And that led to this

That last post lead to this thought.

My take on our current society.

We the people have become obsessed with the idea of instant fame and fortune to the extent that without it, our lives just suck so people will sink to the depths of scuz to try and get it which has created a culture of sue first and don't even worry about if it was right or not.

Corporate America, who the people sue, is being run by people who are just in it for the moment of trying to grab as much money as they can while they are at the top. Screw everyone. And risking going to jail. But who cares, Martha Stewart came out weighing less, just think of it as a weight lost program.

U S government is in a red hot affair with Corporate America because the politicians get their pockets lined by these doofuses. GE reported 14.2 BILLION in profits and paid NO TAXES.

Which brings us full circle back to we the people getting fucked by being regulated up the butt.

So we don't pierce our ear drums. And sue some corporation, who is grabbing as much gold as possible and paying off the government, who is taking as much graft as possible and fucking the public.

And around it goes.

Until it crashes.

Disclaimer: This post brought to you by a chemical induced menopause moment.

Why pretend about ears?

A few years ago I bought an ear cleaner gizmo at an Asian store. It was basically a tiny spoon with a guard so you couldn't go too deep and pierce your ear drum. That little gizmo worked great at scooping out ear wax. Much better than the damned car keys.

One day it broke. Well, it was plastic. And it just gave out somehow. And I never could find anything that came close. The store was gone and I never did get a replacement. Until today. Today I found ear cleaners. Soft bendable plastic gizmos with a tiny spoon thing on one end and a tiny brush contraption on the other. At CVS drug store. I'm thrilled. Except with the lies on the box that say DO NOT INSERT INTO EAR CANAL. Well, what the hell else am I going to do with the damned thing. According to the box I'm suppose to use this to clean the outside of my ear. Around the outside of the ear canal. But, DO NOT ENTER THE EAR CANAL. Really? really? Because some doofus could get over zealous with jamming the thing into the ear canal and pierce their ear drum become deaf and sue the pants off the company that made the ear cleaner to just clean the outside of the ear.

I took one out of the box and promptly shoved the damned INTO MY EAR CANAL. Removed a nice satisfying junk of ear wax to boot.

I have a feeling I should stock up on these because I don't think they are going to last long. Someone is going to pierce their ear drum. It's just going to be unavoidable.

Blog Fodder

I'm lacking in blog fodder. Nothing much going on so I'll just ramble. Because the one thing I have discovered is that if you write on a regular basis, it becomes addictive. And soon after a few days of not writing something just feels weird. And then it comes to you that oh I haven't written.

So basically, I'm just trying to get my fix!

Somethings are going on around me right now that makes me smile. I see friends going outside of their comfort zone. Big time. And nice payoffs are coming as a result. And I'm seeing them live.

Getting my son on hopefully some self discovering paths here. He is starting a class on career exploration for teens and I'm hoping to get him into a ROP class with an internship this summer. I will be attempting to register him on June 1st. He is excite about that.

I don't go back to my oncologist until the 9th. The Femara (the pill I take everyday to further decrease estrogen) is giving me stiffness. For any man who happens to be reading this and thinking what's the problem, I'm talking joint stiffness. And I've put on about 4 pounds. This is from the Femara. So I don't know. I'm not happy with any of it. I will be discussing this with my doctor and talking about benefits out weighing this bullshit. I'm not happy.

Yeah, yeah but, what's a bit of weight gain and some stiffness if it is keeping the cancer from coming back?

Well, that's the thing. I'm not sure. I need to talk to my doctor about what we are really risking here. And maybe I could just cut back on the pills and still get some benefits.

I'll see what he has to say. And then figure something out that I can live with.

WoooOOOOooooW (Scott Pilgrim wow) And here I didn't think I had any blog fodder and nothing much was going on.

Huh.

To

To know
To love
To accept
To live
To fight
To sigh
To cry
To bleed
To bruise
To hug
To kiss
To taste
To caress
To lose
To grieve
To Be

Bock Bock Thanks Easter Bunny

Easter is upon us. What a jacked up holiday.

You got Christians celebrating Christ rising from the dead. As a thinking Christian as I like to refer to myself I have issues with that. My Jesus isn't a zombie. The whole idea creeps me out. Not sure what happened there. I often think he didn't really die. Woke up from a coma from hanging on the cross and found himself in a tomb. I don't know.

Easter marks the end of lent. The forty days leading up to Easter where you are suppose to self denial yourself something, fast, pray because Jesus did it for forty days in preparation of going public.


Good Friday sometimes coincides with Passover. That's the "celebration" for Jews of the angel of death "passing over" the door way and not killing off their first born. So we got that in the mix. And Christians celebrate Christ dying on this day. Not sure that makes it "good" but we are talking about using some form of the word good that means holy. Why not just say holy? I don't know.

And then you have Spring Equinox. Well, not this year. But, it sometimes gets thrown into the mix too.

And let's toss in Easter eggs. Easter eggs the symbol for Pagans for the rebirth of earth but was adopted by early Christians as a symbol for the resurrection of Christ because that makes sense.

What a mess. To sum it up, Jesus was a Jew. Trying to come to town to honor the Jewish holy week, just to end up crucified. Christianity gets formed but, overlaps all the Jewish holy holidays. And Christianity when being formed was recruiting Pagans so they tossed a bunch of those traditions into the mix. Then modern day Hallmark comes along and wants in on the action to make a buck and here comes chocolate out the butt. And let's not forget the Easter bunny. On second hand yeah let's forget him because I'm not sure how he figures into to it all.

