Protected: Pause for Celebration
Protected: Fathers and Sons
I got a call a few minutes ago from the diagnostic imaging lab where I am scheduled to have an MRI on Thursday. Actually, where I WAS scheduled to have an MRI on Thursday. My insurance has denied the scan. My medical oncologist is appealing the denial, which will likely take some weeks to resolve. (Paying out of pocket would be $2000. Yuck.) I guess my Facebook tirade about insurance was prescient.
I am also not supposed to have an MRI within six months of having a surgery. So this means that I need to cancel my follow up appointment with my plastic surgeon to discuss next steps, if any, in my reconstruction. He told me that there’s no hurry and so it’s not a big deal except that I would have liked to put the Big Book of Surgeries away for awhile.
“Hurry up and wait” has been a large part of my breast cancer and treatment experience. And I’ve been spared this for awhile. The timing, given my overwhelming swirl of emotions is not good. I did not worry like this about my follow up mammogram last February. Then again, MRI’s in and of themselves are nerve-wracking. I’d much opt to get my breasts panini’d even in a PEM scan where each photo takes 7 minutes. (Yes, the squishy plates are in place for that long each time but gratefully not as tightly as we would all pass out. The whole thing takes about three hours. And you can’t eat any kind of sugar for 24 hours, which eliminates most foods. Okay, I change my mind. I would rather have an MRI.)
Thank you all for your kind support and encouragement. I am saving them for later.
In the meantime, I’m breathing and setting out for another walk.
Protected: The Zoo
I probably didn’t sleep quite as well as I remember but boy, did it seem like I used to be an A+ sleeper before my cancer diagnosis. And then as I managed the shock of my diagnosis and subsequent surgeries, I’ve had to adapt to the side effects of medications that have put me into menopause until fall 2014, at least. Hot flashes and night sweats interfere with sleep as many of you know firsthand.
One of my female relatives has told me that my time of having quality sleep is over because I am menopausal. But I know what sleep does for me emotionally, physically, and cognitively. So I went on a multi-pronged attack against my insomnia, combining sleep hygiene (a real thing), meditation, behavioral techniques, nutritional supplements (magnesium and melatonin) and acupuncture. For awhile there I got almost back to normal except that I have chronic difficulty with early morning awakening though I am usually able to get back to sleep.
My insomnia over the past 17 months has come in waves. It ebbs and flows. It has troughs and crests. Peaks and valleys. Oh I am stuck in a circle of trite metaphors. And why is this? What is the reason for my perseverative triteness?
I am soooo tired!!! That’s why!!! I remember being in bed last night and feeling that wired feeling I used to get when I drank coffee too late in the day. An exhausted body and a brain that is all buzzy and addled. I remember being awake A LOT but I must have slept because time, somehow passed.
I have an MRI on Thursday. It is my first follow-up MRI since May of 2012 when I was originally diagnosed. I have been trying not to worry about it and mostly, I have succeeded. Well, I succeeded until last night. Now I am thinking about the ramifications of the information that will be gleaned from that scan.
There are four outcomes in any diagnostic procedure: (1) true positive (evidence of disease and it is actually there), (2) true negative (no evidence of disease and there is actually no disease), (3) false positive (false evidence of disease), or (4) false negative (there is disease and the test missed it.)
Unfortunately, we only know if the test is positive or negative and not whether it is true or false. The biggest problem in the assessment of my breast cancer has been that of false negatives. A routine screening mammogram picked up 1 of the 4 invasive tumors I had in my right breast. A diagnostic mammogram, ultrasound, MRI, and core biopsy confirmed that there was an invasive tumor. However, the MRI missed the 6 cm of DCIS and although mammography and ultrasound are not particularly sensitive to DCIS, MRI is. And putting aside the issue of whether DCIS is really cancer or not or whether it should be treated, I would have liked to have known that it was there using assessment measures less invasive than three surgeries.
