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Waiting for Godot…or something like that…

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Welp, I’m pretty much ready to go for tomorrow’s Adventure in Medical Science. Called the Mayo and learned we’re not scheduled till 10 a.m., not (as promised), at 6:00. That’s annoying in one way but maybe better in a couple of other ways. First, we don’t have to leave the house at five in the morning, which is mighty nice. Second, I’m allowed to eat and to drink fluids until midnight. So my plan is to try to get amply hydrated: I’m gonna sit here until around 11 p.m. watching Netflix and sipping water, which I hope will help with the excruciating thirst while we’re sitting around waiting to be called in.

This afternoon my son came by and asked me to dinner — I’d already stuffed myself, so that was kind of moot. And he puttered around collecting keys and trying to figure out what would need to be done. And advising me, in his manly way. 😀

I’ve got two old Land’s End soft-sided briefcases. One now holds a set of PJs, extra underpants, toothbrush, and the like. Oh, and something to hold my glasses. And the phone (I figure the Mayo may not have land lines into every room the way hospitals did in the good old days!) and a list of phone numbers (mine is not a smart phone). And a book. And a yellow pad and a pen.

Then I’m putting the laptop (and its charger cord!) in the other one and giving it to my son to haul around. Whenever I get settled in the room and come back to consciousness, I’d like to have that at hand, since it’s my main source of amusement. Must remember to bring the Netflix codes.

Hmmmm…. I hope that if they put me in a room with a roommate I won’t have to listen to a dratted television blathering away. I hate that! I should probably ask M’hijito to bring a pair of earphones, since I don’t have a set.

So tomorrow the endless round of surgeries will be over (I sincerely hope!), and with any luck three weeks from now the worst of this little adventure will in the past.

Meanwhile, today the freebie Knitted Knockers arrived in the mail. Not very impressive, I’d say.

First, I asked for a size “C.” They’re a bit large for my bras, and the bras I tried them in are C-cups.

Second — and this may be a function of the way they’re stuffed rather than the way they’re made — instead of being cone-shaped, they look like little chair cushions.

Heeeeee!

The person who made them sewed a thread or piece of yarn through from front to back (exactly as the Tit Bit instruction says to do, at Knitty.com) and pulled it tight, just as you would when you sew a cushion with a single button in the center, so it’s poufy all around the circumference and pulled firmly tight in the center.

{chortle!} Looks like I imagine a Whoopee Cushion looks!!

The ones Windy City Gal discovered are more cone-shaped, flat on one side and perky on the other, presumably like the ones pictured at Knitty.com or like the ones shown here at Canadian Living.

I’ll e-mail the Knitted Knockers lady and ask if there’s a way to adjust them so they look more like boobs and less like seat cushions. First, I’ll have to figure out a tactful way to say that…  😆

 

Catch-up: Can you do nine months of yardwork in one afternoon?

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Well. No.

No, you can’t. But you can kind of beat back ferality.

Since the current adventures in medical science started last June, I’ve pretty much let the yard go to pot. Fall is Arizona’s answer to springtime. Normally the Happy Homeowner would sprinkle some vegetable seeds into the dirt and set out some flowers and pour a bunch of sugar water into the hummingbird feeders and stock the finch feeders with “wild bird seed” straight from Home Depot.

I haven’t even been able to look at my gardens for lo! all these seven months. The result is the place as pretty much gone to pot. And not the smokeable kind.

The poolside rose has stretched out its crooked, clawed limbs to toss passers-by into the drink. The blue plumbago has turned into the Plant That Ate Philadelphia. The  Meyer lemon has invaded 360 degrees of space.

Normally in Arizona one would prune the roses along about the end of December. I did manage to hack back the climbing rose on the west side, so as one could walk through the side yard without being thrown to the ground. But that was about it.

With another Surgical Experience scheduled for Tuesday and yet more groceries to be bought and plans to be laid and tons of paid work still undone, today looked like the last window in which to shovel back the jungle between now and about the end of March. So it was out to the backyard with clippers and nippers in hand.

