Coffee heat rising

Angst

“Why Am I in the English Department?”

by

You recognize the allusion, of course. Hint: Mark Harris.

The question of the day, to be more specific, is why WAS I in the English Department? What on earth would possess any sane human being with a sliver of a normal sense of self-preservation to get a FREAKING Ph.D IN ENGLISH????????  What part of “you will never be able to get a decent job that will not leave you tearing your hair” can such a person fail to understand?

Today I engaged eleven years of advanced university education for EIGHT HOURS, trying to untangle the formatting mess left by yet another MS Wyrd crash and then doing things like searching “[any digit] + blank space + a” trying to find every reference to a time of day in 272 single-spaced pages so as to regularize format for each one, roughly according to Chicago style. With curlicues to make allowances for the author.

[Why would I do such a wacko thing? Because AU has written times of day as N a.m., N am, N AM, N:nn a.m., N:nn am, and NN AM. And so on. These all need to be regularized, made to follow the same style.]

So, here’s how this came down:

Last night around 11 p.m., I stumble away from the computer.

This morning around 8:30, I come back to the project. When I turn on the computer, I find a message: Word had to shut down.

Again?!?

This is a constant thing with MS Wyrd: for no good reason that anyone, human or silicon, can figure out, Word will crash. Out of the effing blue.

But this is something new, or so it seems: the program has gone down after I clicked Open-Apple > Sleep.

Fortunately, only three files were open at the time of the crash, one of them very short. Two are easy to restore.

Then we have 272 pages of client disquisition.

He is an articulate client who pays handsomely. And on time. An interesting man. The sort of client for whom one pines to do well.

The restored back-up file comes up and seems not to have lost much data (shouldn’t have: I saved before putting the computer to sleep).

No. It hasn’t lost data. Au contraire. It’s ADDED data.

Every. single. paragraph has been reformatted: “Not superscript/subscript,” proudly advertised in Word Track Changes.

Huh?

Not a single footnote number was ever changed (on my part) from superscript to anything else. And nary a subscript character appears among a single word filling those 272 pages.

These changes are all intertwined with hundreds of edits — I’ve already read 100 pages, and every page has changes on it: at least a few and usually quite a few.

The only way to get rid of the phantom changes is to click “Accept.” If you reject the change, then it converts the copy to superscript!

There seems to be no way to search “superscript” or “superscript/subscript.” The list of edits doesn’t come up.

And — inconsistently, with no rhyme nor reason — in some paragraphs if I highlight the graf and click “accept all,” Wyrd keeps the tracked edits in place. But in some, it accepts all edits. That won’t do, because Client needs to see the changes I’ve made.

On average, each page has about ten of these “Not superscript/subscript” commands.

No joke: that means something like TWO THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY spurious tracked changes to delete!

Some beach!

Shortly I figure out that I can go from the end of the file toward the last edited page and click “accept all” over batches of paragraphs. This isn’t very satisfactory, because I’ve done a number of global searches and replaces, and I really don’t want to lose those. So even though some of these “accept” commands work to get rid of the “not superscript/subscript” things, I have to watch carefully and Ctrl-Z to undo and manually fix each erroneously accepted “not superscript/subscript” command, ONE at a painstaking, mind-numbing, hair-tearing TIME.

This only partly lengthy procedure leaves about 100 fully edited pages to go through, ONE painstaking, mind-numbing, hair-tearing, goddamn infuriating command at a TIME.

Along about three in the afternoon, I find  myself revisiting the question of whether I should shut down the editorial business.

I mean, why am I doing this?

If I wanted to be a typist, I’d hire out as a virtual assistant. Oh, hell. If I hired out as a virtual assistant, I’d make a helluva lot more than I earn as a high-test editor, because there’s one helluva lot more demand for virtual assistants. Some woman at the last meeting of the West Valley Writers group I attended dasted to ask me if I’d type her manuscript.

{sigh}

If I charged enough by the page, I’d make almost as much as I make editing content.

I can’t charge the client for work created because my computer crashed. So today I’ve spent a good six hours working for free.

Do I hate reading freshman comp drivel more than this?

I hate reading freshman comp drivel a lot.

Quite a lot.

But more than this?

Possibly not.

If I took on two extra adjunct courses from the Great Desert University, which pays a Ph.D. almost a grand more than the junior colleges do, I’d earn as much per year as the S-corp earns from my editorial efforts. Actually, all told I’d earn about $3,000 more than that.