I know that a lot of people complain about limitations in mammography in screening for and diagnosing breast cancer. And it would be easy to take my experience and just say, “Well yeah, mammography sucks!” My situation, however, is a bit different. The biggest complaint about mammography is that although it has high sensitivity (it has a high hit rate of detecting an invasive cancer if it is there), it has low specificity (it has a high false positive rate.) By definition, tests with high sensitivity have a low rate of false negatives. But I had many diagnostic mammograms and they missed a significant amount of cancer that “should” have been picked up. I also had multiple ultrasounds, an MRI, and even a PEM scan, for which there is mounting evidence that it is the best technique for women such as myself, who have more difficult tissue to read using the other methods because 1) I had dense breast tissue (premenopausal women have a higher proportion of water in their tissue, which shows up as white on scans, the same color as cancer) and 2) I had relatively slow growing tumors. More aggressive tumors are easier to spot because they produce calcifications, which in turn, are easier to spot on scans.
The good news about my induced menopause as well as the natural menopause that is on its way, is that the tissue density issue will improve, as fatty tissue increases. So diagnostic scanning techniques should improve for me as I age. In the mean time, I have to rely on the research I read prior to deciding whether I would have a unilateral or bilateral mastectomy. You see if I have breast cancer again it is much more likely to be in my left breast than in my right because the right breast was removed and replaced. (A risk of metastatic cancer is also a possibility and I am trying really hard not to borrow worry on that right now.) I looked at research on contralateral occult cancer (cancer undetected by scans in the opposing breast of an individual with unilateral breast cancer) in women who opted for bilateral mastectomy despite the fact that cancer was detected in only one breast. There were a number of risk factors for contralateral cancer, none of which I had. I looked at the probabilities of having cancer in my left breast both at the time of my initial diagnosis as well as cumulatively in the years to come.
Although my “right” decision may be different than the “right” decision for others, I decided that the risk of keeping my left breast was tolerable for me. I also knew that my systemic treatments, Lupron and tamoxifen, might address any occult cancer that might be present. And I also took into account that 25% of invasive breast cancer tumors don’t develop into dangerous disease. For example, some invasive cancers lose blood supply and just stop growing. (This is the issue of “overdiagnosis” that has been all over the Internet of late. I knew about it at the time of my diagnosis because I have a close friend who is a cancer researcher at Rutgers. She sent me a research article.)
I am praying for a “no evidence of disease” result on Thursday. But I also know that what I am hoping for is an ambiguous result. In the quest for black and white, a true positive result followed up by a positive core biopsy would be a clearer result. With the question, “is there cancer or not”, it’s a pretty clear answer. Obviously, there’s lots of gray still but relatively speaking, it is the clearest finding. And it is not the one for which I am praying.
I know I will cope with this. Something I have learned about myself is that I have become very good at coping with a sea of gray. In the meantime, I expect to get very familiar with the sounds, thoughts, and scenes, which are experienced only in the middle of the night and in the wee hours of the morning.
My husband and I were walking the other day. He got hot and took off his shirt. John is a relatively fit man but like a lot of middle-aged men, he has a collection of adipose tissue (fat and other stuff) collected in the “beer belly zone”.
John’s father had his first heart attack in his late thirties and the one that he had at age 49 killed him. John is 48 years old and although he lives a very different lifestyle than did his father, I still worry. He has high cholesterol, which is controlled with a statin drug. But his trigylcerides are high again and his blood pressure, although still in the acceptable range, has been steadily climbing.
So the belly bothers me. It’s not as big as it was a year or two ago but it’s still there. Talking to a spouse about health concerns especially when it could also be interpreted as a criticism of physical attractiveness, is tricky. But it is really important that both John and I be as healthy as possible, especially now that we are painfully aware that physical health is not a guarantee.
I said, “John, I’m thinking that you need to do something about the fat you have around your mid-section.”
He said, nonplussed and gesturing like Vanna White over his physique, “My stomach? Look at me! I’m almost 50! I look damn good! But I am a man and we all think we look great.”
I don’t think all men think they look great. But John is one of the least physically self-conscious people that I know. He is perfectly comfortable with his body and honestly, he is quite a good looking man. And because he is not self-conscious, he won’t mind me saying that in college, he was perhaps one of the least stylish men I’d ever met. John wore incredibly thick glasses and the arms were attached with paperclips. He cut his own hair when I met him with kitchen shears, just enough to keep it out of his eyes. John’s shirts often had holes in them. But he was kind, funny, bright, studious, and comfortable in his own skin. These qualities were extremely attractive.