Four hours later… The place doesn’t look a lot less feral.

Yet:

New, less obtrusive cheapo doggy barriers replace the white wooden and green wire things that have kept Ruby from throwing  herself in the drink.

The rose bush is pruned back from the walkway.

The orange flowering thing has been trimmed to a reasonable size.

The blue plumbago has been disentangled from the Lady Banks rose and sort of trimmed. But it remains its jungley self, because in jungle format it helps to block Ruby from slipping into the pool area and plunging into the drink.

The Mexican primrose that has taken over the flowerbed remains in place, because it’s frost-hardy, because come spring it will burst out in a blanket of beautiful pink blossoms, and because it creates a thick mat of ground cover that crowds out most weeds except for the hated pepper tree offspring and the hated bermudagrass…although it must be said the latter has a hard time holding its own against the stuff.

Since the ongoing horror show began, I just haven’t had the energy or the heart to work on my yard. So it’s a mess. Filled a large black yard bag with clippings, hauled a great deal of debris out the back gate, but made little visible impression on the mess.

Still. It’s a start.

Presumably if no new horrors arise (and arise they certainly may…), in six or eight weeks I’ll feel like returning to this chore. That would be around the end of March, eh? It should stay cold enough for another three or four weeks after that to inhibit new growth. With any luck, all of February will be growth-averse. The end of March will still be cool enough, most of the time, to throw oneself around  out in the yard.

If the worst happens — other than croaking over under the anaesthetic (hardly the worst possibility) — I’ll have to sell the house and move, because if the current horror show continues any longer, I won’t be able to care for the property any longer. But if the docs find no invasive cancer in the stuff they lob off and so leave me fukkin’ alone after this, maybe I’ll get back into synch with the seasons and the work. One hopes so.

But one doesn’t hold out excessive hope.

I’m thinking about what I’ll do if they come back to me after this surgery with yet another depressing path report. The only depressing possibility that remains is that they’ll find some invasive cancer cells in the remains of the Guilty Boob they lob off on Tuesday and will propose to subject me to full-blown cancer therapy: radiation, chemotherapy, hormone therapy. What, really, am I going to do then?

Am I really going to subject myself to radiation and various bizarre chemicals?

I think not.

I think the response to a report like that will be “Thank you very much…don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

I think I’d rather die in another five or ten years, half or three-quarters of which would be spent feeling pretty good, than live another twenty years with my health wrecked. And that is exactly what the proposed cancer treatments will do: wreck my health permanently. I don’t think I want to live sick from now into perpetuity.

In fact, I know that’s not what I’m going to do.

Pray for the best, whatever that is.

😉

 

New Year’s Closet Cleanup!

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Five days (four days and a wake-up) to go before the Big Double-Deboobification Caper, I decide that as long as I’m stocking up and organizing things for friends who have kindly volunteered to help out, nothing will do but what I need to shovel out the long-neglected hall closet, which holds everything from perfume and hair conditioner to candles to the dog and the human first-aid kits.

Tidying cabinetry is not my favorite activity. Wouldn’t go so far as to say I hate it, as in hate grading freshman comp papers. But it is a pain.

P1030301Threw out an entire, large basket full of debris, stale bottles of pills, lifetime supplies of junk that should’ve been bought at Walgreen’s in human quantities, not at Costco in elephantine quantities.

Discovered a number of valuable precious commodities, gew-gaws, and gadgets that have been “lost” for some months or years. Glad to get those back.

Found a bunch of batteries. Moved them into the battery drawer in the other room.

Scrounged up a bunch of boxes from the garage, the office closet, underneath and on top and inside of places… Used these to organize the potpourri of junk, pill bottles, shampoo bottles, Bandaid containers, and whatnot. Even put labels on them, so as to remind myself to put stuff back where it belongs.

P1030298The result is not bad: certainly much more usable and less annoying than it was! The shelves are crowded but not jammed, and everything is within reach. The dog meds are organized; the first-aid  kit is organized; and next time I get a cold, I can pull out the humidifier without bringing half-a-dozen Ikea pillar candles down on my head.

