Friggin School Projects

So, DramaQueen has been learning about Brazil. For weeks they've been earning "Brazilian bucks"--for doing what I don't know. So we get this notice that the lessons will culminate in a Brazilian Market, and that each child should bring in 25 (yes, 25) homemade items to sell. And you should have seen some of the suggestions: paste a picture onto cardboard and cut it up to make a jigsaw puzzle. Yeah, right. That's going to be a busy booth. Or I imagined trying to help her make 25 paper flowers, or 25 bookmarks, or 25 painted rocks, or 25 anything.

Well, Dear Husband has some experience with Brazilian culture (or should I say, with Brazilian women), and he told me about this sweet called a brigadeiro. He even found a recipe. Cool--it has only 3 ingredients: sweetened condensed milk, butter, and Nesquick cocoa powder. How could I go wrong?

Well.

First, there was a certain vagueness about how long to cook the mixture. "Until you see the bottom of the pan." Hello--we're working with condensed milk, you can see the bottom from the start. So the first batch I cooked for maybe 10 minutes, and that didn't set up at all, so I shoved it back into a pan today and cooked it for about a half hour more. Then I started a second batch, trying to match the increasing viscosity of the first batch. Seemed to get thicker. So, rather than about 10 minutes, as one recipe suggested, I cooked it for nearly an hour. Poor DramaQueen gave out after about 10 minutes of constant stirring.

I had a bad feeling about waiting until tomorrow so DramaQueen could help roll them into shape. I just finished trying to roll the goop into balls and roll them into jimmies and cocoa powder. Fine as long as they're chilled, then they just spread out like a lake. Finally I popped them into little cupcake cups. Someone said they tasted like tootsie rolls. In a pig's eye. Dear Husband says the taste is about right. Obviously his tastes were unformed at the time of his interaction with the Brazilian "community".

Well, to me it tastes like really sweet sticky milky goop. I'm nuking the hell out of the rest of it just to see what happens. I estimate that it would take two hours of conventional cooking to get to the tootsie roll stage. Maybe kids will like it. It's full of sugar and messy. If I lived in New York, I would have done the sane thing and located an actual Brazilian bodega (or whatever the appropriate Portuguese word is) and avoided this whole nonsense.

An Hour Later:

This is a total mess--completely unusable. And BTW, never try to nuke the hell out of a caramel mixture. Now I have tomorrow to come up with a suitable substitute. At least it doesn't have to actually have anything to do with Brazil. I'm so not doing Brazil nuts--blech. So the dollar store it is. Any suggestions?

DramaQueen is not going to be happy.

Browsing in Dream Bookstores

I awoke this morning with another vivid dream. Unfortunately, this one did not involve David Krumholtz or God. Instead I dreamed about bookstores.

I walked into a used bookstore and started to browse. The salesman was very friendly and talkative, and I was alarmed to realize that he was assuming I was going to buy every book I casually glanced at, since he was gathering them together. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to protest. I left, promising to come back.

Next I walked into what was obviously a gay and lesbian bookstore. I walked to the back, where there were clothes, of all things. “These really are cute,” I thought, “and they come in my size.” Then the owner came over to welcome me and gave me a form to fill out, which I reluctantly did. But there were abbreviations I didn’t understand. What did “C” mean? Closeted? But there didn’t seem to be a letter that could mean “out.” What about “M”? Married? If I marked that would they assume I was married to a woman? Should I just mark it anyway? Would they hate me if they found out I was married to a man? Why was I here at all?—I was such a fraud. Then I realized that she was ringing up a book she thought I wanted to purchase—it was a copy of the Childcraft book of stories from many lands that I loved as a child. (I used to make my mother read “Nannette and the Chateau” to me every night. I re-read this as an adult and, boy howdy, Freud and Jung could have had a field day.)“But I already have that,” I thought, “and it’s expensive--$51.” But again I couldn’t seem to decline.

The dream ended there.

To top things off, I woke up with an old Lloyd Cole and the Commotions song running through my head: “Perfect Skin.” “She’s got cheekbones like geometry and eyes like sin, and she’s been sexually enlightened by Cosmopolitan.” This was particularly annoying because I always preferred his song “Rattlesnakes” from that album.

God

Some Good News

Well, the doc says Dear Husband does not have shingles but a really really bad yeast infection. I think his words were, "Even women don't get it this bad." Or, if it doesn't go away in a few days with treatment, the doc says, then it's shingles after all.