I admire John’s ease with himself. He is a 48 year-old man who has felt comfortable in his own skin for 48 years. I was 5 years-old when I first thought there was something wrong with my body. We were looking through recent vacation photos and there was one of me wearing a navy blue one piece bathing suit. At least two of my five brothers immediately started teasing me for being “fat”. I’ve been pretty open in my blog about my history of weight problems but I don’t think I was actually overweight until I was 12 or 13 years old, after which I lost over 20 pounds, grew, and maintained a healthy weight until I was 24 years old, at which time my up and down weight battle began. In any event, I wasn’t the slightest bit overweight as a 5 year-old!
I have struggled with body image for most of my life. And I’m not blaming my brothers but they were a layer in the onion of negative messages I received. There is a lot of pressure on girls to be unrealistically thin in our country. To be unhealthy is to be beautiful. I’ve always known this to be wrong. I was a reasonable and intelligent girl who grew up to be a reasonable and intelligent woman.
As I’ve written in the past, there was a tape that played in my head when I was overweight. As soon as I woke each morning, I felt the extra weight on my side and noticed how much closer the outline of my body was to the edge of the bed. I thought, “I’m fat.” Every morning of every day, on and off, for YEARS. And when I went out into a public place with crowds, I would compare myself to the people around me, “fatter than her”, “fatter than him”, etc. It was like a horrible, horrible tic. I knew how unhealthy it was. At times in my adult life when I’ve been at healthy weight, the tape has positive information but it is focused on weight and comparing myself to others. I knew that although a more comfortable state, it was still the trap of depending on my weight for a significant segment of my self-image. And I also knew that no matter whether I’ve been at healthy weight or not, I’ve avoided lots and lots and lots of opportunities to swim in my life because I felt uncomfortable wearing a swim suit. And people, I was an athletic girl. I even won the 8th grade award for physical education.
A few days after my breast cancer diagnosis, I gave myself a hard look. I had started back on Weight Watchers a few weeks earlier and people were asking why I would continue given that I had just learned that I had cancer. But I had already started to lose weight and from experience I know that there is a certain groove that is hard to find but once found, goals get achieved. I was pretty sure I was in that groove. Additionally, I thought it was a concrete thing I could do to improve my health at a time when I was feeling pretty out of control of my life. I decided to press on and wrote about this decision as well as my keen sense of embarrassment that a grown woman who was a generally happy person would have an evil tape playing in her head every day. I remember thinking for the first time that perhaps I needed to give myself a break for not being a perfectly self-accepting person and maybe the tape was something I just needed to accept about myself.
That bit of acknowledgement and acceptance was an important step in dealing with that negative tape. I focused on making good decisions in my cancer treatment and living a healthy lifestyle. I kept on Weight Watchers, I started mindfulness practice, and started exercising every day. I exercise by walking between 3 and 4 miles each day. I go out to walk with extremely few exceptions, every day, rain or shine. I walk in the winter when it’s dark (darn you, northern latitudes), cold, wet, and windy. I don’t really like to get cold or wet so I was kind of worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up my walking during all seasons of the year.
I was able to keep it up and I discovered something about walking in the cold, the rain, and in the wind. I could do it and if I wore good gear, it could actually be relatively comfortable. It felt powerful to be vulnerable in the elements and to still have a good time. There’s ALWAYS some interesting life out there, the birds, the trees, the flowers. Bracing wind can bite but it can also be invigorating and as I’ve learned, it can also be the best medicine for an intense hot flash!
Admitting the existence of my negative body image tape was hard and embarrassing. But it was a confession that lifted something for me because it was no longer something that was too horrible to mention. Similarly, I admitted to a friend over a month ago that I was terrified of wearing a swim suit in public. It was a painful admission and I actually felt somewhat embarrassed and regretful afterwards about having made that disclosure. But I think just speaking it aloud wiggled something loose for me.
