Places I have been

There's a whole lot of empty space there. I need to get myself to South America, Africa, and some Asian countries.



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Pancake Day

Tonight, while my party-animal American friends are whooping it up at a Mardis Gras party, with beads and hurricanes (no pun intended), I shall be marking Shrove Tuesday by making crepes stuffed with feta.

This is not through some stubborn refusal to take on the local traditions, Matt and I get up so early on week days that a late night drinking fest is a really bad idea. I think it is rather symbolic that I grew up thinking of Fat Tuesday as "Pancake Day", the day when we often had crepes for school lunch AND made them for dinner at home, with a vague idea that it's the last day before lent, and it's all somehow linked to Easter and Jesus and other random Christian stuff. Please note that I went to a Presbyterian school, but was raised atheist. Meanwhile, in the U.S., Fat Tuesday is Brazilian showgirls flashing their boobs at drunken frat brothers in the middle of a crowded street in New Orleans.

Pretty different.

Perhaps I should combine the traditions and make my crepes topless. Me topless that is. Or in a sparkly bikini and high heels, since the idea of making anything involving hot fat on a stovetop without a top on is a little scary. No photographs will be forthcoming. It might be worth it just to see the look on Matt's face. "No sweetie, I'm not starting to cook yet, I've just got to go change..."

All Clear

EVERYTHING came back all clear. All five moles were normal, no melanoma in the lymph node, no melanoma left in the margins they took (which means they didn't even need to take out as much as they did, but it's done now so...oh well).

Whew.

So now I can just focus on trying to look after my healing incisions. No chemotherapy or further excisions needed! I was actually very surprised that I didn't even have a whacko mole, they've been following a trend of being "abnormal", I'm glad they're gone now so I don't have to be super vigilant of 5 different odd looking moles on my face. That was making me a little crazy already.

On Friday, when the stitches came out, I wasn't too happy with how it all looked. I was also pretty busy being relieved that I got off so lightly, and celebrating with Matt (there was wine, and congnac, and chocolate, on saturday there was peach lambic and more chocolate) But by Sunday the upper half of the loooong incision had healed and is already starting to vanish. It's just a LINE now, a thin line at that, if that's what it looks 1.5 weeks post op, it'll pretty much vanish over the next few months. The lower half...I'm not examining too closely yet, it's still healing up, and I know it'll be more visible, a thicker line, but it'll probably look a lot better than my paranoid imaginings.

Sunday, Matt and I went up to the nearby mountains in search of snow, on the way up we took an offroad trail, so we got MUD and SNOW in one day trip. Yesterday was a public holiday, and I was in bed, napping and reading until about 10.30. With both cats flaked out keeping me company. Then my parents called and I spoke to them for about 2 hours. Lazy day.

My whole family is breathing a lot easier now. I'm so lucky to have been going to a dermatologist regularly and caught it early enough.

Question

This morning the glue on my dressings loosened enough for me to take off the surgical tape and replace it with fresh tape. So I got my first look at all the stitches and everything. Quite honestly I think it'll heal up really well but it freaked me out for the rest of the morning seeing so many stitches all over my face, and especially realizing how LONG the incision is from the melanoma.

I took a couple of photos for posterity. I think it will be good to be able to look back in a few months or a year, if I get down on the whole scarring issue. I think it will be good (if a little wierd) to have a photo I can look at and say "yeah...but I survived looking like THIS!".

So here's the question: you wanna see my new, temporary, bride of The Creature look?

We Love General Anesthetics

I spent a significant portion of yesterday unconscious, and when I came out of it I was filled with much happy love for the world (including the nurse who came over to me every once in a while to remind me to breathe properly because I kept dozing off and not breathing enough apparently). Highly preferable to lying on a table feeling no pain but being intensely aware of every tug and pull as a doctor fiddles about with your skin and stitches you up.

Now I'm a bit headachey and my face feels a little swollen, but I think that's pretty good for one large, one medium, and FIVE small incisions on my face. I'm also a little tanked up on vicodin, so I'm probably fairly incoherent.

The coolest part is that the dye they injected into the site of the tumor (so they could locate the correct lymph node) was bright blue, and now so is that part of my face! Yesterday the entire under-eye circle was this amazing bright cerulean blue. Like the height of 1980s eyeshadow tackiness, only UNDER my eye. It's already faded to a mere wash of turquoise, Matt got a photo about halfway between the peak of blueness and where I am now.

Biopsy results next Friday. I'm really glad the surgery's done with, I shall probably worry more about the results as Friday approaches.

