my-blog

Thank you all for your support....

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 00:54:42 +0100

I just wanted to take a moment to tell all of you "Thank you" for being so wonderful recently when my little world fell apart with the loss of our dear Pekingese 'fur baby' last month. We continue to grieve for her, but life goes on, as it always does. When I mentioned to you here that I hoped you'd not stop ordering, because I needed to stay busy, many of you wrote with messages of comfort and the orders poured in at a time when keeping busy was the best medicine possible for me.

Today, I wanted to share a picture of our little girl. We miss her so, and nothing can ever replace her. We had not planned to ever have another little dog, but sometimes things happen that are not planned so maybe someday there will be another, we'll see. Sometimes God puts people or pets in your life that you'd not expect, situations none of us could imagine in advance, and I'm already being reminded of that.

At any rate, we're doing better now, looking to the future more. I just ordered more microbeads and got them in today, and have caught up a bit with things that need doing around here. So, if you're ready to order, it's a good time and the sewing room is ready again whenever you are. I'm going to try to keep making the microbead forms at the same price for a little bit longer. Everything has gone up at least twice since the last slight price increase, both in materials and postage, which is especially noticeable when I order things and pay that higher postage, ick... It's possible that my price for the microbead breast forms may go up in July, if not before then, but I'm holding out for the moment and staying at the same price for now.

Hugs, and again, THANK YOU!
Mary

It's been a difficult week.

Sat, 18 May 2013 18:22:03 +0100

Our aging Pekingese fur-baby that we've loved for about 13 1/2 years, passed away on Thursday. It was my husband and my 36th wedding anniversary, another anniversary we'll never forget... We'd so hoped she'd recover from her latest health issues, as she'd suddenly taken a turn for the worse early in the week. She had then improved after an injection Tuesday, but it only gave her another full day with us on Wednesday. At least it was a good day. We were then up trying to comfort our little dog all during the night before our anniversary, her pain increasing as her organs had begun to shut down. When our vet called us the next morning to check on her, we all tearfully realized that it was time, nothing more could be done to help. We spent a few more minutes alone with her, then headed in to the vet's office. As you can imagine, that was extremely difficult.

Every day of that small dog's life, she was held and told how much she was loved and would be always, every single day of her little life, and that's the last words she heard again as she drifted off to her final sleep, looking as if such relief had come.

She will be dearly missed. I thank those of you who had written during this last few days, if you and this website weren't here, I don't know how I'd have dealt with it all. Life goes on, and my sewing room will still hum with the sewing machine, keeping me focused on something else other than missing our little friend every moment. In my heart, she'll always be napping in the doorway as I work, watching over me.

This will probably be our last little dog. I plan now to grow the website a little more, occupying some of the time that's no longer needed by our little friend. Everyone please keep ordering now, please don't anyone think I need more time off because I don't do well dwelling on it. I really need to keep extra busy. I'm heading for the sewing room right now to fill a couple of orders. There is no better solace than having something positive to accomplish.

Soon to be an exciting change in fabrics!

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:03:57 +0100

I've been looking long and hard for a dependable future supplier of the fabric I need when making microbead breast forms for those of you who order from me here, as I've had problems finding someone with the right weight of fabric lately, and... guess what... I'VE FOUND THE PERFECT ONE! So excited, just got the perfect sample and made my first larger order, can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Whew.

Those of you who don't sew, may not get how great this is, but it is a really difficult to find fabrics that meet preferences AND in large quantities. Fabrics have to have the right amount of stretch in order to let the microbeads do their job of filling a bra cup both comfortably and attractively, and it has to be the sort of knit that won't 'run' or snag under normal day to day wear, and it has to have good 'recovery' when it's stretched out of shape, it must go immediately back to it's sewn shape. It also has to be a fabric that my sewing machine can handle without it crawling around too much because I sew a LOT and it's so not easy if the fabric doesn't cooperate.

If all that weren't enough, it also has to be a color that will work in white, beige, or various bright bra colors and still be at least somewhat acceptable if seen through a lacy bra. All this, and it also has to be the type knit that will wash and dry fairly easily. Sigh...this is not easy, folks, lol... if you've shopped for any sort of skin-tone swimsuit fabric, you know, right? It's not as hard to find a fairly adequate generic SWIMSUIT fabric that'll do most of this at a local fabric store, just hard to get it in skintone AND the right thickness, then add ordering online unless you have a sample. Ick.

Really, if you wear a microbead breast form INSIDE a mastectomy bra pocket, it might not matter so much about what color it is to anyone else, but to me, it matters. :^) I know many of you have the same problem in finding swimsuit fabrics that will work when you try making your own breast forms, and I've recommended you try whatever swimsuit fabrics are available to you at your local fabric store even if they're leopard print, because no one else will know (and besides, it might be FUN!) but...well... I make these for a lot of people with a lot of different preferences, so what I buy must be a fabric that will both hold up in washing and wearing AND look good to the greatest amount of people.

The fabric I've found for my manufacturing these microbead forms is 'light nude' color, which is slightly lighter in color than the old color I have been using, but I've been comparing it to the most popular bra shades of 'nude', and it's a pretty good match. The supplier is VERY knowledgeable, especially compared to many other people I contacted or ordered samples from who didn't seem to know their Spandex from their...well...let's just say many others didn't seem to know what they were selling and it was difficult for them to understand what I needed, and this supplier KNOWS HER STUFF inside and out and SEWS, has even given me some nifty ideas for new projects!

Buying fabric online is just not easy. If I were you, I'd first buy whatever you can find that you can pick up and touch at your local fabric store, even if it's bright purple, until you KNOW you can work with this type fabric...lol... no one but you will know what it looks like inside your bra,aanyway. :^) I get orders from a lot of people who gave sewing Spandex for the first time a try, and threw up their hands in despair, so I don't recommend investing in a lot of fabric unless you know you can successfully work with it.

