Confronted With The Impossible

Being confronted with the impossible 

makes us ask unexpected questions. 

Emilie Conrad, founder of Continuum Movement

I did not think I'd live long enough to ask some of the questions I'm asking these days. It's been five years and a few months since I was diagnosed with cancer and told that I would most likely die within two years. I'm living outside the realm of probability and therefore, inside the realm of possibility, and within this mysterious domain I am confronted with a deluge of unexpected questions. I am living proof of the unfolding of Emilie Conrad's statement.

Before I launch into philosophically pondering some of these unexpected questions, I need to fill you all in with some current events. I've been somewhere between unwilling and unable to blog, post on Facebook, or talk about myself publicly for quite a while. It is exhausting living life under scrutiny. It's tricky to find the balance between my need for privacy in order to maintain and support my inner state of equilibrium and inquiry, and the desire for a wider web of connection. Before I engage in public disclosure, I have wanted to understand what need I am meeting by sharing with you all. I am feeling the tenderness of exposing my fragile being, and an organic sort of shyness.

I don't mean social or emotional shyness, the feeling of self-consciousness when looked at, although I have to admit to feeling a little of that. My shyness is not personal; it is more like the expression of shyness that we find in the natural world - the way a bird is scared off by staring at it, or the way animals in the wild run and hide if they know you've spotted them.

I value privacy, and yet I feel that there needs to be a balance between privacy and sharing, otherwise those private moments can seem isolating. In writing to you all I get to choose what to share and when to restrain disclosure. I'm not trying to create a public image; I'm searching for the balance of information that helps me feel expressive, connected, and understood, while also respecting my own guardedness of my vulnerability.

In this blog entry, I’ll address the following “external” questions that have come from emails from blog readers since I posted last. Sometime soon I hope to write to you all and dive into some of the internally generated “unexpected questions.” 

My PET scan, which was done in December, shows no new cancer activity. My tumor markers remain low. No one really knows what it means to have cancer that is “metabolically inactive.” It’s just a finding on a test, not a literal description of what’s happening in my body. We know it’s probably not growing or actively spreading. Cancer cells could be circulating in my blood and traveling throughout my body, but we don’t know how to accurately measure this. For now, it all seems to just sit there sleeping. It’s not gone, but it’s also not doing much. Do I tip-toe around in my life trying not to wake the sleeping dragon? Or do I ignore the inert mess inside my bones and plow ahead? I’m always listening for clues and although I can’t say I know the answers, I am alive, and that is literally living proof that I’m on the right track. But as Will Rogers said, “Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.” I try not to sit too much.

My bones that have/had metastases growing within them are remodeling, and it’s not clear how much of this is a good thing or not. My clavicle and ribs are changing shape and the outer rim of bone is thinner with more scar tissue in and around the bone. In some ways, knowing this I feel more fragile. I’m afraid to walk outside alone in this icy winter wonderland for fear of falling and breaking. No one can definitively say if I am exceptionally aware and I’m being appropriately cautious, or if I’m being overprotective of myself. I walk the fine line between heightened awareness and paranoia.

The side effects of the anti-estrogen medication I take daily (and am still encouraged to take for the rest of my life) continue to wreak havoc with all my muscles, tendons, and joints. Almost everything hurts all the time. It’s a full-time job filtering out pain from my daily perceptions without losing other vital information from my body, people around me, tango partners, and my environment. But it’s what I do, because it’s preferable to taking pain medication. How do I cope with chronic pain? These are some of my avenues of relief: I breathe, I rest, I meditate, I have a glass of wine, I practice Continuum, and I tango.

Tango doesn’t actually provide relief (yet, but I’m hopeful), just distraction. When the dance becomes fluid there is tremendous pleasure, but at a cost. It has taken almost a year and a half to begin experiencing these few precious moments of fluidity without pain, effort, and concentration. The strength I have had to develop to be able to dance has been hard-earned. I not only suffer from the soreness of using my body in new ways, but from the compensation I have to engage to dance with my upper body in such disarray. I hurt if I stay home and do nothing, so I’d rather hurt somewhat differently and be dancing.

I have been mysteriously drawn (ok, it’s not so mysterious) to a dance that relies on awareness of my sternum/heart, but my sternum is as thin as an eggshell, filled with the remains of tumor and scar tissue. My heart is heavy as I carry the sadness of the life I have had to give up, the sadness of my mother who died from ovarian cancer at 53, the sadness of the world. My third rib on the right doesn’t attach to my sternum and it grinds and pops with every ocho (a tango step) and torque of the embrace. 

