Tori Takes A Bite

A Drive Through Infinity

toritakesabite — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 13:30:00 +0000

Over the summer, my doctor had called to remind me to schedule a chest MRI to check out how the tumors were doing in my lungs. The deal was that if they hadn’t grown, we’d leave the little guys alone. But if they grew even a smidgen, they would immediately schedule surgery to remove the bastards. My mom nagged me to make an appointment, but after begging and guilt-tripping her for a week, I convinced her that I would schedule my scan right after I make a cross-country trip that I’ve been wanting to make for the past year. A week later, tickets were booked and I was off to San Francisco with my 3 dearest friends.

———

The second to last day before we had to fly back to New York, my friends and I decided to make a 4 hour road trip to Yosemite National Park. After spending the day surrounding ourselves with nature’s most beautiful creations by swimming in hidden lakes and hiking through stunning forests, we were exhausted and ready to drive back to San Francisco. So we packed ourselves into our rented convertible (it was a splurge well splurged), put on our stupid panda neck pillows that we purchased at the airport, and drove off with the top down, hoping to catch a few last breaths of fresh air that couldn’t be inhaled in NYC. As we slowly drove down the twisty road leading us away from the park with the mountains around us, the sun began to set and we were soon engulfed by nothing but the umbrella of the galaxy, showering us with billions of stars that left us all sitting there with dumb grins on our faces that were squished inside our even dumber neck pillows. Right at that moment, my friend decided to change the radio station and Goo Goo Dolls’ Better Days started to play. (High school prom, anyone?) You know those moments in your life where you wish there was a camera crew filming you because there’s just no way you could illustrate with words what just happened? This was one of those moments.

The only way I can even begin to describe my feeling at the time is to compare it to the end of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being A Wallflower, where Charlie felt infinite as his friends drove through a tunnel and he had the courage to stand up in the back of the pick up truck with his arms wide open as the wind blew against his face. At the very end of the movie, (1 min, 40 sec mark for the video above) he narrates,

I can see it. This one moment when you know you’re not a sad story. You are alive. And you stand up and you see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder, and you’re listening to that song on that drive with the people you love most in this world. And in this moment, I swear…we are infinite.

Since my cancer diagnosis, I’d been faced with my own mortality more times than I would’ve liked at 25 years old, and not once was I even close to accepting it. Every time I thought about it, I’d end up angry and would force my mind to change topics. As I looked up at the stars, laughing with my friends as we screwed up the lyrics to the song, I knew in the back of my mind that when the trip was over, I would have to face the what-ifs of cancer again. But for the very first time, I wasn’t angry; I felt determined that no matter how many times I have to face the MRI machine, or how many scars this disease leaves on my body, I will always have to remind myself to look for that certain beauty that comes with every sad story. And for me, that wouldn’t be hard to find. I am, and forever will be, surrounded by it.

And in case you were wondering, here are our neck pillows.

Mini Post – Why I Don’t Pinterest

toritakesabite — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 01:31:22 +0000

I never got into Pinterest for two main reasons: 1) I’ve heard that people can spend hours on it clicking the flamboyant “Pin it!” button. 2) The majority of the pictures on there will make me feel inadequate in one way or another. (i.e. why haven’t I thought of making a mirror out of spoons?)

I finally gave the site a try when I desperately needed creative thank you gift ideas and all the Google search results linked me to Pinterest. Clicking the link instantly proved the second theory that I listed above to be true; jars, boxes and cards bursting with colors and intricately wrapped with even more colorful ribbon and bows, all finished with a cutesy font that screams “I AM SO TALENTED.” One hour later, I settled on creating these little guys. Mini lemon shortbread cookies in mason jars! Why yes, I did in fact stuff it with tissue paper to 1) be more colorful like my Pinterest Idols and 2) avoid having to bake 300 cookies.

Recipe for the cookies can be found here.

How McDonalds Saved My Life

toritakesabite — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 22:18:12 +0000

When I first entered the field of dietetics, I was against all fast food. To me, McDonald’s was an evil corporation filled with McFatty fake fried food. And to a certain point, it is. According to their website, a single Chicken McNugget contains over 25 ingredients, some of which I can hardly pronounce.

My opinion of McDonald’s changed one week after my first chemotherapy session, which lasted 8 days straight. My body literally starved for a week as my body was trying to fight off the nauseating side effects of the toxin flowing gracefully through my bloodstream. Bags upon bags of potassium and sodium in the form of clear fluids were the only things keeping me alive. The effects of chemo didn’t stop once the 8 days were over. For two weeks after, my appetite was almost nonexistent. Every food tasted like a bite of cardboard with a dash of metal. Oral supplements didn’t help, as they resembled the taste of sweetened cardboard – strawberry flavored, to be exact. I remembered learning that one of the leading causes of death during cancer treatment is malnutrition. As I saw my weight drop rapidly, I decided I needed to start eating anything to keep my body going. I thought of the most flavorful comfort foods, and for some reason opted for McDonalds. As I sat in the hospital bed dipping my first piece of chicken selects into BBQ sauce, I began to feel guilty. Conveniently, my dietitian walked by my room, saw that I was finally eating, and gave me a huge grin. She walked away, not commenting on my lunch choice.