Meanwhile, the weather was getting hot and I didn’t want to bake on my walks. So I bought a jogging bra and shorts for my summer walking. I also thought it would be a good way to work on the body image project. Although I could deal with the shorts, having my midriff exposed was a little, EXPOSED. So I wore a t-shirt over it and got pretty hot on my walks. Then remember when I went hiking in the mountains? It was supposed to be cold that day so I was wearing a long-sleeved sports dress (there really are such things) over a sports bra and capri jogging tights. In the sun, high altitude, and my cancer-treatment induced prone to hotness, I soon got overheated. I debated for awhile but then thought, “Who would know me up here?” So the dress came off, my midriff was exposed, and guess what? Nobody died. Now I admit that it was a bit awkward given that everybody else appeared to have a normal thermostat and none of them looked over heated. In fact, some people were wearing stocking caps! So I was much more skimpily dressed than the rest of the people I encountered on the mountain trails. But again, NOBODY DIED, GAGGED, OR PASSED OUT.
Midriff in the mountains. Yes, my belly button is no longer round due to TRAM surgery. I kind of like the new shape.
Then it just got too hot on my daily walks and I found myself stripped down to a jogging bra and shorts about a third of the way through my neighborhood walks. Just prior to my recent vacation, I realized that I was parading around the neighborhood in front of God and everybody, wearing something equivalent to one of the spicier Land’s End two piece swim suits for middle aged ladies. (And even the young girls frequently wear board shorts instead of bikini bottoms these days.) I realized that my problem was not with how much skin was covered. It was the negative associations I’d had with wearing a swimsuit or even the idea of wearing one, in the past. And by the way, in the course of my walks around my neighborhood, NOBODY DIED, GAGGED, OR PASSED OUT.
I decided that during my vacation, I would wear a swimsuit at least once. I wore a swimsuit twice with no adverse effects. In fact the 20-ish year old kid who rented me a kayak told me that I should jump off the bridge at the other side of the lake. Apparently, I was was looking confident enough in my attire to jump off of a bridge! Woo hoo! Spring break! Middle-aged lady gone wild wears swim suit while exhibiting good posture and providing no apologies. (I did actual consider the bridge jump briefly, remembered my fear of heights as well as my research training, and concluded that this would be manipulating too many anxiety variables at once.)
Last Sunday was another chance for me to work on this swim suit issue because we went to the water park with crowds of people. God was going to be there, too. But the roller coasters had turned out to be much easier than I expected, I was proud of myself, and pumped to expand the bubble of my comfort zone. I did it! I was in public, in a swim suit for hours. We actually bumped into one of John’s co-workers from Disney. Neither he nor anyone else at the park, DIED, GAGGED, OR PASSED OUT. It ended up being a lot easier than the Gordian knot I had envisioned in my head.
There were a lot of people at that park of various shapes and sizes not to mention taste level when it comes to swim attire. I found that the longer I was there, the less comparing I did. About midway through my time there, I looked around and the words that came to my mind in looking at the people around me were, “We are all God’s children.”
My life is really good right now. I am happier than I was before. I have a great deal of peace and joy in my life. And even with the waves of grief I have, there is calm and hope, too. The skin I’m in has a lot of scars, but they are fading.
I looked into the mirror this morning. The woman I saw looked healthy, happy, and like she had a few good stories to tell. Health is beautiful. Life is beautiful.
Yep it’s me in an actual swim suit, not purchased from an antique store! And for extra credit, I’m wearing no make up and squinting into the sun!
Protected: Mother’s Day
My husband and I spent two weeks in Egypt in the summer of 1990. We were on our honeymoon. My husband grew up in a family that did a fair bit of foreign travel. Prior to that summer, I had never been to a non-English speaking country and the only other country I’d visited outside of the U.S. was Canada. (Yes, Canada is bilingual but we only visited the English speaking provinces.) In fact, prior to this trip, I think I’d only traveled by airplane on two prior occasions, at age 18 for a high school trip to New York and at age 22 to accompany John to his father’s funeral in California.
