What Happened? – Frantic Shanti

Kidney Stones: Errr, Maybe Not?

^{(Title image: Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash)}

So my health has taken an interesting turn.

About a week ago, I went to see a nurse practitioner (NP) for an interesting combination of symptoms: nausea and middle back pain. After listening to my complaints, she determined that the cause was most likely kidney stones.

So…I’m not the typical kidney stone sufferer…but I wasn’t the typical breast cancer getter either, so I accepted her diagnosis while we awaited lab confirmation of whether there was blood in my urine (TMI, sorry).

And then I proceeded to waste an entire weekend on the Internet, driving myself bonkers about what foods contained oxalates (a common kidney stone culprit) and how to combine foods that did with calcium, but not too much calcium.

I was treading in the Wild West of the Internet and I soon learned that kidneys are big business and everyone not only has an opinion, but is also selling something.

Kidneys = $$$ and clear and concise info was harder to find than I anticipated. More stress!
(Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash)

At the same time, except for one relatively bad night with a lot of pain, most of my symptoms remained mild-ish. Definitely not “hurts more than childbirth” level.

However, as a result of this, I was afraid to eat, which seemed to increase the pain and I realized that it was actually kinda sorta in my stomach?

Four days after submitting the urine sample, my NP called with the results: no blood in the urine.

That made the “kidney stones” story more difficult to believe. So after more discussions with her, she settled on the possibility that I might just be experiencing particularly bad heartburn and prescribed omeprazole to reduce the levels of acid my stomach produces.

This actually made a lot of sense to me. I am one of those “stress non-eaters”: in difficult situations I lose my appetite quickly, go for longer periods without eating and tend to lose weight. That leaves a lot of time for my stomach to sit empty.

But this also brings up another point that I find personally interesting. I have consistently been doing better with handling general stress and anxious episodes. I now have a plan for stress that includes understanding my reactions and using mindfulness, meditation and exercise. As a result, I experience far fewer episodes of runaway anxiety.

Stomach, stress…it all feels like fire.
(Photo by Yaoqi on Unsplash)

However, I am not able to control everything that happens in my body. I might be able to soften my response to stress and anxiety, but over the long term my body may still show signs of wear and tear from the pressures that I face.

This may also mean that while I’m doing great with keeping my stress levels lower, I might not be doing as great as I think I am. If this is truly “heartburn” or a little ulcer or something, it’s a reminder that managing stress is a constant process that requires vigilance.

Oh, and there’s also the oxalate thing, which my NP said not to stress over since it’s probably not a kidney stone. Which is good. Except now I’ve bought a bunch of low-oxalate foods, a number of which are the ones that I learned I should avoid for stomach issues.

Health is becoming a nonstop game of whack-a-mole.

Kidney Stones: Like I Needed That, Too

File this under, “lucky me”.

Well, I started experiencing nausea with no discernable cause last week. Wasn’t too bad and I assumed it was, I dunno, just my body being weird. Or maybe the pack of raw sugar snap peas that I had eaten the day before.

But the next day I woke up with middle back pain. I assumed that it was due to a new strength training workout that is known for evoking muscle soreness, and I figured that I’d just overdone it.

The nausea got worse, the backpain didn’t abate.

After a few days of this I decided to make an appoinment to get it checked out. This was partly because Dr. Google suggested that this could be an issue with my gall bladder or a kidney stone. I waved the gall bladder possibility off because the symptoms didn’t seem to match…but the kidney stones? Kind of ridiculous, I thought. I regularly drank a lot of water, ate limited processed food, was a vegetarian…you get the gist. I didn’t think I had the most common risk factors for it.

Then again, I didn’t have the most common risk factors for breast cancer either.

My nurse practitioner listened to my complaints and pronounced the most likely diagnosis: kidney stones.

I just don’t get it.

Why do these things happen?

This…is not gonna be fun.
(Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash)

After trying to live an exemplary life diet and exercise-wise, breastfeeding my kids and whatnot, seven years ago I got cancer. That’s one of the most terrifying diagnoses you can get.

I did not enjoy treatment. But eventually I got through it and learned to deal with the uncertainties that cancer brings.

Now, I may have a kidney stone. A “more painful than childbirth” kidney stone, which people that I’ve told like to point out is *ahem* very painful. Exceptionally painful. Severely painful. Hello, these reminders don’t help.

