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Keepin’ Me in Stitches

Janice — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:24:32 +0000

Today, at 440pm PST, I am scheduled for my post-op appointment to get 6 stitches taken out of the palm of my hand. That’s 3 hours and 16 minutes from now, not that I’m counting. And it’s about time. Because these stitches are DRIVING. ME. CRAZY.

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Making Adjustments

Janice — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:46:29 +0000

It’s hard to write about my heart. Which is why I’ve gone missing again. About a week after my last post, I had a drop-me-to-my-knees kind of chest pain while walking across a flat parking lot. No hills, no stress, just plain old walking caused my heart to contract. I’d also experienced dizziness, minor chest pains, and a fluttering feeling near my heart many times, in spite of my attempts to ignore the whole crazy thing. It was obviously time for a more aggressive approach to dealing with my anomaly.

Back at the cardiologist’s office, we learned I needed to go on daily medication for the first time in my life. Thus the pill reminder/holder. If you’ve lived 50 years without medication, it’s harder than you think to remember to take a daily pill, even when it’s one that keeps your heart beating. After counting the pills left in the bottle one too many times, trying to figure out whether or not I’d taken the pill that day, I broke down and bought the pill reminder. So it’s official. I’m old now. But alive. Thanks to a drug called Norvasc, which opens my arteries and veins so that more blood can flow to my heart through the arteries I do have. I have a whole new respect for pharmaceutical companies, believe me.

The amazingly good news is that there aren’t any side effects. I can take a very small dose and it’s enough for now. After several weeks on the drug, I can exercise as much as I want, and get my heart rate up at the gym, and life feels pretty normal again. Except for that darned pill holder, reminding me that I’m not getting any younger. Not a bad price to pay for life, I’d say. I’m still a very, very lucky person; dramatic visits to the cardiologist, and exciting stays at places where they pump drugs into my veins, are over.

I’m knocking on wood as I write this (which makes it very hard to type, by the way), but this should be my last post about my heart. For a long, long while. And I can get back to writing about recipes. About really good food, and friends, and sailing, and all the other things you come here to read. Thanks for sticking with me. You’re the best.

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Hearts Behaving Badly

Janice — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 22:07:19 +0000

I haven’t felt up to writing about my heart. It’s been too scary; too unreal. But today I got good news. So here’s the whole story. The longest entry in my entire blog.

I’ve been going to physical therapy for my back, which turned out to be fractured, for several months now, and I’ve done so well that I was able to start going to the gym. I’ve been working out pretty hard on the treadmill and elliptical machine, and in the pool for the last two months.

A few weeks ago, I noticed I was having chest pains when my heart rate was really high (140 to 150), about 45 minutes into an hour or so of hard exercise. I talked myself out of worrying too much, but the thoughts still came to me . . .

Then I went and had my eye exam, and the optometrist told me I have cholesterol behind my pupils, which I didn’t have at my exam two years ago. I freaked out, called the doctor, and went in that day. (I’ve always had high “good” cholesterol and low “bad” cholesterol, so this really worried me.) After the doc heard where my chest pains were, she sent me immediately to the hospital to get blood tests to see if I’d had a heart attack, and she told me to schedule an echo stress test. The blood tests all came back great, including my cholesterol. I stopped worrying, but she wouldn’t let me exercise again until I had the stress test. (The cholesterol behind the eyes turned out to be totally irrelevant, but it got me to the doctor!)

After the echocardiogram stress test, the nurse at Stanford said my EKG looked completely normal and the pain was probably muscle related. I pretty much forgot about the whole thing, until I got a phone call from my doc the next afternoon. The test had come back abnormal, and the cardiologist who read it thought there might be a major blockage in an artery. So they immediately scheduled a angiogram with possible angioplasty.

I subsequently felt so stressed out that I came down with a bad case of the respiratory flu. Go figure, right? The doctors decided to go ahead with the angiogram, in spite of my illness, although the cardiologist in the cath lab felt I had nothing to worry about – that this was just a case of an overly-sensitive echo test. My blood tests were great, my weight is great, my blood pressure low. What could really be wrong with my heart? I joked in the operating room that if I had a clogged artery, I was going to blame it on all the quinoa I eat.

We spent from 8am to 8pm at the hospital. In post op, I was coughing my head off while putting pressure on my femoral artery so it didn’t re-open, which could have caused me to bleed to death. Impressive, right? It was very humorous to hear me cough, and three nurses’ heads would immediately pop in through the curtain and simultaneously ask me, “Are you putting pressure on your bandage?” You’re not supposed to move for four hours, much less cough, so everyone was on high alert. It was like a funny bit in a play that went on for too long.

