learning to diet

Today was the first full day at home, and it was certainly nice to have Spoons back. He can do most things on his own -- just the socks and shoes are a problem, and he's not allowed to left anything too heavy. He was walking a lot in the hospital for exercise, and kept it up today, going on two walks around the neighborhood at about ~1 mile each. I went with him on one of them, and it was exciting to see signs of spring: buds on trees, crocuses blooming, people outside.

I also went shopping to try to find a bunch of foods that we would normally steer clear of: fat free yogurt, fat free sour cream, fat free salad dressing (hint: it's mostly vinegar without the oil). Often, the "full fat" versions of these foods are just milk, while non-fat versions have a lot of other stuff to compensate, like lots of sugar. I did manage to find some good ones, though, I think, and we had homemade borscht for dinner with a bit of fat free sour cream as a garnish, and it was tasty. Because grocery shopping is usually pretty easy for me, it was a new feeling to walk around and think "nope, shouldn't buy that" and "off limits!" -- I felt lucky that usually, most of the things I want to buy are the things that I can buy.

In general, I feel very lucky this week - lucky that we have access to good health care and good insurance, lucky that we both have jobs where people care about us and are flexible with our schedules, lucky that we have people to help us both close by and farther away. I think bad stuff happens to everybody eventually, and I feel glad that we were in a place and time that we could deal with it and go forward. Spoons' brother Ben said it seemed to him like we thought the surgery and chemo were "wildly inconvenient" but not much worse, and I'd agree. If "wildly inconvenient" is the worst it's been, then I think we are doing pretty well.