On the bright side, this probably won’t kill me. I’ll only wish that I were dead.

I was already thinking about how ridiculously unfortunate it was that the stressors I’m currently dealing with were taking place all at once (that’s another story that I won’t bore you with). I was not asking for yet another one.

And it gets even worse: I was given the opportunity to teach yoga to cancer survivors in about a month, something that I was so excited about! It was such an amazing chance to do exactly the thing for which I become a registered yoga teacher.

By the way, the average time for a kidney stone to pass is, you guessed it, a month. (To be fair, I’ve also heard anywhere from 1 to 6 weeks, so it kind of depends whom you ask). The timing just sucks.

I learned that the main protein sources for vegetarians are very high in oxalates, which are some of the most likely culprits in the formation of kidney stones. As a matter of fact, so much healthy food (dark leafy greens, for example) is actually high in oxalates, with spinach being number one. Who was eating spinach almost daily? Right here, me!

In the meantime, conflicting information on the internet about what I should be eating is stressful because I feel like I’m making things worse every time I put food in my mouth. My main staples are coming up as no-nos.

So what am I going to do? Try not to catastrophize. My mind is my worst enemy and comes up with all kinds of unpleasant possibilities as I wait for urine test results and probably a CT scan.

I’m going to ride this out the best that I can. That means keep practice teaching for my yoga class and consider this another test of how well I can prevent my scary thoughts from dragging me down a frightening rabbit hole.

Update when I know more.

“So, What Should We Talk About?”: My Six-Year, End-of-Chemo Appointment

A little over a week ago, I had another oncological appointment. This one marked my six years since completing chemo for triple positive breast cancer.

Honestly, at this point, the conversation between my doctor and myself has turned much more social. There are not as many pressing matters to discuss. My bloodwork is normal and boring. I don’t have side effects to speak of, at least not any that I can attribute solely to cancer treatment (hello, menopause, ugh). And even my oncologist is openly positive about my future.

Wow, have things changed.

Six years ago I was dealing with the effects of a nasty fingernail infection that landed me in the ER (be forewarned before clicking that link: it was pretty gross!). But for this appointment, I was asking my doc how HE was feeling.

Our conversations have become pleasantly mundane and I enjoy catching up with him. Also, I am panicking less.

As a cancer survivor, I do not like surprises. When my doc says to schedule an exam, I’m going to do it fast!

Much less. Even when I do lapse into micro-panic, I have accompanying moments of calm. That is a definite improvement. At the same time, cancer is cancer. So when my oncologist noticed that I hadn’t had a pelvic exam this year, he told me I needed it. And then before our appointment ended, he repeated that I should get one.

For a brief instant, my emergency alarms went off.

Maybe it was the fact that he repeated himself and seemed very serious about it. After six years of hypervigilance, I still get unnerved by slight shifts in tone of voice. I think that’s hard-wired in me, seared in via anxiety, even though my days of being a hot stress-mess are behind me.

It’s so tempting to wipe my hands off and pretend that everything is normal, but cancer teaches us that some nasty stuff might be lurking under the surface of, “I’m sure it’s nothing”. My days of innocent ignorance are gone.

So, yeah, I’m fine. Still no recurrence of a cancer in my breasts. Probably not anywhere else either. I’ll remain optimistic and look forward to seeing my oncologist in six months and chatting again.

But I’m going to schedule a pelvic exam soon.

Lightening Your Mood By Letting Go

Quite a lot has happened here in less than a week and it deserves a bit of an introduction.

It started with a leak last Wednesday. Water dripping from a ceiling fan…which isn’t supposed to happen! I got the upstairs neighbors to check their plumbing — their carpet was wet. And it got worse from there as plumbers found several gallons of standing water contained within the studs in the floor above us, coming from cracks in our neighbors’ kitchen drain pipe, now starting to overflow those confines.

Yeah…I’m pretty sure this is not a good thing.

That water was searching for low points…which happened to be overhead electrical spaces in our unit: ceiling fan in the dining area, wires coming through our kitchen cabinets, even the overhead kitchen light. Soaking the ceiling as it traveled.