Still, I'm picky, annoyingly picky, about getting just the right fabric.... so to find a kind-hearted, patient, and trustworthy supplier who was generous enough to put up with MY nutty preferences and get the right fabric to me so quickly, is a red-letter day! I'm happy, Snoopy-dance happy, and just had to tell you! Was really getting very worried as my supplies dwindled and I SO didn't want to go 'second best' on fabric to replace it.

Also, all of you who are repeat customers, please NOTE: I'll soon be running out of the old slightly darker shade of 'nude' fabric, and will be switching over to the new slightly lighter color for your microbead forms. If you specifically NEED the darker nude color for your next set, be sure to order very quickly. When it's gone, it's GONE! (There's a slight possibility that in the future, my supplier may be able to provide a bolt of the darker kind, and I may invest in some of that as well, but don't depend on it, ok? I'll likely buy another bolt of this color fabric first and I have to save up money in between because it's a major purchase for me. I do invest as much as I can afford to in keeping a good quantity of fabric, but it's hard to keep a lot of DIFFERENT types for a lot of extra choices. Will do my best though, and will make a note for you on the ordering page when I switch over to the lighter color fabric.)

One last thing...because of this (ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL) supplier, there's finally a possibility that you'll soon see some other products here as well, may even finally be able to produce a small mastectomy clothing line that I've wanted to add, with things I've never been able to find commercially produced. I figure, if it's something I need and can't find, there's probably others with mastectomy who need it and can't find it, so SOMEBODY'S got to do it, right? Before, I couldn't depend on a consistency bolt to bolt, and the prices were beyond prohibitive for someone like myself to order less than several hundred yards at once (yeah, who has room to store THAT MUCH, right?). However, now that I've found a great fabric partner online, it's very tempting! :^)

ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING POSTAL INCREASES!

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 21:03:15 +0100

For those of you who are like me, you may not have kept up with the latest changes at the post office. I just today shipped a pair of microbead breast forms to someone in Canada, where it's usually hardly any higher than shipping within the United States, and the price for First Class Mail International had jumped to more than THREE TIMES the price it was only a few weeks ago when I'd shipped a pair! Oh...my....goodness! Since I barely make expenses as it is to make the forms and ship them (the price on my 'Items for Sale' page includes postage and packaging costs as well as the price of the materials, and the cost of taking them to the post office), there's no way I can continue to ship to Canada as I've done in the past.

I've been looking up the new costs to mail these very light forms in the lightest safe packaging available, and now the extra cost ranges from almost $9.00 for postage to Canada for the largest size pair mailed by the cheapest method, to almost $13.00 for the same sent to Europe. If sent Priority Mail International, the price was even more horrific, around $24 for the smallest flat rate package! OBVIOUSLY, I can't absorb these new prices, so for anyone OUTSIDE the United States who wants a pair now, I will have to charge significantly more, especially since I'll have to drive to the post office to ship.

For those of you who live within the United States, the postage has gone up for here as well, but for right now, I'll continue to absorb those costs myself when making and shipping the microbead forms to people. The price may have to go up very soon, because when I buy supplies again, I'll be paying a much higher price myself.

I do apologize for the, but I'm like the rest of you, have to just take whatever the post office throws at us and move on. This latest huge jump is just crazy, I can't even BEGIN to make any sense of it! Thanks for understanding.

THE SCAR PROJECT

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:57:29 +0100

A website reader just suggested a YouTube video called "The Scar Project". There's several, but the one by David Jay is something I'd suggest for anyone who has been, or is about to go through breast cancer surgery. It will give you an idea of what typical scars look like, whether reconstruction is done or not... and some of the women had lumpectomy or partial mastectomy.

I'm appreciative of the brave breast cancer survivors who allowed their photos to be put on the video It's very informative and quite moving to watch, perhaps because I recognize that look in their eyes. They've survived and life goes on, but it does affect us. People around us often don't see past the exterior we project daily, and once we're healed, life moves on. As anyone who's been through something as life-altering as breast cancer knows, the life we move on into is quite different from what we had before. It's just...different... which isn't always bad or good, just different.

Because friends forget the change in us, it does not mean that it's not there, and we survivors always recognize that look in the eyes between ourselves. It's a club none of us would choose to be in, but it's a close-knit club who supports and stands up for each other, and I totally support everyone who participated in The Scar Project, and send a big 'thank you' to the lovely reader who mentioned it to me. I may have seen it a long while ago, but had forgotten, with all else that's been going on.

If you get a chance, go look it up on YouTube... it's tastefully and artfully done, black & white photos, in a slide-show format with music, nothing shocking. I've often had people about to go through surgery ask about what the scars are like, and this is quite informative without overwhelming you. I'll forever be thankful to a a very kind nurse who let me see what bilateral mastectomy looks like before I went through it myself so that I could see that it was something I could live with.

New cold virus going around....

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 17:45:13 +0100

Well, despite feeling great and being really healthy, I STILL caught the cold virus that seems to never go away this year, lol... Am over it but still feeling a little off my game. Instead of designing new things, have spent most of this month de-cluttering my home.

Like most of you, I find a new year to be a good place to start fresh. With so many wonderful organizational tips on the internet, it's hard to go organize and not just READ about it, lol... but things are really taking shape again. When the last of the clutter is gone from all the little hidden areas, it seems easier to focus on more complicated things like pattern design and crafting again. Almost to that area, and can't wait.

Sewing to me is like having a vacation, and I love it when microbead mastectomy form orders come in from the website because I see it as a happy little holiday (at least for a few hours). :^) Please feel free to continue to send order requests and questions, but do be aware that on occasional, I don't get back to the internet to check emails until very late at night.

(**Note: If the lady who asked about international shipping is still checking in, please email again with a working email address. I wanted to let you know that I can ship to your country, but my replies to you keep coming back as undeliverable to the address you gave me. Thanks!)

