Happiness is an Empty Colon

I talk about poop a lot.

Freud would say this means I am stuck in the anal stage of childhood development, and I am not sure that’s too far off the mark.  Let’s just say that The Beatles were wrong when they said that happiness was a warm gun.  No, no, it’s an empty colon.

—–

Since Brian and I get up for work at different times in the morning, we don’t get to see each other until we get home from work in the evening.  We supplement our communication needs with email and chats during the day.

me: You know, because of this bloating, I’ve had to get up and pee TWICE each night since Saturday

Brian:  eek

me:  My sleep hasn’t been good

Brian:  Have you asked Dr. Internet what to do?

me:  No…but it’s just going to tell me that I am dying.  Or pregnant.  Besides, I pooped this morning, so that’s a plus!

 Brian:  Was it a lot?

 me:  Not a lot…

 Brian:  Still good though

 me:  From 1-10, it was a 4

 Brian:  Hah

 me:  10 being MASSIVE, EPIC poo, you know, that breaks the water

 Brian:  On the Shat Scale

 me:  Right!  So at least my poo wasn’t a 1, which would be like two little nuggets…plop, plop.

 Brian:  Let’s change the subject.

 me:  Why?  This is awesome!  …This could be a blog post!

Finding shapes in the clouds

I’m going to talk to you today about ultrasounds.

They are weird.  They are uncomfortable.  Sometimes, they are hilarious.

I’ve had roughly 20 ultrasounds over the years (about 19 of which were cancer-related, and one was to check for a blood clot in my leg after it swelled to the size of one of those GMO turkey legs at the state faire).  Each experience was like the first time you let a monkey kiss you on the mouth – a little bit different and a whole lot weird.

I’ve had two kinds of ultrasounds – the kind where my abdomen is made into a slip-n-slide for hairless mice, and the kind where my vag is made into a fleshy joystick that feels like the total opposite of joy.

Recently, I had what may turn out to be my last cancer-related ultrasound…ever (which is both exciting and scary).

First, the nurselady led me from the waiting room into a more private one-person waiting room and told me not to get undressed.  Under no circumstances was I to remove clothing.  I sensed that at some point she must have experienced an embarrassing misunderstanding with a newbie patient.  Don’t worry, lady, this is old hat.

I picked up a very tattered Ladies Home Journal and tried to calm my nerves.  Even though I totally know the drill by now, I always get white coat syndrome on account of the dreaded c-word.  Oh yeah, that, and my bladder was so fucking full that I could taste the pee in the back of my throat.  Long ago I learned that if I actually drink the 304,786 oz of water they tell me to drink before my appointment, I end up having to swerve off the freeway halfway there and run into a gas station bathroom before urine drips down my legs and soaks my socks.  All I have to do is drink the milk from my morning cereal and rinse my mouth out after brushing my teeth, and my percolator fills up that peesack like clockwork, no worries.

So I get called into the actual exam room where the undressing action happens.  Usually, I get a student tech and ve’s supervisor asking if it’s ok if a student pokes around in my nethers.  I support the sciences, so I usually shrug and tell them they can enter at their own risk.  This time, however, I guess I got a real tech because she was all I got.  Either that, or she was a student tech gone rogue.  I decided to take my chances.

Next step is that I undress from the waist down for that first kind of ultrasound (bring out the hairless mice!).  A tip to all you first-timers out there: make sure the towel they give you is fully tucked into your underwear unless you want to walk around all day with goo-covered chonies.  That tech ain’t watching where they are putting that paddle, and that goo gets frickin everywhere.  And it’s not even the good kind of goo you want up in there, anyway, so tuck it.

First good sign: this tech warmed up the goo!  She’s a pro, this one.  I lie back and enjoy the warm, sticky sensation as I watch the white snow on the monitor and wait patiently for Samara to emerge.

“help…I’ve been stuck in there for 7 daysss….and 9 months.”

This whole process, if you sit and think about it for a quick sec, is pretty magical.  A stranger wields a wand, adds some primordial goo, and – Expecto Patronum! – they can see inside your body, your innermost secrets.  They can see the absence of a second ovary (if I get a particularly naive tech, or a tech who obviously hasn’t read my chart, sometimes I’ll fuck with ‘em:  What?!  You can’t find my left ovary?!!  WELL YOU HAD BETTER FIND IT!), they can see my scar tissue, and they can also see that my bladder is rapidly filling up and about to burst like Liz Lemon after sandwich day.  Talk about embarrassing.

