Protected: Eggshells
In actuality, my sleep has improved ever so slightly. But I am still working from a several month pattern of interrupted sleep as well as stress, all things that can impact the smart part of my brain. I keep running into the consequences of bad brain days and today I discovered that my bad brain days preceded my breast cancer diagnosis.
Every year, I have to renew my Washington State Psychology license. The renewal date is my birthday—that’s the way the licensing board likes to honor us. “Happy Birthday, please send us $316 or if you would prefer to wait until after your birthday, please send us $471.”
Every three years, I have to sign a statement that I have met the continuing education requirements. I do a lot of continuing education so this is no big deal. In all of the years I’ve done more than the required amount without even thinking about it all that much.
Did I say, “In all of the years…?” Well, today I found out that during the last three years, not only have I not completed more than my minimum amount of continuing education, but as of 8 am this morning, I hadn’t even finish 50% of the required amount. In truth, I’d completed a little over a third. What happened three years ago? What kind of horrible stress could have occurred that took me so off of my game? Hmmmm.
Oh yeah, three years ago, I became a parent to an adolescent!
Well, there’s nothing like realizing that I have to do two years of continuing education in two weeks to get the old adrenaline pumping. Also, the B12 that I started taking this week does seem to be boosting my energy a little. So far, I’ve gotten about 6 months worth done. That has meant a lot of reading, listening to webcasts, and last but not least, a lot of money paid to take the continuing education tests online. I’ve also been using my printer like crazy to get hard copies of the reading materials. The printer could have used a little B12 this morning, too. It is almost out of black ink and is printing only intermittently as it is in “Cool down mode.” I’m glad my printer has good self care skills and can set healthy limits with me.
The other limit setters, however, was my credit card company! Concerned about wanton spending on educational materials for psychologists, they disabled my card, right when I was buying three courses, one on childhood bipolar disorder, another on mindfulness, and the last on behavioral sleep medicine. (And in respect to the last two courses, I did some others this morning related to self-care, namely some ethics courses on handling a serious illness and it’s impact on one’s competency.) About five minutes after my card was disabled, an agent from the fraud department called, asked me a bunch of questions, apologized, and reset my card. At the end of the call, he informed me that I had $18K left to my credit card limit. I promised him that I wouldn’t spend it all on continuing education classes, at least today. He laughed. I bet he would have thought yesterday’s tattoo joke was funny, too.
I went in to see Dr. Welk this morning so he could take a look at my skin graft. I was instructed to keep the dressing over the graft all of this time so this was an “unveiling” for me, as well. He took off the dressing and said, “Looks good.” I was relieved since I thought the color and texture did not look so good. But that’s the way it’s been all along. When I think it looks bad, the experts think it looks good and when I think I know what kind of bad-looking tissue is actually well-healing tissue, I am told, “I’ve never seen this before.”
After Dr. Welk cleaned up the area a little, I could see that it was healing. I also saw that the shape of the graft was more of a pointed ellipse than a 1 cm by 2 cm rectangle, as I had thought previously. What I was seeing before was the color and outline of a sponge that was put directly over the graft. Seeing the shape of the graft I joked to Dr. Welk, “Hey, cool that looks like a little eye ball. I could get an eye ball tattoo there.” As soon as I saw his face I said, “Kidding, kidding, kidding. Tattoos are not really my style. But I guess that is not a great joke to make in Seattle.” (For those of you in other parts of the world, tattoos and body piercings are quite the rage in these parts.)
Speaking of tattoos, I recently learned that a new business, a tattoo place, is moving into the space above the offices that I share with two other psychologists. We’ve been in our ground floor space for many years and there’s been a good deal of turnover upstairs. The last business was a day spa and before that, it was a chiropractor’s office. So, it has a lot of little rooms in it. Now the rooms will be filled with people getting inked. The teens that see us in the psychology offices will be thrilled. I am hoping they don’t blast loud music or anything. I am also hoping that there aren’t a bunch of people with scary piercings. I see preschoolers, after all. I think it will probably be just fine. My biggest fear is that a coffee shop or restaurant would move in upstairs. We would hear footsteps, the sound of the steam wand, and talking, all day long. Not to mention the impact on the parking situation. Our building is a cute house built in 1917 so it would have appeal for these kinds of businesses. Fortunately, when the chiropractor moved in, she totally remodeled the place, removing the kitchen, not to mention putting little exam/treatment rooms everywhere.
