I made a heckin’ good lasagna this past weekend. I’m not a professional cook by any stretch of the matter, but it was just so darn good and fulfilling to my spirit. It made me want to share it with all of you, so now me sharing recipes here on the blog is something I’m going to do.
There’s not too many dishes that I can make without a recipe (just the way my brain seems to work with food), but this is one of them. My mom taught me to make this so it brings all those good memories back to me too. I’m sure the Italians I know will cringe at its Andrea-ness. But I swear its delicious!
As written from my memory.
Mom’s Lasagna
Olive oil
1lb ground turkey or chicken
1 onion, diced
3 carrots, shredded
2 celery ribs, diced
Fresh garlic, diced
Can of diced tomatoes, don’t drain!
Jar of marinara sauce
Italian seasoning
Cinnamon
Salt and Pepper
Box of oven-ready lasagna noodles
Mozza cheese or your favourite Italian blend
What to do
Warm up a big pot. Add the olive oil, and then the ground turkey.
Brown turkey.
Add onion, carrots, and celery and cook until translucent.
Add the garlic and let brown.
Dump in the full can of diced tomatoes (including the juice!) and the jar of sauce. Mix mix mix!
Add the Italian seasoning and the cinnamon to taste (approx a tbs each). Add salt and pepper.
Bring to boil.
Pre-heat your oven per lasagna noodle box temp.
Get your roasting pan ready. Scoop 1/3 of meat sauce into the bottom of the pan.
Layer on noodles. Scoop 1/3 more sauce.
Add another noodle layer and the last of the sauce.
Put on alllll the cheese.
Cover the roaster with tin foil. Mind the foil doesn’t touch your cheese or you’ll lose it.
Bake per directions on noodle box.
Last 15 mins or so, remove tin foil so your cheese will brown.
When I was told I need to get full brain radiation treatment my world stopped. It sounded like the absolute worst type of therapy I could receive. Don’t get me wrong, it is absolutely intense in the way we need it to be in order to get this shit (cancer) under control. Our goal is to destroy what we can and shrink what we can’t, so that we can manage it for as long as possible. There was just too many tumours in my head for us to do a targeted radiation or even surgery. And sure, those are scary too in their own ways, but this meant radiating my whole brain—even the good stuff.
The radiation oncologist didn’t offer up the alternatives, though I had been googling. And she had to read off all the possible side effects of them radiating my whole brain.
Needless to say I couldn’t breathe. Nobody prepares you for that.
In an attempt to prepare myself, I tried to find stories of people who had been there and through it. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s suprisingly difficult to find real life stories of people who have been there and living it. I did manage to find some wonderful ones through MBCBrainMets.org, which were super helpful in putting my mind to the actual living through this and seeing the other side. But that fear of the unknown and all the side effects listed made me afraid to my core.
So, I thought I would share here what my experience was like. Hopefully it will help someone else feel not so alone in this journey.
The Fitting
Once we had my treatment plan, things moved fast. First up was fitting me for my hockey mask. Full brain radiation therapy requires you to be held in place so that when they zap you, they are getting the exact areas they want and avoiding as much of the good brain stuff they can. They still zap your full skull, but they can direct things still to try to reduce the impact on the parts they don’t need.
The appointment was in the mask department down in radiation. A team of two therapists welcomed me. They were incredibly kind, as I explained my high anxiety and fear about this. They let Blair stay in the room with us for the majority of it. I’m not normally a claustrophobic person, but my anxiety and fear of the unknown was in overdrive.
You lay down on a bed of a CT scanner. They put a little beanbag like thing behind your head to settle in. Then they place a warm plastic mask over your face. It has lots of holes in it so breathing is no problem, and they make sure its cool enough so it feels more like a warm towel on your face. The therapists have to work quickly to mould the mask to your face before it cools off too much. They make it form fitting so that it will hold you tight in place, and latch it down to be sure its tight.
Once that’s done, they take CT scans to make sure they can reference them later during treatments. Just so they know you are for sure in the right spot. They both (and Blair) had to leave during that part.