It’s not just my chest and ribs that hurt, my neck and upper back are literally holding on for dear life. I have constant pain and frequent spasms, especially with movement of my arms. Both hands become numb and tingling if I hold anything or anyone too hard for too long. 2 of the 4 places in my pelvis that have "suspicious lesions" ache all the time, especially after walking backwards. I have migratory intermittent flare-ups of my feet, ankles, knees, shoulders, elbows, and wrists. My hips remain the only joints in my body that work fabulously! I have a faint hope that these things might get better with use, since my feet, which were horribly painful 2 years ago have significantly improved.

As some things have somewhat improved, my left hand, in particular, is rapidly getting progressively worse. The joint at the base of my thumb is destroyed, and the one next to it is starting to degenerate also. The trapezium bone and its former ligaments are just a blur on an x-ray. The thumb metacarpal is dislocated, because the joint is gone – there is no location for it to be located anymore. I have 2 large osteophytes (bone spurs) one of which has broken off and is floating in the mess in my palm. I have minimal use of my thumb. I can only grasp with the other 4 fingers.  The good news is that I’m alive and hope to be so long enough that I’m considering a surgery (sometime before September) that will restore the use of my thumb. I would be in a cast for 3 months, which seems simultaneously unimaginable and like it might be a reasonable tradeoff, if I get the use of my thumb back. I’m sitting with a big decision and waiting to be clear about what to do.

Pain reminds me of the preciousness of life and the temporary ability we have to dance. I know that everything I’m learning is ephemeral. I will eventually have to let go when I lose my ability to move in this way. Is this heart-wrenching melodrama? Or is this this being a realistic human? Regardless of how young and strong and healthy you are, unless you die suddenly one day without warning, you will eventually lose the ability to do certain things. I know that my window of opportunity will eventually close. As I get in touch with the imperative of my desire for a last chance to learn this dance, I accept that some day I'll let go of being able to dance. This highlights the preciousness of it.

Life in Vermont continues to be great. I love all the seasons – all 7 of them: winter, sub-zero, mud, spring, summer, fall, and stick (after the leaves fall but before it snows). I love the variety of so many distinct times of year. So much of my life has been in monotonous weather, in Florida and California, that I welcome the variations. I could do without this much sub-zero weather, but I still prefer being too cold to being too hot. We are cultivating a rich circle of friends and innumerable opportunities for art, entertainment and other aspects of culture. We get our "urban hit" by going to Montreal. Steve’s practice is thriving. Life here requires very little time in a car. As a former Californian, I still haven’t experienced what Vermonters call “traffic.” The lake and the mountains easily satisfy whatever gap was left by moving away from the ocean. Although the lake has frozen all the way across to New York, and it’s covered with walkers, skiers, and ice fishermen, I still find it disconcerting to walk even a few feet from the shore. I’m thrilled just to gaze across the frozen expanse towards the Adirondacks on the other side. (Since I wrote the first draft of this entry, I finally cultivated the courage to venture way out into the middle of the frozen lake. It was like walking on the moon. Amazing!)

I am still grieving the loss of our beloved Emilie Conrad to metastatic lung cancer last April just shy of her 80th birthday. Our loss has catapulted the Continuum community into chaos and “creative flux.” In the midst of this painful reorganization of the Continuum community, I remain committed to my own practice, and to teaching at Kripalu this coming July. Here’s a link: http://kripalu.org/program/view/TOSC-151

Please consider coming. I’d love to have you all there. I have created a workshop that feeds me and that I can do once a year, but I could not fathom being able to do more, or to teach on any regular basis. Sorry, but I have no other plans to teach right now. I continue to write, thanks to Dragon voice-activated dictation, but no book is looking like it’s close to finished.

For my Osteopathic colleagues, if you’re wondering where you might see me this year, Steve and I will be attending the annual ASSSG course in Great Barrington, MA this April and the annual Osteopathic Cranial Academy conference in Naples, FL, where I am so looking forward to introducing Hugh Ettlinger as this year’s Sutherland Memorial Lecturer. I’ll also attend the Montreal International Osteopathic Symposium in May. The new highway is finally completed in southern Quebec, which makes the drive to the Osteopathic College only about 1 hr and 45 minutes from home. I can’t imagine being able to travel alone, so it’s great that we can both attend these events this year.