And if I ever do want to get that eye ball shaped tattoo…
Okay, I took a little tiny bit of creative license with the title of my post. My cat, Ollie, is actually male and he is neutered, not spayed. “Neutered” just doesn’t have the right sound. Fortunately, I am not planning to apply to veterinary school any time soon. Or any time for that matter. I’ve had enough advanced education in my life. I absolutely love my job. It’s a good thing I didn’t fully know what I was getting into with graduate school because if I’d known, I probably would have skipped getting a Ph.D.
But back to another infertile member of the family, Oliie the cat. Ollie has been seeking a LOT of attention from me lately. He climbs up on me to purr and sleep, several times a morning, and what I mean by the morning is any time followed by the letters “am.” Ollie is exacerbating my sleep problems by waking me up a lot. He is also warm, which compounds my hot flashes.
Since Ollie has treated John as his favorite for years, I have been perplexed by this change in his habits. At first, I thought it was because he is getting older and has a number of ailments. I thought that maybe he is just needing more attention from every body. This is true, to a certain extent as he has been asking for more attention from John as well. John thinks Ollie is actually feeling better from his liver medicine (he has a liver disease, pancreatitis, and hyperthyroidism) so he has been seeking more attention. The hyperthyroidism also makes him hungrier so he is bugging us for food more frequently. (And yes, there is a treatment for hyperthyroidism but we tried the cheap route, twice daily medication, and he was unable to tolerate it. The alternative treatment costs $1000. We just paid $1500 in diagnostic tests to find out about all of these ailments so we need a couple of weeks to recover.)
I have another hypothesis as to why I have become Ollie’s favorite. You know how cats love to be warm? How they lie in the sun in the summer and on the heater vents in the winter? I think the cat is seeking me out because of my hot flashes!
I do love my kitty but perhaps I will start sleeping with an ice pack on my chest to discourage him.
Another time I tried to turn Ollie into a girl. I put a tiara on him to try to submit a photo to the site, “Cute Overload.” Then I never sent it in because I was embarrassed about trying to take a funny cat picture.
My family gets home later than usual tonight. I decided to use the time to make room in the vegetable bin by cooking a bunch of vegetables. My original plan was to serve all of them with the main entree tonight (Italian chicken sausages). I roasted cauliflower and semi circles of delicata squash with a drizzle of olive oil and a little salt. I also sauteed some chard with shallots.
I still have the chard with shallots. They are untouched. The rest of the vegetables are in my stomach. It started by my looking at one of those little cooked crescents of squash. My massage therapist, Jann grew it and gave it to me. Heaven, every crescent of it. Then I thought, “That cauliflower looks pretty good. It was a small head and I’m really the only one in the family who likes it anyway.” So I ate that.
Now I’m a little full but I still have 45 minutes to get hungry again for a sausage and some chard. Somehow I think I will work up an adequate appetite.
Also ravenous, but not just today, is my cat, Ollie. He has hyperthyroidism and we are still trying to get it treated successfully. This gives him a large appetite and also makes him run around the house at times, in a seemingly manic state. This morning, he climbed into bed with me. He was sweet and snuggly. I gave him a lot of attention. Then he put his paw on my breast and put out his claws slightly, like he does when he wants to play. I thought, “I wonder if he could get through my nightgown, my skin, and the plastic tissue expander? I thought that he probably couldn’t but was not entirely thrilled with the idea of springing a leak in the expander. So I shifted my weight a little and remonstrated, “Kitty!”
You will not believe what he did next. He took a playful bite at my breast, not just once but twice! He’s never done that before in the 11 years he’s lived with us. I wondered why this was the first time. Maybe this is crazy, but I think when he reached out his paw, he was confused by how hard my temporary breast is. It’s a bag full of saltwater, under my skin, after all. Maybe he thought it was my elbow or something.