Sometimes the clarity of medical science is just amazing.

Numbers is on tonight!

Oh, as if stage 0 cancer weren't enough for one family

now Dear Husband appears to have shingles. In a very sensitive area, right in the groin (all you men go "ouch"). I've had shingles (over my eyes--had to go to ER on Christmas Eve to make sure I didn't go blind). My first husband had shingles, too. Wow. I'm kind of a foci of shingles.

Now, let's see--Dear Husband is in excruciating pain (and it's only going to get worse--I should know! and I still can't lift anything over 5 pounds.

Perhaps I should stay part-time for another week.

Day 2 of work and some fanciful rambling about nothing much

I'm going to go take a nap. Really. I'm drinking a big glass of water, which is good for you, and that's the only reason I'm sitting at my computer instead of resting like a good girl.

I finally dug through more email to find that my boss had asked a number of people to review and return stuff to me by yesterday. Thankfully I did find everything, eventually. Except my center. Well, the plastic surgeon did reorganize my mid section. My center may have migrated. It's probably in the wrong chakra now, and that's why I dream about David Krumholtz. Could be worse. Only now to get centered . . . well, never mind.

A little chocolate, and then a nap. Bless the church lady who brought me this ginormous block of Hershey's milk chocolate. And I'll admit that sometimes I snitch my kids' candy. They have tons of the stuff from Easter. Bad Mommy.

Oh Crap

And this was just a half day. I came home and slept until 5pm. I had 500 emails in my inbox. And my pay will be short about $400 because of unpaid leave. Whee. Thank you God for people who want to bring us casseroles, and for our church, who sent us a love offering.

Oh, and the pollen count is sky high and I feel like I have feathers in my throat.

Hi Ho Hi Ho It's Back to Work

So after my super duper revelatory previous post, it's back to the mundane.

I'm going back to work tomorrow. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I'll work half days and then start back full-time next week if all goes well, meaning I don't collapse or something along those lines.

I've discovered something. I like not working. I've always been a working mother type--get out there and have my own career.

But that sucks.

And I don't really have a career. I have a job I stumbled into that luckily is decent and has decent people. I'll be very very busy and rather bored at the same time. I'm bored because there is a constant bombardment of email every day. We have response time rules--within an hour for the Powers that Be, shorter if possible, and within a day for outsiders. That means that at all times I have to interrupt my work to scan for A Really Urgent Matter that Takes Precedence.

Then I'll rush off to daycare and pick up my kids. I will have maybe two and a half hours to spend with them getting them fed, checking homework, getting them read to, bathed, and to bed. If I take the time to go to the gym, I'll have less than an hour (not that the gym is in my future for a few months). In the morning I'll have to move them along like a dictator to get them to daycare on time. By the weekend I'm tired and limp while they have boundless energy.

What can I say? My income is higher than Dear Husband's. He's staying at a job he doesn't like for the free tuition. Then he wants to go to nursing school. Last month I think we paid nearly $300 in prescription medicines alone. This month there will be at least $300 in visits to specialists.

On a positive note, you may remember in a previous post that I complained about DramaQueen's teacher. Well he has mysteriously vanished (been removed or removed himself, the principal can't say for reasons of confidentiality--meaning so no one can sue the school) and someone else is taking over. I told her some of my concerns (SNL skit sneaking into educational video, weird and humiliating nicknames for the kids) and she told me to put it in writing. I really did like him, but after Christmas he seemed to go off his rocker.

Update on Surgery, dreaming of David Krumholtz, and St. John of the Cross--All in One Post!

Well, I was planning to continue my eye candy theme, since I realized I had left out a few deserving individuals, but blogger did not cooperate yesterday with images and I'm not in the mood to tangle with it again. So straight text it is for now.

For those of you who have followed my surgical adventure, I am almost ready to go back to work. Actually, I'm not. I'd rather not ever go back to work but Dear Husband insists this is necessary. I'm starting with half days next Wednesday.

On Tuesday the plastic surgeon removed my last two surgical drains. Yahoo. Now I can actually wear clothes. She also injected the first dose of saline. You may wonder how an expander works. Or not. Doesn't matter cause I'm going to tell you anyway. The surgeon placed this empty sack with a metal disk under some tissue in my right chest (or maybe it's muscle--sure feels like muscle). The metal disk is there so the surgeon can use a magnet to find where to inject the saline. Every few weeks I go back to be inflated a bit more. At some point some decisions will have to be made about when to put in the implant and what to do to make the other breast match. More surgery. Sooo Hollywood.