It turned out that I surprised everyone. (I need to think of happier ways to surprise people.) The angiogram showed that I have a congenital heart defect called CAA (Coronary Artery Anomalies). Less than 1% of the population has this. However, many people who have it never know until they die of sudden death after or during exercise. Exciting, no? It basically just means the coronary arteries aren’t as they should be, with varying degrees of abnormality.

So there was no clogged artery, only an extra-large healthy one, one that was very small, and one that was missing in action. Sort of like the three bears, but not quite. Which meant they needed to do more tests.

The next adventure was a coronary CT scan with dye (complete with beta blockers!), to see if they could locate the missing artery by taking more pictures of my heart. They needed to find out where the artery originated and where it terminated, in order to determine how dangerous the abnormally placed artery could be. Unfortunately, by now I was even more sick with the virus, and this event had to be rescheduled while we waited for my cough to subside. This didn’t add to the stress of it all. No, not at all. Okay, maybe a lot! At some point during this, I stopped caring much about my heart. I just begged to live through the darned virus.

Of course, once I went for the coronary CT Scan, the fun had to continue. They have to give you beta blockers to slow down the heart so they can get clear pictures. I already have a slow heart rate and low blood pressure because I exercise so much. Yup. Add that to a funky artery situation and mix with potent medications and right there you have a cocktail for disaster.

My spouse insisted that I would need less medication than most people, and got the nurse to call a doctor for permission to use less of the beta blocker. Permission granted, I was given a 1/2 dose. In about fifteen minutes, I was a dizzy, sleepy, heartbeat skipping, heart rate and blood pressure dropping mess. I barely remember being quickly hooked up to an IV and to an oxygen tank. I could almost make out the nurse yelling at me, “Breathe!” Yes, it was terribly frantic and I seriously wouldn’t want to repeat the experience. Ever. The nurse later told me to never let anyone give me more than a quarter dose of a beta blocker. Noted, I promise. Lesson learned.

After an interminable wait, the CT results came back. It turns out that there was no missing/hidden artery. It didn’t exist. Which was sort of good news: no surgery to move it. And sort of bad news: a heart needs its arteries!

Today, finally, I got the whole scoop. I have a zero calcium score (for arterial blockage), which is the best score you can have. I have no damage to my heart, no enlargement, no thickening. This is a great news for someone with missing coronary arteries.

My right coronary artery is the tiny one. I do not even have a left anterior descending artery – that’s the one that was missing and they hoped to find from the CT Scan. However, to compensate for the absence of a left anterior descending artery, my body has grown a diagonal branch and a large septal preforator. (You probably have no idea what I’m talking about. I only learned a couple of hours ago. It’s as if there’s no major highway/freeway where there really needs to be one, so they just bulldozed a couple of one lane circuitous country roads to try and handle all the traffic.) This takes me from a rare form of coronary artery anomalies to “very rare,” but it shows how the body can adapt to difficult situations.

I don’t need surgery. I’m not at risk for sudden death, unless I get my heart rate too high or too low, which could cause a heart attack. Any time there’s a lot of demand for blood to my heart, I’m at risk and need to be really careful and pay attention to my chest pains and heart flutters. I have to read the labels on over the counter medicines for warnings about anything related to the heart, and stay away from those medications. I have to stay hydrated ( I’m terrible about drinking water!) in order to keep my heart functioning properly.

The doctor says that I’m really lucky. He said I have a “Ferrari heart.” It’s amazingly healthy, in spite of the challenges it’s had to deal with. The reason I haven’t had a heart attack so far is because the arteries I do have are so clean and healthy. (Yes to healthy eating!) The reason I’m having symptoms now is because I’m aging and I push too hard. When and if my symptoms increase, we’ll deal with it, possibly with medications and more lifestyle modifications. Otherwise, I just have to exercise moderately (warm up slowly, stay well below a high heart rate, cool down slowly), stay healthy, keep eating the way I eat, and pay attention to symptoms.

I’ve always exercised hard. My older brother and I were trained as athletes, competitive swimmers from a very young age. When we stopped competing, we took up running. Anything to keep us moving. I compete with myself most of all. I’m always trying to go 5 more minutes, have a higher average heart rate, increase the resistance, 100 more yards in the pool, constantly challenging myself.

The doctor is right: I’m lucky. I get a chance to learn what moderate exercise means, no matter how sharp that learning curve turns out to be for me. My brother was not so fortunate. A few years ago, at the age of 49, he dropped dead after crossing the finish line of a half marathon. From a congenital heart defect, but not the same one I have. He left five children who miss him every single day. Who knows if he ever felt chest pain and ignored it?