It would be miserable, of course. I’d have to hold out for face-to-face sections, which I truly loathe. GDU has lifted all caps from online sections, meaning you can end up with 120 students or more in a writing-intensive course. How on earth would you ever handle any such thing? You couldn’t assess papers. You couldn’t even make the faintest pass at trying to teach. All you could do is rubber-stamp.

Ethically, there’s a limit.

But maybe there’s a limit to this other stuff, too.

Teaching, as miserably paid as it is, provides the only steady, predictable income I have other than Social Security, which is nowhere near enough to live on. The junior-college courses plus the Social Security just about cover most of my expenses, except for property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, and car insurance. If I drew down only enough to cover those latter gouges, I’d be OK. One or two more courses, paid at university rates, could mean that I wouldn’t have to use retirement savings at all. Not as long as I could mount a course on a CMS.

So. Why am I doing this?

Why am I not in the English Department?

What IS so all-important, really?

by

This morning SDXB calls to tell me he’s decided not to drive into town and grace me with his presence half the day because it’s raining and too cold to sit outside on some coffee shop’s patio. He wants to reschedule for some day totally inconvenient for me, and as usual is consternated when I keep telling him I can’t do Thursday, I can’t do Friday, I can’t do….

It’s kind of comical. And probably it’s just as comical that I find it eye-rolling ANNOYING that he calls me up and announces he’s going to descend on me at some time and date of his choice. He seems to assume I have nothing to do but entertain him.

This morning I found myself wondering why I do find that trait so annoying. What on earth do I have to do that it can’t be put off to spend time with an old friend? What’s more important than one’s friends and family, anyway?

I suppose it’s the presumption that he can tell me when he’s going to show up here and I’ll go yup yup yup and drop everything for him.

So what did I do yesterday that’s typical of what I think is so damn important?

• First, the cleaning lady was here all day, so really, I needed to stick around. But that’s not what you’d call do-it-or-lose-it WORK.

• Wrote a post for Writers Plain and Simple, a lengthy one that required some thought and a fair amount of time.

• Wrote a post for Funny about Money, an afternoon bagatelle, but still: content added to a website that needs to be fed daily.

• Deposited five checks, one for the corporation, one laughable adjunct “paycheck,” and three from Medicare and Medigap. This turned into an inordinately time-consuming proposition, because my system and the credit union’s both work at the speed of a stampeding snail.

• Called the Mayo and remitted the amount paid by Medicare and the Medigap insurer, by charging it to American Express.

• Went back into the credit union’s excruciatingly slow site and paid that amount to AMEX, so as to fork it over before I get a chance to diddle it away on prime steaks from Whole Foods. Or some such.

• Entered deposits and payments in Quickbooks.

• Tested the chemical levels in the newly refilled pool; decided it would suffice until the pool dude shows up. Realized I’d better buy more acid, since Pool Dude knocked the lid off the last containerful that was out there and I had to throw out the remaining muriatic acid rather than let it sit there in the yard in an open jug.

• Calculated how long I think it will be before I can lay off Pool Dude, who’s nice but whose services are altogether redundant when I’m feeling well, which I expect to be along about the end of January. Not having to be subjected to radiation will cut a month or more of hassle, time consumption, and suffering off the ongoing boob horror show.

• Vacuumed up leaves off the bottom of the pool that blew in there as the present storm was wafting in on the wind. And cleaned out the skimmer basket and reattached Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner.

• Made an appointment with Mega-Client, who’s back in town and hot to trot. Sent him 100 pages of edited copy.

• Made an appointment with Financial Adviser.

• Added up 2014 expenses and income; then estimated the amount of drawdown from savings needed for 2015 — a frightening figure. Organized that data in an Excel report preparatory to the meeting with Financial Adviser on Friday. Have a bad feeling F.A. expects a market downturn, a sense gleaned from his rather antsy response to my phone call about the 2015 drawdown.

• Corresponded off and on through the day with Novel Author Client, who’s struggling with a scene that he can visualize but is having a hard time putting into words.

• Corresponded with my mastectomy buddy, who will be going in for her DMX shortly after Christmas.

• Corresponded with Windy City Gal, who happens to know how to make these amazingly cool fake boob insert things that Buddy and I both covet.

• Wrote three book reviews for Goodreads, leaving my sticky little fingerprints there in the form of ads for Slave Labor.

• Learned how to view Kindle’s sales record for Slave Labor and corresponded with the art director about the same.

• Corresponded with the director of distance learning at the college, regarding next semester’s workload.