Right now, I look like hell. There are crosshatches across my right chest, which has a slight bulge to it. I've decided to call it Frankentit. I also have a very long scar along my abdomen, since the surgeon did attempt the tram flap. My midriff is numb as a result. I have to do exercises with my right arm, walking it up the wall, because the muscles along that side of my chest are very angry with me and would like to go on strike.

Now, this brings me to a dream I had about David Krumholtz (see previous post). Actually, this doesn't bring me to any such thing but I can't think of an elegant segue. This was a very pleasant dream. You can interpret "pleasant," I imagine. But oddly, when I awoke it wasn't with a fuzzy warm afterglow but a sit straight up in bed "What the hell was that about" feeling. I don't usually remember dreams. When I do they don't seem important. But this one I wrote down because it puzzled me. I came up with these two approaches: 1) the dream simply means I'm not getting enough action 2) the dream is about being the bride of Christ.

Number 1 is true of course, given the surgery. Even when you feel like hell for an extended period there still part of your erotic nature egging you on "Get a move on, girl, things are getting boooring."

But number 2. Now don't laugh at such a high falutin' interpretation of what seems to be the most straightforward of dreams. And really, doesn't it make a certain amount of sense that a nice Jewish boy would stand in for Christ? I'm not divulging the details, since they have meaning only to me (unless you really want me explicate the Indian print skirt with the mirrors that I'm wearing in the dream--and believe me, I can), but the themes were defense, risk, surrender. I've been thinking about surrender a lot. What exactly does it mean to surrender yourself to Christ? People talk about this so glibly. "I surrender myself to Christ." How? What does that look like? How does that play out? What does that feel like? Do you just start acting as if you know what it means? You do some good things that Christ did and take it from there? Pray and keep going?

Defense. I am a well-defended person. You probably would not guess that from just speaking with me. I'm very open and friendly. I can make you laugh. I love conversation. I can be remarkably frank. I'll tell you my secrets, even. At least some of them. But I will keep them if I have to. I even keep secrets from my therapists. Would I tell my current therapist about this dream, even if I find it significant? Doubtful. When I was in college, I began to cycle through the campus mental health care system. During summer I was pretty happy, still a bit shy but also a bit of a party girl. Then the pendulum swung the other way. I went into yet another intake session and answered the usual boring questions, answering them in ways I knew would get me into actual counseling. The therapist was about to dismiss me when she noticed something. I was wearing long sleeves, and she caught a glimpse of the recent gashes on my arm, something I had quite deliberately not mentioned. I didn't think it was any of her business. I'm not sure I've ever told the complete truth to any therapist. In general, I know what to say to keep things moving along the way they need to go--yes, I still need the antidepressants and the mood stabilizer, thanks so much, and yes they are making me feel ever so much better. I'm taking these steps to accomplish x, and I've found that by doing a, b has become so much easier. I deflect. I can generally charm.

My current therapist once suggested hypnotizing me and I could feel myself start to freeze up. I don't hypnotize. It's been tried. I constantly monitor. My brain starts to analyze frantically: the soothing voice, the fact that I'm supposed to be relaxing, that sound from the air conditioning vent, the fact that nothing is happening, what is that scent? lavender? Nothing is happening. I'm still right here. My mind is still right here. Is there anything in there I should be afraid of? I don't know. Probably not. I don't think there are buried childhood traumas or anything like that. I just don't want anyone penetrating my mind.

Risk. Given my defensiveness, you would think that risk would play a relatively small role in my life. Avoidance at all cost. But there's that pendulum, when it starts to swing the other way--I jump. Sometimes it's benign--I spend all summer rallying for an antinuclear group. I join the college choir (well, the ones who could actually sing probably did not find that benign). I move to New York and write poetry. I fly courier to England get a student work visa and stay there for three months. Then there are the darker impulses--quite a few drugs, recklessness of various kinds.

Surrender. When I was about to graduate college, I saw an exhibit by Bill Viola at MOMA in New York City. One of the installations was called St. John of the Cross, someone I knew nothing about. The installation was a small room with a desk, a pitcher, and a video monitor with a still image of beautiful mountains. The room was tiny; it was supposed to be the size of his prison cell. It was lit from inside. The small room was in a large, dark gallery, filled with the sound of wind blowing, and the image of mountains projected on one entire wall, a jerky image, hard to watch. When you were close to the small hut, you could hear a voice speaking poetry quietly in Spanish. When I could, I searched out a book of his poetry in translation.

