Cancer Chronicles: The First

She finds the mass on the first visit. I like this new doctor. She is young and spends over an hour with me on the first visit. My former doctor started treating the fat, not me. One ailment relieved by another doctor made me wonder what might be missed. She finds this mass in a simple exam never performed by the previous doctor. I lay on the table and she presses my abdomen. Pain. Immediately wheels are in motion.

Exactly one month to the day, surgery is scheduled. In that short time I’m examined in every imaginable way. Some I never imagined and I’m impressed by the technology involved. No cancer markers show in my blood work and enough blood is drawn to ensure complete coverage. The doctors are perplexed; they expect marker with a mass this size. All three, the primary, the gynecologist and the oncologist are equally fervent in their concern for my welfare and curious of what’s to be found.

48 hours before surgery I drive to the Center for Advanced Medicine for the pre-surgery registration. Part of this process is an exam by who I hope is a nurse or a practitioner. She presses with zeal on my abdomen as if to confirm what the doctors, a great number of them, the technicians reading test results and what feels to be an army of medical personnel tell me is the problem. Her glasses are green and red rimmed.

I wake the day before surgery feeling not so myself. I call in sick to work. As the morning progresses I feel pain in the area of the mass. By late morning I cannot walk; I can barely breathe. I stomp the floor to get my son upstairs and tell him to call an ambulance. I can’t stand. My second call goes to my medical advocate, my very good friend Donna. I say I’m on my way to Barnes; to please meet us there.

Emergency people appear at my door. My house is so small there is no way to get the gurney into the house. Policemen help the EMTs get me to the door. I’m in agony, but finally the Lamaze breathing pays off. I’m able to take off the edge of the pain. They roll me down the hill into the back of the ambulance; my son rides up front. Lying down feels somewhat better, but the pain is still intense. The EMT riding with me is new. I’m not his first, but he’s not in the high numbers yet. He needs to run a line with some pain deadening medication, but is having difficulty. In the end, he must use a needle that remains in my arm throughout the ride in order to inject the medication. Ambulances do not have magical shock absorbers nor do they have magical straight paths to emergency rooms. I prefer an IV, but we manage a few jokes to keep him at ease.

Donna arrives before us. My daughter is contacted and is on her way. I’m in a triage room and yet another person with few vein finding skills inserts an IV in the back of my hand. This new pain gives me a break from thinking of the other pain. I shortly feel better and exams show the mass has burst. There is talk of emergency surgery.

At long last the decision is to place me in a room and keep the surgery schedule as established. I’m in a room by myself and settle in while Donna and my kids keep me at ease. They leave and I watch my own personal TV hanging by my bed. I read a little, have dinner, and then drift to sleep. I sleep soundly and remember no dreams.

First Days

Recently I started a new job. The end of the first day caused me to reflect on other first days I’ve had, none stellar.

My earliest first day in memory is first grade. I wasn’t too excited about it. I’d watched my older sister dress in her uniform, ride the bus and do homework for quite some time. I knew the drill and had the benefit of my older sister attending the same school. Nuns bothered me, but were great curiosities as well. Mom didn’t wear big, black dresses with wide plastic collars. It was my first experience with different fashion statements. I knew that first day school wouldn’t be all bad. Each row of desks was named after a fruit. Cherry and apple are all I remember and I chose cherry. It was a good day, as I recall it. My first experience with corporal punishment came shortly after. Sister Remegia, at least 150 years of age, carried a dowel rod with a rubber point and called it a “candy stick”. We were told to make our “Os” in a specific direction and to this day, I swear I did as I was told, but she smacked my knuckles with that stick. In the grand scheme of things, does it matter which direction your freaking “Os” go? I ball all of that into my first day, because it was my first experience with a first day, a nun, a candy stick, and a terrorist.

