Anyone who came of age in the 80's out there?

The Husband and I were discussing The Big Theme we were taught in high school in the 80's. For both of us, it was "Soviet Union, Bad. They do horrible things like track phone calls and spy on their citizens. United States, Good. We don't do that. Apple pie, red/white/blue = good, Big Brother = bad."

And remember all the talk-radio paranoia in the 90's about Big Government and black helicopters and the UN taking over the world?

That's why we are a bit mystified as to the apparent apathy towards reports that our government ... OUR government ... is, in fact, spying on its own citizens. First, the libraries. Then, the call records. Now, the reporters:

"Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You're Calling

May 15, 2006 10:33 AM

Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation."

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/05/federal_source_.html

I wish Qwest offered local phone service where I live. I'd sign up with them in a second.

Heart+Kidneys+Body = Person

One of the many thousands of things I've learned through All Of This:

Departmental politics is the same, whether you're a marketing manager, an IT guy, or a doctor.

I know, "duh." But it's one of those things you don't really stop and think about until you're in the big middle of Something Big and trusting everything The Big Doctor tells you, and getting mighty confused because what the Big Oncologist and the Big Surgeon and the Big Cardiologist say ... disagree.

Tomorrow we have the appointment with the Big Cardiologist. Back before her surgery, the oncologist considered putting her on a third type of chemo, doxorubicin, which can be weeeely bad for the heart. So, off for an echo to make sure her heart was up for it.

In that meeting, with the cardiologist, we learned that not only was her heart not up for it, but that she had a Serious Heart Condition, which he claimed had nothing to do with the kidney cancer. Because, you know, we didn't have enough to deal with.

All that may be true, except ... while in the hospital, no cardiologists came around til we threw a fit and demanded them. (The surgery team had notified them of her surgery and asked for their input.) Then, she wasn't scheduled for a post-surgery echocardiogram to see if maybe having a grapefruit and an orange on her kidneys had affected her heart. THEN, I got a call a couple of weeks ago saying that her scheduled appointment in June wouldn't work, so howsabout July?

Does Not Compute.

Well, I managed to get an appointment for May (tomorrow) with the cardiologist, rather than July. She's also getting an echo tomorrow. And our big question will be: okay, does she really have a Serious Heart Condition, or were you overplaying that to make sure the Big Oncologist didn't give her doxorubicin?

Big lesson in all of this ... oncologist only sees cancer. Cardiologist only sees heart. Surgeon only sees stuff to cut out. Apparently some hospitals are now looking to have "Principle Doctors" who will take the role of conductor. Sounds good to me.

Tune in tomorrow for As the Heart Turns ...

Not ennui ... and cheap Frappuccino

Ennui is such a good word, but it's not what I'm feeling. But we need a good word, like ennui, for this feeling ... mildly depressed, but you know you don't have a reason for it, so a little guilt mixed in, and you just kind of feel like a bored, bratty kid who goes and picks on their younger sister just for the heck of it. Nyah, nyah, nyah. I'm gonna eat worms.

We need a word for it. It's not depressed, and it's not ennui, and it's not sad, or bored, or lazy, or bratty, though those are all in it, too.

Moving along ...

I love "bizarre" recipes, if they're actually good. Like the Velveeta fudge. Or the tofu pie. Blow me down, they're actually quite good. As opposed to the recipe my Atkins-doing-friends have shared with me for mashed potatoes made with cauliflower.

Now, I happen to actually like cauliflower. I'm roasting some right now for soup. However, mashed cauliflower isn't mashed taters anymore than raw potato is a ripe juicy apple.

But here's a good recipe. It's not exactly like a Frappuccino, but it's pretty darn good, easy, cheap, and less calories than the original. And BIZARRE -- you have to put in a 5 second spray of Pam! But it works, it really does. You have to trust me on this. Go the recipe, and substitute cold coffee (even better, cold double-strength coffee) for the ice water:

http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/magicmilkshakes.htm

Oh, just TRY it.

Abortion, science, philosophy and luck

"A WOMAN is pregnant with Britain's first designer baby selected to prevent an inherited cancer, a newspaper in Britain has reported."

Story: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,19124612%255E663,00.html

The reason why I keep this blog anonymous has less to do with anyone I know finding it and more to do with the fact that it is really important to me that I can be scrupulously honest here. If I knew that anyone who knows me was reading this, I just know myself -- it would affect what I admit to feeling, what I write.