I usually try to position myself so I can see the screen.  I’ve seen my ladyparts onscreen so many times that I fancy myself a real radiology tech – and by “real,” I mean that I point at blobs on the screen and ask, “Ooh, is that a spidermonkey?!”

A good tech will narrate the procedure for me: “…aaaand here we have your uterus, lookin’ good….and then we slide over here….and there’s your cute little ovary!”  A bad tech doesn’t say anything and just makes weird facial features at the screen as she pauses and measures the blobs.

This tech was a bad one (the warmed-up goo was just a ruse)….and she was freaking me the fuck out.  At one point her eyebrows raised and then lowered and furrowed.  I couldn’t stay silent. “What!? What did you see?”

She looked at me with a smile.

“Well, I found your ovary!”

Good news…

“…and it looks like an otter!”

It looks like a what now?!

“Oh, you know, it’s like finding shapes in the clouds with this thing, here look…”

And she points.

Funny enough, I could actually see it, right there, flippers and all.  Weird.

I’d rather my ovary look like this! From projectconnecta-gain.blogspot.com

We had a little moment, Madam Ovary and I.  I waved.

I never really know what to expect at these appointments…

Jim Beam: Kid Tested, Mother Approved

So I went to my parents’ house this weekend and Saturday morning I woke up in my childhood bed, stumbled down the stairs and opened the cabinet to get some cereal for breakfast and this is what I saw:

Boozy-oh’s: Breakfast of Champions!

Alternate captions for this picture include:

“Cirrhosis Toast Crunch”

“Honey Bunches of Jameson”

“Captain Morgan Crunch”

“Scotchy Charms – They’re magically delicious!”

(Now accepting additional submissions for boozy cereal photo captions in the comments section!)

——

I’ll have you know that when I was living at home, this cabinet was full of sweet, delicious carbs in the form of sweet, delicious cereal.

After taking the above incriminating photo, I confronted my mom.

Me: Mom, what happened to the cereal cabinet?

Mom: Why, is it broken?  Did you break it?!

Me: No, it’s full of booze.  It’s now the booze cabinet!

Mom: Oh, that.  Well, I need to take tonic water to calm my restless legs before I go to bed.

Me:  …

Mom: And sometimes I need something to take away the bitterness of the tonic water, so I add some whiskey.

Me:  You take away bitterness…with whiskey?! 

Mom:  *quiter* …It calms the legs.

Next she’s gonna tell me that she replaced the candy in the candy drawer with meth.

Waking Up

I became aware of the horribly bright fluorescent lights as I regained consciousness. I saw my dad first – a blurry version of my dad. I looked past him to the clock on the wall. 9pm and change. Wait, could that be right? They took me in at 2-something…that’s way too long.

“Is that clock right?”
“Was it benign?”
“Can I still have babies?”

These were the three questions I remember asking immediately upon waking up. I also remember my dad giving me an affirmative answer to each one- which shouldn’t have made sense.

Before going in for surgery, I was told that if my tumor was benign, the procedure would take about an hour or 90 minutes. If they found cancer or if there were complications – longer. I had been out for over 7 hours.

Upon hearing the answers I wanted to hear, I started to take stock of how I physically felt. My body didn’t feel like my own. I felt broken. My midsection felt like it had been run over by a semi truck. A nurse suddenly appeared at my side and shoved a button in my hand. She told me to push the button when I felt pain. I pushed it right away and kept pushing it every time I remembered to, which felt like long intervals since I kept drifting in and out of consciousness. I was later told that I pushed that damn thing every 2 minutes or so. No amount of pushing that button could have taken the pain away.

I felt so numb. Blindingly so. After my parents left the room, my boyfriend at the time was allowed to stay. At one point I looked up at him and it looked like he was crying. I asked him if he was and I honestly don’t remember his answer. I just wanted to go back to sleep. I wanted to wake up once it was all over.

I pushed the button.

The next morning my surgeon came to see me. He told me that they found some borderline malignant tumors. Malignant. Plural. With an ‘s.’ This information barely registered. It had completely engulfed my left ovary but I got to keep my right one.

What?
Say again, please?
But my dad said…
…do I have to do radiation? Chemo?

No. Those treatments won’t work on your kind of tumors. Besides, we think we got them all, and now we just wait and see.