Thank you to each and every one of my doctors at Stanford for paying attention. Thank you to the nurse who took care of me as my blood pressure dropped. Thank you to all our friends and extended family who called and emailed and supported us through this ordeal. You’re just going to have to put up with my scrappy, adaptive Ferrari-heart a while longer.

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Valentine Love (when you’re in a hurry)

Janice — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 01:49:14 +0000

So let’s say it’s already late in the day, and you’ve forgotten that a special dessert is almost mandatory on Valentine’s Day. And maybe your pantry is rather bare, with only a few essentials in it. Do you run to the store and buy one of the last picked over boxes of bad chocolates (filled with strange, unnatural fillings), and pretend that’s what you meant to do?

You don’t have to! If you have flour, sugar, cocoa powder, milk, butter, and an egg, you can make a very good chocolate cake in 45 minutes, including baking time. Cut out a paper heart, sift some powdered sugar over the stencil that’s left, and you’re done. No crappy chocolate for anyone. Which is my mission in life. No one should ever have to eat bad chocolate.

I’m throwing a little whipped cream and sliced strawberries on this chocolate goodness, and I obviously made it in a heart-shaped pan. But you can make it in a round cake pan, and just serve it with the powdered sugar heart on top, and people will still love you back. Because that’s what Valentine’s Day is all about, isn’t it? Sharing the love. Happy Valentine’s Day to all my readers!

Quick One-Layer Chocolate Cake
adapted from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder (preferably high quality, I used ScharffenBerger)
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup milk
¼ cup butter, room temperature
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 egg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, rack positioned in the middle of the oven. Grease and flour a 9 x 1 ½ inch round baking pan. (If you use a pan like I did, you’ll have leftover batter, which can be baked in a couple of ramekins for cute little soufflé-looking cakes!)

Whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Add milk, butter, and vanilla. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until combined. Beat on medium speed for two minutes, scraping sides of bowl. Add egg and beat for two more minutes on medium.

Pour into prepared pan. Bake at 350 for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a cake tester or toothpick inserted near the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Remove from pan. Cool. Cut out a paper heart from a piece of paper. Center the heart-shaped stencil (that the heart cut-out leaves) on the cake. Sift powdered sugar over the cake and carefully remove the stencil. Enjoy with or without whipped cream and berries.

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I Can

Janice — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 21:21:44 +0000

I’ve been unusually quiet for a long while now; there have been major health issues in my life. It seems that my body, upon turning 50, realized the warranty recently ran out, and like every major appliance I’ve ever had, picked that moment to fall apart.

Today, I visited a spine specialist, where I learned that “lifestyle modifications” is a euphemism for “all the things I can never do again.” Contrary to what my inner athlete has told me all my life, it seems that pushing through the pain isn’t such a good idea after all. At least not when the pain involves your back.

So I did what any sane person would do in this circumstance: I went out and bought a thriving, gorgeous Cara Cara orange tree. Because I can. And no matter what they tell me I can’t do, I’m pretty sure that watching that tree grow is still within my abilities. Which is what I’m trying to focus on right now.

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Giving Thanks

Janice — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:53:43 +0000

Sometimes, when you’ve just turned fifty, and it’s Thanksgiving, and you spent the last 24 hours packing up a tiny car with baking gear (Kitchen Aid, cake pans, icing spatulas, and all), clothing, birthday presents for your son’s 11th birthday, and groceries (to make two kinds of rolls and a birthday cake with dark chocolate ganache, and homemade marshmallows), and you drove in holiday traffic (cheerful in spite of the inevitable delays), and then you unpacked all that stuff, baked until the wee hours of the night, only to wake up to find your son is too sick to be around others, and now you’ve packed everything back up by yourself, and you’ve driven the two of you back home where your spouse has been all along, you should just shut up, stop trying to figure out why, and be darned thankful for all that you have.

Which is harder than it sounds. But totally worth it.

We weren’t in a car accident.
It’s only a sore throat and cold, not cancer or something scary.
I burned off a lot of calories running around loading and unloading the car.
My spouse is rested and cheerful.
I got to see San Francisco Bay twice in 24 hours, in the sunshine, and it was stunning.
I have a home to go home to.

So here’s to giving thanks. On Thanksgiving and other days. I hope you’re having a good one, but if not, look around. You might surprise yourself with gratitude. I did.

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Blissful Birthday

Janice — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:43:38 +0000

Today I turned forty-nine, and there’s only one thing I know for sure: I’m older than I’ve ever been. I also like to think I’m wiser than I’ve ever been, though not as wise as I hope to someday be. Which means, all in all, this is a pretty good day.