And to answer the last of the questions I’ve received from many of you, “what did we have for Thanksgiving this year?” all I can say is that it involved a trip to Montreal and cheval (everything sounds better in French). I hope this doesn’t upset some of you like the Easter Rabbit and Christmas Reindeer dinners did. We were blessed to have both my step-sons here in Vermont for Thanksgiving and we wanted to have something new and make it memorable. (For a history of our novel Thanksgiving menus, see 11/24/09 and 11/17/10 blog entries.)

What are those unexpected questions I’m asking these days? How do I live with cancer and not take it personally? What's the relationship between tango and Continuum Movement? Can I immerse myself in contradiction until there is no duality? I have no answers to these questions, but I will share my thoughts on these and other questions in the weeks to come.

I'd like to leave you with a poem from Mary Oliver, from her book American Primitive (1983)

To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the times comes to let it go, to let it go.

Kripalu and My Sutherland Memorial Lecture (not necessarily connected…and then again, maybe they are)

My Sutherland Memorial Lecture (which I just gave in Indianapolis last month) is now posted on my website. Click on the link or go to my website if you'd like to read it.

I am also delighted to be offering one 4-day workshop this year. Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in the gorgeous Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts has invited me to teach, "Transformative Osteopathic Self-Care: Integrating Movement and Meditation Into Life."

As some of you know, I have devoted the past 5 years of my life to radically re-imagining the way I care for myself as I engage in a complicated dance with my health, well-being and metastatic breast cancer. I have devoted the past 33 years of my life to caring for others, and now that I have lived to tell the story, I'd like to share my insights with you and help you find your own path of deeply caring for yourself.

I welcome all people who yearn to care for themselves deeply. Whether you are a physician or other healthcare professional looking to care for yourself as well as you care for your patients and clients, or you're looking for ways to pass on what you learn to the people you care for, this workshop has something to offer you. You don't need a background in healthcare to attend; all you need is a body and a desire to explore listening to the necessity of the moment. 

Begins Sunday, Nov 9 at 7 pm  

Ends Thursday, Nov 13 at noon    

Explore the radical possibilities in health and well-being available when you combine the principles of Osteopathic treatment, the practices of Continuum Movement, and mindfulness meditation. I invite you to cultivate awareness of internal experience through breath, sound, meditation, and movement, integrating these practices into daily life.

Restore trust in the wisdom of your body as you allow yourself to fully express fluid movement and rest. Step outside your preconceived notions about your body and discover your inner resources for resilience, adaptability, and change. This workshop offers the tools you need to access this inner healing realm on your own.

This is the only course I will offer this year, so don't pass up this opportunity. I look forward to diving deep, exploring radical self-care, and engaging the movement and stillness of life and health with you. 

Contact Kripalu for more information or to register.

Lecturing, Writing, And Listening

I am off to Indianapolis for the annual Osteopathic Cranial Academy conference where Steve is giving the keynote lecture, and I’m giving the Sutherland Memorial Lecture, as well as leading 2 Tours Of The Minnow (for you non-Osteopaths, that’s a guided experiential anatomy meditation) I’ll be posting a copy of the lecture on my blog within the month for those of you who can’t make it to Indianapolis.

I am looking forward to when I return and have some spaciousness in my life to write again. Shortly before Emilie Conrad died last April we were talking about living with cancer and she said, "Being confronted with the impossible makes us ask unexpected questions." In response to that, I started writing an essay for an anthology of articles by Continuum Teachers. It's entitled “A Continuum Of Uncertainty.” Here’s an excerpt:

 “We all live along a continuum of uncertainty, but usually only realize this in retrospect. We have plans and ideas about what our life is about and where we think we are headed. And it can all change in a moment; a drunk driver can head right at us with nowhere to escape his impact, soldiers can go on a rampage in our village without warning, a flash flood can wash away our home, but for me, it was metastatic breast cancer that suddenly announced the change of trajectory of my life and brought the awareness of uncertainty that had always been there. Unexpected questions arise when faced with the reality of uncertainty.”

I'm learning to listen with grace as I face the unexpected questions, and I look forward to sharing my insights with you when I return from the yearly meeting of my Osteopathic "tribe."

