The Aftermath

So, Its been two weeks now since my surgery and, though I'm still feeling the effects, i.e. soreness, I am very happy to have it all behind me. It took only one day to get the pathology results back. The biopsy came back benign- no cancer! Big sigh of relief, not only for me but for the medical professionals who now no longer have to deal with me.

 I discovered along with all those medical persons, two weeks ago, that I am a really awful patient. I arrived at the hospital at 7:45 am, virtually exhausted from not being able to sleep the night before. The poor Nursing assistant that was assigned to me was met with a very big attitude when she instructed me on what it was I had to do before the procedure could begin. She told me to change into the hospital gown and to make sure that I took my underwear off as well as my bra, to which I simply and firmly asked why I should have to take my underwear off when its the top part they'd be operating on. She had no real good answer to that except to say that if they should need access to that part of my body quickly, the underwear would be in the way. To that I gave an even nastier reply,

"Why the hell do they need access to my butt!"

Fortunately she laughed it off. But she left and never returned.

Next, I terrorized the nurse, who happened to be male. I told him I would not give him a urine sample until someone cleaned the bathroom in my room. He was very sweet. He came in with a bottle of bleach and a rag and scrubbed my toilet himself. I kind of felt guilty at that point, but not guilty enough. I demanded to see my surgeon before signing any release forms.

 I was a sobbing, anxiety ridden mess by the time the surgeon finally came in. She was not much comfort. I asked her to tell me what I would look like when all this was said and done. She told me I would have a scar but no visible indentation. I told her I didn't really buy that and asked if I could just have the needle biopsy done instead. She told me I could, but that she strongly advised getting the lumpectomy. That just turned my fear away from my vanity and toward the possibility of cancer, which I think was her intention. The surgeon explained the procedure again, this time, adding that she would remove a chunk of tissue the size of a golf ball.   A GOLF BALL.

"Lady, have you seen my boobs?" I cried. "They pretty much are golf balls!"

She laughed.

I was unamused.

In the end, with the surgeon's strong advice and extensive knowledge of these breast tumors, and my poor husband, distraught with the idea of me not doing the surgery and possibly leaving a malignant tumor in my body, I accepted what I had to do and allowed them to take me off to the OR.

Nate's last word's to me were, that he loved me more than anything and that if I'm not at all happy with the outcome of this surgery, that he would see to it that I get plastic surgery right away. He then added,

"Hey this could be your excuse to get those C cups you've always wanted."

The outcome is livable. I no longer have a lump in my breast that could grow or cause pain or turn into something weird. I have a small scar and no visible dimpling. I'm glad to be done with it, and I thank God it was nothing more than a lump.

I have a much larger appreciation for the kind of emotional and physical pain a cancer patient must go through. I feel blessed and a little guilty I made it out without cancer. I just think God knows I'm not brave enough to suffer that kind of thing and took pity on me. I am in awe of those who are brave and battle their illness full on.  God bless you all.

Attack of the killer boobies.

I'm not sleeping. Many emotions are running, wild and unwanted, through my head.

Tomorrow I go under the knife to remove a lump found in my left breast.

I'm feeling angry mostly. Sure, my boobies and I have always had a tumultuous relationship, (They've always been a too small and never produced enough milk for nursing my babies.) So they've actually proved to be quite useless on all accounts, but I never thought they'd threaten to outright kill me! This is just beyond reproach. But they're also mine. And I don't want to lose any part of them.

I've tried to be brave, or perhaps I've just been in denial. I didn't even allow myself to think about this surgery at all. But this afternoon, I talked to my mother-in-law, who had this surgery performed on her several years ago. Before our conversation I didn't realize that this lumpectomy procedure left a very noticeable crevice in the breast. I suppose everyone's turns out different, but there is going to be some kind of deformation from the cut.

The weight of this little realization, once hit, hit hard. I've since been bauling and mouring the loss of my little wedge of boob even before its gone. I know its stupid and vain of me to even shed one tear over this, but I am. I want to stay whole and I feel so powerless over that.