WAIT AND SEE?! My brain was screaming but my face stayed blank.
Apparently now my job was just to focus on getting better.

Let me get this straight. You rip me open, take out pieces of me, then run me over with a truck and tell me medicine won’t work for me, and now it’s my job to get better? I thought that was yours. You broke me. Now someone put me back together.

I pushed the button again and everything got blurry.

—

That was exactly 10 years ago today. I just sat down to write and this just kinda came out, wasn’t really planned. It feels good to write about this, so bear with me because y’all might see more of these.

In other news, I turned 30 yesterday and I think I felt all the feelings. All of them. I got drunk on wine with friends and we went bowling. The best part- costumes were required. I brought back the 80s like it was my job. In preparation, I plugged in my crimping iron that I hadn’t used since the 90s, and it promptly began to smoke. Once the putrid smell of burning plastic subsided and got me sufficiently high, I used it on my hair and the results were hecka rad. I even unearthed my old slap bracelets and those plastic thingies one used to clip the bottom of one’s oversized shirt off to the side. Mini skirt, tights, leg warmers, oh my!

I suppose after all this I should post some pictures. Stay tuned, my little psychos.

Mood swings and naked babies

Hey Folks.

It’s been so long since my last post, that I really feel like I just need to post something for the sake of posting.  I’ve started to compose posts in my head only to have them fade from memory after a few hours.

The truth is, I haven’t been feeling the best.  I’ve been moody, I’ve had less energy than usual, I’ve been stressed.  I’ve had some extra responsibilities at work that I don’t normally have.  January was a very busy month in terms of wedding planning – a lot of appointments, some of which were fun, but they all take time away from normal routine and activities.  And…I am turning 30 this Sunday and then on Monday is my 10 year cancer-free anniversary.

I should feel happy, right?  I have tons to feel happy about.  I have a job that I like.  I am planning a wedding.  I have my health.  But I really just want to get in bed and pull the covers over my head.

The worst part for me, as a therapist, is that I don’t fully understand these mood swings.  I am a person who needs to know why, and I’ll ruminate until I figure it out or go crazy, whichever comes first (usually the latter).

But I totally get that I can sit in front of a client and understand what’s going on with ve.  It’s a hell of a lot harder to see with the same perspective into one’s self.

And maybe I don’t really need to know why, even though I have some good ideas.

I’m getting married, which means I am looking forward to starting a family.  After getting rid of the cancer issue, the lingering unknown was my fertility status.  I don’t have the luxury of getting to assume I’ll be able to have kids when the time comes.  Of course I don’t want to freak out until I have to, but the possibility of infertility saddens me probably more than anything in my entire life.

Needless to say, I feel extremely fragile and vulnerable right now and I am trying not to let my rapidly shifting emotions get in the way of me celebrating my birthday (which I hate is so close to Valentine’s Day, btw…impossible to get dinner reservations for an event that is far more important than a naked baby playing with sharp objects).

And now I’m off in search of some donuts.

Thanks for listening, bloggyworld.

A Blogyear Timesuck

As of today, I have been blogging for a whole year.  365 days. Twelve months.  A dozen menstrual cycles, phases of the moon, psychotic breaks with reality.  Ok, so there were actually a baker’s dozen psychotic episodes…mmm, baked goods…

This blogyear has probably been one of the best years of my life, and I owe it all to blogging.  Didn’t you know that typing meaningless stories and feelings and bodily fluids bring great things?  I think Oprah said that one time.

I’d like to recap all the amazing things that have happened and were made legitimate by the fact that I wrote about them and then broadcasted them for hoards of perfect strangers to like and comment on:

Brian earned his master’s degree and I ceased to be the suffering partner of a grad student!

I turned 29 for the first time!

I blogged publicly about having cancer that one time, and I celebrated being cancer-free for 9 fucktastic years!  Plus, I get all the joke-rights to having only one ladyball.  Half the ball, twice the crazy.

I learned how to shoot a gun and no one got hurt except Ben Affleck’s left ear.

I passed two (count em: one and two) Marriage and Family Therapist licensing exams after having studied for them procrastinated by reading other people’s blogs.  Surprisingly, some very important people in the state of California think I can actually help people.  My goal is to prove them right.

I hadn’t even taken a deep breath or a post-licensing-exam-nap before I GOT ENGAGED THIS YEAR to the boyman of my dreams!!!

