Category Archives: Health

2025 AFSP Manhattan Out of the Darkness Walk at Pier 16/17 Seaport

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The AFSP Manhattan Out of the Darkness walk was rescheduled to today given that the original date of October 12 had stormy weather with flood advisories. Out of the twelve years that I’ve participated and fundraised, it’s the first year I’ve been on the Walk committee, and the first year I’ve actually volunteered to help with setup in preparation. I arrived at around 9am to help set up tents and stations. Chris and Pookster arrived once her swim class had completed, and my friend and her boyfriend, who also joined my team, came to the walk to support me and also support suicide prevention in general. My friend had a suicide attempt in her high school years that resulted in a days-long hospitalization. My friend’s boyfriend’s dad died from suicide when he was just a teenager. So suicide and mental health are very painfully relevant topics for both of them. My team was asked to lead the walk, so we kicked it off this year.

The walk turnout felt lighter this year, but I still think that overall, things ran much smoother than they did at last year’s. We were able to work out some of last year’s kinks. In addition, we tried to be more community oriented by calling out individuals and teams for walking with us for various numbers of years.

Volunteering for any nonprofit can be pretty taxing, frustrating, and time-consuming, not to mention insanely (but understandably) fundraising and money obsessed. But I felt happy and proud to finally be a part of the Walk committee, to get to know some of the committee members, and to also get to know our executive director more personally. I appreciated the opportunity to represent AFSP NYC on CBS News twice; it was definitely the highlight of participating on the Walk committee this year. New experiences like that are always exciting and fun, plus they test me in different ways and help keep me on my toes. It’s been a valuable experience, and maybe I will actually continue to be on the committee next year.

Overnight potty training, part II

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Luckily after sleeping almost 11 hours, I woke up this morning and actually felt much, much better. Though I didn’t have any real body aches, I did have an on-and-off headache yesterday, so I was happy to feel that it was all gone, and my phlegm and cough had subsided quite greatly.

In the last number of days, I checked my Oh Crap! potty training book, and I realized that given Kaia has been staying dry each night for about over a month now, we’re now ready to move to stage 2 of overnight training, which is instead of waking up at two different intervals at night, we will consolidate to one wakeup. We used to wake up at around 11:30 and then 2:30. Now, we will wake up just once, at around 12:30, and then just pray that she holds it until she wakes up to pee. This also means that both of us no longer need to wake up each night, that we’ll now alternate nights.

“It’s like we’re back to the night nanny days, on nights and off nights!” Chris declared, laughing.

We have now had four nights of waking Kaia up at 12:30 to dream pee, and so far, so good. She has a bigger pee at that time, and then when she wakes up between 6:30-7, she has a wake-up time pee. Now, all we have to do is get her to wake up on her own to pee. How are we supposed to do that?

Another year, another sickness

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The most amazing things about years 2020 and 2021 are that I never got sick, even a single time. In 2020, I was isolated from pretty much the entire world, so who was going to get me sick? In 2021, we were technically still in COVID times, but I was still fairly isolated. Then I got pregnant and had Kaia. And I was still in the clear. Then 2022 came and the world was open and free again. Chris went to Chicago for a big work conference, came back and gave baby Kaia and me COVID. My milk supply (temporarily, thank God) plummeted for those days, and I still remember every pumping session was painful and so sweaty that I had to change my top and air out my pumping bras each time. After he got back, he learned that over a dozen of his colleagues went home with COVID. He never tested positive, so he annoyingly claims, to this day, that since he never tested himself, he never had it.

In early 2023, Kaia caught Hand Food Mouth from a friend in the play room, and then gave ME my first case of HFM. I had it worse than she did. In the spring of that year, she got sick, and I got really sick, too, AGAIN: I was sick on and off for at least a month. I was so miserable, with my violent coughing fits. I went to see a primary care physician, a respiratory specialist, and even a gastroenterologist just in case. I took lung capacity tests and even a scan of my lungs for anything potentially more serious (all came back negative for problems). No one could give me any answers for why I was having these coughing fits. I still don’t know why I get them now.

Then memorably in November 2024, so about a year ago, I got a peritonsillar abscess as a result of getting hit by two rare strains of first the flu, and THEN strep throat. Because both hit me at the same time, an abscess developed on my left tonsil about three times the size of a quarter. Ever since that happened, I told myself I seriously needed to isolate myself and stay the hell away from anyone remotely sick. Although I am not sick anywhere as often as my colleagues who have young children, when I do get sick, I get REALLY sick, and I hate being nonfunctional. Inefficiency is one of the things that pisses me off the most.