An orientation rally started my first day of high school. In grade school I was accustomed to 30 kids or less in a class. Here I was standing on a blacktop parking lot with hundreds of kids, few I knew. In this new world, I traveled to classes. I had a locker and I had to make it to the locker and to the classes in five minute’s time. Eight years of nun experiences had trained me to have no faith in my own instincts or strengths and to constantly be on the look out for dowel rods. New experiences caused stress and that first day was a bundle of it. Following my schedule I made it to my first class. Orientation tried to prepare us, but they couldn’t cover every element of change encountered. I was not prepared for the desk. My desks had been the type with a lidded metal container attached to a metal frame that led to the seat. When told to take your seat, there was no thought process. No matter which side you stood on, you were able to sit. Welcome to high school seatage. There were no lidded containers, just a flat piece of wood. Anything you carried into class got shoved into a small opening beneath the seat, which, by the way, was attached to that flat piece of wood with a bar. Not in the middle, but on the side leaving but one direction possible to take the seat. I used the wrong one. I learned of the seat, bar, piece of wood construction the hard way. I sat there, embarrassed to have to get up and move to the other side. My instincts failed me yet again. Of course, I’d chosen a seat in the front to maximize my embarrassment potential. So self-conscious was I that it didn’t occur to me everyone else in the room was challenged by their own first day demons. I have no doubt that at 14 we all had them.

First days on the different jobs followed that same general pattern. Until my first day at First National Bank; it spun out of control a bit differently. I’d hired in as a computer operator. My previous postion only lasted three months because of boredom and a lack of serious pay. Hiring on in a computer room enabling me to use skills I’d gained in seven year’s at the Federal Reserve Bank gave me quite the chip on my shoulder. Adding to that chip was being asked by my manager to join him and higher managers for lunch. This job was also my first experience with name badges. I clipped it to the pocket flap of my jacket. I walked through the cafeteria line and joined a number of managers, few of them women, for lunch. I left early to make a good impression about my work ethic. It was back in the computer room I looked down at the keyboard and noticed something dark on the badge. I’d had a bowl of chocolate pudding for lunch and managed to dip the badge into it and smear a considerable amount across my boob. My entire lunch was spent with these managers and my chocolate boob.

Moving forward in time, I started my current position. By this point I know one thing for sure, anything can happen and usually does. Don’t worry about it, because I can deal with anything. I wore a lovely red brocade jacket. It’s one of my favorites and I’m a bold statement kind of girl. Take charge, in control, watch out world I’m coming kind of girl. I met my co-workers, my leader and our manager. I walked around the building finding my way to the bathroom, to the ice maker, the cafeteria and Kaldi’s. Great day and no pudding, at least that I noticed. I got home, tired, but feeling quite happy about the new job. I took off my jacket and that’s when I saw it. A tag hanging from under the arm. The price tag, there, hanging under the arm! I realized I’d worn it that way to work before and had even washed it without noticing the tag!  I handled this with much better grace, that grace that comes with age, experience, humility, and knowledge. I immediately thought of Minnie Pearl. That signature tag hanging from her hat was initially an accident, one of those firsts. Her first performance she bought the hat as an afterthought for her costume and in her rush to the stage forgot to remove the price tag. It stuck making her career and fortune. My price tag did not.

Porn Camp

Every October a trivia night to benefit JDRF rolls around and I sign up with a regular group of friends. It is my favorite social event of the year; it also happens to be my only social event of the year.

Along with the trivia, they always have a silent auction. For me, this is extremely dangerous territory. I’m not an auction fan. Sitting around people making loud noises or raising their arms to outbid each other is not my idea of a good time. A silent auction, however, allows you to write your bid and walk away. No personal interaction whatsoever is involved. Every so often, one can mosey back to see if someone’s outbid them and attack their audacity to cross the bid with a follow-up bid. Defeating the opposition is quite satisfying. As I said, it’s dangerous. There was, however, one moron who countered my bid with the exact same amount. How stupid are you if you can’t figure out how a silent auction works? There were a couple bids ahead of mine so even from that small sample it shouldn’t have been hard.

Among the array of silent auction items, baskets with themes such as smelly lotions, movie nights and party down, sat an overnight bag. Being a sucker for southwest motifs, the bag appealed to me with its red leather look and silver buckle. I bid on it, taking no notice of the other items with the bag. I bid then walked back to my table of friends. Eventually everyone made it over to the auction tables and someone returned and asked, “Linda, you bid on the naughty pictures?” Stunned, I denied any such thing, but walked back to the overnight bag at my first opportunity.