The one most important post I've ever written, so please read it to improve your heath this year!

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 02:07:54 +0100

What if I told you that you could lose weight and improve over a dozen aspects of your health by making ONE change this year?? AND, it won’t cost you a thing, not a cent more than you normally spend, and quite possibly, you’ll spend LESS? I’ve debated for a long time whether to put this tip here, because normally I don’t try to dispense health advice. I SEW. It’s what I do. However, this one thing has made such a drastic change in my own life for the better, in only a few months. Perhaps others need to hear it, if only to help them make that first step toward improving their own health to start off this new year. It took a call from my own doctor in early July to tell me that my blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol (lipids) were all too high to ignore any longer, and that I needed to start cholesterol lowering meds right away. I only knew of one of the three things that I might could change on my own, without meds, and right there resolved to DO IT, not expecting it to have any other benefits, BUT, oh wow, did it ever have BENEFITS!!

What are the benefits of this one change? Well, in less than three days, my blood pressure was normal after being high and getting higher for several years.

After less than a week, my blood sugar went back to normal, after also having been getting higher and higher for several years. I also noticed at this point, coincidentally, that my tongue was no longer coated white when I first woke up in the mornings, it was pink and healthy.

Within two weeks, I noticed that I was going to sleep more easily and no longer needed any meds for pain by bedtime. The arthritis in my hands seemed to have just stopped hurting, as it had everywhere else.

Within about a month, I noticed that my under-eye areas were no longer dark or needed concealing makeup, and my skin was clearer and more even-toned overall. I even stopped wearing foundation, for the first time, in, like….EVER.

Within two months, I discovered that my skin no longer bruised or turned blue even after a bad fall onto concrete that hurt my face, arms and ribs for days (except for one eye area where my eyeglasses had torn the skin when my face hit the ground, now THAT was a black eye!)

While at the doctor for the bodily damage from the fall onto the concrete, they drew blood for testing my high cholesterol again, and I soon found out that I no longer HAD high cholesterol. Not only had it gone from being high down to normal, but it was BEYOND merely normal, every score was at OPTIMAL for good heath! Yippeeee!

Within 2 ½ months, I noticed that my fingernails no longer broke off or even cracked at the edges, they had to be not just trimmed but CUT more often as they were growing so fast, plus were now pink and healthy looking, and so STRONG.

It was also around this time that I noticed my energy was amazingly increased, I’d go outside to do yard work, organize the storage building, etc…, and my husband would have to practically DRAG me back inside at the end of the day as I was still going strong and feeling energetic.

During all this new-found energy, I started assembling some woodshop equipment from our old woodcrafting days and realized that now I could follow the directions easily, my focus and memory were very much improved. For several years since the chemo, I’d felt as if my mental abilities were significantly less than before. I took advantage of this period of clearer thinking by rebuilding my old computer and putting it in a new case successfully, something I’d put off. Easy-peasie.

Within 3 months, the cancer antigen test results that had been steadily rising for several years, only receding briefly when I’d started eating lots of sprouts, but going back up when I’d slacked off…..had dropped 10 points (a drop of a whole 1/3 of the previous score!).

Around the 4^th month, someone mentioned having ‘dry eye’, a condition where your eyes no longer have the oily tears they are supposed to, so sometimes your eyes overproduce watery tears to try to lubricate themselves. It was only THEN that I realized my formerly constantly irritated outer corner of one eye had not been leaking & washing away my mascara because of my own ‘dry eye’ syndrome. Wow, when had THAT been gone?

At almost 5 months, I went to my primary care doctor for a checkup, he reviewed my improvements, pronounced me the healthiest he’d ever seen me, and told me he saw no reason to see me again every 3 months as usual, we’d go at least 6 months this time. (He said that if everyone made the one lifestyle change I’d made, they’d not need him either.)

At around this time, I noticed that my eyebrows had finally filled in totally, all these years after chemo made them fall out and left them skimpy…and my hair was now much thicker and somewhat more youthful looking. No longer did I have to fill in bits of my eyebrows, nice!

While renewing my driver’s license, and being asked if I still had the restriction of wearing eyeglasses to drive or had had any surgeries to correct my vision lately, I hesitated…although I’ve worn strong eyeglasses for both distance and reading for years, lately I’d noticed that I’d often get up and read the newspaper, get dressed, and forget to put my eyeglasses on, sometimes for a couple of hours, and would occasionally take OFF my glasses to read more easily. Well, they tested my vision, and said, “YOU NO LONGER NEED YOUR GLASSES TO DRIVE!” Talk about shocked, I’d had that restriction since I was old enough to begin driving, this was a FIRST! After stepping outside and looking around, I realized that I could now see signs a block down the street, where it used to be that without my glasses I’d barely been able to see the hood of the car clearly, lol…

At approximately the 5^th full month, after finally fully realizing that I’d lost approximately 20 pounds even though I’d not been exercising, it occurred to me that my jeans no longer fit even though I’d taken them up several times. I had been wearing 18W jeans for several years since chemo gave me the ‘big fat belly’. So, like any red-blooded woman, I headed straight to Walmart to try on a pair of size 16 jeans, and they fit…well…almost, they had droopy legs and really needed a belt, so…oh joy..JOY…JOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I tried on a pair of size 14’s, and THEY FIT PERFECTLY! I'd completely SKIPPED a pants size! Yes, I bought them. :^) Immediately after coming home, I tried on everything in my closet and found that now over 30 items were actually way too big, and things that couldn’t close in front before, now closed just fine! I had a real waistline again!

