A Year in Review

It's hard to believe that I started doing this almost 3 years ago; writing. Since we start a new decade in 2 days, now seems as likely time as ever to recap this past year. I don't have any huge insights or words of wisdom. Most days are all about survival-surviving one moment to the next with my sanity and sense of humor intact. Some days I do a better job than others. As I was texting Lee this am to tell him about my morning with the kids he texted back and told me that, in writing, it was all very funny-the eruption of the rice crispies volcano all over the table at the hotel bfast buffet, the wet sheets, the bathtub drain soddered shut at my 9 year old's hands, the arguements over who gets to open the hotel room key with the plastic card and the dead battery in the car because some kid forgot to turn out his light (and more importantly-I forgot to check). And, as I explained to him, I suppose that is precisely why I write. Because on some level I know if you take these situations and isolate them and look at them objectively, even I can find the humor in them. The alternative-loosing your shit with your kids (which I do aplenty regardless of my attempts to the contrary)-is much more damaging. But, as I told my middle child the other day (right before he ran out into traffic and nearly got squished by a car because he 'got confused'-just as squirrels and dogs do as suggested by his dad) when he was crying that I was never nice and I was always mean: he can save his money to go to an expensive therapist one day and tell him or her how awful I was. Then that therapist can tell middle child to get over it and realize I did the best job I could with what I had. Unfortunately I think the moment was lost on him when he became fractionally close to becoming road kill.

I wish I could be all 'leave it to beaver' but is near impossible for me. Last nite I had a dream about this other mom that I know who, in real life gives the appearance of perfection. In my dream another mother quickly dispelled the myth and explained that said mom is a true hot mess. I quess I had this dream because I screamed at my kids about something and then I had to work it out in my guilty subconscience. I could feel better about myself because the 'perfect' mom was the true stark raving lunatic who repressed all of her rage.

Still, despite my daily frustrations I still have moments when I love my kids unconditionally (mainly when they are asleep or at school). About a week ago my heart almost cracked in two when my daughter, who is my youngest, overhearing her older brother asking about my breast cancer realized that it could return. I was getting dressed in my closet and my oldest son, surveying my surgically reconstructed breasts commented on how lucky I was and how many good things I had gotten from the experience. As she was walking by in her towel she overheard him say that he hoped my cancer never returned. She stopped dead in her tracks and looked me straight in the eye and said "it can come back? You can get breast cancer again?" This is not a conversation you want to have with your 6 year old daughter and I'm fairly certain if I googled 'discussing your own mortality with your kids' that whatever might pop up wouldn't actually be that helpful. So there I sat, half naked on the floor of my closet trying to reassure my kindergardener but without sugar coating anything. I don't know if I said the right things to her but I knew that conversation would eventually take place. God in heaven knows that I'd love to tell them that I'm completely cured and the cancer is never going to come back, but I honestly think that lying to them would be worse. Just to be clear about things my oldest asked me for a refresher course this afternoon. I guess this explains why he needs so much reassurance and mom time.

Well, I don't know if this was really a review but it was cathartic for me nonetheless. So, I'll you in 2010 and hopefully I'll be a little more patient and still cancer free (God, I hope you are listening).



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Scouting Gone Bad

The dog just walked by with a pair of dirty underwear in her mouth. She kind of glanced over at me from the corner of her eye to see if I was going to do anything about it and then walked into another room very sheepishly. As a dog, she can't control her urges, but there was shame in her eyes. Her proclivities, though unsettling, are not limited to intimate apparel. Her palate extends to shoes, socks, stuffed animals or anything else that she might feel inclined to destroy.

I just returned from a weekend away from home. It was a lovely chance to reconnect with two of my dear college friends. While no one was looking, we became middle-aged. But, sitting around with them we might as well have been back in our freshman dorm. I wonder if it will be the same when we are sixty? I hope and pray that my daughter has the benefit of strong female relationships. Not having any sisters, my female friends are incredibly important to me and they have helped shape me. I want her to experience the satisfaction of having best friends in her life time. Girls that she can giggle with when she is both 6 and 36 years old. There is nothing more reassuring than sitting around in your pajamas with your girlfriends and laughing at nonsense. It's a sense of security that you are loved and accepted, regardless of how you look or feel.

I tried to impose the strong girl relationship on my daughter through a cookie-selling organization that I'll refer to as 'the female adventurers'. If felt wrong from the outset and I should have known better, never having been a member of any sanctioned girl-club. First of all, my daughter could care less if she was to be a pansy or a lemon-square or whatever the groups may be. Secondly, it was just too hard. A gathering of girls should not be as difficult as this organization makes it. If we forget about the colossal lack of planning that went into the registration rally, which was a bunch of grown women panicking about whether or not their daughters were going to get into the right pansy group, and we talk about the commitment that is required of the mothers you might as well jump directly into the briar patch. That is precisely what I did-lock, stock and barrel. I drank the kool-aid and worried that my daughter might not get picked to go to the ball if I didn't sign up and sign up all the way. So, I sat through the first meeting and the second and the third. I made excel spreadsheets and I e-mailed other mothers about meeting times and philosophies. I read the introductory manual. Still none of it seemed right. The mountain of required paperwork seemed more prohibitive than filing your my own taxes. I was ready to take my blood oath...until some crazy, bee-atch mama went off on me b/c, according to her, I was slacking (not pulling my weight, being lazy, making excuses....fill in the blank). The weirdest part about it was that I didn't even know this woman. I had talked to her on two or three prior occasions and all of the sudden she feels compelled to critique my intentions and offer advice on how and when I should obtain childcare so as to not miss any opportunity to be involved. Believe me, I was not mistaking helpful for critical. She was downright nasty to me. And this organization is supposed to be about fostering great female relationships.

Because she accosted me in the middle of the school cafeteria I decided that I couldn't back down. I felt like a movie character-Norma Rae comes to mind. I wasn't going to let this mean lady talk to me in such a derogatory manner, so I told her to stop. I think she was shocked to have someone stand up to her and shocked that neither intimidation nor manipulation, which seemed to be her ace cards, were working for her.

So, it's been almost 2 weeks since my little 'female adventurers' drama and I am finally starting to realize that both my daughter and I are going to be okay without them. Maybe sometime in the future we'll try again, but next time it is going to be because she is begging me to do it. Otherwise I don't need to impose my insecurities of wanting to be included in a group onto her. So, thank you Deb and Sand. Thank you for being my friends for 20+ years and for helping me to realize that, like her mama, she is gonna be just fine.

Pink is The Word...Have You Heard?

I have been given the task of writing a brief history of my own personal story. I love assignments. There is enough school girl still left in me that I thrive on pleasing the person who is doling out responsibilities. In my own personal report card on life I want to make sure that I get a check plus on 'completes all tasks in a timely manner.' This is just as important as getting the good grade on the completed assignment itself. I want to be in the National Honor Society of life. Everynite I have my own little induction ceremony in my head with bowed heads and dimmed lights and lit candles. Is someone tapping me on the shoulder? Am I doing my best? This is a question I continually ask myself. Where does that come from?

My sense is that my overall life GPA is probably enough to meet the requirement of induction, but when you breakdown the point system, the numbers are all over the map. Before I was diagnosed with breast cancer I was a fairly self-reflective individual. Since the diagnosis, it (the self-reflection) actually means something to me. When you are going along in life with the tacit expectation that your life span is going to fit neatly into the actuarial tables you figure you have some wiggle room. There is plenty of time to work on aspects of your life that, for now, you have swept under the rug. After the diagnosis of a life threatening illness, you have to recalculate your time line. Of course you have the absolute expectation that after all the godforsaken medical interventions you have had that you are one of the 80% plus who will never experience a recurrance of their cancer, but, just in case...You are going to play the odds game and try to outwit fate.

When I was diagnosed with stage 2a breast cancer two and half years ago the trajectory of my life acutely changed. Whatever sense of control that I once thought I possessed had disappeard into the ethers. My 3 children (at the time, 3, 5 and 6 years old, respectively) and my husband now faced the very real prospect of life without a mother/wife. I was terrified not only for myself (at the time a 38 year old woman with no family history of breast cancer who decided to get screening mammography at an early age based on a passing suggestion by my gynecologist), but moreso for my family. I'll be honest, regarding my husband, he is amazing and we have a great ride together and I love him dearly. But, I figured if I died (which every woman who is ever diagnosed with any life threatening illness immediately thinks), he'd just be able to go out and get himself a younger, cuter, blonder, more petite version of myself. It's not like he'd be cheating on me because I'd be dead. But, my kids...that's a whole different ballgame. How can a child be left motherless, especially at such a young age. Sure it happens to...'people'. But according to my plan, I wasn't one of those 'people'. This scenario was not in my play book.