There was this from Living Flame of Love:

O living flame of love
that tenderly wounds my soul
in its deepest center! Since
now you are not oppressive,
now consummate! if it be your will:
tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!

and this from Dark Night of the Soul:

7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.

8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.

He's having sex with God, I thought. How'd he get away with writing this anyway? Oh, yeah, the "soul" is in "union"--it just sounds like sex, if you're profane. Better minds than mine have written about the erotic content of mystical writings, and the bride and bridegroom imagery, the Song of Songs and so on. No doubt reading it all would make my head hurt.

In my dream, I was a virgin, and he told me that if I spoke three words, I would be his betrothed, and that I should not speak them until I was sure.

Having Nothing Better to Do, Some Eye Candy

Well, actually I do, but this is more entertaining--I decided to rank the sexiest men I can think of (except Dear Husband, who beats them hands down. Of course.) I don't have his picture here to prove it, but he is a cutie.


Actually, this isn't a ranking, since I'm not putting these fellows in any particular order, but thought I would just ramble aimlessly until I ran out of steam. So to speak.

First, there is Colin Firth. Those of you who fondly remember the wet shirt episode in the BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice, know how very effective understatement can be in conveying a . . . mood. I also unabashedly love the Bridget Jones movies, much to Dear Husband's disgust. (Really, he's one to talk, given that he ogles the Victoria Secret models.) One of my coworkers told me that her sisters actually have an adjective--firthy--to describe a particularly good looking man.









Next, there's Alan Rickman. To my delight I have discovered that there are whole websites devoted to Slytherin House and Severus Snape. Just proves that a bad boy is always attractive. But I first saw him in An Awfully Big Adventure, which also featured Hugh Grant, who will not be included in my list, as I do not find him wildly attractive. Rickman was also in Sense and Sensibility, and if that little snippet had any taste she would have seen from the first that he was much preferably to that fellow with the tight perm. This photo is probably rather old--I skipped the ones in which he's starting to look like Yoda, but he still manages to look dangerously appealing as Snape.












I move on to Hugh Laurie. I adore this actor. I have the BlackAdder series, in which he plays the nincompoop Prince of Wales (not the current one, but the one under Mad King George), and I've rarely laughed harder. House is now one of my current favorite TV shows. He's so mean and sarcastic--inaccessible men are just madly attractive. I had a teenage crush on Sherlock Holmes, for example, and you can't get more inaccessible than that.













Not too long ago I saw the movie Amazing Grace. What a great film. Couldn't figure out the timeline at all. Couldn't figure out how a woman could spend an entire night in conversation with a man without ruining her reputation. Couldn't figure out why Rufus Sewall didn't get a haircut, or why he suddenly appeared in one scene walking through the fields holding a baby. Was it his child? Or was he just taking a friend's infant out for a discourse on nature? Anyway, this entire film was about the incredibly gorgeous Ionn Gruffud. I mean, it was about abolition, too, and that Wilbeforce was one terrific guy, particularly since he looked like this:












Finally, my latest acquisition. I've always been a fan of Numbers. I love the way shows like Numbers and CSI have to casually insert huge swathes of explanation to move the plot forward, all the while making the delivery look natural, and none of it makes sense but somehow you feel that you understand it. David's character is always having brilliant breakthroughs that make no sense at all, but he's so cute explaining them. They need to stop fiddling with his hair, though. Geniuses are supposed to have messy hair, for petes sake. But, I think it was his performance as Mr. Universe in Serenity that landed David Krumholtz on my list of extremely attractive men. How could you not love a man who with his last breaths provides essential information to his comrades by recording it on his life-size electronic love doll? Sheer genius.

Rev Gals Friday Five

What I am

1. Wearing: my nightgown and two surgical drains. Very fashionable.

2. Pondering: When will I ever get rid of these last surgical drains so I can wear real clothes? (btw, it hurts rather more than I expected to have surgical drains pulled out. I knew I was in trouble when the nurse told me to take a deep breath.) How long until I have a normal-looking right breast? How much more time am I going to have to take off to have the rest of the reconstruction? How are we going to pay to fix the car? How are we going to pay for my meds, now that they've been bumped up from tier 2 to tier 3? How am I going to get anything done when my MIL leaves tomorrow?