It angers me, too, that my surgeon didn't tell me this specific detail of the procedure. Perhaps she felt it wasn't important to me, the appearance of my breast, and if that is the case then she has highly over-estimated my self esteem. Perhaps she figures she'll talk to me about it in the morning when I'm already gowned-up and tied to the bed with IV's. Perhaps she'll breeze into my room, armed with her felt-tipped pen, start drawing smiley faces or some shit like that all over my chest then casually mention, as she's running out the door, "Oh yeah, by the way, you'll look really funny after this surgery. I sure hope your husband has a real vested interest in you, and hasn't married you for your looks!" Perhaps she figures the details of cosmetics don't really matter when it comes down to living or dying. Perhaps this is just absolutely necessary and I can't accept that.

I hate feeling such strong emotions, anger especially, but it is preferable above despair, which is probably the reason I choose it most often in times like these. They're out now. I have successfully purged all of them onto this screen and feel quite tired now. Hopefully I can sleep.

Wish me luck. I'll need it.

Rude Awakenings!

I was interrupted from a very deep and enjoyable sleep several times last night. The first was at a mere 2am, and I'm not going to go into details on what that was about. The second, was at 7:30 am, which is technically morning but after having my sleep interrupted once already, 7:30 felt a little more like the middle of the night to me. Anyway, to proceed with the story, Brooke woke me at 7:30 this morning bauling that Ashton smacked her in the head.

 
"Why did Ashton smack you in the head?" I asked, still groggy
   "I don't know, I was just trying to wake her up for school." Brooke says in the sweetest voice she can muster.

Knowing Brooke, there has got to be more to this story. I don't want to say that  Brooke is a bad kid, but she certainly isn't winning any awards for good behavior any time soon.
  "Brooke," I say, rubbing sleep from my eyes, "how, exactly is it that you went about waking your sister up?"
Brooke gives me the doe-eyed innocence look.
   "I just shook her a little and said, 'its time to get up and get ready for school Ashton.' And then she smacked me in the head!"
  "hmmm." Theres definately more to this story .
Just as Brookie is about to snuggle into my lap and really milk me for sympathy, Ashton comes bouncing into the room, leaps up onto the bed and says,
  "Mom, Brooke woke me up this morning by sticking her finger in my butt!"

And...There's the rest of the story.

When I finally did get to the bottom of the whole thing, (no pun intended.) I discovered that Brooke didn't exactly intend to penetrate Ashton's crevice with her finger, but instead was going for the more mild offense of pinching and her fingers slipped. Considering Ashton was not blessed with ample booty, this possibility is quite plausable and I choose to accept it.

As for my choice in discipline, well what could I do really? If it were me waking up to anal probing I think I would have done more than just smacking the culprit.

Lesson learned: choices and consequences.

Probing another's ass = a smack in the head.
Good enough for me.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming,

Life. Already in progress.

The baskets are put away.

The grass in vacuumed up.

 And the girls are back in school! (ahhhh! sigh of relief.)

Its not that I'm some kind of easter scrooge,

but I'm just glad to be back into the normal routine.

Well...almost.

 I'm so worn out from all the sugar rushes

 and little girl cat fights that it is now 12:00 pm

on Tuesday afternoon and

I  AM

STILL IN

MY PAJAMAS!

I know. Gross right?

below are some pictures highlighting the high points of our eratic easter day.

(with four kids, two jobs and a cat. Life is pretty much always eratic.)

ENJOY.

Consumed by wonderlands and games of hunger

I've pretty much been wrapped up in my life lately to the point that I've thrown writing out to the wind. I would apologize except that I don't think anyone really gives a damn weather I write my weekly trifles down and post them for anyone to see or not. Its pretty clear this blog is a blog for me alone to read and reflect on.

Anyhoo, The last couple of weeks have been absorbed by the problems Ashton's having with bullies at school and fights between Ash and Brooke. In the time away from those two things I've got my own dispute I've been working out. Lets just say, I deal with some OCD ridden, narciccistic, persons, but really who doesn't? Then there's the book I've completely fallen into in any spare time. In fact I've even made spare time just to absorb myself into it and out from reality. I encourage anyone to read it. The Hunger Games it is called and its magnificent! It was this month's book club choice. I have to say, I never thought I would enjoy it so much. I read it because it was the book of choice. I am now more than half-way through the sequel. Read it, you'll love it.

