pepper” and prepared with charred oak and mesquite smoke. Though it doesn’t exactly taste like tequila on its own, the aroma is somewhat reminiscent, and the bottle clearly says it’s meant to be used in cocktails. I mixed up another batch of margaritas using Ritual, and they really were quite decent!

Here's my recipe:
2 oz fresh lime juice
2 oz tequila alternative
2 oz non-alcoholic orange “liqueur” (delicious – recipe here)
2 oz (or more) sparkling water (your choice of plain or flavored. I found a Safeway brand labeled “margarita” which was pretty good)

Of course, I used blood oranges to make the “liqueur” – couldn’t hurt, right??