Poor Taliesin. They didn't find anything wrong with him at the vet, so they decided to give him all his boosters while he was in there. I'm not sure this was a good idea, since I got him home last night he's been all sulky and out of sorts. Not even the mighty pull of a spoonful of yogurt tempted him out from under the bed this morning. So I left him to carry on hunching in dark corners looking miserable. I know how he feels.

I can't just muscle through this, I can't get up the day after surgery, pretend nothing happened, and go back to work and be PRODUCTIVE. I'm not allowed, in fact I've been told I might need help walking to the bathroom, and that I should not be left unattended for 24 hours afterwards. Probably it's the general anesthetic that will have the effect of making me groggy etc. Matt has to work, and luckily one of our closest friends, who also lives in the building, has that day off and will be on supervisory duty. I'm not sure if he'll be hanging out at our place, or just on call. I left Matt to sort that out because the thought of asking for that kind of help makes me feel sick. I hate helplessness, absolutely hate it. Realizing how much I wanted my boss to give me work to take home with me for while I'm resting up was quite a shock.

Somehow in the past 5 years I have become the kind of woman who will keep pursuing work when she's sick, even if it might make her sicker longer. I think of public holidays as a great chance to catch up on household chores, I have actually caught myself considering "doing extra laundry" as a good way to spend a "me day". I'm sure I used to be much more of a skiver, any chance to get away with not doing stuff. I used to be so bored with school, or I couldn't see much importance in getting projects done, that I'd procrastinate until the last minute and then tearfully cobble together some crap, making excuses to myself all the way.

After I graduated and met Matt, and especially after I moved jobs to this one, a job well done became such a great rewarding feeling. Perhaps I learned that hard work does pay off. Hard work paying attention and learning on the job, and also hard work fixing myself up after a long bout of depression. I'm coming to realise that work, doing stuff, being proactive, becoming a go-getting let-me-at-it kind of person is what pulled me out of the hole I was in. It also made our whole wedding planning thing work pretty well. Now all of a sudden I'm faced with a huge challenge: being able to stop.

Even as I type this I realize it's pretty ridiculous. I'm not loosing a LEG. this isn't a permanent stop. I have to face being a gibbering wreck for about 24 hours or so after surgery. Maybe not even gibbering, just disoriented and sick feeling.

I feel that I've spent far too much of my life already hiding under the covers feeling sick. I wasted somewhere between 2 and 5 YEARS not taking care of myself, crying a lot and feeling sick to my stomach just existing. Often it was helplessness that I felt. Helplessness to "fix" my life. Yay anxiety. I hope I'm just spaced out all day after surgery, the fear that is looming is that it will feel just like the pit of depression and then somehow I will get stuck there again.

Of course, I was feeling depression rear it's head before I got this diagnosis. I could go all Medium on the facts and try to convince myself that I felt this coming and was mourning it in advance... or I could skip the BS hokey pokey and admit that maybe go! go! go! go! go! go! go! go! go! go! wasn't working that well as a long term life solution and I'm getting overdue for seeking a little, you know, balance.

One of the signs of this need for balance is that the day I learned the biopsies had shown melanoma, after about an hour of freaking out I started to feel good about the new challenge to overcome, because it would distract me from the lingering depression that had started to really scare me. You know something's wrong when a cancer diagnosis turns into a welcome battle with the world.

I know I will need to give myself some "me time" (sans laundry folding), to figure out what I need once I'm done with getting carved up and biopsied. Right now I think it's ok to huddle under the covers seeking comfort. Hopefully Tali will forgive me for taking him to the vet and come and sulk with me instead of at me.

Happy Birthday to Me

Sunday was designated stuff-your-face day, Matt woke me up by bringing me a Coldstone Creamery chocolate raspberry ice cream cake in bed. With candles that look like crayons! My initial plan was to have icecream cake and a bottle of zinfandel for breakfast, but since I wanted to go to yoga we saved the wine for AFTER the workout. We also had steak for dinner, followed by more cake. Yum.

Today we are "celebrating" by having the pre-operative consultation with the surgeon, getting the stitches taken out of my leg, then going home for leftover london broil steak and the last bit of cake. with super yummy framboise lambic to wash it down.

Oh, and Tali's getting checked out by the vet today, poor little bugger has been acting strange, like he might be about to scent-mark stuff, even though he's never been a spraying kinda guy. So he gets to have his nethers probed by a stranger. Being away from his sister will probably be the worst part of the day. They do much better going to the vet as a pair, so they can cower in their carrier together.

All Is Vanity

While faffing about attempting to resize a photograph to send in for a passport I was seduced by the sparkly lure of airbrushing. First I used it to conceal the incision that will soon be replaced by a much larger one, then I dotted out a couple of obvious pimples. By that point I was far too mad with the new power to make up for my inexpert application of concealer and powder, and I zapped away the under-eye shadows too!