3. Reading: I think I have finished the entire Artemis Fowl series. I have to check Amazon. Someone lent them to me to keep me from being bored.

4. Dreaming: Of never going to work again and instead staying home and homeschooling my children, so that their natural curiousity will blossom, and DramaQueen will replace the lyrics to "I like big butts" with arias, or jazz, or something, and we will take wondeful, educational field trips that inspire them to learn yet more about whales, the ecology, Matisse, anything. The fact that DramaQueen's teacher makes up humerous names for the kids also makes me think I should jump ship--he call her Butsy. Yeah, charming. Oh, and there was the time he accidentally showed them a skit from SNL that featured three friends: the letters U, C, and K, who made a new friend, the letter F. The note back from the teacher said that she was the only one who "obviously knew what the word meant". Am I imagining it or was that snide?

5. Eating: A Reeses Peanut Butter Cup that I found on the bookshelf where I put it before I went to the hospital. And drinking coffee.

Almost time for my next valium and my arm mobility exericise.

I'm back, sort of

Well, here I am. I'm too tired to explain the ins and outs of the past week, so I refer you to my husband's blog www.stilljewish.blogspot.com. Hardly any pain, but I feel like an octopus with drains pinned on my nightclothes. Not very pleasant. The operation did not go as planned, which is a big disappointment to me, but I've been saving up to cry after the abdominal incision has healed. Pathology shows no invasive cancer, so that is news to celebrate. I have to walk around a few times a day, and since I can't stand up straight yet, that is very tiring and about all I can handle. A kind coworker sent me a supply of Artemis Fowl books to read. Actually, friends, family and coworkers have showered us with kindness. I'm particularly blessed that so many folks have undertaken to entertain the girls. Dear Husband is in pain from his own illness, which saddens me. My MIL also has her own disease to contend with, and she's handling all the housework as well as picking up the girls and keeping them on track. I admit that few times I've done some things that I shouldn't just because I know everyone else is near exhaustion. It will be a while before I can drive again.

Well, that wasn't very coherent and didn't exactly flow, but that's the best I can come up with for now.

Waiting

DramaQueen has strep. I am lucky enough to have a doctor that sees patients on Saturday, so I was able to take her in just days after I visited for a sinus infection. If I get sick, the operation will have to be postponed, so I am willing myself to health so I can get this over with.

Someone in work commented, "You seem so calm; are you falling apart inside?" Dear Husband has made similar comments about my lack of grieving. Of course, right now I still have my right breast. It has not yet been replaced with an alien. For traumatic events (deaths are a different matter), I tend to grieve later--sometimes years later. Right now I have only one focus, which is to get to point A. How fitting that I should lose my breast on Good Friday. How could matters have been better arranged? I wonder if I will sleep through most of Easter, and will I be in the hospital for more than 3 days? I don't have the aversion to hospitals that some people experience (except for the knowledge that the longer you're there, the more likely you are to get an infection), but they are very dull.

Some other matters I've pondered: I'll be intubated for the surgery. That is a weird thought. I'll be catheterized as well--that's always jolly. I won't be able to eat or drink for I don't know how long after, in case they have to rush me back in. There will be some sort of inflatable things on my legs to keep me from getting blood clots. Of course, that brings to mind that I will be in danger of getting blood clots.

During the hospital assessment, the nurse asked me if how well I handle pain. Now, does anyone respond, "Oh, I can handle quite a bit, no problem"? And, if any of you do, are you crazy? Some people would rather be in pain that "out of it." Again, I ask, are you crazy? If I have to be stuck in a bed with a catheter, inflatable cuffs on my legs, and no food or water, I better get morphine out of the deal.

April 6

That's the date of my surgery. Thank you everyone for leaving me encouraging comments. Thank you for your prayers. My natural pessimism comes out at times like this and I start thinking about resistant strep and catheters. I also have an increasing and (I hope) unreasonable fear of being one of those people who wakes up during surgery paralyzed but fully aware of what's happening. I know I'll get to meet my anesthesiologist briefly, but what--he's going to tell me if anyone's woken up on his watch? The plastic surgeon has already sent me the scripts for post-surgery meds, which is comforting--percoset, valium. They can all be waiting for me on my return. How will Animal Planet look through a haze of percoset and valium? Did I mention that my MIL watches almost nothing but Animal Planet? And the news, which we have to watch in all its awfulness, even though you can go online and get it without having to listen to or look at the talking heads. Oh lordy, I think she watches court tv, too.