Now Ollie’s eating greenery from a vase of flowers on the table. Now that’s something he’s done many times before. But a fake breast? Maybe he has another illness. With humans, habitually eating items that are not food is called, “pica.” Maybe he has pica. I’d leave you on this note, but I have a funny pica story.
When I was on internship (a one year clinical position that was required to finish my Ph.D. in clinical psychology), we had a morning meeting one day to assign cases to the interns. This was a normal thing that we did every time we had clinic duty. The referral questions were written down on a phone message by the clinic secretary, along with the patient’s name and age. There was a 4 year-old coming in for an evaluation. The supervising psychologist read the secretary’s notes aloud, “Eats couch.” I said, “I’ll take the couch eater!” No one else in the group liked preschool aged children like I do, so my preference was uncontested. Yes, it was my first and only pica case.
Chew on that.
Protected: Spooky!
Protected: Why I Wear Heels
As in Bugs Bunny’s on my butt, in band aid form. Peggy, one of the nurses at Swedish Cancer Institute, put it there after she gave me a Lupron shot. This one is good for three months instead of one month like the two previous shots. I can feel the difference. I also have a Daffy Duck band aid on my upper left arm. Peggy also gave me a flu shot. I have a simple gauze and paper tape dressing over the inner bend of my elbow. That’s from my blood draw. The phlebotomists are old school. Too bad because if they’d given me a Porky Pig band aid I would have had a Warner Brothers’ trinity on my left side.
Last but not least, I have gauze and dressing over the small portion of missing skin on my breast. I found out yesterday that I lost all of the skin in a little area. Dr. Welk told me that what I had been looking at and thinking was deeper skin was actually subcutaneous fat. That was mildly disconcerting since I was unaware that I had been peering at a deeper layer of my insides all this time. He also told me that the skin would heal from the edges in by forming a bridge over the wound. That skin will not form connections to the fat below, however, He did say that the area had revascularized (the blood supply has returned to the area) and the tissue was granulated (a stage of tissue healing), which are good things.
Overall, Dr. Welk was happy with how things were proceeding so he added a bunch of saline to my tissue expander. He did, however, recommend that I have about a square centimeter of skin grafted from my abdomen to my breast. In his usual way he said, “It’s no big deal. It’s just a pinch of skin. It will take less than 20 minutes.” I was feeling brave so I said, “Dr. Welk, last time you told me something was only going to take 5 minutes, it hurt like Hell.” He said, “This won’t even hurt like Heck.” “How about Purgatory?,” I pressed. “Not even like Purgatory. No big deal.”
So I agreed. I met with Dr. Rinn for my medical oncology appointment and she also said she thought it was a good idea because it would reduce risk of infection. So I had a good appointment with her, got my shots, scheduled my next appointment for next January (yay, three months away!), and went home.
This afternoon, I’m going to see if Dr. Welk is right about this little “no big deal” skin graft. If he’s wrong, I’m not just going to give him Heck, I’m going to give him Hell! 🙂
T minus 5 months, that is. At long last, I have scheduled my TRAM surgery date. If all goes as expected, it will be on March 11th. Yes, that’s a long time from now but it was the earliest available surgery date and I am fine with waiting. For one, I need to make some money to pay for it! This way, I’ll get to enjoy the holidays as well as my 23rd wedding anniversary on March 10th. Almost more importantly, I should be able to enjoy the summer of 2013, more so during the summer of 2012, which included three surgeries between June 27th and August 8th followed by a medical leave that lasted until September 10th. I spent the majority of that summer in and out of the hospital and then another month in recovery. I’ll need to take some time off after this next surgery, I’m thinking at least four weeks.
I had a particularly good appointment with Dr. Welk today. He asked me a bunch of questions about what it’s like for me to be a psychologist. He is usually not very chatty. Maybe he ate his Wheaties today!
Ha! If you found this blog entry via Google when you were looking for some porn, you have been punked! This is a middle-aged lady’s breast cancer blog. And when you add the word “cancer” to the name of a body part, even an ordinarily sexy one like the breast loses its allure. Now to my other blog readers, if you are worried about my glee in naming a post “fun in bed” and fantasizing about leading porn readers to my site, let me explain.