As my husband and I settled into the diagnosis and we realized the course of action set before us we were faced with the very real challenge of how to explain this to our children. What we quicky determined is that there is no one way to do this and it wasn't going to be just one conversation but an ongoing discussion. We enlisted the help of websites, doctors, books, match book covers...Just about anything we could find. To some extent, the young age of my children was beneficial for both them and for me. They were too young to understand fully the implications of my diagnosis so this limited some of their long term worries. They were impacted more on the basis of my inability to mother them in the way that they had become accustomed. When I was sick from chemotherapy, they had to be quieter or go on play dates with friends. They had to adjust to a bald mom (of whom they have long since forgotten). They couldn't be held when I was recovering from one of my many surgeries. I'm sure that this made them feel scared and insecure. We talked about it and talked about it and talked about it some more. Everyone went to therapy. Everyone went to some more therapy. In the midst of my treatment, my kids switched elementary schools (and, by the grace of God, my family was embraced at their new school). I was the new bald mom. The kids didn't really care, but they had to explain to their friends why their mom had no hair and always wore a bandana on her head. My middle son told his new friends that I had cancer; skin cancer (he was 5 and after all, the mastectomy had affected my skin). When taking my 3 year old daughter to get a haircut she was asked how short she wanted it and she responed, "Let's just shave it!" With both a bald mother and father (my husband kept his head shaved in solidarity), that seemed to be the norm in our family.

Thirty one months later (since the day of my diagnosis) we have weathered the storm. Knock on wood, I'm good (though I do think I'm dying every time a get a sniffle or a hang nail. Just ask my husband and my massage therapist-Yes, once you have cancer or a chronic illness you enlist the help of every alternative therapy practitioner that has ever been listed in the yellow pages-chiropractic medicine, accupuncture, Reiki, cupping...). But, we still experience residual effects from the storm. Two of my kids require a lot of verbal and physical reassurance. Not so much about my illness. It manifests itself in other ways (am I going to be late for to pick them up from school? am I always nearby in the house? if I step outside to take out the garbage, I have to announce it, etc...) and I have to remind myself not to get impatient with them. Just like me, they are still processing the course of events that have transpired thus far in their very young lives. The other child has responded differently. This one is impish and pushes the envelope on just about every situation and we have to walk the very fine line of tolerance and accountability. This too requires patience and discernment on a whole different level.

All of this is very basic parenting stuff, but confounded by our situation. We are not unique in having had 'circumstances' befall us; everyone has a backdrop on which their lives are created. As I mentioned earlier, having had breast cancer while raising young children has been beneficial. Not only for the reasons previously mentioned, but it has been the gift of clarity. It is much easier to sort out what matters and what doesn't matter (though I still get caught up in the nonsense of life just like everyone else). That is a true gift and one for which I am continually grateful.

So, everyday I wake up and thank God for the gift of life with all the good and the bad. I thank Him for the things that really matter, my husband, my children, my friends and the relationships I have with each of them. I thank Him for the color pink which, in my mind, has come to represent hope and gratitude. Since my diagnosis, almost unconsciously, I usually have something on my person that is pink. I'm not a tremendously girly, girl but this color is a visual reminder to me of all that I hold dear. I have had the good fortune of being in a city with so many available resources. One of them, introduced to me by a dear friend who has since continued her journey beyond this life, has been The Pink Ribbons Project. Through this non profit organization that provides avenues of art therapy for those whose lives have been affected by breast cancer, I have been able to assist in the creation of a program called Pink Alive Kids. This program will help those families with children, very young to teen, navigate the complexities of having breast cancer and raising children. And it will be a resource and an outlet for children who have no 'kids of breast cancer moms/dads' cohort to call their own. They will see that their are other kids who share in their insecurities and they will be offered healthy and safe ways to express the gamut of their emotions. So, in the month of October, despite the overtones of black and orange and all that is ghoolish and scary, I challenge you to Think Pink, if for no other reason it reminds you to have hope and to be grateful!

"Cha-cha-changes, ": Confessions of a Crazy Woman

My baby, the youngest of the 3, is starting kindergarten tomorrow. There is a small part of me that is ready to start a congo line down the middle of my street in celebration of this milestone and the freedom that it symbolizes. However, my current emotional state is far from jubilant. It's more of a combination of extreme melancholy and profound neurosis. The past 9 years, those in which I have been a mother, have passed by at an alarmingly rapid rate. In between the phone calls and the e-mails and the errands I always thought I'd have the luxury of time; there would always be more time to sit on the floor and play babies or match box cars or board games. The mind-numbing mornings spent sitting on the sofa clutching my coffee mug wishing away Dora the Explorer & The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, sadly, are forever gone. Just like that an era is over. It's not as though I get to throw in the towel now that all of them are in elementary school ('See ya kids! You are on your own now! Mommy is going to go toss back some martinis and go take tennis lessons!'). But, I wonder if I have been a good steward of my time? Have I spent these past 9 years wisely? In 9 more years, my oldest will be getting ready to go to college. I only have 9 more years to teach him the stuff he's supposed to know before he leaves home. I know I've squandered some of my time as a mother. God knows it's almost impossible to extract every ounce of purposeful, teachable moments out of your time spent with your kids. There is a lot of static or times when the screen is just blank.

I think I'm my own worst critic. If I had to fill out an evaluation of myself per kid on my performance thus far, I'd probably be circling a whole lot of 6 and 7's (you know, on one of those Likert scales from 1-10 with 10 as the highest). There would be some 2's and 3's (oral hygiene, enforcement of proper language). But I'd have written in a bunch of comments about how I could improve my patience or have been more attentive or spent more time with each kid individually.

Everyone tells you it goes by so quickly, raising your kids. Whenever someone tells me that, a veteran parent-the kind with teenagers or college kids (as opposed to an active duty parent like me-the kind with the little shits still pissing you off more often than not)-I usually smile and nod in polite agreement and then think , "Shut the f_ck up! You aren't scraping blueberries off the hardwood floors or refereeing petty arguements!" But, you know what, those people, the veterans, they are absolutely right. They wouldn't volunteer to do your shift for you, but they are sitting there filling out their own evaluation forms and wishing they could go back and do some things better.

So tomorrow morning will come and it will go but I hope in 3 months, when I am kvetching over 3 different sport team practices and homework and special projects, that I remember how I feel right now. I hope that I am reminded of what a priviledge it is to be given the responsibility of parenthood. I hope that I will remember that I am accountable for my actions as a mother; accountable to my Creator, to my kids and to society. I hope that I savour even the most trivial and aggravating parts of the job, because in the blink of an eye, it will all be over.

(all of this said and I haven't even commented on how freaked out I am about what I am going to do with my time. Now that the noble job of parenting will be largely taken over by the public schools between the hours of 8 am-3 pm). That is where the neurosis factors in-talk about identity crisis. I think this is what they mean by a mid life crisis. Neurotic doesn't even begin to explain how insecure I am feeling right now.

BMI and Other Stuff

I really want a chocolate chip cookie, but I am not going to eat one. Considering the posterior aspect of my body could qualify for it's own zip code, I'm going to do my best to show some self-restraint. But it ain't easy. I want all the people in the world who have fat genes to raise their hands in the air like the just don't care and say, "Woo-hoo"!

Maintaining a BMI greater than 25 takes a considerable amount of effort. While at work today I learned some new factual information. The term 'morbid obesity' is no longer en vogue. The more politically correct classifications of obesity 1, 2 and 3 have been adopted. The higher the number, the bigger you are. For example a BMI greater than or equal to 40 is obesity 30. It seems to me that those numbers correspond quite nicely to the sizing system at Chico's, the clothing store for generous sized women.