I think it will be a good time to watch the BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice straight through. And maybe both Bridget Jones movies.

I've also developed an obsession, as usually happens with me during times of stress. Right now it's homeschooling. Dear Husband will attest that I have checked out all the books available on the topic from the local library. And now I've ordered a set of the homeschooling books by Charlotte Mason, who is just way cool. There's a school here that follows her methodology, but it's expensive and you have to sign off on their statement of faith (probably could handle this), and their abortion position (too strict), and their discipline policy (which is mostly gentle but they make you sign up an okay for spanking "if needed"). Actually, anytime a school starts talking about "covenant children" I feel squirmy, as if I've walled my kids up in the Christian ghetto where the only thing on their IPod will be inspirational Christian pop and evolution has been carefully filtered out and replaced with, well, whatever it gets replaced with these days. Not the Bible, because the gigantuous Christian book publishing industry can't leave a marketing niche unfilled, while they continue to crank out Bibles in colors to coordinate with your outfits.

Well, I got a bit off topic there.

And now it's time to get Firecracker and DramaQueen to sleep. Hah.

Surgery

I haven’t posted because I’m just plain tired and my attention is flying off in all directions. The second biopsy discovered not only more atypia, but ductal carcinoma in situ, which is basically level 0 cancer (it’s contained and hasn’t spread). This biopsy was from an area that had not originally been targeted as suspicious, which means that most likely there is advanced atypia and who knows what else in all areas where there are microcalcifications. Meaning, everywhere. Meaning, I have to have a mastectomy. Meaning, a 6-8 hour operation, a 2-3 day hospital stay, and a month off work.

The upside? The plastic surgeon will use the fat from my abdomen for reconstruction. Glad to put it to good use. Also, I’ve been advised not to do laundry or other housework. Dear Husband will say that I never really did it in the first place, but at least I now have a medically sanctioned reason.

Rev Gals Friday Five—A Matter of Taste

1. I love olives. Dear Husband despises them. But he’s sweet and will think to buy them for me.
2. I like liturgical services. Dear Husband thinks they are dull and stilted (and too papist) and prefers contemporary worship.
3. Oranges are one of my favorite fruits. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Dear Husband eat one. My girls don’t like them, either, but they will drink orange juice sometimes.
4. Reading is one of my greatest pleasures. Dear Husband prefers books on CD--or the movie if that’s available.
5. I love the Arizona desert landscape—the saguaro cactus, creosote bushes, mesquite, big sky and rocky scrubby land. Dear Husband thinks it’s ugly and barren and that hell must look like Arizona.

And now, the thinks my husband likes that I don’t:

1. Liver and onions. I don’t know how anyone can eat that stuff. I mean, it’s the filtering organ for pete’s sake.
2. Right-wing talk radio. Yuck. And yet he also likes NPR, and adores Prairie Home Companion, featuring that adorable liberal, Garrison Keiller. He is a man of contradictions.
3. The Left Behind books. Gag me with a spoon.
4. Contemporary Christian music. Okay, so there’s the occasional song or group I enjoy, but they are few and far between. In general I think this music is shallow and bland—the lyrics are banal and the compositions are pathetic.
5. Pat Robertson. How did THAT happen, I ask you.

3 biopsies, 2 ultrasounds, and 1 MRI

So, what had seemed like a simple matter keeps expanding into new territory. The surgeon I've consulted is not happy with all the calcifications in my right breast. She's worried that more atypical ductal hyperplasia is hiding out. An MRI did not help clarify the matter, but it did "light up" on the left breast, so now I have to have a biopsy on that side, too. And since the area in question doesn't show up on mammograms or ultrasounds, I'll have to have an MRI guided biopsy. So, I get to lie in a tube, with an IV and earplugs and a headset while the biopsy is performed. Maybe they'll be nice and remove the headset. Meanwhile I've had a second biopsy on the right side, to see if other tissue is affected. The doctor is sending off everything for a second opinion, because, as she says, "It's complicated."

Besides my own journey through the local hospital, Firecracker has been having more seizures, so her neurologist will be sending her to the hospital for a special EEG, one that will last from 3 to 5 days. They'll reduce her meds to induce seizures so that they can figure out what part of the brain is producing them. And at some point they'll whisk her off post seizure, sedate her, and do an MRI of her brain. That means that she won't be able to eat or drink anything. And, of course, she will have to remain in bed the entire time. And they will be videotaping her as well. This is happening in late April, unless we get to the top of the cancellation list. How do I amuse a bed-ridden but energetic 5 year old for 3 or more days, particularly when she can't eat or drink? I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

And now, something besides anxiety, sort of

I've been reading two books, Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn and The Myth of the Perfect Mother: Rethinking the Spirituality of Women by Carla Barnhill.