Tucked inside the bag were fliers about a photography session for boudoir photos. Everyone knows what those are. Scantily clad women and, much less frequently, men photographed in supposedly seductive poses to entice their, well, their whatevers. Not my style, at all, but this photo shoot came with a $100 gift card to any local hotel in Nashville. I do love my Nashville weekends. At the table people kept track of my “porn” photo shoot almost as anxiously as I did. I bid on nothing else. It surprised no one that I won; we all enjoyed the chase and I looked forward to a weekend in Nashville.

A couple of months later I finally found the time to contact the owner of the studio. Through email she graciously extended the date due for me as the weather became wintry fierce. Instead of the March 31 deadline she gave me till May. She seemed someone willing to work with me and I asked if I had to do boudoir photos. I shuddered to think of someday finding one plastered on the internet, something I wish everyone would think through before moving ahead. She said, no, they could do some nice business photos for me if I preferred. Only one thing I have less use for than boudoir photos are business photos. We agreed casual wear of jeans and anything else I wanted was acceptable. My good friend, Beulah, name changed to protect, well, me from lawsuits, volunteered to come along. We travel well together and had been to Nashville before. She’d seen me through some pretty dark cancer days and this would be my victory photo shoot. I now had an overnight bag, a photo shoot and hair. It was time for my victory lap.

I told everyone about the trip. Word had spread of my auction win and people were most inquisitive about the whole thing. Another dear friend, Lucille, again the lawsuit thing, began referring to the weekend as “Porn Camp”. The tag stuck. Instead of inquiring about my weekend away, the questions became about Porn Camp.

We left on Friday and on the way down decided we would go to the Grand Ole Opry. We are not country music fans. I don’t know about Beulah, but I can’t stand it. But after my cancer dance with destiny I thought I would experience what I’m able, if only to say I’d tried it. Before you ask, I do not consider boudoir photos to be an experience. After checking in at the Hampton Inn, we went through the Grand Ole Opry Hotel. The flooding last year didn’t leave much of a lasting mark. Our opportunity to stay there passed when the waters receded. I’m sure rates were more affordable with 10 feet of water in the lobby.

Saturday morning Beulah and I drove downtown to find the photo shoot building. She used the Garmin to navigate our way from the hotel. Nashville is not a city that lends itself to easy navigation. We found the valet parking hotel and, according to the instructions I had, the photo shoot building was just next to the Starbucks. Wait. What? I didn’t see a Starbucks. Beulah had. She can spot a Starbucks with nothing but a glint off the logo. The instructions said to look for a building with 3 red flags. Following the map I’d printed, I deduced that the building was a couple doors down from Starbucks. It displayed 3 small red flags. However, it was a lawyer’s office and the wrong numerical address. We crossed the street. Now we found the right building, but the doors are locked and look like they haven’t been opened in years. Refusing to give up my map, I am an excellent navigator, I continued giving Beulah directions per the map. She insisted on steering her own course eventually, much to my chagrin, and tried another door around the corner on the same building, a door with three rather large red flags overhead. Behold! A door with the right address. We lucked out with a couple of residents leaving and we were able to get into the secure building.

According to the address the studio was on the second floor. We got on an elevator and I pressed ‘2’. The door closed and nothing happened. We waited. Still nothing happened. We pressed the button to open the door. Getting out, we waited until it was called elsewhere and tried another elevator. We got on, the door closed, I pressed ‘2’ and nothing happened. My appointment time was on us and we’re struggling to get to the second floor! We found no staircase, no one on site, and when the elevator doors opened and people spilled out, okay, two walked out, we asked them about getting to the second floor. “Oh”, they said, “that floor is locked on weekends because it’s the only floor with businesses.” This would have been nice to know. I called up to the studio and they confirmed the locking of the second floor. They came down and picked us up.

Having someone else put on your makeup is fun, particularly when they know what they’re doing. I think I looked good, except I’d have gone with a bolder lip shade. We talked and laughed. Nanushka, the makeup artist (her real name escapes me), hails from Florida. She’d never been to St. Louis and let us know she only knows one thing about it. I’ll bet you went to “arch”, didn’t you. Nope, exorcist boy. That’s right, all the fancy material and hype put out on our “famous arch” and this gal only knows about the exorcist boy. That was funny and led us down many other conversation paths. We spent well over an hour on the makeup and hair. Hair wasn’t much of a challenge, I thought. But it looked goofy when she finished.