I played with my kids tonite and for that I feel like I should earn a gold star. I was god-awful tired after working all day and all I really wanted to do was watch crappy tv and send them to bed. But summertime rules prevailed and they knew that I would never be able to get them into bed before 10pm. So we sat at the kitchen table and played several rounds of Uno. Not so suprisingly, I had a lot of fun with them. Aside from the fact that I am shamefully competitive, even with my own children, we all had a good time. Every once in a while I'll catch a glimpse of my kids and I'll remember that they aren't going to always sit with me to play card games. When that happens, when I realize that they aren't always going to be little and adorable I try to breathe in the moment and capture it for what it's worth. The dirty fingernails, the goldfish crumbs, the hysterical giggles (potty jokes), the endless questions, the improperly played games-before I know it these days will be a precious memory. So for now, I let the things that dont' reallly matter wait while I enjoy my 3 gifts.

The Dominican Republic

It's been awhile since I've had the luxury of sitting in front of my keyboard and monitor to spew my inconsequential garbage. Sometimes I think I've lost my ability to find humor in everyday situations, but it's more that I don't have the time to write it down.

We just returned from a month long vacation. Instead of going thru all the glorious details of the entire 30 days, I'll recount the highlights from the last one-third of our trip which was spent in the Dominican Republic. In planning this venture, I must admit that I had some reservations about taking my 3 kids to a third world country. Cholera, dysentary, yellow fever, malaria, dengue fever, lack of proper car seat/restraints, machete accidents-these words flashed across my mind like the NYSE symbols flash across the botton of screen on CNBC. My brother spent 3 years in the DR as a Peace Corps volunteer in the early 2000's and it was while he was there that he met his wife; my current sister-in-law. Actually, Bill did all of the planning for this trip. I simply provided him with my credit card information so I could continue to accrue debt. Bill tried to get me to come visit him when he was living in the DR, but I was either pregnant or nursing a baby the entire 3 years he was there so the timing was never quite right. This trip, the one that just occured, was to be a big family trip; his family, my family and our mom. I'd been promising him for the past decade that I was gonna go to this country that he loves, so now was the time.

We arrived in Puerto Plata on July 19th. At this point we're almost 3 weeks deep into our vacation and, proudly might I boast, not a one of us amongst the 5 wanted to kill anyone else. We'd just spent 9 days in Western Pennsylvania at Lee's mom's compound and it was heavenly and serene and peaceful. Bucolic days spent fishing and hiking and swimming and paddle-boating and bb-gun shooting and fresh garden vegetable eating. Lovely. Hard to imagine anything more divine.

The first 4 days in the DR were fairly uneventful. Bill had booked rooms at the RIU Mambo, an all-inclusive resort on the Atlantic coast. I had never been to an all-inclusive resort, but they are akin to a cruise in the 'buffet meals and in your face constant entertainment' aspect, only on land. Any time you turned around someone named Rocky or Mama Mia was trying to get you to take Merengue lessons or do aerobics in the pool and there was practically 24 hour access to the Dominican version of pizza and burgers. No one was questioning your decision to have a pina colada at 9:30 am. As a matter of fact, if you looked around there were about 500 Germans in poorly fitting bikinis (men and women) there to join you. So, we swam and ate and drank and had a merry ole time watching nightly shows on the beach or on the stage (fyi...if you are disappointed about the King of Pop's show cancellation due to an untimely demise, the RIU resort in Puerto Plata has a guy that does a spot on impersonation-moonwalk and all-for an entire hour show. You would have thought it was Michael himself.) During these 4 days we had a couple of outings; a near-death experience on the "Teleferico" and a trip to the "27 Charcos" (27 waterfalls-or more literally-27 pools of water below the falls). With the former fore we took a ski-lift like gondola to the top of a mountain to give us a grand view of the island's beaches. The fact that there were ominous cloud formations providing near zero visability should have been our first clue to abort the mission, but perpetually the optomists, we tarried onward. Once we reached the top of the mountain, the skies opened and the flood waters commenced. We spend about an hour and a half inside tourist shops seeking shelter from the rain all the while trying convince the shopkeepers that we didn't need any of their wares. Realizing the rain was not going to stop, we made our way back to the gondola to take us back down the mountain. Operations had been suspended due to high wind velocity and thunder and lightning. After waiting in the lobby for a reasonable delay they decided to let a car full of fools go back down the mountain. We almost lost one whole branch off the family tree that day. About a third of the way down, the gondola started swinging with the wind and seemed to jump off the cables. This happened several times as the 10 of us and 35 + of our our closest Dominican brothers and sisters chuckled lightly all the while hoping we weren't about to plummet to our death. As we finally reach the bottom of the mountain with the gondola station in full view about 200 yards away, suspended about 100 feet above the parking lot, the gondola looses power and we must wait for the back up generator to kick in. We finally made it and I have a great series of photos that I have labeled, "The Faces of Fear".

The 27 Charcos were incredibly cool. The Rio Damajagua spills down the mountain creating 27 waterfalls with giant pools of water beneath them. After hiking about 3 miles to get to the base of the falls, we ascended the falls with our 2 Dominican guides, Lioney and Yunior. The smaller of the 2, Lioney, looked like the equivalent of Zac Efron size wise. At least Yunior appeared to be able to bench press more than his own body weight. But these 2 guys hoisted us up the falls (we only did the botton 7 due to time constraints and b/c my mom was stuck at the bottom with the 2 littlest kids who couldn't go up) with the agility of gazelles. Those 2 could shimmy up a rock faster than any mountain goat this side of the equator. Once we got to the top of the falls we got to slide, swim and jump all the way down. I felt like I was in one of those old Mountain Dew commercials where they have all those young, cool, good-looking kids jumping of rocks.

The badness starts about day 4 of our trip. Somewhere in the buffet line, despite the hand sanitizer offered by women lurking around in maid uniforms as you enter the dining room (or as you enter and exit the bathrooms), some fecal-oral contaminant crossed paths with our family. My middle son was the first to fall almost simultaneous with his grandmother. You name it and it was likely coming out of an orifice. We did the parental thing and comforted him and gave him appropriate hydration and as he improved we waited for the next victim to fall.

Back to my brother, the one who introduced us to the island of Hispaniola and the country of the Dominican Republic. As one might imagine, his time in the Peace Corps was not spent at all-inclusive resorts. He was actually commissioned to help a small mountain community referred to as "El Campo" develop an aquaduct system for farming. This is where he really wanted us to visit. I thought of a million and one reasons in my head as to why this was not a good idea. But, I didn't want to seem like a prissy little girl who was too scared to take her 3 white kids to the mosquito infested mountain jungles of the DR while driving on a narrow gravel road to get there. My mother has been to the campo before. Her initial suggestion was that we stay in the campo for a week. Wisely, my brother decided to curb her enthusiasm down to 2 nights and 2 days. When doing the planning, I had suggested to my brother that we go the campo initially, before the beaches and other sight-seeing. However his reasoning for going in the middle of our trip was justifiable. He wanted to on the weekend when more people would be in from the fields and it would allow more time for visiting. I was hesitant to agree to two nights, but I didn't want to disappoint my brother and Lee and I felt like it was not complete negligence in the parenting department.

As we leave the highway and begin to travel up the mountain on the small and winding road I am not anticipating that one of us might fall victim to the intestinal ailment that had afflicted my son. The drive up is beautiful. Everything is lush and green and much like one might imagine the Garden of Eden to have been. My son is 85% recovered at this point and when we reach our destination, he hops out of the car ready to explore. After introductions are made, Lee leads the kids down a mountain path to a creek and I remain up at the home of our hosts to play dominoes. As we are playing I realize that something is not quite right. I don't really feel nauseous, but I just don't feel right. My sister-in-law had been helping with meal preparation. The campo is very different from the resort. There are no buffet lines. The kitchen is in a small wooden building separate but adjacent to the main house. A wood burning stove is used to cook the food and there is a sink, but the water that is used in the sink is pumped in from water collected in barrels. It is for cleaning but it isn't drinkable. The house is constructed of cement and there are cement floors and a tin roof and interior walls with rooms partitioned off with thin ply wood. During the day, the sunlight lights up the house, at nite electricity is available, but it is minimal and it is provided by a solar panel and used sparingly. There is no plasma screen TV with a satellite connecting you to over 300 channels and a DVD player. It is a modest 4 room home with 3 rooms used has bedrooms and one room used as a combined dining-sitting room. It is sparse, but neat and it has all the essentials that a shelter should provide. It is someplace to lay your head at night and it will keep you warm and dry. My kids had been primed for this experience, but it is hard to sell something when you've never seen it before. They, nor we, really had no concept of what the campo was going to be. As soon as we arrive and my daughter sees the primitive accomodations to which she has been subjected she is appalled and eager to leave. She sees no reason in extending our visit any longer nor does she see any point in the educational/cultural/humanitarian component of our visit. In preparation for our trip we decided to bring gifts for the kids who lived in the campo. I decided that one way my kids could contribute to this effort was to forego the plastic toy in their kids meal for the kids in the campo. My kids have been 'suffering' the loss of their kid's meal toys for about 6 months and my daughter has been the number one proponent and the most generous, happily handing over her goods to me. Now that we are there to deliver she is happy to just drop the goods and go. I can see that her future humanitarian efforts will end at the US border.