As if I hadn’t had enough joy this year, I also got a promotion at work managing our therapy department.  So many amazing changes, that I summoned the Trololo Guy to help me celebrate.

In July, Brian and I took an awesome Pre-weddingmoon trip to Puerto Rico and returned barely alive.  But that’s ok, because what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger and more equipped to survive The End Times.

For the remainder of the blogyear, I’ve basically been planning a wedding, blogging about planning a wedding, and eating potato chips.

Not a bad year if I do say so myself.

—

I’ve found two main benefits to blogging during this past year.  One of them is getting to meet and read about so many interesting, eloquent, and funny people out there!  If I have ever liked or commented on your blog, then I include you in the above description.  And if you have ever read, liked, commented, followed, or given me an award on my blog – thank you.  Thank you for trading jokes, thank you for your encouragement, thank you for the community – because that’s what I was looking for when I started this whole thing.

The second benefit is that I’ve been able to discover who I am as a writer and who I might like to become as a writer.  This blog is basically one big experiment and I basically feel like I’ve been winging it this whole time, but when I look back on my posts I am sometimes surprised to find myself thinking that I actually churned out some stuff that I am proud of.  Who knew that I am funny?!  Who knew that I have shit to say that people might actually care about?!  Who knew that I had so much to say about zombies?!

Don’t worry- I’m not even close to being done blogging about zombies.

Here’s to another year that’s simply blogtastic!

The Price of Wisdom

I’ve been a little under the weather lately.

And by under the weather, I mean had a wisdom tooth pulled with only local anesthesia.  I’m kindof a badass like that.

It went fairly well, and I am happy with my decision, because if I had really wanted to be put under, I would have had to wait several more days, and I couldn’t endure any more anticipatory anxiety coupled with increasingly crippling wisdom-tooth-induced headaches.  That, and general anesthesia reminds me of my cancer surgery, and that’s a very bad thing.

So now I just settle for post-wisdom-tooth-being-ripped-out-of-my-head headaches.

Seriously, who thought up an 8 hour dosage painkiller?  I was prescribed Motrin that can be taken once every 8 hours (well, to be honest, I was actually given a choice between Vicodin, Tylenol with codeine, or juiced-up Motrin.  I actually had to think about this one, cuz hey – street value, peeps – but I decided I’d like to be able to drive myself to work and not slur my words in front of my clients.  And I actually made this choice post-extraction.  I know- I should be given a medal or something.).  I also have to take these meds after eating something, and I descend from mid-western folk.  Allow me to translate: we eat our three squares with minimal snacking or else we get the hose.  Or get locked out of the house in the snow with no shoes, but that’s tough in some parts of Northern California, so the hose it is.

So let’s think about this for a second.  My workday is 8 hours long, so I guess I’ll take a pill right after breakfast but before I get to work so that it’ll kick in once I get there and have to deal with crises related to violence and suffering.  Good start.  Unfortunately, the label lies (said in Voldemort’s voice) and the magic wears off around hour 7 and 14.3 minutes, so in the middle of my last session of the day, the gaping hole in my gums starts throbbing and spreads through my occipital lobe and ravages the [small] part of my brain that houses sanity.  Sorry, client, but I can no longer hear you over the din of a box of live kittens being seared by turbo jet exhaust.  Fast forward to 5pm-quitting time.  By this time it’s too close to dinner to snack (my mother’s voice reverberates in my already pulsating head…something something spoil your dinner…) and I can’t take my next goddamn pill until I eat something.   So here I am, speeding home, trying to see the road through my blinding pain.

Once I get home and eat and take my pill, I start to feel better.  More like a human.  I think my horns and red eyes actually shrink and fade, respectively.  I go to sleep after rinsing my mouth with salt water for what feels like the zillionth time that day (more on that later), and I hope to she-sus that I don’t wake up when my pill wears off in the middle of the night because it only lasts for 8 fucking hours and I took it right after dinner because I couldn’t wait and because I don’t fucking eat right before fucking bedtime.

Wake up, repeat, and feel my pain.  FEEL IT NOW.

Also take into account that I must rinse my mouth with warm salt water every time I eat.  Makes me feel like a fish, but not the drunk kind.

The icing on the cake is that, while I have a bit of swelling and that is to be expected, I also have some bruising on my cheek where the dentist very roughly wrenched my drooling, completely numb mouth open and braced with crazy force to basically pull bone from bone.  So I’ve been going to work, seeing clients who are survivors of domestic and sexual violence, and one side of my face is bruised and swollen.  This is going to be great for business.