I'm officialy a Californian. Or maybe it's just reaching 26.

If you go to the flickr page and flip back and forth between the two photos it's pretty cool, just like one of those "debunking the beauty myth" websites showing magazine covers.

Don't ask

Molemap
Originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

for some reason I felt compelled to make this in word just now.

I think it's pretty self explanatory.

Status Report

OK, the melanoma on my leg was teeny-tiny (less than 1 mm) so they only needed to take out a 5 mm margin, which was done on Tuesday, leaving an incision about 4-5 cm long, with five stitches in it. Just like the first "big" incision I had on my face, which has now faded to a 4cm line that only shows if the light catches it right.

The one on my face was 1.6 mm thick, which makes it on the small side of "intermediate", since I'm on the young side for such things they are going to do a sentinel lymph node biopsy [>] to check for signs of spreading through my lymph system. The margins of this tumor also have to be removed, with a 10 mm margin (eek), which means a circle about the size of a US quarter, or a UK 10p piece, this will be done using the MOHS technique [>]. The Mohs is done with a local anesthetic, which would be kind of disconcerting apart from the fact that I've done this before, and now I won't be lying on the table freaking out about massive scarring, because the first big incision has healed pretty damn well. I bet you couldn't even look at my flickr account and tell me where that first big incision was. Unless you find the photo of me with a pressure bandage on my face.

OK, maybe I will be freaking out a little, but not as much as the first time. I know there's not much I can do but trust the surgeon's skill and take good care of it while it heals. That, and start a fund for laser resurfacing and/or chemical peels.

The lymph biopsy will be done under general anesthetic, which scares me: complete helplessness = baaaaaaaaad. Complete helplessness while somebody works at my throat with a scalpel = fucking scary. I have to keep reminding myself that this is not heart surgery, and that lots of people have general anesthetics for mundane things like wisdom tooth extraction.

Now we get to the part that will probably make everyone think I'm insane.

While I'm "out" under general anesthetic, the surgeon is going to remove five other moles from my face. Yes I have that many, no I don't look like a leopard. They all look pretty much like the innocuous moley that turned out to be harbouring 1.6 mm of cancer. My moles all look pretty normal: even colour, symmetrical shape, not too big, and most of them have been abnormal. Now two have been cancerous. My dermatologist, myself, and the head and neck surgeon all reckon it's a good idea to remove and biopsy the significant moles. If they're normal, we can be relieved, if they're not normal it's better to know now, and deal with it pronto. I am going to feel like the Bride of Frankenstein for a while, with stitches on my leg and on 5 small and one sizeable incision on my face.

I'm all calm right now. Listing off how many chunks of my face are going to be removed, and they might have to go back for more later. The thing with this whole experience is that when I'm freaking out, I'm freaking out WAY too much to type or write coherantly. I've been crying in my car a fair bit, unfortunately my long commute gives my brain plenty of time to run through worst case scenarios to itself. I'm either wailing inside and wanting to run far far away or hide under my bed with a cat, or I'm dealing with life. Dealing pretty well I think. I'm trying to make sure I let myself say I'm scared, and cry a bit, trying to let some of it out so that I can hold it all together enough to feel proud of myself.

Sod's Law

I didn't mention this before, because it's become kind of routine for me to have a dodgy mole removed when I go to the dermatologist for a mole-patrol checkup, but I had another two dodgy moles removed right before Christmas. The incision in my left shin healed wonderfully. By Sod's Law, the incision on my left cheek, right next to my nose was the one that didn't heal well. It wasn't an infection, the culture they took came back negative, but it was inflamed and didn't want to close. So I've been keeping it ointmented and covered to try to minimize scarring.

Waste of time.

Most of the moles I've had removed (3 out of 5 until this crop) have turned out to be "abnormal" in a benign way, and have required further margin to be surgically taken out. Sod's Law made sure that 2 of those were on my face (the other abnormal one was on my scalp).

Sod's Law has really outdone itself this time though. Both biopsies came back as melanoma. Very SMALL melanomas, but melanomas nonetheless. That's cancer, the BIG C. It's the nastiest skin cancer, most likely to spread to other tissues, most likely to recur. It's actually the best cancer to have if you're going to have a nasty spreading type cancer: at least it's highly detectable, and early detection means the only treatment required is excision and vigilance. No chemo. Thankfully.