My sister-in-law preparred a typical Dominican meal for the campo; fried salami and boiled green bananas. I can eat anything. ANYTHING. But, I took one look at this stuff I was supposed to be cutting up for my kids and I knew it wasn't going to happen. I called my mom to the rescue and our hosts kindly showed me to their room where I commenced to rest supine upon their bed for the remainder of my time at the campo. Supine, that is, when I wasn't up running to the latrine (as in outside the main house, in a separate walled off structure, Little House on the Prarie style, outhouse) to have things coming out top and bottom side of my body. All night, in the dark, without air conditioning or indoor plumbing this happened. Only to be worsened if I even so much as thought about a sip of water. At one point as I was making my way down the path to the latrine, I felt so dizzy that I thought I was going to pass out so I lay down on the path. It mattered not to me that I was laying in my own vomit with my shorts half way down my legs. At that point I just wanted to die. I moaned form my brother, the last person I saw before I walked down the path, and he, along with my husband, scooped me up and propped me up on a rock. But not before he pulled up my pants for me. Of all the mortifying things a man has to do in his life, perhaps the most is to see his older sister's flabby half-moon showing and to have to eclipse it for her.

As if the night couldn't get any worse, lying there underneath the mosquito net hoping you can wait at least one more hour to get up to go to the latrine again, I can hear it-wretching and it is not me. It's my husband and he sounds 10x worse than me. Everytime he vomits I think certainly this time he has ruptured his esophagus. Lee is not a friend of this latrine and refuses to use it. Instead he spends the night in the rental van getting up and sh_tting down the side of the mountain every time he needs to go. By morning, I am spent but I am starting feel somewhat human again. But, by this point the commander-in-chief has made up his mind. We are going back down the mountain and going to a hotel so at least if we have to vomit we can do it in air-conditioning into a toilet that we can flush and watch cable tv in the interrum. When he says we have to leave I get a bit mopey and try to think of reasons as to why we should stay. First and foremost, I don't want to disappoint my brother or the generous hospitality of our hosts (who had to put up with our wretching al night long). Lee is adamant though and so we say our goodbyes and head down the mountain which is a good thing because I'm not as well as I think I am and spend the next 24 hours in bed with a fever, but not before I drive us down the mountain and rapidly over a few speedbumps just to make Lee groan a little louder as punishment for making us leave.

One thing I forgot to mention. In the midst of establishing the campo as our very own vomitorium, we had a little mama drama in the mountain jungle. Our host family serves as the mayor and first lady of the community and the are often called upon to help resolve other family's disputes, regardless of the time of day or nite. As I lay there I hear the shouts of domestic violence in Spanish. Apparently the town drunk, who is in his 30's and still lives with his parents decides that he wants to try to kill them by beating them with a chair. All sorts of shouting and yelling and negotiating is happening in Spanish. Finally someone comes and yells outside the windor of my host family and they jet out bed and solve the dispute (by telling the 50+ yr old parents that they are to beat their son for acting the way he is).

Now that we are back and mostly well and all of this is a joke, the thing that I can say about our trip is that it was very humbling. Upon witnessing the generosity of the people in the campo and elsewhere, I can't help but be impressed by the lack of complaint and the gratitude that is displayed by many of the Dominican people and many who are willing to share so much even though it may seem so little by our standards. I just want to remember (and I want my kids to remenber) that most of the world lives with so much less than what we have. Not only do we need to be cognizant of that disparity but we need to live our lives with respect towards it reminding us to do our part not only in word, but by our actions.

Saying Goodbye

I've not been as prolific this year as in years past and I am okay with that. I just don't have as much to say, but I suppose that is how it goes with writing. There are bountiful periods and then there are droughts. Not having anything worthwhile to say has not negated my desire to be a writer. I still see publishing somewhere in my future, I just don't know when or what. I try not to be too expectant of myself because I don't want to manufacture something out of a preconceived notion I might have. I figure that it will be apparent to me when I am supposed to write something and when I am supposed to pursue publication.

Writing as an academician is not anything I desire, which, to some extent, is odd. There is definitely a career path that would allow me to write academically, but I find it stale and boring. None of the topics get me (as one who writes) really excited. I like writing about medicine and about the process of being a doctor and an educator because that is fascinating stuff. It's a strange concept to realize that I get paid to have people listen to me; people like patients, residents and students. Most of the time I don't sit and ponder how big of a responsibility it is, but when I do, I am infinitely grateful for the opportunity.

Right now I am feeling sad. Our neighbors, good friends, will be moving soon. We have lived in the same place for 10 years and these people have lived in their home longer than we have. Their 2 children are the same age as our youngest and our oldest and all 5 of our collective children play together all the time. We are close in the way that neighbors are close. I trust them completely with my children and my home. They have similar values that Lee and I have and they are raising good kids and, by all appearances, they (the husband and wife) have a solid relationship. It hurts my heart to see them leave and I truly mourn their departure for Lee and I and for our children.

In many ways, as you get older, it gets easier to make friends. You don't really care what other people think of you and you aren't trying to impress anyone and they either take you or leave you as you are. But the hard part is, as you get older, there are less and less people with whom you want to spend time or make the effort of friendship. And, no matter what anyone says, after friends move the friendship changes dynamics. You no longer have the luxury of proximity. Everything takes more effort and with busy lives it's not always anyone's priority to make an effort. You have to go to the grocery store or take the kids to the dentist or pay the bills or make dinner or help someone with their homework or take the clothes to the cleaners. When someone is just 3 houses down the street you see them when you take out the garbage or water the grass. You hang out in the street while the kids ride their scooters or climb trees. You take turns letting the kids destroy each other's houses and you've known their kids for so long that it's not weird for you to yell at them (and they ignore you in a way equal to the manner in which your own children ignore you).

Being neighbors with someone and being their friend means you avoid the ackwardness of having to let them know how much they mean to you. Everytime one of you takes each other's respective child to practice, you just know. You've been to every birthday party, every Halloween party, and block party. You've witnessed career moves, home renovations and you know each other's extended families. You've brought each other diapers or honey baked hams at the birth of new babies, you've thrown each other baby showers that mother to be wasn't able to attend b/c she had to attend the birth of the baby that was being honored. That same baby is now 5 years old and spends the nite at your house with your daughter. During the worst time of my life, they were there for our family in a way that no amount of gratitude will ever be able to repay. And just like that, situations change and they have to move on.

I think it is easier to be the leaver rather than the leavee. If you are moving you have all the giddy anticipation of the new house and the new circumstances. If you are left behind you are left hoping and praying that whoever moves into the house is remotely tolerable. And you know that however wonderful they might be, they'll never replace the original occupants. As the one's left behind, you feel a little like Jimmy Stewart's character in "It's a Wonderful Life"; consistent, yet uncertain of your personal value. It's almost like a relationship that you know is doomed from the beginning, you just don't want to be the one who gets dumped. It's always better to be the one who jumps ship first. And with any good neighbor, there is always that hidden fear of the other one moving first and the guilt that is felt by the ones who are doing the leaving. And the secret selfish desire by the one's left behind, that all real estate transactions will crash and burn thus forcing your friends to stay put (but knowing that they won't really be satisfied).

But I guess this all part of that circle of life thing. Friends come and go. Lee and I have become accustomed to being the ones left behind so we'll be fine in the end. The kids, they are new to this game and that is what saddens me the most. Their impending sorrow leaves me wishing I could find a way out of having to face it. No guide book can really prepare you to deal with your kids' disappointment. So we'll do what our parents did before us; make stuff up as we go along and pray to God that we are doing a good enough job. I know that it's something that they will have to face in life eventually, a transition like this. And they will be fine too. They'll learn from it and they will be more resilient. But, I still can't help feeling the saddness that comes from saying goodbye to people that you love.