We live in an old-ish building with old-ish pipes that are showing their age. We have had quite a bit of water damage and leaks already, some of which required strict restoration measures since there is asbestos(!) in the ceilings. The current incident is no different except that this time the repairs will be more extensive due to both the asbestos and growing mold, requiring the removal of kitchen cabinets, some carpeting and lots of ceiling.

When things like this happen, the HOA’s insurance covers all issues from the walls into the interwall spaces and the homeowners’ insurance covers everything inside the unit. As risk-averse renters we have our own insurance to protect our belongings, but we are not the owners of this unit. Regrettably, our owner did not have the unit insured. This poses uncertainties that we have yet to address.

This part of the ceiling has been marked for removal…

First things first, however: a restoration company marked out the spaces that were wet and from which we needed to clean everything out. We spent all weekend doing so. And that brings me to the point of this post.

When you have a lot of stuff, it’s easy to keep holding onto it because there’s no real impetus to get rid of it. And even if you try, it’s too easy to talk yourself into not letting go. If you get rid of it and then have to repurchase, that’s like twice the cost, right?

Except that I’ve come to believe that space = money. There’s so much that we have that we’re not really using. Maybe it was on sale, maybe it was something you needed one time, maybe you decided to splurge. But if these things are taking up space unnecessarily, they are costing you. I know they take an expensive toll on me in terms of headspace, making cleaning more difficult and our living area less inviting.

So this weekend was about purging. And wow did we PURGE. It felt amazing.

…as do the cabinets and ceiling in our galley kitchen.

Old glassware, shopping lists, aged spices, an extra bathroom scale (from a time long ago when we have two bathrooms), chipped plates, dollar store containers, plastic utensils, old computer cables, and the list went on. We emptied the 20-gallon fishtank, relocated its few inhabitants to the aquarium my husband has at his office, and realized that we could probably get rid of the cart that the tank sat on too.

There was so much that we’d been holding on to that simply was not necessary to have. And the more we got rid of, the lighter I felt. Buoyed by the sensation, I started going into areas not marked for restoration and getting rid of unneeded items, because I believe a big change is imminent. Something has been put into motion that will require big decisions and big action.

So in the midst of having the majority of our kitchen items and the entirety of our dining room stacked up in the living room area, I should be stressed out. But I’m floating in quiet acceptance, staying present and reveling in the lightness. I never expected to feel like this, so positive. Maybe it’s because all those things we held on to were weighing us down?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This saga will continue…

Six Years and 2 Days Ago, Panic

On Feb 8, 2017, I finally went to see my nurse practitioner about a breast lump that I’d originally noticed six months before, the previous August.

From the split second that the expression on her face shifted as she felt the lump and sent me off with an order for a diagnostic mammogram, everything changed. I went from hemming and hawing about spending the money on a copay for a doc appointment for something that would obviously turn out to be nothing…to a downward spiral into despair like I’d never felt before.

Memories of this period in my life are not very pleasant, so instead of loading up images of frightened faces and horrible possibilities, I’ve decided to post only peaceful pictures here.

Looking back on that time, knowing all the self-calming techniques and meditation methods that I currently practice, if I were going through this now one thing is very clear: I would still have panicked.

It bears mentioning that on Feb 8, 2017, I did not get my diagnosis. That appointment simply opened the door for scans that I was hoping I wouldn’t have to go through, but it devastated me regardless. In the two weeks that it took before I could actually go in for the mammogram and ultrasound, I died many times over.

The fact is, nothing ever prepares you for a cancer diagnosis. No matter what sort of mental calisthenics you practice, cancer is still CANCER. And even the idea that cancer could be a reality is terrifying.

There is no “alternative wording” that makes this easier. Sooner or later, you’d still bump up against that six-letter word that, for someone in my generation, meant a distinct possibility for a very sad ending (which arguably is an outdated and potentially irrational view, but that’s what you get).

Yeah, nothing stressful here. Just a sleepy kitten.

So rest assured, if you ever find yourself in this situation, no matter how you’re handling it, you’re doing a good job. Because you don’t really “handle” the news, you just splash around and try to keep your head above water.

Doctors, I’m told, practice delivering the news in a calm but empathic manner. Trust me, that’s kind of lost on the patient. Since my lump was clearly cancerous on the diagnostic ultrasound, I actually got the news broken to me twice:

My radiologist (after the ultrasound): “I have two things to tell you. One, you have cancer. Two, you’re going to be okay.”

