live for today

live in the moment. i am trying. but along with the actual pouring rain and darkness today, i've got a metaphorical cloud over my head.

i've just met my second friend in the past few days who had her cancer "cured" - through chemo and/or radiation and surgery - and had it come back a year or two later, and then come back again.

it doesn't help that this is around the same time last year that i was admitted to hospital and was well into my chemo treatments - so every subway ride reminds me of my weekly trips up to memorial sloan kettering. the holiday season from halloween to christmas is when i lost control of my life.

as someone who used to see myself as totally in-control, self-possessed and capable, i was so incredibly helpless that i couldn't even walk to the kitchen and make myself toast. just thinking about it fills me with nausea and exhaustion. i can almost feel the burning in my veins as the chemo drugs surged through me. and the panic, the panic.

i was saying something to sasha about thanksgiving last year. i was cross because i had ordered a deep-fried roasted garlic turkey from jiveturkey.com and i hadn't been able to taste it because i was sick and vegetarian at that point.

and sasha said, "i don't remember anything at all about last thanksgiving."

i think my kids blocked out the whole winter.

this year, i just kept thinking how grateful i was to not be living that any more. i am so relieved to have come out the other side.
i'm also so grateful for all my friends, especially zia and my brother, who did research into alternative therapies and diets when i was too sick and weak and paralyzed with fear to search the internet.

one of the reasons i was able to recover so quickly and so completely, was all the juicing, vitamins, fresh vegetables; the poly-mva, the zhikr and meditation. the supplements mary schook and sheikha fariha and mona chopra recommended. i had a great support system of people who didn't trust the medical establishment.

and i was lucky to have my parents come and hold down the cramped and miniscule fort for the amazons.

for all the adolescent struggles - myself and my parents, me and the amazons - we are almost back to normal.

now just praying to stay that way. breathing and remembering that fear never helps.

as the sufi poet hafiz says:

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living
In better conditions.

day 17 - you looked fantastic!

 left side

 rightside

head-on

so i got that text message from my friend tony today. i'd dragged the amazons to see him in macbeth and we were all a bit tired still from the eid festivities and my mum and dad visiting the previous few days. so i zipped myself into my standby herve leger skirt that is so stretchy, it fits immediately post-chemo and now that i am 12 pounds heavier, too.

i texted back, "not fishing for compliments but what looks fantastic?"

he texted, "hair looked nice, well-dressed, nice make-up and earrings."

since the extent of my make-up is kajal (which i put on once every few days) and blush (which i put on after the pool in the morning) and the only thing i was wearing which he hadn't seen before were my grandmother's earrings, my reaction to his enthusiastic compliment (and he doesn't give lots of compliments either) was:

"wow!"

so the cream is working.

i walked in on mary schook who is madly preparing the shop to be the msapothecary winter wonderland holiday destination and she said, "oh my gosh, your cheeks are higher!"

the current consensus: the beaucell cream has - in 16 days - taken about five years off my face.

again, it costs $2,000 and is only available in korea, japan and, possibly, at mary schook's shop (if it keeps working).

in case you couldn't remember what my face looked like in april (2 months after the end of chemotherapy) - here's my college trip with sasha and aaron up to syracuse university. sasha filmed me sitting on the shore of the river.

what's tragic is that i thought i looked GOOD. phew. i must have looked really really bad during chemo. i remember reading some kind of statistic when i was working on anti-ageing skincare for loreal. about 75% of women don't realize how much they are ageing and how much their faces have changed.

i do know that i don't look in the mirror often - and when i do, i am so surprised at how different i look that how i feel (like 10 times bigger, taller) that i rarely get past that to notice the details - like the little wrinkles around my eyes or my sagging jowly chin - until i see a photograph or a video.

those have to be pointed out to me by my daughters.

also, i am so thin and pale in the video that i am amazed i thought i could jump in the car and drive 6 hours back and forth to show sasha colleges. no wonder people were alarmed!

anyway, if you have $2,000 to spend on face cream - i should add that this is an ENTIRE kit: day cream, toner, eye cream, night cream, face masks, so you needn't have anything else and the texture and scent (very very mild) is really nice - this DOES seem to make a difference.

testing, testing

i have been given the quite wonderful job of guinea pig for my friend mary schook (beauty engineer extraordinaire) http://www.maryschook.com/

she literally knows EVERYTHING about beauty and aging (follow her on twitter @beauty212 ).

