Everyday Project Management

On the first day we were at the Burzynski Clinic - they did a test on my Mom’s blood to see what type of genetic markers she had (oncogenes).   Their goal with Plan A is to wipe out the tumor cells that make up my Mom’s brain cancer based on her specific genetic markers.

They started her that very same day on Sodium Phenylbutyrate. Sodium phenylbutyrate (Buphenyl) taken orally is metabolized in the liver into a combination of phenylacetylglutamine and phenylacetate, which then enter the bloodstream.  Those two chemicals are the prime ingredients of antineoplaston AS2-1. Sodium phenylbutyrate was given an orphan drug designation by the FDA for use as an adjunct to surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy for treatment of patients with primary or recurrent malignant glioma.  According to Dr. Burzynski, when the body does not have enough antineoplastons, cells that begin to develop abnormally are not corrected, and tumors form and grow. Antineoplaston therapy supplies the body with the substances needed to correct the abnormal development of the cell and allow it to develop normally or to die a natural cell death, while healthy cells are not affected.

The second day she started on a targeted therapy to block specific enzymes and growth factor receptors involved in cancer cell proliferation. The drugs in this group are also called signal transduction inhibitors. She was given Erlotinib (Tarceva®).   It is currently approved to treat metastatic non-small cell lung cancer and pancreatic cancer that cannot be removed by surgery or has metastasized. This small-molecule drug inhibits the tyrosine kinase activity of EGFR.   They use this off label to treat my Mom’s brain cancer.

The third day she started on a targeted therapy to block the growth of blood vessels to tumors (angiogenesis). To grow beyond a certain size, tumors must obtain a blood supply to get the oxygen and nutrients needed for continued growth. Treatments that interfere with angiogenesis may block tumor growth.  She was given Pazopanib (Votrient®).  This is currently approved for the treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma. Pazopanib is a small-molecule inhibitor of several tyrosine kinases, including VEGF receptors, c-kit, and platelet-derived growth factor receptor.

The fourth day they start her on another targeted therapy that also block specific enzymes and growth factor receptors involved in cancer cell proliferation. These drugs are also called signal transduction inhibitors.  She is being given Everolimus (Afinitor®).   This is approved to treat patients with advanced kidney cancer whose disease has progressed after treatment with other therapies, patients with subependymal giant cell astrocytoma who also have tuberous sclerosis and are unable to have surgery, or patients with pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors that cannot be removed by surgery, are locally advanced, or have metastasized. This small-molecule drug binds to a protein called immunophilin FK binding protein-12, forming a complex that in turn binds to and inhibits the mTOR kinase.

And the story continues…….

I rounded the corner into the driveway at the end of my usual 4.5 mile run. The three cars were parked in their prescribed positions. The two cats perched in their ordinary look out spots awaiting my return and their evening meal. But one thing was very different. The gate of the Toyota was open and its contents announced the achievement of an important milestone.

Inside the trunk of the car were well organized and neatly stacked plastic containers filled with the essentials an eighteen year old needed to start a new phase of their life. Clothes, books, personal care items, small fridge and athletic equipment, you know the basics. It was the pair of boldly displayed bright blue Nikes that triggered the flashback and a moment to remember.

It was 1997 and a hot July 4^th morning. Her big brown eyes were adorned with long lashes and always smiling. Two pig tails swept her blonde streaked hair to the top of her head and bopped with each step she took. Sporting shorts to just below her knees and a white imprinted t-shirt almost as long, she ran her first official road race. The race distance was about 100 yards, perfect length for a four year old. She gave it her all and walked away a winner.

It was also the day of my first official road race. Mine was longer though, two miles. I was able to complete the entire distance, mostly walking. Needless to say, I didn’t place in my age group, but I too walked away a winner because in the weeks that preceded this milestone, I had taken action to begin to improve my health and focus on becoming a positive role model for my daughter. It would be the first of many road races for both of us during the next 14 years.

Although I suspected my role modeling of healthy actions and choices would impact both of my girls, it wasn’t until several years later when they began to make their own sports and activity choices, the significance of the role modeling became evident. Healthy snacks preferred to junk food, after school clubs, involvement in sports and community activities chosen over hours of endless TV.

When I jogged around the corner on Tuesday and saw the car in the driveway packed with all her gear ready for the 750 mile road trip that would begin her college adventure, her imminent departure became a reality. But even as the lump in my throat grew and I swallowed hard to fight back the tears, I knew she was well prepared for the journey and ready to face new challenges. 

About the Author: Jill Hart, Project Management Professional (PMP) and owner of Brain Logic, LLC helps companies integrate the voice of the customer into their design products, technology and processes.  When she’s not focused on her business or family, she enjoys running, biking, blogging, teaching and cooking.

energyoremotions

The book Power vs. Force by David Hawkins, published in 1995 is about the energy of emotions.   Hawkins measured the energetic response of various emotional states and plotted them on a logarithmic scale.   The last columns from drive over to the right are columns I created based on my understanding of his work (I welcome debate as this as I am just exploring these ideas but find it a very good behavioral model).   The drive column is in what drives people to experience specific emotional states.   The zero value in the row starting with the term permitting is significant.  Any state of being above that line - for any energy you put to living in the respective state, provides you with a return shown in last column (based on his logarithmic scale for the energy of emotions).  My company Cheetah Learning operates at the drive level - Your Success is My Success.  By living at this level, we get a 10,000 times return on energy invested.   Anyone who knows my lifestyle and the lifestyle that we’ve created for the entire Cheetah team is probably nodding in agreement on this statement.