So this was a big adventure. I love art, culture, and travel. I hate, however, not knowing where I am or how to communicate. So going to an Arabic country was a bit of a formidable challenge for me. Also, this was before the Internet so hotel reservations could only be made ahead of time for the expensive hotels, which we could not afford.
We muddled our way through and had a terrific time. Going to Egypt was a risk to me in that it was outside of my comfort zone. We made additional risks in the country. Crossing the street, for example, was a risky adventure. One street was designed for four lanes but was used as if it had eight lanes. And the cars did not put on their headlights at night. And we encountered a number of cab drivers who obviously needed glasses and did not have any. So crossing eight lanes of traffic at night was more than scary.
In that case, the risk turned out okay though it was not a situation we would have planned to have gotten ourselves into. We also found ourselves in situations without transportation a couple of times since we were traveling during the off season when taxis and buses were not as available. We got a ride on the back of a pick up truck in Abu Sur, on the road to Saqqara, the site of the oldest pyramid in the world, designed by the earliest known architect, Imhotep. From Saqqara, we planned to travel to Memphis. However, when we arrived at Saqqara, there were no mini-buses and only one taxi, which was already hired for the day. But the cab driver was nice and asked around to see if someone could give us a ride.
A group of three young Saudi Arabians agreed to take us to Memphis even though it was out of their way. There was a man and two women. I have no idea whether they were related to one another or not. But what John and I immediately gathered is that these young people were treating their vacation to Egypt like American college students who go to Fort Lauderdale for spring break. Woo! Young people gone wild!!!!!!
Now they weren’t drinking or anything but the women were kind of hanging their uncovered heads and torsos out of the windows of a speeding video. They were also singing along to some pop music that was playing in the card. The woman sitting in the front passenger seat turned around to us, pointed at the driver and said, “That is his voice.” I didn’t believe her but tried not to let on but my facial expression must have given me away. So she handed me the cassette tape case and low and behold, the driver’s photo was on the front. At the end of the ride, he gave us the tape and autographed it. The next day, we walked by a music store and a copy of his tape was displayed at the front of the window. We had hitched a ride with a Saudi Arabian pop star!!
Some of our other risks did not turn out so well, however. We met this man, Magad (pronounced “maggot”) who was probably in his late 20’s. He offered to take us around Cairo. John is typically open to these kinds of things and we had already had a good experience on the other part of our honeymoon in Italy, when we met Lorenzo Lampignano, a Canadian who had been born in Italy. Traveling around with Lorenzo was fun and he knew his way around the country. Magad seemed nice and it was WAY harder to get around in Egypt than Italy. (I could speak Italian competently at that time.) So we agreed to have him take us to some mosques the next day.
The mosques were really spectacular. We had a fun day. And he took us to some places we wouldn’t have visited otherwise like the October 1973 War Museum (this war is known elsewhere as the Yom Kippur War). Not only was the name of the war different but the outcome was presented as a victory for Egypt, which is not the prevailing interpretation. It’s kind of a surreal place. There’s a film, “The Road to Victory”. There’s also this huge diorama where the war is re-enacted with plastic planes on fishing line. The final war experience is provided in a 360 degree panoramic painting accompanied by music and rotating seats. It is very similar to the Cyclorama in Atlanta.
Magad told us that he was going to take us to an “Egyptian circus” later that night. And for some reason, the thing didn’t start until some ungodly hour. But hey, an Egyptian circus sounded cool. We didn’t know what to expect but we were sure that it would be delightful experience to remember.
Well it certainly was a night to remember! Due to some translation issues, the circus turned out to be an amusement park with rides one might find at the county fair. Number one, I have a long history of being very uncomfortable with amusement park rides. The fact that these rides were in Cairo made me terror stricken. I can’t speak for now but in 1990 Cairo, let’s just say that it was very clear that safety standards were much different. For example, we were staying at a hotel that had those European style elevator doors that pull out like the door to a house. There were two elevators. One day, we opened one of the doors and were greeted with the sight of an empty elevator shaft. There was no sign on the door or any attempt to secure it so that no one would open it and fall in.
