My Cervix Is Perfect!

Just to be clear, this title is actually something my doctor said to me at my last appointment. This post is about my boobs though, and not my cervix, which I won't be discussing. Also, two different doctors involved here. Well three really, if you count that random doctor who stood oddly (and I mean oddly) by at my last check up. And I do. Because he saw my boobs. And offered no medical expertise.

Good news! I don't have breast cancer.

I know I covered that before but it's still really exciting news. I also do not have to surgery. At this point in time. Boob doctor, not to be confused with a plastic surgeon, decided since the inflamed lymph node hasn't changed at all one way or the other that it would be overkill to remove it at this point. Which is infuriating because I spent all that time freaking out about it because he specifically told me that if nothing changed he wanted to take it out.

Now it just gets to hang out in there being all occasionally sensitive. I'm still on an anti-inflammatory regime though for the next 4-5 months, at which point I will go back in to see him. And I'm sure there will be a new and exciting "doctor" standing by the table in scrubs, being absolutely unhelpful, while my bare breast gets that disgusting gel smeared on it and then gets prodded and poked at by that ultrasound gun thing and I don't really know if this so called 'specialist' actually knows how to use that machine.

This reminds me: I don't like when an additional doctor is brought in to check out my ailments that can't be discussed and properly viewed while I'm fully clothed. It's not like a super common occurrence for me, but I can think of at least three times when a medical professional (supposedly) has seen parts of me that literally only five other people have. (I'm including my parents in this count because I was a baby once, and as such I had people bathe me. I was also above dressing myself. And I still kind of am.)

Well, to be fair, I don't know what went on when I was born. There could have been any number of people in that room.

I know that I can probably be like, 'whoa hey who is this guy and why does he get to see my lady garden? I am 17, and this is not acceptable.' Or, 'nuh-uh Doc, I know where this is going and he does not get to see my boobs unless he puts cash up front.' But I always feel meek and stupid when I'm around a doctor. They use those idiotic medical terms, instead of speaking plainly, and I don't want to ask what a word means because the tone they use makes me feel like I should know already. Of course I should know already. What kind of idiot do I have to be to not know that ductal carcinoma in-situ is a type of breast cancer in the ductal system?

I'm going to be totally honest, the extent of my knowledge regarding cancer in general (despite all the relatives who have died from various forms of it) is that when I first heard 'carcinoma', my sincere initial response was to somehow connect it with carbon monoxide poisoning. ...Just say the word. It kinda sounds similar. The 'car' part mostly. Only.

Anyway: I'm trying to say that I don't like feeling pressured to be okay with having some new guy come in and take a look at my unmentionables. I dislike it even more, when he has nothing to add.

Literally nothing.

And just stands there.

Watching.

Because it's really fucking creepy.

My List of Things To Do Today

(seriously, this is how busy my schedule is)

• Wash dishes
• Dust
• Vaccum
• Shower
• Buy a pair of winter boots
• Plan to write, but don't write
• Finish 'A Clash of Kings'

That is my legit schedule for today. If you will note, the time is now 11:27 am, EST. Since Jeremy works the late shift, I have plenty of time to accomplish these tasks because, naturally, I have no life and he's taking the only vehicle to work. ... I suppose I could drive him to work, but that really hinders my plan to try to save on fuel this year but not senselessly driving places when we don't have to. On the other hand, if my mother doesn't text me back then I'm stuck at home all day. These are the trials of being an adult.

I Do Not Know What 'Auld Lang Syne' means.

Okay so I was going to post about the Vacation movies, and I even have a draft saved of that blog, but then I just got really lazy this past week. I was off from 5 am Wednesday morning until, well I'm still off actually, and I was online for a pretty good amount of that time, and I just did not do anything with the blog. And then Friday we went to down to Columbus to my brother's for New Years Eve. Naturally while there I also did not do any blogging, as evidenced by this being the most recent post since before Christmas. I was going to talk about other stuff, like how my job now completely blows it again, but apparently I have to talk about my holiday. Cause my brother's wife wants to read about my Christmas, even though she celebrated it with me. Maybe she got drunk and blacked out afterward and can't remember it. Anyway, here's a rundown:

• December 23rd: Jeremy and I open presents, I get super amazing gifts, he gets what I thought were super amazing gifts but evidently are just 'pretty cool' gifts. What a dick. Also, go to calling hours for a relative of a friend of the family.
• December 24th: Christmas with my side of the family, including my apparently super drunk sister-in-law. More awesome gifts exchanged, funny zingers tossed out ("Oh nice, actually"), brunch buffet with tiny pancakes enjoyed, and I make punch following a supposedly German recipe that has a lot of wine, a lot of rum, and very little actual flavor. Cody and dad drink almost literally all of it. Troopers.
• December 25th: Christmas with Jeremy's side of the family, we get a blender, a fire-safe, and I get a cake pop maker. Guess who's bringing dessert next year? This girl! Then we go to Christmas at other friends house who also lives in Salem (where we were for his side of the family). I get a transforming stuffed Perry the Platypus. Jeremy get s a Boba Fett helmet to go with the Boba Fett hoodie he received the day before. The helmet, built for a child, astonishingly fits Jeremy's obnoxiously large head.