So, Jesus was a Jew and in honor of him dying we are going to eat ham, which he couldn't eat, and hide eggs for the Pagans, and consume chocolate for Hallmark.

Did I leave anyone out? Probably. Sorry.

I'm doing Easter at my house. Having family over. And plan on just enjoying the time with them.



Happy Easter!

Although really, this holiday confuses me.

How to train your nurse

I had a Lupron shot on the 12th. To recap last months shot was no bueno. The male nurse I had tried to slide the needle in and it hurt. And of course I bitched him out and told him "Your fire!" With the Donald's finger pointing and all.

Well, this month guess you strolls in to give me my shot? Yep, the same male nurse who stops dead in his tracks when he sees me.

I say "I fired you"

"Yeah, I know you did, do you want me to get someone else?"

I'm tempted. I sorely am. But, how are these people going to get any better? So instead I asked him "are you giving up this profession any time soon?"

Ah, nooo.

Well, then you better learn to do it right then. You have to grab my butt and pop that needle in there like a dart. Can you do that? I mean it. No, wussing out.

Yeah, I can try. I can do it.

Okay, let's go.

And he does a much better job. And yes, I let him know. That was better. That is how you have to do it. You can even be a bit more aggressive. But, you got to do it like that otherwise it hurts.

I think all good nurses are made. Made by patients being a pain in the ass and telling them what was no good. How else are they going to learn? It's easy to bitch behind their backs and say man, they sucked. But, how are they going to get better? I'm not popping needles into people for a living. I don't want to pop needles into people for living. But, someone has to. We need people to do this.

I told him if I had him next month I'd let him do it again. And that I expected him to be even better.

The Vessel and The Brew

A vessel
It is too short
too tall
too round
too thin
fragile
strong
filled with a bubbling brew

a bubbling brew of
intellect
stupidity
wisdom
knowledge
creativity
naive
emotions

The vessel's true substance is the brew
Yet, it's structure is harshly judged
and measured in no time

The brew can be judged too
But, it needs to be tasted
Savored over the life of the vessel
in order to be truly understood

The vessel will age
weaken
crack
deteriorate

But, the bubbling brew
ferments
will fizzle
concentrate
into a brew
The Brew of life

The vessel will
under the pressure of time
disintegrate
a become no more

But the brew
will pour back into the earth
and become a part of
all things

Forever

Ever wonder...

We have all read or heard those stories where someone ends up getting the wrong limb amputated. And haven't you wondered, come on just how does that happen?

Well, now I know.

Went and had my mammogram on the 5th. It's is fine by the way. The tech takes me back into the room. She places some stickers on my scar so that scar tissue can be identified on the scan. Then she went and looked at something on a screen a few feet away from me. Then she comes back over to me and says "so your tumor was right on your chest wall and the wires were inserted from the top down at this angle"

"NO" I reply. "My tumor was right here, no where near my chest wall and the wires were inserted from the bottom. Where my scar is"

"Well, that's not what is on you mammogram from when you had surgery"

"What are you looking at?"

She takes me over to the screen. I look at my mammogram they took when they did the wire insertion for surgery. I say "see those, those are the tumor markers, that is where the tumor bed was and that is a wire and that is a wire".

She says "oooohhhh"

"What are you using this as a reference for?"

"Well I wanted to know where the tumor was so I can make sure we scan that area"

"Well, the area that the tumor was is gone. As in it was removed during surgery. How about if we just stick as much of me into the scan as possible and scan that"

I am not amused. And now I know how people get the wrong limb amputated.

It did seem like she shoved as much of me as possible into the machine. And she tried to get away with just scanning the left girl and not bothering with the right one. No. Both were scanned. The radiologist said it looked good.

I'm going to have Dr. Barth look at them when I see him in May.

In other news. I saw my amazing surgeon, Dr. Guerra. She is pregnant with her first baby. Due in June. She is crazy excited and sticking her belly out for it to be fondled. Very cute.

It was a good visit.

The scan was rather scary.

Live to the end

This documentary is on Netflix instant.

This is what living looks like.

Do it to the end!

Happy Anniversay!

Today marks my one year anniversary of my diagnosis of breast cancer.

And to mark this memorable day I'm going to test out my memory of the last year and attempt a re-cap

April 1, 2010-diagnosed with breast cancer to follow was:
1 Mammogram
2 Ultra sounds
2 needle biopsies
2 MRIs
1 PET scan
4 rounds of chemo
12 days of steroids (3 for each chemo round)
1 hospital stay
1 ER visit
1 iron infusion
1 surgery
36 Rads of radiation
1 diagnosis of HER2 positive
2 MUGA Scans
1 CAT scan
11 (out of 18) Herceptin infusions
5 Lupron shots
61 Femara pills ingested
1 break out of the shingles
? Doctors visits
1 lost job
0 lost friends
Lots of fabulous hats

And the cost of a year of cancer? I don't know but I'm going to add it up soon and post.

It has been quite the ride and it isn't over yet. And it does change you. I find I'm picker about how and where I spend my time. Who I spend it with and what I'm doing. I'm also more compassionate. Find myself less judgemental.

And it's difficult to put into words but somehow I'm at peace with myself.