05.30.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:33 am by Bridget Zinn
The in person auction was perfect. Thanks to everyone who made it so!
I’m having another good day and we’re taking advantage and going to have a picnic on the beach so I don’t have time to post more or to arm wrestle a camera away from someone to get some pics. BUT what I do have for you is a link to the fabulous Suzanne Young’s blog where she posted tons of pics.
Laurie Ann from Halo did such a good job on my hair, I honestly don’t know if it’s ever looked better (and my olden time friends know how I felt about Kenneth, but Laurie Ann, I think, has got him beat!). There was some last minute scrambling when I realized that with such delicious starlet hair I had to wear something that lived up to it and, if you’ve been following this blog, you know I got rid of almost everything I owned last year when we moved to Portland. I went from having more dresses than there are days in the month to only a couple. And somehow one of them was just perfect.
Until I saw a pic of Barrett, Matt Holm and his wife Cyndi and saw this naked girl in the background THAT WAS ME. Didn’t realize there was no back to my dress. At least the bottom half was covered.
Must go, beach and veggie burgers (with brie and mushrooms, my favorite) await!
Love to you all and good luck to all of you online bidders today!
Bridget
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05.27.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:45 pm by Bridget Zinn
I’m having a great day. A super awesome, frabjous day! I have not slain any jabberwockies sadly, but I am feeling really good and that only comes around so often lately.
I got the super cute haircut of my dreams. Triple Huzzah! I called at the last minute this morning and had never even been to the salon before. I didn’t think such a thing could happen, but Halo Salon = Best Place Ever. Laurie Ann was totally on the same page and got the Needing A Super Cute Haircut Emergency and stepped in to save the day. The beginning, I hope, of a long and lovely relationship, as I do plan to live for a very long time despite any rumors you may have heard to the contrary. I have not given up my plan of becoming very very very old and one day walking out into the woods and gently morphing into a tree or a nice plant next to a stream or something where bears and little girls meditate as sort of a break between human incarnations.
I digress. Laurie Ann was perfect and even when I went from going a million miles an hour, which happens when I’m having a good day, to pretty much zero and had to take a little nap in her chair, she just kept going and played around and made me feel pampered and lovely. Then, at the end, when I was all gushy and happy and wanting to know what she used and she wasn’t pushy about selling things but said sure she would make a list and that they did have small sizes I could try if I wanted, Gloria (who is my new mother-in-law, but I think that’s just a weird and unfortunate name and I haven’t come up with anything better yet. Other Mother kind of cracks me up but all of you Coraline fans will be picturing black button eyes) 
stepped in and said, “We’ll take the lot, it’s on me,” or something to that effect, possibly less British, but still very exciting. Since Harry Potter “took the lot” on his first ride to Hogwarts, I’ve always wanted to do that. *sigh* Such a great day.
And the appointment ended with Laurie Ann setting up an appointment to do my hair for free before the Big Event on Friday. 
The Big Event is, of course, the Silent Auction at the Lucky Lab at 6:30-9 pm this Friday, May 29th. I hope hope hope to see lots and lots of you there. If you can’t make it, I think there is still time to bid on fabulous items in the online auction. We can’t thank all of you enough for your generous donations and for bidding and just being overly wonderful. We really couldn’t get through this without you all.
My darling friend Georgia Beaverson is still working hard to get donations for Bridget’s Cancer Fund and the lovely Cailin O’Connor along with her husband Nicolai are putting together some kind of super team in Wisconsin to follow up after all of the Oregon auction-ing ends. They also started a group on facebook called I want to help Barrett & Bridget.
And totally out of left field, without our knowing anything about it at all, SCBWI-Western Washington held a raffle for us at their conference last week and raised some money for us. I meant to blog earlier, but the whole hospital stay followed by a drug-induced daze was not good for the blogging. Thank you SCBWI-Western Washington! I will get up there for a conference one of these days. Very shnazzy having it hand delivered to my hospital room with such a sweet note and treats by one of my favorite people in the world — my super agent Michael Stearns who ALSO added cupcakes to the mix.
Plus, an editor friend of mine just sent me the must delicious looking box of books I have ever seen in my entire life. All girly, all the time. I just want to spread them out and look at them for a while.
Plus Plus, my friend Emily Whitman, who has a great new book out (plus a gorgeous website designed by none other than my own tech genius/now husband Barrett) hooked me up with her Chinese doctor and I have an appointment next week. AND she made me scrumptious home-made orange flower water pudding.