To culminate the holiday season, as I mentioned earlier, we went to Columbus and got drunk with my brother and his wife. Mum came with us but she doesn't drink so she just nursed her O'Douls like a pro. I like to think she'll remember it, but likely I'll have to post something about that. So here:

• Saw the movie New Years Eve, on New Years Eve (naturally).
• Ate at Wholly Joe's
• Dressed up all pretty
• Played board games that resulted in hilarity
• Got increasingly more drunk as the night wore on
• At midnight, blasted a glass of champagne at my sisters urging even though she bailed like a pussy cause she underestimated the fizziness of it.
• Drove home the next day, today, with zero problems with the Jeep (unlike the last time when we literally broke down on the highway but managed to crawl to a gas station to get towed to a Good Year and had to spend the night again cause no place was open to fix the belt and water pump.)

So, there ya go. My holiday.

Odds and Ends

If you haven't seen it last weeks episode of American Horror Story was pretty fantastic, in my opinion. My favorite part was the ending, and not in my usual, sarcastic, 'thank god that's over' way. I was sincerely moved by the ending. You feel Violet's pain when she makes Tate go away and then she's crying and there's no music so it's all you hear and they do that slow-camera-spinny-thing and I was waiting for Vivien to show up and the way she did was terrific. Just her hand on Violet's shoulder while she's crying and then you see them and the look on her face speaks volumes. You see at once her love and pride for her daughter as well as her hatred and disgust at being trapped in the house forever.

I cried. Not gonna lie. Got all teared up and sniffly.

Waiting on a few packages to arrive to be all finished with presents. Everything is bought and wrapped but those few damn things the mail is taking forever to get to me. The one item for Jeremy I bought this past week, got order confirmation, received it Friday, and Saturday got the email that it had shipped. Which was a little backwards, but I got it a lot sooner than I expected to, so that was nice. It's going to be so awesome. I can't wait for him to open it. He's going to love it.

I believe I mentioned that we weren't putting up a tree this year. Instead, I put some ornaments on the wall and strung lights around them in what I had intended to be a star shape. It looks super demented though so I won't be taking pictures of that. It's festive, in what I imagine is the way Renfield would decorate after dining on splys (spider stuffed flys).

I can think of two people off the top of my head who will get that reference.

Unrelated, I'm scheduled overnight Friday till 3:45 am. Our family celebration is Saturday. This seems like an awesome effort on my manager's part to give me Christmas Eve off which I mentioned I would like, but as a retail employee am not allowed to request off, because it's the holidays. I appreciate her efforts. On the other hand, unlike my brother who works till 8-ish Saturday morning, I have time to go home and sleep before festivities begin. Which is almost worse than not being able to, because I can get like four hours before I have to get up and start getting ready. Four hours seems like a lot if you're an insomniac, but after an 8 hour shift during the time of night when you're used to sleeping, four hours actually just feels like a light nap. So I'll likely be pissy and bitchy Saturday. Merry Christmas family!

Honestly, I can find anything to complain about. I am just never satisfied.

This One's For My Homies

My sister-in-law sent me a text today, one among many bitching about my brother and Christmas gifts. Amidst these angry texts I also received a suggestion to write a blog about one of her recent Facebook statuses and how no one really commented on it and they should have.

So I read it:

Awkward Christmas song lyrics, Under My Tree by 'N Sync:
No one else but me and you
Nothing I would rather do
Then make all your dreams come true
Under my tree
Such a cozy rendez-vous
Just relax enjoy the view
I'll show you how could it could be.
I wish that Santa could be here to see
It's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful under my tree

Now, when I first copied these lyrics over yonder, I had already told Jeremy she had this status. So I get them here, and I'm like, 'Alright here are the Awkward Christmas lyrics.' And I read them aloud. Our conversation went as follows:

Me: (after the lyrics) So that's it.
Jeremy: ...I think it's about the chick licking his balls.
Me: What?
Jeremy: Read it again, that's what it's about.
:I read it again:
Me: Are you saying the tree is-
Jeremy: The tree is his dick.

This made me think of Dick-in-a-Box. I don't know that I agree with this assessment, but it did make me laugh. Merry Christmas... ladies.

