Yay!

I just got the call: they checked the breast they removed, and found “no residual cancer”. The whole breast. No cancer.

w000000t!!!!!

The chemo seems to have worked…if that whole huge tumor went away let’s hope its gone everywhere!!!

to be honest…

The reason y’all think I’m not whiny is cause when I’m whiny I’m too whiny to post. BUT I FEEL SOOOOOO WHINY!!!

Update on Mom and my marriage

This update is specifically for Pamajama’s benefit…

I guess when my husband called my mom on Monday to say I was out of surgery, he said “this is your son-in-law calling”… and later on in the conversation, she said “so you did get married?” and he said “OH yeah.”

Today when I was talking to her, she mentioned having memory problems, and I said “that reminds me, you do know we got married, right?” and she said “yes, are you going to change your name?” We discussed spelling issues for a while.

She mentioned that she is no longer a “mother-in-sin”. She seemed a bit sad about that part but she does like my husband. It appears that she is happy for us.

Home and feeling good

My surgery went well, my recovery went better than anyone expected, I’m home, and I feel pretty good!

Thanks for all your kind wishes.

Surgery on Monday and general blather

I found out that surgery was on Monday for sure, when they called on Thursday to ask me to come in for an EKG that same day. That turned into a 1.5 hour interview/sign off/pay the copay at three parts of the building, one of which was smack in the middle of their Christmas party, complete with caroling that was too loud for how good it was.

Friday I sat in my office thinking about how, since before Thanksgiving, I thought Friday was “surgery day”. Also I skipped the office Christmas party in spite of a whole lot of kids being waved as bait. It’s just too uncomfortable for me to do the dance of avoiding the people I mutually avoid. I don’t like parties anyway.

I had two real life conversations in the office, with two of the three people I still speak to. They both told me about people they know with really bad stage 4 cancer. In detail. Oh well I seek these stories out on the internet anyway. I probably filled in more details with my imagination than these people actually told me.

This morning, I’m a little apprehensive about surgery. I have not been under anesthesia since I was 4. They tell me that people hardly ever die from anesthesia allergy anymore, but when I was in high school one of my friends lost her mother that way.

The most annoying thing is that I’m sitting here being depressed about the things I’m usually depressed about when I “don’t have cancer”… Winter, work, friends and how I hardly see any in person.

Lately I try to think of work as just another sucky place of employment, but every now and then I think about how I’ve known some of these people half my life. They made this place out to be one big happy family when I came back. Now they are just assholes who don’t want their cushy boats rocked. The ones I was friends with outside of work ALL got transferred out, too. The ones that seemed to have a work ethic. So now I don’t even feel guilty about my workload because no one who is left works any harder, and some much less.

Every job I’ve had has sucked so why should this one be any different?

Anyway I don’t have to go back there til January 5.

So I guess I better find something else to obsess on besides work and surgery.

I’m reading yet another Augusten Burroughs book, “Dry”. I’m pleased that when my husband was talking to my mother and he was clearly about to give me the phone, I was reading the words “It’s weird that no matter how drunk I get, I can always remember my Adult Check password.”

This was the second time I’ve talked to my mother since we got married. It still did not come up.

I think she may actually have forgotten we were going to get married. She is pretty freaked about my cancer. (Oh, did I mention? I don’t know. She told me a few weeks ago that god was punishing HER by giving ME cancer.) She said “you’re not freaked out about the surgery, that’s good” and I said “well I am a *bit* freaked out!” and she said “oh anyone would be before surgery” and changed the subject slightly. Later she said “I’m glad you’re not freaked out about surgery” and I said “only for a few minutes at a time and <my husband> is great”. Her voice raised up in pitch and she told me the story (for the 5th time in 7 months) of how she knew all of these breast cancer survivors and so she always knew it would be okay.

Thanks mom. I’m glad you feel better.

This reminds me of when Jerry Garcia died. She told me later that she didn’t call me because she knew I would be upset. My husband is so forgiving or some crap, that he manages to find a way to make that seem caring. I can never remember what it is when he’s not speaking it.

Maybe Monday?

Monday of next week, which was not a day the surgeon planned to work at all, is now probably my surgery day. So…. I guess maybe they don’t suck. This will work out well with the days that work is forcing us to take off (and use vacation.)

more waiting

My copy of the insurance approval showed up Saturday, in a letter dated 12/9. So today my husband called the surgeon’s office for me, and found out that they are now full up for Friday 12/19, and I’ll probably have my surgery on 12/30, unless they have a cancellation.

I called the surgeon’s secretary on Friday 12/12 and she “checked” for approval while I was on hold. What did she check, her snail mail in box?
I called her the Friday before as well and she told me she checks twice a day.

So they couldn’t save me a freaking space on the day we’ve been talking about since before Thanksgiving, that would let me use my four holidays and three forced vacation days for recovery? NO?

Oh and they might call me at the last minute with a cancellation. Nice.

ARRGH.

Real

I’ve been on the internet since 1983 when I got my first email account at the university. I used it to keep in touch with friends from another university that I dropped out of. For years I have only communicated with people who have email. I stopped using the phone much.

I read internet newsgroups back when I could read all the news in my groups, and wait for more to come in. One piece of advertising could start a flame war. I bought a newsgroup themed tshirt from the same person as my husband. We didn’t meet for another 15 years after that. We both still have that shirt.

I met my husband at a shop and we exchanged email addresses. I was living in Utah but visiting here. For the next year we got to know each other by email. I got to know 3 previous boyfriends by email even though two of them lived in town. (The other one was “Stinky”.)

I got to know my ex husband by… snail mail letters. Several of them a week, pages long. We lived a couple of hours apart. I didn’t have enough to do at my job then, either. I even had a melodramatic fight with a coworker via letters (a flame war!). I kept xeroxes of the letters I wrote to both of them.

The friends I have in town now, I mostly communicate with on a chat program at work. The people I communicate with the most are those I’ve never met in person, who live all around the world, but who I talk to on the IRC almost every day. We all know what each other had for dinner and whose kids have chickenpox. My husband and I chat with these people together, changing the “nick” and trading the keyboard back and forth. We don’t have TV, so this is most of what we do in the evenings.

These people are real. We talk about them. We discuss what they should do with their lives. We try to boss them around but they never listen. They are real. We have met some of them over the years. We went on a music cruise with one of them and shared a cabin with him.

My blog friends are real (the current melodrama aside for the moment.) I think about you, I talk to my husband about you. It pains me sometimes that I can’t discuss your issues with my “real life” friends, because I don’t want them to know about this blog. Sometimes I fib about where I know you from so I can mention something.

Since I got cancer I have read more blogs of people with cancer. This is making certain concepts more real. I have not had much contact with illness and death. I am learning about how people react to these. Some people react with surprising grace and I hope to do half as well when my time comes.

I miss Mark.

10 Days… maybe

I did phone the doctor’s office last week and they said they are waiting on the insurance company, and they would call as soon as they got approval, and let me know when my surgery will be.

Sooooo it *might* be 10 days til my surgery. How can I count down if I don’t know what to count towards?

So far I’m only afraid for 20 seconds at a time a couple of times a day. :-p

wow.

I know I told my mother we were going to Vegas to get married, because the first thing she said was “that’s where your father and I got married, and look how well *that* turned out.”
She just phoned for the first time since then, and didn’t mention the wedding at all. Out of passive-aggressive curiosity, I didn’t mention it either.
We talked for about 10 minutes and it never came up.