Remember the old “Sometimes, always, never” questions…parallel lines intersect never and the hypoteneus of a triangle is always its longest side?
Okay, so I’ve tried posting in this blog sometimes, when I was dealing with cancer. And I’ve tried posting never, like in the last few months, because, well, what’s worth posting and what is blather.
So, for a while at least, I’m gonna try posting always. Most of it will be blather. So, don’t blame me. You’ve been warned.
With thanks to Paul Simon:
Yesterday it was my birthday, I hung one more year on the line. I should be depressed-- my life's a mess; but I'm having a good time.
Okay, so Charlie has given some amazing gifts over the years. But the one I got tonight (for my 50th birthday yesterday, which I was quite happy to let go by uncommented upon, but everyone at work thought otherwise) was incredible.
I liked John Edwards as a presidential candidate. I liked him even before the newest info on Elizabeth’s health. I sent him money after Ann Coulter attacked him and he had the gumption to fight back, not just explain things away, on the heels of a great interview on Beliefnet. And, after sending “Coulter cash” and seeing how the Edwardses reacted to the news of Elizabeth’s cancer, I decided I really did like him.
When Charlie discovered that Edwards was going to be in town today for a fund raiser, just a day after my birthday, it seemed to be fate saying that he should give a bit more money and we could attend the fund raiser. But then, for just a bit more money, he found out we could be event hosts.
So, tonight we hosted the Edwards fund raiser in Macon (along with about 100 other hosts, from the size of the “host reception”). The reception was crowded and the real fund raiser was supposed to be outside, but the rain moved in early (Macon’s under a tornado watch right now), so moved into the hosts’ living room.
And Edwards spoke to the crowd. And along with my name in the invitation, a glass of (white!) wine, and a photo-opportunity in the rain, I got the real gift. I got to hope for America again.
Edwards spoke of his time since the last election and how he’s spend so much time out of the US. America used to be looked up to by folks overseas, but now they have real, valid questions about us. We know there’s genocide in Darfur and, well, there’s genocide in Darfur. He says we are different, special, the only county that can lead in so many of these areas. And today we can’t separate domestic policy from foreign policy.
He knows how important health care is and has plans to provide it for everyone. In front of a room of big donors (I went on a scavenger hunt to find people who weren’t lawyers there and it wasn’t easy!), he had the courage to say he’d roll back the Bush tax cuts for those making over $200,000.
And of course, he emphasized education and the importance of the American dream and how everyone should have the chance. Still, if you could work, you should. But something’s wrong if the top 350,000 earners in US make more than the bottom 150,000,000.
He had sense to know the room was crowded and leave out all the details. But he didn’t miss the dream.
Hope. What a cool gift.
Of course, Charlie said I now have to give him an Edwards presidency for his birthday. If only I could.
Okay, get all the small children off the blog. The language is going to get sorta salty. The way I’d talk if I didn’t work at a Baptist university. The way I talked that got me through three years in the Army.
And don’t worry, I’m fine, but dreadfully self absorbed.
Two things to carry on about as you’re hustling the little ones out.
First, why is sex bad and violence okay in movie ratings? We want our kids to grow up to be happy sexual beings, not violent ones, so shouldn’t we be happier to have them see a lot more happy sex than violence?
And second, Mercer is re-examining its Baptist heritage. It’s really ridiculous. I went to a meeting last week. They all talked about how Mercer wasn’t southern and Baptist like most people think when they hear “Southern” and “Baptist” together. They want to be the happy, good tolerant Baptists. Seems there were some in the 1600s in New England. And yeah, there are some now. They want to be “Buddy Shurden Baptists.” He is one of the good ones. But who really knows that.
Sure. So, suppose I’m a high school student looking at colleges. I see Mercer. I see Baptists. Since I’m one of the smart ones, I realize Mercer is in Georgia and Georgia is in the south and I figure out transitivity and think southern Baptist and don’t read the pages of explanation that say “No, not that kind of Baptist.” Sheesh.