Blessed Wal-Mart

It's just me and my dog sitting here in the house. The dog is going nuts because she sees her in-laws across the street and she wants to go and be with her beloved. She and the neighbor dog have a thing going. They are smitten with each other in a way I did not know occurred with canines.

I've been meaning to write about my most recent excursion to Laredo. The kids and I went for Easter and, like every other trip, we ended up at Wal-Mart. This is an observation that I have made and we are testing the hypothesis. Can we go an entire vacation without going to Wal-Mart? So far, the answer is no. This time my middle kid forgot to bring a pair of shoes. As the mother it should be my responsibility to make sure that everyone is properly packed. He started off with 2 pairs of shoes, but before we had even gone 100 miles he had busted his flip-flops and the cleats (couldn't find his sneakers) that I grabbed for him were actually his sister's. He could have made it the whole weekend shoe-less had it not been for the fact that we were going out to a ranch chock full-o' snakes and cacti. Sadly, I can't even blame the whole Laredo Wal-Mart experience entirely on him. By Easter Sunday I had already been there about 3 times.

The thing about Wal-Mart is that they are all exactly the same. I don't mean the physical lay-out, but I mean the ambiance. If you are in the middle of a Wal-Mart the city outside could be just about anywhere. There are never enough cashiers and the lines are always about 10 people deep. There are always women who should be wearing clothes larger than what they selected to wear (ample flesh pouring over the sides of their tank tops and jean shorts) and usually they have about 3 crying kids in their cart, especially if it is 10 o'clock at night. Even the ethnic mix is always the same; a cross-section of America. Maybe I always end up there b/c of the security in sameness. Sadly, the consistency of Wal-Mart comforts me.

It's 4am and I Must Be Dreaming

Here an oink, there an oink, everywhere an oink, oink...Seems like swine flu is on everyone's mind these days. The reason that I am up at 4 am is due to guilt. I managed to make my good friend's 40th birthday memorable b/c I successfully caused enough paranoia in her mind that she has likely quarantined her entire family for the next 365 days. But, when she told me that her colleague just came back from Mexico and stayed home from work today b/c he was feeling fluish-well, I couldn't resist the "oh my god's" and the "are you kidding me's". I truly thought she was pulling my leg. Chances are it is probably nothing remotely related to swine flu, but that natural human reaction (which, if I may bash on my own gender, is often times more pronounced in females) to switch into hysteria mode kicked in. Normally I pride my self in being even-keeled, but she caught me in a moment of weakness when my mind was processing about 17 things at once and wasn't completely focused on the conversation. So, those interal thoughts that usually get filtered out before they leave your lips were given life. No time to think about implications of what I might say, the verbal diarrhea came bubbling forth! Then, in the hours that followed our conversation I got caught up in my own caca and forgot to call her back. Forgotten...until about an hour ago when, as I am peeing and in a fog like state, I think, "Oh no! I forgot to call her back!" So, knowing there is nothing I can do right now, I figure I might as well read everything I can on swine flu b/c 4 am is a really good time to make rational decisions! To avoid any other potential damage, I think I'll go back to bed!!!

Today Was a Tough Day

Is it March or April that is in like a lion and out like a lamb (or is it the other way around)? Whatever...March was a fairly dry month concerning bloggable insights and so is this month quite honestly. Mainly I'm writing because I need to clean out my 'closet of insecurities' and see if I can get these negative thoughts of imminent death from pinging around in my head.

This is a yucky feeling-fear. I just don't like it. I've been floating along, carefree, in my little bubble for a couple of months without too much preoccupation about cancer. I've enjoyed my time off. But doggone it if a series of events didn't cause me to come undone this morning. First I heard about another 40ish year old woman diagnosed about 10 years ago and with kids not much older than mine with widespread metastases and approaching death. Then I gave a lecture to the medical students about being a doctor and a patient. It was a small group and the discussion, using some of my own writing from my own experiences, was insightful and thought provoking. I didn't tell the students that they were reading about me and that I had written the stuff till the end of the session and I hadn't realized how much it would affect me. It made me sad to listen to some of my own story in the words that I had written. Not so much because I had been morose when I was writing, but more because I was completely open and exposed when I was telling about my experiences. Maybe I was mourning for myself. I think that process occurs in waves, self-mourning. Sometimes the waves are so big that they come crashing right on top of you and you feel like you might get knocked over and swept away. I think right now I'm trying to do what you are supposed to do if a riptide carries you out into the ocean. I'm just floating along in the current and trying not to struggle till I gather enough strength to swim back to shore.

After these 2 things I had a conversation with my brother about the likelihood of him having to care for our mother should we play the odds and assume that I go before him and my mom. I hadn't really been thinking about checking out anytime soon (minus the two events that I just described), but we started talking about him having to care for his mother-in-law eventually and in my already depressed state I decided, 'hell, why not take this scenario one step further' and gave him my cheery prediction that he would be the sole provider for two old ladies one day. He decided to top me on my gloom and doom report and relived his experience playing bingo with and feeding ice-cream to a some middle aged woman who had suffered a traumatic brain injury and now had the mental capacity of your common garden vegetable for some church do-good event this weekend. He said it reminded him to remind our mother to figure out some retirement plan for herself so he could afford to put her in a place as nice as the one he had been to if she ever suddenly became incapacitated. I think that bummed me out even more, because in his recollection to me of his conversation to mom, I was already out of the picture. He was providing for our proposed elderly and invalid mother all on his own and I hadn't even joked to him about this yet-that he would be doing it all on his own b/c I'd be dead. He'd already thought of that. I know that all of my friends and family probably already think it. Not that they wish me dead, but they probably have scenarios in their heads that don't include me. I just don't want to hear them. I only want to hear the, "Of course you'll be at your kids' weddings!" It's not denial. I can postulate what the actuarial tables calculate just as well as the next guy, but normally I figure that it's better to have hope than not and I want people around me to feed me hope. My brother wasn't being cruel. He probably didn't even realize how it sounded (it was kind of like when my middle son drew a picture of the family right after I was diagnosed and everyone was in the picture except me. I have-joked that he had some sort of grim-reaper 6th sense).

I got so worked up that today while I was shopping at Cosco I was convinced that I was having some kind of preseizure aura and I was about to fall on the ground in convulsions at any moment with my legs splayed wide open and my skirt all askew with my soiled undies showing for the world to see. I kept waiting for an arm to twitch or a facial palsy and the resulting public humiliation of having to get dragged out of Cosco on a stretcher after causing a huge spectacle in the middle of the clothes tables. The stress of all the worry caused a sharp piercing headache in my left occiput that I was convinced was a huge tumor from whence all the neurological symptoms were originating. The fact that I could massage away the pain was only mildly reassuring.

On the way home I called my dad for reassurance and he did his best, but no one really knows how to reassure you the way you need to be reassured, so I decided that I'd just try to brush it off and suck it up. You know, repress the feelings deep down as far as they would go. It seemed to work for a little while till I remembered that my good friend who also has breast cancer and 3 small kids was probably coming out of surgery for her 2nd mastectomy with plastic surgery & reconstruction (why do we have to be in this club?). And then the icing on the shit-cake was when I read that a Sunday School friend's mom (who is in her early 60's) has just taken a turn for the worst and is going to die imminently from pancreatic cancer. This friend has 2 kids less than the age of 5 years old and a year ago thought that her mom would be around to see her grandkids grow and now she's sitting at her mother's bedside waiting for her to die. The woman who brought her into this world is about to make her final exit.

I know that I need to just focus and get my eyes back on God. But every once in a while there will be a day like today and it just gets so easy to lose sight. Huh, interesting...right after I wrote that last sentence I read from Sarah Young's book, Jesus Calling this passage, "When you focus on what you don't have or on situations that displease you, your mind also becomes darkened. You take for granted life, salvation, sunshine, flowers and countless other gifts from [God]. You look for what is wrong and refuse to enjoy life until that is 'fixed'"

So I will do my best to give thanks even on days like today.