Plus Plus Plus, I just got an e-mail from a neighborhood writer who is helping me get connected with a neighborhood healing center to tell me that she just picked me up some CD’s and goodies from them.
Seriously, don’t we know the nicest people ever?
I may have only had five good days out of thirty this past month, but when they’re good they’re really really good. I would settle for just not having pain or throwing up, but when they’re even BETTER than that….
I hope everyone else is having a lovely day and has had a chance to check out Steve’s fab article which I haven’t thanked him for doing such a great job with yet.
So many people to thank, so few good days. If I haven’t gotten to you yet on the thank you list, I swear, I will.
Love you all,
Bridget
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05.25.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:42 pm by Bridget Zinn
The song going through my head for the past couple of days now is that Violent Femmes song with the “too many drugs line” in it which just about sums up the past weekend. I was not eligible for chemo on Friday (white blood cell count too low) and ended up with just a fifth of the treatment that had been scheduled.
What I did go home with was a whole new posse of drugs I got from my stay at OHSU last week to try and control my myriad side effect problems. Not to knock OHSU in any way because now they’ve all read this incredibly-well-written-not-to-mention-complimentary article and may pop over to my blog and I don’t want any of the awesome staff to think that I am dissing them, especially the two fabulous nurses who tag-teamed to get me through the MRI Torture Chamber and rank as Super Awesome Nurses of All Time in my book, but I definitely went home with too many drugs.
Because I have completely lost Saturday. I mean it’s just gone. All day Sunday I kept asking my darling and company about things that happened yesterday and they kept saying, “No, that was Friday.” But something must have happened on Saturday, right? No answer. They give me hollowed-eye looks and shake a bit in horror.
How bad could it have been? When I’ve squeezed a bit out of Barrett, he told me that I would fall asleep so suddenly that my head would hit the wall, I’d start hunting for pills in the sheets that weren’t there, pop out of a deep sleep to continue a conversation we weren’t having and at one point he even caught me at the laptop WITH THE MANUSCRIPT I’M REVISING OPEN!!!!!
This does, in fact, scare me, just a bit. Hope super star agent is not reading this post.
So we’ve cut waaaayyyy down on the narcotics and I’m going back in tomorrow to try and winnow everything down as much as possible. Then my alternative medicine hunt is going to get kicked into high gear.
Because I really really really hate being sick, but also, I really really don’t want to miss out on the awesome auction at the Lucky Lab this Friday!
Hope you all are feeling healthy and spry etc.
Love,
Bridget
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05.20.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:10 pm by Bridget Zinn
I know that it’s a lot to ask for more than one miracle and if it comes down to having to choose of course I’m going to choose the Completely Cancer Free miracle, plus world peace and wonderful karma to all of the people who are helping me through this. And an end to the chemo side effects that have been plaguing me.
But if I get another one, I’d really like a miracle haircut.
I know this is superficial and not important in the grand scheme of things and I’m super lucky that I even get to keep my hair because of the non-hair-loss kind of chemo I’m getting, but when you’re a Sick Person (even one who plans on this being a very temporary sort of thing) the last thing you want is to look like a sick person. It doesn’t make anyone happy. It makes people look at you with sad frowny faces.
All I ask is a haircut that looks cute all of the time despite the fact that sometimes I’m too tired to style it and tend to sleep on it when wet so it dries into weird little smooshy messes. That’s not too much to ask for, is it?
I even made an appointment last week to try for a miracle haircut but unfortunately all of my Big Plans were interrupted by a lovely nausea vomiting jag that two days of outpatient re-hydration and drugs couldn’t cure and which landed me back in the hospital last Saturday. And I’ve been here ever since.
There are no miracle haircuts on the 13th floor of OHSU.
Plus, the whole nausea vomiting thing has kind of taken over as a priority. It’s difficult to think about haircuts when you are doing the breathing-slowly-counting-to-ten-trying-to-keep-everything-that-is-in-your-stomach-just-exactly-where-it-is thing.
Fortunately, I think that the docs here have finally (after seven days) put together the right cocktail of drugs to stop the nausea and are, fingers crossed, going to send me home today. Where I can go back to obsessing about important things like haircuts.
Wishing you all a fabulous day with perfect hair and whatnot!