For the next 4-chemo sessions, I followed a similar pattern of non-intentionally starving myself, and then eating foods I normally would not have touched pre-cancer life. I slurped down ramen noodles and consumed cans of processed, sodium-filled soup. The more flavor, the better. As a result, my weight steadily increased back to almost normal and I had the strength to resume more chemo.

I’m not saying that every cancer patient will have the urge to eat processed fast food. I bow down to any patient who can physically and mentally devour leafy vegetables and whole grains during treatment. But for me, McDonald’s actually saved my life.

So what did I learn?

I have never been against specific diets such as vegetarianism or veganism. I strongly believe that people are entitled to their own beliefs, as long as they aren’t doing anything blatantly questionable, such as eating nothing but cabbage soup and bananas in hopes of losing 10 pounds in a week.

As someone who has studied nutrition for 5 years, I often hear and see people trying to follow “the perfect diet”. Obsessing over what types of food to eat is ingrained in our culture. Whether it may be trying to shed a few pounds or trying to avoid diseases such as diabetes and cancer, our society tends to jump on the newest “super food” and goes absolutely crazy over it. What’s worse is when people judge others for not believing in the same diet or health benefits of foods as they do.

The lesson is: there is no perfect diet. Unlike the biochemical processes that function essentially the same in every average human body to keep us alive, humans also possess unique mental, social and even environmental needs – all of which also help keep us alive. You cannot go wrong with a diet filled with vegetables and fruits, but if you sometimes crave a chicken nugget or two, don’t beat yourself up over it.

My Useless Lung

toritakesabite — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 11:47:23 +0000

You probably know by now of my current situation, because yes, I am that obnoxious person who posts personal things on Facebook statuses, the majority of them being related to my health. For those who don’t know, I’ve been in the hospital for a week now. I was admitted because I had a massive blood clot in my right lung. I had almost no symptoms, minus some chest and back pain on my ride side, which I dismissed earlier because I thought I had strained a muscle lifting weights like a bro.

They kept me in the hospital on high-dose blood thinners, which would prevent the clot from becoming worse. My doctors and surgeons went back and forth debating surgery for a while, because removing the clot surgically would involve placing me on a heart/lung bypass machine, a procedure they would rather not perform on a 23 yr.-old if unneeded. Unfortunately, my clot didn’t dissolve at all, and everyone agreed surgery would be the best option after all. Since I have a history of sarcoma, the clot may be a tumor clot as opposed to a blood clot, in which case they would remove my entire right lung to make sure the cancer can’t spread. The good news is that they had scans of my other major organs and all of them are clear. The better news is that people can function perfectly well with one lung. Thank you, evolution.

Now that I got the physical summary out of the way, many of you have been asking how I’ve been doing emotionally. I couldn’t write in the beginning of my hospital stay because I was too frustrated and no one really wants to read angry rants. Lucky for me, I’ve become pretty talented at accepting less-than-desirable news when it comes to my personal health. So after a week of having a LOT of time for myself to think and stress-eat on salty foods that are restricted on the cardiac floor (thank you friends who fuel my poor eating habits by bringing me snacks all day), there is only one word to describe how I feel at this moment: alright.

Healthy or not, everyone always wonders about the “unknown”. What is it like having to get a limb amputated? What is it like losing the sense of sight, the sense of hearing, or god forbid, the sense of taste? (Bad joke?) What is it like having to live with a history of cancer, and knowing it can be back at any moment? It’s like living in a bad neighborhood and having the risk of getting your wallet stolen every day while walking home. Just because the risk is there, you can’t lock yourself in your house and never come out, just because you have a love affair with your Michael Kors. You continue on with your life, and do as much as you can to prevent the risk from happening. And once the risk does happen, take it as a sigh of relief. There’s not much to be scared about anymore, because the “unknown” is finally known. To me, living in the situation is always more comforting than being scared of the situation happening.

My best friend comforted me and said I was functioning fine even without knowing the lung wasn’t working. In her words, “your lung is like a useless boyfriend that isn’t really there.”

So I feel alright. Not too scared, not too angry, not anything. Just alright. Although I must admit I’m a bit confused; cancer cells can do so much damage yet have the shittiest survival mechanism ever. It tries to kill the only thing that’s keeping it alive. Idiots.

