--written not so long ago at wonderwifey.com --
I'm trying to blog, but I'm still not coming up with anything to write about. Blogger's Block, you say? Loss of inspiration?
There's a lot of issues and stressors that have been swimming in my head (cerebrospinal fluid, eh?) lately. First of all, my hair has been abandoning my head as if on a sudden exodus to the shower floor (25 strands at one time), the towel (another 15 at one time), the table, my shoulders, my tank top, the couch, my kitchen tiles, the carpet, the pillow, everywhere and anywhere but my head, including your plate of lasagna if you're having dinner at my house (I'm sorry). My used-to-be-thick crowning glory seems to be doing a very successful crash diet and it worries me. What the hell is causing my hair follicles to jump ship, in a terribly unglorified harakiri? (Forgive me, but I'm seeing a cartoon rendition of animated hair strands jumping off a cliff, screaming "hi-yah!!!!" in my head). Mass suicide, actually.
Is it stress?
Is it stress over my crazy schedule? I've taken a one month leave from dance class effective yesterday, and I don't know what else I'll find myself unloading in the next few weeks.
Is it stress over Michael Jackson's kids? No, wait a minute...
Is it stress over Uncle Sam shoving that horrendous amount of taxes down my throat?
Or is it my thyroid acting up? Hormones going haywire, feeling tired all the time, yada-dada yada-dada...
Or is it stress over the mammogram results? For those of you who don't know, my mom is a breast cancer survivor for 20 or so years. It recurs, yes, but she's been fighting it with flying colors with the kind of courage I can't see myself capable of (maybe) and with the help of the advances in medical science: affairs with chemotherapy, radiation and oral meds. I've seen the whole drama of it all...us family members and herself playing tug-of-war with cancer and continuously struggling to win the battle, relentlessly trying to pull her back to our side, and not allowing her to fall into the arms of those emotionally insensitive malignant neoplasms. If you think third party lovers and mistresses are the ultimate home-wreckers, well, you haven't met cancer. You can't get back at cancer once it steals someone away from you. You can't shoot cancer with a 45. You can't throw nitric acid on cancer to burn its face like people do in the movies and in your tabloid news, you can't take cancer to court, no,you can't sue cancer (wow, I've never uttered/written that word "cancer" this much because it used to hurt so much). Anyway, you can't just plot a stupid well-orchestrated act of vengeance on cancer. You simply can't.
I digress.
On the mammogram results...
A few months back during one of those self-checks I would normally do as someone with a very high genetic risk, I thought I had felt a tiny lump. A very little one, the size of a pearl (not the South Sea kind, thankfully), yet giving me so much fear the size of the Milky Way and beyond. Why? Because with this kind of news come scary possibilities and I don't want to go that road! I just refuse to go through the same ordeal because I've seen it played over and over in my family, and I might not hold up as good as my mom has (or dad-- yeah, prostate cancer for him) to pull myself from "victim" to "survivor" status. I don't even want to go through the process. I've seen it, more like "felt" it and it's painful and ugly. Plus, I'm done. I'm T-I-R-E-D. It's like being in a very emotionally-charged sports game: you yell, you cheer, you root for your teammate with all your might, and then suddenly, you find yourself too tired when it's your turn to play. Like that. I was reflecting on it one time as I looked out into the yard watching my husband lovingly water my favorite plants while wearing MY garden crocs and it is tearing me apart already. No, I can't do this to my man. Please, God, no replays. Please spare me so I can spare him!
And so I went for a mammogram. They also did a breast ultrasound, and then another ultrasound for further investigation. Nothing. They couldn't find anything. I told the radiologist that I would feel the lump when I'm watching TV or when I'm in the toilet, and so she asked me to mimic my position during those instances while aiming the sonogram poker on the spot. Nothing. So rather comically, I flipped, *poke*, turned around, *poke*, bent over, *poke*, stretched, *poked*, slouched...tilted...hang up-side-down. Nothing. She was, I guess, at the point where she was tempted to bring in a TV as a prop to the ultrasound room and in front of me to simulate the situation, or better yet, follow me with the sonogram machine to the toilet on my next visit there. But so far, NOTHING.
Until last week, when I received a letter from my healthcare provider saying that I need to come back for a reimaging because there was "a finding" that needed to be looked at one more time. The notice said that it's common to be called back for reimaging and usually the findings are benign with most people anyway.
Who knows? I'm probably getting too worked up for NOTHING!!! But you know where I'm coming from now. Meanwhile, I await my second mammogram schedule as of this writing. And I'm going through a battery of blood tests this weekend to find out what's the underlying cause of my falling hair -- and I hope it's not just the dadgum shampoo after all the stress! Or rather, I hope it is...
So if you're reading this, please pray for me. Because lately, all I want to do is hide in my cave (when I'm not in the pursuit of items in my bucket list --because one can really never know, y'know!) and plug in some music in my ears so I don't hear my own thoughts.
For lunch today, for a change, I drove out of my work place all the way to Safeway and got me a pack of sushi-to-go (California Roll, baby!) -- and yeah, despite all the turmoil that's going on in my life, my appetite hasn't left me (aaarrrrggghhhh!!!). I'm not surprised. When I drove back, I had a good view of the bay. I could see the skyline across the water and the crystal view of San Francisco as Colbie Caillat croons a relaxing number in my iPhone, again and again and again.
It's such a clear day today. I hope the fog will lift off my medical situation soon too.
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