A few years ago, I was searching on Google for “free holiday clip art.” I was trying to find border art for our annual Christmas letter. You know, just another day in the life of a mom and wife, engaged in a wholesome family-oriented activity. So I saw a link titled, “Free holiday clipart. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Valentine’s Day.” I clicked on it and much to my horror, I entered a couple’s home made porn site! Aaaaaaaaagh, my eyes! And by the way, they were not cute. And double by the way, if I were ever to meet these folks, I would say, “I have a little suggestion for you to help improve your photographic skills. I’m glad you have a zoom on your camera but a tight shot like that really detracts from the subject. You might want to zoom out a little and use a light diffusing filter. You may also want to take future photos with the lens cap on. And, Dude, so sorry about your scar. The trauma you must have experienced with a circumcision gone awry. Other than that, big props on keeping it spicy in the bed room!”
And if you feel sorry for these people, don’t. I was lured to this site. For those of you who are unfamiliar with how websites are set up, let me explain. There are these things called “meta tags” that you attach to your website. Basically, they are key words. People can’t see them but when they use them in their Internet searches, they will be directed to your site. For example, for my business website, I assigned meta tags such as “psychologist”, “child psychologist”, “ADHD”, “Seattle”, etc. That helps people find my site when they search through Google or another search engine. So yes, that means that these do-it-yourself porn stars assigned “holiday clipart” as a meta tag to their site!!!!!!!!! They were just waiting for some unsuspecting mom to click on their link and view them in their gory glory!
Okay, so now that I have successfully accomplished my revenge on Internet porn, I’ll tell you the real story behind the title for this post. First, I had quite interesting dreams last night. In one of them, I traveled to some European country, it was probably Hungary since John was just there. However, in my dream it was a country that hosted the winter Olympics recently, as I was informed by a tour guide. I visited a mountainous area where the games were held. It was filled with glass sculptures (suspiciously Chihuly-esque) and there was a mountain in the background. It was a stunning scene so I started taking pictures. Of course, as soon as I started taking pictures it became instantly dark outside. The rest of the country tour was interesting. Despite the alpine climate, the area was full of tropical plants like palm trees. I remember thinking, “Wow, this is weird. Why is it warm with palm trees in Europe during this time of year?” Also, in the tour, we were doing a helicopter tour at times and a bus tour at other times. On the bus tour, we saw lots of architecture. However, the buildings were really cartoonish and the whole vibe was more like a Disney park. Maybe I’d made it to Euro Disney. (Hmm, I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that my husband’s business trip to Hungary was for his job at Disney. Let me ponder that one for a few hours.)
I remember less from the second dream but I have no idea where it came from. I was in college and Natalie Portman was one of my dorm mates. And she was famous in the dream. She was trying to get me to buy this special kind of underwear that she favored. They had a liner and an outer layer, which looked like a pair of board shorts. They were really bulky and dumb looking. Natalie enthused, “If you buy some, we can share!” I said, “Gee, Natalie I’m don’t really want to share underwear with you.” She clarified that she only meant the board short part. I was not convinced and also pointed out that we also would not wear the same size. I forget what else happened. Aha, I just pieced together the random thoughts that created this dream. I’m not going to say anything, I’ll let all of you speculate on my unconscious.
Finally, my last big of “fun in bed” occurred when I was doing my mindfulness meditation. Ollie, our monster-sized cat, decided that he needed some attention. Suddenly, I feel his full weight on me, including on my abdominal incisions. Not super painful but not my favorite, either. Then he started sniffing my face which is his greeting and request for petting. He got bored and jumped off of me. A few moments later, he did a do over and he was on me again. Ordinarily, I would have stopped what I was doing (meditating) because I wasn’t “doing it right.” Instead, I kept meditating and instead of trying to block him out, I tried to calmly notice what was going on. (That’s part of mindfulness.) So I thought, “Now Ollie has jumped on my abdominal incisions. Observing, without judgment, I’ve go to say that it hurts a little, etc.” I kid a little, especially about the “observing without judgment” part (it’s an ever present catch phrase in mindfulness). But I have to say that it worked in making what would usually be an irritating experience into a useful and slightly humorous exercise. It was a good start to the day.
My Eyes Are Up Here 