So, let's dive in to being scrupulously honest.

I am pro-choice, at least in the abstract, which is what being "pro-choice" is about. It isn't about being pro-abortion. It's about being willing to say, hey, I don't know everything, so I don't feel that I should be allowed to affect the choice here of other women. It's up to them. Pro-choice.

I am blessed that I have never had to make that choice.

We were prepared to, and had a couple of scares during pregnancies, waiting for tests to come back.

My godmother had a daughter who lived to be 55. She was severely retarded, blind, physically disabled. She lived in a hospital most of her life. My godmother loved her dearly but admitted that had she known ahead of time, knowing what she knows know, she would have terminated the pregnancy. Because of that, The Husband and I had said that if we had to make that choice, we would terminate. We didn't want to bring a soul into the world trapped in such an existence.

Thankfully, we never had that choice.

So, here's the deal ...

Knowing what I know now, if I had known that Little Warrior would be diagnosed with cancer by 7 months, would I have terminated the pregnancy?

Absolutely not. Every day I get with her is a gift. Not to mention, this will hopefully be curable.

But here's the rub:

If I did NOT know what I know now, and I was told that the fetus I was carrying would be diagnosed with cancer at only 7 months, would I have ended the pregnancy?

I just can't answer that. I just don't know. It would have seemed so overwhelming. I just don't know.

Except to say, in this case ... I'm glad I didn't know. Zealots on either side of this debate want us to believe that it's a simple thing. It's murder, it's a clinical procedure, it's a sin, it's a necessary choice.

Truth is, there's nothing simple about it. Nothing simple about the above article, either.

The Best Mother's Day Ever

Sometime in February, right after Little Warrior was diagnosed, something was said about Mother's Day. I can't even remember the context. The thought of the day instantly made me choke up then. Mother's Day seemed a million months away. Would I have three children celebrating with me, or four? Would I be celebrating, or mourning? I distinctly remember asking The Husband, "What will life be like by Mother's Day?"

Today is Saturday -- Mother's Day hasn't even begun -- and I can already tell you that life on this Mother's Day is incredible.

"It is what it is."

There you have it. What "yada, yada, yada" was for the 90's, "It is what it is" IS for the 00's.

Remember the Seinfeld episode about "yada, yada, yada"? Wherein in came out that the phrase was the ultimate cop-out phrase, as it could be used to obscure the truth?

That's what "It is what it is" ... is. Total cop-out phrase. At it's most innocent, it means "I can't change anything about it." Quite often, it's used to mean "I don't have enough information to make a decision, so I'm just going to put my head in the sand for now." Or, "I've done as much as I am willing to do." Or "Yeah, I totally screwed up, but rather than take responsibility, I'm going to act like it happened in a vacuum."

Hate the phrase. I've used it myself. Hate that.

Hey -- it is what it is.

Blue Jay Bullies

Walked the kids to school, pushing Bo Peep and Little Warrior in the jogging stroller. Not that I ever jog.

Beautiful, cool, not-too-humid morning. After dropping the older two off for their day, the younger two and I went on a long walk, looking at people's yards (The Husband wants me to give him a list of plants I want him to plant for my Mother's Day present). Songbirds just making a beautiful racket. Robins and mockingbirds, mostly.

And the bluejays. Ho-ho. Got back home and there was a squirrel up on one of the pine trees in our front yard. A blue jay began chasing him, furiously. Now, if you've never seen a blue jay chase a squirrel, you have missed a sight. That ole blue jay thinks he's the size of an ostrich, and with all his wing-beating and screeching, the squirrel thinks so, too. Around and around the tree, over and under limbs ... finally, the squirrel ran down the tree, across the yard and hopped another tree.

Probably, the squirrel got close to ole Blue Jay's nest. But you never know. Blue Jays are mean ass birds that love to bully other birds, animals, heck, even small children.

Bo Peep was out of the stroller and got to watch the whole show. She laughed like it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen.

And in our family, that's saying something.

Wide-eyed blinking in disbelief

Chris is gone???

Even if you never watch American Idol, you too can participate in the hot water-cooler talk tomorrow. Just repeat the above question.

Omphaloskepsis, Third

Huh.