The Kohn book I started reading after an exasperating attempt to implement an incentive chart. It didn't work for me. I felt that I spent all my time monitoring every blessed thing the girls did to see if I needed to add points or subtract points, and I had a sneaking suspicion that getting them to comply wasn't the same as encouraging actual kindness, helpfulness, and general character development. When I started investigating my feelings about incentive charts, I ran across Alfie Kohn, who has taken up arms against most conventional forms of behavioral modification in favor of, well, something rather amorphous that combines listening, respecting children, playfulness, and the avoidance of criticism OR praise as forms of parental manipulation. That last floored me, because it's drilled into us to praise our kids as much as possible. Though I have at times thought that gushing over every kind or nifty think my kids did was an easy way of not actually thinking about any of it very deeply. Oh that's so beautiful honey, what a great job you did! On to the dishwashing. He referances research that shows that children praised for doing nice things actually act less generously in situations where there's no "reward" and children begin to loose interest in projects and activities after parents praise their efforts, or they start thinking only in terms of how to earn another pat on the back. Anyway, I have only an imperfect idea of how to parent the way he describes, but has been a very thought-provoking read. I have another of his on my stack to read: Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and other Bribes.

The second book addresses the problems with the "ideal mother" as promulgated by mainstream evangelical Christianity--the mom who never complains of boredom or dissatisfaction because motherhood is her ultimate calling, self-sacrificing, stay-at-home, homeschooling, success or failure measured by the behavior of her children, which in turn indicates how well she is training them in the faith. There's some of that where I work. One woman told me that she didn't believe teen rebellion was inevitable, if a child was reared properly (so of course rebellion would be a sign of poor parenting). Homeschooling is how you keep your children from the evils of evolution. Spanking is biblically mandated and if you don't you're some kind of liberal weirdo. I even heard one woman mention the Ezzo's, who are crazy wacked out Christian child rearing "specialists" who believe in something called "first time obedience," which sounds like it would be at home in a fascist regime. Then there was the time I read a forum discussion on schooling where one angry dad declared that he "wouldn't sacrifice his covenant children in the public schools." Well, back to the book. Barnhill is much nicer than I am, since I'm inclined to throw my hands up in exasperation and find a children's illustrated guide to evolution, so there.

Whew, for the most part

My biopsy came back benign, but I still have to have surgery. I have something called atypical ductal hyperplasia and aypical lobular hyperplasia, which could cause havok in the future. The surgery is outpatient, but I'll be under anaesthesia. It's called a benign surgical biopsy. They'll look again at the tissue to make sure none of the cells have become cancerous, to be safe. Such a relief. Thanks to everyone who dropped by with good wishes and prayers,

Biopsy

So, tomorrow I have to go in for a biopsy. I go with much trepidation. Not that anyone goes tripping lightheartedly. What is so disconcerting is that I was given the all clear after a second mammogram, only to have the doctor call me the next day. He had second thoughts about some areas of calcification and consulted a colleague and decided a biopsy would be best. I’ve now read altogether too much about calcifications (I have a lot, it seems) and the kinds that can be a marker of cancer. Which led me to read a bit too much about breast cancer, including the dispiriting information that small isn’t necessarily better. A small cancer no bigger than a pinhead can kill you and you could actually have a better prognosis with a cancerous tumor the size of a golf ball. With some cancers early detection doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. So, the fact that this clump of whatever is so small the doctors almost didn’t bother with it is no comfort at all. So I’ve been thinking about death and how much I don’t like it, no matter what glories await on the other side, and how I would I would like to not approach any closer.

I also haven’t had a lot of medical interventions that involved slicing, or puncturing in this case. My c-section was it. Beyond that IVs and blood draws have been my sole encounters with invasive procedures. The idea of someone sticking a big needle in my breast, even if there is a local anesthetic (and that causes me some alarm, too, as I have now extrapolated from my issues with Novocain to whatever numbing agent they will be using. They said I could go back to work afterwards. Ha! I’m going to eat chocolate and watch a movie, and maybe go to a bookstore.