My general practitioner (after the biopsy): “It’s as we feared. It’s cancer.”

See, whether the delivery is kind of upbeat with an attempt at a positive ending or whether it’s more reserved, anticipating the patient’s fear at hearing this, it doesn’t matter. Because once you cross that threshhold, you can’t turn back to “it’s nothing, have a nice day”. You are literally propelled forward into the next steps, and there will be many of them.

Room for one more image? How about tulips? I love tulips.

But there are a few things to remember. Being thrust headfirst into the world of cancer means that at least you’re not standing still like you are when you’re worrying about a diagnosis. Recalling Churchill’s famous quote, “When you’re going through hell, keep going”. Of all the times in a cancer journey, the point right around the diagnosis is the most terrifying because you know you have cancer but not necessarily how “bad” your situation is or what the next steps are.

There is relief in the movement of information and the passage of time. If there is a way to focus on the next step, always the next step, without getting overwhelmed by the tidal wave brought on by the concept of having cancer, you will be able to gingerly find yourself a path through which to navigate the cancer journey, and there is peace in that.

And if there isn’t peace…you’re still very normal. ❤

Finally, This Is My Real 5-Year Anniversary

I was going to write about something else for this week’s post until I realized that I had another five-year breast cancer anniversary to share: the end of my radiation treatment.

It had run for six weeks, five days a week — going to the cancer center became a daily habit. But on October 23, 2017, I rang the gong signifying the end of treatment, said my good-byes to the radiation oncology staff and left them with baked goodies.

Cancer treatment felt like a never-ending vortex of scary experiences…but it did finally end.

With 2022 being five years since my cancer diagnosis, I’ve had a number of anniversaries to share this year. What makes Oct. 23 significant is that it marked the end of all the “tough stuff” that people scare you with about cancer. By that date, I’d put the diagnosis, surgery, chemo and then radiation behind me.

Because 2017 had been a miserable year, when radiation was done I thought I could finally take a deep breath. I’d waited for this point in my treatment for a long time and decided that I would lose myself in the spirit of the holiday season.

The problem was, you never really get rid of all your concerns. You release some, but others show up to take their place. I finished radiation…but wait, there’s more! Now I was going on tamoxifen and that brought a whole new set of issues, and yes, fears, with it.

So I spent Christmas season doing my best to enjoy myself but the holidays passed by and left me feeling a little empty. I’d expected a lot out of them and they didn’t deliver.

I had wanted to be free of all my worries but that’s not how cancer works. In fact, that’s not how life works either. It took me five years to figure out that I couldn’t get what I wanted, but what I could make of it was beautiful in its own way.

Admittedly, it was a tall order. After cancer, I tought the world would shine with joy, but that wasn’t realistic. Cancer isn’t the kind of disease you say to, “done!”, brush your hands off and walk out the door. It tags along behind you, if not as the disease, then as its shadow.

Fast forward five years to now…ok, ok, I know what I got wrong back then.

I had felt like life owed me something amazing because it had put me through cancer. I thought I deserved a post-cancer life that was perfect. Of course, it wasn’t. And it still isn’t.

So if there’s something to celebrate, it’s that I learned a few things over the past five years.

This holiday season I’m not going to be expecting things to wow me. But I am going to be enjoying the fact that I am still physically active and working the same university job, expanding my horizons as a new yoga teacher and finding fun ways to spend my time. And mostly, that I have moved past the feeling of anger that I felt about cancer and found some gratitude to fill its space.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I know I keep going on and on about how much better life is when you’re not carrying the burden of anger, but honestly, if I’d known that acceptance would lighten me up this much, I would have done it sooner!

Chemo Fatigue: What Is It Like? [video]

[IMPORTANT: Please be aware that at the time the videos were filmed, I was in a very negative headspace. My experience should not be considered an example of a “typical” experience because with cancer treatment, there is no such thing. Just as cancer is a disease specific to an individual, so is the treatment and, as a result, one’s response to it. If you are interested in viewing the below videos, please keep all the above in mind.]

I’ve posted quite of few photos of my cancer journey. You’d think I wouldn’t have any more pics left, but–surprise–I do!