The air is warmer than it was last week, and people seem to be slowing down, in spite of the rapid approach of the Thanksgiving holiday. Or maybe it’s because of the impending holiday. Who knows? One last chance to savor the soft air before we dive headfirst into celebrations that will manage to keep us so busy until the frigid air of January stops us clean in our tracks. On my way to the community garden, I passed an elderly gentleman stringing Christmas lights about his yard while the sun shone in the bright blue autumn sky. I heard a grandmother singing a hauntingly beautiful melody to a baby she cradled in her arms, rocking from one leg to the other, catching the warmth in her sunny driveway on our busy street. I eavesdropped as a concerned citizen raised issues with a local political figure attempting to walk his dog in the park, unable to shed his duties even long enough for a quiet stroll.

It’s difficult to find words to share how much this all means to me today. To be alive. Suffice it to say, I feel lucky to live in this beautiful, diverse land called California, and even luckier to love and be loved.

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Food Bloggers: Lovers, Not Fighters

Janice — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:48:39 +0000

At the end of September, I went to BlogHer Food 09. An entire day-long conference at the St. Regis in San Francisco just for food bloggers. I didn’t encounter a bad attitude all day. How many conferences have you attended where you could say the same thing? It was incredible: smiles, hugs, laughter all around. Maybe it was the fact that it was a warm sunny day in the city. Or maybe it’s that all these people really love what they do. Either way, I was somewhat stunned by all that niceness in one place. Let there be no doubt: the food blogging community is one seriously generous group of people!

I decided to sleep in (it was a Saturday!) and skip both breakfast and a welcome meeting. I hopped on BART at a reasonable hour and then walked three blocks to the hotel. I noticed a huddle of policemen standing right outside the St. Regis. Oh great, I thought. Food bloggers must really be rowdy; am I going to like this at all? Not even 9am, and the police have already been called!

Heading into the hotel and walking quickly toward the elevators, I was told to STOP PLEASE by a firm hotel employee. Startled, I looked up to see a small crowd moving through. Speaking a foreign language and dressed in suits to-die-for, it was clear these were high-level dignitaries, bodyguards, and various attendants. It happened so fast. They moved into waiting limos, the police dispersed, and elevator doors re-opened. The employee apologized to me for the inconvenience. Whew. Food bloggers weren’t causing the ruckus!

Stepping out of the elevator onto the second floor, I walked right into the only person I knew at the entire conference, the amazing Cheryl Sternman Rule, who just might be the funniest writer I know. She introduced me to several smiling food bloggers and the day spun out of control. We cornered David Lebovitz for a moment. I sat next to Zoe Francois of Zoe Bakes. I laughed with Todd and Diane of White on Rice about fighting urban critters for cherished homegrown backyard fruit. The Gluten-Free Girl’s baby gave me the biggest smile. Did I mention that everyone was so nice?

I attended morning sessions with White on Rice, and with Heidi Swanson and Matt Armendariz on photography. I’ve learned so much about my little embarrassing camera and how to use it since I listened to their advice and read my camera manual. Just a little detail I had previously overlooked. I will say that I pulled out my (Kodak!) camera once, and the blogger I showed it to was so mortified to be standing near me (with the Kodak in my hand) that I stuck my camera back in my bag for the rest of the day. (Therefore, no pictures for you!) Apparently it is cool to use expensive cameras, very expensive cameras, or a Polaroid or iPhone, but not a Kodak Easy Share. Who knew? That’s my camera and I’m sticking to it, however uncool it may be, until I can stop dropping cameras in wet bread dough. Because at that point I really do stick to it.

Then came lunch. You can read about our Bertolli lunch, the big stir, and the commentary during it – oh my, not what you would think – here and here. I met so many wonderful writers and bloggers and photographers – famous ones, great ones, and brand new ones – at that lunch and during the breaks. I watched Elizabeth Falkner convince otherwise socially acceptable people to put latex gloves on their hands and dig in chocolate boxes for corn nuts, cake, and pretzels covered in marshmallow and dark chocolate ganache. You read that correctly: latex gloves, digging in chocolate, corn nuts. I think you had to be there. (But if you weren’t, check out this post.)

There was also a surreal cocktail party on the glam roof terrace (warm evening in SF!), with sumptuous cocktails, and with appetizers using Campbell’s Soup. You cannot make this stuff up – all conferences need sponsors, okay? Which is about when I gave out. I hugged a few people, grabbed my swag bag full of Scharffen Berger Chocolate and other assorted goodies, tucked the business cards of my new blogging buddies in my pocket, and headed back to BART. Yes, this is what I call work these days. Read it and weep.

New Friends (in no particular order):

Black Girl Chef’s Whites