About two weeks ago, I could feel a sore throat coming on. I did all the things I was recommended: daily salt gargle, daily evening nasal saline rinse, all the ginger-lemon tea. I even added a few TCM teas into the mix, like apple-fig-apricot kernel and ginger-aged tangerine peel-honey. While I clearly had a cold because I had some congestion and a cough, I was fully functional for the last week and a half. I did everything I’d originally planned to do and worked every day. I just skipped a few mornings at the gym. It felt like a standard, mild cold. I could deal with that. Then, we had two friends over for lunch on Sunday. I thought I’d wake up Monday morning being 100 percent. No, I did not: I woke up with a scratchier throat, a sharper cough, and more phlegm than I’d had the previous week. I had no idea what was going on. Today, I basically moved any meeting where I had to speak a lot, or joined meetings camera-off when I could, because my cough and phlegm were so bad. Chris got me some soup, and I increased my hot liquid intake and took a long, steamy shower.

I keep maniacally checking my uvula to ensure it hasn’t deviated. It has not, fingers crossed. I also keep checking to see if I have any weird spots in my throat. I just want to be a regular person who gets a minor cold and then it goes away. Why is that so much to ask? In my twenties, I almost never took real “sick leave” because my colds were so minor that I’d just sleep them off. Now into my late thirties, it’s as though my body says, nah, you can’t have it easy anymore! Now, you have to suffer because you’re getting older and you have a child, muah hahaha!

Kaia tried to wake me up earlier than I wanted this morning, and I told her to be nice to mama because she’s not feeling well. She pat me on the head and said, “Mama, why are you sick?”

“That’s a good question, Pookie,” I said back to her. “Why am I sick? Is it because of you?!”

First dermatologist visit and full body skin cancer screening

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After almost forty years of existence, I finally decided to schedule a dermatology appointment for a full body skin cancer screening. For many years, I wrongly assumed that you needed a specialist referral from a primary care provider for a “skin problem” to see a dermatologist. Then about two years ago, my doctor told me that I should actually see a dermatologist every year for skin cancer screening, and that it’s covered by pretty much every insurance — no referral needed. After trying and failing to make appointments at several derm offices that were in very high demand, I decided to go the ZocDoc route and find someone who got decent reviews and was semi close by. And so the appointment happened today.

It was pretty straightforward. I came in, confirmed the reason for my appointment, and then an assistant noted anything of concern or any spots you may want to have extra special attention looked at. Then, I undressed completely except for my underwear and put a fun gown on. The doctor came in and greeted me, asked me a few questions, and then proceeded to go section by section of my body, looking for any potential scary spots. The good news is that she said my skin looked great — I didn’t have any spots of concern. She was pleased to hear that I wore a hat and wore sunscreen every day (even inside, really). She did note a few freckles and sun spots I developed, especially the ones I pointed out to her on my face. We talked about potentially using a prescription grade 20% azelaic acid cream to lighten them. She emphasized sunblock and reapplication, plus covering up/wearing hats when outside. And given I knew it could be possible that insurance would cover a prescription grade retinol (and I am almost 40!), I decided it wouldn’t hurt to ask and spin it as, “Can retinol help with fading sun spots?” She said that it would help pretty dramatically and asked if I’d be interested in Tretinoin, the prescription retinol. She divulged that it is typically covered by insurance if you state it’s for the treatment of acne. “You do get the occasional pimple, right?” she winked at me. “Everyone does!” And then she quickly wrote me prescriptions for both the Tretinoin and the azelaic acid cream. She also told me that I had to be patient and consistent; I’d likely see changes over the course of three to four months. I could do that.

Within the hour, I got a text notification that my health insurance approved the Tretinoin, no problem. The azelaic acid cream was denied, though. Wahhh. So I will see how much it costs out of pocket vs. other methods and go from there. This is pretty exciting, though, to get a heavily subsidized prescription grade retinol for the first time. I am wondering if it will live up to the hype I read about in mom groups that it “changes your life” and skin completely!