• Took the three Goodreads reviews, converted them to blog posts for Writers Plain & Simple, and scheduled those posts to go up once a week through January 12. That will keep WP&S alive at the rate of one post a week until I’ve recouped from the upcoming surgery, I think.

• Explored the sites of several followers of Writers Plain & Simple and took note of their URLs by way of using them in a round-up, which I suppose I’m going to have to write today,  huh?

• Articulated, in writing, a broad outline for a book on the mastectomy/reconstruction/no-reconstruction drama and began gathering research for the same. Considered whether to seek an agent for this to publish through a mainstream press or whether to add it to the Plain & Simple Press publishing empire. Decided I lean toward the former. Put that thought on a back burner.

• Finally, walked a mile with the dogs.

Really, is any of that anything that could not be handily co-opted by a visit from His Nibs?

What would I have missed doing today had he showed up as announced?

• Write cover copy for PoD versions of Slave Labor and FireRider.

• Try to finish chapter 9 of FireRider, book II.

• Do the laundry.

• Try again to contact a local press that I would like do business with.

• Write and send out this week’s announcement to SBA members.

• Write a newsletter update for clients of The Copyeditor’s Desk; in addition to sending out season’s greetings, add a plug for Slave Labor by way of update, and clue them that the company is now in a position to help them with any self-publishing projects.

• Start working on incoming copy for current issue of Chicana/Latina Studies.

• Write a post for Funny about Money.

• Write the round-up post for Writers Plain & Simple; schedule it.

• Write a new post for Adjunctorium.

• Figure out how to get invited to present to a Chamber of Commerce meeting; begin groundwork for engineering that.

• Create and post a video for the spring-semester 102 sections on how to write a position paper.

• Dream up a subject I might present to my writer’s group and figure out how to get invited to do that.

• Do physical therapy exercises and figure out how to work a daily yoga session into the schedule. 🙄

• Chat with Cox tech CSR over the phone about the slow service (DONE!).

• Visit Cox website, identify compatible DOC 3 wireless modems, and identify retailers, preferably Costco or Fry’s electronics.

• Start nagging M’hijito to come over this weekend (or sooner,  if at all possible), install it, and configure it.

• Walk at least two miles, rain or no.

Huh. I’d better get to work on that stuff…

First-World Problems…

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{grump!} How do I dare complain, growl, grump, or crab about things  like this? That is the question. Is my problem that I have to walk two miles with a pair of buckets hanging from a stick slung over my shoulders to gather water? Is my problem that we’re eating the dogs for dinner, after having run out of food? Is my problem that the water I’m about to haul back from the river contains a parasite that will cripple me and anyone who shares that fine dinner with me? Ohhhh no. No, no, no. My problem is that depositing $1344.17 worth of checks remotely took damn near 45 minutes, longer than it would have taken to make the round-trip drive to the credit union, park the car, walk across the parking lot, go inside, stand in line, and deposit the goddamn checks.

Mine is a First-World problem, no question of that.

Then I get on the phone to the Mayo, thereunto to fork over $234.45 in Medicare and Medigap reimbursements, am told the phone-tree wait will be over five minutes (horrors!), and am treated to annoying Muzak and repeated robotic announcements to the effect that it (the robot) is sorry for my inconvenience.

Really. Why AM I complaining?

The problem is, I’ve got SO many other things that need to be done today! I could have done this (pointless, overcomplicated) job faster if I’d just gotten in  my car, consumed a gallon or two of gasoline, and driven up to the credit union.

The process of uploading checks is SOOO SLOOOWWWW and SOOO FRUSTRATING that I was ready to pick up a $2,000 iMac and THROW IT ACROSS THE ROOM before all that junk got uploaded.

I don’t know if it’s the bank’s system, my router, or Cox’s notoriously slow “high-speed” internet connection — for which speed one pays extra. The iMac kept telling me it was “looking for a connection,” which usually means the connection or the router is down. Again. Up and down and up and down and up and down like a yo-yo, which has become SOP for this thing.

Don’t know whether to try a new router or to change providers.

Has anybody tried CenturyLink? They’re advertising a high-speed connection for $19.95. “Up to 40 MBPS.” That would be “40 MBPS if you’re lucky,” right? Oh, here’s the fine print: “where available.” That would mean, then, “not available wherever you happen to be.”

Cox is charging $62.99. That amount is coming out of the corporate account, because virtually all of my email and browser usage is business-related in one way or another.