Anyone who's read this blog from the "Before All of This" days, or B.C. (Before Cancer) is probably aware that the one thing I feared most about being a minister was crying. I was a crier. You know how movie stars get botox in their armpits to keep from sweating? I thought it patently unfair that they couldn't botox my tear ducts. Laughing, sad, I cried. Frustrated, I cried. Hallmark commercials, I cried. It was a family joke (in the way that it's not really funny to the person concerned) about what a crybaby I was.

Last Fall, I had two big challenges. I had to give a sermon the Sunday after Hurricane Katrina -- well, the song I had picked out, two months earlier, was Bridge Over Troubled Water. Boo-hoo.

Then, a coupla months later, an older friend of mine died. And I had to do the memorial service.

Tonight, I watched House. In it, a baby died. After being suffocated by his mother, who was insane at the moment. The Husband could barely stand it. Audible sniffs.

For me, no tears. Total detachment.

Huh.

More Omphaloskepsis

Before All of This, I was planning on going back to seminary this next semester.

Now, no way. At best, Little Warrior will be 2 months off treatment. I need a couple of "everything's okay" CT scans to go by.

When All of This began, I had this immediate thought of, "Okay, so I'm never going to go back to seminary. This is going to make me not want to be a minister. " The old "rage against God," thing.

Except that never happened.

I never did rage against God. Instead, this just kind of cemented what I already had percolating in my head ... that God is a concept we can't get our heads around, and God is not responsible for everything that happens. Kind of the Deist thought ... the world was created, and then we were off on our own.

It's not that clear-cut for me. I see so many things that are just too coincidental. Too many things connecting. I see everything as being part of a giant Spider web, one thing connected to the other.

But how do I reconcile that with my firm belief that Little Warrior's cancer did not "happen for a reason"? I cannot believe that anything would be dependent on her suffering and facing death. I do not believe, as a nurse cheerfully told me in the hospital, that this happened to LW "to teach all of us lessons." Perhaps the Christian God was willing to sacrifice his son for mankind; I am not a God, and I am not willing for my child to in any way be a sacrificial lamb. And certainly not so that other people can "learn lessons."

My brain is a Cuisinart right now. No clarity.

But I'm planning on going back to seminary next January. Good Lord willin' and the creek don't rise.

Omphaloskepsis

This is kind of bizarre.

I've gotten quite comfortable with Major Stress ... life and death stress.

But, inversely, the least little bit of day-to-day stress ... sending emails, contacting a doctor's office for an appointment ... makes my stomach hurt.

I used to eat stress for lunch. Now it's eating me.

Bizarre.

Crawling is Over-Rated

Little Warrior can't crawl -- I think that she tried crawling before her surgery and found she couldn't lift her tumor-filled belly off the ground, so she's like a puppy who continues limping on three legs after the fourth has heeled.

She does, however, get wherever she wants to go through a combination of log-rolling and slithering.

I left her quietly playing with toys and stepped into the next room. I soon heard a machine's roar -- LW had slithered over and turned on the Roomba. She was not hurt, but since she had to get on top of the Roomba in order to push the buttons, she was, to say the least, a bit startled.

Later on in the day, after making sure she was far away from the Roomba, I again went into the kitchen. The time, she rolled over to the coffee table and got her head and shoulders wedged in it. Again, she wasn't hurt, but she was highly indignant about the entire situation.

Tomorrow, I'm pulling out her play pen.

Like Riding a Bike

My son, "The Boy," rode a bicycle for the first time today.

He is a bit late in this -- 10 years old -- but it's never been something he was particularly interested in. He received a new, bigger bike for his birthday this week, and at some urging, took it onto our street.

Within 5 minutes, he was riding. No training wheels. No Dad running along behind.

He explained it to me:

"See, before, I was thinking about how I was worried and afraid I'd fall. But I just told myself not to think of that, but to think about how much fun it would be if I could learn to ride it."

It's such a cliche ... but cliches become cliches for a reason.

I learn so much from my children.

Cancer on TV vs. Cancer on reality

Or, reality on cancer.

Watched "Guiding Light" today as I held Little Warrior while she slept off some chemo. Soap operas are not so bad if you have tivo and can watch the entire show in 5 minutes. So, the Queen of the Tear, Reva, is diagnosed with breast cancer. And the results of her biopsy come back within a couple of hours. Yessir, this is tv.