Granola vs. muesli vs. Bircher muesli

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Many many moons ago, or about 13 years ago, Chris was trying to get me up to speed on differences in food and speech between Australian and American culture. One of the things he taught me at the time, which I have since realized is factually incorrect, is that what Americans call “granola,” Australians and British people call “muesli.” Initially, given I had no reason to think he was wrong, I believed him. But then when going down the grocery aisle at a Cole’s or Woolworth’s in Australia, I thought it was odd that all the things labeled “muesli” just looked like a bunch of raw oats with some nuts and dried fruit mixed in. There’s no way that Australians actually ate raw oats on the regular, right? The body doesn’t digest raw oats as easily as cooked oats, so this just seemed odd to me.

My suspicions were later confirmed. As ChatGPT sums it up, these are the key differences between granola and muesli: At a high level, granola is baked, crunchy, and sweet. Muesli is raw, softer, and less sweet. They are not the same thing.

In more detail: granola is baked and made crunchy with oil and sweeteners like maple syrup or honey. People like me who enjoy (homemade) granola love the large crunchy chunks or clusters. There’s pretty much always some combination of oats, nuts and seeds in it. And it’s usually eaten with yogurt or milk in cereal. Sometimes, you can even just snack on it by hand as you would chips. Muesli, on the other hand, is always raw, soft/chewy when soaked with a loose texture, with little to no added sugar. The base is usually a combination of oats, nuts, seeds, and dried fruit. Muesli usually soaked overnight in milk/yogurt and eaten cold.

The concept of muesli comes from Bircher muesli, which was first created in Switzerland by Dr. Bircher-Benner. Bircher muesli has a lot in common with overnight oats, but tends to be heavier the emphasis on adding nuts, seeds, dried fruit, and also including yogurt (and sometimes even sweetened condensed milk!) for added creaminess and mouthfeel. During the pandemic, I ate a lot of overnight oats, but I eventually got bored of it. When I thought about eating a little breakfast on weekdays again in the last month (I normally don’t eat breakfast on weekdays), I thought about a Bircher muesli recipe I found on the Wall Street Journal (never thought I’d get a recipe recommendation from there!) that sounded good. I changed it up a bit and made a big batch for breakfast this week. And it was really satisfying and definitely kept me quite full and satisfied. This is what the base looks like (for 6-8 servings). The base is soaked overnight to allow the oats to “cook”:

1 C rolled oats
1/4 C unsweetened coconut flakes
1/2 C raw cashews, chopped, toasted
1/2 C raw almonds, chopped, toasted

1/4 C pumpkin seeds, toasted
1/4 C ground flaxseeds
1/4 C chia seeds
6 Medjool dates, pitted and diced
1/4 C raisins or dried cranberries/cherries
1 Tbsp honey
3.5 C cow, almond, or oat milk
1 C whole milk yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
 
To add right before serving:
2 firm pears, cored and shredded with skin on
Fresh fruit, such as blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, or sliced plums

The ingredient I remember I’ve neglected for a while has been chia seeds. I’ve had a weird relationship with chia seeds. Lots of people love to add them to smoothies, but I absolutely hate them in smoothies. They stick to and expand in liquid, and they get physically stuck in everything: blender jar, blades, the sides of the kitchen sink, MY MOUTH. But I realize that in Bircher muesli, they are perfect because they create a pudding-like consistency when mixed with yogurt and milk. I’m definitely going to keep making this. Though I’ll be honest and reveal that I do something a bit sacrilege with my Bircher muesli: I do not eat it cold the way you are supposed to, as I hate cold oats. I always warm my bowl up a little.

Cooking with chanterelles – an autumn luxury and privilege

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I love mushrooms. They are one of my favorite foods on earth. The more irregular and funny looking they are, the more likely I am enamored by them and just want to find ways to cook with them and get them in my belly. Over the years, I’ve had so many delicious varieties of mushrooms. In Asian cooking, shiitake and enoki mushrooms are extremely common. Since graduating from college, I’ve been buying king oyster and trumpet mushrooms more regularly. And while I am obsessed with morel mushrooms, they are almost impossible to find…and when you do, quite cost prohibitive.

One mushroom that had remained on the “out of reach” list for ages were chanterelles, a rare, delicate, and difficult to cultivate mushroom. They cannot be commercially cultivated and can only be grown wild, thriving on tree roots. Chanterelle mushrooms form symbiotic, mycorrhizal relationships with tree roots in a way that is so complex that humans still have not figured out how to reproduce this in a controlled farm environment. And thus, every chanterelle mushroom anyone buys has been foraged by hand in the wild and not farmed. They also have a very short season that is usually late summer to fall, and their yield heavily depends on rainfall, temperature, and soil quality being at optimal levels.