If anyone felt saddened by this post, I genuinely apologize, because you know the last thing I would want is to make people unhappy. So I’ll end this post by including some pics of friends and family who were good sports about getting Hello Kitty tattoos upon their visit. (These don’t include the nurses who I made get inked too.)

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Parking Tickets & Macklemore

toritakesabite — Sat, 04 May 2013 20:31:28 +0000

I received a parking ticket yesterday. I wasn’t even aware of it until I turned on my windshield wipers and saw a piece of paper clinging onto its dear little life as the wipers thrashed against its poor heartless soul. I was hopeful that it was just an annoying advertisement as I pulled over and grabbed it before it could fly away. I looked at it and did the weird one-eyebrow-up expression, as I saw the angry words “PARKING VIOLATION” crying tears of black ink from my wiper fluid. I tossed it aside, shrugged, and continued my merry way to the store while singing a very not-in-tune version of Macklemore’s Can’t Hold Us.

One of the most cliched questions to ask a cancer survivor is, “how did cancer change your life?” It’s also my favorite question because I have different answers depending on how much I like the person. If I don’t like you, I would say something along the lines of, “I get a lot more wedgies when I wear shorts now because of the uneven sizes of my thighs. Surgery is a bitch.” But if I happen to like you (which I probably do, because I’m just so full of love), I’ll give a more meaningful answer:

Carefree would be the perfect adjective to describe me post-cancer. Not to say that I have completely disregarded the bigger factors of my life – my career, family, friends, what to eat for dessert, etc. However, I actually find myself enjoying the smaller problems – such as getting parking tickets -which I would’ve stressed about pre-cancer. One year ago today was the completion of my second chemo treatment. Aside from the physical stressors, I also worried about scans, tumors, surgeries and the burdens that my parents were facing daily. Life felt like holding on to a gigantic broken umbrella that was trying to protect me, but was actually letting more rain in than it kept out.

Even before treatments ended, I decided to let go of that umbrella, and thus letting go of trying to control every aspect of my life, even the things I evidently could not change. I gave myself the responsibility to do one thing: breathe. With each breath I took, I reminded myself it was another chance to do something, anything, with my life. And I did. Ever since my health improved, I’ve discovered multiple new projects to work on while continuing ones I’ve always loved. I’ve resumed cycling, adding an extra mile each time as a reminder that there could always be one day where I won’t get a chance to do it again.

What else has changed since my diagnosis? I sing louder and dance more – usually while driving, which is probably a bad idea because I find myself putting both my hands up…like the ceiling can’t hold me.

It All Started With A Fat Leg

toritakesabite — Sat, 26 May 2012 22:39:09 +0000

So much can happen in such a short amount of time. These past months flew by, yet I feel like I need time to go even faster. As many of you know, I was diagnosed with cancer at the end of March, and I’ve been battling it since. The outpouring amount of support, love and kindness I am receiving is tremendous. Cancer is a funny thing. It’s meant to destroy your body and potentially your life. For me, it took away my comfort, my hair, my immune system, and my final months of enjoying a normal undergrad life in college. But throughout the last few months, I feel like I gained so much more. Everyone associates the word “cancer” as such a terrible thing…and trust me, it is. However, you can always find beauty in any crappy situation that life throws at you. So before I share what beauty I found in being ill, here’s a quick story of what happened to me:

It All Started With A Fat Leg

I’m a runner. At least, that’s what I pretend to be. My endurance actually sucks and I don’t run very fast. In Feb., I started a new regimen at the gym and began running really fast intervals. Around mid-Feb., I noticed my left leg starting to hurt, specifically in my thigh. I ignored it and passed it off as my body being sore from running intervals. Bad idea. On Feb. 27th, I noticed my whole entire leg started to swell up. Actual quote from one of my best friends Eddie: “Holy shit. Your leg is fat.” Which was when I decided to go to the emergency room. The nurses sent me to get an ultrasound, and it turned out that I had an extensive blood clot running up my entire thigh. I was immediately checked into the hospital and put on blood thinners to make sure the clot didn’t travel to my lungs or brain.

Hospital food sucks – but the ICU can actually be quite nice
On the second day of my hospital stay, my doctors agreed that it would be a good idea to try to remove as much of my blood clot as possible through a simple technique that involved inserting some blood de-clottification meds (technical term I made up myself) into the back of my thigh. They also inserted a filter into my inferior vena cava to make sure any clots that dislodged from my leg wouldn’t move to other vital organs. After these procedures, I was placed in the ICU because the drugs they used on me can cause really yuck side effects, like bleeding in the brain. I actually liked being in the ICU, because the nurses pay so much more attention to you..and you get a private room! The sucky part was that I was placed on a fluids only diet for 2 days. But things can get worse. And it did.