I asked if I could cut my hair, and they said no because it would change the fit of my mask. So that I left until after my last treatment.
And that was it! They unlatched me and said they’d modify the mask so it had eyeholes. Then sent us on the way.
Treatment
For something so big, treatment actually feels small.
Ringing the bell at my last treatment.
You go to your appointment. The radiation techs welcome you, you lay on the bed of a CT scanner. They put your headrest and mask on and latch it up tight. It did have eyeholes, but I mostly kept my eyes closed (both to help my anxiety but also I can’t see anything anyway). They will talk to you through the mics if you just need a reassuring voice to tell you what’s going on.
First they do some CT scans to make sure you are absolutely in place. They can adjust the bed using tech, so you feel some adjustments as they get you in place.
Then they run the radiation. It was like a blue light shining in different places. It also smelled like chlorine in my nose. The machine made a small vibrating sound as it worked its magic. For me they zapped from two different positions.
And that was it. The process took 10-15 minutes, for five days. Like I said, it felt so small for something that is going to do so much. So much so that I was having doubts about if the treatment was even doing anything (we actually had to ask the radiation oncologist because I just wasn’t really having side effects). She assured me that this was totally normal.
You’d better believe at the end I rang that fucking bell.
Side Effects
Rashy forehead side effects.
But, speaking of side effects, there are some. They tell you they will get worse about 2-4 weeks after treatment because the radiation is still doing its work in your head. So even though you might not get side effects right away, they can come and find you later.
As I’m posting this I’m only one week out from my last radiation treatment, so I might not have been visited by all the side effects yet. But here’s what I’ve gotten so far.
Fatigue. My energy during treatment hits me low sometimes. And I can definitely feel it regularly that I don’t quite have the energy before. I am sometimes huffing and puffing from trying to do normal things. Overall it has been manageable so far.
Loss of balance. This catches me off guard. I think I’m totally fine, but then I’ll find my body pulling to the right as if the world is just doing its thing and not me. Especially if I’m bending over. I wiped myself flat on my face in a moment of running to get my phone.
Insomnia. I’m on a sleeping pill for my anxious squirrel brain, but I wake up in the wee hours of the morning and can’t go back to sleep. Not every morning, fortunately.
Forehead rash. I look like I’m 13 again, as my forehead has gone all rashy and acne filled. It itches, but alas.
That’s it so far! I buzzed my hair anticipating that it will fall out this week. I’ll report here on my symptoms should they arise in the next couple weeks. After that they should start to get better, with me being back to ‘normal’ by the end if summer.
I thought choosing some of my old writing to share would be an easy task: pick something old and post it! Do it lady! Alas no. My pesky brain is enjoying reading the old pieces, and wants to maybe write some more of stuff?
I’m still going to make my brain post the things instead of being precious about it. But it’s nice to be given that motivational kick to keep going!
For this first fiction share, it’s the very first RPG post for a Star Trek RPG character named Trinalla. She was the right amount of silly, never took herself seriously, but smart as a whip.
“Abraham de Lacy, Gieuseppe Casey, Thomas O’Malley……”
Strains of a jaunty tune could be heard coming from the research facility. It was a lone female voice, quite loud and mostly on key but it wasn’t intentionally trying to be. There wasn’t any background music the voice was singing along to, no other singers. Just the one voice singing without self consciousness.
“O’Malley the Alley Cat…. I’ve got that wanderlust, gotta walk that scene….”
Trinalla was pacing her corner of the research facility, PADD in hand, trying to unfurl the newest bug in her pet project. There had been a few deficiencies reported in Utopia Planitia’s latest upgrades to their standard warp drive. Sure, it wasn’t the end of the universe if things weren’t performing quite at the levels that Trinalla had set out in her findings document. But sweet, beautiful Great Bird, if it didn’t get under her skin that it was off by two percentage points.
“Gotta kick up highway dust… feel the grass! That’s! Green!”