Given this, it’s been pretty usual that if I go to Whole Foods or a fancier grocery store (regular grocery stores will rarely have chanterelles!) around September to October each year that I will see chanterelles being sold for anywhere from $28-50 per pound. While I have loved them and have enjoyed them in a couple tasting menus we’d indulged in, I never had the pleasure of cooking with them myself until during the pandemic. In 2020, we spotted them at a Costco for about $12-13/pound, and I obviously pounced on it. And then once again during our Costco trip this past Sunday, I got two pounds of them for the same cost. Sure, they’re expensive and are priced like fancy meat even at this far-cheaper price, but to me, chanterelles are worth it as a rare autumn treat.

Today, I made my chanterelles two ways: I seared and tossed them into a cashew-cream based sauce with short pasta, along with cannellini beans and baby bella mushrooms for extra protein and mushroominess; and for something I hadn’t previously done but wanted to do, I seared them and tossed fresh green herbs into them, adding them atop crusty Breadivore bordelaise sourdough and a generous pat of salted French butter. It was simple, delicious goodness. But once I finished cooking my two pounds of chanterelles down and looked at my final dishes, I looked down and sadly noted how much they shrank down in volume, just like all my greens, into just a teeny tiny fraction of what I originally started with. This is often why when people ask me how I can possibly eat all of <name whatever squash, vegetable, bag of greens at Costco>, I tell them that it always cooks down to far, far less than what you’d think. So while it looks like we bought a lot, we”ll likely get through it in just two meals each!

CBS News New York Livestream covering the AFSP Out of the Darkness Manhattan walk this Sunday

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After the live segment the AFSP Manhattan walk co-chair and I did on Saturday, we were informed yesterday that they’d like us to come back for the CBS News New York live stream. It was a bit chaotic in the last 24 hours because the date and time of recording kept changing; we weren’t sure if it was going to be filmed today or Friday. Plus, the volunteer manager and I (the ones who were asked this time) both have day jobs obviously, so we had to coordinate our work schedules on top of the changing filming schedule.

I arrived at the CBS Studio at 9:45 this morning and waited for our volunteer manager to arrive. When he did, we noticed that they had just sent the interview questions about thirty minutes before. And when we finally started recording at 10:15, I realized that the questions were not exactly what was shared. I was a bit thrown off and stumbled a little bit during one of my answers, but eventually picked myself up and kept speaking. I kept thinking to myself after: how funny it is that during the live segment, I spoke fairly well, yet during the pre-recorded taped segment, I stumbled! That was so annoying to me. We were reassured that because this was being taped and not airing live, we didn’t need to worry about any stumbles, that they would cut/edit it so we all looked and sounded good.

When we finished our segment, the director stopped filming. Cindy Hsu, the news anchor who interviewed us, is also on the board of AFSP, and she was really great to work with. She was warm and friendly as soon as we got on the stage. We made some small talk before and after about AFSP and our families. She took photos with us and also did a cute little social media video for each of us on her phone.

CBS News would also be present at the walk on Sunday, likely interviewing AFSP volunteers and participants every hour starting at 9am, and our executive director asked that I also speak with them there. I figure that will be a lot more ad hoc and casual since it will be at the event, and so I don’t have any pressure to look or feel polished. All in all, both TV experiences this week were completely unexpected a month ago, and it was a fun way to mix up my usual week to week routine. Now, I can always look back on this and say that I was on live and pre-recorded TV!

Unexpected customer news today

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Some colleagues and I had a scheduled call this morning with a customer we hadn’t heard from in months. We had tried reaching out countless times to get a meeting on the calendar with them since April, to no avail. Finally, they agreed to this meeting today, so we spent a lot of time thinking about what we’d add to the agenda. Then, when our executive contact came on, she slowly spoke and revealed that they’d unlikely be renewing our contract when we reached the end date in the spring because they had not seen much a return on any of their e-learning providers and needed to rethink their strategy for internal upskilling. And in the same breath, she revealed that she had stage 4 cancer and would not be around for much longer. She would try to make all our scheduled meetings and respond to our messages, but if she did not, she reassured us that she was not ignoring us; she was simply prioritizing her health, or… she just wasn’t around anymore. She also said she’d try to remember putting up an out-of-office auto reply.

I wasn’t even sure what to say. All of us froze on the call, and the customer kept talking business. So that’s the direction the call went. But it just such sad, unexpected news. I didn’t even know she had any health problems. Plus, for her to talk about not renewing the contract and having stage 4 cancer in almost the same sentence was just completely baffling to me. Plus, the fact that she was reassuring us that she wasn’t ignoring us in the midst of everything she’s going through personally… I was just rendered speechless.