Blue Moon Rising at Dusk - 3:16 PM Alaska Time.

I am still in Alaska, enjoying the dark, ice skating to town, and risking future mobility everytime I step out the door.    I am happy to report the dog has recovered from DID or could it be that others in the house have adopted my more pleasant view of reality and we are no longer collectively manifesting DID?   As I have had ample time sitting in the dark to contemplate whether the ocean near me is an illusion that we have all agreed is real or really is real, I did observe something rather spectacular -   the full moon rising above the magnificent mountains on two crystal clear nights.   Now two full moons in one month is rare enough to have it’s own name - a blue moon.  What is even more rare, is that there were two cloudless nights in southeast Alaska where I could see the full moon rising over the mountains at sunset.   What is even more amazing, is I was here to observe it and it happened on New Year’s Eve.   In my reality, I am taking this as a sign from the universe that 2010 is going to be one heck of a year.   I am starting the new year by heading to Hawaii for a corporate retreat.   I figure if we’re going to do strategic planning, it may as well be somewhere coool (I mean warm).   But I rented a house near the rainy side of the Island (it was a bargain).   Stay tuned.

The Beautiful View (Sans DID) Through the Warp on the Loom

I just finished reading Busting Loose from the Business Game - the main premise is that everything in our life is a complete and total illusion and that as we realize this over time, we will find an infinite source of abundance for whatever we are choosing to do in the moment. We are simply players in a very big and grand game and it’s our expanded consciousness that has created patterns in the field that we are observing. Simply stop observing the patterns, choose to observe new ones and voila, your life is instantly changed. Easy enough - BTDT numerous times. Even created several t-shirts.

The premise of the book is that which you are experiencing, is only real, because you are choosing to observe it. And I thought my naivete of the world being the way I thought it was, was simply because I am not all that observant. I never realized living and observing reality the way I wanted it to be would come in so handy in this new type of game. Especially with the rule that if the dog poops in the house, and you notice it, you are required to clean it.

I was sitting at my loom and weaving, one of our Christmas guests came over to talk with me and immediately started wretching as there was a large pile of obvious dog intestinal distress (DID) less than ten feet from the loom. How could I not notice this? The offending pile, I swore did not exist until this other being entered into my playing field. As proof - look at my “warped” view from the loom.   No dog poop - just a beautiful view. Now being the nice hostess that I am - since she noticed it, and I was the hostess, NOT the guest, I decided to live in her reality for just a few moments and clean up her observed creation. She did not seem to think it was as amusing as I did that she manifested DID in the atrium and I did not. Shit happens (for others).

Come to think of it, I manifested another DID right behind my seat in a very small sports car on a recent road trip to California with her. Where again, she feigned disgust, and I had to clean. She needs to read the book and start playing a new game too. DID doesn’t exist in my virtual reality game when I’m in it with just the dog. At least not when I’m there to have to clean it.

Quantum Physics and Dog Poop

Slept.   I would put in a picture of me sleeping, but I was sleeping so it was hard to take a picture.   Well to be totally honest, I did not sleep the entire day.   Being up in Alaska during the shortest day of the year, I have a rule - if the sun is up, so am I.   I am also enforcing this rule on my two college children home on their winter break.   Having once been in college myself, I understand the desire to sleep most of the time when you first show up back at home.   Partly so no one considers you available to do chores, but mostly to recover, from well, college.   Since I know the game, we have competitive napping going on here.   But I figure, we can all sleep for the 19 hours of the day the sun is not up.   I’m not sure if the sun is truly even “up” more than two hours because it only peaks over the mountains to the south for an hour or two - the rest of the time the area is washed in an eerie lightness.

To counter the winter blues, I have taken to making tropical drinks.   My latest “adult” non-alcoholic beverage is a no-hito mo-hito.   Upon my arrival in the land of perpetual o-dark-thirty, I stopped at the Juneau Costco and purchased a twenty pound bag of limes.   And then at the only florist shop in Haines, I found a lovely little lime mint plant.    With these two main ingredients, it was party time at the manor.    After the pucker punch of the first round, I scoured the cabinets and found a stash of agave nectar that makes the no-hito mo-hito a delightful, eye opening beverage.   We are now down to ten pounds of limes.   And no one will suffer from scurvy at the house.

I also purchased a case of pomegranites - besides staining all my clothes in little red splotches that has me even more in the Christmas spirit,  I’m still racking the creative synapses to figure out their mission this holiday season.   Maybe I’ll have to go back and take a nap to let the subconscious work on this task.

Bob gets back in touch with his indigenous past.

