Cysterhood

Betty and I have lots of things in common, being sisters who were born only 15 months apart. Besides the good stuff, we both went on a really low-fat diet in our middle thirties and lost our gallbladders as a result. We both have chronic coughs. This past week we've shared a respiratory virus. And we both have cysts on our heads.

They start out really small, but eventually they grow and become annoying, as well as really unpleasant to look at. Betty's had two removed and one that will soon need to be removed. I had one that grew recently right on one of my cowlicks on top of my head. I decided to have it removed before heading to life in South Florida.

The doctor injected lidocaine and epinephrine (to constrict the blood vessels) and went to work. It took less than half an hour from start to finish, didn't hurt a bit (and a xanax beforehand helped me to relax), and I ended up with an incision that is pretty much invisible. The stitches are the same color as my hair, and it hasn't bled. And it has a bit of an unexpected bonus----

My face feels a bit tighter, especially around the eyes.

I guess mine was in just the right place.

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On the Idjit front, he called again last evening and offered $6000 less than he knows we'll accept. Stoopid.

My rounds

Friday started The Week of Doctor Visits for me. I put off making doctor appointments as long as I possible can, because I hate making phone calls. The appointments themselves don't bother me that much. But the phone calls.....

So a couple of weeks ago I made a bunch of calls one right after another and set up a mammogram (I swear I had one a few years ago, but their records go back 10 years....), a physical (so I can get my drugs), an appointment with my retinologist, and one with a head surgeon to remove a cyst on my head. Right on the very top of my head. I bet it'll leave a bald spot.

The new digital mammogram is so much more comfortable than the old film one, even though it squeezes every bit as hard. So that's one down.

Tuesday I saw the head doctor about the cyst. Seems they run in families, and we're one of the lucky ones. That'll be removed on Tuesday morning. Yesterday was Retinologist Day, and, as it turned out, Long Needle Stuck in My Eye Day. That pesky ol' Wet Macular Degeneration is acting up again so I got another Lucentis injection. See, the good thing about that blind spot in the center of my left eye is that I can't see the needle coming at it.....

Joan met me at the office and drove us to lunch at Olive Garden afterward. We had a nice, leisurely lunch, until I could see again, then we went our separate ways home. How about that; a needle in the eye at 1:45, drive home at 4:45. Without an accident, at that.

Already my vision is better than it was yesterday. When I made the appointment my vision felt the same as it has since the last checkup 15 months ago (because I'm so bad at making appointments after I cancel one), but Friday I felt like something wasn't quite right, and it's a good thing the appointment was so soon afterward. I'll have another injection on June 17, then on the 18th Betty, Joan, and I will leave for Florida, where we'll spend a few days at the beach before Betty and Joan fly home and I spend a few days with Jennifer and kids in Orlando, then on to my new life in the Keys.

This afternoon my eye is achy, but the scratchiness that is usually pretty painful after an injection just lasted a couple of hours, not until I went to sleep last night, as it usually does. Maybe my eyeball is getting tougher. I didn't take as much percocet as I usually do, either, and no xanax before the procedure. Most of the time I spend the night with Mom and Dad after the injection so I don't have to drive home that evening, or Tom drives me, but they're all in Florida now so Joan and I just hung around for a while. And it was nice.

In an hour I have to be at the doctor's office to wait for my physical. There must be 50 doctors in that practice and they're all running late all the time. The waiting room is always filled with sick people spewing germs all over everyone else. I've had to wait as long as 3 hours for my doctor (ONLY because I was out of cough syrup and I have to appear in person to beg for another month's supply); the shortest time was maybe half an hour. Once. I hate that place. I'm hoping that this will be my last visit there ever. Maybe this time I can share my allergies/cold/bronchitis/whatever the hell I've had this week with my peers in that waiting room.

I think that's my first illness this year. I had some bug a while back, but since Christmas I've avoided colds. I hate colds. I get very angry when I have one. I don't know why. The flu doesn't make me angry, maybe because it's acceptable to stay home when you have it. But a damn cold can hang on forever and I just don't have that much sick leave.