I made some important (to me) videos after my sixth and final infusion, but to date I’ve hesitated to post them. In part, this is because I’ve tried to remain anonymous in this blog, but in the clips, you get to see my face. And it’s not a pretty sight.

I didn’t feel human.

I was the weakest that I’d been my entire adult life. My body was feeling the strain of multiple infusions of chemotherapy, I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror and my voice didn’t sound like my own. I was so sick and tired of this part of the treatment and wanted it to be DONE.

At this point, I wasn’t suffering that entire cascade of side effects that I’d experienced after my first chemo infusion, and I’d learned to better deal with what I did experience, and even what to do to avoid some of the side effects.

However, the fatigue I felt was far beyond what I imagined it would be. And it was coupled with constant background nausea, like a slow burn in my gut. This was a result of losing the rapidly-dividing cells that lined my intestinal tract; they were felled by the chemotherapy, collateral damage as the medicine killed off potential cancer cells.

Strangely, there were also times when I was actually quite hungry, but literally too tired to try to get something to eat. Even calling for a member of my family to bring me food required too much effort. Speaking took a lot of energy.

The final infusion’s side effects lasted the longest. A full week after my infusion I was still very unsteady and barely made it to work for a few hours.

It’s worth noting that this was pre-pandemic and I wasn’t properly set up for working from home. Were I experiencing chemo treatment now, I’d be able to get more work done…likely to my detriment, unfortunately, because I really needed that time away.

It took five years for me to decide that it was time to post these videos. Apologies if they get a little intense:

August 13, 2017 – Cancer fatigue, part 1

August 13, 2017 – Cancer fatigue, part 2

And Suddenly, Another Freakout

Last week, I had a Pap smear. If you’re not familiar with what that is, you must be either male or blissfully young. In brief, it’s a test for cervical cancer, customarily done every 3-5 years.

I knew my results would come this week, along with other lab results. I was in a work meeting today when I noticed my phone was vibrating. It was my doctor’s office…and I was too late to answer the call.

Me: It’s probably nothing.
Also me: OMG I NEED TO CALL NOW!

The doctor’s office didn’t leave a message.

And that’s when I officially tuned out the meeting. A flood of possibilities came rushing in. My boss needed to talk to me but I was trying to suppress the growing urge to call the doctor’s office immediately.

The urge won. I called and left a message and went back to work, but my head was elsewhere.

The fact that there had been no message was extremely unsettling, because it made sense that if there were really bad news, the office would want to speak with me directly instead of leaving a voicemail.

And my reaction shouldn’t come as a surprise, because having been hit with a cancer diagnosis before, I’ve become hypervigilant. Like it or not, my brain wants to prepare for the worst so that I don’t have that horrible fall from thinking that everything’s just peachy to slamming into a nightmare.

It doesn’t help that I’ve read sooo many stories of women talking about being completely blindsighted by frightening diagnoses, and all of them saying that they thought nothing of the missed call from the doctor since they knew they were perfectly healthy, blah blah blah.

Of course, I know better than this. And at least I was aware of the hypervigilance, aware of my body’s reactions and aware that I was blowing things out of proportion. But it’s that uncertainty that is so difficult to take. Even though I know my response, I know why it happens and I know that chances are everything is ok…I want that certainty.

As it turned out, the call had come from the nurse assistant to let me know that my blood work results had come in. This was a relief, although I admit I considered it a defeat that I couldn’t be mindful and breathe through it all.

Then again, as a cancer survivor, I need to cut myself some slack. Getting slammed with a devastating diagnosis once leads to understandable echoes, no matter what test results I’m waiting for.

For now, I’m calm. Of course, my actual Pap smear results aren’t in yet. Those should come tomorrow or the next day. The nurse assistant told me that they’ll probably be normal (OMG, how can anyone say that????) and they’ll be loaded onto the patient portal…unless they’re not normal. And then they won’t be.

Guess whose heart will be fluttering for the next few days?

Not mine, because I’ve got it together.

Kind of…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To be fair, I didn’t totally freak out over this. But scanxiety over test results is getting a little old, honestly…

Five Years Down and Moving Along

I had another oncologist appointment last week. This one was a milestone, since it officially marks five years since my breast cancer diagnosis.