So, back to my lovely dermatologist on Tuesday, to remove margins from my shin. She looks like a prettier version of Janice, Chandler's irritating recurring girlfriend on Friends, so I will call her Dr Janice. Then I will see a specialist in head and neck dermatology and surgery on Wednesday to discuss the offending site on my left cheek, and the possibility of doing a lymph node biopsy. I want the biopsy, I want to KNOW that it's clear, not assume.

Of course, I'm sure I'm sounding (reading?) much too calm. This is because I got the phone call around noon, and have already quietly freaked out about it by myself, then told a friendly coworker, and freaked out a bit more, then told my friendly boss, been sent home, and bought a fancy shower curtain and fuzzy bath mat as retail therapy. I've had 5-1/2 hours to digest this. There will be further freakouts, I may even post during one, they make good reading (if you want to see what I look like freaking out and questioning my existance and role in life etc., just check out 2001-2002 in the archives).

Matt just came home, and I told him right away. He takes my word for medical detail, so hopefully he won't be *too* worried, not constantly at any rate. I'm not going to tell my parents, not until I've had the margins cleared and (hopefully) get the all clear from a lymph node biopsy. My mother's brother died of internal melanoma, it would be such a nightmare to put her through the waiting and worrying again, so I will tell them when it's done and we're in vigilance mode, not treatment mode.

It's freakish and frightening, but it's not the threat-of-death diagnosis a lot of cancers are. More the threat of fear of recurrance and definite need for more bits of my face to get chopped out. I'd been wondering if I should have the remaining moles removed prophylactically, now I'm sure I will.

Shallow though this sounds I'm just REALLY glad this diagnosis came after the wedding. I think I'm going to be looking at a couple of years at least of babying incisions, and then saving up for a laser resurfacing or something. On some level I've been expecting this, you don't have 5 moles removed in 3 years, and have 3 of them turn out ot be abnormal, without something being a bit fishy.

Strike that

Bugger the giving up sweets. Some Januaries it works for me, some it doesn't. A week of sleeping like crap and weird hormone-withdrawal weeping/depression completely killed that. Forbidding myself from eating sweets of any kind was depriving me of much needed serotonin. So I ate a lemon poppyseed muffin. Best muffin I've had in ages.

Still haven't used the workout DVDs either.

My name is Cliche, I'll be your sporadic blogger for the evening

I bought a set of workout DVDs. In the first week of January.

And I'm cutting out sweets. For January.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

My computer tells me it's 4am, therefore it is time to call an end to Hogmanay revelries, involving random 20 yr old finnish girls asking for the recipe for pimento cheese, old Scottish flatmates talking politics with new (ish) mexican friends...it has been a goood one for the books signifying life coming together and making an odd kind of sense of past and present. My husband is snoring. Time to go join him. Since So Cal is behind most countries in ushering in the new year.

Obey the Gingerbread

eat02.jpg
Originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

Yes, that is a river of chocolate surrounded by mini marshmallows. In the top right corner of the photo there is a bowl of peanut butter flavoured fudge to cancel out any virtue we might feel by eating the bits of fruit and veg.

Despite this photograph, so far the festive season has been pretty "good" as far as pigging out goes. I may make up for that tomorrow night at the New Year's Eve party we're hosting.

Hosting Hogmanay. YAY. I'm excited. New Year's Eve is a big deal in Scotland, and I've garanteed us a bunch of first footers by tempting them into our home with ham and mulled wine.

Sunset / Moonrise With Cold Fingers

Nov2005 009
Originally uploaded by Rosemary Grace.

We drove into the nearby mountains yesterday afternoon, hoping to get lunch at a bakery, and finding they were out of everything but nachos at the snack bar. So we had nachos and danish pastries for lunch, then carried on to a little bit of offroad driving. The trail we were on turned out to connect with one of our favourite longer trails, but there was a gate closed across it, so we didn't get to do a big loop, just got out of the car and wandered along the trail for a bit. It was pretty chilly, but that felt nice as long as we were walking. It felt like real November weather. We got back to the vehicle just in time to avoid being stuck in the dark without flashlights. For the last few minutes of walking back, Matt had his camping knife ready in his hand in case of coyotes or mountain lions.

I must admit I was being cheerfully oblivious to the whole "we're in the wilderness" thing. I'm so used to living in a place with city parks, and even if you do go off into the Scottish wilderness, you're hardly going to be leapt upon by a pissed off rabbit or a rabid sheep and have to defend yourself with a bowie knife. The wild haggis keep themselves to themselves. Sometimes it's a little daunting to realize that people do get jumped by mountian lions here, not often, but a couple of times a year. Maybe I should get myself a camping knife too, all I had yesterday was a pair of tweezers I brought in case of a close encounter with a cactus.