But…I’m afraid that if I cancel the Internet, they’ll tell me that the phone bill is some incredible bargain because it’s “bundled” (no such thing is shown on the bill, but you can be sure they’ll pull some number like that on me) and then jack up the phone bill through the roof. And I can’t afford to have my personal land-line bill go up. Plus I have no idea whether CenturyLink is what it says it is.

Ohhhhh….waitaminit. Yelp is awash in complaints from unhappy CenturyLink customers. And helle’s belle’s, over at CityData.com, we’re reminded that CenturyLink is actually Qworst by a newer name. And over here at ConsumerAffairs.com, here are the “Top 1,119 Complaints about CenturyLink“! Qwest, the Master of Customer Disservice...

Ugh. That flyer goes in the trash.

Welp, I guess I’ll have to try a new router first and then, failing that, try to get Cox to choke up a new modem…mine is six years old and may need to be updated.

Terminal senility…or drug-induced brain fuzz?

by

A friend on the choir cleared up a little mystery that’s been lurking around for a while. She’s a pharmacist — has been for some decades.

She, having observed that recently I’ve been even more bat-brained than usual, remarked the drug anaesthesiologists use to knock you out causes a kind of brain fog that can last upwards of a month. Hmmm…

The Mayo’s nurses tell you not to sign any legal documents for a day or two after the surgery on the theory that you may feel confused for 24 to 48 hours. But my pharmacist friend says to extend that to several days, and not to be surprised if you can’t remember where you left your fingers for several weeks.

Insight!

That explains a lot. Since the current surgical marathon has been going  on, I’ve become as scatterbrained as Lucille Ball! I cannot remember ANYTHING. Every day I lose something, I make wrong turns, thinking I’m turning into the neighborhood but ending up in the one to the south. And I’m constantly making weird little ditzy mistakes.

She says that’s the long-term effect of the anesthetic. She advised being careful not to leave the kitchen when you’ve got a pan on the heat, and not to get upset when these little glitches happen. And also to be extra careful while driving.

LOL! The other day I had a 7 a.m. meeting in Scottsdale and a 9:30 a.m. in northwest Phoenix, way on the other side of the Valley. (The “Valley” is larger than the city of Los Angeles, which should give you an idea of what that means.) I wanted to let the dogs out between them so as to have less mess to clean up after getting back from the second meeting.

So around 8:50 I come flying in the door, rocket to the bedroom and let the pup out of her crate, shovel the two dogs into the backyard, stash my computer in the car for the 9:30 meeting and haul the stuff from the 7:00 meeting and dump it in the office, lock the dogs into the backyard with the dog door open and the bedroom door to the dog-door room closed (more mess prevention), fly back out the door, leap into the Dog Chariot, charge out of the garage, get about a half block down the road and think…hey! WHERE’S MY PURSE?

Well, it’s not in the car.

Back to the house.

Not in the kitchen. Not in my office. Not in the living room. Not in the dining room. Not on the bedroom bureau. Not even in the bathroom! Helle’s Belles! I figure I’ve left it at the restaurant.

Now I’m frantic — the Scottsdale restaurant where my bidness group meets on Thursday mornings is a half-hour drive away! And my entire life is in that thing. And it’s a breakfast joint — closes in the early afternoon. The other place I have to be is a half-hour in the other direction.

Grab the phone, look up the place’s phone number, dial it, and pace anxiously around the house waiting for someone to pick up the phone. That’s when I see an odd black mass sitting on the bed.

A short, fat zombie?

No.

I’d dropped my purse on the bed when I shot in to let the puppy out of her crate. And completely spaced it. Never would even have begun to think of looking on the bed for it. Nor would I normally drop a purse on the bed anyway.

For the past ten years or so, I’ve been deep enough into my dotage that I can’t find things unless I put them down in the same place all the time. But over the past more recent while, what with four procedures in five months, it’s gotten much more ridiculous. 😀

Cotta2Last weekend in some kind of a hurry, I took off my choir robe and cotta and tossed them on a chair in the choir room, and flew out to do something — don’t even recall what (because of course I can’t remember my name longer than about an hour these days). When I got back, someone had taken the robe and left the cotta (or at least so i think). So I get a substitute from the store of new ones. I become so preoccupied with this that I don’t realize I’m supposed to be wearing the brightly colored chant choir robe, because chant choir is singing the introit. So I throw on my white cotta and, late as usual, run to join the others at the front of the sanctuary (oh, yes…where ELSE?). Naturally, I’m the only one up there who doesn’t match. And the communications director is shooting photos. I try to hide in the back row, no doubt ineffectually.