Five years ago, I was told that with triple-positive breast cancer I had an 85% chance of survival…but there in the fine print was added “five-year survival”.

Delays in routine care due to the pandemic have resulted in more late-stage diagnoses.

With advances in treatment for HER2-receptor-positive tumors (HER2 being the third marker in “triple-positive”), that percentage has improving. But it’s still interesting to note that there’s a finite end to what reliable survival info your doctor can give you, since it’s hard to run longitudinal studies with a large group of participants.

In any case, my oncologist was happy to see me alive and kicking. With the pandemic, women voluntarily and/or involuntarily delayed preventative care, and as a result, there has been an increase in the percentage of women presenting with advanced-stage breast cancer (from UC San Diego Health). Given how far treatment itself has come, this is a distressing statistic because it means that we have effective treatments but patients are not getting them soon enough. So perhaps, for him, I was a five-year treatment success in the midst of all of this.

My oncologist’s concern now is less that my tumor will recur and more that whatever conditions were responsible for the first tumor might result in a brand new one. He still checked me over carefully. My bloodwork looked good with only a lower white blood cell count (“that may never recover,” he’s said in the past). I have no headaches, my bone pain has significantly decreased and other long term physical side effects from endocrine therapy have just about Sudisappeared.

Five years post-diagnosis I’m turning down another path, one that I would have never explored had it not been for what cancer made me face.

I’m still dealing with things like distractability issues, but that could also be due to menopause and the pandemic situation and maybe just the march of age in general. I’ve noted before that it’s hard to pull apart all the factors to identify a single culprit.

My oncologoist remarked that I looked like I was doing well, that I exuded a positive “aura”, and while I’m sure he didn’t mean that metaphysically, the truth is, I feel like I’m finally moving forward in my life again. This coming weekend I start a three-month yoga teacher training course that will move me down a new path for the future.

I still plan to keep posting weekly during this time. We’ll see how it goes!

No More Sticky Fingers!

Running late with this post as I’m furiously cleaning our apartment in advance of the Christmas holiday!

I noticed a few mornings ago that when I made a fist and then straightened the fingers of my right hand, the joints didn’t stick at all.

It took over 300 days…but I’m happy to celebrate the end of the side effects!

While this may seem like an odd thing to celebrate, it marked a milestone for me. This was the last side effect attributable to letrozole that I had been experiencing, and it was finally gone. Letrozole is an aromatase inhibitor that blocks production of estrogen and is used as endocrine therapy for breast cancer patients who have estrogen receptor-positive tumors. I’d been on it for about 14 months after switching to it from tamoxifen.

For reference, as of today, I am at Day 307 since stopping the medication, so it’s taken quite a while for this joint side effect to subside. Yes, there are other things still plaguing me, such as memory issues, low libido and difficulty maintaining muscle (even with strength training), but those are more difficult to separate out from the garden-variety effects of menopause.

The sticking fingers began in August 2020 (about 8 months after starting letrozole) and were getting progressively worse. By March 2021, when I called it quits with the endocrine therapy, a number of finger joints were sticking and painful, particularly in the morning.

At that point, I was having trouble getting up off the floor, as I was having issues with joints throughout my entire body. The medication was affecting various aspects of my life, making it difficult to exercise and, as I like to put it, lowering the quality of my existence. Following discussions with my oncologist, we both agreed that my risk of breast cancer recurrence was low enough to stop the meds.

It’s been quite a journey to get to the point where I am now.

Shaking this last side effect of letrozole reminded me how far on this cancer journey I’ve traveled. There have been so many ups and downs, friends made and friends lost to the disease, that it was easy to forget that nothing in life is permanent. Time passes and situations change, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

The concept of “CANCER” used to terrify me, and after I was diagnosed, I hit a low so deep I thought I’d never be able to crawl out of it.

Gradually, as my experience with the disease played itself out, I came to accept the uncertainty about the future. As the end of 2021 draws near, I inch closer to the 5-year survival mark. The fact that I can straighten my fingers in the morning without any pain or sticking is a perfect example of how while I cannot know what the future will bring, I can deal with the “now”. And this “now” is not so bad.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Best wishes to everyone for a very Joyous Holiday Season and much promise for 2022!