Chasing Meaning Rather Than Avoiding Discomfort

I recently listened to a TED talk by Kelly McGonigal; no, not the Hogwart's teacher, the Stanford-based Psychologist/Neuroscientist. I attended a workshop led by her for people dealing with cancer, shortly after I was diagnosed, back when I lived in California. She's a great story-teller, as well as an inspiring scientist and all-around blend of quirky, intelligent, nerd, compassionate explorer of body awareness and consciousness. In her TED talk, actually after the end of her talk, when the moderator asked her a question she said,

"Chasing meaning is better for your health than avoiding discomfort."

I'm not sure I could have come up with a better one-line summary of my life right now. I've spent the past 4+ years listening to my body and learning to care for myself more deeply and I've learned a lot about living with pain and discomfort. I've spent a lot of time avoiding discomfort and I'm entering a new phase in which (some of) the avoidance is over. I'm moving head-on into using my body in new ways (more on this theme in a future blog entry when I tell you about Tango). It feels deeply meaningful… and it hurts.

Avoidance of discomfort has many subtle gradations. How do we learn to listen to pain and interpret its message? Sometimes rest and immobility are crucial for healing. When you break a bone, it needs to be immobilized in a cast. When my ribs and sternum were about to burst with growing tumors, I needed to lie still and not move on a gross physical level. I learned to "fly under the radar" and move in subtle ways that didn't evoke pain. I learned to breathe with as little movement as possible, and focus on my movement at a cellular level, or on the change of the shape of the microscopic spaces between cells. I trusted that my combined knowledge and imagination would provide a map that would lead me to the territory where I could find what my body needed.

There came a point, when I realized that I had rested enough, perhaps too much. I was weakened from resting. I had to start exploring my gross physical limits and push those limits. I don't mean to imply the push was a brute force action or an abuse of my strong will. Sometimes it's valuable to push and feel the feedback that speaks through the body's response to the pressure of pushing. I had to find a way to call forth a level of exertion from within that was necessary for my recovery. There's a fine line between resting and fading away, and another fine line between doing and over-doing, and pain is an unreliable guide. 

Coming back from such profound disease and de-conditioning involves pain: pain from the weakness of unused muscles, pain from tumors that still might be active, pain from compensatory patterns gone awry, pain from movement of joints and connective tissue distorted by cancer and inflammation, and the emotional pain, which is frequently indistinguishable from what is happening physically. I'm learning to more precisely distinguish when the pain I experience is due to a good thing. It's sometimes painful to use our bodies in new ways. Tissue needs to breakdown and remodel to accommodate a new movement. Building strength involves microscopic trauma to muscle and connective tissue. The remodeling that occurs in response to this stimulation is ultimately good for us in the long-run, but it can be painful in the short-run.

This time in my life is about meeting discomfort and finding stories to help make it tolerable. It is these "explanations" that grant meaning to my suffering today. Tomorrow my story might change; in fact it will definitely change. Nothing in life is stagnant. We can't explain everything, and fooling ourselves into thinking we can only makes it harder when we are faced with how little control we have over some aspects of life. As long as I'm not attached to any one fixed meaning, I derive great satisfaction from creating new narratives to make whatever sense I can of my life. I enjoy chasing the next meaningful story that will help me to creatively cope with whatever unfolds next. 

Here's the link to her TED talk and her website:

http://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend.html

http://kellymcgonigal.com

My book is now available in Italian!

Ciao,

For all you Italian-speaking Osteopaths and Continuum buffs, I have great news, my book, Engaging The Movement Of Life has been published in Italian.

My Osteopathic colleague Giuseppe Caranti has undertaken translating many Osteopathic books into Italian, and I am honored that he chose mine to translate. He came to California to do a 4-day workshop with me in 2010 and we have been in conversation over the fine points of word choice since then. I wish I spoke Italian so that I could fully appreciate his hard work. I urge all of you who speak Italian to support his endeavor to spread the word.

Here's a link to his website, if you'd like to order it:
http://www.centro-osteopatico.org/drupal/node/45

Health & Moving

One sweltering day last August when the portable air conditioner we stuck in the window of our 17-foot-ceilinged apartment was struggling to keep the place below 82, I flippantly said to Steve, "I can't bear the thought of one more summer in this apartment."  My romance with the river had faded. I saw it for what it actually is, a dammed (damned) polluted river with a hydroelectric plant, with a bridge crossing it that allowed cars to shine their lights in our windows and wake us when ambulances passed over on their way to the university medical center. Along with the trendy new restaurants and bars around the corner came loud drunken people walking below our windows at night smoking cigarettes. I loved the spaciousness of the loft and the big view of the waterfalls and the sky, but I was tired of the noise, the relentless artificial light, the F-16s roaring by (you Vermonters know that sad story), and the rest of the urban vibe. I kept trying, but it felt less and less like home.