So now do you get my terror? On top of this, the galleon ride (the ride that where the ship swings back and forth in an increasingly wide arc) had been renamed in keeping with the region. And it was labeled in English. I believe it was supposed to be called, “The Flying Carpet,” but it was labeled, “The Flaying Carpet.”
We were in a very awkward situation. Magad had been so excited to bring us there and had even insisted on paying our way. It was also clear given the fact that there were a few couples there still in their wedding clothes that going to this place was a really special treat. And it was the middle of the night. And Magad was our ride. So we went on the Flaying Carpet and prayed. And we went on the octopus. My husband dealt with his own anxiety by making very helpful jokes about how he hoped the hardware on the ride was secure and that the screws were tight.
Okay, there’s another thread of this story that I have neglected to tell you. Magad had been creeping me out some. While we were at the mosques, he’d put his arm around me, for example. This was very confusing to me as (1) men and women did not make physical contact in public and (2) I was a married woman with her husband. I thought maybe we were just having a cultural misunderstanding because I was young and dumb. And John was too busy taking photos to notice that this man was standing right next to me ALL OF THE TIME.
Prior to the “circus” we had visited Magad’s house. He lived with his mother who served us a bunch of stuff that we weren’t supposed to eat. (Another bad risk as we both got sick a few days later.) Magad had also changed into these thin lounge pants and told me that he wanted to read my palm. He asked me to sit on the floor. Then instead of sitting in front of me, he sat behind me, straddling me with his legs. I don’t know how to be delicate about this but it only took me a second to realize that he was going commando and I jumped up like a shot into a standing position saying, “It’s time to go to the circus!” As I’m writing this, I can’t believe we didn’t leave right then and there. We were living in that surreal world of bad decision making. And again, we were young and dumb.
Back to the amusement park. While Magad was paying for the tickets, I took John aside and said, “Hey, I don’t care why this guy is touching me but I don’t want him doing it. Please stay right at my side and between he and I at all times.” In addition to our terror on the rides, there was Magad’s mounting and very visible annoyance at not being able to get his hands on me. John finally insisted that Magad bring us back to our hotel, which he did. And we never saw him again. We learned a valuable lesson, which is that there are creepy people in every culture. We were acting much more trusting there than in our own country due to their incredibly low violent crime rate and the extreme helpfulness and friendliness of the vast majority of Eygptians who we encountered.
So what got me thinking about this trip with its risks some that paid off and others that didn’t? Yesterday, I went to a theme park as part of my daughter’s birthday celebration. It is a water park combined with an amusement park. My daughter loves swimming and is a total thrill seeker. She loves this place. We have taken her there probably five or six times in her life.
I dislike amusement parks. I’ve disliked them even before the Egyptian circus fiasco. They are noisy, chaotic, and the rides are scary. Even parks like Disney Land are somewhat of a trial for me. Although I loved it the first time I was there at age 19 (the craftsmanship of the old rides is awe worthy), the subsequent trips have been decreasingly fun. But as you know, being in a family means doing things that other people like to do, from time to time.
About a week ago, I decided that this trip would be different. I decided to face a couple of fears. I’m just going to write about one of them today and that is my fear of going on roller coasters that are not surrounded by Disney animatronic figures singing cute songs. I’m talking about traditional roller coasters, the ones that are open on both sides. I had never been on one of those, ever.
I don’t need to go on roller coasters to live. And that’s what I have been telling myself all of these years. But it is an irrational fear. In contrast to the amusement park in Cairo, I don’t really worry about the safety of roller coasters. That’s not why I had never been on one. The reason that I’d avoided them for over 40 years is that I hate the idea of feeling scared and out of control on purpose.
I’m not one of those people who won’t go anywhere or experience anything. Naturally, I think I am fairly adventurous. And our family does a lot together. But there has been a slowly but surely growing list of things that I have come to refuse to do because they are out of my comfort zone. I had a chance to swim with manatees. I skipped it. (I was so disappointed with myself that when the park ranger was bringing a snake around for people to touch, I made myself do it even though I am afraid of snakes.) I tried skiing once and quit right away because I was afraid of falling. (Also, seeing the little kid whiz by me who was so young that he had a pacifier in his mouth, was downright demoralizing.) I stopped snorkeling after I had a vertigo sensation while swimming off of the coast of Miami in 1998.