Scratching her head, Trin turned and started pacing in the opposite direction. She’d walked this route many times since she’d taken a billet here on Utopia Planitia. Just the latest in her career, she’d been attracted to the posting by the prospects of a more efficient warp drive. The project was mostly starting to wrap up.
“Gotta strut them city streets…Showin’ off my éclat, yeahhhhh.”
Trinalla found the pacing helped to keep parts of her brain occupied that could sometimes get off track, so that she could really focus on the meat of the problem with these deficiencies.
“Tellin’ my friends of the social elite….Or some cute cat I happen to meet that I’m….”
The singing. Well, the singing was because she liked it.
“That I’m Abraham de Lacey, Gieuseppe Casey….
Exiting the lab, Trinalla restarted the route that took her towards her quarters. Sometimes just pacing the little lab wasn’t enough to really keep her busy. Sometimes her thinking walks took her all over the station. It mostly amused folks, and typically resulted in a solution.
“Thomas O’Malley…”
Ah ha! There you are you little…. She made a notation on her PADD, finding where there was a slight variance in her calculations. A copying error perhaps? Whatever it was, Trin felt validation as she was certain this was the cause of the problems.
“O’Malley! The alley! Ca-” Before she could finish the lyric, Trinalla rounded the corner and collided with a person. The collision threw her off balance, sending her sprawling to the deck in a heap of Kriosian in engineering gold. Her PADD went skittering off several meters away.
Pushing her warm brown hair from her violet coloured eyes, Trinalla looked up. “Oh, hello. Who put a person here?”
One of the most diffcult things I’ve found in living with stage 4 cancer, is the lack of stories of each other.
Don’t get me wrong. I know how this story ends: I know the timeline, I know the side effects, I know things are going to suck. I’ve done plenty of raging and crying against how unfair it is. There’s a lot of bad stories out there. Because yes this does entirely suck and its entirely unfair. Nevermind that a hard story is sexy and that’s what sells and gets donations. Nobody wants to hear the success story.
But there is so much life in between the diagnosis and the end that we don’t talk about. There’s just no stories of people like me and what it’s like to go through this. We don’t talk about managing symptoms, of the new treatments and the new meds. Of what getting a week of full brain radiation is actually like. The hope and the hardship. The things that become normalized like having to get IV treatment every three weeks. Or the fear every three months brings you.
We don’t just talk about how this is also a normal piece of life.
It could be some other disease I had. Diabetes, MS, a stroke. And they all suck. But life is still happening. Our son is still growing up. Our business still needs to keep moving. The last 12 months were admittedly a bit of a reprieve from this all, lulling me into a soft blanket that I was stable.
And I was, until I wasn’t.
Life didn’t end a year and a half ago. I still got to do so much. See so much. Be so much. And I still can be. We can take adventures, and try new things, and just live our lives around the symptoms and side effects. One day, one moment, at a time.
I’m still here for as long as I can be. Living with cancer. Living.
I’ve just decided to fuck it and try to post here regularly. Share some of the fiction I’ve written instead of hoarding it. Share some of the lessons I’ve learned in TTRPGS, small biz, communications, and community building. Share a slice of life of what it’s actually like to be living with cancer.
Because maybe there is someone else like me going through this huge diagnosis. Knowing the end is coming. But life is also coming. Life is here. And we’re going to live it for every day.
This is not the news I wanted to share today, instead it’s a flaming hot pile of bullshit. But here we are.
Last week I got CT scan results back. Apparently the cancer has metastasized into my brain. It has caused my right hand to go numb, and causes a bit of tension in my neck. Otherwise I feel totally fine and normal.
We were lucky to catch it. Apparently the type of cancer I have doesn’t usually go into the brain, so they didn’t think to check. And because brain fluid can be very difficult for chemo meds to penetrate, the meds I’m on have been working fabulously against the other tumours in my body but not well in my brain.
I go for full brain radiation starting next week. They will figure out if I stay on my current chemo meds or if they will tweak it to something that will do a better job in the brain. It’s all a wait and see situation until after radiation. We just have to get through this next step. The oncologist is confident that I will make it through.