Lions and Cacti and Bears! Oh My!

O.K. No bears here, they're further north, but I know what to do if I encounter one: run, but not up or down hill, AROUND a hill. Seriously, they can't run with one side higher than the other, but they can climb trees. So if you ever encounter a wild bear run along a hillside, don't climb a tree like everyone does in the movies.

Watch what you say

Not that long ago I was commenting that my new post-wedding life contained few significant landmarks and deadlines for me, and that that was a good state of being for me.

Well, evidently the lull was too much for me and I needed a new project, because I've decided to apply for graduate school. Specifically to study epidemiology and add the letters "MPH" (Masters in Public Health) to my name. "M.P.H." The post graduate degree that sounds like a stifled burp. Seriously, try it. Try saying "mph" and making it sound scholarly.

So besides my current biostatistics class (in which I have earned a "A" every week so far, go me) I now must start studying for the GRE, which is a post-graduate study entrance exam type thing. Standardized test a la I.Q. tests. I've already signed up to take it in the middle of December, just to make it real. The application is due March 1st. So there's two new deadlines I'm counting down to: Mid-December GRE exam, and 1st of March application due, including spiffy letter of intent and worshipful reference letters from my boss and her cronies. My boss is very supportive of this, I'm very relieved, I was a little afraid to tell her I'd suddenly moved up the schedule for deserting her.

Jitterbug

Wow. The coffee cart coffee must be way stronger than what I'm making at home, I just had one cup from the cart and I'm all zoomy and light headed. My hands are actually shaking! For reference, I usually have 2 or three large mugs of coffee in the morning at home.

I'm going to eat my lunch, drink some water and hope that I slow down soon so that I can do some cell culture. Hopefully my coworkers won't be put off by me flittering about the lab muttering "buzz buzz buzz, zoom zoom, buzzbuzzbuzz", which is how a friend of mine once responded to a double hammerhead.

On Being Damp

Being damp and a little bit cold reminds me of home. I never used to bother with an umbrella because Edinburgh rain so often came with gusty winds that it was too much hassle and you got wet anyway. Besides the fear of thwacking a passerby with your brolly because of an ill-timed puff of wind.

Right now I'm sitting at my desk with damp feet, I stepped in a puddle and my formerly waterproof wondershoes are evidently wondershoes no longer. Just soggy moccasins.

The odd thing about rainy weather is that it makes me homesick. You'd think I'd be extra glad to live in California when it rains, because the rain here is only a small part of the year, but it makes me miss my parents' house and the fireplaces. Damp cold weather NEEDS a roaring fire to toast yourself in front of. My electric fan heater doesn't quite cut it. I have to resist the urge to make this an excuse to live on tomato soup and fried cheese.

Now that I think about it I was cold a lot growing up, which is probably why I'm such a heat seeker now, except for when the weather gets over 90F and I turn into a melted puddle of grumpy goo. Cold bathrooms: trying to keep my entire body under the stream of hot water in the shower because despite the steam, the air stayed resolutely chilly; being thankful for wooden toilet seats, so they were never that cold to sit on. Cold bedroom: getting into bed and spending the first few minutes shivering until my body heat warmed up the pocket of blankets I was in; trying to change into my pajamas under the blankets so I never had to be completely uncovered; giving up on my bedroom and just getting dressed for the morning in the kitchen, in front of the AGA, on which I would pre-warm my shirt.

I wonder if it would drive me crazy now to be so cold. I don't think so, our flat on 30th street was so uninsulated we referred to it as a shack, we'd wake up able to see our breath and shuffle quickly to the livingroom and turn on the heater. Which, by the way, was mounted about 6 feet above the floor level so it very kindly heated all the air next to the ceiling before it started to do us any good. Chilly mornings huddled into a bathrobe and slippers are my favourites, they make it so much more fun to wrap your hands around a mug of hot tea or coffee, rainy weather makes me appreciate my nice dry flat full of warm colours, and it really makes me appreciate the fact that Marble is a well trained foot-warmer. She's quite happy to take a nap on top of my feet.

In the name of science

I got up at 5.05am this morning, somehow managed to make myself porridge (and eat it) and stagger out the door to my car just after 6. The coffee pot was empty, and making more was beyond my mental capacity that early.

Leaving the house without coffee was a mistake, I found myself fighting droopy eyelids at stoplights by the time I got to work. Now that I've done the 7am cell treatment that neccesitated my early morning, and I've got 2 1/2 mugs of coffee starting to work their magic on my system I'm finally starting to feel awake. Hooray for the mini coffee machine on my desk. Hooray for pilfering the little pods of milk from the cafeteria.

I still want a nap though.