Sex Ed 101 for Your Elementary Schooler

The boys got a crash course in animal reproduction this past weekend. We were driving and it always seems as though all important conversations happen in the car when you can't see the expressions on their faces. I think they do this on purpose. I'm not sure how the topic turned to the mating practices of canines, but it did. My oldest was concerned that even though our dog has been spayed, more importantly, because she was not married it was inconceivable to him that she could become impregnated. Now Lee and I are pretty conservative, but practical. While we won't be advocating teen pregnancy in our home, the whole "wait until you are married" concept, though in a perfect world would be ideal, might be impossible to enforce. And we already know plenty of people who have conceived/had their kids outside of the "marriage bed", so to speak. So, thinking that the whole idea of tolerance is more important than idealism, I decide that 290 west is the optimal location to disspell the myth of not only dog matrimony, but matrimony as a prerequisite to childbearing in general.

"Son, dogs can't really get married."

"But then how do they have babies?" he asks, bewildered.

Thus, the sex education lesson begins. Already they are well versed in the correct terminology of male and female anatomical parts, so I explain that the male dog's penis goes into the female dog's vagina. Lee expounds and decides to make it relateable, "You know how it feels good to touch your penis and it can get hard? Well a dog's penis can get hard too." I remind them of the times that they have seen a dog's penis which leads them to recollect all the different times that they have seen various animal's genitalia. Collectively, the two of them can remember a fair number of animal gaint-testicle sitings. After the digression, my younger son wants to know about the mechanics of the whole encounter. He is puzzled as to how exactly a dog's penis can fit into another dog's vagina. The two parts just don't seem to fit. Then I explain "humping." This is a term that is not in their vocabulary, so I clarify things for them.

"Well, they can't lay down together, so the male dog kind of pounces on the female dog from behind and his penis can go into her vagina", I offer to them.

Since we've gone this far, Lee figures we might as well go all the way with our lesson and starts in on embryology. "The testicles have sperm in them, which are like little seeds and these seeds go out thru the penis into the girl dog's vagina. The girl dog also has a little seed inside of her and it's called an egg and the sperm and the egg join together and puppies grow from this. It's the same thing for humans. This is how they have babies too."

My oldest, Mr Concrete, dumbfounded, exclaims, "No way, the girls have eggs inside of them? How did they get in there?"

So, Lee backtracks and explains the difference between the eggs that are seen in a cardboard dozen and the eggs in a woman's body. The oldest seems satisfied with our lesson and is quietly pondering these things in his mind, though the concept of canine promiscuity is rattling his sense of right and wrong. I know he is still thinking, "Surely, they must get married before they have babies. Who would take care of the puppies? Just the mom?" He does't realize, in the animal kingdom, there is not an equal division of labor, with dad taking the pups to soccer practice so mom can make dinner.

Our younger boy gets it right away (mercifully, our daughter who is far more savvy than both of her brothers combined, is asleep in her car seat). In the rear view mirror I can see his wheels spinning and putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. Boy dog's penis in girl dog's vagina. Boy dog pounces on girl dog. Boy dog's seed and girl dog's egg combine and make a baby. And this is the same as humans! I can see the moment his little mind is screaming, "Eureka!" and with an impish look on his face and a glimmer in his eye, he raises his eyebrows and says to Lee, "So dad, is that what you did to mom? Did you pounce on her?"

I'm sure that we will have this conversation (or versions there of) time and time again, but I don't think that Lee and I will laugh as hard as we did on this occasion, with tears streaming down our faces and urine soiling our underpants. Hands down, that was one of the top ten moments of parenthood. I don't see how people can avoid talking to their kids about "sensitive subjects". They (kids) are so damn smart that you really aren't sparing them from anything and you, as the parent, are, at the least, withholding some really funny stuff from yourself. Child-rearing, no matter how exhausting it may be, is awesome!

Addictions and Missions

Our dog, Star, has a fondness for small stuffed creatures. Either the furry creatures that populate our daughter's room (more accurately, the four corners of our home) are little known canine delicacies or upon seeing them she enters into some sort of predatory mode and is simply protecting us all from the dangers of Beanie Babies and Webkins. My desk has become a make-shift stuffed toy infirmary. Cuddly dogs and cats, bears and wombats are lined up next to the computer, some with simple lacerations and others destined to be amputees. When my daughter sees one of her stuffed animals in the dog's mouth she feels betrayed by the dog. Like she, the dog, had promised my daughter that she would end her addiction, but then she is caught red-handed (or red-snouted to be precise). The look in my daughter's face is one of disgust and deep sorrow because she knows that she can't trust the one that she loves.

Speaking of addictions, my middle son has developed a fetish of sorts with temporary tattoos. I blame my aunt and uncle who sent him a book of over 500 temporary tattoos. Even though he is not quite 7 years old, his arms, neck and chest resemble those of a 42 year old biker. All he is missing is the motorcycle, leather apparel, long white beard and the bandana. His father and I are hoping that he gets the need to have body art out of his system while he can still remove them with a little soap and water. His addiction is like any other; it's done in secret and he is somewhat ashamed by it. We find wet papertowels and washclothes in unseeming places, evidence that he has been feeding his habit. Later, he wants us to remove them or he covers them with shirtsleeves. He is horribly fearful of having his classmates see them. If he weren't too young to understand the tenets of a 12 step program we might have to consider finding one is some church basement or school cafeteria. Either that or hide the book of tattoos.

I have much more to write, particularly about my soul-searching mission I just completed. Well, maybe I didn't complete it, but I did start it. Rather than journeying to the far east, I went southwest to Laredo, TX. If you can believe it, this trip to a border town was the trip of a lifetime. I credit God and my husband for forcing me to go on this pilgrimage. I must admit at first I was somewhat reluctant. More than anything, it gave me the opportunity to ask really difficult questions. But after I started talking, I realized the questions weren't all that hard to ask, they weren't all that taboo and most people wanted to (or were at least willig to) talk about the topics I proposed. Talk about clearing up a lifetime of misconceptions! Had I had these conversations 20 years ago I could have saved myself a hell of lot of time and money in therapy. But it was probably all those hours over all those years sitting in that chair that enabled me to get to the point where I was ready and preparred to ask the questions without judgment, anger or fear. It encourages me to tell others to do the same. Don't wait to ask the questions or have the conversations. You'll be suprised at what you may learn and mostly, even if it's not what you expect, it's all good.

Just Another Day at the Office

I am sick. That is not meant as a judgement of myself, rather it is an actual physical description. My office mate told me that I sound like Brenda Vaccaro. I'm not sure who she is, but if she sounds like she's been a smoker for the past 60 years, then I sound like her. I have not been able to breathe out of either nostril in days and I bark like a seal when I cough. The reason I had been feeling like I couldn't breathe is because my body was getting ready to mount this assault on me with this horrific cold. Basically, I'm miserable and I want the whole world to know. I laid in bed for almost 3 entire days. The good news is that I finally got to watch "The Millionairre Matchmaker" on Bravo.

Despite my fragile state, ever the martyr, I went in to work today. The first part of the day was spent lying on a nogahide couch in the resident's lounge in the back of the ER. Every time the residents or students had a patient to discuss they would tiptoe back to where I was napping and gently rouse me out of my misery. They could have ordered an open-heart biopsy to be performed right there in the ER (just like they do everything in the ER on the show ER) and I would have agreed to it. After lunch I decided that I had better make an appearance and actually see a few patients. This was a critical error in judgment.

Mostly, I really like the ER. It is a fun, strange, surreal, crazy, hectic, humbling place to practice medicine. Occassionally you have to deal with the scourge of the earth and you want them to crawl back under the rock from whence they came. Today was one of those days. Maybe it was because I felt so shitty. Regardless, after my interaction with one of the patients I found myself wondering why I hadn't bothered calling in sick today. The man wanted cough syrup; prescription cough syrup. Well, no one gets a prescription for cough syrup with codeine from the ER. It just doesn't happen. Besides, I didn't hear him cough one time the entire 15 minutes I spent interviewing and examining him. His lungs were crystal clear and he was finishing a course of antibiotics his primary care doctor had prescribed for him. When I told him that I could give him a prescription strength cough drop, otherwise he'd have to buy over the counter cough syrup, he went ape-shit on me. He pulled out the race card. I had not seen this coming. He told me that I wasn't giving him prescription cough syrup because he was black and all white doctors thought that black patients "just wanted the syrup and they were all drug heads!"