It sucks. So bad. I am devastated by this news. But I’m going to keep fighting as long as I can because I have so many things to fight for including myself. I am HERE and I’m not going to give up on this. I’m scared out of my mind, but I am full of hope and determination. I WILL get through this. I will see Miles’s second birthday, I will see our 10th wedding anniversary, I will reach 40, I will take Miles to Disneyland again. I WILL FIGHT.
Send us all the emotional love, prayers, and healing thoughts you can next week while I go through this treatment. If you need a physical way to help, a homemade meal goes a long way. Please also consider a donation to Andrea’s Adventurers and help us continue to fund cancer research.
I wrote this eulogy for my wonderful Mom, Lorraine, who passed away from stage 4 breast cancer.
I’d been struggling to come up with what to say for today’s celebration for my Mom. Grief avoidance? Probably. How do you take all those memories of one of your favourite people and condense it down into a three minute speech?
Then last weekend Blair, Miles, and I were at the cabin with Dad and I wanted to make cinnamon buns as my contribution to Easter brunch the next day. As I was mixing, measuring, and kneading out the dough, I had this feeling come over me like a cozy blanket being draped around me. I suddenly knew that Mom was there with me, guiding me, and ensuring things turned out right. Making cinnamon buns for Easter brunch is exactly what she would have done for us. I’m an… okay… cook, but sure enough, this batch of cinnamon buns were the best I’ve ever made.
Mom was always ready with a hug and a big smile as ways she told you she loved you, but even more than that, her love shone through in the food she made for friends and family. She loved feeding people. If you ever attended a meal at Mom and Dad’s, this love of feeding people was obvious because there was always just so.. Much… food. And she always made things that she knew you liked.
In high school, our house was the place my friends and I spent most of our time. Mom always made sure there were plenty of snacks for us famished teens, ensuring there was always a batch of fresh made cookies or other tasty treat for us. She liked that it gave her a chance to connect with my friends. She even earned herself the nickname “Mumsy” from my friend Amy. As I grew up and my friends started to bring their kids to our family dinners, she made sure their kids were included too. There was always marshmallows and chocolate on hand at the cabin so the kids could make smores over the bonfire. This earned her the nickname “Cabin Grandma” from Colton, the son of my friends Sarah and Matt.
At Christmastime she was always baking up a storm. A parade of Christmas cookies, brigadoon tarts, fresh fudge, coconut marshmallows, pyrishky, cabbage rolls, cranberry marmalade. The list of her holiday recipes goes on. One Christmas she gifted Dan and I each a bread shaped cutting board with a copy of her famous fruitbread recipe that she’d hand burned onto it. It’s one of the best gifts I’ve ever received.
Mom loved trying new recipes, and surprising people with new favourites. She was always so excited for the themed meals she’d put together for my parent’s famous card night or for the fancy canapes and treats she’d come up with for the Safeway Christmas parties or for her golf ladies. She’d spend hours researching and reading cookbooks. I loved getting to be her sous chef and taste tester, experiencing her enthusiasm in the kitchen. I always got roped into being the waiter at these parties, too, but that was always fun and I got to eat the leftovers.
Mom had this magic power where she could open the fridge or pantry and just know what to make without any planning. Surprise guests? She just happened to have the right ingredients for her sweet and sour spare ribs. You were feeling sad? Here comes your favourite monster cookies. Just needing a last minute weeknight meal? Here’s the most delicious sausage, mashed potatoes, and tomato soup combo coming right up. Under the weather? She’ll cook up a pot of her borscht. It’s a magic power that I wish I’d inherited from her, but I think that power went to my brother instead….
If you asked me what my favourite food is, it has always been Mom’s homemade cottage cheese perogies. She’d put fresh dill in the cottage cheese filling and served them up with a warm sour cream sauce and fried onions. Most folks had heard of the Ukranian kind of perogies with potato and cheddar, but not many have tried the Mennonite style. When Blair and I met, we were both surprised to learn that the other had even heard of cottage cheese perogies, nevermind that it was both of our favourite foods. Mom was delighted to learn that it was Blair’s favourite food, too, and that he knew how to make them. After that she always had Blair make the sauce for the perogies, letting him make the cream gravy that he grew up with so that he would feel welcome and included in our family, too.