As if that weren’t enough, shortly I manage to lose one of the church’s music books — these are lent to choir members, assigned by numbers. Between last week’s rehearsal and this morning, I search the house, I search the car, I rack my brain. Finally realize I probably left it in the choir loft (or maybe in the choir room) (or who knows where?). But since it’s nowhere to be found, I figure I’ll be purchasing and donating a new music book. Hmm… £13.95. That would be $21.92. Plus shipping.

Fortunately, the choir director found it and put it aside. Saved!

People say things in meetings. I can’t remember what was said. I don’t even remember that something was said. I write and distribute a report that makes it obvious I haven’t a clue.

I say I’ll do things. And have no memory of saying I’d do those things.

I show up at choir practice late because I’m so engrossed in grading papers I lose track of the time.

I go off and leave the space heater on.

Have you noticed that as you get older, it takes you longer to get out of the house? That you’re always running late because you’re bloody never ready to go???

That’s not a function of the drug-induced brain fuzz, but it certainly has been aggravated of late.

I started trying to figure out why it takes so long to get out the door now that I’m old, given that I never had this problem as a young pup. What has changed?

What, indeed.

  1. Computers. Back in the good old days, one didn’t fill the first moments (and the next moments, and the next moments…)  of the morning with e-mail. Now every day starts with a check of e-mail, replies, maybe another check for replies to replies.
  2. Makeup. When I was young and pretty, I didn’t need to paint my face quite so artfully. Yea verily, I didn’t really need to paint my face at all, and often didn’t. Now a good, thick layer is required to cover the brown spots and fill in the wrinkles.
  3. Lost stuff. A lost purse. A lost file. A lost list. A lost whatever.
  4. Liquids. I never used to carry a cup of water with me every where I go. Not a chance. I never fixed coffee before leaving the house so’s to pour a mugful and stash it in the car. If I wanted coffee, I bought it en route, usually at a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts, now defunct. Now I’ve taken it into my head that the car can’t leave the garage unless it’s stocked with something to drink.
  5. Locked office door. Whatever I’ve remembered that I forgot, it’s always on the other side of the goddamn deadbolt on the office.
  6. Dogs. In the olden days, dogs did not shit all over the goddamn floor. Therefore, the household livestock did not have to be wrangled into pens or herded outdoors before the human could leave the house. One could simply close the door behind one and lock it, leaving the dog inside to snooze undisturbed until one returned.
  7. Dog food. Before the melamine flap and the offshoring of everything, including dog food, to China, I fed the dogs kibble. It took all of 10 seconds to dish up a bowlful. Now I have to fiddle around with measuring out eight ounces to each dog from packages of freshly made concoctions and then storing the remainder back in the fridge.
  8. Dog competition. Dogs of yore did not try to steal each others’ food; therefore one of the dogs did not have to be tied to the oven door to keep her from chasing her betters away from their dog-food dishes…
  9. Space heaters. Back in the day, one could afford to pay to run the central heating.

So it goes.

The whiteboards with the calendars and space for daily to-do lists help a lot, especially the one that’s now installed on the back door. Lately I’ve been trying to organize stuff a day or two in advance and load it into the car, making it harder to forget things and cutting the last-minute thrash-around factor. I try to remember to put everything back in its accustomed spot (if something isn’t where I expect to find it, I’m not gonna find it). I’ve quit carrying water, tea, or coffee in the vehicle. I make lists, in hopes of not forgetting something important. But I can’t second-guess what I’m going to forget.

 Got any ideas? What do you do to avoid losing things, forgetting things, muffing things, and chronically running late?

Another Day in Dystopia

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So what are we to make of lynch mob by media?

A police officer shoots an unarmed young man. One is White — the cop. And one is Black — the civilian. From there, the facts elide into contradiction, gossip, and ambiguity. The case is referred to a grand jury, and as jurors deliberate, news media predict mayhem. The President of the United States weighs in.

Nay. The news and social media urged mayhem. Reported pre-mayhem. Smelled blood in the air. Prayed for mayhem to sell papers (and website ads). Lordie!

Now we learn the grand jurors couldn’t discern enough evidence to decide, clearly and incontrovertibly, what actually happened during those violent moments. They decline to indict.

Doesn’t matter. The eighteen-year-old is in the ground. The cop has already been tried and convicted in the Court of Public Opinion, a.k.a. the Kangaroo Court of the Media.