After makeup, it was time for the shoot. I followed the master photographer through a small bathroom to a very large studio with a bed used as a prop. I used it as a closet, laying out all my tops and the jewelry appropriate for each one. I wear jeans with everything and that look can’t be improved. She said I could change in the bathroom. I got 3 changes of clothing here and I asked if I could just change there. Okay, here’s the porn part. She said no problem. In her line of work she sees more boobs than Hef. Even better, I only change shirts, so the girls stay garbed through all three changes. End of porn! She told me of the women that come to her, some to please their husbands, some to please their boyfriends, some to please their husbands and their boyfriends. That last one just made me ill. I’ll bet we finished the shoot in under half an hour. Once finished we left the studio.

I kept that goop on my face all day, even to the Opry that night. I figured why should I use my makeup when this junk would probably stay on for days if I wanted to go that long? I doubt I’d look as good by day 3, but it might have been somewhat correctable. I didn’t push it, though. Before bed I washed it all off. My eyes were looking coony by then and the whole thing was giving me a headache. Beauty isn’t worth losing sleep over. 

Osama Rant

Am I sad Osama bin Laden is dead. No. Am I celebrating? Yes, but not his death. I celebrate our government finally making good on a promise. It was 11 years in coming and included making war on a country for completely unrelated and puzzling reasons, but finally they made good. It seems a lot of people forgot about that promise. They aren’t celebrating. It doesn’t bring anybody back they say. Why would that ever be part of the deal? Have we become so impractical, so mindless and lacking cognitive activity some believe this is even in the realm of possibility?

Hitler’s death brought no one back. It did, however, bring some margin of peace for some part of the world. No one of rational thought mourned his passing and was glad of it. Not because his death brought them some personal relief, but because it brought relief to a good portion of the world. I am glad for the same reason.

While some credit of this feat is deserved by the military, let’s face it. The commander-in-chief held all the responsibility. If the effort had been a massive failure, it wouldn’t have been the military taking the hit for it. Doesn’t anyone remember Jimmy Carter? Not only his political life, but his place in history is forever marred by the incident. The military followed Bush into a disastrous war that he proclaimed “Mission Accomplished” far too early over. He didn’t get nearly enough heat for that fiasco. Yet many Americans backed him and his wrong decision. Was I glad Saddam was found and killed? No. He did nothing to this country and the effort was misdirected. He was a horrible dictator, like many, many still existing in the world, but didn’t wield nearly the long arm that bin Laden did. Now we have a POTUS who carefully, thoughtfully and with guts made a decision that resulted in a rousing success and Republicans don’t want to credit him.

This morning on NPR was a discussion about what Pakistan knew and didn’t know. The current administration is thinking about what to do about our funding them. In an agrarian area, set off from any other neighborhood is a large complex surrounded by 18 foot walls topped with razor wire. There is no visible sign of a power supply, yet lights are seen. It is guarded night and day and no one has interaction with anyone in the area. And some nitwit Republican says he understands how the security forces in Pakistan might have missed this. I guarantee you, I put up an 18 foot wall with razor wire and my neighbor Frank will get the government on me. And when pressed about the length of time it took to get this guy, his response was, “It’s hard to find an individual.” He pointed to the 10 most wanted list.

Okay, if they were looking for me or you, yeah, it might take a while, but not long. Skip a tax payment, car payment, house payment….something meaningful to someone and they’ll find you. Dogs in hand, they’ll find you. Especially if you mess with the IRS. But he wasn’t you or me. He was freaking responsible for an attack on US soil and murdering over 3,000 people and then some! Where the hell were we looking? He wasn’t living in some cave as we were led to believe, but in a compound! Here’s another point. We don’t have an entire military to hunt down the 10 most wanted. We can’t afford it, like everything else that might benefit us. CSI is a TV show. That’s the only police department that could afford the Jetson technology, one that’s part of TV. I guarantee you, put the entire military to the task of finding the 10 most wanted and they’ll get found, all 10 individuals! Please, jackass, if the Bush administration were interested in finding the guy, they’d have found him.

My hope is, now that the mission is indeed accomplished, we pull up stakes and come home. My belief is that the hundreds of thousands of souls persecuted by this dead madman are resting much better, and I like to think at the moment he left this life, they waited for him in the next. They aren’t virgins, and they’re pissed.