i am testing one of the most expensive anti-aging creams in the world by a korean company called beaucell.

it costs $2,000.00 for a one-month supply and comes in this very sleek, futuristic packaging, lying on a bed of silvery satin.

its claim to fame - medical-grade human stem cells.

the complicated process involves a serum that must be refrigerated upon opening and applied to the skin once a night using a small battery-operated electrical device that helps it penetrate the skin better. then there's a gel, then a mask (pictured above), then a night cream and an eye cream!

during the day, there's a toner, another gel and an essence.

the question is - 1. can a topical product really make a difference? (i have never had botox, collagen, silicone or any other injectable nor any anti-aging cosmetic surgical procedures) 2. for an advertising person like myself - in this economy, will people buy it?

in my mind, the first problem is that there are no real instructions. there's a very beautiful silver but totally vague brochure. everything on the package is in korean except for a stick-on label that says, in english, made in korea. (um, yes).

i like instruction sheets myself. especially if they are well-written and give you a bit of story. it makes you feel looked after, and as if you are using something important, that someone has put a lot of thought into. i like the conversation with the company who's produced the product.

without a good instruction sheet, especially with all these silver packages, i feel like i am in limbo. i have to keep emailing mary with questions. this is not good for a $2,000.00 at home treatment.

rara is laughing at the mask as she watches tv.

for now, my face feels super-moisturized but that's it. (mary says i look brighter, but that might be the glare of the light in the grease. the night cream is very rich.)

supposedly, this should work no matter what the chemo has done to my skin. once a week, i'll go to mary's for a picture that shows the thickening of the collagen and the reduction (i hope) of the sun damage (the chemo drugs made my skin overly sensitive to the sun this summer).

i'll put up a picture every day...

this is me, this afternoon. mary tested it last night.

enormous changes at the last minute

thanks to mary schook's previous work and ruba abu-nimah giving me a load of creme de la mer, the texture of skin doesn't look nearly that bad.

on the other hand, my skin has taken a sort of orangey-yellow cast and my eyes are totally sunken in and tired-looking almost all the time.

my eyelashes and most of my left eyebrow have fallen out or are falling out. losing them was making me sad but i'm getting over it.

here are a few of my immediate pieces of beauty advice to anyone with cancer or undergoing chemotherapy.

as an aside, unlike most of the cancer advice people give you, in this case, it doesn't matter what kind of cancer you have. it will work.

(most of time, when they say, eat reishi mushrooms at 6am or something like that, what they don't realize is that different therapies work for different cancers and different body types and immune systems. the most irritating thing about healing in general is that our bodies all different and react differently so who knows what will work?)

but this advice is really one size fits all.

ONE

drink a ton of water.

if they tell you to drink 2 to 3 liters of water daily, believe it.

do it.

basically, the chemo is cooking you from the inside. every part of your body is dehydrated and desperate for the same molecules of water. they need them to flush out the chemicals and to revive themselves.

drink

(the

water)


TWO

moisturize like crazy.

if you are a weirdo like me, you will notice immediately that the skin on your body has changed to that dry, papery skin of a very old person.

this is because you are dehydrated.

keep drinking the water and slather on moisturizer as much as you can.

previously, i was never a fan of creme de la mer because it was too much like crisco for me. thick and greasy. and it smells like nivea.

but post-chemo, i put it all over my face and also my scalp and my skin seems to drink it in. i LOVE it.

THREE

give up sugar.

especially white sugar.

it really is bad for you.

there is stuff that is still open for discussion, like grass-fed beef, like cheeses and yogurts, organic vs non.

but sugar causes inflammation. lots of people say cancer feeds on it and it makes tumors grow. i don't have the statistics on that.

what does seem clear is that sugar is hard on all your organs especially your liver and kidneys. those are the ones processing the fall-out from the chemo and fighting all the other toxins in your body.

you are reading a jelly-bean-addicted psycho here. i LOVE LOVE LOVE white sugar. i adore candy in almost every form. i am not a natural broccoli-eater. i can make myself eat cabbage and pretend i love it but i'd really prefer chocolate mousse.

so even if it's just out of vanity - knowing that sugar breaks down the collagen in your skin, so you will definitely age faster if you are eating it - give it up.

i am not going to argue with anyone about fruit or carrots or beets or maple syrup (unless it's to excess) but even agave nectar and high-fructose corn syrup are evil.

do not eat them if you are doing chemo.

or cut back as much as you can.

your face will thank you.