At about 5 ½ months, one of the very best things happened…and ladies, those of you who have been through menopause will nod your heads when I say it’s the BEST thing… I noticed that instead of removing chin hair twice a day, I could now go for 3 days without it being noticeable. :^) Yes, it’s our big secret, some of us grow chin hairs so fast after 50 that we make our closest friend promise us that if we’re ever in a coma, they’ll have to come pluck or shave us two times a day, minimum. We are so serious about not letting anyone see what menopause does to us that, yes, we’re more concerned about that than about some life-threatening conditions. If you’re not one of ‘us’, then don’t judge until you go through it. BUT, for it to STOP happening, gives us our freedom back, so it’s IMPORTANT to mention about about this, especially. :^)

After all that, and I’m only telling it all that way so that you’ll have some things to watch for if you choose to make this change yourself, because I didn’t expect ANY of it and it happened so slowly that sometimes it was only by accident that the improvement was discovered. And, before I go further, I want to tell you that it’s not a total miracle. I still have hot flashes a lot…. Other than that, my total health is so much better than 6 months ago that if you looked at me and my health then, and again now, you’d probably not recognize me. Sometimes, I don’t recognize myself now that I look honestly at myself. Having never before been vain, and usually avoiding mirrors because I always considered myself rather ugly anyway, I now stand in front of the mirror sideways and wonder where that big ‘pregnant looking belly’ went. Even though I still have some ‘rolls’, I now have a waistline. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that’d happen.

So, what’s the change you have to make for all this to happen? STOP….EATING….SUGAR. That’s it. That’s all. Just avoid one processed substance on the face of the earth that is so toxic to us that it affects every aspect of our health. Yes, I know you like it, I did, too. Yes, I know it’s hard, because EVERYTHING has sugar in it, but you can do it. The moment your skin improves so much you no longer have to use makeup (especially if you're 56 like me, and never was able to go without makeup before!), the week when you realize that all ten of your fingernails look great at the same time and that's never happened before, the day you put on your really skinny jeans again and they zip, or the day you get your medical test results and see a huge improvement, not only are all of those things are worth it, but each one of them individually is worth it.

If you’d told me six months ago that even a fraction of these things would have changed, I’d not have believed it. Still have trouble believing it. I’ve told people about it when they’ve noticed changes in me themselves, and although most of my friends want to improve something or other or lose weight, hardly any of them are willing to give up sugar for it. Well, actually a nurse at my doctor’s office did tell me that it was enough to make HER stop using sugar and she was starting that day!

Before you say how deprived I must be, not eating anything with sugar, and how tired from probably constant exercise...let me assure you that I’m not. I’ve not been able to start exercising yet, first because of pain after that fall onto the concrete sidewalk edge, then because of a student nurse accidentally giving me a flu shot directly through a tendon or something, took months to heal, so I’m not exercising yet. I also eat really good stuff, and I’m not counting calories or fat.

In fact, I’m eating more fats than most of you can conceive of, drinking whole organic milk, real butter, real cheddar cheese, real eggs and even occasionally bacon, etc… I don’t eat ANY sugar substitutes or use honey or agave nectar, and totally avoid anything low-fat. After several months of this, I've paid attention to more recent studies being reported that sugar is indeed a toxin to us, and that eating some fats is good for us, that low-fat hasn’t helped anyone really and that our brains NEED most of the fats we eat so that they can fight against mental decline. Some even say that memory problems, Altzheimers and senile dementia may be related to low-fat eating, but who knows.

On a typical day, I start out with a bowl of oatmeal with a tablespoon of raw, unprocessed coconut oil in it, along with about a teaspoon of cinnamon, from the big cheap bulk bottle of cinnamon from Sam’s Club, because it helps even out blood sugar spikes, and I put whole milk over it. I don’t drink any fruit juices, because they spike blood sugar, and that’s what I want to avoid. Eating most fruits is fine, (except for apples which seems to be almost the same as eating sugar) as long as you’re getting the fiber in the fruit, but juices alone are out.

Many things you’d think are good for you, aren’t. In fact, I use a glucometer and test my blood sugar often, to make sure no sneaky sugar-spiking foods are in my diet. If you want to do the same, you can get (without any prescription) a glucometer for about $16 at Walmart, and 50 test strips for about $10 to $15, look at the different brands and get a meter with cheap test strips. Rather than buy some unproven diet pills that aren't going to work anyway, do yourself a favor and invest in a glucometer, best money you’ll ever spend, as it’ll speed you up on learning what foods specifically you might want to avoid.

That was the secret to my success at this, because so many foods can spike your blood sugar that it’s better to check your own readings a couple times after each food you’re not sure is safe for you. If you do it before eating, then compare a reading perhaps an hour after, and again two hours after, you’ll see how much it spikes. Oatmeal doesn’t do it much, but if you put sugar or honey or whatever on it, it will, so your goal is to eat simple, unprocessed and natural foods. Sometimes instead of oatmeal, I’ll have a boiled egg and a few cubes of cheddar cheese, or a bowl of Cheerios or Post Spoon Size Shredded Wheat (which I’ve grown to love with milk and a spoon of Kroger all natural (no sugar added) peanut butter.

For a snack, I’ll have a cup of milk or some cubes of cheddar, or some walnuts or almonds, or some Triscuit Original whole grain crackers (not the flavored kinds). If I’m really wanting something sweet and decadent, I keep banana chunks frozen at all times so I can toss one in my ‘Bullet Blender’ along with a cup of milk, sometimes with a little vanilla flavoring, and in just a few seconds it gives me a big bowl of ‘ice cream’, looks and tastes like soft-serve and fluffs up into a large amount. With a few walnuts over the top for crunch, yummy!

For meals, broiled chicken is great, so I keep some frozen broiled chicken breasts ready to toss in the microwave and reheat. After one is hot, I like to cut it up and pour some Extra-Virgin Olive Oil over it, sometimes putting a little hot sauce in it, too. EVOO is really good for your health, but not if it’s been heated, so I pour a little over my food almost every day. Any veggie is fair game for me, my favorite is anything green, and for dessert, I often bake a sweet potato in the microwave and add butter, a little salt, and cinnamon, heaven on a plate! (When my blood sugar is high, if I eat a sweet potato with butter and cinnamon, it comes right down and usually by morning, I’ve lost a pound that hadn’t wanted to come off.)