Okay, got the little ones gone?
Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn. (Don’t worry, it’ll get worse.)
There is way too much metastasizing going on. Yes, Elizabeth Edwards, but I’ve already commented on her.
But, to have something new to say, I’m a host for a John Edwards fund raiser. Yeah, a host! In less than two weeks. He’ll be at a private home (not ours, or I’d be too busy cleaning to post) in Macon and there’ll be a letter going out inviting others to come and I’m one of the ones doing the inviting (our last Democratic governor is another one doing the inviting). Cool, no? So, if you’re in the area and want to contribute to the campaign and meet the senator (I may get to talk to him next week during a phone conference and during tonight’s phone conference about this all they casually talked about “the senator”–way too cool), let me know.
Oh, they did let us know Elizabeth would be on Oprah Friday, too. So cool.
So, to show cancer is an equal opportunity pain in the ass, Tony Snow goes and has his cancer metastasize too. Now, I normally think of Snow as mostly soulless, but he does have a liver and its cancerous and I have to feel sorry for him.
But, much closer to home, a woman who went 6 months before me into this breast cancer thing, a wife of a coworker of Charlie’s, a woman who has sent all sorts of supporting email, just found out her cancer metastasized. Her blog is still positive, but she’s got at least three tumors in her brain, skull, and lungs. She’s got a full body scan tomorrow to see what else is happening.
And what the fuck can I do for her? Sure, I’ll light a candle or two, send a card, but…
And now the embarrassing, self absorbed part. This is far more frightening to me than having cancer was. With cancer, they knew what to do and there were things I needed to do to treat it. Hell, there was even a book they gave me at the oncologists–they had it so well figured out.
But this waiting for cancer that you thought you killed to show up again? That’s not in the fucking book.
So, now every silly little ache and pain I have is “maybe cancer.” Normally, I wouldn’t even bother, but boy, I’d hate to be wrong about my trigger finger. Sure, it’s probably the sheath rubbing against the tendon, but wouldn’t I feel stupid if it were a tumor? These other women didn’t think their problems were cancer when they saw their doctors.
So, do I go running to the doctor about these aches? (I already talked to him about trigger finger, so he won’t hear that again.) I don’t want to be a hysterical woman. Of course, there’s little chance of that happening for the next couple of visits. He thinks I was fooling myself when I told him the breast tumor might just be an insect bite, when I was really trying to stay calm and not blow things up prematurely.
But what the fuck do I do? Pretend none of it is cancer? Behave like all of it is? Stop watching the news until this wave of metastasizing is done?
In writing this, I have figured one thing out. Charlie was more worried than I about my initial diagnosis because he’d never known anyone close who recovered from cancer. He watched his grandfather and my mother die pretty lousy deaths from it. But I watched Mom recover from breast cancer, so I wasn’t too worried about it.
But I did watch Mom die a dreadful death from metastatic cancer. Lung, brain, and, in the end, all over her body. So that’s the one that bothers me. Because that’s the one I’d never seen anyone recover from.
But maybe you can, so maybe I can relax a little. Especially since it’s just trigger finger.
So, I’m sitting watching the 60 Minutes interview with John and Elizabeth Edwards. And I’m just amazed at how many people want to tell them how to deal with cancer.
My two cents? This is their cancer. This is their decision. Butt out.
Period.
Now, this is easy for me to say. I made pretty much the same decision Elizabeth Edwards made. I stayed at work. And lots of people seemed to think I wouldn’t do that. Both my associate dean and the new president welcomed me back at the beginning of the fall semester. Okay, I did go to Europe over the summer, but that’s not what they were welcoming me back from. They just assumed I’d stopped working when I got cancer.
When I did stop working, over Christmas break, and just sat around and had cancer, it almost drove me crazy. I was so much happier when I was at a conference a year ago and had to argue with the wife of a colleague “No, I’m not kidding; I do have breast cancer. Really.”