I think it is a sign of health that I could think of not only getting out of bed each day, but actually  moving again. As often happens when I let the universe clearly know what I want, the wheels start rolling. Within a few days we realized we knew exactly where we wanted to live and decided we needed a condominium, not a house.

To make a long story short, we found the place and moved in the week before Thanksgiving. We found one of the only condos in Burlington that are all on 1 floor, without anyone upstairs or down. It has a 12-foot peaked ceiling, a fireplace, bamboo floors, and a fabulous kitchen. Other parts of it are in need of attention, but that gives us a chance to fix it up the way we want it. Perhaps its greatest attribute is that it doesn't share any walls with another unit. It's like a little cottage. Here's how it looked in September when we first saw it:

We look out from the back into a little patch of woods, and can't see any other units from the porch, bedroom, and living room (which you can't see in this picture because they face the back). We are wedged between 2 parks, around the corner from Lake Champlain, and on the Burlington Bike Path (miles and miles of paths along the Lake and through the city). And last week when it snowed, they came and plowed and shoveled right up to my front door three times in one day!

We moved the week of Thanksgiving and are now seriously settling in. Steve is a master painter and has done an amazing job of transforming our walls and bringing some fabulous color into our home. I'm exhausted and trying to recover from the push that I was miraculously able to pull off. Good news; there's a cure for exhaustion!

When we moved here 2 years ago, I never imagined we'd be moving yet again, and that I'd be well enough to begin imagining a whole new life. I thought I was coming back east to nest in my death bed. Moving to a new place helps me feel like I have a new beginning, and not just the beginning of the end. I can't imagine what will unfold next.

In early December I had another PET scan that looked good. All the places I have bone mets are still filled with lumps, bumps, and holes, but they aren't metabolically active. We can't say that the cancer is gone, but it isn't growing. The only place that continues to light up on the scan is where my third rib meets my sternum. It is so "wonky" that the activity there is probably a chronic irritation due to the abnormal movement caused by the distortion in the joint from where the cancer had previously spread.

I have agonized about how much to report to you all, and I fear that if I continue the internal debate that I will never get this blog entry out to you all. I seem to be getting all my mail forwarded and I've even gotten some packages that some of you have sent to the old address. Make sure you have my new address if you plan on contacting me by mail: 80 Austin Drive #261, Burlington, VT 05401. My phone numbers haven't changed.

I hope you all have a great "whatever you celebrate" and especially enjoy the return of the light. Welcome Home to us all.

Redefining Good Medicine

My drug holiday ended, and like all good vacations I had to accept the realities that come with returning to "regular" life, which in my case meant experiencing the side effects associated with my new cancer drug. I started taking a new aromatase inhibitor, letrozole, also known as Femara about six weeks ago. So far it's not quite as bad as the last two (Aromasin and Arimidex), but I'm back to cycling through intermittent phases of joint and muscle pain, as well as fatigue. I don't want to think of it as "bad" because it's part of the plan that is saving my life. 

The good news is that the new drug's side effects are not as challenging as those of the last drug, and the knowledge that the side effects are from the drug and not from some other degenerative aging or disease process makes it a little easier for me to cope. 

Aside from my own health, it's been a tough week for my friends and loved ones. One friend had a heart attack, 2 friends had life-threatening heart arrhythmias, one died of cancer, another had an old cancer spread. My own aging is challenging enough, but as time goes by I realize how much I experience the losses and grieving of my friends, their spouses, and their families.

It's a good thing that it's so fabulous to be alive. It makes it a little bit easier to navigate the hard parts. I wrote something to a friend this morning and I realized that I need to take my own words as medicine. If I need these words of wisdom, then perhaps sharing them with all of you would be helpful too.

When life becomes challenging and we are afraid, we need to be kind to our trembling souls. I don't think it's a reasonable goal to always be cool, calm, and collected, and feel Stillness. If we can remind ourselves that the Stillness is there, even when we can't feel it, we still benefit from its presence in our life. Isn't that what faith is? I think there's a big difference between feeling fear and taking it literally, versus feeling fear and saying, "there I go again," and not being so hard on ourselves. 

I'm off to have dinner with friends on this magnificent Vermont summer day. I hope you're all moving as gracefully through your lives as possible, given whatever challenges are yours this day, and that you take time and space to be kind to yourself and feel some love and gratitude for something, no matter how small or mundane that makes being alive in this moment worth it. It's good medicine.