Added to the things you probably think I shouldn’t eat, lol..I also eat sour cream on things, and drink whole milk in my coffee instead of creamer. No clue why, but as long as I have all the yummy and very filling high fat foods, I don’t miss sugar one bit. Whenever a secretly sugar laden food sneaks into my diet, I know it, because it makes me feel ‘off’ and irritable, and disrupts my sleep that night, so that’s also a big reason to avoid anything like that. Just to know that the high fat foods are not only helping me stay healthy and lose weight, but my HDL and LDL cholesterol and triglycerides are finally at healthy levels, make it way easier for me to avoid sugar.

Eating out is the hardest part, if you have family members who want to stop for fast food. So far, I’ve found that Arby’s French Dip Sandwich doesn’t make my blood sugar spike, nor does Wendy’s Chili. Normally, I don’t eat anything with white flour but on those days, I do eat the bread on the sandwich and a few crackers with the chili sometimes. I can eat a few French fries, just no ketchup which has more sugar in a tablespoon of it than you should have in a whole day. It helps to take along some cheese cubes and Triscuits so you won’t be tempted to eat something not so good for you.

Some tips to help you get started, it helps to keep the following in the fridge at all times: Some peeled boiled eggs in a jar to combat hunger between meals, and some pre-cubed cheese, and some bell pepper strips, along with some Philadelphia cream cheese (some brands have bad stuff in it, but philly seems alright). On the counter, keep some Triscuit Original crackers, some Cheerios, almonds, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, etc..

Daisy sour cream is all right to eat, by the way, but most other brands have something or other in them that’s not, so you have to watch everything and read ingredients until you know what brand has sugar and what doesn’t. Hot dogs in the Sam’s club snack bar must have sugar, as I’ve eaten them cut up with no bread or sauces, and STILL my blood sugar was very high hours later. Who’d have guessed?

There’s books on eating sugar- free at the library, but if you get one that pushes sugar substitutes, avoid it. I ate Splenda for awhile a few years back before I had blood sugar problems, because my husband’s doctor suggested it for him. Within a few days, my legs were jerking and extremely uncomfortable, and the doctor said I had become a diabetic with blood sugar around 400 and had diabetic neuropathy. He prescribed various meds to reduce the blood sugar but nothing worked. I was very frightened, because it came on me so suddenly!

After reading on the internet for hours, I found only ONE MAN who mentioned that it could be Splenda. I stopped eating the Splenda and within two days, my blood sugar was normal and the jerking legs stopped. Splenda may be safe, but I’ve read that it’s the method to produce it that’s not safe and leaves substances that cause some of us problems. Personally, I’d not use Splenda or Nutrasweet or any other substitute for any thing, so I do not in any way suggest any of you switch to sugar substitutes. If you keep up your addiction to sweet tasting things, it’ll only make it harder for you to stay off real sugar, too. By eating un-processed natural fruits and vegetables and lean meats, you’ll start to appreciate their flavors as your sugar-killed taste buds revive.

In fact, within a week of not using sugar, you’ve already mostly begun to break the addiction to it, and within a month, natural foods taste way sweeter than you could imagine. A banana will taste like candy to you, and some fruits taste so sweet you’ll hardly want to eat them as they taste too sweet. After about six months of doing without sugar, I really don’t crave it at all and can walk away from it. At one time, if there were a pan of rice crispy treats on our counter, they’d be gone overnight, no matter how many there were. Recently, my husband bought a package of them, and I never opened a single one, even after they were here for weeks.

The real trick is to get your friends to stop wanting you to ‘have just this one cookie, after all, one can’t hurt you’, because…well…YES IT CAN! Ask an alcoholic if they can have one drink and not go back to drinking, or someone who has used drugs if they can just have some occasionally. Our bodies are not made that way. If you have a belly, chances are, sugar affects you negatively. After losing so much of my belly, I thought I could have a little dark chocolate for my birthday this week. I ate perhaps 4 small squares of it, and I ate a very tiny square of cake when we ate out. By today, I had gained a couple of pounds. That little bit of sugar didn’t make the weight gain, it made the blood sugar spike that caused the hormone in my body that made everything ELSE I ATE go to the weight gain.

Knowing what I know now, I’ll take it off in a few days, but it takes longer to take off than to put on, so I’ll not plan on having anything else again with any sugar in it, probably until my NEXT birthday when, hopefully, I’ll have lost enough weight to not worry about gaining a small amount. To tell the truth, the candy and cake didn’t taste nearly as good as I thought they would, it was just my birthday and in my MIND, I wanted something. Looking back, I’d have been happier if I’d not eaten either, especially since my sleep has been disrupted also.

Just remember, do this only if your health permits you to make any changes. I doubt your doctor would advise many of you to keep eating sugar, BUT in case you have some unusual health issue where you need to eat it, check with your doctor first before making any changes, as always. You don’t want to have blood sugar that’s TOO low, so eating small regular meals and snacks seems to be what’s helped me stay stable.

Is there anything that could convince me to go back to eating sugar? Let’s see, do I want to see that big belly come back and move back up two jeans sizes? Um..no…nor do I want to see my arms and legs with bruises from every bump into something, nor do I want to see the dark circles under my eyes again, or have to slather on makeup to go anywhere because my skin looks bad. I certainly don’t want to go back to wondering how high my cancer antigen tests will be at the next oncologist’s visit, because I’m pretty sure that they’ll continue to drop as inflammation caused by the sugar continues to drop.

Though my fingers are still stiff in the mornings from years of damage from arthritis, they no longer hurt, and I know the drop in inflammation has helped that tremendously. My only wish is that I’d done this years ago. Yes, I’d heard that sugar was bad for you, but like many others, I thought that since I didn’t eat MUCH of it, I was safe enough. Who knew back then that ANY sugar can be bad for you?