But there’s clearly a lot more to Elizabeth Edwards than having cancer. And if she wants to focus on that other stuff, she’s got my vote.
Ya know, I really thought this cancer thing was over. At least for me.
I went to see my oncologist Monday and had nothing to report. Except that they really need to work on keeping the staff informed. Molly Ivins died of breast cancer last weekend. When the new physician’s assistant came in to talk to me and I mentioned my big concern was how to prevent being like Molly Ivins. The PA had no idea who I was talking about.
My mother was in a funk for days over Betty Ford’s and Happy Rockefeller’s mastectomies. And this was years before her problems, even while my dad and I were making bad jokes about the boobs in the White House (we weren’t big fans of Gerald Ford). If you’re in the cancer industry, you need to know about cancer in the news. Your patients do!
But I had a friend, a supporter through my cancer and through life, call to tell me last night that she had breast cancer, again. And I just sat last night and thought about her. I put aside the great books I had to read in favor of Cancer Vixen, a graphic novel (or, as it is better known to people my age, comic book). And nothing else seemed to matter.
And today I got email that a member of Cancer Wellfit died last night. He was “supposed” to have died over a year ago. But he was back and far better on the walking track than I’ll ever be. He delighted in beating the odds before. He delighted in life.
I didn’t think that the whole “cancer thing” would have major long term effects on me. I know some survivors who completely turn their lives around based on having cancer and become almost “full time cancer survivors.” They wear pink ribbons everywhere and do all sorts of stuff for the Komen Foundation and read every issue of Mamm Magazine. But I haven’t done that. I’m much more involved in Kids Yule Love that Relay for Life. I subscribe to Threads, not Mamm. I still don’t wear pink.
But the last 24 hours of news has made me realize that surviving cancer means more than things in my medical records…
No,
This is not an entry on the BCC Championship or the Super Bowl.
I’d found a new game. Since I’d been receiving so much comment spam on this blog, I made it a game to see how quickly I could delete that spam. Just this evening, I deleted an entry 2 minutes after it was posted.
I thought I was doing everything I could from having it post, other than turning off all commenting. But I found another setting and it looks like I’ve got victory over blog spam.
Now, this means that I no longer have this game to play. And, like most, I do dislike spammers…I misplaced an important message this week due to spam filtering. I liked getting to wipe out comment spam numerous times a day. But no more. When you win the war, you don’t get any more battles!
Ike has also had problems with being too successful. Many of you know him as IkeGetDownFromThere, but as he approaches 15 pounds, he’s spent less time 10 feet high in the house. Don’t worry, he’s still very healthy; at his last vet check, the vet tech was dismayed by his weight, but the vet said it was all muscle. Wrestling dogs does make cats strong.
But Ike has a new trick. He knows how to close doors. He’s managed to lock the dog out of the bathroom in the morning, so thinks it’s a good thing. But when I came home Friday, Ike didn’t come out to greet me. Seems he’d locked himself in the bedroom. Now, this may have been intentional; it means Ike got the bed and didn’t have to share it with the dog. But he still seemed pleased to get out when I opened the door.
Of course, Ike still was closing doors this morning, so I don’t have to worry about him getting too smart.
So, I finally got a test graded for my Concepts of Programming Languages class, very very late last night.
In a way this is good. Now, of course, the teacher in me says it’s good because I will be able to give feedback to my students in a timely manner and all that good teacher stuff. But most of them won’t read it. This test sorta gives me proof of that. Three questions came, almost completely verbatim, from the last test and the quiz the week before. And they still got those questions wrong. But I didn’t feel bad for them as I was grading it.
But no, this is good because it’s another sign of normalcy. I had a horrible habit of staying up late to get grading done before I got sick, and I’m back to it.
Of course, it’s bad also. It could be a sign that I haven’t learned a damn thing. (But really, I have; I saw my doctor this week for a physical and I’m doing everything right as far as preventative tests go.) And getting 4 or 5 hours sleep isn’t all that good either. (And I’m sitting in on an Honor Council hearing this evening and it doesn’t look good if the faculty advisor falls asleep, but the kids are so energetic, that won’t be a problem.)