My Drug Holiday Is Not What You Might Imagine

I have been on a "Drug Holiday" for the past 3 weeks. If you've never heard this term, you might think I've been intoxicated while on vacation. It sounds like I've been lounging on a pile of cushions on the floor of a dimly lit opium den in some far-away exotic Asian country. Or maybe I've been lying on a beach in Jamaica with the aromatic smoke of ganja being carried away on the ocean breeze. Amsterdam might be a great destination for a holiday of drug use. But, no, I'm home in Vermont and the drug holiday actually refers to the fact that I have just spent 3 weeks not taking my exemestane (Aromasin), the estrogen-blocking drug I've been on for 3 and a half years. 

Blocking the small amounts of estrogen that my adrenal glands and fat cells make seems to be one of the crucial things that have helped my estrogen receptor-covered tumors to shrink. However, the side effects have been debilitating. Since my last PET scan looked so good, we all (3 oncologists and the rest of my team) agreed this was a good time to take a rest from the drug, take a "drug holiday," and see if we could:

1. give my body a rest and a bit of relief.
2. see if I feel better off of it and distinguish which of my symptoms are side effects and which are not.
3. switch to another drug after the 3 weeks that does the same thing with a (hopefully) different side effect profile.

On day 4 the feeling that my joints were going to EXPLODE began to fade. I still feel a fair amount of pain, but without the apprehension of impending explosion. What a relief! What's left is some mix of garden-variety arthritic degeneration symptoms, bone pain from the sites of metastasis, along with the effects of being one year post my last dose of Zometa (zolendronic acid) and having my osteoclasts come back into action. For you non-physicians, this was a drug I took for 2+ years that inhibited the breakdown of bone. The theory is that if you inhibit the cells in the bone that cause it to break down (osteoclasts) and allow remodeling, then a tumor can't spread through the bone. The bone increases density and creates a wall-like effect that won't allow the tumor to break through it. It also leads to bones that get "stale and brittle" because they haven't been remodeling. I have a lot of catching up to do and although it's a good thing, it happens to be somewhat painful.

By the second week of my drug holiday, I found myself in San Diego at the annual meeting of the Osteopathic Cranial Academy feeling miraculously not fatigued. I was tired, but not fatigued. There is a huge difference between those two feeling states. This is the first time in 3 and a half years I've gone 2 weeks without an episode of fatigue. It's amazing to feel a little bit more oomph. But just as all things in life are, this state is transitory.

Now I am facing going back on a drug that may or may not have the same side effects. Tonight I take my first dose of Femara (letrozole). I'll know how I respond within the next few days to two weeks. I am advised to take one of this category of drugs for the rest of my life. The original projection was for the rest of my life to be a year or 2, so that now that I'm going on 4 years and getting better, not worse, the prospect of an unexpectedly long life on this drug is daunting. I keep reminding myself that I'd rather live with joint pain than die of cancer, to keep it in perspective.

Whatever happens when I resume the medication will happen with me knowing the difference between me and the drug. If I can distinguish the sensations that are caused by the drug from the natural sensations of my body, I will attempt to not take them so personally. I know that sounds odd, because I'm still the one feeling the pain,  but if I can attribute the feeling to something external, I hope to be able to cope with some greater ease or grace. This is my hope. We'll soon see if I can actually attain this lofty state of consciousness.

I have a new updated website. It's still at www.BonnieGintis.com, but it looks a bit different. It doesn't have any new content, it's just constructed from different software that's easier for me to make changes on my own if I add anything to it in the future. It's the easiest way to find this blog, if you want an update about my health or hear some philosophical musings about life, love, Osteopathy, Continuum, food, or whatever else moves me. (Check out the other beautiful websites designed by my divine WebMagician Copperwoman at www.Copperwoman.com)

It's great to be home after the grueling trip from San Diego, where Mike Burruano and I were each bestowed Fellowship in the Osteopathic Cranial Academy. It is quite satisfying to be acknowledged for all my years of service and teaching. All you Osteopathic colleagues, please come to Indianapolis next June, where I will be giving the Sutherland Memorial Lecture, as well as leading "Tours of the Minnow" at the ends of Friday's and Saturday's programs.

I'm working on my lecture, and on one of my several half-written books. This one is entitled, "Unexpected Relationships." Encourage me to finish it, because you might be in it!