Very nice.

Ate one of the four lamb shanks I cooked up yesterday in anticipation of the medical chivaree. Should have  left it in the freezer, but it’s SO cold today and I was hungry and didn’t want to go fiddle with the barbecue.

Continued fiddling with the pool’s acid level. Wonder how on earth I’m going to persuade someone to add a couple of cups of acid to that thing three or four times a day. Realize I’m not. Disgusted.

When you drain and refill a plaster pool, the water is basic: pH of 8.2 or higher. You want to get it way down in to the range of 7.6. This entails adding muriatic acid in amounts of no more than about three cups at a time until you get it down into the “ideal” range, and continuing to add acid until the pH stabilizes at that level. It takes a LONG time. A couple of weeks of fooling with it every day, several times a day.

I’d hoped it would be OK by the time I have to go in for the next round of surgery, but pretty clearly, it’s not gonna happen. I won’t be able to pick up a bucketful of water with acid mixed in and slosh it into the deep end of the pool. So somehow I’m going to have to persuade someone to do it for me. Hm.

Created a guide for our journal authors explaining key differences between Chicago author-date and APA style. Most of them are sociologists or cultural historians and so are used to APA style. The differences are subtle but significant. That took half the day. Shipped it off to our client editors and my associate editor for review and critique.

Many, many more things to do in the miles before I rest, etherized upon a table…

Tomorrow must make a Costco run: out of stuff for breakfast. Out of a lot of other things, too. Then off to AJ’s and Fry’s, in search of the half-dozen rolls of dog food needed to last the hounds through until I’ll be well enough to buy and cut up new rolls of food. That’ll occupy most of the day.

When, for crying out loud, am I going to get any work done between now and the 6th? Besides three client projects, I still have to do the course prep for the magazine writing course! Holy sh*t.

The Pre-Prep Room Prep Jamboree

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So here I yam, starting to get my dainty self prepped for the dramatic surgery I get to enjoy next week. My Mastectomy Buddy went in yesterday…and I hope to hear from her in a day or two.

Her adventure is even more dramatic, because she has an actual invasive cancer. Thank the Lord (or Lady), I managed to escape that. Her mastectomy: pretty much de rigueur. Mine: pretty much a matter of smarts.

So we’re keeping her in our thoughts.

And we’re also keeping another Dear Friend in our thoughts: as I was driving into the ‘hood yesterday afternoon I spotted her strolling up the road with her big, friendly, lop-eared dog. Her husband has been enjoying lung cancer these past many months. She looked tired, even haggard. I stopped to block traffic and chat. She said they had hospice in. Called their son, who’s on his way in from out of town. Hospice worker was amazed the old boy made it through the holidays. She says he sleeps most of the time.

God, please let us sleep through the dark of that good night.

So where were we? Yes. We were thanking our lucky stars, because things could be worse. Much, much worse.

This afternoon, with barely a week that’s not occupied by holidays and parade road closures to go, I decided I’d better get my act together.

Insights:

1) One can order the desired peri-surgical gear from Amazon and waypoints rather than running around the city searching for recommended items.

2) One could, in theory (only in theory, right?) stock up one’s favorite boozie-poos and open the bottles. These, then would be ready to go without any painful struggles.

We’re told that for the first three to six post-surgical weeks, opening screw tops and especially adult-proof caps is excruciatingly painful. If unscrewing the cap on a bottle of detergent hurts, just imagine the effect of a corkscrew applied to a cheap bottle of wine!

3) We want some comfort food, and we don’t care how fat it makes us!!!!!!!!!

4) All those items in daily use — the dog dishes, the giant Costco bottle of Maker’s Mark, the French press coffeemaker — really, truly NEED to come down from the high shelves in the kitchen.

So it’s time for a raid on Amazon, there to buy a package of two female versions of the famed Wife-Beater: in woman language, “cotton tank tops.” These, we’re told by those in the know, will absorb any leakage (t0 be expected, argh urk) from the tubes installed in our chest to collect drainage from the not-so-gaping wounds to be inscribed thereupon.