As soon as her grandkids were old enough, Mom had a step stool next to the kitchen counter so that Natalie, Claire, and Lauren could help with baking and cooking. At first it was just a chance for the girls to play next to Grandma, pouring the ingredients she’d already measured into the bowl, and sticking their fingers into the dough. But then it became doing the measuring themselves, kneading the bread dough, and rolling the sushi rolls themselves. I’m sad that my son Miles won’t get to experience cooking with Grandma, but I’m grateful that he got to meet her, that she still had the chance to share her love with him by feeding him bottles. I know that he will feel her love as I make for him Mom’s favourite recipes, and that one day he’ll be next to me sticking his fingers in the bread dough and learning about his Grandma.
Food was a way for Mom to show she cared about me and the people she loved. Fondues, family dinners, holiday meals… they always tasted better because Mom put her heart in them.
When you go home today, please cook up one of mom’s recipes or your very favourite food, and raise a fork and toast her. And know that she loved feeding you.
It still almost doesn’t feel real. Here I am, a week and a half after my first chemo treatment and it’s still hard to believe that I have to deal with this shit again.
Last week was probably a lot harder than it needed to be, given that it was Christmas. I really wanted to have a normal Christmas, especially as it was Miles’s first Christmas, but also because I love this holiday and it brings me so much joy. It was still a lovely few days, but extra tiring from all the hubbub. Still got to spend it with family and friends, so it was worth it, but we’ll wait to see if round 2 brings the same about the same level of tiredness.
Because oh man I was definitely tired. And had a lot of brain fuzz those first few days. There was even an instance where the brain fuzz was so bad that I was trying to change a diaper and it was all I could do to focus on how to do it. I got through it, but I ended up breaking down crying because it was so tough for me to concentrate on what the next steps were.
My mouth has been on fire too. It lasted about a week, but now it’s broken out into mouth sores. My stomach felt like acid (though while taking the dexamethasone it was like my body could feel it and yet it was numbed?) and I had acidic/spicy pee and poops. I had a fair bit of back pain, too, to the point that I couldn’t lift the baby which made me extra sad.
Yesterday was the first day that I actually felt mostly human, apart from the mouth sores. Though I’ve had diarrhea yesterday and today. And today I have a headache (though I might not have had enough fluids yesterday).
My heart is still trying to wrap itself around the fact that my time on this planet is now short. I know in my heart that I’m going to fight this the best I can, and that I have accepted that this is what it is, but it’s hard to not sit in those moments. We spent the weekend with our best friends, and the kiddos had kiddo moments. I kept joking that “this is what we have to look forward to” in regards to Miles, but then my brain would add “if I live that long”. I know that as soon as we’re born everybody has a timer–nobody escapes death–but to have it so evident and obvious is so difficult to process. To know that yours is significantly shorter than the average person’s, that you might not get to experience those milestones with your kid weighs heavy. Then I have the added guilt that I want to be present and enjoy each day, but it’s exceptionally hard when you’re feeling like garbage.
I never thought I’d be here the first time. I hoped I wouldn’t be here a second time. But here I am.
Last week we learned that my breast cancer has returned and has metastasized into my lung, liver, and bones. In March I had reached my 5 year survivorship milestone, so to have this news hit so soon after has been a big shock. Blair and I are pretty devastated, after everything we’ve been through these past 6 years since I was initially diagnosed. We’ve been taking the last week to digest and connect with family and close friends.
Today I start back on treatments. I told the oncologist I wanted to get on this right away to give me the best possible chance, so she was ON IT. I’ll be on chemo for the next six months, and then regular preventative treatments for the rest of my life or until it stops being effective (and then they’ll change up the treatments).