Because I'm saving it to take off early for the beach. And my new life. In the Keys.



P.S. Cross your fingers, legs, and eyes; we're negotiating with a man who really, really wants to buy our WV property; he just doesn't want to pay enough for it. We might just persuade him to see things our way, then we'll be FREEEEEEEE! of a mortgage. Not much left over to work on our place in the Keys, but enough to save each month to get things done.

Update from the Keys

Weather: 79 degrees and raining.

Health: ill, possibly flu. Going back to the condo to sleep.



Last night my stomach hurt so much that I thought I'd die. I couldn't straighten up. When I didn't die after half an hour, I went to bed. I figured I'd die or sleep. I slept. Fine today.

Overall, I'd rather be in Marathon.

I'm about one frog from going garter

Or postal. Whichever works.

I started over The Wedding Stole, v. 3.2, again last night. Again, after the second row, I had two too few stitches. That means that I must have missed a couple of yarn-overs, but frogging back to find them is much too difficult with so many s2kpssos in the stupid row. I end up with a tangled mess. I'm too lazy to run a lifeline after each row. I'm guessing that I'll go to a garter stitch shawl and just add beads wherever I want. So right now, Elaine is the frontrunner for the prize.

This getting up before the asscrack of dawn is wearing me out. Even if I'm tired, I can't go to sleep until 10 or after. I'm up at 6, but not voluntarily. I'm fortunate enough to have a wonderful husband who turns off the alarm clock and lets me sleep (desperately clinging to the bed) another few minutes. He then gently tells me it's time to get up (and even calls me sweetheart), fixed a travel mug of tea, gathers my lunch and snacks, and hands it to me with a kiss as I stumble out the door, telling me to drive carefully. That's so sweet of him.

I like getting out of work at 3. It makes the evening feel a little longer. Now that it's definitely getting dark earlier, I'm always asking Tom what time it is and I'm suprised that it's only 8.

We're watching a lot of HGTV and DIY home-improvement shows, trying to get ideas for selling this house and gutting and rebuilding renovating the cat house. There have been a couple that have featured adding outdoor showers, which we'd like to have off the back of the master bedroom. It just seems to be the height of luxury to be able to shower (privately) (we will have neighbors, and I don't want to scare them) under the sun, moon, and/or stars. I might change my mind when it's really muggy, but I imagine that it'll still feel good to shower off after floating in the pool. We were in the Keys during their hottest and muggiest time of the year, and if there weren't mosquitos breeding in the concrete pond then, Monroe County must have a pretty damn good mosquito control program. A real estate agent told us to call the county if we notice mosquitos and they'll come out and spray for them quickly. I don't like the idea of being in all that poison all the time, but it's that or be eaten alive. After all, I did live in the Hopewell area for the first 6 years of my life and visited Miami every summer, so I was exposed to a lot of spraying in both places. We always had to go inside when the spray truck came around. We really wanted to stay outside and play in the nice, cool fog..... I wonder if that's what caused me to have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Betty has an immune system disorder too. I think that we can thank Hopewell's chemical plants and irresponsible storage/disposal of their products for our health problems. Joan was born in Hopewell, too, although she only lived there for her first two months until she returned in her 20s; she has migraines, skeletal/muscular problems, and she and I suffer from depression and anxiety. Maybe that should be that we have problems with depression and anxiety but our families do the suffering. Whatever.

We still love Hopewell, though, and have many fond memories of the times we spent there. I can remember going to Nana's house and getting a glass of water and watching the particulate matter swirl in the vaguely brownish water. Good times, people.

Finally!

Vindication.


As an adult, I've realized that I feel better when I have a tan. For most of my life, however, science has pounded into our heads (okay, so I'm a little sensitive about the subject) that sun = cancer. I've been very careful not to burn and use sunblock when I'm on the beach, but without skin color, I feel exhausted, depressed, out of sorts, you name an unpleasant emotion, I've got it during the cold months.


The article linked above explains why this happens. I have a vitamin D deficiency.