His tactic backfired. It was all intimidation. He thought he could intimidate me into prescribing him narcotics by calling me a racist. This was not the most well thought out plan. After my initial desire to tell him to shut the f-ck up while biting my tongue so as not to call him a f---ing, sh-thead, a--hole and curbing my urge to spit in his face, I took a deep breath (through my mouth b/c, unlike my patient, I actually could not breathe out of my nose) and told him (with the utmost professionalism, of course) that he could not speak to me in that manner and if he continued to speak to me in the tone that he was using (by the way, when he told me I was racist, he was yelling at me and in my face) that I would be happy to call security to escort him out of the hospital. He didn't like this plan so he decided that he would leave on his own. Right then and there. I didn't go running after him, I'm not that much of a martyr, but I did offer, one last time, to give him the cough drops that he didn't want. He declined, though not politely.

I was hopping mad after that little interaction. I was like Deputy Dawg mumbling all sorts of things under my breath, "Sassen frassen...Scourge of the earth...syrup!...hah!...sassen frassen..." It took about 2 to 3 more patients for me to completely pipe down, but by the time the HIV positive lady asked me to look at her "27 vaginal warts", I was as cool as a cucumber. I guess it's just all in a day's work...

Alicia Keyes Listen to This: "I am NOT Superwoman."

I've been especially neurotic lately. At least I can identify it now. When I get anxious I get ailments. Most recently, I have chosen to highlight my respiratory system. Last week, while Lee and I were lying in bed, suddenly I felt like I couldn't breathe. I made Lee go out to the car and pull his nasty public hospital stethescope out of his doctor coat and listen to my lungs. You know, I really want to be tough all of the time but I simply cannot. Lee is priviledged to witness my weaknesses and frailties. He and my housekeeper. But mostly Lee. It must be burdensome. However, I am the one that needs reassurance, so I have him listen a second and third time and assure me that my lungs aren't filled with fluid or riddled with metastatic disease.

Two girls that I know, friends, have been diagnosed with breast cancer since my diagnosis. They are both in their 30's and they both have 3 kids, 8 and younger. Being a good, supportive friend in this situation is not complication-free. As much as I want to be objective, I can't completely extract my own story from their situations. I don't think that it is just about reliving my own circumstances. Rather, I have not yet come to peace with my whole scenario. I guess it is a little bit like picking a scab off of a wound when it is almost healed. But I don't know if this sore ever completely heals. If I isolated myself I don't think that the rawness of it would go away. I'd just be by myself with this exposed nerve and I'd still be getting zapped. I guess I just need to come to terms with the notion that no one is expecting me to be the expert in 'how to be a breast cancer patient'. No one needs me to write the manual with the '10 simple steps to achieving breast cancer survival nirvana'.

Validation-it boils down to this. Somehow by helping these girls, coaching them along, it validates the year I spent wrestling with the breast cancer demons. It puts all that time to good use. In my mind, somewhere deep in my psyche, I can think, "It was all worthwhile. It was purpseful. I can recycle it and use it for something better." That is the type of girl that I am; never sitting still. I need to allow that year, 2007 and the whole frightening ride that it was, to just be. It happened and it happened to me and my family and it was unfortunate, but it is okay now. God or Lee or my parents or my family or my friends are not expecting me to make something profound and useful out of the experience. I'm doing that to myself. My only job is to be me.

Their experience, now, sends me back to those places that I did not like; the dark corners of uncertainty. I have no more control over my destiny now than I did a year and a half ago. And, I have no control over their destinies. It's between them and God, just like everyone else's life is between them and their maker. So, when my friend has to have a mastectomy and reconstruction and her 3 kids have to wait for months to hug their mother, I can cry for her. I can remember my surgery and my recovery and not sugar-coat it. It was hard for everyone. We made it through, but I can still cry for me too. Not because I am feeling sorry for myself, but because I can just let it out. I should not, nor could not, hold this sadness inside anymore than I should or could hold in a sneeze or a hiccup. Because my other friend has finished her treatment and is scared because there is no longer a battle plan and she feels helpless and out of control, I can understand her fear. I still feel her fear. I know the terror of waiting for test results because you think you have some new complication. I can tell her, "I know you are scared. I've been scared too. Whatever it is, it is going to be okay. I am here for you no matter what." I don't have to try to explain away her fears. Acknowledging them is enough.

I am not Superwoman. No one thought I was. There wasn't even a job vacancy. I made myself put on the tight, constricting costume. This is why I couldn't breathe. It was my own anxiety. This is a journey and I can simply join my friends. I don't have to lead the way and sometimes I can fall behind. As I wrote on my friend's poster to hang in her hospital room, in the word of Robert Earl Keen, "The Road Goes on Forever and the party never ends..."

Fillin My Nights With Song

Before I go to bed, I want to share an observation I made regarding the differences between boys and girls...Girls like musicals and boys don't. I think you can draw a line in the sand and have boys stand on one side and girls on the other when it comes to this critical issue. I chose the movie tonite for me, my 3 kids and my nephew. My daughter is 5, my sons are 6 & 8 and my nephew is 7. I told them my kingdom is a dictatorship and they had to watch what I wanted to watch or go to bed. There was lots of R rated stuff that I could have picked out, but I didn't want to spend the whole movie explaining inappropriate stuff to the 4 kids, so I settled for a PG-13, Mamma Mia!

All of the boys' choices were immediately vetoed. As we left Blockbuster they hung their heads in defeat. We started the movie soon after we arrived home. My daughter was immediately enraptured. The singing, the dancing, the costumes, the love story...it was all too good to be true. She sat next to me on the couch, snuggling close and smiling from ear to ear. I could tell what she was thinking; "Where has this genre of movie been hiding for all these years?" She wanted to know all about the girl and the wedding and the dress and the traditions. Who was going to walk her down the aisle? How old would she be when she got married? In her mind, it was all good. And suddenly I had a new partner with whom I could watch chick flicks!

At the same time my daughter was experiencing nirvana, the boys were somewhere in between complete and utter disgust and bewildered resignation. My nephew could not sit still. He stood up. He sat down. He bounced to the left. He crawled across the back of the sofa. He crawled under the sofa. He crawled under the coffee table. He stood up. He sat down. He bounced to the right...About half way through the movie, he turns to me, completely befuddled and with the utmost sincerety and asks, "Why do the keep speaking out in song?" And that will be the same question that he and other men will continue to ask for the rest of their lives. Some day, 30 year from now, he will be sitting in a theater with his wife, having just paid top dollar to see Chicago or something like it and he will turn to his wife and say, "I don't get it. Why do they keep breaking out into song? When are they gonna kill somebody?" That was the question that my 6 year old had for me. "When is there gonna be some action?" As if watching Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan proclaim their unrequited love via a ballad wasn't action enough. My 5 year old daughter got it. As the credits roled, I know she would have sat there through another viewing while the boys were wondering how the could have been duped so easily. That was an hour and forty five minutes of their lives that they would never get back that they could have used playing video games or watching Sponge Bob. While I don't think I could ever get my 8 year old to admit that he liked the movie, I do think that there was some morbid curiosity on his part (like watching the monkeys mate at the zoo).

I know they will never trust me again. I don't see how they can. It was a complete abuse of my power and I know it. I subjected them to a musical without a grown man nearby to come to their defense. I suppose if I allow them to use the Play Station 2 for 4-6 consecutive hours tomorrow, I may be able to atone for my sins. But, I'm not too worried about it because I have my new ally and tomorrow she and I will probably watch the movie another time or two or at least till we know all the songs by heart!

Farewell Sweet Piggy...Farewell

I read a quote recently about blogging; "Never has so much been written about nothing by so many people and read by so little." Pretty much sums it up. But, as long as I realize that I am doing this for me and my kids and not to get discovered by Oprah, then who cares, right?

It's a lazy day today and as usual, I am putting housecleaning at the bottom of my priority list. The amount that needs to be cleaned is overwhelming and I'd rather sit my butt down in front of the computer and waste time. Speaking about wasting time in front of the computer. I joined Facebook recently. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about the time spent on Facebook; very little return for the investment you make. But...it is addictive. People that I haven't even thought about in 20 years-now all of the sudden I know when they are going to go to the bathroom or have their dog groomed. I wonder what it says about us as a society that we'd rather electronically peer into obscure acquaintances' lives than have a conversation with your own family who is sitting in the same room with you or the neighbors that live next door. I'm not proud of this fact, but I have hushed and shooed away my children because I was busy reading Facebook. Not only is that downright pathetic, it's extremely pathetic. I'm 40 years old. I should be busy doing something worthwhile. Sadly, I don't think I am going to quit anytime soon. Like any addiction, it is feeding some deep seated need that I have. I'm not sure what that need may be, but I am feeding it nonetheless.