Perhaps people were saying it, but it wasn’t sinking in with me for anything other than to lose weight. I’d even been on a low-sugar diet years ago, and had lost weight. My husband had stopped drinking colas and lost over 50 pounds in one year with no other change than that. Now he drinks water, as do I, and we carry bottles of cold water with us everywhere in the car, so we’re not so tempted by sodas for fruit juice or sweetened tea.

After saying all this, I’m sure most will ignore it, but there will be a few people who MIGHT want to try it, though in my experience, until you’ve lived it, most won’t believe this stuff is really possible. I didn’t believe it until it happened to me and couldn’t be explained in any other way. If any of you are going to try giving up sugar to see what will happen, I’d love to hear from you and also hear how much you accomplish and if any of it happens close to my own time line. If one person can relieve even a few of their health issues, or even one person can lower their chances of getting cancer again, this long afternoon of typing will have been worth it. I know that for me, not having to take meds anymore is well worth it…but, I’m almost ashamed to admit it, I’d have done it to get back into the smaller jeans again, too, lol… Size 14’s may seem very large to some of you who have smaller body types, but I’m almost 6 ft. tall, so on me, they’re not all that large. The size 18’s looked HUGE to me, though, and I don’t want to go back. In fact, I’m loving being able to try on size Medium tops now instead of always looking for the 2x ones to accommodate the huge belly!

Also, please don’t send me advice to further my weight loss by eating ‘low fat’ and telling me how bad my diet is for me. Keep in mind that until I started eating like this, I ate that way and my cholesterol was awful, and now it’s fine. I have a great many friends and acquaintances who continue to tell me how to best lose weight, and so far, I don’t see them losing OR keeping off any weight. Though I appreciate the good sentiments, I’m not going back to that way of eating. Ever.

I understand where they’re coming from, as I too was brainwashed by all the media (particularly advertisers of low-fat foods) has pushed on us about eating low fat. If you think back, those of you who are of my age or greater, before tv dinners and heavily processed foods came along with so much sugar put in to help preserve things, you’d hardly see one overweight person among a large roomful. Everyone ate regular butter and cheese and drank whole milk back then, but didn't seem to have any ill effects from it. My grandmother lived into her late 90's and she even ate bacon grease on her biscuits every morning. Everyone in her family ate high fat, and all lived to ripe old ages. In fact, most are still alive and going strong.

After we started eating frozen dinners with lots of preservatives back in the 60's especially, and living on fast foods that have so much sugar and preservatives that we never would dream are in them, we became a nation of people who are mostly overweight and there are very few of a healthy weight. When the medical community decided our diet of high fat foods was the culprit, we were all brain-washed into believing their mantra of eating low-fat because it sounded reasonable, and we WANTED it to be true.

Turns out, they were wrong, and even in the past few months I’ve seen study after study that disproved the old theories. People who truly did eat healthy whole foods have tried to tell us this for years and did we listen? Nope..because the mainstream media was telling us otherwise, in every advertisement. Only when this point was proved to me in my own body, did I finally ‘get it’. After all, I didn’t make this change to lose weight, I did it to get my blood sugar down. Period. All the many other good side effects were just happy extras, as far as I was concerned, at first.

Wishing every one of you a happy new year, and hoping that you find something that makes you feel as good as this has done for me. Thanks for taking the time to read all this, and understanding that I’m not trying to ‘preach’ good eating habits at you, just am taking the chance that some of you may be ready to hear it at this time of yearly resolutions, and maybe some will benefit from hearing from another breast cancer survivor who also thought she’d never be able to make such a change in her health again. Yes, you can, I did, and trust me, I’m the weakest person in the world when it comes to ‘dieting’, and I can’t do it. However, not eating sugar? Simple, elegantly simple, and easy to remember. One day at a time, and it just gets easier and easier. :^)

Did you have a nice trip? Grrrrr....

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:41:09 +0100

About a week ago, I had a really bad fall while going into a pharmacy. As you can imagine, I haven't felt just the best since then, so I've not updated the story about my frustration with the new bra and forms, but I will in just a moment. To first answer your question about the 'trip', lol... because that's what everyone asks...I'm fine, ended up alright. I fell forward, eyeglasses came halfway off and twisted upward before my face arrived at the concrete, so a screw cover tore the skin under my eye and the lower lens gave me a purple under-eye, plus I also had scratched up wrist/palms, a bloody knee, bruised lower ribs, etc... On the good side, I was wearing my microbead forms instead of silicone which would have surely burst open on contact with the sharply uneven rocky concrete, and the microbead ones not only survived but broke my fall just enough to keep my ribs intact, plus my nose didn't hit the concrete. Yay!

If my glasses hadn't flown off, I'd have been fine. As it is, my new eyeglasses are bent to smithereens and the left lens scratched deeply, but that's only a material thing. Didn't lose an eye, only will have a few small scars for awhile. The doc just cleaned me up and put band-aids loosely over everything, so I kept bleeding every time I'd move, for about the next 6 hours until I took everything off, pulled together the loose flaps of skin, dabbed on antibiotic ointment, and taped over the flaps snugly with paper surgical tape. It worked fine, the skin joined and grew back quickly then. Knowing patternmaking was a boon, as I cut darts into the paper tape and shaped it over my rounded swollen cheek and around my knee, or else I'm pretty sure I'd have healed looking like Frankenstein. Moral to that story? Most of the time, it's better to just do it yourself, once you're sure you haven't broken anything, sigh....