Life is short. None of us knows what is going to happen next. Death is just waiting to take all of us away.

CBS New York Live – AFSP NYC Walk

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At 9:55 sharp, I checked into CBS’s studio just 3.5 blocks away. And at 10:25am, we filmed for five minutes – no cuts, all live. And this was how it turned out. It was a good thing the AFSP ED asked me to prepare a “why” statement a few days in advance because that statement ended up being what I mentally referenced when I was on the stage speaking.

After checking in at the front desk of CBS News, an assistant escorted us up an elevator and through a maze of long, seemingly endless wide hallways with exposed wires of endless colors. It really felt like those “behind the scenes” shots where you see performers go down long hallways before getting on stage. After what seemed like ages, we finally got to a “waiting room” where there was a lit up sign that said “ON AIR.” Signs everywhere said to keep our voices down. The producer came out to briefly introduce himself, told us that the hosts would ask us these several questions (never shared with us ahead of time, but hey, this is live TV!), and then asked which of us would answer what question. He said everything was already behind schedule, apologized for his brevity and the fact that everything felt rushed, and then got each of our lapel mics set up on us. He tested the mics and made sure they looked good on us without having wiring exposed oddly (my dress was particularly annoying, for some reason…), and then said he’d be back in about two minutes to get us.

Just minutes later, we were escorted onto the stage, where we met Doug and Jenna, the news hosts. They warmly greeted us, and we ran through how to pronounce our names, confirmed our AFSP titles/positions, who was going to answer which questions, and then clarified which camera (of the FIVE) there were to look at, or who to look at when. Our co-chair Scott answered questions about who and what AFSP is, I answered questions about why I joined AFSP and why I continue to support and fundraise for it, as well as how to get involved. It all went by so fast that before we knew it, Jenna and Scott were already in the out-tro view, where they were discussing how to seek help if you need it. Once the director yelled “CUT!”, they thanked us for coming on and commended us for being so vulnerable in sharing our stories and wanting to help others. For news casters, I really felt both of them seemed genuine, warm, and kind, which wasn’t really how I imagined anyone regularly on TV being with regular everyday people like us.

The entire experience was so frantic, fast-paced, and tight, with pretty much zero notice of anything that was about to happen. I know I would never do well in TV production, much less live TV production. But even though it went by so quickly, it was a pretty fun and interesting experience to see how live news is filmed at a major broadcasting station like CBS. I felt really honored and privileged to have this experience as a Walk committee member, volunteer, and fundraiser; it’s not like I have a real leadership role at the NYC Chapter for AFSP, so I realize it was a rare opportunity for me to represent them and share my personal story; they definitely instilled their trust in me in this way. It felt really good to be open about losing Ed in a very open and public way, and the conversation we had live, though very brief, felt very conversational and natural, the way I’d have it if someone were to ask me about my involvement with AFSP or how Ed passed. Even though he’s no longer physically here, he still lives on through me and all that I do. And I will never stop sharing his story and how much I love and care for him, even long, long after his death. I don’t want Ed to have died in vain. I want his life and story to live on.

“It’s really amazing that you both do this,” Jenna said, as she walked us off the stage. “I hope this doesn’t sound trite, but I think your brother and your friends (Scott’s friends he lost to suicide) are looking down on you and feel so proud of the work you are doing and how you are choosing to honor their lives.”

I do hope that is true. I really hope so.

Older, not necessarily wiser: I gave myself an ice burn

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I had to ice my elbows last night while reading to sooth the irritation in my elbows, particularly on the left side. While reading, I completely forgot the usual icing advice, which is to only ice for about ten minutes at a time. I got carried away and just kept reading. I probably left the ice pack on my left elbow for over 25 minutes before I took it off. The surface of the inside of my elbow felt irritated, but I didn’t think much about it since the area was already feeling uncomfortable. I woke up, exercised, and showered, to then realize that my entire inside elbow area was not only purple, but I had even developed a small puffy blister where the ice pack rested!

AHHHHHHHH. I was so annoyed. This was not from cubital tunnel syndrome. This blister and purple “bruise” is from excessive exposure to my ice pack. I started cursing myself in my head, thinking about how dumb I was to let this happen.

I am turning 40 in just under four months. I am definitely getting older, but sometimes in moments like this, I certainly do not feel wiser.