I feel like I should wear a sign around my neck.  Maybe I’ll attach a doctor’s note for further proof.  FML.

You do plan to have dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour, right?

I survived Jurassic Park!!

Actually, I just got back from Puerto Rico, which [parts of it] looks a whole lot like Jurassic Park.  And we were in a Jeep.  On muddy roads.  With goat extremities flying about.

I was ready for giant roaring, spitting, flesh-tearing lizards at every turn.

I was also ready for all the crappy parts of what going to a tropical region entail – mainly mosquitoes, sunburn, mosquitoes, theft, mosquitoes, and humidity.  Also mosquitoes.

Don’t worry, I’ll go into great detail about all the things that were crappy about this vacation.   But first – a few things that were surprisingly awesome:

1. No migraines!

I live in Northern California.  It’s dry here, especially in the summer.  I tend to get migraines fairly often, and they are triggered mostly by dehydration and stress, and when we go hiking, they are exacerbated by the altitude.  In PR, we hiked to the top of El Yunque in the tropical rainforest, and no headache resulted.  Not even a little one.  Not one for the entire trip!  Sure, my sweat never freaking evaporated, but it felt sooooo nice to not have to pop Excedrin all the time.  Score one for the tropics.

2. No Breathe Right strips

When I go to bed, I look like a huge nerd.  I pop in my retainer from high school, and for the past year or so, I’ve been wearing Breathe Right strips to bed because I inherited my dad’s clogged, gross nasal passages apparently.  On this trip, I didn’t have to use a one.  The air was fresh and clean from all the rain, and it moistened my sinuses with gentle wetness and joy.  Squee!

3. Not having to moisturize after bathing

I developed eczema at the same time that my cancer symptoms were developing.  They took all the cancer out of me, but the eczema stayed.  This meant that I must moisturize like a madwoman after a hot shower or else my dry skin would get all itchy and scaly and I’d look like I belong in Jurassic Park.  I figured out the hard way that in a tropical climate, too much moisture gave me heat rash – yaaaayyyyy.  Sometimes I just hate my body.  But the upside was that I could just airdry with none of my normal head-to-toe goo rituals and it felt so freeing!

4. Awesomely ripe fruit + delicious Puerto Rican coffee = regular BMs for dayz!

I really don’t think this one requires an explanation, except that Brian and I call this phenomenon “mango poo.”
So I didn’t realize or intend for this post to turn into a list of my medical ailments, but it has.   I wrote an abbreviated journal while on the trip and it tended to read like a prison diary:  “Gone 4 days now. Heat rash is spreading. 15 mosquito bites so far.  I hope I have another mango poo.”

At this point, I don’t know which is the prison – PR or my desk at work; I’m actually developing a migraine as I write this.

The man in a pink tutu

I was moved to tears this morning over my Organic Colon-Blow while watching the Today Show.

This guy takes pictures of himself wearing nothing but a pink tutu to help his wife and others suffering from breast cancer.  It’s called The Tutu Project.

I just wanted to share the laughter and tears I experienced this morning.

Smells like sexism

Mr. Limbaugh, your sorta-kinda apology is not enough.

Read this Huffington Post article that contains the full text of the so-called apology here.

One of the few things you got right is that you are indeed absurd and you speak absurdities.  I am so glad that we agree on that.

I think we can all agree that you did indeed intend a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.  I don’t see how calling someone a slut and prostitute can escape the label of personal attack.  Please stop adding lies to the damage you’ve already done.

What you get so horribly wrong is that this debate on contraception is not about “personal sexual recreational activities.”  This is about women’s health, pure and simple.

How is it that health plans cover Viagra, where its only purpose is for personal sexual recreational activities, and not cover birth control, where it is used for a wide range of purposes, from regulating menstrual cycles to preventing ovarian cancer to preventing pregnancy?  What happened to “personal responsibility and accountability” for men, Mr. Limbaugh?  Based on your logic, shouldn’t men just deal with not having access to a drug that would allow them to perform personal sexual recreational activities?  This smells like sexism.

What pains me, absolutely pains me, is when people do not understand that by holding women back, you hold us all back.  (I recommend an amazing, inspiring book on this topic.)

And I refuse for you to hold us back, Mr. Limbaugh.

I refuse.