People, this is missing out on fun and I am tired of living like this! I told John my plan to ride the rides and to go on the water park rides. We started off with the easy rides and worked our way up. I told John that I wanted to go on the wooden roller coaster. He said, “Really, it’s pretty scary?” I told him nicely to try to be more supportive so he was. I did it, I went on the roller coaster. And it wasn’t all that bad. In fact, some parts were enjoyable.
Every since I first learned of the existence of the loop de loop roller coaster, I have been adamant that I would NEVER EVER GO ON ONE. And I was pretty satisfied with this decision. But after my traditional roller coaster success, I found myself eying the loop de loop coaster, which at this park is called, “Wild Thing.”
I told John my thoughts. He was incredulous partly because he has avoided ever going on that particular ride. But he was trying really hard to be supportive and had told me how very proud of me he was because he knew how hard it was for me to go on that open roller coaster. I said, “Let’s go on that galleon ride to see if I can handle the arc and if I can do that, I want to go on the roller coaster again to see if I can do it with my eyes open this time.”
We went on the galleon ride, which I thought was pretty easy. But easy for me was queasy for my hubby. The first thing I noticed was that the part of my arm that had rested against his was totally wet with his sweat. He told me that he felt sick. I decided to go on the roller coaster myself and see how he felt afterwards. By this time, I had my plan and I was going through the steps. (In psychology land, this strategy is called “systematic desensitization”, by the way, as I have noted in past posts.)
I was able to go on the roller coaster with my eyes open, no sweat. And it was fun. John felt better so we walked over to “Wild Thing”. It did not make my heart sing or make everything groovy. It put my heart in my throat. No singing was going to occur unless screaming is someone’s idea of singing. But I was determined as was my husband who later told me that he overcame his own fear for me. (Actually, what he said was that he would never be able to live it down if I went on that ride and he didn’t but I prefer the more heroic version of the story because John was so very sweet to me yesterday.)
I did it! I did it! I went on that loop de loop roller coaster, all six loops! And yes, I screamed pretty much non stop. And yes, my eyes were closed most of the time. But I did it! I conquered that fear and it felt awesome!
One of the hardest things about being a naturally anxious person is worrying about the right things. I worried too much about being able to get around in a foreign country and about offending an Egyptian man that I dismissed my own gut feelings about real potential dangers. On the other hand, I have worried too much about getting scared in situations that I knew were actually safe.
I didn’t previously see the value in getting over my fears just to know that I could. I will probably never be a big fan of amusement parks but I had fun yesterday and that means something. But I suspect that this experience and the other ways in which I have been challenging myself, will help me do some of the things that I really have wanted to learn how to do but have been too careful to try.
Maybe you will see me on the slopes this winter with the people I love and in the mountains that fill me with peace and wonder.
Cairo. This boy was so friendly. He wanted his photo taken thinking that we had a polaroid camera and could give him a copy.
Bazaar District, Cairo
Mosque of Ibn Tulun, Cairo
Karnak
Cairo
View of the Nile. I think this was taken from our hotel room in Luxor, which was the setting for Agatha Cristie’s, Death on the Nile. Alternatively, it could be the view from our hotel in Aswan.
Abu Simbel. This is part of the Temple of Ramses II that was moved by UNESCO as it would have been submerged under water by the Aswan Dam. Abu Simbel is located near the Sudanese border. We were there in AUGUST. It was beyond incredibly hot but so beautiful.
Road to Saqqara in Abu Sur.
West Thebes. I think this is a detail from the Temple of Hatshepsut.
The Wild Thing. I rode it on 9/1/13 and my heart’s still beating.
Yesterday, I wrote about how my daughter was stressing me out and working my last nerve. My husband told me that I had “stink lines” coming off of my head while I was writing the post. He meant the lines that are drawn over the heads of cartoon characters to show anger.
Today was the day of the girl’s 15th birthday party. As you can see in the photo, we all had a wonderful day.
My Eyes Are Up Here 