My lovely little cheetah like cat - Bob used up the last of his nine lives today.   The fact that he lived this long is rather amazing considering his mother ate all his litter mates and he was rescued in the nick of time.   As Bob grew, he lived an eternal life as a kitten.   We learned over time why the Mama cat probably ate the litter mates - Bob was a few cards shy of a full deck.   He never quite grasped the litter box - thinking the front paws in the pan was good enough.   He used up many of his live’s taunting the resident eagles as he  lolled outside the front door rolling around on the front step appearing to just say - lets see if you can swoop down and get me.

Bob leaves behind his dear pal Spot.

Yes it is a miracle Bob lived three years.   We’re not quite sure what took him to the final resting place - the vet thinks it was anti-freeze.   We aren’t in the habit of leaving anti-freeze out inside the house so I’m not sure how that could have happened.   And as far as we know, Bob had no enemies.

Our deepest condolences are to his playmate Spot (another Ocicat) who was an absolute pest without Bob - the reason we adopted Bob in the first place.   I’ll miss him too - he and I spent hours studying the printer spitting out various drafts of my writings.   I think Bob brought down the IQ of everyone in the house - this was not a bad thing.

Carey and I learn how to boil Italian water at cooking school.

Well, it is now the fourth day of cooking school, and I am just getting around to writing in the blog about the first day of school.  They keep us busy here from early morning to late at night.   Mostly in EATING.   Yes I am learning quite a bit about Italian cooking - which I am coming to find out is as much about selecting the correct ingredients and enjoying a fine meal as it is about cooking.   The Italians are very passionate about their food.  More than five hours every day is devoted to meals.   This explains why I am having to play late night catch up on the blog.

Oddly enough with all this attention on eating, my pants are getting looser, while many of my classmates are having the opposite problem.   WOW what does that say about my eating habits at home?   A big part of the Italian cooking class is also learning how to consume wine with every meal and not get too inebriated.   I unfortunately am allergic to alcohol.  So while most of my classmates are getting a good number of calories from the wine, I am just doing the tasting meals.  Which is lots of little portions.   And lots of time in between.  Slow eating, over a couple of hours, small quantities of food and LOTS of walking in between time.  That explains it all.

Overall the experience with Academia Barilla in Parma has been fantastic.  My classmates are primarily woman - most over 40.  Two brought their husbands.  The rest came with friends or solo.   It’s a group of woman who love to cook and have a great time.   The laughter has been non-stop.   What I love even more about it - I am NOT IN CHARGE.   If there is a problem, it is someone else’s to solve.  (I did have to get one of my classmate’s computers to work on the internet - but as a volunteer it didn’t matter if I succeeded at that or not).

We spent the first day in a lecture where we learned about the quality certifications on the foods produced in Parma and how to distinguish the real thing from the fakes produced all over the world.  Very insightful education.   Sounds like the food industry has the same problems the Project Management industry has with people presenting knock offs as just as good as the real thing (non-certified PMs vs. PMPs).   Then we went to their incredible kitchen classroom.   We were in groups of four working on the recipes for a five course meal.  For every two groups, we had a dedicated chef to help us.   One of the woman in our group was trained at Cordon Bleu (what she was doing in this class for untrained folks was beyond me).   I learned “knife” skills the first day. by our in group “expert.”   The Academia Barilla chef, Nicola, seemed fine with my knife skills but taught me some  techniques if I wanted to try something new.   I preferred his approach.   After almost 40 years of cooking,  I wasn’t doing everything wrong with the knife.  I learned more about group interaction styles and what approaches work well in a team and what don’t more than I learned about knife skills from our group’s self proclaimed expert.

One of the other woman taught me how she chops up rosemary - never really had given much thought to how I chopped up rosemary or that it even needed to be chopped.  But then she explained all the different ways she used chopped rosemary with cooking her own beef as well.  We became good friends fast - a fellow cattle woman.   Now we’re exchanging stories on installing windmills.  Maybe we woman who love to cook and are willing to travel to Italy to learn more, have more in common than we realize.   And since I am not the teacher in this group - I am allowed to have favorites.  Mary Jimmy is one of my favorites - she is an emergency room nurse.  If I ever find myself in need of an emergency room nurse near the Jack Daniels distillery in Tennessee, I will be in good hands at her hospital.  I think we need to write the definitive guide to cooking an entire cow.

I’ve made lots of other friends in class as well.   An elegant woman who on a wing and a prayer made a dramatic life change to follow her heart and start her life over in San Diego - she was as beautiful as she was gutsy.   Another was  a recently widowed full of life woman from LA.  And then there was the truffle loving  veterinarian who took copius notes.  I became fast friends with “Mom and Dad” - a recently liberated couple who sold their chain of hotels.  And by the end of the week was discussing entreprenurial opportunities with this spit fire mom-preneur from Georgia who was on the trip with her Mom.   I also got to know  two wonderful employees from Sur La Table (good move sending those two to this class).  When we reconnect with each other back in the states - at least we know we can all cook.

I’ll write more tomorrow - it’s almost 1 AM and we’re taking a boat to some island to try out various olive oils tomorrow.