And now for the rest of the story on the new bra and silicone forms. Good news! Fixed! First, I looked over every website bra size calculator out there and got a different size bra every time, so I certainly don't blame my mastectomy fitter for giving me the wrong size bra the first trip, it probably SHOULD have been the right size for the large size 12 forms. But, that's the bra that stretched, expanded, and drooped, after wearing for several hours. After another trip to the fitter, we tried to get something small enough to hold the forms in a more structured way, and ended up with a size 40 band, and a D cup, instead of a 44 band with a D cup, which surprised us both by working perfectly. Might be half an inch too tight, but any larger size was too large and didn't hold the form properly. Of course, the silicone forms STILL are too painful to wear for everyday use, so I made a pair of microbead forms to fit that smaller bra.

By moving to a larger size bustline, more like what I had years ago before surgery, I've learned something important about the microbead forms as well as the silicone forms. If you want a very full looking bustline to fill your current bra, whether with microbead forms or silicone, get the next form size up. If you want a typical lower, less noticeable perkiness, the bustline we all naturally would have gotten with age, then go with the forms MEANT to fit that size bra, making sure that your band size is snug if measuring for silicone.

For an example with microbeads, my XXL forms fit the 40D bra well, same as shown in the size chart on my website, but they also look good even in my old 42B, though they pull it away from the body a little too much at the top in a B cup. I guess what I'm saying is this...and this mostly goes for sizes 2X and above... my microbeads are more likely to feel as if they run small because most of us who were D cups and up to start with before our surgeries, don't feel the same 'bustiness' with forms that merely fit inside the bra cup. Our bodies were used to a lot more bulge. Sizes that only 'fit', are going to feel too small in some bra cup styles, particularly if your band size is actually a little bit too big for your body.

I've always made forms to fit inside the cups of all sizes of bras, and since almost everyone was happy with them staying inside the cups, that was fine. Now I'm thinking that probably ladies XXL and up may want to order the next size up in order to better fill their cups and feel more natural. Occasionally, with size 3X to 5X, people would say they didn't fill the cup enough, but then some people in the same size range said the forms were too large, so I left them at the average to fill those sizes.

As always, this stuff depends on whether you truly have the right size bra for your ribcage, when set at the tightest hooks...and the right size cup, and the average size indentations from mastectomy...sigh...there's no 'one size fits all', even when I am making ten different form sizes. So, you larger sizes out there who are like me, learn from me, lol... if you really want to be full-sized again up top, you may end up needing bigger forms, because though microbeads are very forgiving for size variations on sizes XL and below, differences can be more noticeable in XXL and above, especially if your bra band is a touch too large.

I'm SOOOO frustrated...

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 02:05:26 +0100

Bet you thought I had all the answers after over 5 years of dealing with mastectomy, right? Nope, still studying, still inventing, and once everything finally works, things change and I have to start over. Though, for the last few years, I had it down pat with my bra size and style, form size, etc... UNTIL deciding that I'm finally ready to go back to the larger bust size I had before mastectomy. Easy, right? Not so much.

Right after the bilateral mastectomy surgery, I chose to be a smaller size than I'd been before, to reduce the weight on my shoulders. The smaller size forms looked alright, but for my height and body shape, the C cup I'd chosen to fill was really a little bit small. When I gained weight after chemo, it'd gone down to a B cup in the next set of bras, because when bodies get wider, fake breasts don't gain any weight, so you go up a band size, go down a cup size. Sigh....

After accepting that I'll never again be the thin size I was until my late 30's and a B cup just didn't do it for me at 55, especially since I'm close to 6 ft. tall, I went to my mastectomy fitter last week for new silicone forms and new bras, thinking that maybe by NOW, forms would be lighter-weight and bra styles would fit better. No, and no. Not for us 'bigger girls' anyway.

Oh they LOOKED spectacular! Really, they did, in the fitting room. For the rest of the day while doing errands, I was enjoying the warmth and feel of them instead of the cooler microbead forms I normally wear. Having that natural fluid 'swing' feeling of breasts when you walk, is something you don't really have with microbead forms. However, as a few hours passed, I noticed how tired I was getting, and things didn't seem to be fitting so well. I felt, well...floppy...and when I got home, I realized why. My beautiful new larger cup bra was caving in, rolling over, sliding around, and now looked pretty awful.

The new style of teardrop shaped silicone forms I had been so excited about, were turning sideways from their own weight. When I took it all off, the agony started! I'd forgotten how silicone pushes against the nerves enough to sort of deaden the pain they're causing. My underarm on the side where lymph nodes were removed, continued to hurt all night and was still hurting the next day. For the last few days, I've gone back to my old bras with my old microbead forms, and sulked.

Today, I made a pair of microbead forms in the new size, and decided it was time to start to work on making this new size work. It was after completing them that I realized that the new bras were a little too large in the band, and there was WAY too much fabric in front around the edge of the cups, so that's why the silicone form had crawled around. The fabric used as a mastectomy pocket was a cottony feeling loose stuff that did nothing to hold the form in place, either. After it's worn awhile, that fabric just becomes a perspiration-dampened wrinkly overstretched mess. Just goes to show, that bra manufacturers STILL don't have a CLUE about what kind of materials to use in their bras.

First of all, have you noticed how in advertising the cottony fabrics are called 'absorbent' as if that's a good thing? It's absorbent all right, and never dries out while you're wearing it scrunched up behind your mastectomy form. Swimsuit spandex fabric dries out at least, and doesn't 'grow' with dampness the way stretchy blends with cotton does, that's why the spandex stuff is used in swimsuits, it dries fast when we get out of the water and doesn't stretch out of shape. Sheesh....

To make this bra work, I'll have to cut a triangular shape from the sides to reshape it so the new teardrop shaped silicone form won't have room to turn sideways, and remove about 3/4 inch of fabric from underneath the cup, next to the band, so it'll support the form better, and then cut out the useless cottony pocket fabric and replace it with a heavy-duty spandex swimsuit fabric, and THEN, the bra should look right and might possibly hold the silicone forms to wear occasionally to church or for special occasions that only last two, maybe three hours, without suffering any lasting pain. It should work out fine for the microbead forms after that, as well.