Ashton asked if we could go out for a little mommy-daughter night last night. I obliged. We dropped the other kids off at grandma's and went to see Alice in wonderland .  I liked it and I don't care what the critics say. It is not the Alice that we all are used to, and that is probably the best part about it. Its bold and fun and totally thought-provoking. Plus Jonny Depp. Need I say more. He's absolutely terrific in this film, as always.

My only regret about the evening is buying a much larger-than-necessary tub of popcorn because a lot of it went to waste.

On the way back I told Ash that we'd been gone too long and that I bet grandma turns into the red queen when we get back.

Of course she didn't dissapoint and we had a good laugh about it later.

In short, Alice was very entertaining and I would definately recommend seeing it. I'm no critic, but i'm an average house-wife and my opinion should count for more based on the fact that most people are like me-looking for entertainment not a lot of artsy hooplah! I also recommend reading The hunger games if you haven't already.

The Yuckas

For the past two weeks my family and I have had what I call "the yuckas", which really is as accurate a name as any other for this particular ailment. The yuckas start with a little dribbly nose that can easily be dismissed as seasonal allergies.

Maybe spring is beginning to bud, I always think.

But then by day three or four everyone starts feeling pretty run down and fever's begin to spike. Then before you know it we're spending half the day in our jammies watching Spongebob and nursing bottles of Robitussin like its liquid candy.

And It's not like I'm a big baby or something. I can handle a cold like any other normal person,

but this junk doesn't want to go away!

By day six and seven I'm so sick of wiping thick snot from the kids' faces and listening to their raspy little whines I could just strangle myself.

But alas, there does seem to be an end in sight. We're going on day twelve or something like that and the runny noses seem to be slowing down, coughs are settling, and we're all slowly emerging from our cave little by little.

If you do come into your own case of the yuckas I suggest Mucinex. Its a life saver.The humidifier's seem to be helping the cough's a lot too. The kids went from those dry "croopy" sounding coughs a week ago to a nice wet cough within one day. (Wet cough's are better than dry. I'm not being sarcastic here).

And hang in there spring is almost here!!

Good Human!

A friend of mine, while taking classes at the university for journalism/writing, was required to write a profile of herself as seen through the eyes of her pet.

This sounded like a deliciously interesting writing assignment and I wanted to attempt it myself. The following is an attempt to describe myself from the view point of my cat, Mr. Kitty.

I bounded up the stairs to see what the humans were doing up there today.

The humans keep strange hours, awake and wandering through the house while I'm trying to sleep on one of my many beds. And when I am feeling active, they wish to sleep.

The gate was closed again so I sat on the top step and stared through the bars.

The smaller, red haired one was making that noise again. The one that sounds like desperate meowing.

I believe he wishes for food.

He was in strange disguise again. This time he wore a green covering over his body and his head as well. Only a small amount of red fur could be seen peeking out from under the covering on his head.

The female, the one the other's call mommy, is carrying the smallest one on her hip.

She carries the small one a lot, even though he can now walk on his own.

Humans tend to over-care for their young.

The large female does not see me staring at first. Her back is turned and she is busy preparing something for the littlest one to suckle.

The female turns around and sees me, we make eye contact.

"What do you want, stupid?" She mutters to me.

She does not seem to think I understand that she is insulting my intellegence.

I meow an insult back to her and she doesn't seem to understand that either, because she opens the gate and lets me through to the upstairs portion of the house.

I like it up here, its much warmer than the downstairs.

I follow the female human to the large bed where she lays down with the small one. He is now suckling on the container that has a sort of teet attached to its top.I jump up to snuggle in close to her, but she pushes me, and I tumble to the floor despite my attempt to claw in to the soft cushion.

She makes no sense, this female, petting me and giving me food one moment then pushing me off the bed the next. I would throw her out of my house all together if she weren't the only one to clean out my litter box.

Later, I think I shall hide around the corner of the downstairs, wait until I hear her coming, then jump out at her suddenly, and give her my nastiest yowl.

She will probably jump back and yelp like she has done in the past.

This will be my revenge.

For now, I think I'll wander to my favorite spot in the hallway and stretch out on the floor. This way, the female will have to step around me to pass to the other parts of the house and she will then know that I am dominant in this territory.

Ahh, yes she comes. She bows down closer to me and rubs my head.

It seems I have finally made her understand who is master here.

She is a good human. Not so bright, but she is good.