Other things that made me laugh: myself. Just now. We were talking about T-shirts and this one shirt he bought me, it's a picture of a dandy looking cup of tea with a cane and monocle, rocking some spats, and running like a spazz behind him is a freaked out cup o' Joe, with crazy eyes. It says, 'Tea, the gentleman's coffee.' Get it, guys? It's my T-shirt. My, t shirt. Tea shirt. It made me CTO.

That's a new thing. I'm starting a new LOL, it's CTO. Chortling To Oneself, or Chortled To Oneself. It'll catch on.

I make myself laugh all the time. (That's actually a line from my sister-in-law. She had it in her About Me on Myspace, back in the day. When I read it, I CTO. CTO'd? This is going to be a tough one to move into the vernacular.)

In unrelated news, I made Jeremy watch The Godfather Saturday night and I live-tweeted his comments. There weren't many, but they amused me. Lots of things amuse me. I would link to it, but it's Twitter. You'll never find it. ... I probably should've put it on my Tumblr now that I think about. Or even hear. I could transpose, I suppose. Apropos of nothing... see what I did there?

I'm done now.

I Couldn't Sleep

Early this morning while trying to sleep (I got home at 4, for a change.) I was thinking about my wedding dress and how I originally thought that because of how informal it was I would be able to wear it anywhere afterwards. Then I realized that if I wear it anywhere with my family I'll have to hear stupid jokes about wearing my wedding dress out and blah blah blah. Except it won't be limited to my family. His family will do it too. :sigh: Such are the problems of coming from a sarcastic family and marrying into another one.

I also remembered that I totally wore white to a wedding once, completely by accident. I actually only realized last night (this morning) when I was thinking about my other white (ish) dress. It has flowers and stuff on it and it might be an off-white, but still... nobody called me on it either. There was no mention of it from anyone. I wonder if anybody even noticed... I've always been curious about that. Shouldn't everyone be looking at the bride anyway? Nobody should even know if a guest is wearing white, unless that guest takes a picture with either the bride or groom. In which case, just Photoshop her dress a different color.

Coming Soon: out of context texts from my husband.

Because I think he's funny and everyone has to suffer my terrible sense of humor.

He's a Doctor, I Should Trust Him, Right?

OR Freaking Out Because of Non-Existent Realities and Also Because I'm a Paranoid Hypochondriac With a Way Overactive Imagination.

So we saw 50/50 last night. Really good movie. I cried a few times. It also made me really nervous about the whole breast-cancer-not-breast-cancer-thing. (I'm not still awake at 3 in the morning because of it though, that's just my sleep schedule for the past month and half.) I have to go back in about 4 weeks for another ultrasound to see if the "totally benign" lymph node is still there. The doctor said if it was then he would want to remove it, and I agree with that decision. Because nobody wants inflamed things just hanging out in their boob. Remove that.

But I started wondering if maybe it isn't actually benign. He didn't do a biopsy because he assumed it wasn't a big deal. I had no other indicators of breast cancer, nothing was misshapen, there was no discoloration, no discharge, no family history- I'm going to stop there for a minute.

When I first told mom that I had this appointment scheduled, which also included what we were looking for, she neglected to mention to me that our family does have a very brief (read vague) history with breast cancer/boob related things. Apparently a great aunt on her side had a mastectomy, one of her sisters had an issue with a fatty cyst, and she had one other example for me that I honestly was tuning out on because she told me this after my appointment. Which is also after I told the nurse, the doctor, and even the paperwork that I did not have any family history with these things. So I kinda panicked and called the office, but they were like, it's cool we'll see what's going on when you see the doctor in January.

Back to the paragraph before this. If it's still there in January I don't know if he'll want to do a biopsy first or just remove it. He said he would want to take it out, but he didn't say anything about checking out what it might be first. I've had a biopsy before, it was incredibly painful and I vomited pretty much the entire next day from the searing pain. (It was in the mysterious lady area, and that's a story for a different time. Or never at all.) So I have no idea what a biopsy is like with external maladies. At this stage I'm only concerned and curious.

Then of course I just fucking snowballed from there to it actually being cancer and needing to go through chemotherapy and what it would do to my body and if I would ever be able to have children and I nearly lost it sitting in the movie theatre. It was an emotional scene, but I honestly don't remember it because for some reason I conjured up this eternally fucked up story in my head: what if I found out I was pregnant, and that I also had breast cancer?

Yeah.

I did that to myself. While watching a heart warming comedy with my husband. I imagined a horrifying future for the two of us where I die young and childless.

You should never tell a hypochondriac there is even a 1% chance that the lump in her breast is cancerous. Lie to me, Doc. Seriously, just lie.

Also, when my lady-parts doctor found the lump he said, "It's probably nothing to worry about. How old are you?" I said 23. He said, "Oh definitely nothing to worry about. You're young."

So, I can't have breast cancer because I'm young, according to my doctor. I assume, had I asked, he would have told me the other girls don't like me cause they're jealous of how pretty I am.