From there to Knitted Knockers, which gives away freebie knitted prosthetics to the cancer-victimized…sorry, by golly, to “cancer survivors.” 🙄 This, even though we know our friend Windy City Gal is making a much nicer pair for us. We figure an extra pair, even though evidently inferior to Windy’s, will be handy to have around.

Then it’s over to PinkPockets, there to ask for a set of five self-stick “pockets” to attach to the inside of whatever piece of clothing you care to name, to hold the “grenades” (suction devices) for the drainage tubes we will be fitted for. Mastectomy Buddy has kindly provided a strap-on bulb-holding purse, which  looks  like it (also!) will be superior, since one of PinkPockets’ customers complained vociferously that the product’s double-sided tape didn’t work.. So the stick-on pockets, too, amount to a back-up.

Buddy’s daughter whipped up a pair of these, one for her mom and one for moi. They attach to you with an elastic waistband, and they  hold four (count’em, FOUR) grenades. Is this handy and dandy or  not?

Mastectomy pocketThe plan is to wear this out of the hospital — whenever it gets here, it goes straight into the Overnight Bag collection.

Thence, we’re off to Sprouts, via the Walgreen ‘s.

At Walgreen’s, I picked up a package of safety pins, said to be necessary to pin the grenades…uhm, the drain pump thingies…to a bra or your clothes. (Ha ha! I love it where this writer compares the thing to a church incense censer!!!)

Also picked up a cheap toothbrush — I use an electric toothbrush, once affordable but now pretty much out of the question, which I am not about to take to a hospital — plus some dental floss to pack in the overnight baggie. WonderDentist, thank you very much, hands out toothpaste samples every time his underlings clean your teeth, so I had a nice new little tube to add to the pile of loot.

Crossing two main drags on foot from the Sprouts to the Walgreen’s, I pass a big bearded bruiser of a guy all decked out in a black  leather gladiator outfit, complete with a black leather miniskirt. He is unsmiling. Does he take himself seriously? Is he stoned? Is he the butt of some biker gang’s initiation ritual? Or is he just crazy as a loon? I do not know. I dodge inside the store and lose myself in the labyrinth of aisles, knowing there’s a way out through the pharmacy and that the pharmacists do not have the physical strength between the three of them to stop me from vaulting over the counter and blasting out the back door.

At Sprouts, what should I stumble across but a package of lovely chicken thighs and two packages of lovely lamb shanks? Both of these are the Stuff of Comfort Food.

The plan is to cook up an entire package of Costco pasta, toss it in a little olive oil, and freeze it in small packets. Then cook up all four lamb shanks with lots of onion, garlic, celery, and red wine. Freeze this into portion sizes, too. And last night I grilled the chicken pieces and dropped them in the freezer.

Contemplating the comfort-food qualities of these items, I recalled one of my favorite childhood dishes: my mother used to make this incredible garlic chicken under the broiler.

She would spike plenty of butter with garlic powder or (more likely) garlic salt. Then she’d baste the chicken pieces with that and run them under the oven broiler until done. (We lived in apartments, so there were no outdoor grills. Besides, no one ever heard of a propane grill in those days.)

Heh. My mother never used real garlic. Literally, I never saw a head of garlic until I reached graduate school and took up with friends who fell under the influence of Julia Child. She wouldn’t have known what to do with a clove of garlic. And come to think of it, I don’t know if my mother ever saw actual whole garlic.

Well, no bottles of powdered dehydrated garlic reside in my house these days. Only the real stuff will do.

It’s not the same.

I minced a couple cloves and melted them into some butter; basted the chicken thighs with it and let it sit for awhile. Added some adobo powder, figuring that would add the sort of je ne sais quoi flavor of artificial spice. Grilled, with frequent basting.

The result was very good, but not the same as my mother’s. Probably in reality better. But not the same.