But staying up late has other advantages. I walk Linus right before bedtime and by the time I got to bed last night, nature had reclaimed the neighborhood. Usually, this just means a neighbor cat is prowling our sidewalk (and Linus, watchdog that he is, almost never notices) or an armadillo is strolling around. But last night, it meant there were three deer grazing across the street. I kept Linus from running across the yard and we ended up at the corner, with me watching them and him sniffing things out, and both of us wondering why the other wasn’t fascinated by what we were observing. The deer watched us carefully, but weren’t scared by the small wolf I had on a leash, so didn’t run away.
It was a beautiful moment and almost worth the exhaustion that’s going to hit this afternoon.
You’ll meet some amazing people there.
We had lunch at the Olive Garden, which shares a parking lot with Macon’s only remaining clothing-fabric store and the blood donation center. On the way out, I decided to run by the fabric shop and see what was new. But first I figured I’d drop in at the blood center. Last week, Maureen, the volunteer coordinator, called me, out of the blue, to let me know she was thinking about me. She wasn’t trying to get me in to give; I’m ineligible for at least two more years. She just wanted to see what was up.
So, Maureen was there and came up to hug me and we spent an hour catching up. I’ve only seen her at the center and even during my most frequent visits, I was only there for two hours every two weeks. And her office isn’t in the donation center, so it’s not like we spent those two hours in the same room. She even remembered IkeGetDownFromThere. Ike’s a memorable cat, but really, to remember the pet of a donor. I’m so blessed with these people in my life.
Of course, Maureen had pictures of the latest children receiving platelets and knew all their stories. So, please go give blood and there will be another amazing person there.
(See, isn’t this better than an ad for celebrity photos?)
It might be very easy to forget you have a blog. Especially if you post to it as infrequently as I do.
But I have one of those sorta demanding blogs. It won’t let me forget it. At first, this was a very nice thing. I’d post and people would comment and I’d get copies of their comments via email. The comments were incredibly supportive; it was great to know someone was out there.
Well, now, I’m not posting. But I’m still getting comments. Of course, you might think people were still being supportive, and I’m sure they would be, but ya know, not many people feel the need to be supportive of a surgery 7 months after the fact, when I’m back and as good as ever.
No, instead, I’m hearing from the same people everyone on the Internet is hearing from–the spammers. They’ve figured out how to automatically search out blog entries and add comments to them. I could just abandon this blog and let the spammers have it, but I’m just too ornery for that. It’s become like a game. They post a comment to an old entry and I go in and delete it. I win if I delete it before anyone else sees it. I get extra points if I delete it less than an hour after its posted (I think my record is 9 minutes). They win if you order Canadian pills to make your hair grow larger and weigh less from them.
So far, I’m way ahead.
I hope.
They also are trying to post fake trackbacks, but the software is pretty good and has found most of them so far. There have been over 3000 fake trackbacks almost posted in the last 2 months.
So, this is what I’m doing instead of grading essay questions from my freshmen. I figure anything I post will probably be better than spam and it does help the morning walks go by faster to try to reflect on something other than asphalt.
So, a year ago today I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Yesterday I saw my surgical oncologist after my first post-treatment mammogram and it was a dull, routine meeting. Nothing at all to report, the mammogram (which took twice as long as they used to pre-cancer, but I’m not complaining) showed nothing.
Sometimes dull is very, very good.
And Charlie and I are back to our routines, such as they are. I’m in Princeton at an AP Meeting, he’s in Maine at the TUG, Last year at this time (or soon thereafter) we were doing much gnashing of teeth about whether or not we could attend these meetings. He ended up attending a few days of his (worrying the whole time that he should be home, I think) and I called in to mine.
Sometimes routine is very, very good.
Of course, it doesn’t leave much to blog about, but…
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