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.