I didn't realize that vitamin D is so closely tied to the problems I have in cold weather. I don't drink milk, occasionally eat yogurt, a little bit of cheese, so I don't get much vitamin D unless I spend time outside. When it's cold, I'm not going outside, and now tanning beds have such a nasty reputation that I don't want to use them.

I feel so good when the weather's warm and I can go outside every day. No wonder trips to Florida in the winter are so enticing. I feel like I genuinely need to spend time in the sunshine.

Too bad that living in a cold climate isn't considered a disability by employers. It is a disability when one dreads the end of summer and outright hates winter. I deal with intense depression and anxiety eight months of the year, but somehow I don't think I'd be approved for disability retirement.

I am so looking forward to living in the Keys!

Packed and ready to go

Yesterday I went through my yarn and chose the sock yarn I'll take to Florida, along with the necessary patterns and the box o' needles. I am ready for any eventuality.

I pretty much know what books I'm taking (I think I'll just sneak 'em into the car after Tom packs it, because he thinks I'm taking too many); I've gotten a bunch that look good at book swaps lately.

I might not be quite as prepared for leaving the condo, though, as I don't have any clue as to what clothes I'll take.

Over the weekend, I read I Am Legend, which was written in 1954, I think, which can be sort of aggravating with the details of life at that time (as in, no microwave, records instead of cds, cars with chokes, etc.), but it really is a timeless story. Only the car with a choke, and a record player seemed odd in this day and age. I imagine that the movie with Will Smith will address those issues; now I have to see it. Very good book.

And I read the 5th book in the House of Night series. I can't remember what its title is, although I think it's Hunted. Those are fun, easy books and I enjoy them.

As for knitting, I did finally finish the second sock of the pair that I started two years ago. They fit and feel good. I knit them with fingering yarn and size 2 needles, which is what put me off them so long ago. They make a very thin fabric, but I like the way they feel. Very lightweight, soft. I started a pair with some of Claudia's sport discards, pink and yellow, but I don't know the colorway. I'm making them for a coworker whose only luck is bad luck, really really bad luck. As in she used to be an English teacher (in a piss-poor backwoods county, if that tells you anything) but had a nervous breakdown or something because she's now working as a teacher assistant for maybe $12,000 a year, and she's always deathly ill with this or that, or having foot surgery that laid her up for three months and she couldn't work, and her kids won't help her (although it's possible they have a reason for that), her furnace broke down in the dead of winter and she couldn't afford to fix it, so people here at school chipped in to take her through those months, including paying her health insurance when she couldn't work. Well, last week the poor woman had a mini-stroke while working and had to be rushed to the hospital. She was hospitalized for two days. Anyway, a few weeks ago I asked her if she'd like some handknit socks (she's always admiring mine) and told her to measure her ankle and the length of her foot. She wears a child's size 3 or 4 shoe! She never did get the measurements to me, but I'm guessing that her foot is about the same size as 9-year-old A's foot, well, except for the poor woman's bunions.

On top of it all, the woman was running back and forth 5 hours to the bottom of the state to take care of her ailing father, then he died and left her some run-down, no good rental properties waayyy down there, and she's sunk way too much into fixing them up, and the people who are renting aren't paying their rent........... She's just a magnet for bad luck, poor thing.

I tell you, we are so blessed. During the winter when the scary financial things were going on with us, I had no doubt that we'd come out of it okay. We came out really well. And here we are, with plans to spend my entire 6 weeks off work in the Keys, while we look for a house to buy, just seven months after the financial boogey man attacked us.

We truly are blessed.

I'm mommy

There's been a flurry of activity here since Thursday night when my daughter, J, called me with some scary health news that I won't go into here so as not to embarrass her. Anyway, the scare seems to be simply that, and things are okay, and she wants her mommy.

And I need to hug my daughter, so with the help of extremely low last-minute airfare from one of the upstart airlines, I now need to pack my bags so I can catch a flight to Orlando. Eight days in Florida. What have I been whining about for months? Florida. And I'm going there today.

Medical miracles, airline miracles, and the miracle of the internets. Pretty decent life we have here.

Not to mention the incredible principal I have who told me to "Go. She needs you." I'll be working all summer, but who cares?