Cancer diagnosis on tv: character is shocked. Character decides to do nothing and hide the cancer from everyone. Eventually, a nurse slips up, the family finds out, and the character is forced into treatment.

Cancer diagnosis on reality: person is shocked. Person calls all the family necessary and explains what's going on. Person seeks opinions on the best doctors and treatment available. Person begins treatment.

My experience and that of my friends, anyway. I'm sure it was different 20 years ago, but c'mon ...

Falling in Love Again

I've fallen in love with my parents.

I always thought they were pretty amazing people, but, like most, we had a few issues over the years. Before All of This, they weren't shy with their opinions that I need to lose weight, my children needed more discipline, I was apparently a horrible child and a worse teenager, etc. I harbored opinions that they thought Karen Carpenter would have been such a pretty girl if she could have just lost another 10 pounds, fear was a good tradeoff for empathetic parenting and why the heck couldn't they see that I was their only child to not do drugs, have sex in high school and sneak out of the house?

I'm sorry, what was I talking about?

The time that they spent here, while we were thrust into the Amazing World of Childhood Cancer, had its effect. My mother and I were always daily callers to each other, but now, even Dad is in the party. "Hey, be sure and watch CMT tonight - it's going to be Bruce Springsteen doing 'The Seeger Sessions.'" "Hey, did you read 'Pearls Before Swine' today? We've both had 'friends' like Rat, haven't we?"

It's not like anything in our relationship has changed that much. I always knew that I was loved, and they always knew I loved them.

I guess, now, it's that I know I'm cherished. And they know they're appreciated. Hmm. Maybe that's the whole secret to this parent/child thing. The child wants to feel cherished and the parent wants to feel appreciated.

Okay, now to make my monkeys feel cherished ...

10 years ago tonight ...

I was in the emergency room. The baby in my womb had stopped moving. We were close to my due date and he was my first pregnancy. I had called my ob/gyn who instructed us to come to the hospital and get checked out. My parents were at my house because we had planned on having a family dinner. My husband and me, my brother and his wife, my sister and her boyfriend, and my parents. They stayed behind as we left.

In triage, they had me drink some apple juice while they readied the doppler. Babump, babump, babump. Heartbeat. And it sounded fine. They had me stay a little while longer, then released me.

At home, with that news, everyone relaxed. And had dinner. And drank a little bit more than usual. This was the first grandchild in the family. As they left, very late, they called out, "Don't go into labor tonight, we're too tired and drunk!"

Yeah. You can guess.

3:00 am, I woke to feel some strange cramping. And dampness. I got up. No big gush, but definitely water coming out. I woke up The Husband, excited. "My water broke. But I'm going to take a shower. You can go back to sleep if you want." And he did!

He argues that this was because he was sick. He was, but this is a guy who can sleep through the sinking of the Titanic, so I'm not sure it was a causal factor.

I had my shower, called the hospital, he got up and got dressed. We had planned on paging my parents, but the RV park where they'd parked their trailer was on the way to the hospital. They were awakened at 5:00 am by me banging on their window. My dad, bleary-eyed, came to the window and peered out. "We're going to the hospital to have a baby!" I announced.

He and my mom came out. He held me at arms length to look in my face. "This is the happiest I've ever seen you," he said.

A few hours later, when they got to the hospital, I didn't look so happy. A few hours past that, I threw away the whole "natural birth" thing and experienced the wonder and joy that is called "epidural."

When it was time to push, I felt a kinship with all the mothers in the world. At my request, The Husband went out into the hall and asked the two grandmothers if they wanted to see their grandson born. Music was playing, the grandmothers had to keep reminding each other to breathe, the rest of my family was out in the hallway. At 5:06 pm, The Boy was born. He was so beautiful. I had myself prepared for a lizard -- that's what everyone said newborns looked like. But not this one. He looked like a doll baby.

Tomorrow, he turns 10. I can't believe that in the same amount of time it took for him to get from there to here, he'll be 20. It goes so fast.

Tomorrow, his sisters, father and I will creep into his room with his "morning" birthday cake. We will wake him up singing "Happy Birthday." His father and I will tell him how glad we are that he's ours.

He'll go to school. And Little Warrior and I will go to get her first 100% double-dip of chemo. Obladi-oblada. Life goes on.