The birth of Timmy the Tumor
On the 4th day of being in the hospital, my doctor decided to do another ultrasound of my leg to see how much of my clot dissolved. The ultrasound technician spent an hour pressing that stupid device that they use on pregnant ladies into my thigh, because she noticed something was blocking the blood flow in my leg. They sent me for an MRI and lo and behold – they found a tumor compressing on my veins. So what do I do after I was done crying? I name the damn thing. Thus, the birth of Timmy the Tumor.

Back home
“There is a 95% chance that this tumor is benign. But as your surgeon, I can’t tell you 100% until we get the actual biopsy results.” Dr. Rapp’s words were really reassuring to my whole family and I. Unfortunately, two weeks later, I found myself sitting in his office again, my whole mind and body numb as he explained that my tumor is in fact, quite the opposite of benign. I was diagnosed with a very rare form of a malignant High-grade Synovial Sarcoma that was growing in my upper thigh. High-grade means it has the potential to grow and spread much faster than a low-grade tumor. How did I get so lucky?

Lucky to have my leg..for now.
Dr. Rapp immediately helped me get an appointment with Dr. Rosen – an Oncologist that has been specializing in Sarcomas since the 70s. Upon meeting him, I immediately liked him, mainly because he was wearing a bow-tie. His brilliance clashed with his communication skills, but I wouldn’t have his bluntness any other way. I definitely didn’t want him to hold back how serious (or not) my cancer was. He started our conversation by saying: “You are very lucky. If this was 30 years ago, we would’ve chopped your leg off, and you probably would’ve died anyway.” He said that amputation of my leg is still possible, but not very likely. I try to keep that thought at the back of my mind though. (Maybe I can run faster with a prosthetic leg! Now isn’t that a thought…)

Treatment Begins
I was mentally prepared for my first round of chemo. Physically, not so much. My first round would consist of 192 consecutive hours of the toxin being injected into my body. I was sent home with a 24-hr. spiffy chemo bag..which really just looked like a fanny pack. Since Dr. Rosen had said that I probably wouldn’t feel the effects until the 5th day into treatment, I made the mistake of agreeing to a cousins-night-out on the 3rd day of treatment. I had to cancel the dinner plans when I found myself puking almost every hour starting on the 2nd day of treatment. However, my cousins came over my house anyway. How did they spend the night? By keeping me company and sitting around my bed as I got sick over and over again. Towards the end of the night, I kept repeating that I couldn’t do this…and I wanted it all to be over. My cousin Jenn held my hand as my brother Vin gave me a hug and a smile and simply said: “Nope. You can’t give up. You can do this.” To the best of my ability, I smiled back, then puked again. Family: it’s a beautiful thing.

Where I am currently
Almost 3 months later, I have gone through a total of 3 chemo treatments, 2 blood transfusions, a platelet transfusion, 19 radiation treatments (with only 6 more to go!) and a LOT of time being confined in my house because my white blood cell counts were dangerously low. During my chemo weeks, I literally sleep and puke my days away, so time fortunately goes by quick. The days following chemo, however, can really kick my butt. Nausea doesn’t go away immediately after they take you off chemo. For me, it takes a good week for my nausea, heartburn, headaches and fatigue to start wearing off. The good news is that my tumor is definitely shrinking and Dr. Rosen is really happy with my progress. Surgery will be sometime in July, so I will have another chemo session before that. I’m just waiting for my platelet and white blood cell counts to go back up again before they can restart the drugs. I’m crossing my fingers that a leg amputation is still not needed, and hopefully they can just take out the tumor.

Seeing the beauty in cancer…and the beauty in people
I will never, ever feel lucky that I got cancer. However, I find myself realizing that I have been learning so much about myself and about others throughout my battle. For one thing, I discovered that I actually have a nice shaped head! Would I ever shave all my hair off again? No. But at least I know I don’t look terrible as a baldy. Ok, seriously though: I discovered the beauty of kindness. Since my diagnosis, I have received cards and letters from people who I’ve never even met before. Friends come out of their way to visit me at home. (Brian & Kristina – I’ll find a way to make it up to you both for missing your visit!!). Eddie & my other best friend Marissa even started a relay for life team for me back in Syracuse. I reconnected with my high school best friends and they’ve given me the best laughs whenever I felt down. Jen – you’re still crazy as ever and you have no idea how much your sense of humor and friendship means to me. As for my family – I couldn’t ask for a better one. My parents have been taking such great care of me, and Vin has been checking in on me daily from California. My cousins turned into my siblings, and my aunts & uncles treat me as if I were their own daughter.

Cancer can beat me up as much as it wants to…but because of all the support and love I’ve been receiving, I actually find it hard not to smile some days. So thank you everyone. I can’t find a better way to repay you guys except for beating this cancer back to remission.

Team Tor