Bridget
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05.11.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:41 pm by Bridget Zinn
I knew this wasn’t a good mantra going into my second round of chemo. Totally, totally knew that this was the wrong thing to think. But I couldn’t help it. “It can’t be as bad as last time,” just rolled around and around in my head like the puffing of the Little Engine That Could. I had the flu the first time around, there was NO WAY I was getting the flu again so chemo had to go better the second time.
Then I woke up Saturday morning around 2 am. Just dealing with some normal chemo side effects, no big deal. Couldn’t fall back asleep, but not from stress or anything. I just felt awake. So I rested and thought and planned a whole entire blog where I would just write about books again like in the olden days because I wouldn’t have any medical stuff to report. There are books I want to recommend! Friends producing books right and left that I want to share with you all.
The pain didn’t start coming on until about 5 am. What started as a run-of-the-mill ouch turned into a rather nasty curl-up-in-a-ball-and-whimper ouch. It was in the area of my lower lungs where I haven’t had pain since this started.
We went off to the ER where I got some lovely pain relievers and started in on the tests. While we (Barrett, my dad, Diana and I) were waiting for the x-rays and blood tests etc. to come back and for them to decide if I was getting a CT scan, they gave me the “no eating, just in case” directive. We sat and talked about food and started planning the fabulous lunch and dinner we were going to cook as soon as they let me out.
When I can get on top of the nausea meds, I’m all about the tasty vittles.
Went to CT scan. Came back and talked some more about the delicious meals we were going to cook at home. (I mostly direct on the sidelines lately, but it’s still very satisfying being part of meal prep, have I mentioned how much I like good food?). We might even get to eat out on the porch and soak up the last of the afternoon sunshine.
Finally, the ER doc came in. CT results didn’t show anything, but they blamed this on my organs being too smashed together. “If you were fatter, your organs would have room to spread out and we could see them better on the scan,” the doc says, “since we can’t find anything, we must assume the worst and you need to stay here overnight. Oh, and by the way you can’t eat anything.” !!!!!!
So 1) I’m in trouble for being too thin = v. annoying 2) he’s assuming that there’s something wrong with my digestion because I flinched when he poked me (just had abdominal surgery 8 weeks ago PLUS I’m on a chemo drug that makes me sensitive to cold, how could I not flinch when he poked me with his ice hands?) 3) I didn’t even go in because of abdominal pain, I came in for lower lung pain! 4) he was not bothered in the least by that little fact and decided that I shouldn’t eat just in case I had some kind of digestive obstruction that they couldn’t see on the CT scan.
I have to admit that once the doctor left us alone, my positive attitude may have taken a brief holiday. There may even have been cursing.
The oncologist on call stopped by. A lovely, lovely woman. She very reasonably took back the order banning me from eating and asked nicely if I would stay overnight just in case the pain in my lungs came back or anything else weird happened. She wasn’t at all worried about the imaginary digestion issue.
I couldn’t say “no” to that. It was sensible and most likely The Right Thing To Do.
Then they brought me to the most gorgeous hospital room I’ve ever been in. One whole wall was windows overlooking the river with Mt. Hood smack dab in the center. The building is only two and a half months old and somehow I got snuck into one of their special VIP rooms. Apparently, there weren’t enough VIP’s around to fill the rooms over the weekend. Since I wasn’t paying the extra $150 for VIP treatment I did not get the satin sheets that normally come with it.
But the kitchen doesn’t get any kind of message distinguising whether or not it’s a real VIP in the room. When they get an order from a VIP numbered room, they make up a fancy tray lined with purple fabric, cloth napkins IN ACTUAL NAPKIN HOLDERS, doilies, a silver dome cover for the entrees, plus they make your food look all fancy by fanning out the vegetables etc.
The view though. Wow. I think that it may have cured me.
Another awesome bonus was the “Write” bracelet Jone dropped off — Laura, the designer, wanted me to have one like the bracelet up for auction on the Bridget Zinn auction site and it is absolutely gorgeous. It was nice to have the visual reminder around my wrist that I do have a life outside the hospital walls.
Sunday I felt fine and they sent me home. No explanation for the pain except that people have weird reactions to chemo. It wasn’t any of the serious things they worry about, so they just gave me some directions on meds and how to handle the pain should it come back.
The view was nice, but it was SO good to come home.
Definitely need a new mantra before the next chemo session.
Thanks for all of the kind thoughts on facebook and twitter. It really helps knowing I have all of you out there rooting for me.
Best to all,
Bridget
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