Deaf Does Not Equal Stupid

I'm 2 days late and 2 dollars short, but I just read Happy Feminist's post about disability issues, led by Diary of a Goldfish's urge to blog about disability.

The Husband is 75% deaf, which means with hearing aids, he can function somewhat normally, and without hearing aids, I want to pinch him. (Lizard Eater is not a very patient person. And the only time The Husband doesn't have his hearing aids in is in the middle of the night. When babies cry. The Husband does respond quite quickly to being kicked, however.)

This should not be taken as a wholesale endorsement of kicking the deaf.

My .02 about deafness: do not assume, if someone is hard of hearing, that they are mentally impaired. How does that connection get made, I wonder. I mean, he doesn't exactly have hidden hearing aids. And they're in both ears. And when he can't hear you (for instance, when you are the employee at McDonalds saying, hullo kin I take yer order), he leans in, tilting his good ear toward you.

For some reason, rather than this indicating to the person that he is, indeed, hard of hearing and would like for the person to speak more clearly and/or louder, this indicates to the person, "I am a freakin' idiot. Please treat me as such."

Don't.

Here's your laugh for today ...

A bittersweet laugh.

Reading RevChristine's post about losing a family pet made me think of losing one of our cats a couple of years ago. She had to be put to sleep. I tried to explain it to The Princess, who was 5 at the time -- not the euthanasia, just that she had died at the veterinarian and Daddy would be bringing Sally's body home for us to bury. "What made her alive -- her soul -- is gone, so she can't meow or walk around or feel anything anymore. Daddy is just bringing home her body."

The Princess looked up at me sorrowfully, trying to comprehend.

"But not her head?"

Blogging About Cancer

Fuggedabout about Kubler-Ross's levels of grief. Nowadays, if you get cancer (or someone you love does), there are the 7 Cancer Levels of Internet:

1) You google like crazy all the terms you hear the doctors say, in an effort to know what's going on. Of course, the main thing you're searching for is what you have, and whether you'll survive it.

2) Because of all that googling, along with the medical sites, you land on some blogs of folks/parents dealing with cancer and read them furiously, going backwards to see how it was diagnosed and fast forwarding to see if the person is still alive.

3) You get on discussion lists with other people who have the kind of cancer you have.

4) If you're a parent, you start a "caringbridge" site or one like it, so that rather than answer the phone all day, you can post the patient's updates there.

5) You start your own personal blog.

6) You begin checking the blogs of a handful of other cancer patients/parents daily. As they do well, you rejoice. When they have a downturn, it is devastating to you.

7) You write about the fact that you read these blogs in your blog.

And here I am.

I just read on another site that May 17 is "Livestrong" day, and part of it involves a request for people to blog about cancer topics most important to them on that day.

For many of us 'doing the battle' right now, every day is Live Strong day. But I like the idea of lots of people picking that day to post about how cancer has affected them. Everyone has a story -- their own cancer scare, a favorite aunt, the neighbor down the street.

Or a really cute baby.

What a Difference in a Year

Last year, at this time, I was pregnant. Getting checked every week to see if the inhepatic cholestasis of pregnancy had begun, which I had with my other three. (Ironically, with Little Warrior, it never appeared.) Living in an excruciatingly clean house that was on the market, and in the process of purchasing this house.

I had pictures of the "new house," which is an old house, but new to us. I would look at these pictures, look at photos of the back yard with the 4 story pine trees, and daydream about the day we'd live here.

So here we are. A year later.

This morning, I walked the kids to school and on the way home, fell in love again. With my iPod. Materialism, very bad. But damn, I love that white rectangle. Listened to Pink, Willie Nelson, Black-Eyed Peas, Ray Charles and I dunno who else.

Took a long walk after dropping them off, listening to my tunes, pushing the double stroller with Little Warrior and Bo Peep, enjoying the somewhat cool morning.

Came home and sat out in the backyard, pushing Little Warrior in her swing, keeping up with 'Peep's babbling conversation, listening to a mockingbird, looking up up up at the pine trees.

Here I am.

What a year. Baby has been born, house bought, house sold, new school, new neighbors, vasectomy for The Husband, lots of family around for holidays in the new house, baby diagnosed with cancer, lots of family around for cancer, surgery for the cancer, chemo, The Husband changing job positions ...

The trees are as wonderful as I knew they'd be.