As for due process?  Casualty of hysteria. Victim of circumstances. Lost and gone, maybe forever. Echo of the past. Wave of the future.

Plus ça change…

Boob Update: Back, Forth, and Back Again

by

Okay, so WonderSurgeon is at last convinced, and so am I, that the best thing to do is to have the boob OFF, and better yet, to get them both off so as to bring a stop to concerns about the other breast and so I don’t have to spend the rest of my life lopsided.

It’s taken a while to get to this point.

Last week (was it only last week?) I went in to see the radiation oncologist. By then WonderSurgeon and I had decided to keep the boob and do radiation and aromatase inhibitors. This new doctor, though, said she would do it but that the chance of recurrence was high and that the side effects I’ve heard about are real. Among them, she said, I will have scarring of the lower lobe of the right lung, which may lead to pneumonitis, which can be life-threatening. Aromatase inhibitors are not yet approved by the FDA for preventive treatment of DCIS, and so they would prescribe tamoxifen, which I have no intention of taking. She remarked in passing that if it were her, she’d have the mastectomy.

So by the time I saw WonderSurgeon, I’d changed my mind in favor of chopping off the boob. Even though I was very certain that I wanted a mastectomy, she wasn’t so sure. She felt there’s a possibility there’s no more abnormal cells in the breast, in which case it would be unnecessary surgery to remove the boob. Between the two of us, the uncertainty factor was enough to give us pause. We decided that she would order an MRI of the guilty boob, slated for next week: if any more mass appears on that, then we would amputate; if not, then we would try radiation and hormone treatment. Neither of us was thrilled with this scheme, but neither of us knew for sure which way to jump.

Well, yesterday she called me up with a new report:

Still worried, she had taken my endlessly troublesome case BACK to her colleagues for another conference. First she asked the pathologist to revisit the samples she had excised and to analyze the results more carefully. Then she asked them for their opinion. And, she said, she was careful to keep her mouth shut and just listen to them.

The consensus, she said, was overwhelmingly in favor of removing the offending boob.

Well, I was relieved.

You know how when you’re worrying about something or thinking about some major project, you’ll wake up in the middle of the night with your brain spinning on it — with no hiatus between awaking and starting to think on the issue? Well, that happened a two or three nights ago. I woke up about 4 in the morning with a perfectly formed thought in mind: Trying to save this breast is the wrong thing to do!

It seemed as perfectly obvious as the dogs sleeping on the bed next to me. I do not want my chest irradiated. I do not want my lung scarred. I do not want pneumonitis, for godsake. I do not want to run the risk of fractured ribs, new soft-tissue cancers, leukemia, and some blood disorder whose name I can’t even pronounce. I do not want my life disrupted for another four to six weeks with daily trips to the hospital for radiation treatments. I do not want to take aromatase inhibitors that will thin my hair and give me joint and muscle pains on top of the nearly crippling back pain, thank you very much. And I most certainly do not want to take tamoxifen!

Furthermore, I do not want to wait five or ten years until a new DCIS, probably harmless, is found in the other breast and then I have to go through this entire nightmare circus again! I do not want to go around lopsided, having to stuff plastic or fabric prostheses in an empty bra cup in an attempt to look normal enough not to frighten small children. And I do not care whether I have blobs of flesh hanging off my chest, because I’m not a young girl anymore and I’m not in the market for a man.

At four a.m., I could not think of how to tell WonderSurgeon about this revelation without making her think I’m crazy. So I decided to wait until the MRI revealed more mystery tissue in there, which I felt pretty sure would be the case. If it didn’t, then I’d cross that bridge when I got to it.

So, weirdly, her call to deliver what she thought would be received as bad news was really very good news.

I told her that I had quietly come to the same conclusion. She sounded relieved that I didn’t burst into tears or some such stupid thing. Then I asked if she would take both boobs off, so as I could be the same on both sides and so we could be certain that no recurrence would appear in the contralateral (medico-talk for “the other”) breast. She agreed to do so. And she even folded on the “no goddamn reconstruction” topic.

We’re keeping the MRI on the schedule, but instead examining the contralateral boob so as to see whether there’s any DCIS in there. She said there was only about a 3% chance that would be so. I reminded her that every time we’ve had positive odds, I’ve managed to defy them. Pessimists drive the poor woman nuts. 😀

Do you realize what this means?

No. more. effing. mammograms. EVER AGAIN!

And….this is the best part…

I will never, ever have to shop for a goddamn brassiere again!!!!!!!!!

WAHOOOO!