This is NOT a death sentence. It sucks bad and is really sad. But Blair and I are trying to treat this more like a chronic condition that I now have to live with. I may live 2 years, 5 years, 10+ years… who knows, but I am NOT dying tomorrow. I am choosing to live everyday to the best I can and I have so much to live for. So I am picking up that battle sword and I will just.. keep… going.
We are going to need all your love, support, and hugs, especially these first six months while the chemo takes it out of me. We have to keep working because Adventure Dice is our only source of income, and I’m not going to be at my best. We will likely be reaching out for childcare, home cooked meals, and Adventure Dice help. Blair needs lots of hugs.
Together, we’ve got this. There is nothing else to it.
Thank you all for your love and support. -Andrea, Blair, and Miles
“I’m… not really good at speeches. So I won’t try to make a good one. But I wanted to tahnk you, all of you.” Her eyes suddenly stung. “This… all this… This was a gift you gave to me. And I…” She grimaced at Cal, and then at Tandri. “I didn’t deserve it. The things I’ve done in my life… I don’t have any right to this kind of good fortune.
“But more than this place, I don’t deserve you. If there was any justice in the world, I’d never have met you, much less have even a scrap of your regard. And for a while… I thought maybe I’d cheated fate to have you near me. That I was bending the rules–forcing some impossible streak of luck–and any moment, you’d find out who I really was, and then you’d be gone.”
She breathed out, slowly.
“But what as stupid thing to think. Unfair to you. Did I think so little of you? Did I think you couldn’t see who I was, really? Was I foolish enough to believe I could make you see something other than what was there?”
She looked down at her hands for a moment.
“So. I might not deserve you. And you might forgive me too much. But I’m damned glad to have you.”
Last night, for the first time in a very long time (six months? A year?) I actually made time to write again. I decided at 10pm that I would spend an hour writing. I haven’t been doing things to fill my bucket lately (baby, business, etc), and especially 2022 was so stressful, so my goal for October is to try to do more things that fulfill me in other ways.
Boy, was it intimidating sitting down at the keyboard again. I could feel my panic rising as I tried to figure out what to write, could feel that wall rise up that always comes up when my writing gets hard.
I tried to work a little on my Wren book, but after a few minutes of scrolling through my outline and my work-in-progress I was floundering. It had been so long since I had touched it, I didn’t even know where to start. Do I jump in with just a random scene and go? Do I go to the beginning and read it again to reminder myself? Those are both good strategies I think, but it just seemed like a lot.
So a stopped, and thought about it. Part of getting back into writing is also getting back into the practice of writing. I told myself that I didn’t have to tackle one of my works in progress. Just writing anything to get my brain back into the routine and the rhythm of the practice would be a big step.
So I found myself some writing prompts, picked one that tickled my brain and went for it.
It was a slog. My anxiety kept wanting me to bail. I fidgeted a lot, and pondered a lot. And made myself stay in my chair until 11 at least trying. One more word, one more sentence at a time.
Forty five minutes later I’d written just over a page. Was it perfect? No. But I felt so good having persevered through it. I showed myself that I can still do it. I just need to make time and go and push through the anxiety.
I’m proud of myself for trying. I’m hoping to set aside a “creative” time for myself. After the baby’s bedtime routine but before my own, reserve that little space of time for filling my creative bucket.
Character Sheet
Hi! I’m Andrea (she/her). Welcome to my little corner of the internet.
Conduit for nonsense and delight. Storyteller, RPGer, board gamer, bibliophile, writer, tea drinker, introvert, hybrid Jeep owner, living with cancer. Pan and Ace. 🖤🤍💜 Boss lady at Adventure Dice and (on leave) Terminal City Tabletop Convention.
Here you’ll find some of my fiction, slice of life stuff, TTRPG and community building insights, and life with stage 4 cancer.
ways to support me
All the writing you find here you’re welcome to read free of charge! I just want to get my words out in the wild. But, if you enjoyed my work and you’d like to buy me a cuppa tea… here’s a few ways you can support me.
-Andrea, Blair, and Miles