None of this is my mastectomy fitter's fault, they don't make the bras, or the forms, all they can do is fit us as we stand in their shops with what's available on the market to fit the average person. It all fit and looked great IN THE SHOP! It only started collapsing with perspiration and an afternoon of reaching, stretching, etc... while shopping, and entering and exiting the car, etc... Since I've already worn and washed the bra, and know what to do with it to fix it, I'm keeping it, but it made me SOOOO frustrated that I just wanted to tell somebody! It occurred to me that as frustrated as I am with the situation, those of you who don't sew, are probably even more frustrated when this same thing happens to you.

It makes me wonder what everyone else does, and if they feel as down as I do when it seems so impossible to get something that fits and wears well? Although I now offer ten different sizes of microbead forms that can help relieve some of your PAIN from silicone forms, what do you do when you've gotten bras that are just not shaped right to HOLD forms correctly?

I mean, my old bras (that fit so well) were from the SAME COMPANY that made these new bras, in the same cup style, but when they sized their patterns for the cups upward, they just drafted the pattern up without considering that when a plus-sized person who's had mastectomy doesn't go up proportionally around the chest the same way as a plus-sized person who hasn't had mastectomy. I'm betting that a lot of you who wear 2X and up have found the same problems.

Maybe I'd not have realized what the problem was either, if I hadn't recently read a fitting textbook (written by a former Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.) teacher) for plus sizes that mentioned that clothing patterns couldn't just be drafted larger and fit well, like the retail garment manufacturer's do. After all, our shoulders don't get wider when we gain weight, so if the size of the pattern is just enlarged incrementally all over to fit our larger bustlines and waistlines, then the shoulders get wider and wider. Sound familiar? How often do you buy clothing larger enough in the waist and bust, only to find that the shoulder seam hangs half way down to your elbow instead of sitting at the top of your shoulder where it should?

Makes me wish I were younger, I'd have loved to go into manufacturing clothing that really did fit plus sizes, and that includes taller people, AND those of us who've had mastectomy in particular. When I was what everyone called 'skinny as a bone', I still wore a size 12 to 14 because I am so tall, that's what it took proportionally. I might have LOOKED bony, but, well, tall and bony, lol...so I even THEN had to remake some garments... and now, let's just say I'm NOT bony! When trying on clothing off the rack, most often I just put it back and walk away, feeling disheartened and frumpy.

Anyway, don't give up, I'm not! For those of you who sew, I plan to put a photo-tutorial up at some point when I cut up this mastectomy bra and remake it. Maybe it'll help some of you who, like me, are not bony teenagers anymore, but would still like to look good while wearing your mastectomy bras. Especially for those of you who are 3X to 5X and have bought my microbead forms before, I hope your bra styles have worked with them better than mine worked with either my new silicone forms or my microrbead forms today.

Even if you don't want to take bras apart to remake the cups to fit better, just pull up the fabric in those pockets in the back and hand stitch a big wrinkle in them to make what's left fit flat against your body, and that'll do a lot to make your cup sizes fill out forward better with the microbeads. Won't totally fix it for silicone forms though, sorry.... those things will still wallow around from their own weight.

Thanks for listening...and I'll now quit feeling sorry for myself, lol... Time for me to 'get over it' and go back to finding workable solutions of some sort. After all, most problems can eventually be fixed somehow, given enough time and effort, and tomorrow is a new day!

Wow!!! Remember that new Brother SE400? JUST saw it on SALE

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 04:09:27 +0100

It took me years to decide to invest in the sewing and embroidery machine I told you about recently here, on the 'Can you believe it's almost summer?' post. It's the one I bought on Amazon with my yard sale money, and paid significantly more than I just now saw it on sale for. If anyone is even THINKING about wanting an embroidery machine that also sews really great, go check it out on Amazon. I just now saw it for $339 with FREE SHIPPING... I've seen this same machine at Walmart in our town a week ago for $398, and with taxes it'd have been way more. On Amazon,I've never been charged sales tax on things I bought through them online,so $338 is what you'd actually pay, just make sure to buy the one that says 'free super saver shipping'... Here's a link I just now copied, hope it works:
http://www.amazon.com/Brother-SE400-Computerized-Embroidery-Machine/dp/B003AVMZA4/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

Amazon changes prices from time to time, I'd watched this machine go up and down for years. Don't know what it depends on, maybe the economy or the off season, and I'm hoping the price will still be the same when you get there, but as of today, right this minute, it's there! I use this same machine now almost every day and am totally spoiled by it as a sewing machine. Thought I wanted an embroidery machine mostly, but hey, I make these microbead breast forms for people often enough that this machine has proven itself to me in dependability and ease of use, even on difficult-to-sew fabric.

If you've ever priced true embroidery machines, you know they usually cost thousands of dollars, so most people think this more inexpensive one couldn't possibly do the job, but they're wrong. I have embroidered a few things and it was so easy and came out so pretty. You can buy and download designs, or find them for free sometimes on various websites. I am hoping to embroider on things more often when I can get enough colors of embroidery thread, but most of my money goes to skin-tone thread for sewing microbead forms... maybe another yard sale will happen in the fall to stock up with more of those gorgeous shiny spools of machine embroidery thread that keep calling my name when I walk past them at the craft store, lol... What? Thread doesn't speak to YOU? Poor dear... :^)

Although...well... I really really really DROOL over the Brother serger at Amazon for $194 now, oh what I could do with that machine! My ancient sergers, three of them, each only do one thing well, so each one sits there until it's needed for it's job. I'd SO love to have ONE new one that would do it all well, to take the place of the old ones that I bought at various estate and yard sales, so there'd be more room to actually SEW. Someday! Should I break it to hubby that he'll need to help me with ANOTHER yard sale in a few months when it's cooler? Will have to search for things that need to go, he'll be glad if I discard more odds and ends probably. :^)

Amazon? Are you listening? How about a Brother serger sale, come on!