Oh lordie! I overslept; it’s almost time for the cleaning lady to show up and the chill’s not off the house yet and I haven’t even started to fix dog-and-human-breakfast.

And so, away!

When Life Hands You Lemons…Turn Them into Easter Eggs!

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Yah. Paint those effing lemons!

So here’s a little discovery along those lines: You can cover up your mastectomy scars with TATTS!

Yes. Tattoos, and we don’t mean fake areolas. We mean extravagant, baroque, surrealistic, and truly wonderful artwork that turns something you’d just as soon not look at in the mirror into a delight.

Check out this marvelous “sleeve” that grows into a spectacular vine:

This lady has a reconstruction, and a pretty darned good one, too. Looks mighty convincing, assuming you think women’s breasts should be bulbous, as in the shape of  grapefruit. Nevertheless, even a very good reconstruction can leave you with some nasty scars. The tattoo, with its wonderful organic structure, distracts from the artificialiaty of the reconstruction job and in fact takes advantage of it. If there were any scars there, the artwork covers it exquisitely. To die for!

Here’s one, by the same artist, Vyvyn Lazonga, that appears to be over a no-reconstruction job, covering the straight, flat scar that results when the woman is rather slender and the surgeon is skilled

Now that, I could stand to look at in the morning. Or at any time of day.

For the reconstructed set, look at what the same artist did for this poor soul:

One of the things docs don’t always make clear to women is that autologous reconstruction — wherein blobs of flesh are ripped out of other parts of your body and hung on your chest to create fake boobs — is violent, destructive surgery that leaves you with scars from terrific wounds on your belly, back, fanny, or thighs. This is the “before” shot:

Here’s another very successful and appealing decoration of an unreconstructed mastectomy:

Personally, I decided to elect a double mastectomy so as to avoid becoming lopsided — out of concern about effects on posture and hoping to avoid aggravating the chronic back pain. But as a matter of fact, a design like this could overcome at least one of those concerns.

Here’s my kinda woman:

She looks like she’s close to my age, and she’s not afraid of anything. Don’t you love it?! That gecko is as perfect as perfect can get. And she looks great.

There are many more to be seen at Oddee.com and at SheKnows.com. Also — wouldn’cha know? — there’s an app for that.

From what I understand, before getting a boob tatt you need to wait a year or two after the surgery, to be sure the incisions are fully healed and everything has settled down.

Besides finding an artist who can actually do these amazing things (how to find her?), your main concern with choosing a tattoo is to address the risk of infection. The inks are injected into your skin, through the epidermis (the outer part that sheds or peels off when you get a mild sunburn) and into the dermis. Obviously, that procedure poses some risk of transferring pathogens, whether bacterial skin infections or hepatitis, a potentially lethal viral infection.

However, there are ways to maximize safety. The Mayo gives you quite an earful on the subject, plenty of useful guidelines on that site. Consumer Reports advises on what to look for and how to insure the safest procedure. The FDA, not surprisingly, inveighs against the practice, but the Washington Post reports that by and large it’s considered reasonably safe.

But if you’re scared — or just not so sure how it would look — you can get fake, temporary tattoos. Obviously, these are not going to be as gorgeous as the real thing custom-designed by an in-the-flesh (heh!) artist. But they could at least give you a clue about how a real tatt would work on your particular body.

Images:

Pink sleeve and vine: Vyvyn Lazonga, found at Ad Agency Jumps on Tattoo Bandwagon
Morning glories over flat scar, Vyvyn Lazonga, found at Tattoo Art 101: To Cover Up or Not to Cover Up.
Vine around the belly, Vyvyn Lazonga (I think–apologies if this is wrong), found at Tattoo Art 101: To Cover Up or Not to Cover Up.
Pre-vine belly: ibid.
Flower and vine over single mastectomy: Found at Tattoo Road Trip via Fifteen Most Amazing Mastectomy Tattoos — sorry, I can’t find the artist’s name at either site.
Grand lizard: Jane Fox, found at Tattooists Turn Scars into Butterflies; again, no artist’s name seems to be provided, at least not that I can find.