Piggy, our black and white mouse, died yesterday. I was very flummoxed as to how I was going to break the sad news to our kids. It's not like they haven't experienced loss (in the form of pet death) before. They are actually veterans at this point. After I allowed myself a moment of sadness and reflection, I decided to wait until this morning to tell them. Lee is the one who noticed that she was dead. Earlier in the day one of the neighbor boys asked if she was dead, but I was preoccupied and wasn't really paying attention, so I answered, "No, she's just sleeping." I never went and actually checked Piggy out myself. I went back to whatever I was doing and forgot about it. Later in the evening when Lee told me that she was dead, I thought he was lying. We joke about killing the mice and have fantasies of their demise all of the time. They stink and we are the only people who clean out their cage (except for our housekeeper when she can't stand the stench any longer and she does it herself).

Earlier this week we thought Piggy was on her way out and I actually took the damn thing up to the vet. "Get her here right away!" the vet receptionist instructed me, with alarm in her voice. I immediately jumped in the car (after strapping the cage into the seatbelt) and raced up to the vet's office just to be told, mockingly, that there was nothing wrong with Piggy. "I don't really know that much about 'rodent care'" he told me (and still had the nerve to charge me the $9 office fee). "They can get something called wet tail and you have to get them to me right away so I can give them a shot of antibiotics. But your mouse's bottom looks clean. Sometimes they can get tooth abscesses, b/c their teeth grow continuously. You can just get a pair of nail clippers and clip off the end of their teeth. Just do that and watch for signs of diarrhea."

I gazed at him like he was stoned. "Do you really expect me to be vigilant about my mouse's anal and dental care?" I asked him. He just shrugged and looked at me like I was a fool (which I suppose I was. If wasn't in this pseudo-housewife role, would I have the time to take a mouse to the vet?). I took my mice and left.

For the next couple of days Piggy was fine. She rebounded from whatever mouse ailment from whence she suffered and resumed her role as the less dominant mouse in hers and Snowflake's relationship. She gathered seeds, tended to the mouse dome and occasionally took a foray around the cage...until last night. Last night was the last time that she would climb to the top of the waterbottle to better search for nuggets of food.

Lee banged on the cage. "See, she's not moving." Sure enough, Piggy lay there, amidst the blue shavings, rotting. God only knows how long she had been dead. As I mentioned, I was slightly sad. As much as we joke about it, I could never actually bring harm to the damn things. Even after I threatened to euthenize them earlier this week. After confirming her demise we debated about the best way to rid of her corpse. I thought we should put it outside in a plastic bag and let it freeze (it's been near freezing here) and then take it to the vet to incinerate. Lee didn't like this idea. He scooped it out of the cage with a couple of plastic bags and threw it in the garbage can outside. He said he didn't really care if it decomposed in the garbage can and stunk up the whole neighborhood. He just knew there was no way he was taking the mouse up to the vet. Remind me to make sure I have some plans written down somewhere so he doesn't just put me in a plastic bag and throw me in the garbage for Thursday trash pick up.

The next morning I decided to tell the kids after ruling out my other options; a) get a replacement mouse (been there, done that) or b) lying to them. I'm not opposed to the latter-I lie to my kids quite frequently, especially when it makes my life more convenient. But I decided that it was too much work to make up some elaborate lie about how the mouse escaped, etc...All 3 of them were sitting on the couch with the boys' friend who had spent the nite. The boys were playing with their hand held electronic games, so their noses were buried deep in the screen.

"Kid's I have some sad news. Piggy died." I told them in my most solemn tone. I waited for a second thinking that the wailing and gnashing of teeth would begin at any moment. Complete silence as the boys are trying to navigate thru the 8th level of whatever particular game they had been playing. I add, "She died peacefully and she's in mouse heaven now. She didn't suffer."

"I told you she was dead!" the boys' friend proclaims triumphantly. "So where is she rotting?"

"Daddy put her in the garbage can last nite."

"Oooh! Cool! Can we go see?" the friend wants to know. Obviously he does not appreciate the delicateness with which we need to approach the situation.

"Where was she?" my middle son wants to know. "In the cage." I answer. "No, I mean was she in a corner or in the middle of the cage? Because Sally [9 yr old next door neighbor who the boys worship-name changed to protect anonymity] said that mice only die in the corner of the cage. If they are lying in the middle of the cage they are just sleeping." he explains to me.

"No, she was definitely dead" I assure them. "Dad checked her to make sure."

"How, how did he check her?" This is the oldest who never ceases to ask questions. I begin to explain, but notice that neither of the boys have stopped playing their games since I began the conversation. I decide to just leave it at "She wasn't breathing and he's a doctor, so he knows."

"Yeah, but he's not a vet." He says this with complete seriousness, still playing the handheld game.

"She's definitley dead" I told him.

Meanwhile, my daughter is busy flirting with the neighbor boy. It's more important to remain cute in the face of tragedy, she decides. Later when we are by ourselves, she expresses sorrow. I tell her that the mouse had fulfilled her destiny on earth and now she is in mouse heaven with all of our other deceased pets. She's okay with this for now....Until another one meets his or her untimely death!

Kids, Don't Try This At Home

New year, new blog...The Hollerin Chef was going to be the name of mine and Lee's cooking show, but we could never get beyond the conceptualization phase so this idea fell into the same pile as the idea for the restaurant for dogs.

Lee and I are getting old. I can't believe it has actually happened, but when we weren't looking, we both turned 40+. Now more friends than not have some kind of diagnosis and, sadly, many of our friends have either buried parents, or they have parents who have become ill. The fifteen years between 25 and 40 flew by at light speed and now I find myself in this demographic and I'm not sure I am preparred to be in it. Five years ago everyone was having babies. That time between having babies and becoming middle-aged was condensed in our generation because we all waited so damn long to have kids. Anyway, I digress...

I think everyone agrees that an unwritten, but understood part of every longterm relationship is patrol of the other person's unwanted hair growth. Making sure that there aren't unsightly hairs growing out of your partner in unorthodox body parts is part compassion and part self-serving. To forego this critical duty is not only careless and thoughtless, it is grounds for reconsideration of the whole partnership. If you can't rely on your mate to tell you when you aren't properly groomed, you are operating at a level beneath primates. I tell Lee when his ear and back hairs are reaching maximum density and he tell me when I've forgotten to pluck a stray chin hair or upper lip whisker. Imagine my horror and dismay when I realized I had been walking around all day with a long, white hair sticking out of my nose. With every word I spoke or breath I breathed, it danced in the wind, but I didn't know this until after I had been to the bathroom and reported back to him that I had just encountered the most unsightly hair protruding out of my left nostril. Instead of faking like he didn't know that it had been there, he said, "Oh yeah, I saw that this morning and forgot to say something to you." As if that one incident wasn't bad enough, while putting lotion on my legs this morning I noticed pubic-like hair on the back of my right mid thigh. It was a small patch, but it was there, beneath the level of most shorts and certainly visible to the naked eye. Hair grows back differently after chemotherapy. It crops up in strange locations and with different textures. I'm not sure which was worse, letting me walk around with nose whiskers or short curlies on my thigh, but we had a "come to Jesus" after that and he knows that unless he wants small birds nesting in his ears, he's got to improve his surveillance skills...

Which brings me to my last insight for the day...Don't ever try on your dog's choker collar. The choker collar has spikes directed into the neck so your dog won't go nuts when she sees other dogs/squirrels/cats while you are taking her for a walk. If the dog starts to chase or run after something, the spikes dig into her neck-it gently reminds her to stay in-line. Well, Lee and I decided it would be a good idea to try on Star's choker collar ourselves. Lee's neck was too big for the collar, but guess what, my neck was just right! Yup, we snapped that baby on and it was much easier to put on than it was to remove...I have about a dozen spike marks in my neck to prove it. So, even though we are both old, we are still stupid.